Hugh Hefner

Hugh Hefner

Hugh Marston Hefner (April 9, 1926 – September 27, 2017) was an American magazine publisher, editor, businessman, and playboy. He was best known as the editor-in-chief and publisher of Playboy magazine, which he founded in 1953. He was also the founder and chief creative officer of Playboy Enterprises, the publishing group that operates the magazine
Hefner was born in Chicago, Illinois on April 9, 1926.He is the first child of Grace Caroline (née Swanson; 1895–1997) and Glenn Lucius Hefner (1896–1976), who both worked as teachers. His parents were from Nebraska. He had a younger brother, Keith (1929–2016). Hefner's mother was of Swedish descent, and his father had German and English ancestry Through his father's line, Hefner stated that he was a direct descendant of Plymouth governor William Bradford. He described his family as "conservative, Midwestern, [and] Methodist".

While he was working as a copywriter for Esquire, Hefner left in January 1952 after being denied a $5 raise. In 1953, he took out a mortgage, generating a bank loan of $600, and raised $8,000 from 45 investors, including $1,000 from his mother ("Not because she believed in the venture," he told in 2006, "but because she believed in her son."), to launch Playboy, which was initially going to be called Stag Party. The first issue, published in December 1953, featured Marilyn Monroe from her 1949 nude calendar shoot and sold over 50,000 copies. Hefner, who never met Monroe, bought the crypt next to hers at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in 1992 for $75,000.

After the Charles Beaumont science fiction short story "The Crooked Man" was rejected by Esquire magazine in 1955, Hefner agreed to publish it in Playboy. The story highlighted straight men being persecuted in a world where homosexuality was the norm. After the magazine received angry letters, Hefner wrote a response to criticism where he said, "If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society then the reverse was wrong, too." In 1961, Hefner watched Dick Gregory perform at the Herman Roberts Show Bar in Chicago. Based on that performance, Hefner hired Gregory to work at the Chicago Playboy Club; Gregory attributed the subsequent launch of his career to that night

In 1949, Hefner married Northwestern University student Mildred ("Millie") Williams, who was also born in 1926. They had two children: daughter Christie Hefner (born 1952) and son David (born 1955) Before the wedding, Mildred confessed that she had an affair while he was away in the army. He called the admission "the most devastating moment of my life." A 2006 E! True Hollywood Sory profile of Hefner revealed that Mildred allowed him to have sex with other women, out of guilt for her infidelity and in the fond hope that it would preserve their marriage. The two were divorced in 1959.

Hefner remade himself as a bon viveur and man about town, a lifestyle he promoted in his magazine and two TV shows he hosted, Playboy's Penthouse (1959–1960) and Playboy After Dark (1969–1970). He admitted to being "'involved' with maybe eleven out of twelve months' worth of Playmates" during some of these years.Donna Michelle, Marilyn Cole, Lillian Müller, Shannon Tweed, Barbi Benton, Karen Christy, Sondra Theodore, and Carrie Leigh — who filed a $35 million palimony suit against him — were a few of his many lovers. In 1971, he acknowledged that he experimented in bisexuality Also in 1971, Hefner established a second residence in Los Angeles with the acquisition of Playboy Mansion West and, in 1975, moved there permanently from Chicago

Hefner died at his home in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles, California on September 27, 2017, at the age of 91