Hugh Hefner wears his icon status as comfortably as his silk pajamas.
The founder of Playboy magazine is self-made yet urbane, a symbol of leisure and consumerism that’s committed to progressive social causes. He also dates women 60 years his junior and rarely appears in anything more formal than the aforementioned pajamas.
He is, in other words, precisely the type of personality Playboy magazine would profile.
“It’s amazing to me, quite frankly, that we had such a revolutionary impact in the 1950s and ’60s,” Hefner said over the phone from the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles. “To still be around and have a voice of some significance more than half a century later is unusual.”
Hefner, who turned 82 last year, has grown accustomed to celebrating the passage of time. He’s remained in the public eye longer than many of his followers have been alive. Playboy, the groundbreaking men’s leisure magazine he founded, still publishes in 25 countries and reaches 15 million readers a month, according to the company.
The Playboy name has become a multitiered, international brand that extends to radio, TV and online, not to mention Playboy-themed clubs and merchandise.
This month the granddaddy of all lad rags celebrates its 55th anniversary with a “classic nudes” photo spread that includes Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Bettie Page and others. Excerpts from Playboy’s intimidating Q&A library include Martin Luther King Jr., Miles Davis, Fidel Castro and John Lennon.
Despite Playboy’s now-accepted stamp on American culture, Hefner still strikes a controversial pose. Many have argued that he’s long since passed his cultural sell-by date and become a scraped-out husk of a man. Others say Playboy Enterprises itself is no longer viable.
“Very early on I recognized that people’s perceptions of me are reflective of themselves,” Hefner said. “The very nature of my life, because it involves sex and wealth and a very open lifestyle, is a mirror of other people’s expectations and fantasies.”
That may be the case, but what exactly are we looking at when we gaze into Hefner’s world?
Empire-building
Born in Chicago in 1926, Hefner grew up as the older of two brothers in a relatively traditional household. “The Hefner family dynamic … created a child who was extraordinarily self-absorbed,” wrote biographer Steven Watts in “Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream.”
The book, published in October, provides an intimate account Hefner’s empire. And Watts, who has penned biographies of Henry Ford and Walt Disney, sees Hefner as a quintessentially American figure on par with his other subjects.
“Hefner has a great gift for self-creation and self-invention,” said Watts, a professor of history at the University of Missouri. “I think he even saw signs of that in high school, where he made this self-conscious decision to be a hip high school kid and start wearing fashionable clothing and adopting certain lingo.”
When Esquire magazine wouldn’t give Hefner a $5 raise at his copywriting job in the early 1950s, he hocked his furniture, sweet-talked nearly 50 investors and published the first issue of Playboy — which he pieced together on a card table in his apartment.
“Those years immediately after the launch of the magazine and the very beginning are still very clear and very fresh in my mind,” Hefner reminisced. “It’s last Tuesday that’s a little blurry.”
Business savvy
Featuring a nude pictorial of Marilyn Monroe in the first issue was one of Hefner’s most brilliant moves, helping make the inaugural issue an instant success in 1953. From there Playboy rapidly ascended the cultural ladder, incorporating music, hard-nosed interviews and some of the most bracing literary voices around to complete its male- centric conception of “the good life.”
“What Hefner is really up to after World War II is promoting this broader culture of self-fulfillment,” Watts said. “Part of that is the sexual revolution, but just as important is the element of material abundance. It’s not only encounters with beautiful young women, but having a nice bachelor pad, stylish clothes and the latest music.”
Hefner has also motivated both sides of America’s traditional political divide to declare him the Antichrist, whether it’s the feminist left decrying his apparent misogyny or the religious right damning his celebration of casual sex. Hefner has helped forge a distinct identity for the American male, bringing sexuality to the forefront and championing free speech and equal rights alongside naked bodies and hot tubs.
“Playboy’s influence in terms of the male identity is that it’s helped offer a little more civilized way of being,” Hefner asserted. “Younger people growing up don’t have the same romantic connections that I had when I was growing up with music and art. Popular culture has dumbed down. There’s a much shorter attention span.”
“Dumbed down,” of course, is a relative term. “The Girls Next Door,” Hefner’s current E! TV show, portrays his big-breasted, dyed-blond girlfriends’ lives in the famous mansion. (The show was just renewed for a sixth season.)
But if Hefner’s life is a Rorschach test, then what we’re seeing is a shape that constantly morphs. “One of the virtues of ‘The Girls Next Door’ show is you get a sense of what I’m like as a human being,” Hefner said.
It also keeps him in the public eye — a virtue in and of itself. (See recent appearances in “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “The House Bunny.”)
He may be as successful as ever at keeping a pop-culture profile, but competition from imitators and other media has gradually chipped at his once- dominant position.
In October, the company laid off 55 employees as part of an attempt to save $12 million a year. Hefner has recently opened his 29-room, 26,000- square-foot mansion to the public. Of course, tickets to his lavish get-togethers sell from between $5,000 and $25,000, depending on the type of party and who’s showing up.
There were also reports in the New York Post last week that Playboy is combining its editorial and Web operations, closing its New York offices and moving everything to Chicago.
But Hefner, whose 56-year-old daughter, Christie, steps down as CEO this month, doesn’t seem to be sweating any of it. At 82, he doesn’t have the time.
“At this point my legacy’s fairly well established,” he said. “I would like to be remembered as somebody who had some positive impact on the social-sexual changes of his time. As my girlfriend said the other night: ‘You’re going to be in the history books,’ and I think that’s true.”
John Wenzel: 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com
