Bashirfuntua: Hugh Hefner Founder Of Playboy, Dies At 91

Thursday 28 September 2017

Hugh Hefner Founder Of Playboy, Dies At 91

Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy Enterprises, has died of natural causes at the age of 91 in his home, the famed Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills, according to a statement from Playboy Enterprises.

For over six decades, Hefner served as the iconic leader, and later figurehead, of the magazine that he founded in 1953 at age 27 with some $600 of his own cash and a few thousand borrowed dollars. Known for its mixture of lifestyle content, high-profile interviews (with, among others, Jimmy Carter, Malcolm X and Miles Davis) and, of course, nude women (the first issue featured a partially clothed Marilyn Monroe), the liberal magazine quickly became a hit. Its first issue sold out, and the magazine was soon widely read by grown men and sneaky teenage boys alike. His timing didn't hurt: The golden age of Playboy coincided with the sexual revolution, and in the early 1970s, paid circulation peaked at around 7 million copies a month.

"Playboy is a personal image. What's important to me is our product," Hefner told FORBES in 1971. "The part that interests me most is the ideas, not the dollars."

But dollars followed. The magazine morphed into a business empire, with clubs, licensing deals--the Bunny lent its name to everything from clothing to toy cars--and a television network. Though the publication has declined in recent years--mainly due to the rise in competition from free, online pornography and dwindling circulation--the business is still alive and well, and was recently valued at $500 million.

At the center of it all was Hefner, a larger-than-life personality—and a playboy, himself. Hefner was a polarizing figures, criticized by feminists but adored by his friend. Known for hosting lavish parties and dating a slew of younger, beautiful women, Hefner, often clad in silk pajamas, touted sexual freedom.

"We like our apartment,” Hefner wrote in the editorial for the first issue of his magazine. “We enjoy mixing up cocktails and an hors d’oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph and inviting in a female for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex."

This decadence is best reflected in the Playboy Mansion, a 29-room estate with a zoo, the infamous grotto, Hefner's extra-large round bed and, it seems, an ever-present group of scantily-clad women. While Hefner continued to live there until his death, the mansion was actually sold in 2016 for $100 million, making it the most expensive home ever sold in Los Angeles at the time.

Playboy Enterprises went public in 1971 but was taken private in 2011 in a deal that valued the company at $207 million. While Hefner was the junior partner in the venture that acquired Playboy in 2011 and was no longer CEO of the company at the time, his employment agreement did leave him exclusive control over the magazine, as well as "the right to approve the overall image, costume and promotional outfits used by Playboy Bunnies." Hefner served as chief creative officer until last year, when his son Cooper took over (and swiftly brought back nudes to the magazine which had a brief stint without it).

Though Hefner may have been more well-known for his hedonistic lifestyle, he was also a champion of free speech and social liberalism. He spoke in support of abortion rights and the decriminalization of marijuana, and against the Jim Crow laws that persisted during Playboy's rise. He supported these causes with the Playboy Foundation, which he discussed in FORBES as early as 1971.

Hefner is survived by his wife, Crystal Harris, his daughter, Christie, and his sons, David, Marston and Cooper.

"My father lived an exceptional and impactful life as a media and cultural pioneer and a leading voice behind some of the most significant social and cultural movements of our time in advocating free speech, civil rights and sexual freedom,” Cooper wrote in a statement.

Cooper continued: “He defined a lifestyle and ethos that lie at the heart of the Playboy brand, one of the most recognizable and enduring in history."