Playboy

Hugh Hefner Biography

Producer, Illustrator, Entrepreneur, Journalist, Editor (1926–2017)

 

 

Mr. Hefner was born April 9th in 1926, in Chicago, Illinois. He was the oldest of two sons and born into a strictly Methodist beliefs and life style. As a young child he was quite an anomaly of the boys his age he was student council president and had an IQ or 152. He continued into things like the publication of his school newspaper. In which he learned how to form a publication and soon after wrote his own! At a very young age he wrote a comic book called "School Daze", he fell in love with this he was able to have his own magical newspaper that only he could control. It was his fantasy. After graduating from high school he served in the noncombat section of the U.S. Army during the end of WWII. After leaving he studied at the Chicago Art Institute for summer before enrolling at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he majored in psychology. Hefner earned his bachelor's degree in 1949, the same year he married his first wife. After this he studied more in depth Sociology and sex research which obviously fell in line with his interests which he made into an empire.

 

Hugh Hefner in 1953 had tapped into a industry that he would soon revolutionize. Which was men's adult entertainment magazines, which fed into the sexual revolution of 1960. This was at its heat of controversy which fed into the enormous buzz of the magazine and formed it into an international enterprise. He started Playboy on his own and raised $8,000 from 45 different investors and $2,000 from his mom and younger brother. What is now universally known as Playboy was almost called "Stag Party" but didn't because of trademark infringement. The first copy distributed of Playboy was in December 1953. 50,000 copies were sold and became an instant sensation. American's trying to further themselves from roughly 30 years of war and an economic depression the magazine proved a sense of comfort and the sexual repression of the era. 

 

After the depression Playboy took the Golden age by storm increasing the level or circulation world wide and built "private key" clubs that were racially inclusive when segregation was still legally enforced. These clubs didn't just have waitresses but what was know as Bunnies. But it was super hard to become one due to the imagery they where trying to instill in the business. Playboy was/is a brand and at the time they had a reputation to keep up. These women's high and weight determined there eligibility.

Through the sexist working conditions that these ladies where employed under was the only way to survive as a women where not many other jobs were offered. These ladies played into the game of it due to the fact that they where making some of the best money a women could make during the time.

Hefner died in 2017 on September 27th. Inside of the Playboy Mansion, located in Holmby Hills in California. He passed at the age of 91. Although controversial his work he had left behind a foot print in the industry that still lives on today. 

Bibliography:

- https://www.biography.com/people/hugh-hefner-9333521