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Founder and publisher of Playboy magazine. Born April 9, 1926 in
Chicago, Illinois. When Playboy first hit the newsstands in 1953, it
represented a new openness about sexuality that was beginning to
influence American life.
The magazine, which was the brainchild of a would-be cartoonist from
Chicago named Hugh Hefner, was originally to be called "Stag Party,"
but Hefner, who wanted to suggest sophistication as well as high living
and wild parties, eventually settled on Playboy.
Hefner hoped to make his magazine the equal of others
that featured female nudity as well as articles, such as Esquire, for
which Hefner had also worked and which had recently stopped featuring
suggestive photography.
Playboy was an instant
sensation, mainly because Hefner had shrewdly purchased a nude
photograph of actress Marilyn Monroe; it had been taken before her
success in Hollywood, and Hefner used it as the centerfold of his first
issue. Monroe was a star by the time the magazine was published, and
the first issue sold out quickly. That issue included an editorial by
Hefner that espoused the Playboy philosophy that was to become familiar
over the years:
“We
like our apartment. 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 acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso,
Nietzsche, jazz, sex.... If we are able to give the American male a few
extra laughs and a little diversion from the anxieties of the Atomic
Age, we'll feel we've justified our existence.”
The magazine, which was the brainchild of a would-be cartoonist from
Chicago named Hugh Hefner, was originally to be called "Stag Party,"
but Hefner, who wanted to suggest sophistication as well as high living
and wild parties, eventually settled on Playboy.
Hefner hoped to make his magazine the equal of
others that featured female nudity as well as articles, such as
Esquire, for which Hefner had also worked and which had recently
stopped featuring suggestive photography.
Playboy
was an instant sensation, mainly because Hefner had shrewdly purchased
a nude photograph of actress Marilyn Monroe; it had been taken before
her success in Hollywood, and Hefner used it as the centerfold of his
first issue. Monroe was a star by the time the magazine was published,
and the first issue sold out quickly. That issue included an editorial
by Hefner that espoused the Playboy philosophy that was to become
familiar over the years:
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