Six: A Philosophy for Playboys: Hugh Hefner

  1.   .  Photographs, inaugural ball tickets, and Hefner’s commentary on the JFK inaugural are in Hefner Scrapbook no. 66. This scrapbook, as well as all others mentioned in the endnotes for this chapter, is located at the Playboy Mansion West in Los Angeles, California.

  2.   .  Ibid.

  3.   .  Hugh Hefner, interview with the author, Nov. 11, 2004.

  4.   .  See Watts, Mr. Playboy, 49–58.

  5.   .  Playboy (undated first issue; actually Dec. 1953), 3.

  6.   .  Bob Norman (a pen name for Burt Zollo), “Miss Gold-Digger of 1953,” Playboy, Dec. 1953, 6–8; Burt Zollo, “Open Season on Bachelors,” Playboy, June 1954, 37–38; Shepherd Mead, “The Sorry Plight of the Human Male,” Playboy, Nov. 1955, 46–48, 59–61; Shepherd Mead, “The Handling of Women in Business,” Playboy, Jan. 1957, 53–54; Shepherd Mead, “Beware of Hasty Marriage,” Playboy, Sept. 1962, 119–20, 205.

  7.   .  “Dear Ann and Abby: Move Over for the Masculine Point of View,” Playboy, Dec. 1958, 25–28; Jay Smith, “A Vote for Polygamy,” Playboy, July 1955, 15–16; William Iversen, “I Only Want a Sweetheart, Not a Buddy,” Playboy, July 1960, 57, 75; William Iversen, “Love, Death, and the Hubby Image,” Playboy, Sept. 1963, 93–94, 192–98, 200–204, 206–10, 212–15.

  8.   .  See the following in Playboy: Philip Wylie, “The Abdicating Male,” Nov. 1956; Wylie, “Womanization of America”; Wylie, “Career Woman”; “Playboy Panel: The Womanization of America.”

  9.   .  “An Impolite Interview with Hugh Hefner,” Realist, May 1961, 11, 14.

  10. .  Hefner speaking on 1958 David Susskind television show, the transcript of which was later reprinted in Mademoiselle (Oct. 1963), 113; “An Impolite Interview with Hefner,” 9–10; Hefner quoted in Project ’62: Playboy of the Modern World (1962), a Canadian Broadcast Company documentary film.

  11. .  Watts, Mr. Playboy, 107–22.

  12. .  Ibid., 109–11, 114–18.

  13. .  “What Is a Playboy?” ad, Playboy, April 1956, 73, and then repeated in many issues thereafter.

  14. .  Watts, Mr. Playboy, 79, 123–36; Hefner, interview with the author, Nov. 8, 2012.

  15. .  Watts, Mr. Playboy, 82, 105–6, 151–52.

  16. .  Hefner in “Playbill,” Playboy, Dec. 1958, 3; Hefner, interview with author, Jan. 3, 2004; Hefner in Project ’62; Hefner quoted in Hal Higdon, “Playboying Around the Clock with Hugh Hefner,” Climax, Feb. 1962, n.p.; Hefner quoted in Project ’62.

  17. .  On the politics of Hefner and Playboy in the 1950s, see Watts, Mr. Playboy, 137–42.

  18. .  Ibid., 80–81, 103–4, 138.

  19. .  Ibid., 158–60.

  20. .  Ibid., 156–58.

  21. .  Ibid., 160–62.

  22. .  Hefner, interview with the author, Nov. 8, 2012; Hefner Scrapbook no. 64 for photographs and descriptions of the “Irwin Corey for President” rally and party in 1960.

  23. .  Ralph Ginzburg, “Cult of the Aged Leader,” Playboy, Aug. 1959, 59–60, 96–98.

  24. .  Reisner, “Word on Frank Sinatra,” 62–66, 84–88; “Playboy Interview: Frank Sinatra,” Playboy, Feb. 1963, 35–40.

  25. .  Hefner Scrapbooks nos. 65 and 67; Hefner, interview with the author, Nov. 8, 2012. See Hugh M. Hefner and Bill Zehme, Hef’s Little Black Book (New York, 2008), 32, on Sinatra’s mixed emotions about Hefner and Playboy.

  26. .  Hefner, interview with the author, Nov. 8, 2012; Hefner Scrapbook no. 64.

  27. .  Legare, “Meeting at the Summit,” 34–37, 48, 97–100; Hefner interview with author, Nov. 8, 2012. Even many years later, Hefner’s magazine continued its fascination with Sinatra and his cronies. See David Halberstam, “Sinatra at Sunset,” Playboy, April 1998, 76, 154–57; George Jacobs and William Stadiem, “Sinatra and the Dark Side of Camelot,” Playboy, June 2003.

  28. .  “Playboy Panel: The Womanization of America,” 43–50, 133–36, 139–44; “Playboy Panel: Sex and Censorship in Literature and the Arts,” 27–28, 72–76, 88–99; Norman Mailer and William F. Buckley, “The Role of the Right Wing in America Today,” Playboy, Jan. 1963, 110–12, 165–70, 172–74; “Playboy Interview: Norman Mailer,” 69–84.

  29. .  Hefner, interview with the author, Nov. 8, 2012; Mailer’s attendance at Playboy Mansion party as documented in Hefner Scrapbook no. 75; Norman Mailer, “Ten Thousand Words a Minute,” Esquire, Feb. 1963, 109–20, republished in his Presidential Papers, 213–67.

  30. .  Hefner, interview with the author, Nov. 8, 2012; “Playbill,” Playboy, March 1960, 6; Hugh Hefner memo titled “Chronology for Ian Fleming/James Bond/Sean Connery,” Oct. 12, 1990, Hefner Papers.

  31. .  “Playbill,” Playboy, April 1963, 8. The Playboy serializations included “The Hildebrand Rarity,” March 1960; On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, beginning in April 1963; You Only Live Twice, beginning in April 1964; The Man with the Golden Gun, April 1965. See also “Playboy Interview: Ian Fleming” and “Playboy Interview: Sean Connery,” Playboy, Nov. 1965.

  32. .  “Playbill,” Playboy, March 1960, 6; Hefner, “Chronology for Ian Fleming/James Bond/Sean Connery”; Patrick O’Donnell, “James Bond, Cyber-Aristocrat,” in Comentale, Watt, and Willman, Ian Fleming and James Bond, 59; Fleming quoted in The Rough Guide to James Bond (London, 2002), 67.

  33. .  Hefner, interview with the author, Nov. 8, 2012.

  34. .  Ibid.

  35. .  Ibid.

  36. .  Ibid.

  37. .  Watts, Mr. Playboy, 174–80.

  38. .  “The Playboy Philosophy,” pt. 2, Playboy, Jan. 1963, 42, 49.

  39. .  Ibid., 49–50.

  40. .  “The Playboy Philosophy,” pt. 3, Playboy, Feb. 1963, 43–46.

  41. .  Ibid., 44, 45, 47.

  42. .  “The Playboy Philosophy,” pt. 13, Playboy, Dec. 1963, 105, 104, and pt. 3, 46, 44.

  43. .  Walter T. Ridder, “The Kennedys: Tastemakers in the White House,” Show Business Illustrated, Oct. 31, 1961, 25–26, 86.

  44. .  Hefner, interview with the author, Nov. 8, 2012; photograph and description of Joseph Kennedy’s visit to Chicago in Hefner Scrapbook no. 70.

  45. .  Cartoon from Los Angeles magazine, May 1962, in Hefner Scrapbook no. 73.

  46. .  Watts, Mr. Playboy, 350.

  47. .  Hefner’s comment about “the Playboy President” came in his interview with the author, Nov. 2012.