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From an idea born on Hefner's Chicago kitchen table,
Playboy has become a huge business empire and one of the
world's most recognisable brands.
With its centre-fold pinups, the magazine has evolved from
what was regarded as smut into a glamor publication that
Sharon Stone, Cindy Crawford and Kim Basinger and other
stars clamoured to pose nude for.
In an assault on what he saw as the hypocrisy of post-war
puritanism, the former copywriter launched Playboy in
December 1953 featuring a nude Marilyn Monroe as the first
"Playmate".
"I didn't put a date on that first issue because I didn't
know if there would ever be a second," Hefner said in an
interview with AFP at his Gothic-Tudor Playboy Mansion in
Los Angeles.
Pitched as a sophisticated lifestyle magazine for men, the
maiden issue was financed with 8,000 dollars scraped
together from family and friends.
"I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams -- as wild
as my dreams were -- what was going to come to pass," he
said.
Male readers responded overwhelmingly to the slick
hedonism and Playboy's savvy and self-assured pitch,
snatching up more than 50,000 copies.
An instinctive marketer, Hefner realised he had tapped
into to a goldmine of young bachelors seeking a racy
lifestyle that he for a while would come to epitomize.
He sold the dream with a potent mixture of articles by
famous writers, clever cartoons and photographs of
semi-nude girl-next-door types that would revolutionize
attitudes about the enjoyment of sex.
"I did not conceive Playboy as a sex magazine. I conceived
it as a lifestyle magazine in which sex would be
incorporated as one part."
"What we said in a very simple way is that sex is okay,
that nice girls like sex too," he said.
That message screamed across America through Playboy's now
iconic rabbit-head logo. Together with the advent of the
contraceptive pill in 1960, it played a key role in the
transformation of Western society.
"What we did was the spark for what became the sexual
revolution that arrived full-blown in the mid-1960s,"
Hefner said.
Without any real competition, the magazine propelled
Hefner to international celebrity as head of the glamorous
and fast-growing corporation that sold a million copies a
month.
He launched a television show, opened the first of his
Playboy Clubs and bought his first Playboy mansion in his
native Chicago.
"I literally came out from behind the desk and started
living the life. I became Mr. Playboy," he said.
With an uncanny knack for generating mystique, he created
icons from Playboy cufflinks, to the bunny costumes worn
by hostesses in the Playboy Clubs to his black jet, the
"Big Bunny," his pipe and red-satin smoking jackets.
Hefner's empire expanded in the 1970s when it launched its
first overseas edition in Germany, and global sales peaked
at around seven million.
But Playboy faced stiff competition in what Hefner dubbed
the "pubic wars," as magazines like Penthouse and Larry
Flynt's Hustler began stealing market share with more
explicit fare.
But Hefner says he does not resent the upstarts that made
his once raunchy publication look tame.
"What you get with any kind of freedom is a certain amount
of excess," he said. "It may be not my particular taste,
but is there a place for hardcore pornography."
He also dismisses frequent claims by feminists that he has
demeaned women, saying that women were the biggest
beneficiaries of the Playboy revolution.
"The fact is (today) that women around the world have
embraced the Playboy bunny as a symbol of empowerment and
sexual freedom."
After a severe downturn in business and the tough US
crackdown on the adult industry in the 1980s, which marked
the nadir of Hefner's career, Playboy began clawing back
some of its former glory in the 1990s.
While it remains the world's best-selling men's magazine
with around five million copies sold globally, the company
barely makes a profit.
Now run by Hefner's daughter Christie, Playboy is reaching
out to a new generation with the Hefner image through the
Internet, television, gambling and merchandise businesses.
"Now everything is coming back round again with the retro
connections of the Playboy brand," Hefner said. "The
Beatles, James Bond and the bunnies are now very hot
again. The bunny will be back."
--AFP
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