WEBVTT - The Playboy Mystique 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:09.800 Why uzzy media productions. The minority of women's liberationists was 0:00:09.840 --> 0:00:13.000 on the streets across the country. In the end, I 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:18.119 kind of came to understand that in many ways, women 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:21.600 are all bunnies. I enjoy women, I enjoy being women 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:26.920 with women very much, constantly surrounded by gorgeous girls and 0:00:27.000 --> 0:00:31.760 beautiful belongings. Hefner's world may seem enviable to some. I'm 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:35.879 a very lucky fellow. With whatever problems or conflicts I've 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:39.440 had in my life, I've managed to pursue and fulfill 0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:44.080 most all of my dreams. I personally would not want 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:47.199 to go down in history as who happening On the 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:52.599 night of March, two major social movements in America collided 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:56.000 on live television. It wasn't on the news, It was 0:00:56.040 --> 0:01:05.040 on a late night talk show. But it's nineteen seventy. 0:01:05.360 --> 0:01:08.520 Almost everyone on stage whereas bell bottomed trousers and some 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:11.720 shade of brown or orange, the set is adorned with 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:15.720 red upholstered chairs and walls. Dick Cavitt, the sandy haired 0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:19.039 host with bushy sideburns, announces his final two guests of 0:01:19.040 --> 0:01:20.920 the evening. There are a lot of women in this 0:01:21.000 --> 0:01:23.760 country who feel like they're being pushed around, and they 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:26.639 become very vocal. They call themselves the Women's Liberation movement, 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:29.000 and we have two representatives in that movement here tonight. There, 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:33.039 Cavot invites Susan Brown Miller and Sally Kimpton out on stage. 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:36.000 The two prominent feminists sit down just a few feet 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:39.759 from the show's previous guest, another man with sideburns, one 0:01:39.760 --> 0:01:42.360 who is smoking his trademark pipe and grinning like a 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:46.920 cheshire cat. That man is Hugh Hefner or hef as Cavit, 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:50.520 and most of America calls him. The founder of Playboy magazine. 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:54.320 Is the walking, talking embodiment of the sexual revolution, or 0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:57.240 at least the red blooded male side of it. Cabot 0:01:57.360 --> 0:02:00.000 sets things off when he asked brown Miller a pointed question, 0:02:00.400 --> 0:02:02.600 what do you think men are doing wrong? They oppress 0:02:02.720 --> 0:02:06.800 us as women, they won't let us be and Hugh 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:12.000 Hefner is my enemy? Who really set you up today? 0:02:12.440 --> 0:02:15.080 I'm more in sympathy than perhaps you know. The girls 0:02:15.120 --> 0:02:20.519 realized with I'm sorry, Then the ladies realize I am used. 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:25.640 Girls referring to women of roll agents should suddenly the 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:28.920 man responsible for dressing young women up as playboy bunnies 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:32.320 and his clubs is getting dressed down on national television 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:35.640 by a woman. It's the kind of confrontation that happens 0:02:35.680 --> 0:02:38.600 all the time on talk shows today. But Cabot's audience 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:40.800 doesn't know what to make of it, and Brown Miller 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:43.359 is just getting warmed up. Don't know what to do. 0:02:43.360 --> 0:02:45.960 You make them look like animals. Yes, women aren't buddies, 0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:49.639 they're not rabbits, they're human beings. It's Hefner now, who 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:53.080 resembles an animal one frozen in the headlights, went oncoming 0:02:53.120 --> 0:02:56.960 train and then the knockout blow the day that you 0:02:57.000 --> 0:02:59.000 are willing to come out here with a cotton tail 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:04.880 attached to your rear end. Heffner is visibly flustered by 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:07.800 the assault and sits back in his chair. He pulls 0:03:07.800 --> 0:03:10.800 out a match and lights his pipe. The audience revels 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:13.919 in the drama and his discomfort, And there were some 0:03:14.040 --> 0:03:17.240 feminists in the audience who sort of rushed the stage 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:21.520 during the broadcast, and Dick Cavitt had to sort of, 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:25.360 you know, restore order. This is Heffner biographer Stephen Watts. 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:28.320 People were brought in to calm everybody down. Then it 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:31.639 was quite the big deal. Cabot would later apologize for 0:03:31.680 --> 0:03:35.480 the charged encounter to Heffner. This turned into a roast 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:38.720 Haffner evening, I have a sorry today on the Thread 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:52.800 Hugh Heffner, Playboy icon enemy. This is the Thread a 0:03:52.880 --> 0:03:56.200 podcast from Aussie media where we explore the interconnecting lives 0:03:56.200 --> 0:03:59.880 and events of history. I'm Sean braswell. This season we 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:03.240 pull the thread on the feminist leader Gloria Steinham. One 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:05.600 of the turning points in Steinham's career, as we heard 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:08.480 an episode one, was her assignment as a young reporter 0:04:08.600 --> 0:04:12.200 to go undercover as a Playboy Bunny. The experience opened 0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:14.720 her eyes to the realization that all women could be 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:18.760 considered playboy bunnies. The man behind the Playboy Club and 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:22.839 its bunnies was another legendary magazine founder and a very 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:27.200 different sort of American icon, Hugh Heffner. In this episode, 0:04:27.440 --> 0:04:30.440 we trace Steinham's story back to the exclusive universe that 0:04:30.520 --> 0:04:34.600 Hefner created, to its early days, and to the Hollywood 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:38.240 legend who inadvertently helped Heffner launch Playboy in the first place. 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:44.640 Hugh Heffner's death last year marked the end of an era. 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:47.359 Hugh Heffner, the publisher of Playboy, has died at the 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:50.279 age of ninety one, and Hugh there was a Playboy 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:54.640 till the very end, borrowing lavish parties well into his eighties. 0:04:54.880 --> 0:04:59.560 Heffner's extravagant lifestyle and outspoken views on sex were controversial 0:04:59.560 --> 0:05:02.200 while he is alive, and no less so after his death. 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:06.400 Hefner considered himself to be a rebel an activist and 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:09.520 to progress it. What Heffner was was a man on 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:14.320 a mission to alter society's conservative views on sex, politics 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:17.520 and social equality. Many had a far different conception of 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:20.120 Heffner by the end of his life. One New York 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:23.239 Times calumnist wrote after his death that the Playboy founder 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:27.359 was a lecherous, low brow Peter Payne ice cream for breakfast, 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:31.480 pajamas all day while bodyguards shoot male celebrities away from 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:35.360 his paid harem. Or, as Gloria Steinham puts it, if 0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:37.560 I had made him up and put him in a novel, 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:41.240 I would be hung from the highest tree because he 0:05:41.360 --> 0:05:45.039 was such a parody of himself. He was pathetic. Hugh 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:48.320 Heffner changed the world, but the world also changed on 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:54.360 Hugh Hefner. Heffner saw himself at the vanguard of the 0:05:54.400 --> 0:05:57.760 sexual revolution occurring in the mid twentieth century, not only 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:01.400 as a participant but also a catalyst Stephen Watts. Again, 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:06.000 Heffner was convinced, I think, probably with some justification, that 0:06:06.080 --> 0:06:09.320 he had played a very large role in the sexual 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:15.240 revolution and in sort of loosening the sexual mores and 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:19.240 values of American society. And he grew more bitter as 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:22.400 the years went by when others did not recognize his handiwork. 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:25.800 This is Russell Miller, a journalist and author of Bunny, 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:29.400 The Real Story of Playboy. He did have a strong 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:35.000 sense of resentment that he wasn't being sufficiently lauded for 0:06:35.080 --> 0:06:38.040 what he'd done. That he eventually said that it was 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:42.880 Playboy that liberated America, but which part of America. Playboy 0:06:42.920 --> 0:06:45.240 was no different from any other pop culture fixture of 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:48.760 the nineteen fifties and sixties. It reinforced the primacy of 0:06:48.800 --> 0:06:54.960 men in American society. Hefner was selling something that advertisers 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:59.080 were willing to support. Gloria Steinham again, he would never 0:06:59.200 --> 0:07:03.360 publish of an article or a story, even a fictional story, 0:07:03.440 --> 0:07:07.400 in which women want quote unquote, Heffner said, we think 0:07:07.400 --> 0:07:10.480 it's a man's world, or should be. And yet he 0:07:10.560 --> 0:07:13.800 was surprised when his relationship with America's growing women's movement 0:07:14.000 --> 0:07:17.480 became contentious. And I think he was genuinely stunned in 0:07:17.520 --> 0:07:22.800 the late sixties and early seventies when modern feminists begin 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:26.800 to paint him as being an oppressor, an oppressor of 0:07:26.880 --> 0:07:31.960 women uh. And Heffner frankly didn't quite know what to 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:34.680 make of this. He had always sort of viewed himself 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:42.320 as liberating uh women as well as men for sexual experience. Heffner, 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:44.600 to his dismay, found himself the whipping boy of the 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:48.000 women's movement, and not just on the Dick Cabot Show. Well, 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:51.200 I think he served Hefner as a kind of foil 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:54.240 for the feminist revolution in that I think because of 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:58.880 the magazine and the images and his personal prominence, ah, 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:03.160 he became some one who was a very convenient and 0:08:03.680 --> 0:08:08.400 easy target as a kind of boogeyman. Hefner fought back. 0:08:09.200 --> 0:08:11.480 Not long after the encounter on the Dick Cabott Show. 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:15.160 Hefner responded by taking the war to the pages of Playboy. 0:08:15.600 --> 0:08:21.800 He assigned an article to a male reporter to write 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:25.680 about the women's movement, and uh when it came in 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:28.119 and it was at all accurate, he wrote a memo, 0:08:28.240 --> 0:08:33.000 which then one of the women there leaked out. Hefner 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:34.960 spelled out in the memo the kind of story he 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:38.400 was looking for. These chicks are our natural enemy. What 0:08:38.520 --> 0:08:41.160 I want is a devastating piece that takes the militant 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:45.760 feminists apart. Gloria Steinhum, who first exposed the Playboy clubs 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:49.880 as an undercover reporter, when after Heffner again she released 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:52.320 the leak memo to the media. She hoped it would 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:56.480 prompt a backlash and show Heffner's true colors. The memo 0:08:56.520 --> 0:09:06.120 fell on deaf ears even laughter. Hefner and his feminist 0:09:06.200 --> 0:09:08.959 critics were not in fact total enemies. They had more 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:11.720 in common than either cared to admit. They're on the 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:14.439 same side when it came to big issues like free speech, 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:18.520 civil rights, and reproductive freedom. Playboy was the first major 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:20.920 U S magazine to advocate for the right to legal 0:09:20.960 --> 0:09:24.760 abortions on demand. It published letters from women describing the 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:28.880 emotional and physical trauma they had experienced from seeking illegal abortions, 0:09:29.520 --> 0:09:32.800 but Hefner remained opposed to the women he called militant 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:36.520 feminists for a long time. So feminism I think was 0:09:36.600 --> 0:09:39.600 something that was a sore point with Hefner. I think 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:43.520 in the seventies and eighties and nineties, says he got older. Um, 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:47.200 I think he reconciled himself to this a lot more, 0:09:47.920 --> 0:09:50.000 and I think by the end of his life he 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:53.880 considered himself to be a feminist. Most today would not 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:56.480 think of Hefner as a feminist. His record is a 0:09:56.559 --> 0:10:00.719 bit complicated, says his biographer Stephen Watts. Honest, I think 0:10:00.800 --> 0:10:06.240 you Hefner's impact on on women in modern America. It's 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:09.400 something of a mixed record. On the one hand, Hefner 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:12.679 supported feminism in terms of equality before the law says what. 0:10:13.520 --> 0:10:15.920 On the other hand, he made no effort to conceal 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:18.920 how he made women into sex objects. But actually I 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:22.640 talked to Hefner about this, because he said, of course 0:10:22.760 --> 0:10:26.839 women are sexual objects for men in the same way 0:10:27.000 --> 0:10:30.960 that men are sexual objects for women. He said, The 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:36.360 problem is is if you only objectify women, if you 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:40.960 only see them as sex objects, and that's the rub. 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:44.600 And I think that's the rub for Playboy too. How 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:47.120 did Heffner wind up the enemy of so many women? 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:50.679 Up next, we go back to the early days of Playboy, 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:55.000 when Hefner transformed his controversial magazine into a global empire 0:10:55.360 --> 0:11:05.640 and transformed himself in the process. Playboy Magazine was an 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:08.679 instant success when it launched in nineteen fifty three. The 0:11:08.800 --> 0:11:12.240 very fierce issue of the magazine was was very popular 0:11:12.320 --> 0:11:15.480 and it sold out pretty quickly. From what I gather, 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:18.400 it was one of the most successful launches of a 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:22.920 magazine in modern American history. The nineteen fifties were a 0:11:22.960 --> 0:11:25.559 time of abundance in America and the currents of the 0:11:25.600 --> 0:11:29.439 sexual revolution were just beginning to stir. I think Hefner 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:32.520 and in his notion of Playboy, really fell into the 0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:36.959 culture at precisely the time when the culture was sort 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:40.439 of ready to receive it. So right guy, right idea 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:43.800 of right time. The majority of the magazine's readers were 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:47.040 men between the ages of twenty and thirty four. In 0:11:47.080 --> 0:11:51.120 the primary attraction, the nude centerfold known as the playmate 0:11:51.200 --> 0:11:54.559 of the month. This is Russell Miller again the playmates 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:58.600 in in um Playboy was always the wholesome girl next door, 0:11:59.040 --> 0:12:01.560 the kind of girl that you could take out and 0:12:01.640 --> 0:12:04.880 not worry about. You wouldn't mind introducing to your Mom. 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:08.160 The humorous Mortzol once equipped that an entire generation of 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:10.520 American men grew up thinking that women came with a 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:15.240 staple in their midsection. Others were not as amused. Television 0:12:15.240 --> 0:12:18.360 host Mike Wallace interviewed Heffner in nineteen fifty six and 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:21.920 suggested that he was selling quote, high class dirty book. 0:12:22.640 --> 0:12:26.240 Hefner responded, there's nothing dirty in sex unless we make 0:12:26.280 --> 0:12:31.960 it dirty. Within a few years of Playboy's launch, Hugh 0:12:32.000 --> 0:12:35.960 Hefner was a different man. Well. Playbook magazine changed Hefner's 0:12:36.040 --> 0:12:41.400 life dramatically when it became very, very successful, and he 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:46.040 just sort of blasted off into the cultural stratosphere. Hefner 0:12:46.120 --> 0:12:49.040 threw himself into his work. He really did begin to 0:12:49.160 --> 0:12:53.520 live at the office. He had a separate bedroom suite 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:56.760 sort of built off his office, and he stayed there. 0:12:56.840 --> 0:13:00.120 He rarely went home. Hefner used his office bedroom or 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:03.360 other activities as well. He began to spend a lot 0:13:03.400 --> 0:13:07.520 of time around rather fetching young women. Uh He began 0:13:07.640 --> 0:13:12.440 to have liaisons and affairs with a number of them, 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:17.040 and his marriage slowly began to crumble, and so Hugh 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:20.920 Hefner decided to reinvent himself. He made a very conscious 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:26.720 decision that he would become Mr. Playboy. He would become 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:32.240 the guy that was being idealized in Playboy magazine. Heffner 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:35.559 started to smoke a pipe, he dressed better. He surrounded 0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:38.320 himself with beautiful women, and he made no effort to 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:41.559 hide it. I enjoy women. I enjoy being women with 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:45.440 women very much. Most of the girls that I date 0:13:45.559 --> 0:13:52.120 are several years younger than I am eighteen to probably 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:55.199 a good many of them, of course, are girls that, 0:13:55.440 --> 0:13:58.280 in one way or another, work for the magazine. Soon 0:13:58.320 --> 0:14:01.120 there was no real divide between Offner's work and play 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:05.000 Hefner was more than a brand ambassador for Playboy, he 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:10.200 was the brand itself. Constantly surrounded by gorgeous girls and 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:14.480 beautiful belongings. Hefner's world may seem enviable to some. At 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:18.320 forty four, he's unquestionably King Rabbit, and certainly he takes 0:14:18.360 --> 0:14:24.600 every opportunity to enjoy his dough. He moved into a 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:28.120 new home. He called it the Playboy Mansion. It became 0:14:28.120 --> 0:14:30.800 the most famous party house on the planet, first in 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:34.600 Chicago and later in Beverly Hills. What happened if Playboy 0:14:34.680 --> 0:14:38.280 mansion in a kind of typical day, was that it 0:14:38.400 --> 0:14:43.240 was the site for Hefner's uh sort of equally intense 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:47.360 bouts of work and play. The one million dollar home 0:14:47.400 --> 0:14:51.760 became an exclusive playground, one where fantasies became reality among 0:14:51.840 --> 0:14:55.400 celebrities and scantily clad women, or so it seemed to 0:14:55.480 --> 0:14:59.120 many who did not journey inside the mansion's walls. It 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:04.640 was I crowded. There were lots of men, there quite 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:08.520 a lot of girls. Russell Miller again, he wentness firsthand 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:11.360 the typical evenings at the Playboy Mansion. They weren't sort 0:15:11.360 --> 0:15:16.840 of big celebrities. They were be team actors and second 0:15:16.880 --> 0:15:20.480 class footballers and hairdressers. And they'll just be hanging around 0:15:21.040 --> 0:15:26.200 all a bit bored, drinking wine and beer and stuffing 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:30.720 his sandwiches until about eleven o'clock when a secretary suddenly 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:33.880 emerged from his room on the top floor and came down, 0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:36.920 running down the stairs a quick, quick, He's gonna come down, 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:44.720 make like there's a party. Stephen Watts says it was 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:47.040 like something out of the pages of The Great Gatsby. 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:50.680 After was sort of like Jay Gatsby in that he 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:53.920 always had one foot in and one foot out. Partly 0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:57.800 of participant, partly an observer. Hefner was also a creature 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:01.720 of habit. He was a very wretched, vented man. He 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:06.920 was addicted to routine. The movie nights, for example, were 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:10.360 set on the set schedule of nights, the same kinds 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:12.400 of movies on the same days of the week, with 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:16.160 the same groups of people. He ate the same meals 0:16:16.160 --> 0:16:19.560 the same day of the week, and the same recipes 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:23.120 and everything. Heffner's routine was often at odds with the 0:16:23.120 --> 0:16:27.720 Playboy image. The reality of life in the Los Angeles 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:32.440 mansion was very, very different from that that the magazine 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:35.760 constantly portrayed. And I have to tell you that Hefner 0:16:35.840 --> 0:16:40.040 played Monopoly three times a week with the same four friends. 0:16:40.680 --> 0:16:44.920 That's right, Monopoly games, Fried Chicken, old movies, and old men. 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:48.400 It was like Hooters had opened a retirement home. But 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:51.280 for Heffner, it was perfect. He didn't like to leave 0:16:51.320 --> 0:16:55.480 the mansion. He was sort of charming and and and 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:59.200 and funny and pleasant, you know, and a very amiable 0:16:59.240 --> 0:17:02.120 in individual. Except and I thought I had a strong 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:04.960 feeling he was just cut off from from reality. And 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:07.080 I said to him once they said, why didn't you 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:10.720 ever go out, and he seemed quite shocked. Why should 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:12.840 What on earth would I want to go out? What's 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:15.720 the point? I got everything I need from here. And 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:18.439 part of what Heffner needed and got was a steady 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:21.600 supply of young women. Hundreds lived at the Playboy mansion 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:26.520 over the years, constantly replenishing here and large the women 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:31.920 recognized that they were um second class citizens. A lot 0:17:31.960 --> 0:17:37.679 of the girls um quickly became disillusioned, and they recognized 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:41.520 that they were just there as decoration, as for sexual playthings, 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:47.840 and would would would leave and not come back. Hugh 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:51.200 Lefner managed to create a mystique around his own Playboy image, 0:17:51.320 --> 0:17:54.280 whatever the reality of mansion life may have been, and 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:57.520 it wasn't long until Heffner and Playboy had another idea. 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:00.800 Take the fantasies from the pages of the magazine to 0:18:00.960 --> 0:18:05.400 Playboy clubs with male members only, and what they're created 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:09.640 was a place for readers of the magazine to come 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:13.760 to these places and experience in real life the Playboy 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:19.479 lifestyle with good food and good liquor and sophisticated jazz music, 0:18:20.359 --> 0:18:22.439 all the kinds of things they were talking about in 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:27.960 the magazine, and of course very attractive young women. A 0:18:28.080 --> 0:18:30.560 job as a playboy bunny was also very attractive to 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:34.280 many young women. Most bunnies were college students or aspiring 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:37.640 actresses or models. They were drawn to the flexible schedule 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:40.399 and a chance to earn more than their fathers. The 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:44.240 Playboy clubs would become a worldwide phenomenon during the nineteen sixties. 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:47.080 It seemed that playboy could do no wrong. You know. 0:18:47.240 --> 0:18:51.600 Hefly began to talk about the whole Playboy world where um, 0:18:51.720 --> 0:18:54.840 you would stay your your entertainment would be provided by 0:18:54.920 --> 0:18:58.120 Playboy club, your reading would be provided by Playboy magazines. 0:18:58.520 --> 0:19:01.960 You would stay in play By hotel, used Playboy money. 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:05.720 I mean just he got carried away with them with 0:19:05.800 --> 0:19:08.320 the notion that that playboy could take over the world. 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:13.680 Up next, we find out what really launched Playboy. Heffner's 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:16.320 fantasy powered rocket ship might have crashed and burned on 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:19.240 the launch pad without the star power of the playmate, 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:28.000 who Hefner admired above all others. Hugh Heffner grew up 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:32.240 in Chicago during the Great Depression. Here's biographer Steven once again. 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:38.200 His parents, Glenn Hefner ran Grace Heffner, were transplanted Nebraskans 0:19:39.240 --> 0:19:42.639 from a very traditional background, and Heffner grew up. He 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:46.520 had a very happy childhood, but one that he felt 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:51.359 was a bit restrictive on the religious and moral front. 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:55.800 They were sort of middle class folk, m very good fearing, 0:19:55.960 --> 0:19:59.879 very respectable Russell Miller. Again, they didn't drink, they didn't 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:05.520 smoke um. They there was no high living. Hefner himself 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:08.720 admitted at the age of eighteen that he was still 0:20:08.720 --> 0:20:12.280 a virgin. Heffner was a gangly teenager five ft ten 0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:16.240 one fifteen pounds. He was shy and awkward around girls. 0:20:16.760 --> 0:20:20.399 He was something of a loner, and he spent a 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:25.600 lot of time in his bedroom. He was a cartoonist, 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:29.720 a fledgling cartoonist even as a young boy, and he 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:33.480 had a very vivit imagination. I guess I would say 0:20:33.840 --> 0:20:37.000 Heffner loved movies and pop culture, and he immersed himself 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:40.159 in fantasy worlds of his own creation. In the eighth grade, 0:20:40.359 --> 0:20:43.399 he discovered Esquire magazine and he hung its modest pin 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:46.320 up girls on his bedroom walls. The movies and the 0:20:46.359 --> 0:20:49.840 magazines inspired the young Heffner to reinvent himself for the 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:53.280 first time. By high school, he had transformed himself into 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:55.719 the life of the party, and then in high school 0:20:55.720 --> 0:20:59.439 he was enormously popular. He always looked back on his 0:20:59.560 --> 0:21:03.000 life uh in high school as being a kind of 0:21:03.080 --> 0:21:06.480 golden ero. Hefner entered the army in World War Two 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:08.920 after high school. Then he went to the University of 0:21:08.960 --> 0:21:11.679 Illinois on the g I Bill, where he studied journalism 0:21:11.680 --> 0:21:14.919 and writing. After college, he moved to the suburbs and 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:18.959 married his college sweetheart, Millie. But like many college grads, 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:22.399 Hefner struggled to bridge the gap between his aspirations and 0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:25.560 his employment options. He gave up on his dream of 0:21:25.600 --> 0:21:28.520 being a cartoonist and took a series of copyrighting jobs 0:21:28.600 --> 0:21:33.160 or advertising agencies. Hefner soon grew unhappy at work, unhappy 0:21:33.200 --> 0:21:36.399 with Millie, now pregnant, and daunted by the prospect of 0:21:36.440 --> 0:21:41.439 becoming a parent. He longed for a better life and 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:44.399 a more sophisticated and more glamorous life. He used to 0:21:44.440 --> 0:21:48.640 walk along sort of fancy streets in Chicago and look 0:21:48.720 --> 0:21:51.840 up at the windows of apartments of people who had 0:21:52.280 --> 0:21:57.639 high fives and fancy cars and thought they look in 0:21:57.680 --> 0:22:00.320 the windows and think about that's what I want to be. 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:02.680 One day that's what I want to have one day. 0:22:02.880 --> 0:22:05.720 Hafner's discontent came to a head after he attended a 0:22:05.760 --> 0:22:08.920 high school reunion in nineteen fifty two and was reminded 0:22:08.960 --> 0:22:12.400 of that golden era again. And he came home actually 0:22:12.480 --> 0:22:16.520 from this gathering sort of deeply depressed. And he told 0:22:16.680 --> 0:22:20.200 the story later in life that he was in downtown 0:22:20.280 --> 0:22:23.160 Chicago and he was standing on one of the bridges, 0:22:23.359 --> 0:22:27.440 kind of looking out over the water, just wondering about 0:22:27.480 --> 0:22:30.240 his life. And as he was standing on the bridge 0:22:30.280 --> 0:22:33.639 looking out of the water, thinking about his high school days, 0:22:34.240 --> 0:22:37.560 he decided he had to do something to change his life. 0:22:38.359 --> 0:22:40.640 And what he did was to go home, and over 0:22:40.680 --> 0:22:45.200 the next several days he began to put into action 0:22:46.480 --> 0:22:49.040 a plan that had been kind of percolating in the 0:22:49.119 --> 0:22:51.480 back of his mind, and that was to create a 0:22:51.600 --> 0:22:56.720 magazine for young men like himself. And that magazine, of course, 0:22:56.760 --> 0:22:59.960 turned out to be Playboy. Hafner bristled at the restrict 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:03.359 demorality of his Midwestern upbringing, not to mention the growing 0:23:03.400 --> 0:23:06.960 conformity of nineteen fifties suburbia, and he was convinced that 0:23:07.000 --> 0:23:09.000 there were a lot of young guys out there just 0:23:09.160 --> 0:23:12.720 like him. This post war period was one where the 0:23:12.760 --> 0:23:17.040 economy was booming and young men like him, we're getting 0:23:17.080 --> 0:23:20.359 decent jobs with, you know, pretty decent salaries, and I 0:23:20.400 --> 0:23:23.800 think having been in the war, they were looking for 0:23:23.920 --> 0:23:29.159 broader experience, deeper, more authentic kind of experience, and a 0:23:29.160 --> 0:23:32.040 lot of them were feeling pressure to be family men 0:23:32.160 --> 0:23:33.960 and to have a lot of kids, and to move 0:23:34.040 --> 0:23:36.879 to the suburbs and that kind of thing. Heffner wanted 0:23:36.880 --> 0:23:39.040 to create a magazine that would serve as a pathway 0:23:39.080 --> 0:23:41.920 to a richer kind of experience for these men, an 0:23:42.040 --> 0:23:46.640 entertainment magazine for the upwardly mobile urban mail, something breezy 0:23:46.680 --> 0:23:50.760 and sophisticated that included original writing and tips on fashion 0:23:50.800 --> 0:23:55.760 and style, and of course, the all important centerfold. Hefner 0:23:55.800 --> 0:23:58.359 worked hard to gather up around eight thousand dollars to 0:23:58.440 --> 0:24:02.199 launch Playboy. He called on all his friends and indeed 0:24:02.200 --> 0:24:06.160 his family to put in a small amount of money, 0:24:06.320 --> 0:24:12.080 and he raised enough money to make the first edition feasible. 0:24:12.520 --> 0:24:15.520 That first issue, which Heffner had assembled on his kitchen table, 0:24:15.800 --> 0:24:20.560 hit newsstands in December nineteen well. Haffner was extremely nervous 0:24:20.560 --> 0:24:23.520 about the first issue of Playboy because he borrowed money 0:24:23.560 --> 0:24:26.840 from his family. He actually sold some of his furniture 0:24:26.920 --> 0:24:30.120 and his card to raise money. He just gambled everything 0:24:30.160 --> 0:24:33.040 on it. It was an all or nothing venture for Heffner, 0:24:33.359 --> 0:24:36.720 and everything hinged on that first issue. He wasn't sure 0:24:37.680 --> 0:24:41.439 if people would buy it. He was so unsure that 0:24:41.520 --> 0:24:44.199 he didn't put actually a date on the first issue, 0:24:44.280 --> 0:24:48.120 nor his name. Actually, when the magazine first came out 0:24:48.160 --> 0:24:52.080 from the distributor, he went down into Chicago and sort 0:24:52.080 --> 0:24:56.040 of a walk from newsstand to newsstand and hid behind 0:24:56.040 --> 0:24:59.280 a tree or behind a card to watch to see 0:24:59.320 --> 0:25:02.720 if guys who came by the news stand were buying 0:25:02.800 --> 0:25:07.080 his magazine, and they did in the thousands. Playboy quickly 0:25:07.119 --> 0:25:11.520 sold out, thanks in large part to one unforgettable centerfold. 0:25:14.680 --> 0:25:17.240 Hugh Hefner was never shy about his admiration for the 0:25:17.280 --> 0:25:20.000 screen legend Marilyn Monroe. Do you think you would have 0:25:20.119 --> 0:25:23.359 dated her? I would have loved to. This is eighty 0:25:23.440 --> 0:25:26.040 six year old Hugh Heffner talking about Monroe in a 0:25:26.080 --> 0:25:28.879 two thousand and thirteen interview. You know, I'm a sucker 0:25:28.920 --> 0:25:32.719 for blond, and she's the ultimate blond. Monroe also had 0:25:32.760 --> 0:25:37.720 an oversized impact on Hefner's life. She was the launching 0:25:38.320 --> 0:25:42.119 key to the beginning of Playboy. Heffner knew that he 0:25:42.160 --> 0:25:45.679