In December 1953 an inexperienced young publisher on a miniscule budget launched a new magazine. Its modest 70,000-copy print run sold out instantly, and within six years it was selling one million copies per issue. The publisher was Hugh Hefner and the magazine was Playboy.
Hugh Hefner was born on April 9, 1926, in Chicago, Illinois to strict Midwest Methodists. He possessed a genius IQ of 152 and received his bachelor’s degree in two and a half years by doubling up on classes. Hefner was always a cartoonist at heart and drew cartoons for the Daily Illinois and edited his campus humor magazine Shaft, where he introduced a new feature, Co-ed of the Month. In 1951, after a stint in the army, he landed a job as a promotion copywriter at the groundbreaking men’s magazine Esquire. Two years later, publisher David Smart moved the operation to New York. When Hefner asked for a compensatory raise, and was refused, he quit and stayed on in Chicago to launch his own magazine.
Hefner started what would become a vast empire with a mere $8,000, producing the first issue of Playboy on his kitchen table. To save money he wrote the majority of the articles himself, and reworked public-domain short stories. He took all the strengths of Esquire, even copying its “Esky” mascot concept and turning it into the Playboy Bunny.
The shrewd marketing strategy transformed the Bunny icon from a dopey adolescent idea to a symbol of sophistication and style. Playboy undoubtedly made girlie mags reputable, and this respectability lured top cartoonists.
Hitting newsstands in December 1953, Playboy #1, simply subtitled “Entertainment for Men,” carried no cover date because Hefner was unsure when or if he would be able to produce another. He needn’t have worried—Playboy blew all the competition out of the water. “I never intended to be a revolutionary,” Hefner recalled. “My intention was to create a mainstream men’s magazine that included sex in it. That turned out to be a revolutionary idea.”
Rival publisher Roscoe Fawcett noted: “We did wonderfully with True—the largest selling men’s magazine until Playboy came along and killed us with the advertising dollar.”
Hefner consciously cultivated the “Hef” persona—a carefree, gadabout lounge lizard who would become synonymous with his pipe and pajamas. In reality, Hefner was a workaholic, staying up late working on the latest issue while the parties raged on around him.
This extremely risque gag by “Andrews” comes from one of Playboy’s longstanding competitors, the down market and defunct Adam magazine. The Sixties cartoon has the woman asking “Why don’t you ever play the flip side?” using the vinyl record as an allusion to anal sex.
“What did you say you stocked this pond with?” This beautifully rendered illustration by Ernst shows that most of the mens’ magazines from the ’50s and ’60s had a high standard of full page erotic and saucy gag cartoons.
By July 1957, Playboy was bragging that it was “the most imitated magazine in America.” Certainly there were many pretenders to the throne, including The Gent (“An approach to relaxation”), Gay Blade (“For men with a zest for living”), The Dude (“The magazine devoted to pleasure”), and Rogue (“Designed For Men”).
Hefner was a man with a constant ear to the cartooning ground, seeking out talent in the most unlikely places. Hef had studied anatomy at the School of Art Institute of Chicago, where Gahan Wilson—soon to become a Playboy mainstay—also honed his illustrating craft.
Because of his love of the medium, cartoonists warmed to Hef instantly and he was gently ribbed and drawn into many strips and gags by artists as diverse as Will Elder, Harvey Kurtzman, and Jules Feiffer, and even “guest starred” in Mike Judge’s King of The Hill strip specially created for Playboy.
The magazine continued to grow, and by the start of the ’60s, Playboy was making $3 million a year. But, as usual, the law was never far behind, and Hef was arrested in June 1963 on obscenity charges for the Playboy pictorial, “The Nudest Jayne Mansfield.” However, the ever-eloquent Hefner argued such a tight case for freedom of expression and anti-censorship that a hung jury voted seven-to-five in favor of his acquittal.
This exceptionally drawn cartoon from Gay Book in October 1937 set up the archetypal boss and sexy secretary scenario that would be played out in endless gag cartoons over the following decades. The simple caption reads, “Is that you dear? Go to hell!”
Misogynistic cartoons were the mainstay of men’s magazines right up to the mid ’70s (and beyond, in some cases). This one’s caption reads, “Wha-what happened? …Where’s the party?… Wh-where am I?” Implying that date rape is something to joke about.
