American Playboy: The Hugh Hefner Story (2017) s01e01 Episode Script
Before the Bunny: Marilyn Monroe
1 [disco music.]
Ah, look at me get down Whoo, check him out Boy, I'm steppin' All right What you talkin' about? Yeeoww [Hugh Hefner.]
That's me Hugh Hefner.
Are you ready [Hugh Hefner.]
I took a personal investment of $600 and turned it into a global empire.
Are you ready [Hugh Hefner.]
You may think you know me the guy who has it all.
Would you welcome Hugh Hefner.
[applause.]
Get on down [Hugh Hefner.]
The lavish mansion.
Look at me get down Whoo, check him out [crowd cheering.]
[Hugh Hefner.]
The legendary parties.
[James Caan.]
He would invite all these beautiful girls.
I mean, you talk about, like, dying and going to heaven.
It was amazing.
[Hugh Hefner.]
And, of course, the women.
[crowd chattering.]
Can you estimate just how many ladies you have known? No, I can't.
Yeeoww [Hugh Hefner.]
And what started it all Playboy magazine.
[Hugh Hefner.]
But for everything you've heard about me, there's probably a lot you don't know.
For all the people who loved me, there were plenty who wanted to take me down.
Playboy openly advocates the overthrow of Judeo Christian standards.
There were times when I felt worn down, trying to escape.
You know, you pick yourself up and you fight it again.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I've been investigated by the FBI and the DEA.
[reporter.]
Hefner said that prosecutors kept pressuring Miss Arnstein to testify against her boss in drug cases.
[Hugh Hefner.]
Attacked by the media and religious groups.
[Mike Wallace.]
Well, with this I think that you'll agree, it's a sniggering kind of sex.
It certainly isn't a healthy approach to sex.
[Hugh Hefner.]
And pushed to the brink of bankruptcy.
Hef, you are killing yourself.
[Hugh Hefner.]
But my magazine wasn't just about naked women.
It was breaking down barriers, starting a cultural conversation about sexuality, and standing up for social justice.
[Jesse Jackson.]
Hugh Hefner identified unequivocally with the civil rights movement of that time.
Giving a platform to Dr.
King, a platform to Malcolm X.
By any means necessary.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I've been called a pornographer a smut peddler and a sexist.
The day that you are willing to come out here with a cottontail attached to your rear end [audience laughing.]
[Hugh Hefner.]
And my lifestyle hasn't always been easy on the people closest to me.
He dates other girls, and I don't like it.
And he knows I don't like it.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I've gained enemies and lost friends.
An already emotionally troubled woman was pushed beyond endurance and she killed herself.
[Cooper Hefner.]
The conception of Playboy came from my dad's irritation with the status quo.
So, the entire magazine came to be because of one guy who was pretty upset with how most people interpreted and defined sex.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I've lived a life most could only dream of.
This is my story.
Or at least how I remember it.
Every little movement Every little thing you do Is it sleight of hand That commands my heart to love you Every little movement Every little movement [crickets chirping.]
[heavy breathing.]
Hef? Oh! Bobbie.
- Hef! - What is it? The cops are downstairs.
Just tell them I'll deal with it tomorrow.
They're here for you.
This morning a man is on trial in Chicago, charged with violating that city's laws against obscenity.
He's Hugh Hefner, publisher of Playboy magazine.
The issue has been the cause of many court cases involving motion pictures, books, and magazines, and various court decisions have left considerable gray areas in determining just what is salacious and obscene.
[man.]
Men who would stand by and see their women degraded and debased, as they are with the breast and the buttock presentation by Playboy, are not men at all.
[Hugh Hefner.]
What you're accusing me of, in essence, is taking things that previously were taboo and considered obscene and objectionable and making them tasteful and acceptable.
[Mike Wallace.]
Tonight, the first of three special reports on the controversy.
[Hugh Hefner.]
The only thing wrong with sex is the fact that we have a great tendency to treat it as something shameful and guilty and taboo-ridden, and this is what causes the major problems, not the sex itself.
Mr.
Hefner why did you start Playboy? Well that's a tough question.
Just take your time.
[slow guitar.]
I'll never smile again [Hugh Hefner.]
Long before the mansions, before the clubs, the parties, before the women, before the magazine there was just me.
Hugh Marston Hefner.
I was born in Chicago in 1926.
My parents were hardworking Midwestern protestants who didn't allow dancing, drinking, or swearing in the house.
My father spent most of his time at the office and my mother was emotionally distant toward me and my younger brother, Keith.
I think that the major thing that I missed, and that my parents missed in their own childhood because it's been passed from generation to generation was the inability to show love in an emotional and physical way.
No hugging.
No show of any kind of emotion.
[Hugh Hefner.]
With my home life lacking the affection I craved, I escaped into a world of fantasy.
And for me, that was cartooning.
[Keith Hefner.]
As a young man, he was quite shy, and so he created his fantasy life by writing stories and by cartooning his life where he could live out the kind of life that he really wanted, that he fantasized about.
This was a way of compensating for that shyness, and it has continued on through his whole life.
[Hugh Hefner.]
By the time I reached high school, I'd even created an alter ego named Goo Heffer who was confident and popular.
But when I wanted to imagine a life far more exciting than my own, there was only one place to go.
[traffic noise.]
[film projector clacking.]
When I was in my teens, I got a job at the local movie theater.
I was taken to movies when I was very young, and from very early on, up on that screen, were all the dreams of the possibilities.
You'd come out of that movie and you'd feel like you were Bogart or the leading man.
The heroine loved you in a very pure way, and I think that was what I was really looking for.
[Hugh Hefner.]
The heroine I wanted in my life was Betty Conklin.
Everyone who's ever been a teenager has known a Betty Conklin.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I was just overwhelmed by her.
There was a brief period of time in which I thought it might really be, you know, a romantic relationship.
She picked my buddy instead of me, and that told me more than I wanted to know.
And that was the period when I reinvented myself.
[swing music.]
Let your tear fall, baby [Hugh Hefner.]
Over the next few years, I was determined to transform myself into the leading man I'd seen on screen.
So I turned to my favorite magazine for help Esquire.
[David Granger.]
Esquire was the first men's magazine.
It was the only magazine that sort of went after the general interests of men.
The reason there weren't more magazines for men is because magazines, and to a slightly lesser extent, reading, was seen as like a pursuit that women did.
And it was kinda revolutionary to create a magazine for men and that it would be successful, and it was successful pretty rapidly.
I had just discovered Esquire for the very first time, and the world suggested by Esquire.
The cartoons, the fiction, the fashion, and certainly the pin-ups, which were called Petty Girls.
The Petty Girls became my first favorite pin-up.
And I covered my walls with them when I was first in high school.
Let your tear fall, baby [Hugh Hefner.]
Esquire just opened my eyes to a whole other world that was only hinted at in the movies of the time.
[Hugh Hefner.]
Reading Esquire changed my whole approach to life.
I was more confident and outgoing.
If you said good-bye [Hugh Hefner.]
And, by the end of high school, I met someone.
Her name was Millie Williams.
I've got a girl that lives up on a hill [Hugh Hefner.]
I felt an instant connection with Millie.
She got my sense of humor, liked the way I dressed.
But most importantly she understood me.
I met Hef at a graduation party, the week of graduation.
He made me feel very important and that he liked me a lot.
[laughing.]
And he was fun to be with.
[Keith Hefner.]
I really think that Millie was the first girl that he really loved, rather than just being in love with from afar.
That he really loved, who loved him back.
[Hugh Hefner.]
We started getting serious, and when Millie registered for college at the University of Illinois I decided to follow her.
Hey, man, I'm happy I am happy as a baby boy [Hugh Hefner.]
But, like most couples of the day, our private life was pretty innocent.
Everyone, I think, had the same routine, in which sexually you did many things, but you didn't do the thing.
And this was very typical, and somehow that kept you, you know, God wasn't frowning.
Little woman I'm through [orchestral flourish.]
[Hugh Hefner.]
My college life was fairly typical for the first few semesters.
But in my junior year, everything changed when a groundbreaking psychological study came out that would open my eyes to a completely different side of life.
[Carrie Pitzulo.]
In 1948, sexologist Alfred Kinsey published a massive study of American male sexuality.
In this study, he showed that American men and women had a lot more sexual experience than most people were willing to admit to.
Affairs, same-sex experiences, multiple partners.
And it made news all across the country.
[Hugh Hefner.]
You have to remember, back in the '40s, no one was talking about sex.
In Hollywood pictures, a man and a woman weren't allowed to be shown in bed together not even married couples.
[Hugh Hefner.]
That attitude was reflected in books and other mass media.
There was a kind of a Norman Rockwell view of the world that didn't exist, and it bothered me very much.
I was standing on the corner When I heard my bulldog bark [Hugh Hefner.]
Kinsey's expose of the hypocrisy in our country was a revelation to me and I was inspired to start voicing my own opinion.
We've got it down to these six.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I became editor of the college humor magazine called Shaft.
This one.
And, taking a lead from Kinsey I used it as a sounding board for my own sexual beliefs.
Stagger Lee told Billy [Hugh Hefner.]
Shaft magazine had an editorial about the Kinsey report and about sexual repression and the hurt and hypocrisy of it.
I wrote a great deal about the really moral issues.
That what we call moral, in every other area of human activity, is what is good for people.
And our traditional values related to sex are not good for people.
They hurt people.
They're hypocritical.
Go, Stagger Lee [Hugh Hefner.]
I started drawing racy cartoons, writing essays about sex, and challenging conformity.
I think what my father taught me about freedom of expression is that it's okay to not be PC when you're having a conversation about something that really matters.
It's okay to challenge other people's beliefs and your own beliefs.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I also introduced a feature that was an instant hit on campus.
Stagger Lee and Billy When Hef was working on Shaft magazine, he started Coed of the Month.
And it would be a girl, and it would have career information and her statistics and what she was into and what she liked.
So he already had that idea pre-Playboy.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I loved the creative freedom that writing for Shaft offered me.
Now, look out, Stagger, go [Hugh Hefner.]
And the best part was I could use my cartoons to send hidden messages to Millie.
[Millie Gunn Williams.]
As he was talking about these laws, these restrictive laws and repressive things, it was very easy to discuss this together and say how wrong this all was, because we both, we felt the same way, despite my Catholic background and his background.
And um, we found we had a lot of the same attitudes.
[Hugh Hefner.]
Our shared views brought us closer both emotionally and physically.
My romance with Millie, then, was an extended, uh, foreplay until she graduated from college.
We had sex for the first time the summer of '48.
I would've been 22.
[Hugh Hefner.]
A few months after graduation I did what everyone else did in those days.
I proposed to my college sweetheart.
[woman in film.]
And we should be able to trust one another.
[man in film.]
Don't smile it away [Hugh Hefner.]
But then one night Millie dropped a bombshell.
[man in film.]
You were in love with a schoolgirl notion of a popular novelist! Millie.
[crickets chirping.]
Millie! What was that about? I just want to go home.
Everything okay? [Hugh Hefner.]
That night Millie told me she had an affair.
Can we please go home? I was completely blindsided.
You told me That you would leave me Here in tears [crowd chattering.]
Now you're gone and hours seem like years [Hugh Hefner.]
Nothing in my life had prepared me for that moment.
I was just absolutely devastated.
It may be difficult to imagine, related to the publisher of Playboy magazine.
But I had been intimate with only one woman in my life, the woman I was gonna marry.
How I dealt with it, I don't really know.
I just dealt with it by, I think somehow, putting it out of my mind.
Where did you go [Hugh Hefner.]
This was, after all, the 1950s.
And back then, you married the girl you were in love with, no matter what.
And, truth be told, I was still in love with Millie.
Johnny Johnny, you're too young But I'm gonna get married You're so young My name she'll carry [Hugh Hefner.]
Our wedding was in the summer of '49.
Johnny, you're so smart [Hugh Hefner.]
We had our whole lives ahead of us.
And in January of 1951 That's great news.
I landed my dream job.
I'd just be writing copy in the ad department, but I'd be working for my favorite magazine It sets my soul on fire [Hugh Hefner.]
Esquire.
How come every time she leave me [Hugh Hefner.]
This was my chance to do something creative.
too young to marry But not to hide an aching heart [typewriters clacking.]
[Hugh Hefner.]
But I quickly realized it wasn't what I'd imagined.
Esquire had changed.
[David Granger.]
The 1950's was kind of a down period for Esquire.
I think they were probably reeling from the end of World War II and the beginnings of a more repressive society and probably tended toward being a little more conservative.
[Hugh Hefner.]
They'd moved away from all the things I'd been drawn to growing up.
The full-page cartoons, the jokes, and most of all, the pin-up girls.
The job turned out to be a huge disappointment.
And when they refused my request for a five dollar raise I quit.
But everything changed in 1952 You couldn't be cuter [Hugh Hefner.]
when Millie gave birth to our first child.
Plus that intelligent face [Hugh Hefner.]
We named her Christie.
charm for me [Hugh Hefner.]
And while I loved being a father suddenly, I had a family to provide for.
You are the little grand slam I'll bring to my family [Hugh Hefner.]
And I needed to find a job any job as quickly as possible.
So I took a low-level position at a publishing house crunching numbers and trying to improve sales.
But the job was about as mind-numbing as it gets.
[time clock clicks.]
And, as time went on [click.]
I realized I'd become just one of the masses.
[Patty Farmer.]
The 1950's was a time of conformity.
The course was set out you went to school, you got married, you had children, you got the best job you could to support your family.
There was not a lot of room for individuality, and that did not appeal to Hef at all.
[patrons chattering.]
[upbeat record playing.]
[Hugh Hefner.]
I only went into that bar to be alone.
Just one look And I fell so hard [Hugh Hefner.]
And I certainly wasn't expecting what happened next.
With you Oh oh, oh oh I found out How good it feels To have [Hugh Hefner.]
I knew what I was doing was wrong but for the first time in a long time, I felt alive.
[light switch clicks.]
The affair ended as quickly as it started.
But it sparked something in me.
I'd always been happiest being creative, and as I looked back on my cartoons, short stories, and articles from Shaft magazine, I saw what I was missing.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I became convinced very early that older people became cynical and somehow sold out those dreams.
And that's what I was unwilling to do.
I was not willing to make that tradeoff, to get in line and lock step march away the rest of my life.
My father was still trying to find himself, and had a number of jobs that I think were less than satisfying.
He was always, I think, drawn to both visual expression and also to big ideas.
[Hugh Hefner.]
It was then that I made a decision that would change the course of my life forever.
I decided to create a magazine of my own.
One that would appeal to guys like me featuring articles about music, literature, art, and culture.
[Richard Rosenzweig.]
When he started the magazine, he actually created the magazine for himself.
There was no magazine out there that he found of interest for a young guy.
Most of the men's magazines were hunting and fishing magazines, gun magazines, not sophisticated magazines.
The only sophisticated magazine that was out there at the time was Esquire.
[Hugh Hefner.]
It was going to be, uh, what Esquire used to be.
And it was a magazine that would really be for the young urban male.
[Hugh Hefner.]
But my magazine would be so much more.
In the same way that Kinsey blew the cover off sexuality in America I wanted my magazine to confront the topic of sex head on.
[Bill Maher.]
For Hef, I think the message about sex has always been that it's healthy.
And natural.
And, that we shouldn't be ashamed of it.
And we should embrace it.
That was not the popular opinion in the 1950s.
And it's hard to remember now, when you look back, that this was fairly revolutionary.
[Hugh Hefner.]
It was one thing to talk about sex, but I wanted to do more Growing up, my favorite parts of Esquire were those drawings of the pin-up girls.
But I thought my magazine could go one step further by showing photos of nude women.
[Christie Hefner.]
I think the brilliance of the magazine was it spoke to all the interests of young men.
So those were cultural and political.
It was fashion, it was travel.
But it also was an unabashed recognition of the interest that young men had in beautiful women.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I knew that there would be nothing that was outside, uh, the boundaries of what was already being published.
In other words, there were magazines, art photography magazines, sunbathing magazines, with nudes in them.
I wanted to package it in a way that suggested that this was not art.
It was something with an editorial message, and the editorial message was that sex was okay.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I was going to combine a modern lifestyle magazine with nude photos of women.
And I had the perfect name for it.
Stag Party.
[Hugh.]
What magazines do you read? Why? Just name some.
I I don't know.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I knew I liked the idea Now I just needed to see if anyone else would, too.
And the first guy that I thought of was my old friend Eldon Sellers.
What if there was a magazine that didn't fall into any one category? That took all your favorite things and put them into one place.
And it'll have a full-page color photo of a real life pin-up girl completely nude.
[both chuckling.]
It's gonna be great, Eldon.
It sounds like it.
It's going to be a progressive magazine for men.
He came to me and said that he would like to have some help raising some money for a magazine.
He did a terrific job of promoting the idea and explaining it, and he was he was extremely articulate about that.
I like that.
[Hugh Hefner.]
Eldon liked it so much, he chipped in $2,000 and even offered to help me find more investors.
And, honestly, I was going to need all the help I could get.
Just to give you a sense of how much money I needed to raise, Time magazine was started with an initial investment of $86,000.
And that was all the way back in 1923.
Today, that's the equivalent of over $1.
2 million.
[Christie Hefner.]
Even when Playboy was started, it was unusual to have that little capital and those few resources.
Today, it would be almost impossible to consider starting a magazine without having millions and millions of dollars and the capacity to sustain losses for three, four, five, six years.
[upbeat music.]
My man called me this morning [Hugh Hefner.]
I figured after Eldon's investment, I was still going to need at least $6,000 to get my idea off the ground.
Said hello, baby [Hugh Hefner.]
So we started meeting with investors in Chicago.
What do you think? A lot of them said no.
My head went round and round, yeah [Hugh Hefner.]
But a few of them said yes.
My man called me this morning Hello, Fred? Hugh Hefner here.
Well, I'm happy you asked.
Okay I was hoping for slightly better than that, to be honest with you.
Okay that sounds great.
[Hugh Hefner.]
No matter what, I was going to make this happen.
And, after weeks of calling we got my younger brother, Keith, and my neighbors to pitch in.
Even my puritanical mother gave me $1,000.
[Christie Hefner.]
I never had a long conversation with my grandmother about her investment in the magazine, but, knowing her as I did, I would say that she would have said it was not a magazine for her, but that she believed in her son.
[Hugh Hefner.]
But even with my family and friends pitching in, I was still about $600 short.
So, out of desperation, I put my furniture in hock.
It included some pretty nice pieces by designers like Herman Miller and Eames.
My man called me this morning, stop [Hugh Hefner.]
And finally, I hit my goal.
With the money finally in place, I was ready to start making my magazine.
But I quickly realized I couldn't do this on my own.
[Hugh.]
So what did Frank tell you? Well, not much.
Just that you're you're starting a magazine, and you might be looking for an art director.
Well it's not just any magazine.
It's a lifestyle magazine with a full-color nude spread of a girl in each issue.
But I want this magazine to be more than that.
A look that nobody has ever seen before.
I want this magazine to be beautiful.
You want to do a magazine with nude girls, and you want the magazine to be beautiful? [chuckles.]
That's right.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I had my art director a popular graphic designer from the Southside of Chicago named Art Paul.
[Stephen Martinez.]
Art Paul was ahead of his time.
His designs were modern and different from Esquire, and that's what Hef was looking for.
And Hef has a knack for finding that talent.
[Hugh Hefner.]
With Art Paul on board, I had my team.
I'd write the copy, Art would create the design and Eldon would handle promotions.
My small apartment became Stag Party's offices and it was finally time to get to work.
[Jason Buhrmester.]
Playboy was never a corporate magazine.
It was never part of a giant publishing house.
You're talking about a magazine that is as DIY as it gets.
It's one man started it at his kitchen table in Chicago.
[Hugh Hefner.]
We came up with countless ideas for how to make the magazine stand out.
At that time, 3-D movies were hugely popular so we considered featuring our girls in 3-D.
But attaching a pair of glasses to every issue proved too expensive.
In the end, we realized it wasn't about the gimmick.
We just needed to find the perfect girl.
Hurry on down to my house, baby, ain't anybody home [Hugh Hefner.]
In the 1950s, if you wanted a nude photo of a model, and you didn't have your own to photograph the only places you could get them from were calendar companies.
And, for a price, you could purchase the rights to their pin-ups.
Ain't nobody home but me [Hugh Hefner.]
We reached out to countless calendar companies and gathered hundreds of options for our first cover girl.
There's nobody home but me What about her, huh? No, she's not right.
This one? No, no.
Maybe if you tell me exactly what you're looking for, we can find the girl.
Well, that's the problem.
We're not looking for a girl, we're looking for the girl.
What does that mean? We need to find a girl that no guy would be able to resist.
Someone who will make it impossible for a guy not to open the cover.
Oh, well, if that's all I don't know where she is, but she's not here.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I'd spent weeks looking for a cover girl and I was starting to lose hope.
But in the fall of 1953, the solution would come out of nowhere.
I touch your lips and all at once The sparks go flying Those devil that know so well the art of lying And though I see the danger still [Hugh Hefner.]
In those days, Marilyn Monroe was every man's ultimate fantasy.
your kiss of fire Just like a torch you set the soul [Hugh Hefner.]
She was the very pinnacle of sexuality.
I must go on along the road [Hugh Hefner.]
But years before she was famous when she was still known as Norma Jean Baker the young model had posed nude for a calendar.
your kiss of fire [Hugh Hefner.]
She was the hottest star in Hollywood.
I heard about, uh, the Marilyn Monroe calendar picture, which everybody had heard about, but nobody had seen because they were afraid to show it back then.
I can't resist you [Hugh Hefner.]
But I knew I had to put it in the magazine, because she was the absolute perfect choice.
[Brett Ratner.]
Hef had a real understanding of pop culture and the public's fascination with celebrity.
So that Marilyn Monroe image, he knew that was the golden ticket.
That was thing that was going to launch that magazine.
Yeah, oh [Hugh Hefner.]
You have to remember, this was before the Internet, so getting access to photos this rare was almost impossible.
But now, I knew who had the originals, and what's even crazier was that he was right here in Chicago.
But I only had $1,000 left in my budget.
I just had to hope that would be enough.
[man.]
Okay, uh, what can I help you with? Well, I'm interested in purchasing one of your photos.
That's all? [distant phone ringing.]
It's, uh, it's not just any photo, Mr.
Baumgarth.
It's Marilyn.
Look people pay me a lot of money just to look at those pictures.
Buying them won't be cheap.
Well, uh, I only need one.
But I have to have full rights to print it.
[chuckling.]
This is Marilyn Monroe we're talking about.
Uh, I couldn't let you have it for any less than, uh 600? Yeah.
That's a lot of money.
[sighs.]
Make it 500.
Done.
But you pay me now.
In cash.
Agreed.
Don't you know Don't you know I love you so [chuckling.]
Don't you know Don't you know I love you so There she is.
Why did you have to go [Hugh Hefner.]
Marilyn didn't disappoint.
Apparently, the photographer was so nervous, he forgot to change the film leaving some of the photos with two images overlaid on top of each other.
Thank you.
I could hardly believe it.
There I was, holding what was probably the most valuable photograph on the planet.
Don't you know I love you so [Hugh Hefner.]
After months of planning, I was ready to take the world by storm.
Every little movement Every motion of your hips I feel the compulsion to pull you To my sweet lips Is it a black magic spell You put me under This miracle moment Never let it end Every little movement Is beyond improvement You are the magician I've been wishing for forever Every little movement Every little movement
Ah, look at me get down Whoo, check him out Boy, I'm steppin' All right What you talkin' about? Yeeoww [Hugh Hefner.]
That's me Hugh Hefner.
Are you ready [Hugh Hefner.]
I took a personal investment of $600 and turned it into a global empire.
Are you ready [Hugh Hefner.]
You may think you know me the guy who has it all.
Would you welcome Hugh Hefner.
[applause.]
Get on down [Hugh Hefner.]
The lavish mansion.
Look at me get down Whoo, check him out [crowd cheering.]
[Hugh Hefner.]
The legendary parties.
[James Caan.]
He would invite all these beautiful girls.
I mean, you talk about, like, dying and going to heaven.
It was amazing.
[Hugh Hefner.]
And, of course, the women.
[crowd chattering.]
Can you estimate just how many ladies you have known? No, I can't.
Yeeoww [Hugh Hefner.]
And what started it all Playboy magazine.
[Hugh Hefner.]
But for everything you've heard about me, there's probably a lot you don't know.
For all the people who loved me, there were plenty who wanted to take me down.
Playboy openly advocates the overthrow of Judeo Christian standards.
There were times when I felt worn down, trying to escape.
You know, you pick yourself up and you fight it again.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I've been investigated by the FBI and the DEA.
[reporter.]
Hefner said that prosecutors kept pressuring Miss Arnstein to testify against her boss in drug cases.
[Hugh Hefner.]
Attacked by the media and religious groups.
[Mike Wallace.]
Well, with this I think that you'll agree, it's a sniggering kind of sex.
It certainly isn't a healthy approach to sex.
[Hugh Hefner.]
And pushed to the brink of bankruptcy.
Hef, you are killing yourself.
[Hugh Hefner.]
But my magazine wasn't just about naked women.
It was breaking down barriers, starting a cultural conversation about sexuality, and standing up for social justice.
[Jesse Jackson.]
Hugh Hefner identified unequivocally with the civil rights movement of that time.
Giving a platform to Dr.
King, a platform to Malcolm X.
By any means necessary.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I've been called a pornographer a smut peddler and a sexist.
The day that you are willing to come out here with a cottontail attached to your rear end [audience laughing.]
[Hugh Hefner.]
And my lifestyle hasn't always been easy on the people closest to me.
He dates other girls, and I don't like it.
And he knows I don't like it.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I've gained enemies and lost friends.
An already emotionally troubled woman was pushed beyond endurance and she killed herself.
[Cooper Hefner.]
The conception of Playboy came from my dad's irritation with the status quo.
So, the entire magazine came to be because of one guy who was pretty upset with how most people interpreted and defined sex.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I've lived a life most could only dream of.
This is my story.
Or at least how I remember it.
Every little movement Every little thing you do Is it sleight of hand That commands my heart to love you Every little movement Every little movement [crickets chirping.]
[heavy breathing.]
Hef? Oh! Bobbie.
- Hef! - What is it? The cops are downstairs.
Just tell them I'll deal with it tomorrow.
They're here for you.
This morning a man is on trial in Chicago, charged with violating that city's laws against obscenity.
He's Hugh Hefner, publisher of Playboy magazine.
The issue has been the cause of many court cases involving motion pictures, books, and magazines, and various court decisions have left considerable gray areas in determining just what is salacious and obscene.
[man.]
Men who would stand by and see their women degraded and debased, as they are with the breast and the buttock presentation by Playboy, are not men at all.
[Hugh Hefner.]
What you're accusing me of, in essence, is taking things that previously were taboo and considered obscene and objectionable and making them tasteful and acceptable.
[Mike Wallace.]
Tonight, the first of three special reports on the controversy.
[Hugh Hefner.]
The only thing wrong with sex is the fact that we have a great tendency to treat it as something shameful and guilty and taboo-ridden, and this is what causes the major problems, not the sex itself.
Mr.
Hefner why did you start Playboy? Well that's a tough question.
Just take your time.
[slow guitar.]
I'll never smile again [Hugh Hefner.]
Long before the mansions, before the clubs, the parties, before the women, before the magazine there was just me.
Hugh Marston Hefner.
I was born in Chicago in 1926.
My parents were hardworking Midwestern protestants who didn't allow dancing, drinking, or swearing in the house.
My father spent most of his time at the office and my mother was emotionally distant toward me and my younger brother, Keith.
I think that the major thing that I missed, and that my parents missed in their own childhood because it's been passed from generation to generation was the inability to show love in an emotional and physical way.
No hugging.
No show of any kind of emotion.
[Hugh Hefner.]
With my home life lacking the affection I craved, I escaped into a world of fantasy.
And for me, that was cartooning.
[Keith Hefner.]
As a young man, he was quite shy, and so he created his fantasy life by writing stories and by cartooning his life where he could live out the kind of life that he really wanted, that he fantasized about.
This was a way of compensating for that shyness, and it has continued on through his whole life.
[Hugh Hefner.]
By the time I reached high school, I'd even created an alter ego named Goo Heffer who was confident and popular.
But when I wanted to imagine a life far more exciting than my own, there was only one place to go.
[traffic noise.]
[film projector clacking.]
When I was in my teens, I got a job at the local movie theater.
I was taken to movies when I was very young, and from very early on, up on that screen, were all the dreams of the possibilities.
You'd come out of that movie and you'd feel like you were Bogart or the leading man.
The heroine loved you in a very pure way, and I think that was what I was really looking for.
[Hugh Hefner.]
The heroine I wanted in my life was Betty Conklin.
Everyone who's ever been a teenager has known a Betty Conklin.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I was just overwhelmed by her.
There was a brief period of time in which I thought it might really be, you know, a romantic relationship.
She picked my buddy instead of me, and that told me more than I wanted to know.
And that was the period when I reinvented myself.
[swing music.]
Let your tear fall, baby [Hugh Hefner.]
Over the next few years, I was determined to transform myself into the leading man I'd seen on screen.
So I turned to my favorite magazine for help Esquire.
[David Granger.]
Esquire was the first men's magazine.
It was the only magazine that sort of went after the general interests of men.
The reason there weren't more magazines for men is because magazines, and to a slightly lesser extent, reading, was seen as like a pursuit that women did.
And it was kinda revolutionary to create a magazine for men and that it would be successful, and it was successful pretty rapidly.
I had just discovered Esquire for the very first time, and the world suggested by Esquire.
The cartoons, the fiction, the fashion, and certainly the pin-ups, which were called Petty Girls.
The Petty Girls became my first favorite pin-up.
And I covered my walls with them when I was first in high school.
Let your tear fall, baby [Hugh Hefner.]
Esquire just opened my eyes to a whole other world that was only hinted at in the movies of the time.
[Hugh Hefner.]
Reading Esquire changed my whole approach to life.
I was more confident and outgoing.
If you said good-bye [Hugh Hefner.]
And, by the end of high school, I met someone.
Her name was Millie Williams.
I've got a girl that lives up on a hill [Hugh Hefner.]
I felt an instant connection with Millie.
She got my sense of humor, liked the way I dressed.
But most importantly she understood me.
I met Hef at a graduation party, the week of graduation.
He made me feel very important and that he liked me a lot.
[laughing.]
And he was fun to be with.
[Keith Hefner.]
I really think that Millie was the first girl that he really loved, rather than just being in love with from afar.
That he really loved, who loved him back.
[Hugh Hefner.]
We started getting serious, and when Millie registered for college at the University of Illinois I decided to follow her.
Hey, man, I'm happy I am happy as a baby boy [Hugh Hefner.]
But, like most couples of the day, our private life was pretty innocent.
Everyone, I think, had the same routine, in which sexually you did many things, but you didn't do the thing.
And this was very typical, and somehow that kept you, you know, God wasn't frowning.
Little woman I'm through [orchestral flourish.]
[Hugh Hefner.]
My college life was fairly typical for the first few semesters.
But in my junior year, everything changed when a groundbreaking psychological study came out that would open my eyes to a completely different side of life.
[Carrie Pitzulo.]
In 1948, sexologist Alfred Kinsey published a massive study of American male sexuality.
In this study, he showed that American men and women had a lot more sexual experience than most people were willing to admit to.
Affairs, same-sex experiences, multiple partners.
And it made news all across the country.
[Hugh Hefner.]
You have to remember, back in the '40s, no one was talking about sex.
In Hollywood pictures, a man and a woman weren't allowed to be shown in bed together not even married couples.
[Hugh Hefner.]
That attitude was reflected in books and other mass media.
There was a kind of a Norman Rockwell view of the world that didn't exist, and it bothered me very much.
I was standing on the corner When I heard my bulldog bark [Hugh Hefner.]
Kinsey's expose of the hypocrisy in our country was a revelation to me and I was inspired to start voicing my own opinion.
We've got it down to these six.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I became editor of the college humor magazine called Shaft.
This one.
And, taking a lead from Kinsey I used it as a sounding board for my own sexual beliefs.
Stagger Lee told Billy [Hugh Hefner.]
Shaft magazine had an editorial about the Kinsey report and about sexual repression and the hurt and hypocrisy of it.
I wrote a great deal about the really moral issues.
That what we call moral, in every other area of human activity, is what is good for people.
And our traditional values related to sex are not good for people.
They hurt people.
They're hypocritical.
Go, Stagger Lee [Hugh Hefner.]
I started drawing racy cartoons, writing essays about sex, and challenging conformity.
I think what my father taught me about freedom of expression is that it's okay to not be PC when you're having a conversation about something that really matters.
It's okay to challenge other people's beliefs and your own beliefs.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I also introduced a feature that was an instant hit on campus.
Stagger Lee and Billy When Hef was working on Shaft magazine, he started Coed of the Month.
And it would be a girl, and it would have career information and her statistics and what she was into and what she liked.
So he already had that idea pre-Playboy.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I loved the creative freedom that writing for Shaft offered me.
Now, look out, Stagger, go [Hugh Hefner.]
And the best part was I could use my cartoons to send hidden messages to Millie.
[Millie Gunn Williams.]
As he was talking about these laws, these restrictive laws and repressive things, it was very easy to discuss this together and say how wrong this all was, because we both, we felt the same way, despite my Catholic background and his background.
And um, we found we had a lot of the same attitudes.
[Hugh Hefner.]
Our shared views brought us closer both emotionally and physically.
My romance with Millie, then, was an extended, uh, foreplay until she graduated from college.
We had sex for the first time the summer of '48.
I would've been 22.
[Hugh Hefner.]
A few months after graduation I did what everyone else did in those days.
I proposed to my college sweetheart.
[woman in film.]
And we should be able to trust one another.
[man in film.]
Don't smile it away [Hugh Hefner.]
But then one night Millie dropped a bombshell.
[man in film.]
You were in love with a schoolgirl notion of a popular novelist! Millie.
[crickets chirping.]
Millie! What was that about? I just want to go home.
Everything okay? [Hugh Hefner.]
That night Millie told me she had an affair.
Can we please go home? I was completely blindsided.
You told me That you would leave me Here in tears [crowd chattering.]
Now you're gone and hours seem like years [Hugh Hefner.]
Nothing in my life had prepared me for that moment.
I was just absolutely devastated.
It may be difficult to imagine, related to the publisher of Playboy magazine.
But I had been intimate with only one woman in my life, the woman I was gonna marry.
How I dealt with it, I don't really know.
I just dealt with it by, I think somehow, putting it out of my mind.
Where did you go [Hugh Hefner.]
This was, after all, the 1950s.
And back then, you married the girl you were in love with, no matter what.
And, truth be told, I was still in love with Millie.
Johnny Johnny, you're too young But I'm gonna get married You're so young My name she'll carry [Hugh Hefner.]
Our wedding was in the summer of '49.
Johnny, you're so smart [Hugh Hefner.]
We had our whole lives ahead of us.
And in January of 1951 That's great news.
I landed my dream job.
I'd just be writing copy in the ad department, but I'd be working for my favorite magazine It sets my soul on fire [Hugh Hefner.]
Esquire.
How come every time she leave me [Hugh Hefner.]
This was my chance to do something creative.
too young to marry But not to hide an aching heart [typewriters clacking.]
[Hugh Hefner.]
But I quickly realized it wasn't what I'd imagined.
Esquire had changed.
[David Granger.]
The 1950's was kind of a down period for Esquire.
I think they were probably reeling from the end of World War II and the beginnings of a more repressive society and probably tended toward being a little more conservative.
[Hugh Hefner.]
They'd moved away from all the things I'd been drawn to growing up.
The full-page cartoons, the jokes, and most of all, the pin-up girls.
The job turned out to be a huge disappointment.
And when they refused my request for a five dollar raise I quit.
But everything changed in 1952 You couldn't be cuter [Hugh Hefner.]
when Millie gave birth to our first child.
Plus that intelligent face [Hugh Hefner.]
We named her Christie.
charm for me [Hugh Hefner.]
And while I loved being a father suddenly, I had a family to provide for.
You are the little grand slam I'll bring to my family [Hugh Hefner.]
And I needed to find a job any job as quickly as possible.
So I took a low-level position at a publishing house crunching numbers and trying to improve sales.
But the job was about as mind-numbing as it gets.
[time clock clicks.]
And, as time went on [click.]
I realized I'd become just one of the masses.
[Patty Farmer.]
The 1950's was a time of conformity.
The course was set out you went to school, you got married, you had children, you got the best job you could to support your family.
There was not a lot of room for individuality, and that did not appeal to Hef at all.
[patrons chattering.]
[upbeat record playing.]
[Hugh Hefner.]
I only went into that bar to be alone.
Just one look And I fell so hard [Hugh Hefner.]
And I certainly wasn't expecting what happened next.
With you Oh oh, oh oh I found out How good it feels To have [Hugh Hefner.]
I knew what I was doing was wrong but for the first time in a long time, I felt alive.
[light switch clicks.]
The affair ended as quickly as it started.
But it sparked something in me.
I'd always been happiest being creative, and as I looked back on my cartoons, short stories, and articles from Shaft magazine, I saw what I was missing.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I became convinced very early that older people became cynical and somehow sold out those dreams.
And that's what I was unwilling to do.
I was not willing to make that tradeoff, to get in line and lock step march away the rest of my life.
My father was still trying to find himself, and had a number of jobs that I think were less than satisfying.
He was always, I think, drawn to both visual expression and also to big ideas.
[Hugh Hefner.]
It was then that I made a decision that would change the course of my life forever.
I decided to create a magazine of my own.
One that would appeal to guys like me featuring articles about music, literature, art, and culture.
[Richard Rosenzweig.]
When he started the magazine, he actually created the magazine for himself.
There was no magazine out there that he found of interest for a young guy.
Most of the men's magazines were hunting and fishing magazines, gun magazines, not sophisticated magazines.
The only sophisticated magazine that was out there at the time was Esquire.
[Hugh Hefner.]
It was going to be, uh, what Esquire used to be.
And it was a magazine that would really be for the young urban male.
[Hugh Hefner.]
But my magazine would be so much more.
In the same way that Kinsey blew the cover off sexuality in America I wanted my magazine to confront the topic of sex head on.
[Bill Maher.]
For Hef, I think the message about sex has always been that it's healthy.
And natural.
And, that we shouldn't be ashamed of it.
And we should embrace it.
That was not the popular opinion in the 1950s.
And it's hard to remember now, when you look back, that this was fairly revolutionary.
[Hugh Hefner.]
It was one thing to talk about sex, but I wanted to do more Growing up, my favorite parts of Esquire were those drawings of the pin-up girls.
But I thought my magazine could go one step further by showing photos of nude women.
[Christie Hefner.]
I think the brilliance of the magazine was it spoke to all the interests of young men.
So those were cultural and political.
It was fashion, it was travel.
But it also was an unabashed recognition of the interest that young men had in beautiful women.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I knew that there would be nothing that was outside, uh, the boundaries of what was already being published.
In other words, there were magazines, art photography magazines, sunbathing magazines, with nudes in them.
I wanted to package it in a way that suggested that this was not art.
It was something with an editorial message, and the editorial message was that sex was okay.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I was going to combine a modern lifestyle magazine with nude photos of women.
And I had the perfect name for it.
Stag Party.
[Hugh.]
What magazines do you read? Why? Just name some.
I I don't know.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I knew I liked the idea Now I just needed to see if anyone else would, too.
And the first guy that I thought of was my old friend Eldon Sellers.
What if there was a magazine that didn't fall into any one category? That took all your favorite things and put them into one place.
And it'll have a full-page color photo of a real life pin-up girl completely nude.
[both chuckling.]
It's gonna be great, Eldon.
It sounds like it.
It's going to be a progressive magazine for men.
He came to me and said that he would like to have some help raising some money for a magazine.
He did a terrific job of promoting the idea and explaining it, and he was he was extremely articulate about that.
I like that.
[Hugh Hefner.]
Eldon liked it so much, he chipped in $2,000 and even offered to help me find more investors.
And, honestly, I was going to need all the help I could get.
Just to give you a sense of how much money I needed to raise, Time magazine was started with an initial investment of $86,000.
And that was all the way back in 1923.
Today, that's the equivalent of over $1.
2 million.
[Christie Hefner.]
Even when Playboy was started, it was unusual to have that little capital and those few resources.
Today, it would be almost impossible to consider starting a magazine without having millions and millions of dollars and the capacity to sustain losses for three, four, five, six years.
[upbeat music.]
My man called me this morning [Hugh Hefner.]
I figured after Eldon's investment, I was still going to need at least $6,000 to get my idea off the ground.
Said hello, baby [Hugh Hefner.]
So we started meeting with investors in Chicago.
What do you think? A lot of them said no.
My head went round and round, yeah [Hugh Hefner.]
But a few of them said yes.
My man called me this morning Hello, Fred? Hugh Hefner here.
Well, I'm happy you asked.
Okay I was hoping for slightly better than that, to be honest with you.
Okay that sounds great.
[Hugh Hefner.]
No matter what, I was going to make this happen.
And, after weeks of calling we got my younger brother, Keith, and my neighbors to pitch in.
Even my puritanical mother gave me $1,000.
[Christie Hefner.]
I never had a long conversation with my grandmother about her investment in the magazine, but, knowing her as I did, I would say that she would have said it was not a magazine for her, but that she believed in her son.
[Hugh Hefner.]
But even with my family and friends pitching in, I was still about $600 short.
So, out of desperation, I put my furniture in hock.
It included some pretty nice pieces by designers like Herman Miller and Eames.
My man called me this morning, stop [Hugh Hefner.]
And finally, I hit my goal.
With the money finally in place, I was ready to start making my magazine.
But I quickly realized I couldn't do this on my own.
[Hugh.]
So what did Frank tell you? Well, not much.
Just that you're you're starting a magazine, and you might be looking for an art director.
Well it's not just any magazine.
It's a lifestyle magazine with a full-color nude spread of a girl in each issue.
But I want this magazine to be more than that.
A look that nobody has ever seen before.
I want this magazine to be beautiful.
You want to do a magazine with nude girls, and you want the magazine to be beautiful? [chuckles.]
That's right.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I had my art director a popular graphic designer from the Southside of Chicago named Art Paul.
[Stephen Martinez.]
Art Paul was ahead of his time.
His designs were modern and different from Esquire, and that's what Hef was looking for.
And Hef has a knack for finding that talent.
[Hugh Hefner.]
With Art Paul on board, I had my team.
I'd write the copy, Art would create the design and Eldon would handle promotions.
My small apartment became Stag Party's offices and it was finally time to get to work.
[Jason Buhrmester.]
Playboy was never a corporate magazine.
It was never part of a giant publishing house.
You're talking about a magazine that is as DIY as it gets.
It's one man started it at his kitchen table in Chicago.
[Hugh Hefner.]
We came up with countless ideas for how to make the magazine stand out.
At that time, 3-D movies were hugely popular so we considered featuring our girls in 3-D.
But attaching a pair of glasses to every issue proved too expensive.
In the end, we realized it wasn't about the gimmick.
We just needed to find the perfect girl.
Hurry on down to my house, baby, ain't anybody home [Hugh Hefner.]
In the 1950s, if you wanted a nude photo of a model, and you didn't have your own to photograph the only places you could get them from were calendar companies.
And, for a price, you could purchase the rights to their pin-ups.
Ain't nobody home but me [Hugh Hefner.]
We reached out to countless calendar companies and gathered hundreds of options for our first cover girl.
There's nobody home but me What about her, huh? No, she's not right.
This one? No, no.
Maybe if you tell me exactly what you're looking for, we can find the girl.
Well, that's the problem.
We're not looking for a girl, we're looking for the girl.
What does that mean? We need to find a girl that no guy would be able to resist.
Someone who will make it impossible for a guy not to open the cover.
Oh, well, if that's all I don't know where she is, but she's not here.
[Hugh Hefner.]
I'd spent weeks looking for a cover girl and I was starting to lose hope.
But in the fall of 1953, the solution would come out of nowhere.
I touch your lips and all at once The sparks go flying Those devil that know so well the art of lying And though I see the danger still [Hugh Hefner.]
In those days, Marilyn Monroe was every man's ultimate fantasy.
your kiss of fire Just like a torch you set the soul [Hugh Hefner.]
She was the very pinnacle of sexuality.
I must go on along the road [Hugh Hefner.]
But years before she was famous when she was still known as Norma Jean Baker the young model had posed nude for a calendar.
your kiss of fire [Hugh Hefner.]
She was the hottest star in Hollywood.
I heard about, uh, the Marilyn Monroe calendar picture, which everybody had heard about, but nobody had seen because they were afraid to show it back then.
I can't resist you [Hugh Hefner.]
But I knew I had to put it in the magazine, because she was the absolute perfect choice.
[Brett Ratner.]
Hef had a real understanding of pop culture and the public's fascination with celebrity.
So that Marilyn Monroe image, he knew that was the golden ticket.
That was thing that was going to launch that magazine.
Yeah, oh [Hugh Hefner.]
You have to remember, this was before the Internet, so getting access to photos this rare was almost impossible.
But now, I knew who had the originals, and what's even crazier was that he was right here in Chicago.
But I only had $1,000 left in my budget.
I just had to hope that would be enough.
[man.]
Okay, uh, what can I help you with? Well, I'm interested in purchasing one of your photos.
That's all? [distant phone ringing.]
It's, uh, it's not just any photo, Mr.
Baumgarth.
It's Marilyn.
Look people pay me a lot of money just to look at those pictures.
Buying them won't be cheap.
Well, uh, I only need one.
But I have to have full rights to print it.
[chuckling.]
This is Marilyn Monroe we're talking about.
Uh, I couldn't let you have it for any less than, uh 600? Yeah.
That's a lot of money.
[sighs.]
Make it 500.
Done.
But you pay me now.
In cash.
Agreed.
Don't you know Don't you know I love you so [chuckling.]
Don't you know Don't you know I love you so There she is.
Why did you have to go [Hugh Hefner.]
Marilyn didn't disappoint.
Apparently, the photographer was so nervous, he forgot to change the film leaving some of the photos with two images overlaid on top of each other.
Thank you.
I could hardly believe it.
There I was, holding what was probably the most valuable photograph on the planet.
Don't you know I love you so [Hugh Hefner.]
After months of planning, I was ready to take the world by storm.
Every little movement Every motion of your hips I feel the compulsion to pull you To my sweet lips Is it a black magic spell You put me under This miracle moment Never let it end Every little movement Is beyond improvement You are the magician I've been wishing for forever Every little movement Every little movement