美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Playboy' Founder Hugh Hefner, Champion Of Free Speech And 'Smut,' Dies At 91

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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Hugh Hefner has died at the age of 91. He created Playboy magazine at his kitchen table in Chicago in the early 1950s. It became not only a brand but it came to symbolize¹ a lifestyle, both glorified² and despised, of lavish³ parties with attractive young women and permissive attitudes about sex. Scott Simon has this look back at the life of Mr. Playboy.

SCOTT SIMON, BYLINE⁴: Hugh Hefner's magazine was blamed or credited with setting off a cultural revolution in America. But within a few years, he was a target for the women's revolution, a champion of civil rights who was branded a male chauvinist⁵, proponent⁶ of free speech who was decried⁷ as a merchant of smut. Playboy published outstanding writers - Joseph Heller, Margaret Atwood and Norman Mailer, and distinctive⁸ interviews with acclaimed⁹ and controversial figures including Fidel Castro, Miles Davis and Malcolm X. But who are we kidding? The magazine made millions because serious pieces were printed on the flip¹⁰ side of pictures of naked women. Hugh Hefner told us in 2007...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

HUGH HEFNER: The Playmate of the Month, the centerfold, came directly out of the influences of pinup photography, an art from World War II and before. But what set them apart was what I described at the time as the girl next-door. But it all comes from that notion of being a fresh, wholesome¹¹, all-American person, and in the context of the Playmate, a sexual icon¹². The recognition that - and it was the statement that the Playmate of the Month was all about - that nice girls like sex, too. Very revolutionary in the 1950s. In some quarters, radical¹³ even today.

SIMON: Hugh Hefner was a cartoonist for Esquire magazine in Chicago in 1952 when he was turned down for a $5 raise, realized that wasn't what he really wanted to do, anyway. So he raised $8,000 from 50 investors¹⁴, including his mother, to create a prototype for a new magazine. He found a five-year-old shot of a nude¹⁵ model in the files of a Chicago calendar company and bought it for $500. The model was Marilyn Monroe before she'd become a star. The magazine sold out in days. Playboy.

MICHAEL HAINEY: And, you know, the joke about Playboy is it's I get it for the articles. But in fact, the journalism¹⁶ in it was profound.

SIMON: Michael Hainey is the editorial director at Esquire magazine.

HAINEY: One of the first stories he published, it was rejected from Esquire. It was a fiction piece about heterosexual men in the near future who were persecuted¹⁷ by a gay majority. And, you know, he - he was experimenting with publishing controversial, cutting-edge stuff. You know, the fiction he put in there was - you know, he was always paid top-dollar for fiction, published a lot of authors who never would've found an audience. For 50 years, 60 years, as long as Hugh Hefner was publishing Playboy, you know, when he started off he fought a lot of battles in terms of the First Amendment¹⁸ and free speech. Now, whether we agree with what he was publishing and how he was portraying¹⁹ women, that's all what he was battling about in the courts and for free speech. So, you know, he fought a lot of those battles and he fought them, I think, ahead of his time.

(SOUNDBITE OF CY COLEMAN AND HIS ORCHESTRA'S "PLAYBOY'S THEME")

SIMON: The 1950s were a buttoned-down time. Playboy was unbuttoned, all about jazz and booze and swinging. The success of the magazine led Hefner to create Playboy clubs in Chicago in 1960. He hired talented black comics including Dick Gregory and Bill Cosby at a time when most clubs were segregated²⁰, and Lenny Bruce, when the comedian²¹ was often tried for obscenity. But Hugh Hefner's profile as a hip²², liberal activist²³ was cracked by the rise of feminism in the 1970s. Hefner and Playboy were accused of demeaning women as sex objects. In 2003, on Playboy's 50th anniversary, he told us he preferred to pose those criticisms this way.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

HEFNER: I recognize that I remain a - even after half a century - a controversial figure, but America has always had conflicts related to things related to sex. In other words, we remain essentially²⁴ a very puritan people.

SIMON: I think there are - a lot of our listeners would say, look, I'm not hung up about sex. I think it's great. I'm not a Puritan. I just think what they do in Playboy makes objects of women.

HEFNER: Well, I think you ought to talk to the women who've been in the magazine and see how they feel about that. I mean, what is more puritan than somebody who has a strong opinion about somebody else's life and who disapproves²⁵ of it because somehow or other it's not their particular way?

SIMON: As popular culture changed, Playboy was caught between critics who considered Hefner the emblem²⁶ of anti-feminism and competitors like Larry Flynt's Hustler, who were explicit²⁷ to the point of raunchy. Circulation declined. Playboy clubs closed. Hugh Hefner turned control of Playboy over to his daughter, Christie Hefner, in the 1980s. She believes the enterprise her father founded didn't demean women and elevated the struggle for civil rights and free speech.

CHRISTIE HEFNER: So if you want to reduce the magazine to its center three pages then in effect you've objectified the magazine.

SIMON: Hugh Hefner spent the last decades of his life more as a cultural symbol than a force. He relocated to a southern California mansion²⁸ with a koi pond, game room, grotto²⁹ and a movie theater to host lavish parties. But the host reportedly mostly stayed in his bedroom suite³⁰, working in silk pajamas³¹ on his round bed. At the time we interviewed him in 2003, Hugh Hefner shared his mansion with seven women all young enough to be his granddaughters. But the man who set out to surround himself with sexuality and extravagance looked isolated³² and lonely. He told us his eventful life had convinced him romance was an illusion.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

HEFNER: I mean, sex - sex was handed to us by the powers that be. But romance is something that we invented that is unique to humankind. And what's interesting about the Western romantic tradition, of course, is that some of the classics are real "Romeo And Juliet" where everybody dies. I mean, there are a few little details that we haven't quite worked out in terms of all of this. In the fairytales, it's pursuit and then they lived happily ever after, but we never really deal with they live happily ever after.

SIMON: Hugh Hefner, the founder³³ of Playboy. Scott Simon, NPR News.