Hugh Hefner, the founder of the popular adult magazine Playboy, passed away at his Playboy Mansion in California’s Beverley Hills on Wednesday, September 27. Credited with ushering in an era of sexual revolution in the 60s and 70s, Hefner was one of the most envied celebrities in America. Often ridiculed for promoting obscenity, Hefner refused to bow before his critics and regarded Playboy as a lifestyle magazine which revolved around sex and played to the male sexual fantasies.
Here are 10 lesser known facts you need to know about the media mogul, who regarded “sex, not religion, as the major civilising force in the world”:
1) As surprising as it may appear, it was Hefner’s mother Grace who had loaned him $1,000 to establish Playboy magazine.
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2) Hefner was sometimes characterised as an oversexed Peter Pan as he usually kept a harem of young blondes that numbered to as many as seven at his legendary Playboy Mansion. He had said that because of Viagra, the drug which is used to treat impotence and sexual dysfunction, he continued exercising his libido well into his 80s.
3) In 2005, Hugh Hefner tried and failed to create an Indian version of Playboy magazine sans the nudity featuring Aishwarya on the first cover.
4) In the early 60s when black Americans were largely denied equal civil rights as their white counterparts, Hefner started the first Playboy Club in Chicago where people of all races were offered admission. In 1965’s March issue, Jennifer Jackson became the first African-American to grace the cover of Playboy magazine. “We believe in the acceptance of all persons in all aspects of life on the basis of individual merit and without any regard to race, colour, or religion,” he wrote in a memo at the time.
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5) Despite the popular perception that Playboy’s success mostly attributed to its sexual content, Hefner was very serious about publishing good fiction. He hired the best writers of the time such as James Baldwin, John Updike, Doris Lessing, Kurt Vonnegut, Vladimir Nabokov and Michael Crichton.
6) He owns the world record for being the longest-serving editor of a magazine in modern history (for 60 years). He reportedly approved each and every issue’s layout, even as late as until April 2017, from its inception in 1953.
7) Hefner had admitted to have slept with over 1,000 women. He had famously said, “I’m the boy who dreamed the dream.”
8) Hefner is the 9th cousin, twice removed, of President George W. Bush, and the 9th cousin, once removed, of former Senator John Kerry.
9) In his biography, Mr Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream, author Steven Watts wrote that “Hefner’s thirst for sexual experience became so strong that he even had a one-time homosexual experience”.
10) Hefner would be buried next to Marlyn Monroe at Westwood Cemetry in Los Angeles. He had booked the crypt for a whopping $75,000 way back in 1992. When asked if there was any particular reason for his unique place of burial, he had famously said, “Because then nobody will be pissed off that I am still getting laid.”
11) Apart from being the longest-serving editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine, Hefner also has his name in the Guinness Book of World Records for owning the world’s largest collection of personal scrapbooks.
May the man, who had famously vowed “to never grow up”, rest in peace.
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