Hugh Hefner was an American businessman, magazine publisher, and playboy. He was the founder of Playboy magazine, which he launched in 1953. He was also the founder and chief creative officer of Playboy Enterprises, the company that operates the magazine and other media properties.
Table of Contents:
1. Early Life
2. Career
3. Later Years
4. Personal Life
5. Legacy
6. Top Hugh Hefner Quotes
Early Life:
Hugh Hefner was born on April 9, 1926, in Chicago, Illinois. He was the son of Grace and Glenn Hefner. His father was a strict Methodist, and his mother was a more liberal Catholic.
Hefner attended Sayre Elementary School and Steinmetz High School. He then enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he studied psychology.
During World War II, Hefner served in the U.S. Army. He was stationed in Germany, where he worked as a clerk.
Career:
After the war, Hefner returned to the United States and took a job as a copywriter for Esquire magazine. He was soon promoted to editor, but he was fired in 1952 for disagreeing with the magazine’s owner, Hearst Corporation, about the direction of the publication.
In 1953, Hefner borrowed $600 from his mother and raised an additional $8,000 from investors to launch Playboy magazine. The first issue, which featured nude photos of Marilyn Monroe, was published in December 1953.
Playboy quickly became one of the most successful publications in history. The magazine featured nude and semi-nude photos of actresses, models, and other women, as well as articles on a variety of topics. Playboy quickly became known for its sexually liberated attitude, and Hefner became a symbol of the “playboy lifestyle.”
In 1971, Hefner opened the first Playboy Club, a chain of nightclubs that featured Playboy Bunny-clad waitresses and entertainers. The clubs were located in major cities across the United States, and they quickly became popular destinations for wealthy and famous men.
Hefner also produced a number of television shows and films, including the reality series The Girls Next Door, which followed the lives of Hefner’s girlfriends.
Later Years:
In the later years of his life, Hefner continued to run Playboy Enterprises. He also became a philanthropist, donating millions of dollars to causes such as civil rights, animal rights, and the preservation of the environment.
Hefner continued to live a lavish lifestyle, even as his health began to decline. He suffered from a number of ailments, including back pain, hearing loss, and erectile dysfunction.
Hefner died on September 27, 2017, at the age of 91. He was survived by his wife, Crystal Harris, and four children.
Personal Life:
Hefner was married three times. His first wife was Mildred Williams, with whom he had two children. He divorced Williams in 1959 and married Playboy Playmate Kimberley Conrad in 1989. The couple had two children together before divorcing in 2010.
In 2012, Hefner married Crystal Harris. The couple had no children together.
Hefner had a number of well-publicized relationships with Playboy Playmates and other women. He was also known for his parties at the Playboy Mansion, which were often attended by celebrities, athletes, and other VIPs.
Legacy:
Hugh Hefner was one of the most controversial and influential figures of the 20th century. He was a champion of sexual liberation and free speech, and he helped change the way Americans think about sex and relationships. He was also a successful businessman, creating a media empire that spanned the globe.
Hefner’s legacy will be remembered for both its successes and its failures. He was a revolutionary thinker who helped make America a more tolerant and open-minded place. But he was also a man who objectified and exploited women, and who was accused of contributing to the degradation of American culture.
Top Hugh Hefner Quotes
“I looked back on the roaring Twenties, with its jazz, ‘Great Gatsby’ and the pre-Code films as a party I had somehow managed to miss.”— Hugh Hefner
“Follow your own particular dreams. We are handed a life by peers, parents and society, you can do that or follow your own dreams. Life is short, be a dreamer but be a practical person.”— Hugh Hefner
“I truly believe that age – if you’re healthy – age is just a number.”— Hugh Hefner
“I think that sexual oppression and dictatorship go hand in hand.”— Hugh Hefner
“There are many roads to Mecca.”— Hugh Hefner
“People project their own dreams, fantasies, and prejudices onto my life. So people are either fans, or jealous, or disagree. Everybody marches to a different drummer.”— Hugh Hefner
“I think the Playboy philosophy is very, very connected to the American dream.”— Hugh Hefner
“We’re separated by our myths.”— Hugh Hefner
“Because of the nature of my life, it’s difficult for people to recognize that a person can live a full life, and maybe an unorthodox life, and still be on the side of the angels.”— Hugh Hefner
“I’m never going to grow up. Staying young is what it is all about for me.”— Hugh Hefner
“I have no plans to retire. It’s the perfect combination of work and play that keeps you young. If I quit work it would be the beginning of the end for me.”— Hugh Hefner
“It’s good to be selfish. But not so self-centered that you never listen to other people.”— Hugh Hefner
“If Playboy ever loses its editorial balls, then it will deserve to be knocked over by a younger, more vigorous magazine in the coming generation. But that won’t happen so long as I’m alive, I can promise you that.”— Hugh Hefner
“Several girlfriends are easier to handle than one wife.”— Hugh Hefner
“Picasso had his pink period and his blue period. I am in my blonde period right now.”— Hugh Hefner
“Historically the Puritans left England to escape religious persecution, and they promptly turned around and started persecuting the people they didn’t agree with – the scarlet letter A, and the stocks and the dunking board came from that. That puritanism is still there.”— Hugh Hefner
“I am in very good health. I’ve never felt better.”— Hugh Hefner
“If you let society and your peers define who you are, you’re the less for it.”— Hugh Hefner
“One of the problems with organized religion is that it has always kept women in a second-class position. They have been viewed as the daughters of Eve.”— Hugh Hefner
“You know, from my point of view, I’m the luckiest cat on the planet.”— Hugh Hefner
“Retirement is unthinkable to me. The future is bright and very exciting and I’m looking forward to playing a part in it.”— Hugh Hefner
“They must be doing something right up there in Canada.”— Hugh Hefner
“My life is an open book. With illustrations.”— Hugh Hefner
“I am not primarily an entrepreneurial businessman. I’m primarily a playboy philosopher.”— Hugh Hefner
“In my own words, I played some significant part in changing the social-sexual values of our time. I had a lot of fun in the process.”— Hugh Hefner
“The people who had the most impact on me when I was young were Freud and Darwin, but growing up I also had my film idols.”— Hugh Hefner
“The whole 1950s notion was find the right girl, get married, move to the suburbs and then hang out with the guys while she stayed home with the babies. I felt that was sort of sad.”— Hugh Hefner
“One of the sad things, I think, about the younger generation, quite frankly, is they have less sense of yesterday. And if you don’t know who you were, you don’t really know who you are.”— Hugh Hefner
“Life is bittersweet. Inside our heads, if we’re lucky, we’re the same kids as we were when we were young.”— Hugh Hefner
“I think that from the very beginning it wasn’t simply, what made Playboy so popular was not simply the naked ladies, what made the magazine so popular was, there was a point of view in the magazine, that you couldn’t run nude pictures without some kind of rational that they were art.”— Hugh Hefner
“I dreamed impossible dreams. And the dreams turned out beyond anything I could possibly imagine. You know, from my point of view, I’m the luckiest cat on the planet.”— Hugh Hefner
“Publishing a sophisticated men’s magazine seemed to me the best possible way of fulfilling a dream I’d been nurturing ever since I was a teenager: to get laid a lot.”— Hugh Hefner
“I think that I am the luckiest cat on the planet and I’m living out my own dreams and fantasies and have been for a number of years and to remain at this stage of my life, you know, so alive and things have never been better.”— Hugh Hefner
“Part of the sexual revolution is bringing rationality to sexuality – because when you don’t embrace sexuality in a normal way, you get the twisted kinds, and the kinds that destroy lives.”— Hugh Hefner
“Surrounding myself with beautiful women keeps me young.”— Hugh Hefner
“What surprises me about getting older is that I remain so young.”— Hugh Hefner
“Living in the moment, thinking about the future, and staying connected to the past: That’s what makes me feel whole.”— Hugh Hefner
“People get their information in different ways now. And we are a little poorer for it, because the way you get information affects what you learn.”— Hugh Hefner
“You stay in touch with the boy who dreamed impossible dreams.”— Hugh Hefner
“I got married before I found myself. People should find themselves before they get married.”— Hugh Hefner
“Life is too short to be living somebody else’s dream.”— Hugh Hefner
“You really don’t create an authoritarian society unless you control the personal choices including the sexual choices of the people.”— Hugh Hefner
“My first wife was a brunette, and Barbi Benton, my major romantic relationship of the early 1970s, was a brunette. But since the end of my marriage, all of my girlfriends have been blonds.”— Hugh Hefner
“Smoking helped put me in touch with the realm of the senses.”— Hugh Hefner
“I think that the major message of my life and what I hope to be remembered for is someone who managed to change the social sexual values of his time absolutely.”— Hugh Hefner
“The Puritans thought they could simply repress man’s sexual nature, and they reaped a whirlwind as a result. Their code of sexual morality – which became America’s – was nothing more than a set of rules laid down by people who believed that all pleasure was suspect.”— Hugh Hefner
“In my wildest dreams, I could not have imagined a sweeter life.”— Hugh Hefner
“I’m very comfortable with the nature of life and death, and that we come to an end. What’s most difficult to imagine is that those dreams and early yearnings and desires of childhood and adolescence will also disappear. But who knows? Maybe you become part of the eternal whatever.”— Hugh Hefner
“Being attacked by right-wing Christians did not bother me. Being attacked by liberal feminists did.”— Hugh Hefner
“I didn’t want to repeat my parents life. I saw in their lives a routine and a lack of dreaming, a lack of the possibilities, a lack of passion. And I didn’t want to live without passion.”— Hugh Hefner