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People Feature
A conversation with Hugh Hefner
"A whole generation has grown up that was waiting for me to come out and play."
By Chris Colin
[12/28/99]

People Feature
Storm of the century
Rubin "Hurricane" Carter has lived a life of novelistic proportions. Unfortunately, the only fiction was the prosecutor's case.
By Frank Houston
[12/24/99]

Nothing Personal
And now a word from our readers
Welcome to the First Annual Nothing Personal Readers' Choice Awards! Where you dish the gossip and I go on vacation!
By Amy Reiter
[12/24/99]

Desmond Llewelyn
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By Bruce Feirstein
[12/23/99]

Nothing Personal
Keith Richards: Like a thief in the night?
Evil Glimmer Twin makes off with fan's guitar; health poll: better to resemble Tina Turner than Calista Flockhart -- Doh! Plus: Joe Frazier's daughter to Muhammad Ali's daughter: Boom! boom! Out go the lights.
By Amy Reiter
[12/23/99]

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In considering Hefner's life, it's best to begin with a snapshot of the present: A short, gray 73-year-old man being pawed in a Beverly Hills mansion by four nude or semi-nude models. The mansion has monkeys and peacocks in its lavish gardens. Two of the four models are twins. The man is smiling. A lot. In the background, radiating outward: a country's worth of smaller homes, with fewer pawing models, less wildlife and the rest of us asking: How does he do it?

With Viagra, of course, and millions of dollars. Any man in possession of these things could be in the same snapshot. Indeed, when a chuckling Geraldo Rivera asked the Playboy editor, "Hef, how do you do it?" it reeked of manufactured naiveté. But Geraldo's gosh golly-ism about wealth and power belies a deeper mystery: What is it about Hugh Hefner that ushered him through standard American tropes -- mediocrity, lust, ostentation -- to the degree of veneration he's now wallowing in?

Also Today A conversation with Hugh Hefner "I never intended to be a revolutionary. My intention was to create a mainstream men's magazine that included sex in it. That turned out to be a very revolutionary idea." By Chris Colin

Part of it is his sense of romance -- Hefner talks passionately about "the male-female connection." And yet it's a funny idea of romance. From the outset, man's mark was often discernable in Playboy's photos -- a football pennant on the wall, a cigar burning in an ashtray near the frame -- but it was the female side of the male-female connection that got all the play. The naked female side, to be precise.

Still, the adolescent reverence for women's bodies bespoke a version of romance -- albeit puerile, underfed -- that other skin magazines lacked. Whatever Hefner believed respect for the fairer sex actually entailed, it was a respect he held at the core of his company's enterprises. When the '70s exploded with Playboy imitators -- Penthouse, Hustler -- Hefner responded with a newfound restraint. The "pubic wars" raged briefly (raising the bar on just how much skin could be found at the local newsstand), but Playboy dangled a seldom-seen white flag; there are limits, Hef decided, to what a classy rag like Playboy will show.

His chivalrous gesture marked a turning point for the magazine, or perhaps for the culture that now seemed to be eclipsing it. Two decades later, Hefner's creation reads not as radical, but as a monument to what radical once was.

Radical and huge: In 1971, when Playboy Enterprises went public, the world was buying seven million copies of the magazine a month. Twenty-three Playboy clubs took the Playboy philosophy and served it with drinks. A shrewd marketing strategy had transformed the Bunny icon from a dopey adolescent idea (rabbits, see, they like sex -- lots of it) to an immediately recognizable symbol of sophistication and style. Hefner, feeling philosophically obligated to embody the full playboy lifestyle, hosted a regular TV show that dripped v-neck sweater swank while spotlighting the best new acts.

Before the millions, before the publishing empire, before the first Playboy -- before what Tom Wolfe called "one-handed magazines" were ever held in one hand at all -- an 8-year-old Hugh Marston Hefner opened his mansion. It wasn't, technically, a mansion back then -- more of a small Chicago home, sans Bunnies. But it was the neighborhood hotspot, and if there was fun to be had, it was had at Hefner's. His career would later make bank on the girl next door's curves, but his life has always been about hosting.

Hefner's seamless host persona allowed him to usher 20th-century America through some of its most dramatic changes. Boilerplate histories brusquely credit him with the sexual revolution and move on. In truth, the various and complex liberations that fall under this rubric (credit for which Hefner always splits with sex-science pioneer Alfred Kinsey) represent just a fraction of his influence. Hefner's impact on notions of domesticity and single life, on male and female identity, on fashion, on publishing, on corporate branding wisdom -- even on our understanding of the postal system -- his impact on all of these are abundantly evident.

But first, a lurid magazine about sex. In 1953, creating Playboy was scarcely a stretch for Hefner: In high school he'd written an essay criticizing the lack of frank discussion about sex in America, and in his college newspaper he'd praised the recently released and controversial "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male," aka the Kinsey Report. The real stretch was for the rest of the country. Never before had nude pictures been successfully sent through the mail as a mainstream commercial venture. Indeed, the Marilyn Monroe photos, which appeared in Playboy's first issue, had existed long before Hefner got his hands on them, but nobody had dared challenge the powerful U.S. Post Office and its anti-obscenity regulations. Hefner went ahead with his plans, visiting newsstands throughout Chicago on the day the magazine went on sale, to monitor progress. Fifty thousand issues sold nationwide -- more than he ever thought possible.

Next page | Dutifully attending photo shoots with beautiful naked women