I read a comment by another publisher years ago to the effect that while Hef was famous for the playboy lifestyle and all the girls and everything, what he really was, was the best magazine editor who ever lived.
Actually, the incident of unfaithfulness and his loss of virginity occurred just before his first marriage. NPR rebroadcast part of Terry Gross’ 1999 interview of Hefner today and he relayed the story there.
Incidentally, Hefner also put out a publication called SBI (Show Business Illustrated) in the early 1960s that can be best desribed as a monthly precursor of Entertainment Weekly. I would not have been aware of this were it not for the fact my parents had a March 1962 edition of the magazine that they stuck away in their dresser drawer for 40 years before rediscovering it. I now have it and it’s a real time capsule. A young Paul Anka is on the cover and there’s a profile of Ray Charles and his drug problems by Nat Hentoff. I’ve sometimes thought of scanning the magazine into my hard drive and posting it on-line but I don’t want to incur the wrath of Playboy’s attorneys.
:dubious:
Would a Bunny Tell all that said “Hef was a great guy and a total gentleman” sell any books?
Met Hef once, briefly, seemed like a cool dude.
Believe it or not, I had dinner with him and Cynthia Maddox when I was eight or nine (1963 or '64). I didn’t know who he was at the time, and I didn’t find out until many years later. But I remember that occasion well.
I was visiting my dad in Joliet at the time; it must have been during Easter vacation, because it wasn’t summer but the weather was nice. My dad was dating a woman I assume worked for Playboy, and we spent the afternoon and evening at her home in Chicago. Which is where the aforementioned dinner took place. I sat across the table from Hefner.
This is Cynthia Maddox:
Kind of a cool memory, actually. :o
Well, Marilyn’s nudes were acquired and published without her permission and from what I understand, she was pretty annoyed about it.
Yeah, I was going from a vague memory and didn’t bother to look up the facts. I hate when other people do that, so mea maxima culpa.
Photographers normally have models sign releases relinquishing all further control over the photos. That happened here. Marilyn might have been annoyed but both the photographer and Hef were legally completely in the right when he licensed the use of the picture. Hef wasn’t even the first to print the picture. He actually saw it at the Chicago printer who was using it as part of a calendar.
The interesting story behind the picture is in the link below. I’m spoilering it because it has several Marilyn nudes.
That’s why I clarified that it depended on who you believed. Personally, I found the descriptions of the “club nights” beyond nauseating, and that a young, beautiful woman who may have finally found a place to stay, may not have felt she had a lot of options.
There was a videogame called Playboy: The Mansion that gave you a small taste of what it was like to be Hef. It was a Sims-style game that let you build Hefner’s empire from scratch. You had to hire writers and photographers and put out a monthly Playboy issue. You had to build relationships with models and celebrities. You got to take topless pictures of the models, and the better your relationship with them, the sexier they would pose. You could even boink them if the relationship was just right. The better quality of the magazine you put out, the more profit you earned, and you could make improvements to the mansion and unlock key areas such as the grotto and the clubhouse. And you got to throw swinging parties. There were a few (B-list) celebs such as Tom Arnold, Carmen Electra, and José Canseco, who allowed their likenesses to be licensed for the game.
You know what they say: The best revenge is to live well.
Who inherits all that? The daughter is the only one I’ve ever read anything about (the one who took over for a while and refused to show the world her tits). There is an older son I have never read a single thing about, probably a bald old man living in Des Moines under a fake name, and a pair of younger ones who are supposedly severely autistic but run around spending millions on anything, anywhere, any time, like Trump spawn.