Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
Romeo & Juliet summed up nicely in four lines.
Playboy broke down a lot of barriers. It’s hard to believe today just how restrictive the laws were in the fifties. Mailing an adult magazine could get you charged through the Federal Postal regulations. Hef and his magazine took a big risk.
Some things never change. 2015 it’s illegal to mail an ad for pot.
https://www.google.com/amp/www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-postal-service-marijuana-ads-20151217-story,amp.html
Thanks for introducing me to my first hairy beaver. I still love that delightful creature. 
And thank you Hef, for all the great mammaries err… Memories. 
I swear, I subscribed for the wonderful articles and cartoons! The centerfold was a delightful bonus.
Ignore this. Wrong thread.
I thought it was deep allegory of the hatred between Houses Heffner and Guccione.
I highly recommend “American Playboy: The Hugh Hefner Story” available on Amazon Prime. It covers the magazine’s creation and evolution, expansion of the empire (TV, clubs, etc.), the social issues the magazine helped bring attention to, and some of the barriers/hurdles it faced.
I shall sip a single-malt scotch in his memory.
The University of Illinois has lost its most famous living alumnus. Unfortunately there are few wild stories of his undergraduate days. As a young man, he didn’t have a whole lot of money. He had to found Playboy in order to make enough money to be a playboy.
Or Hefner and Flynt.
I only read his tombstone for the epitaph
He had some really groovy musical guests on Playboy After Dark.
How do you get aii them bitches?
First off, I don’t call them bitches. A little respect will get you a long ways, son.
A question was brought up while discussing this with Ms. Cups: Other than the argument that porn is “bad”, did Hefner ever do anything bad?
I can’t think of any drunk and disorderlies, or problems with drugs, or money laundering or anything else that he was a part of. He seemed, overall, to just be a decent dude and a savvy business man
I have read Talese’s Thy Neighbor’s Wife and ol’ Hef gets a couple chapters.
I guess it depends who you listen to/believe - some of the “Bunny Tell-Alls” accuse him of some pretty abusive (if not criminal) behaviour. It’s not completely far-fetched when you take into consideration he is from a different generation, when maybe slipping someone a Quaalude wasn’t considered as evil.
After moving HQ from Chicago to California, especially in the 70s he did seem to get very much into the whole lifestyle-of-excess thing.
On a more expensive side, he also got himself bad advice and gambled and lost at the casino business.
Was among the publishers who did not really get a handle on changing markets but while daughter Christie managed she was at least able to stop the bleeding and sort of stabilize the company. But after she retired they’ve been kind of adrift again.
Hef had a brief resurgence in the Reality-TV age with the sometimes cringey “The Girls Next Door” but by then he was a parody of himself.
Based on the Amazon docu-series I mentioned above (which I think probably tries to paint him in as good a light as possible), a few things stick out.
He was a pretty crappy husband and dad to his first wife and their daughter. HH married his college sweetheart but started the magazine a short time later. Making the magazine a success consumed his life he readily admits that he neglected his home life. They divorced after a few years. His daughter did end up coming in to help run the company when she got older, and there are some interviews with his ex-wife and I didn’t get the impression that she was especially bitter.
He greased some palms in order to get the right permits/approvals or whatever he needed to open his first casino in New Jersey. It’s portrayed as basically what you had to do to play ball at that time, not that that makes it right. When it looks like the authorities are going to crack down, HH drops a dime and works with the prosecutors in exchange for immunity.
He gets addicted to amphetamines as the stereotypical workaholic/slave-driver boss, but eventually kicks the habit.
As it’s portrayed in the series, HH’s trusted assistant gets mixed up with a drug-dealing boyfriend. He gets busted but the DEA (I think?) sees HH/Playboy as a bigger fish and gets the boyfriend and other drug-dealer to pin it on HH’s assistant in order to try and get her to implicate HH/Playboy as being involved in some big drug syndicate. She refuses and gets convicted, but kills herself before going to prison. In my opinion, HH comes off as more interested in saving his brand than helping his long time friend in his efforts to distance himself and the company from the trial. Only after she kills herself does he make a public statement about how she was framed.
It seems like there is another part in the series where HH throws someone under the bus to save or help the company. I remember there is some sort of bust at his London casino at one point and it might be the guy that was in charge there, also a long time friend/adviser.
He sponsored a lot of really great Jazz Festivals.
He promoted Freedom of the Press.
He has my gratitude for that.
Yeah, this pretty much. Hef was promoting a lifestyle. His magazine was targeted towards people who would be sophisticated Man’s men. They would listen to the best music on hi-fi stereos, read the best fiction, be up to date on politics and maybe even philosophy, reject Neanderthal attitudes like racism and homophobia, and fuck the best women. The women weren’t due much consideration. you’d throw them away when they got worn out, just like you’d replace your copy of Kind of Blue when it got too many scratches.
Also, like** Poysyn** said, some women reported being treated really badly at the mansion. Of course they could have quit, and workers in a lot of places get treated like shit. But for someone lauding himself as a progressive, Hefner could have done better by his bunnies. If you look at the guest lists for his parties, the men were writers, thinkers, artists, and other diverse categories. The women were mostly babes, picked for their looks.
Hef was a mixed bag. He stood up against racial prejudice. If a club was refusing black people, he would buy it and integrate it himself. He stood up for gay people in the fifties. But he had his blind spots. I think some of the “Good riddance you gross old lech” articles I’ve seen pop up in the Guardian and elsewhere are shitty, but not completely unfounded.
http://www.clickhole.com/article/beautiful-tribute-old-decrepit-man-wandered-around-6751
He was a virgin when he married at 22. His wife then cheated on him. It destroyed him.
It’s extremely simplistic to say that the rest of his life was the most elaborate revenge against a cheating spouse in the history of mankind, but it does seem to explain a lot.
Interview with former Playboy CEO Christie Hefner. Quite interesting how she learned the business and Rose to CEO. She held several important jobs before CEO. Director of Marketing, Publisher of some guides to electronics. She brought back the Playboy Jazz festival.
Playboy employed a lot of women in management.
Not that it matters a great deal, but for the sake of fact Millie (Hef’s first wife) cheated on him prior to their marriage while he was away in the service. Nor was Hef a virgin, though he almost was. He and Millie had sex for the first time shortly before their marriage and it was after this that she confessed to him that she’d been unfaithful. You are correct as to the impact it had on him. He later described that revelation as having been the most devastating moment of his life. (I know all this from a book on Hefner I read in the 70s. The title escapes me, but I’m sure the information is easy to find with Google should anyone doubt the chronology.)