This goes back to what I’m saying though… why would you think he’s being played? Attention to his brand is waning. The only things you hear about the once-mythical Playboy Mansion anymore are how it stinks like dog urine and feces and how dirty it is. One of his former prostitutes put out a book that described just how pathetic the sex with him was. The man’s been married before, and doesn’t need a wife to get laid. What possible benefit could a marriage have to him, other than attention? And doesn’t the last-minute call off give him more of that?
I imagine she keeps the ring as payment for her part in the show.
To be fair and give both sides of the story, Harris is telling E Online that the breakup was mutual; that they were only getting married because he thought that was what she wanted, and that she didn’t want a “multiple girls” lifestyle. IMO, her not wanting multiple girls around sounds plausible, but not that Hefner would marry her simply because he thought that was what she wanted. Hefner has never been known for taking a back seat in his personal life in order to accomodate others.
And beartato, I think it’s plausible that the wedding might have been a tool to drum up interest in Playboy but I doubt it. Plus, like I said just above, Hefner has never been one to live any way other than he felt like. His previous marriages have been unhappy ones and I would imagine he would be more than a little reluctant to jump into another one whether it would benefit his magazine or not. I could be wrong, but I’ve tended to think that the Crystal Harris thing was mostly a rebound affair which resulted from his being left by Holly Madison. Hefner seemed truly troubled by that breakup and he seemed to find the ‘girl of his dreams’ awfully quickly after that.
And proceeded to move the afair in the direction that Holly had wanted their relationship to move - sort of “oh, so that’s what the hotties like these days, engagement? OK let’s try it”. It did seem awfully abrupt.
One can’t really be sure about the old fool these days. As mentioned, he has always had the tendency to become some sort of a caricature of himself, and that can, if you excuse the term, swing accross what Spinal Tap called the fine line between stupid and clever. Some times you look good – the über-Hep-cat persona in the early 60s went exactly with what his product represented at that time – and other times not so good – the Reality-TV character, for instance.
That said, I should have his problems. Oh, woe is me, I’m old and dotty and my dog soils the carpet and I can’t hold a long-term girlfriend and the last 50 years of my adult life have been a ride in First Class furnished in wall-to-wall five-star prime-grade T&A.
Yea, you can’t shop around a deal like that without word getting out. Not like Hefner doesn’t have connections in the sleazy news outlet world, after all.
She and her lawyer probably waited til the 11th hour, to avoid risking someone ratting her out to Hef, but it backfired anyway. Yeesh.
Yeah, the more I think about it the less Harris’ story adds up. Everything was apparently fine Sunday morning and by Sunday night she was packed up and gone. You’d think that if they had just sat down, talked, and decided marriage wasn’t the right thing to do after all, they still might have remained together as a couple. I mean, they were supposedly in love and all. Or she might at least have continued to live in the mansion (or the Playmate house across the street) until she could find a place and get settled. I believe Holly and later on the twins both continued to live there after they split with Hef (Holly in the mansion and the twins across the street). Instead, something unplanned happens and she’s out of there in a flash.
Funny thing is, though, that if she were truly looking for a payday of $500k or more, shouldn’t she have just married him? He’s what, 85? Worth $35 million? The wife (with no prenup, as per Hef) gets half, the other half gets split amongst the children, generally speaking.
Even if she’d just stayed married to him for a year or two it seems like she could have easily made off with $1m or more. I mean, if you’re going to be a gold-digger, girl… be a good gold digger, at least!
If the rumors are true, I’m thinking she wanted to hurt and embarrass Hefner. Not too many things worse than to be the Playboy of the Western World and get stood up at the altar on the grounds of your own mansion in front of all your friends. So, if she was feeling resentment strong enough to do that she probably couldn’t have continued to play the happy Hef-lover for much longer. It’s possible she felt that since she was gonna leave him anyway, she might as well try to finagle a hefty payday out of it in the bargain.
And with regard to the prenup, I thought I read a while back that Hefner said he expected there would be a prenup signed before the marriage. Then later it began to be reported that he wouldn’t have Harris sign a prenup. So it’s possible that he had a last minute change of heart and insisted that Harris sign a prenup after all, and that triggered the breakup.
So many possibilities. I imagine the truth will come out eventually.
I wonder how the $45 million figure he’s worth is arrived at. I’m guessing the Playboy Mansion alone is worth almost that much (it’s 9 acres in Beverly Hills) and upkeep on it would be tremendous.
The mansion must be corporately owned and maintained.
That is correct. Hefner in turn pays a rent to PEI Inc. for his private-residence and non-business use, plus reimburses the company for personal use of non-household facilities or staff. Wiki says the Mansion’s valued at $54 million.
Last I heard he owned something like 3/4 of the voting stock.
I suspect that his current PR people are putting about the disinformation that Hefner is in his early to mid-80s, but he’s considerably older than that.
When he was interviewed in the 20th anniversary edition of Playboy, he stated he was 35 when he quit his job at Esquire to found his own magazine. That was in 1953.
Appearing with Barbie Benton on David Frost’s show in April 1970 (air date), he stated that he was 50. I know because I was watching the show that night.
Do the math. He was born in 1918 or '19. Despite what his publicists say, he’s gotta be 93 or 94. I’m amazed no one else has caught him out on this so far.
