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Planet Hefner was created in the early 1950s, when 'Hef' founded the Playboy
empire. What Hefner sold were aspirations, a vision of the world according to
his Playboy magazine. It was peopled by smart and rising young executives,
speeding from boardroom to boardroom in crisp shirts and European sports cars,
and then at night swapping their snappy three-piece Italian suits for tuxedos
and what 'Hef' identified as an 'adult' lifestyle - the gaming tables at a Playboy
club and Martinis proffered by Bunny Girls. In Hefner's dream of 'sophistication',
this world was full of gadgets, golf clubs and executive toys - and one of those
toys was a beautiful woman.
In truth, the Playboy lifestyle was not so much adult as the fantasy of an eternal
adolescent. It made Hefner rich, and his wealth bought him the fantasy. But
Hefner's was a lifestyle which few would chose and even fewer would enjoy for
any length of time. He once described an average day in his life: 'Get up in
the early morning, have a meeting, there's a regular buffet, a couple of movies,
go upstairs round about 1am with girlfriend or whoever, make love, then have
a meal, watch a movie or two.'
In an interview with Hugh Hefner in the Sunday Times (22 September 1985),
the British writer Martin Amis observed that the Hefner lifestyle - turning
night into day, and spent almost entirely in slippers and dressing gown - seemed
like a case study in terminal depression. It was a control freak's life, banishing
the possibility of the unexpected or the outside world thrusting itself messily
into the ordered Playboy universe. Hefner was famous for never venturing outside
his Playboy fortress in Chicago. He later moved to Los Angeles, itself a kind
of huge controlled environment in which the sun shines all day long and young
women are browner and bustier than those in the Windy City.
Determined not to be thought a mere smut peddler, Hefner filled the space on
either side of the centrefolds in Playboy magazine with highly paid pieces
fashioned by America's literary lions. So the Playmate of the Month rubbed shoulders
with the likes of Norman Mailer. Hefner saw Playboy as a literary magazine
with tits, but how many of Hefner's readers lingered over Norman Mailer before
thumbing their way quickly to the centrefold?
Next:
PLAYBOY IN BRITAIN
This article copyright of
www.channel4.co.uk.
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