Mandatory Credit: Photo by James Fortune/REX/Shutterstock (803112cx)
Hugh Hefner and Playmates at the Playboy Club
Hugh Marston Hefner has died at the age of 91. He may have had more influence on American culture than any artist, musician, activist or politician in the last century.
He founded Playboy when he was 27, bankrolling it himself and selling out the initial run of 51,000 copies, largely based on the nude Marilyn Monroe centerfold. He’ll be laid to rest in a mausoleum drawer next to hers.
It’s easy to diminish Hef as a purveyor of dirty pictures. It’s a cliched joke to say that you read Playboy for the articles, but it became true. The interviews were extensive and thoughtful, with presidential candidates, rock stars, sports figures, writers, filmmakers, in short, anyone who was worthy of the country’s attention. The short stories, articles on fashion, politics and lifestyle were deeper than any other popular magazine. Hef was a civil rights activist before it became fashionable, taking hits for inviting black entertainers on his Playboy After Dark TV show.
The Playboy Philosophy, derided as hopelessly libertine in the sixties, gradually became mainstream. Hefner was charitable, generous to those down on their luck. Strangely, he was a bit of an introvert who was a virgin until he married at 22. Boys of my generation learned more about sex from Hef than we ever did from our parents.
As he said, he lived the dream. A mansion filled with celebs and beautiful women where he could work and play in his pajamas and a smoking jacket. Yes, it became a joke when he cavorted with females sixty years his junior, but they were willing partners and if you could….
