2017
Hugh Hefner dies
The founder of Playboy died at his Los Angeles mansion at 91, closing a career that pushed sex into the mainstream and drew fierce criticism.
Hugh Hefner died at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles on September 27, 2017, at the age of 91. The immediate cause was cardiac arrest and respiratory failure, after an E. coli infection had led to sepsis. He was buried at Westwood Memorial Park, in a crypt beside Marilyn Monroe that he had bought for $75,000 in 1992.
Hefner was born in Chicago on April 9, 1926, into what he called a conservative, Midwestern, Methodist family. After Army service and a psychology degree from the University of Illinois, he worked as a copywriter for Esquire, then quit in 1952 when he was refused a $5 raise. The next year he took out a $600 loan and raised $8,000 from 45 investors, including his mother, to start his own magazine. The first issue of Playboy appeared in December 1953 with photos of Monroe taken years earlier for a nude calendar. It sold more than 50,000 copies, though Monroe was never paid.
Playboy mixed photographs of nude women with fiction and long interviews with writers, artists, and public figures. In 1966, Hefner sent Alex Haley to interview the American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell, who was shocked to discover that Haley was Black. Hefner built the brand into a network of Playboy Clubs, hosted television shows, and lived a publicized life of parties and girlfriends in mansions in Chicago and later Los Angeles.
Why it matters
Hefner turned a magazine launched on borrowed money into a brand known around the world, and he became a leading figure of the sexual revolution in American popular culture. He also put money behind causes he cared about, from a foundation devoted to individual rights to film study at the University of Southern California, and he spoke out for same-sex marriage. His foundation funded the prototype of the rape kit.
His legacy is deeply contested. Critics argued that he made the commercial exploitation of women’s bodies respectable, and former partners described rivalry, pressure over body image, and a hostile atmosphere inside the mansion. A 2022 documentary series, Secrets of Playboy, aired serious allegations of abuse against him and his circle, and the company that owns Playboy publicly distanced itself from its founder.
Did you know?
In 1978, Hefner helped raise money to restore the Hollywood Sign. He paid $27,000, about one-ninth of the cost, to sponsor the letter Y.
