#12 HUGH HEFNER’S KARMA–Part One: The Gears Mesh

Gloria Steinem, 1963.

  It would not be better if man could get what he wants. 

  –Heraclitus

I’m fascinated by Hugh Hefner’s one in a billion karma.  Not only did he rise quickly out of the middle class into a life awash in millions of dollars, he transgressed social mores and in the face of outrage, actively changed them; he threw some of the most famous parties on the planet; hobnobbed with generations of celebrities; published some of the best writers and most indelible voices of our time; owned a home so lavish and legendary only residences like the White House or Buckingham Palace received more attention; and of course he seemed to practically drown in the erotic attentions of countless young beauties, literally until the day he died, an icon himself, at 91, the elder statesman of hedonism, a longevity apparently achieved without the bother of healthy living.

I’m not saying this with envy (well, maybe a smidge), just astonishment at a life so endlessly abundant in worldly rewards.  Who can you easily think of that checks off all these boxes of success?  It just doesn’t happen on a planet dominated by hand to mouth poverty; even other jet-setters never had it quite so good. Typically, he’s either idolized by fans aspiring to his life-style, or he’s astringently condemned by evangelical Christians and feminists. Though I will need to both praise and condemn, that’s not so much what interests me.  I wonder more how he became the matrix of these forces, and where that leads in the long run.

American Playboy (2017) gives us the authorized biography via TV series with vault footage and dramatic reenactments.  Somewhat touching in its early going, Matt Whelan plays the young Hef, falling for a girl he marries out of college, struggling with nowhere jobs, itching to play out his ideas.  But once he pulls together enough resources to start his magazine (renamed “Playboy” at the last minute instead of “Stag Party,” in one of many felicitous turns), you can feel how his creative/business instincts just seem to click.

In his watershed, inaugural moment, he’s certain he needs a splashy pinup girl to make the magazine launch, and locates nude photos of Marilyn Monroe, the Hollywood It Girl of 1953, and really the quintessential sexual fantasy of an entire generation of American men.  He’s only got a thousand bucks left when he goes to see about the photos, ends up getting the price down, and pays five hundred for them (still a substantial sum in ’53), and likely the best investment he ever makes.

We don’t hear anything about how Marilyn must have felt about pics surfacing she did as a nobody needing cash, but wanting a splash, Hefner got it.

That’s how it goes for him the next twenty years.  He has a good instinct for hiring talent. He proves himself a workaholic obsessive (punctuated by hard partying), meticulous in detail, carefully hawking over every page of his magazine, and willing to take a leap to achieve a higher dimension of quality.  In one telling choice, he manifestly wants to avoid the cheapo advertising of the other, low grade nudie rags; instead he goes for quality ads from national brands, reflective of his (male) readers’ interests.

In the course of time, Playboy, aimed at promoting a bachelor lifestyle for young, urban, sophisticate men, transforms into a literary magazine of note, he moves its operations into a skyscraper, his home into a mansion (where he starts throwing those famous parties), produces a couple of TV series as well as Playboy Clubs that spring up around the US and internationally.  He brings his same sense of detail to his parties and his clubs, producing a luxurious experience you couldn’t have elsewhere, and the cash just keeps rolling in.

Hitting the 60s in stride, he turns the magazine into a cultural and political forum, advocating for free choice in your sexual activities, including gay rights, making the statement of an absolute believer in the First Amendment.  He staunchly backs civil rights, publishing Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and other black voices.  He challenges the Vietnam War, and promotes—wait for it—women’s rights: their sexual freedom, self-determination, equality of employment, and abortion rights.

Feminists hated him and still do.

Well, why?  Because somehow he never would have actualized it all, the fame, the money, the business empire without…hot young women—the key ingredient that gave the cuisine its spice.  The tack he had taken played up their youth and sexual allurement in pictures and as the “Bunnies” employed as glorified waitresses in tight costumes at his clubs.  As Gloria Steinem, who worked undercover in the NY Playboy Club, put it, “Men don’t have to fall out of their costumes to serve food.”

I wonder to what extent feminists have been willing to at least pay lip service to Hefner’s efforts on the behalf of equal rights, but what they have seen, loud and clear, they’ve named “objectifying” and “degrading.”

In his face to face discussions with Steinem and subsequently on the Dick Cavett Show with Susan Brownmiller and Sally Kempton, Hefner continuously stumbles and looks flummoxed.  Brownmiller tells him: “You choose to see women as sex objects and not as full human beings…The day you are willing to come out here with a cotton tail attached to your rear end…” she trails off, but she might have added, will be a cold day in hell.  “You make them look like animals, yes?  Women aren’t animals.  They’re not rabbits.  They’re human beings.”

It’s a pertinent challenge, one he acknowledges but somehow never finds a response for.

(Next time, HUGH HEFNER’S KARMA–Part Two: Through the Gates of the Heavenly Mansion)