Hugh Hefner, the most iconic journalist of the 20th century, has passed away in his home the Playboy Mansion, of natural causes at age 91.
Hugh M. Hefner, the American icon who in 1953 introduced the world to Playboy magazine and built the company into one of the most recognizable American global brands. Hefner, often referred to by the jauntier moniker “Hef,” passed away at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles’ Holmby Hills neighborhood. His longtime home, with its infamous grotto and nearly 22,000 square feet of living space, became one of the most well-known residences, synonymous with “party central” for Hollywood elite and those lucky enough to swing an invitation.
Hugh Marston Hefner was born on April 9, 1926, to strict Methodist parents. The eldest of two brothers, he served two years in the Army during World War II and then went to work at Esquire Magazine as a copywriter. But by 1953, he was ready to strike out on his own in the publishing world. Having scraped together $8,000, Hefner put together the first issue of Playboy at home and it hit newsstands in December 1953, complete with an old nude photo of screen goddess Marilyn Monroe” that Hefner had purchased to add some oomph to the centerfold. The issue sold more than 50,000 copies and a publishing house was born as was the pop culture relevance of the Playboy centerfold, which became the playground for Hef’s Playmates of the Month
Ingeniously all the while, the beauties were stripping alongside some of the greatest celebrity interviews and pieces of journalism of all time, including a 1965 sit-down with Martin Luther King Jr & 1974’s “The Great Shark Hunt” by Hunter S. Thompson, the & Mark Boal penned article that became the basis for The Hurt Locker; and many more. Short fiction by the likes of Vladimir Nabokov Saul Bellow and Margaret Atwood has been featured in its Reading it for the articles.
And while Hefner knew that photos of nude women which over the years included stars ranging from, Kate Moss and Sharon Stone to Lindsay Lohan, Pamela Anderson and Naomi Campbell were what paid the bills, he always had lofty ideals and a firmly progressive philosophy when it came to the tone and sociopolitical purpose of his flagship magazine.
“I think that from the very beginning…what made Playboy so popular was not simply the naked ladies, there were naked ladies in other magazines,” Hefner explained in an interview. “What made the magazine so popular was, even before I started writing the philosophy, there was a point of view in the magazine…Prior to that you couldn’t run nude pictures without some kind of rationale that they were art. I made them into, I put them into a context of a positive, or what I perceived as a positive attitude, on male-female relationships. I suggested that sex was not the enemy, that violence was the enemy, that nice girls like sex.”
While the magazine managed to both inspire and ride the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s and 70s, in recent years it has struggled in the face of tough competition from the availability of free pornography online.
For a brief period from mid-2016 through early 2017, the magazine experimented with avoiding nudity, before returning to its previous formula.
Hefner also led free-speech battles in the U.S., fighting all the way to the Supreme Court after the U.S. Post Office refused to deliver his magazine.
Hefner was survived by his wife, Crystal, his sons, Cooper, David and Marston, and his daughter, Christie.
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