Hugh Hefner, who created Playboy magazine and spun it into a media and entertainment-industry giant — all the while, as its very public avatar, squiring attractive young women (and sometimes marrying them) well into his 80s — died on Wednesday at his home, the Playboy Mansion near Beverly Hills, California.
He was 91. Hefner will be buried in Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles, where he bought the mausoleum drawer next to Marilyn Monroe.
Hefner the man and Playboy the brand were inseparable. Both advertised themselves as emblems of the sexual revolution, an escape from American priggishness and wider social intolerance. Both were derided over the years — as vulgar, as adolescent, as exploitative, and finally as anachronistic. But Hefner was a stunning success from his emergence in the early 1950s. His timing was perfect.
He was compared to Jay Gatsby, Citizen Kane and Walt Disney, but Hefner was his own production. He repeatedly likened his life to a romantic movie; it starred an ageless sophisticate in silk pyjamas and a smoking jacket, hosting a never-ending party for famous and fascinating people.
The first issue of Playboy was published in 1953, when Hefner was 27, a new father married to, by his account, the first woman he had slept with. Hefner was reviled, first by guardians of the 1950s social order — J. Edgar Hoover among them — and later by feminists. But Playboy’s circulation reached 1 million by 1960 and peaked at about 7 million in the 1970s.
Long after other publishers made the nude “Playmate” centrefold look more sugary than daring, Playboy remained the most successful men’s magazine in the world. Hefner’s company branched into movie, cable and digital production, sold its own line of clothing and jewellery, and opened clubs, resorts and casinos.The brand faded over the years, and by 2015 the magazine’s circulation had dropped to about 800,000 — although among men’s magazines it was outsold by only one, Maxim.
Hefner remained editorin-chief even after agreeing to the magazine’s startling decision in 2015 to stop publishing nude photographs. He handed Founded Playboy magazine in 1953, using a picture of a nude a $600 loan against his furniture and investments from family members to launch the magazine with a total of $8,000
Marilyn Monroe,
over creative control of Playboy last year to his son Cooper Hefner. (This year, the magazine brought back nudes.)
Hugh Marston Hefner was born April 9, 1926, the son of Glenn and Grace Hefner, Nebraska-born Methodists who had moved to Chicago. Decades later, he still told interviewers that he grew up “with a lot of repression”. A virgin until he was 22, he married his high school classmate, Millie Williams, and began what he described as a deadening slog into 1950s adulthood.
Meanwhile he was plotting his own magazine, which was to be, among other things, a vehicle for his slightly randy cartoons. The first issue of Playboy was financed with $600 of his own money and several thousand more in borrowed funds, including $1,000 from his mother. But his biggest asset was a nude calendar photo of Marilyn Monroe. He had bought the rights for $500.
When Playboy reached news stands in 1953, its press run of 51,000 sold out. The publisher, instantly famous, would soon become a millionaire; after five years, the magazine’s annual profit was $4 million and its rabbit logo was recognised around the world.
The 1980s, however, brought a huge retrenchment for Playboy. The company lost its London casinos. It shed its resorts and record division and sold Oui magazine, a more explicit but less successful version of Playboy, while the flagship’s circulation plunged. The Playboy Building in Chicago, its rabbit-head beacon illuminating Michigan Avenue, was also sold.
Hefner relied more and more on his daughter, Christie. He suffered a stroke in 1985, but he recovered and remained editor-in-chief of Playboy. In 1989 Hefner married again. His second wife was Kimberley Conrad, the 1989 Playmate of the Year, 38 years his junior. The couple divorced in 2010. Meanwhile, to widespread sniggering, he became a cheerleader for Viagra, telling a British journalist, “It is as close as anyone can imagine to the fountain of youth.”
Five days before the 85-year old Hefner was to marry the 25-year-old Harris in June 2011, the bride called it off. But Harris had another change of heart, and the two married in 2012. In addition to his wife, Hefner’s survivors include his daughter, Christie; and his sons, David, Marston and Cooper.
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