Word: hefners
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After graduating from high school, he enlisted in the Army for an uneventful two years. Discharged, he enrolled in the University of Illinois, largely because of another student there named Millie Gunn. While at Illinois, Hefner read Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. It came as a revelation, and he wrote an indignant review in the campus humor magazine. "Our moral pretenses," he said, "our hypocrisy on matters of sex, have led to incalculable frustration, delinquency and unhappiness. One of these days," he promised, "I'm going to do an editorial on the subject...
...Libido. After 2� years, Hef graduated from college, married Millie and, with his cartoons tucked underneath his arm, canvassed the Chicago publishing world for a job. Nothing doing, so he took a job with a Chicago firm that produced and printed cardboard cartons. It was, says Hefner, the closest thing to journalism he could get. Eventually he landed a job with the subscription department of Esquire magazine. But when, after several months, he asked for a $5-a-week raise, he was turned down. He went to work briefly for a publication called Children's Activities, but he decided...
Inspired by Esquire's popeyed little man about town, "Esky," Hefner picked a bunny to symbolize the new enterprise?because rabbits are the playboys of the animal world. The first issue in December 1953 told readers that "we plan to spend most of our time inside. We like our apartment." Hefner also bought rights to the famed nude calendar pictures of Marilyn Monroe, then at the height of her career, and published them for the first time off a calendar. The 48-page issue sold 53,991 copies; even Hef was surprised...
...vein is still running strong. In the early days, name writers shunned Playboy. Today, Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin, Kenneth Tynan, Herbert Gold, Ray Bradbury and Ken Purdy regularly provide respectable material. This upgrading of fiction is largely due to Auguste Comte Spectorsky,* 56, who was hired from NBC by Hefner to bring some New York know-how and sophistication (a favorite Playboy word) to the magazine. "Spec" has done that and more. Last summer he hired as fiction editor Robie Macauley, who had been running the distinguished Kenyon Review. "I was familiar with Playboy," says Macauley. "The students at Kenyon...
Dream World. Maturing or not, Playboy still exists in a rather special world. Partly it can be seen in the ads, some of them for Hefner products. A four-color promotion for the 1967 Playboy calendar reads: "Make a date with these twelve Playmates. You won't want to miss a day with this delicious dozen . . . Provocative ... in captivating new poses. SHARE THE JOY!" Perhaps nostalgic older readers can hear an echo in these lines of the candy butcher during intermission at the burlesque show, peddling the latest "pictures direct from Paris with each and every luscious pose guaranteed...