Rockwell had founded the American Nazi Party, and was described as the "American Hitler" by the BBC. During the civil rights movement in 1966, Hefner sent Alex Haley to interview George Lincoln Rockwell, much to Rockwell's surprise because Haley was black. In the 1960s, Hefner created "private key" clubs that were racially diverse.
PLAYBOY APRIL 1998 PDF TRIAL
The case went to trial and resulted in a hung jury. On June 4, 1963, Hefner was arrested for promoting obscene literature after he published an issue of Playboy featuring nude shots of Jayne Mansfield in bed with a man present. He was also the chief creative officer of Playboy Enterprises, the publishing group which operates the magazine.
PLAYBOY APRIL 1998 PDF TV
Hefner promoted a bon vivant lifestyle in his magazine and in the TV shows that he hosted Playboy's Penthouse (1959–1960) and Playboy After Dark (1969–1970). Gregory attributed the launch of his career to that night. The magazine received angry letters, so Hefner responded, "If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society then the reverse was wrong, too." In 1961, Hefner watched Dick Gregory perform at the Herman Roberts Show Bar in Chicago, and he hired Gregory to work at the Chicago Playboy Club. The story highlighted straight men being persecuted in a world where homosexuality was the norm. (Hefner never met Monroe, but he bought the crypt next to hers at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in 1992 for $75,000.) Įsquire magazine rejected Charles Beaumont's science fiction story "The Crooked Man" in 1955, so Hefner agreed to publish it in Playboy. That first issue sold more than 50,000 copies. The first issue was published in December 1953 and featured Marilyn Monroe from a 1949 nude calendar shoot she did under a pseudonym. In 1953, he took out a mortgage loan of $600 and raised $8,000 from 45 investors (including $1,000 from his mother-"not because she believed in the venture," he told E! in 2006, "but because she believed in her son") to launch Playboy, which was initially going to be called Stag Party.
In January 1952, Hefner left his job as a copywriter for Esquire after he was denied a $5 raise. After graduation, he took a semester of graduate courses in Sociology at Northwestern University, but dropped out soon after. Hefner graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1949 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a double minor in Creative Writing and Art, having earned his degree in two and a half years. He attended Sayre Elementary School and Steinmetz High School, then served from 1944 to 1946 as a U.S. His mother had wanted him to become a missionary. He described his family as "conservative, Midwestern, Methodist". Through his father's line, Hefner was a descendant of Plymouth governor William Bradford. His mother was of Swedish ancestry, and his father was German and English. He had a younger brother, Keith (1929–2016). Hefner was born in Chicago on April 9, 1926, the first child of Glenn Lucius Hefner (1896–1976), an accountant, and his wife Grace Caroline (Swanson) Hefner (1895–1997) who worked as a teacher. He was an advocate of "sexual liberation" and "freedom of expression", and he was a political activist in the Democratic Party and for the causes of First Amendment rights, animal rescue, and the restoration of the Hollywood Sign. He also resided in luxury mansions where Playboy playmates shared his wild partying life, fueling keen media interest.
Hefner extended the Playboy brand into a world network of Playboy Clubs. The first issue of Playboy was published in 1953 featuring Marilyn Monroe in a nude calendar shoot it sold over 50,000 copies. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine, a publication with revealing photographs and articles which provoked charges of obscenity. Hugh Marston Hefner (Ap– September 27, 2017) was an American magazine publisher.