Hugh Hefner, Playboy, Activist, Rebel 

            Five dollars a week, or $260 a year in 1953, even when adjusted for inflation, it comes out to roughly $40 a week, an extra tank of gas for the car, or just a little over $2,000 a year, that was all he was asking. Not that much. He was a young married copywriter with a baby daughter named Christine who was just beginning to learn to walk.  His four year old marriage to his wife Mildred was not in the best shape and the extra money would help.   His bosses at Esquire magazine said no.  The sexual revolution might have turned out very different if the magazine had given Hugh Hefner the $5 he asked for.  Instead, he quit his job, went home, found forty-five investors, including his mother who gave him a $1,000 and, for a total of $8,000, out of his kitchen launched on December 1953 a new magazine called Playboy (named after a short lived automobile company) which featured as its centerfold a nude calendar that blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe had done before she became famous. (Although the two never met, Hef owns the crypt next to her.) It was such a risky venture that Hef decided not to put a publication date on it, in case it was the first and last issue. Instead, it was an immediate success, selling out it’s 53,991 printed copies in a matter of weeks. 

            Why was Playboy so important? It was an era when nude magazines went behind the counter under the guise of art publications. Short stag films featuring actors in black socks and masks were shown in the back of men’s social clubs. Playboy tried to make sex fun, playful and entertaining.  Instead of being embarrassed, Hefner featured sex as part of a positive lifestyle. While there is a running joke about buying Playboy for the articles (the first Braille addition of Playboy came out in 1970), the magazine went out of its way to get the best writers possible to write for it, starting with the serialization of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 in early 1954. Other great authors and works included Ian Fleming’s James Bond adventure Octopussy, Joyce Carol Oats, Arthur C. Clarke, John Updike, Margaret Atwood, Saul Bellow, and James Ellroy. In 1962 the magazine interviewed Miles Davis, and it was such a success that they expanded it to include other newsworthy notables such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Jimmy Carter, Malcolm X, Alex Haley, John Lennon, Fidel Castro, and Yasser Arafat. 

            Whatever shame had been associated with sexuality was nowhere to be found in its pages.  The women found in its pages were beautiful, the kind of girls guys wanted to meet, the photos artistic, not crude. In fact when other magazines became more graphic like Hustler and Penthouse, Playboy struggled to keep up. It was a unique idea that Hefner combined nudity with politics, arts, and humor, and it paid off like a three cherry slot machine. At its height in the early 1970s, a quarter of all college age males were receiving Playboy, selling over 7 million copies every month.  It became a publicly traded company in 1971, and was publishing international versions, licensing its logo and name to a variety of products. Clubs featuring women in small outfits with rabbit ears and cottontails opened up across the nation including places like Des Moines, Iowa. Casinos and a television show soon followed.  By the mid-1980s, the magazine was showing its age, circulation was half of what it was, the clubs had closed and the casinos had lost their licenses. While still the top selling men’s magazine in America, it no longer had the power and influence it once had. In fact, the number of issues has been reduced from a monthly release to just ten a year. In many ways the sexual revolution has past Playboy by. (Today, most Playboy merchandise is bought by young women, who find the objects fun and female friendly.)

            When people think of Hugh Hefner, they think of rebellion against his puritanically Methodist upbringing, pajamas, scantly clad women, the grotto, Hef with his pipe and smoking jacket, Frank Sinatra, James Bond, and sexual excess; simple hedonism. Barbi Benton and Kimberly Conrad have given way to Grandpa Munster, popping Viagra, with his harem of blonde bubble-headed Barbie dolls. Playboy and Hef have become caricatures of themselves. 

            Award winning director Brigitte Berman, in her documentary Hugh Hefner, Playboy, Activist, Rebel, tries to reframe the image of the founder of America’s most famous skin magazine and his cultural importance by using film clips, scrapbooks, cartoons, and news footage.  Not only is Hef interviewed, but also the likes of Dr. Ruth, James Caan, Tony Bennett, Shannon Tweed, Susan Brownmiller, Jenny McCarthy, George Lucas, and Mike Wallace pop up to add their two cents. The words humanitarian and social activist do not come to mind when a person hears the name Hugh Hefner, but that is exactly what Papa Playboy has been his whole life. Not only did Hefner promote African-American writers like Alex Haley and interviewed King, Malcolm X, and Jesse Jackson, in the pages of his magazine, but made sure that his television show always featured a racially integrated crowd and performers back when blacks were rarely seen on the small screen.  Sammy Davis Jr., Bill Cosby, Dick Gregory, Richard Pryor, the Gateway Singers and countless Jazz musicians were featured.  At the height of the Civil Rights movement, Playboy made Jennifer Jackson the first African-American Playmate of the Month in the March 1965 issue much to the anger of many in the South.  Six years later, he put African-American fashion model Darine Stern on the cover.  (The cartoon character Marge Simpson mimicked the pose on the cover of the magazine last year.) In August 1969, Broadway dancer Paula Kelly did full frontal nudity.  It would be another three years until a Playmate would do something similar.

            Not only was Hefner a supporter of civil rights and equality, he has been at the forefront of the abortion war, autism awareness, and animal rescue.  In 1965, as Jackson posed for the centerfold, the publisher set up the Playboy Foundation which sought to promote education about sexuality, sensible sex and equality laws, rational drug policies, and fight censorship wherever it might be found. His daughter Christine established The Hugh Hefner First Amendment Award "to honor individuals who have made significant contributions in the vital effort to protect and enhance First Amendment rights for Americans."  He routinely featured blacklisted writers and performers in the magazine and on his television show, including singer Josh White and harmonica player Larry Adler. Two areas where Hefner was at the forefront of the fight that might surprise people is homosexual rights and feminism.  In 1955, Hefner was besieged by thousands of angry letters and threats for publishing Charles Beaumont’s short story “The Crook Man” about a straight man persecuted in a homosexual world.  While his confrontation with feminist Susan Brownmiller on “The Dick Cavett Show” is legendary, Playboy was employing women in executive and decision making roles in the company when other corporations were not. He even turned the reigns of his company over to his daughter in 1988. 

Verdict: A Good Documentary