Hugh Hefner

At 91 years old, Hugh Hefner has this physical status:

Hugh Marston Hefner (April 9, 1926-1977) was an American magazine publisher.

He was the editor and editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine, a newspaper that published photographs and articles that sparked obscenity accusations.

In 1953, Playboy's first issue was published starring Marilyn Monroe in a nude calendar shoot; it sold more than 50,000 copies. Hefner expanded the Playboy brand to a worldwide network of Playboy Clubs.

He also lived in luxurious mansions where Playboy "playmates" shared his wild partying lifestyle, fueling a heightened level of curiosity on television.

He was a fan of "sexual liberation" and "right expression," and he was a political activist in the Democratic Party and was responsible for the causes of First Amendment rights, animal rescue, and the revival of the Hollywood Sign.

Early life

Hefner, the first child of Glenn Lucius Hefner (1896–1976), an accountant, and his partner Grace Caroline (Swanson) Hefner (1895–1997), who worked as a teacher, were born in Chicago on April 9, 1926. His parents were from Nebraska. Keith (1929–2016), his younger brother, had a younger brother. His mother was of Swedish descent, and his father was German and English.

Hefner was a descendant of Plymouth governor William Bradford, according to his father. He described his family as "conservative, Midwestern, [and] Methodist." His mother wanted him to be a missionary.

He attended Sayre Elementary School and Steinmetz High School, then served as a US Army writer for a military newspaper from 1944 to 1946. Hefner graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1949 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a double minor in Creative Writing and Art, having completed his degree in two and a half years. After graduation, he took a semester of sociology at Northwestern University but then had to abandon shortly after.

Personal life

Hefner was simply referred to as "Hef" by friends and family. Mildred ("Millie") Williams, a Northwestern University undergraduate, married Mildred ("Millie") Williams in 1949. Christie (b.) was their daughter. David (b. 1952) and his son, David (b. 1955 (Georghiz) Mildred confessed to having an affair while he was away in the army. The acceptance, according to him, was "the most difficult time of my life."

A 2006 E!

Mildred allowed him to have sex with other women out of shame for their own infidelity and in the hopes of preserving their marriage, according to a true Hollywood Story profile. In 1959, the couple divorced.

Hefner remade himself as a bon vivant and man about town, a lifestyle he advocated in his magazine and television series. During several years, he confessed to being "involved" with about eleven out of twelve months' worth of Playmates. Donna Michelle, Marilyn Cole, Lillian Müller, Shannon Tweed, Barbi Benton, Barbi Benton, Shannon Tweed, Pam Johnson, Sondra Theodore, and Carrie Leigh were just a few of his many lovers; Leigh brought a $35 million pallimony lawsuit against him. He confessed to being the first bisexual experimenter in 1971. He bought Playboy Mansion West in 1971 and moved to Los Angeles permanently from Chicago in 1975.

Hefner had a minor stroke at age 58 on March 7, 1985, whenupon he re-evaluated his diet, making several changes. He toned down the wild, all-night parties, and his daughter Christie took over Playboy's commercial operations in 1988. He married Kimberley Conrad, a playmate of the Year, the following year; the couple were 36 years old at the time. Marston Glenn and the couple had sons Marston Glenn (b. 1990) and Cooper (b. 1991 (by the time of the 1990s).

The E!

According to a true Hollywood Story account, the Playboy Mansion had been turned into a family-friendly homestead. In 1998, he and Conrad divorced, and after that she moved to the mansion next door. After an 11-year separation, Hefner applied for divorce from Conrad in 2009, citing irreconcilable inconsistencies as the reason. He said that he only became legally married to her for the sake of their children, and that their youngest child was just turning 18. In 2010, the divorce was finalized.

Hefner was known for transporting an ever-changing group of young women into the Playboy Mansion, including twins Mandy and Sandy Bentley. He dated up to seven women at a time. He also dated Brande Roderick, Izabella St. James, Tina Marie Jordan, Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt, and Kendra Wilkinson. On The Girls Next Door, Madison, Wilkinson, and Marquardt appeared depicting their lives at the Playboy Mansion. All three of them decided to leave the mansion in October 2008.

Hefner began a relationship with Crystal Harris in January 2009; she joined the Shannon Twins after his previous "number one girlfriend" Holly Madison ended their seven-year marriage. He proposed to Harris on December 24, 2010, but the couple broke off their engagement on June 14, 2011, just five days before their planned wedding date. Playboy's July issue hit store shelves and customers' homes just days before the wedding date; it featured Harris on the front, as well as in a photo spread. "Intuitive America's Princess, Mrs." the headline on the front page read. Crystal Hefner. Hefner and Harris reconciled and married on December 31, 2012.

Keith Hefner died at the age of 87 on April 8, 2016, the day before Hefner's 90th birthday.

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Career

After being refused a $5 raise in January 1952, Hefner left his job as a copywriter for Esquire. He took out a mortgage loan of $600 and raised $8,000 from 45 investors (including $1,000 from his mother), "not because she believed in the venture." Playboy, which had been planned to be called Stag Party, was originally intended to be launched in 2006, "but because she believed in her son." Marilyn Monroe of a 1949 nude calendar shoot she did under a pseudonym was included in the first issue, which was published in December 1953. More than 50,000 copies were sold in the first issue. Hefner never met Monroe, but he bought the crypt next to hers at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in 1992 for $75,000.)

Charles Beaumont's science fiction story "The Crooked Man" was rejected by Esquire magazine in 1955, so Hefner decided to publish it in Playboy. Straight men were persecuted in a world where homosexuality was the norm. "If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society, then the reverse was also wrong," Hefner wrote. Hefner hired Gregory to work at the Chicago Playboy Club in 1961. Dick Gregory appeared at the Herman Roberts Show Bar in Chicago. Gregory attributed his career's debut to that night.

In his magazine and on television shows that he hosted Penthouse (1959–1960) and Playboy After Dark (1969-1970) Hefner promoted a bon vivant lifestyle. He was also the chief creative officer of Playboy Enterprises, the publishing company that runs the journal.

Hefner was jailed on June 4, 1963, after he published a Playboy issue featuring nude shots of Jayne Mansfield in bed with a man present. The lawsuit was brought to a hung jury, which resulted in a hanged jury.

Hefner founded "private key" clubs that were racially diverse in the 1960s. Hefner sent Alex Haley to interview American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell, much to Rockwell's surprise because Haley was black. Rockwell promised to talk to Haley only after being assured that he was not Jewish, although Rockwell held a handgun on the table throughout the interview. The Roots: The Next Generation (1979) The interview was recreated with James Earl Jones as Haley and Marlon Brando as Rockwell. In 1963 and 1965 for the newly established 1962 "playboy interview," Haley had also interviewed Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

Hefner said in 1970 that "militant feminists" are "unalterably opposed to Playboy's romantic boy-girl culture, which Playboy promotes" and that he had ordered an article in his magazine opposing them.

Hefner's fame faded in his later years, but he remained a well-known personality, often appearing in comeo roles. Hefner appeared in the 1993 The Simpsons episode "Krusty Gets Kancelled." Hefner sponsored the Clara Bow documentary Discovering the It Girl in 1999. Clara had no one who knew her," he said. "She defined an era and left her mark on the nation." In the 2000 Sex and the City episode "Sex and Another City," Hefner appeared as himself. Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage co-starred in 2005. On the late-night programming block Adult Swim, he guest-starred in a 2006 episode of Seth Green's Robot Chicken. He spoke to himself in the 2007 Family Guy episode "Airport '07." He has appeared on television's Hollywood Walk of Fame for television and appeared in many films as himself. He was nominated for a Razzie award in 2009 for his role as himself in Miss March. "Maybe I didn't know the character," he joked about this nomination on his official Twitter account: "Maybe I didn't know the person."

Hugh Hefner's documentary: Playboy, Activist, and Rebel was launched on July 30, 2010. Hugh Hefner: American Playboy was the first film director and television producer Kevin Burns to be given full access to documentary filmmaker and television producer Kevin Burns for the A&E Biography series Hugh Hefner: American Playboy in 1996. Hefner and Burns then worked on several other television shows, most notably on The Girls Next Door, a reality show that ran for six seasons (2005–2009) and 90 episodes. In the 2011 film Hop, Hefner appeared as himself in a voice-only role.

Hefner revealed in 2012 that his youngest son Cooper would replace him as the public face of Playboy.

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