85 Facts About Hugh Hefner (Happy 85th Birthday Hugh!)
Today is Hugh Hefner’s eighty-fifth birthday, and what better way for PlayBoy.com to celebrate by giving eighty-five facts about the sexiest company in history! Since this is not an infographic, I am going to have to list them. Meaning this article may be a little longer than I’d like.
1. Hugh Marston Hefner was born on April 9, 1926 to Glenn and Grace Hefner, in Chicago, Illinois
2. “I was the best jitter-bugger in the class,” Hef said. He attended Steinmetz High School (class of 1944), where he wrote editorials for the school paper The Steinmetz Star, and drew cartoons under the alter ego “Goo Hefner.”
3. 1949: Hef majored in psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign earning his degree in only two and a half years
4. June 15, 1949: Hef married Mildred Williams (they divorced ten years later and have two children, Christie and David. Christie Hefner was the President and CEO of Playboy Enterprises, Inc. from 1982 to 2008.
5. Early 1950s: During a semester of graduate courses at Northwestern University, Hef wrote a paper called “Sex Behavior in the U.S. Law.” He receives an “A” for the research from his professor, marked down to “B+” for his conclusions.
6. Hef worked t Esquire as a copywriter for a year for $60 a week, but left when he was denied a $5 raise.
7. In January 1953, Hef took a job as the circulation manager of a children’s magazine.
8. In early 1953, after a nostalgic high school reunion, Hef stood on the Michigan Avenue Bridge, looked out at the lake reevaluating his life, and wondered: “Is that all there is? Is this what my life is going to be?
9. In the following weeks, he started making plans to create his own men’s magazine, in the living room of his South Side Chicago apartment.
10. Hef borrowed $600 from a local bank and loan company and raised a total of $8 000 from friend and relatives from which he was able to put together the first issue of Playboy
11. That included a $1 000 cheque from his mother, Grace, signed on September 5th, 1953.
12. During the summer and fall of 1953, Hef worked at Children’s Activities magazine during the day.
13. At night, he worked on plans for his own men’s magazine, sending off letters as “Hugh Hefner, Editor in Chief,” or “Hugh Hefner, Advertising Director,” or “Hugh Hefner, Circulation Director.”
14. “It was quite literally a one-man band,” he said.
15. Hef discovered that the John Baumgarth Calendar Company owned a nude photograph of Marilyn Monroe.
16. He drove his beat-up Chevy to the West Side of Chicago to convince them to let him publish the photograph.
17. The magazine was originally called Stag Party.
18. Right before its first issue launched, in September 1953, Hef received a cease and desist letter from a lawyer from Stag magazine because they felt it was an infringement on the title.
19. After tossing around names like Gentlemen, Sir and Satyr, the name Playboy was chosen.
20. Playboy had also been the name of a sports car in the Roaring Twenties.
21. The magazine’s symbol was changed from a stag to a rabbit in a tuxedo. “If I hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t be here today,” Hef said.
22. “It’s very difficult to imagine clubs around the country with girls with antlers on their heads,” Hef said.
23. In 1953, the first issue of Playboy was so well received 70 000 copies were printed and 52 000 were sold.
24. The first issue went on sale in November 1953, but there wasn’t a publication date printed on the issue because Hef wasn’t certain sales would support a second one.
25. The first few Playmates of the Month were calendar pictures purchased from a local calendar company.
26. Once Playboy started shooting the Playmate of the Month, Hef tried to find young women across the country who weren’t necessarily profession models.
27. “I wanted to make the statement that beauty was everywhere. So the very notion of the Playmate of the Month was that she was the girl next door,” Hef said.
28. Playboy’s first photo shoot was with Charlene Coralis, who worked in the subscription department. Hef renamed her Janet Pilgrim in the magazine.
29. Hef and Coralis were dating at the time.
30. In Those early Centerfolds, Hef introduced the suggestion of a presence of a man—to suggest a romantic situation.
31. “What I was trying to say, quite frankly, was that sex was a natural part of life,” Hef said. “And that nice girls like sex too. In the middle 1950s, that was a revolutionary idea.”
32. In 1955, Playboy published a controversial science-fiction story, “The Crooked Man,” in which homosexuality was the norm and heterosexuals were persecuted.
33. Gahan Wilson, one of Hef’s favourite cartoonists, first appeared in the magazine in the middles 1950s. His cartoons have run in every issue of Playboy since.
34. In the 1950s, Playboy was turned down twice for a second-class mailing permit.
35. Hef went to Washington to file a complaint and over-turned the ban. He told Writer’s Digest: “Henceforth we will continue to be edited in Chicago, not Washington.”
36. In 1956 Hef went on The Mike Wallace Interview, his first network appearance after starting the magazine.
37. After the interview was over, journalist Mike Wallace told Hef, “In five years, you’ll be doing something else.”
38. Hef thought the magazine would top out at 700 000 subscribers. By its fifth anniversary, it had reached a million—surpassing Esquire.
39. In the 1950s, many of Hef’s friends were nightclub performers; Sammy Davis, Jr. and Tony Bennett regularly visited Playboy’s Chicago offices.
40. In August 1959 Playboy held a jazz festival to celebrate the magazine’s fifth anniversary. Jazz critic Leonard Feather called it, “The greatest weekend in the history of jazz.”
41. In October 1959 Hef started taping the late-night variety show Playboy’s Penthouse.
42. “The notion of doing a television show promoting the magazine seemed natural to me.”
43. The opening credits showed Hef driving a white Mercedes and smoking a pip. Hef was living the life he espoused in the magazine, reinventing himself as “Mr. Playboy.”
44. The camera took the subjective perspective of a guest, watching the comedy, conversation and musical numbers in a penthouse apartment.
45. Hef gave Sammy Davis, Jr. a St. Bernard puppy named “Playboy” when he first appeared on the show.
46. Tony Bennett says he gave Hef the idea of starting the Playboy Jazz Festival, held annually at the Hollywood Bowl.
47. According to Hef, the Jazz Festival and Playboy’s Penthouse helped turn Playboy into a mainstream brand.
48. In 1960, at the height of McCarthyism, Hef exchanged letters with Ronald Reagan (then the president of the Screen Actors Guild), who objected to articles in the magazine authored by Dalton Trumbo, on of the blacklisted “Hollywood Ten.”
49. Hef ran a profile of Charlie Chaplin, at a time when he was considered the most hated man in America.
50. Hef’s reason foro getting the Chicago Mansion in 1960 was to have a place to escape to from work..
51. “But very quickly, I brought the work to the Mansion, and from the very early ‘60s on, I was working out of the house,” Hef said. “It’s a way that works very well for me.”
52. The Chicago Mansion had an underwater bar, accessible by a brass fireman’s pole.
53. On February 29, 1960, Hef opened the first Playboy Club in Chicago.
54. In a time of segregation, Hef opened his Playboy Clubs up to people of all races.
55. In 1961, Dick Gregory became the first black comic to perform at the Chicago Playboy Club, opening the door for other black performers in mainstream clubs.
56. In the September 1962 issue, Alex Haley conducted the first Playboy Interview with Miles Davis.
57. “Miles Davis talked more about racial inequality than music,” Hef said.
58. Hef wrote the first instalment of the Playboy Philosophy for the December 1962 issue, with the notion of doing it for only one issue.
59. “It was an editorial in response to our critics,” Hef said. “If I was going to be damned, I wanted to be damned for what I really believed, not what they pretended I believed.”
60. The Playboy Philosophy ran from December 1962 until January 1966, in 25 installments.
61. Hef got his lawyer to defend Lenny Bruce, when the comedian was arrested in Chicago during a comedy routine in December 1962.
62. Hef wrote editorials in the magazine criticizing the injustice of Lenny Bruce’s arrest.
63. In June 1963, the Chicago police arrested Hef on an obscenity charge, basing it on the Jayne Mansfield pictorial in that month’s issue.
64. Hef felt the real reason behind his arrest were his editorials defending Lenny Bruce, and criticizing the Chicago police and government.
65. The jury of 11 women and one man deadlocked, and the trial ended in a hung jury.
66. The June 1963 issue with Jayne Mansfield became Playboy’s biggest seller up to that point.
67. “There are some things in the magazine—like the Centerfold and the Interview—that are so iconic, that I don’t want to change them,” Hef said.
68. When the New York Playboy Club opened in December 19622, it didn’t have an entertainment license for a year. But despite having no shows, the club was filled seven days a week.
69. Playboy published the last piece ever written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in January 1969 (“A Testament of Hope”), edited by his widow Coretta Scott King.
70. Walking down a Chicago street during the violent clashes between police and protestors at a 1968 Democratic Nation Convention, Hef was struck across the back with a billy club by a police officer.
71. Actor Yul Brynner asked Hef to use the Big Bunny airplane to take Vietnam war orphans, who had arrived in San Francisco, to homes across the country.
72. Playboy Bunnies cared for the infants as they made the cross-country flight.
73. Hef’s plane, the Big Bunny, was a stretch version of the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 with overseas capability.
74. As a promotion, Hef offered lifetime subscriptions to Playboy for $150 in thee 1960s.
75. In August 1968, Hef began hosting Playboy After Dark in Los Angeles.
76. In 1975, after spending years commuting between Chicago and Los Angeles, Hef made the move to the West Coast. “I have always lived in two cities: My roots com from Chicago, but my dreams came from Hollywood.”
77. It was ex-girlfriend Barbi Benton who first urged Hef to get a place in Los Angeles. 78. Bill Maher, a Playboy Mansion regular, describes the West Coast Mansion as a combination of Xanadu, Grceland, the White House and Shangri-La. “Nothing could ever live up to it.”
79. In 1980, Hef was given his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
80. In response to the government trying to get Playboy removed from convenience stores in the 1980s, Playboy published a “Women of 7-Eleven” pictorial in December 1986.
81. “We figured the best response was satire,” Hef said. “Nothing diffuses censorship like humor.”
82. 1985: Hef suffered a stroke, calling it “a stroke of luck,” which he claimed would change the nature and focus of his life.
83. In 1989, Hef married Playmate of the Year Kimberly Conrad in a lavish ceremony at the Playboy Mansion. They have two children (Marston and Cooper Hefner).
84. Hef was married to Kimberly for the better part of eight years and, he says: “I was faithful to her the entire time.”
85. At 85 years old, Hef will be married for a third time this June, to Crystal Harris, Miss December 2009.
That's it for today and I apologize for the shortness. It just took me quite some time to grab the information for the article since they weren't in picture format. Now, here are two informative pictures of the Periodic Table of Meat and what the drunk driving limits are for each country. Of course in Russia there is no such thing! For videos, we have a stunning trailer for the new role-playing game that is coming out for the 3DS and it seems as if Nintendo has made hand-held gaming a beautiful experience. To conclude today's blog, we have a video of a fat child reviewing Fruit Gushers. It is a sad day, when a fat kid decides to review food for the internet to see. I wonder if he knew the consequences of trolls sending hate mail to him constantly.
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