[msb-alumni] Playboy Founder Hugh Hefner Dies at 91,

From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2017 16:30:45 -0400

BlankRest in peace, my Brother of the Briar! -- Steve

Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner dies at 91

LOS ANGELES Playboy magazine founder and sexual revolution symbol Hugh Hefner
has died. He was 91. The magazine released a statement saying Hefner died at
his
home
of natural causes Wednesday night, September 27,  surrounded by family.
Founding
the magazine in 1953, Hefner built a brand that defined the sexual culture of
the second
half of the 20th century. Playboy's buxom models were the objects of millions
of
men's fantasies as Hefner challenged what he derided as America's "Puritanical"
attitudes toward sex.

For decades, he was the pipe-smoking, silk-pajama-wearing center of a constant
fantasy party at Playboy mansions in Chicago and then in Los Angeles.

*****
Playboy founder brought titillation to the masses . Matt Schudel.

Sex empire reflected an exuberant lifestyle, literary ambitions As much as
anyone, Hugh Hefner turned the world on to sex. As the visionary editor who
created Playboy magazine out of sheer will and his own fevered dreams, he
introduced nudity
and sexuality to the cultural mainstream of America and the world.

For decades, the ageless Mr. Hefner embodied the "Playboy lifestyle" as the
pajama-clad sybarite who worked from his bed, threw lavish parties and
inhabited
the Playboy Mansion with an ever-changing bevy of well-toned young beauties. He
died Sept. 27 at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles at age 91. His death was
announced by Playboy Enterprises Inc. but the cause was not disclosed.

From the first issue of Playboy in 1953, which featured a photograph of a nude
Marilyn Monroe lounging on a red sheet, Mr. Hefner sought to overturn what he
considered the puritanical moral code of Middle America. His magazine was
shocking at the time, but it quickly found a large and receptive audience and
was a principal
force behind the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Mr. Hefner brought nudity out
from under the counter, but he was more than the emperor of a land with no
clothes.

From the beginning, he had literary aspirations for Playboy, hiring top writers
to give his magazine cultural credibility. It became a running joke that the
cognoscenti read Playboy "for the articles" and demurely averted their eyes
from
the pages depicting bare-breasted women. Few publications have so thoroughly
reflected the tastes and ambitions of their creators as Mr. Hefner's Playboy.

"I'm living a grown-up version of a boy's dream, turning life into a
celebration," he told Time magazine in 1967. "It's all over too quickly. Life
should be more than a vale of tears."

The magazine's formula of glossy nudes, serious writing and cartoons, coupled
with how-to advice on stereos, sex, cars and clothes, changed little through
the
years and was meant to appeal to urban, upwardly mobile heterosexual men. But
Playboy also had a surprisingly high readership among members of the clergy --
who received a 25 percent subscription discount -- and women.

"Hefner was, first and foremost, a brilliant businessman," David Allyn, author
of "Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution, an Unfettered History," told The
Washington Post in an interview. "He created Playboy at a time when America was
entering a period of profound economic and social optimism. His brand of sexual
liberalism fit perfectly with postwar aspirations."

"Hef," as he was widely known, was in charge of editorial operations from the
beginning and was known to work on the magazine for 40 hours without a break,
driven by the deadline buzz of amphetamines, Pepsi-Cola and his ever-present
pipe. He hired a large staff of editors and artists who brought literary
sophistication and visual dash to the pages of
Playboy, but there was never any doubt that the guiding vision behind Playboy
was Mr. Hefner's, and his alone.

For many years, the magazine was produced in his home town of Chicago. Before
he
turned 50, Mr. Hefner was, as Esquire magazine once decreed, "the most famous
magazine editor in the history of the world."  He commissioned articles by some
of the world's most celebrated writers -- Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, James
Baldwin and Joyce Carol Oates, to name a few. Among the works that first
appeared in Playboy were excerpts from Alex Haley's "Roots," Larry L. King's
"The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," Cameron Crowe's "Fast Times at Ridgemont
High," John Irving's "The World According to Garp" and Bob Woodward and Carl
Bernstein's "All the President's Men."

The magazine's in-depth interviews with leading figures from politics, sports
and entertainment - including Muhammad Ali, Fidel Castro and Steve Jobs --
often
made news. One of the magazines's most newsworthy revelations came in 1976,
when
presidential nominee Jimmy Carter admitted in a Playboy interview, "I've looked
on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times."

Each month, Mr. Hefner wrote an editorial in which he sought to define the
"Playboy Philosophy. In his view, sexual freedom was part of a larger spirit of
liberty, including free speech, relaxed drug laws and civil rights, including
same-sex marriage.

Mr. Hefner's umbrella organization of Playboy Enterprises grew to include
television shows, jazz festivals, book publishing and an international chain of
Playboy clubs, where cocktail waitresses, known as bunnies, wore revealing
satin
outfits with fluffy white tails. In 1961, when independently owned Playboy
clubs
in Miami and New Orleans refused to admit African American members, Mr. Hefner
bought back the franchises and issued a sternly worded memorandum: "We are
outspoken foes of segregation [and] we are actively involved in the fight to
see
the end of all racial inequalities in our time," he wrote.

At the Playboy Mansion -- first in Chicago and later in Los Angeles -- Mr.
Hefner held glittering parties that attracted Hollywood celebrities and scores
of women who eagerly shed their clothes. Outside the front door, a sign read,
"Si non oscillas, noli tintinnare" - a Latin phrase loosely translated as "If
you don't swing, don't ring."

Once-forbidden sexual imagery and ideas popularized in the pages of Playboy
became commonplace in film, television and other media, as the culture at large
came to reflect the values Mr. Hefner espoused.

"We will never recapture the importance of Playboy in the '60s and '70s," he
told The Washington Post in 2003, "because we changed the world. We live in a
Playboy world now, for good or ill."

Although he took offense at anyone who called him a pornographer, noting that
Playboy seldom, if ever, depicted overt sexual acts, Mr. Hefner relished
denunciations from religious groups and self-appointed protectors of morality.
Still, he was caught off guard by the outrage of feminists who found his
magazine's depictions of women degrading.

Feminist writer Gloria Steinem briefly worked at a Playboy Club in New York
City
to gather background for an undercover article she wrote in 1963. In a 1970
appearance on the "Dick Cavett Show," author Susan Brownmiller confronted Mr.
Hefner, saying, "When Hugh Hefner comes out here with a cottontail attached to
his rear end, then we'll have equality."

Mr. Hefner remained silent. "Quite frankly," he said on the NPR interview
program "Fresh Air" in 1999, "the women's movement from my point of view was
part of the larger sexual revolution that Playboy had played such a large part
in."

Over time, some women came to view Playboy with greater acceptance, if not
respect. Feminist scholar Camille Paglia approvingly pronounced Mr. Hefner "one
of the principal architects of the modern sexual revolution" in a 1999
documentary.

When "Sex and the City," a television series about four sexually adventurous
women in New York, premiered in 1998, the lead character played by Sarah
Jessica
Parker wore a necklace depicting the Playboy bunny.

Strict childhood

Hugh Marston Hefner was born April 9, 1926, in Chicago. His father was an
accountant, his mother a teacher, and he grew up in what he called a
conservative household of "rigid Protestant fundamentalist ethics."

"There was no drinking, no smoking, no swearing, no going to movies on Sunday,"
he recalled in a 1962 interview with the Saturday Evening Post. "Worst of all
was their attitude toward sex, which they considered a horrid thing never to be
mentioned."

After serving in the Army during World War II, Mr. Hefner graduated in 1949
from
the University of Illinois, where he majored in psychology. While working in
the
personnel office of a box manufacturer and as an advertising copywriter for a
department store, he tried without success to become a cartoonist.
He later worked in promotions for Esquire magazine and held other publishing
jobs while developing the idea for Playboy.

With $600 of his own savings and investments from friends and family -
including
his parents - Mr. Hefner wrote most of the first issue of the magazine himself.
He purchased the rights to the nude photograph of Monroe, originally shot in
1949 for a calendar. ("I had nothing on but the radio," Monroe once quipped.)

Mr. Hefner had planned to call his magazine Stag Party, but when the publishers
of another men's magazine named Stag threatened to sue, a colleague came up
with
an inspired afterthought: Playboy. The magazine hit the newsstands in December
1953 and quickly sold out its press run of more than 50,000 copies. For
Playboy's second issue, an art director drew a cartoonlike bunny's head with a
bow tie. It became the enduring symbol of Playboy, often disguised within the
cover photo on the magazine.

Beginning in 1955, another of the magazine's defining features was its
centerfold, highlighting the "Playmate of the Month" in a glossy color
photograph.  Nude pictorials of actresses and other celebrities often appeared
in Playboy, but the centerfold Playmates were chosen for what Mr. Hefner called
a "girl-next-door" quality. Some of them, such as Anna Nicole Smith, became
famous as sex symbols, but even she was unknown when she first appeared in
Playboy in 1992.

The nude pictures grabbed public attention, but the substance and variety of
the
magazine's other features -- interviews, cartoons, serious journalism and
fiction -- set Playboy part from other skin magazines. Mr. Hefner rejected
tawdry advertising to cultivate a more sophisticated, worldly image.

"Playboy straddles the line between pornography and anti-pornography," Allyn,
the historian and author, wrote in an email to The Post. "Conventional
pornography . . . tends to relish in, and celebrate, vulgarity, whereas Playboy
treats the vulgarity of conventional pornography with disdain.

Shortly before Mr. Hefner married Mildred "Millie" Williams in 1949, she
confessed to him that she had had an affair with another man. The wedding went
ahead, and the Hefners had two children, but Mr. Hefner later said the
revelation shattered any illusions he held about the virtue of women. "I was
absolutely devastated," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1994. "I'm sure that
in
some way, that experience set me up for the life that followed."

Embodying the Playboy image Even before his divorce in 1959, Mr. Hefner sought
to embody the Playboy image of the carefree, urbane man about town. For a
while,
at least, his life was synonymous with that of his magazine and the budding
Playboy empire. From 1959 to 1961, he had a syndicated television show,
"Playboy's Penthouse," with top jazz stars entertaining at intimate gatherings
in Mr. Hefner's home. It was one of the first television shows in which black
and white guests interacted as social equals.

Another show featuring Mr. Hefner, "Playboy After Dark," aired for two seasons,
beginning in 1969.

The magazine reached the height of its popularity in the early 1970s, with a
circulation of 7 million. Mr. Hefner's personal fortune at the time was
estimated at more than $200 million, and he traveled in a black jetliner with
the bunny-head symbol painted on the tail. The Harvard Business School studied
his formula for success.

Before long, though, the Playboy franchise began to weaken. In 1974, Mr.
Hefner's longtime assistant, Bobbie Arnstein, was convicted of conspiracy to
distribute cocaine and later committed suicide.  Mr. Hefner was not implicated
in any wrongdoing, but he was repeatedly investigated by the FBI and Internal
Revenue Service and was named on President Richard M. Nixon's "enemies list."

He also battled postal authorities and federal commissions that sought to
restrict the magazine's distribution. Other publications, such as Penthouse and
Hustler, cut into Playboy's readership by publishing more explicit photos, and
several of Playboy's spinoff businesses lost money.

In 1980, 20-year-old Playmate of the Year Dorothy Stratten was killed by her
estranged husband in a murder-suicide. Mr. Hefner's detractors held him
indirectly responsible, saying Stratten had been caught up in Playboy's
hedonistic milieu.

After a stroke in 1985, Mr. Hefner stopped smoking his familiar pipe, and three
years later he stepped aside as Playboy's chief executive in favor of his
daughter, Christie Hefner, although he retained his title as editor in chief of
the magazine until his death. The magazine remained headquartered in Chicago
until the editorial operation was shifted to New York in 2002 and later to Los
Angeles. Christie Hefner resigned as chief executive in 2009 amid financial
struggles for Playboy Enterprises.   Mr. Hefner led an effort to buy back the
company's stock, making it a privately held corporation by 2011.

After his divorce from his first wife, Mr. Hefner often said he would never
marry again. He had a long relationship in the 1970s and 1980s with onetime
Playmate Barbi Benton, but they did not marry.

In 1989, when he was 63, he married 26-year-old Playmate of the Year Kimberley
Conrad. They had two sons, Marston Hefner and Cooper Hefner. The couple
separated in 1998 and divorced in 2010.

On New Year's Eve 2012, Mr. Hefner married another onetime Playmate, Crystal
Harris. He was 86 at the time; she was 26. In addition to his wife and sons,
Mr.
Hefner's survivors include two children from his first marriage, Christie
Hefner
and David Hefner. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.

Well before his marriage to a woman 60 years his junior, the aging Hef had
become something of a self-caricature, strolling the grounds of the Playboy
Mansion in silk pajamas, accompanied by a troupe of women who never seemed to
turn 30. He acknowledged sleeping with "more than a thousand" women and often
touted the efficacy of Viagra.  From 2005 to 2011, the adventures of the young
women who inhabited the Playboy Mansion were chronicled in a cable reality show
called "The Girls Next Door.

Away from his magazine and his every-day-is-a-party approach to life, Mr.
Hefner
was a generous if unheralded philanthropist. In the 1970s, he led a fundraising
effort to restore the renowned Hollywood sign on a Los Angeles hillside. In
2010, he contributed $1 million to prevent real estate development near the
sign. He also donated millions to efforts to preserve classic films and endowed
a chair for the study of cinema at the University of Southern California.

Well into his 80s, Mr. Hefner continued to edit his magazine and did his best
to
maintain his swagger as the unflappable, unstoppable and unrepentant king of
the
Playboy way of life.

"I have not become jaded," he told The Post in 2003. "I wake up every day well
aware of my good fortune, loving the work I do, loving my life, realizing that
life is a crapshoot and I'm on a roll second to none."

******
Timeline: Hugh Hefner, 'Playboy' founder Editors, USA TODAY

A look at Hugh Hefner, the pipe-smoking icon who founded Playboy and died at
the
age of 91 surrounded by family.

Hugh Hefner, magazine publisher and founder of'Playboy Enterprises, died
Wednesday night in Los Angeles . He was 91. Here's a look back at his colorful
life.

1926 Hugh Marston Hefner is born to conservative Nebraska farmers and
descendants of Puritan patriarchs William Bradford and John Winthrop, Grace and
Glenn Hefner in Chicago.

1940 Enters Steinmetz High School in Chicago with an IQ of 152. Was a shy
student at first until he reinvented himself in the last two years of high
school as "Hef."
While at Steinmetz Hef enjoyed cartooning, founded the school paper named
"Star," was a member of the Green Curtain Players and was on the yearbook staff.
He focused on student causes as president of the student council and was voted
most popular senior and class clown. His favorite class was journalism.

1942 Works as an usher at the Rockne, a Chicago movie theater.

1944 Joins the U.S. Army as an infantry clerk and draws cartoons for the Army
newspaper.

1946 Honorably discharged from the Army after serving for two years near the
end
of World War II.
Went on to take summer art classes at the Art Institute of Chicago and enrolled
at the University of Illinois in Champaign in the fall, where he would meet his
first wife, Mildred Williams, as a student at Northwestern.

1949 Graduates from University of Illinois after just 2 years with a bachelor's
degree in psychology and a double minor in art and creative writing.
Takes a position as assistant personnel manager for the Chicago Cartoon Company.

1950 Hires on as an advertising copywriter at Carson Pirie Scott department
store.

1951 After failing to sell his ideas for a cartoon strip, Hefner publishes
"That
Toddlin' Town," -- a book of satirical cartoons about Chicago.
He lands a job at Esquire as a promotion copywriter. Later he was denied a $5
raise request when the publication moved its offices to New York and he decided
to stay behind in pursuit of creating his own publication.

1952 Collaborates with a fellow copywriter in an attempt to raise enough money
to launch a new Chicago magazine and fails.
Works for Publisher's Development Corp. as a newsstand and promotions director
and discovers a demand for a gentleman's magazine.
Daughter Christie Ann Hefner is born Nov. 8, 1952.

1953 Raises $8,000 from 45 investors, including a $1,000 contribution from his
mother, to launch Playboy magazine. Initially, decides on "Stag Party" as the
title for his magazine but, due to a challenge from Stag Magazine considering
this title trademark infringement, follows the advice of a friend to name the
magazine Playboy .

Playboy's first edition, produced in Hef's kitchen, hits newsstands selling
54,175 copies with cover girl Marilyn Monroe setting the bar for future bunnies.
Balances Playboy with a better-paying job as circulation manager of children's
Activities magazine.

1955 Son David Paul Hefner is born on Aug. 30, 1955.

1956 Playboy's circulation surpasses that of Esquire by selling 700,000 copies
per month.

1959 Hef divorces his wife, Millie.
Playboy sells over a million copies every month.
In celebration, Hef holds the first Playboy Jazz Festival at the Chicago
Stadium, a three-day extravaganza known as the "greatest single weekend in the
history of jazz" at the time. The first American indoor jazz festival draws
more
than 68,000.
Purchases Chicago Playboy Mansion and his first television show, "Playboy's
Penthouse" debuts.

1960 First Playboy Club opens in downtown Chicago.

1962 First "Playboy Interview" is published with Alex Haley interviewing Miles
Davis.

1963 Hef is arrested on obscenity charges after nude photos of Jayne Mansfield
appear in Playboy's June issue. The photos allegedly offended Chicago
Corporation Counsel John Melaniphy, who explained that the captions beneath the
images that were too suggestive to be considered art and were therefore
"obscene."
Due to the jury's inability to reach a verdict, the charges are dropped.

1964 Hugh M. Hefner Foundation is established with a mission to facilitate
individual rights society, placing emphasis on civil rights and liberties,
First
Amendment rights, and rational sex and drug policies.

1965 Hef fights censorship and encourages human sexuality research by providing
grants to non-profit organizations through the founding Playboy Foundation.

1969 Hosts Playboy After Dark television series.

Hugh Hefner, left, and girlfriend Barbi Benton, center, are served by Playboy
Club Bunny Cheri upon their arrival at La Guardia International Airport aboard
the Big Bunny, Heffner's jet, in New York in March 1970. (Photo: AP)

1970 Playboy  becomes the most influential men's magazine worldwide in this
decade, with circulation numbers at 7 million, surpassing those of other men's
magazines.
Hef obtains a black McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30 he names the "Big Bunny airline
jet"  in which he jets around the world.

1971 Playboy Enterprises goes public, selling 7 million magazine copies every
month. The company also successfully establishes 23 Playboy Clubs, resorts,
hotels and casinos and boasts more than 900,000 members worldwide.
Purchases the famed Playboy Mansion on a five-acre estate in the Holmby Hills
area of'Los Angeles.

1972 Playboy earns a $12 million profit for the year.

1975 Decides to make the Los Angeles'mansion his permanent residence so that he
may closely supervise production.
Becomes a driving force in the restoration of the Hollywood sign, a monument he
referred to as "Hollywood's Eiffel Tower."

1980 Awarded the first Annual Hollywood Hall of Fame Award as Outstanding
Citizen of the Year by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

1985 Suffers a minor stroke, Hef considered a "stroke of luck," that serves as
a
huge wake-up call resulting in less participation in mansion poolside parties
and less pleasurable pursuits.

1988 Names daughter, Christie, chair and chief executive officer of Playboy
Enterprises.

1989 Marries longtime girlfriend and 1989 Playmate of the Year, Kimberly
Conrad,
resulting in a period where the Playboy Mansion West represents family life.

1990 Spends much of the next decade devoting his time to philanthropic
projects.
Instills the Freedom of Expression Award given annually at the Sundance Film
Festival
into the Playboy Foundation.
Endows the "Censorship in the Cinema" course at the University of Southern
California.
Son Marston Glenn Hefner is born on'Hef's birthday, April 9. 1991.
Son Cooper Bradford Hefner is born Sept.'4. 1994.
Hefner establishes the Playboy Jazz Film Festival, funded by Playboy . The
festival was the first showcase on the West Coast for rare jazz films and was
free to the public.

1996 Receives the International Publishing Award from the International Press
Directory in London.

1998 Separates from wife, Kim. She and the two boys move onto an estate next to
the mansion.
Hefner is inducted into the Hall of Fame of the American Society of Magazine
Editors.

2001 Hefner is inducted into the New York Friars Club as an honorary friar.
Celebrates his 75th birthday with a lavish party at the mansion.

2002 Receives the highest honor of the Magazine Publishers of America: the
Henry
Johnson Fisher Award.
Inducted as an honorary member of the Harvard Lampoon.

2003 Launches reality series The Girls Next Door , starring Kendra Wilkinson,
Holly Madison, and Bridget Marquardt. The series airs in more than 150
countries
worldwide.
Celebrates Playboy's 50th anniversary with live music, stand-up comedy, and
interviews and is featured in a two-hour special on A&E.
Attempts to expand with a Playboy 'version featuring South Asian women and
Indian pop culture articles to India but it is rejected.

2006 Hefner honored with a star on the Brendan Theater Walk of Fame.
Celebrates his 80th birthday with a weekend full of festivities including a
"Casablanca Night" movie screening, a pajama and lingerie party, and dinner
buffet for about 1,000 guests at the Playboy Mansion.
Embarks on a tour of eight cities in Europe to continue his celebration.
Makes a $1 million donation to the UCLA Film and Television Archive. 2007
Donates $2 million to the University of Southern California's School of
Cinematic Arts.

2008 The three original "girls next door" move out of the mansion.
Holly Madison, Hef's main girlfriend of "The Girls Next Door,"  leaves him. It
is speculated that Madison left him due to his inability to commit and satisfy
her wishes for a family.

2009 Places the home of Kim and his two sons, also known as the Holmby Hills
Mansion, on the market for nearly $28 million. After 11 years of separation,
Hef
files for divorce from Kim Conrad.
Future girlfriend Crystal Harris moves into the mansion.

2010 Hef's divorce from Kim is finalized in March.
Gets engaged to Crystal Harris,'a former 2009 playmate of the month, in
December.

2011 Harris calls off the wedding and the two separate.
Hef quickly moves on and introduces Anna Sophia Berglund and Sher Bechard as
his
newest girlfriends.

2017 Hefner dies in Los Angeles surrounded by family at age 91.

Source: USA TODAY research

*****
Celebrities remember 'Playboy' founder Hugh Hefner, an 'icon of all icons,' on
Twitter Kim Willis , USA TODAY With Hugh Hefner's son Cooper in charge of
creative control, Playboy vows to depict nudity tastefully. Nathan Rousseau
Smith (@fantasticmrnate) reports. Buzz60 Hugh Hefner (center) poses on the
red carpet with girlfriends Karissa Shannon (left) and Crystal Harris (right)
at
the screening of the documentary film "Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist
and Rebel" at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2009. (Photo: Warren
Toda, EPA-EFE) As word spread overnight of Hugh Hefner's death at age 91
, celebrities praised the Playboy publishing icon for bringing'sexual freedom
to
mainstream culture. Former Playmate Jenny McCarthy saluted'him as a "
revolutionary " who changed lives, "especially mine. I hope I made you proud.
RIP #Hef Thank you for being a revolutionary and changing so many people's
lives, especially mine. I hope I made you proud. ? #PMOY 94 ??
pic.twitter.com/sF9ARYgEpw Larry King remembered Hefner as a " GIANT in
publishing, journalism,
free speech & civil rights. Hugh Hefner was a GIANT in publishing, journalism,
free speech & civil rights. He was a true original, and he was my friend.
Rest well Hef. pic.twitter.com/bJ1wxoK4gR NBA Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman
declared him an " Icon of all Icons " and a "#GameChanger. RIP to an Icon of
all Icons. My good friend and founder of Playboy @hughhefner #GameChanger
Another trailblazer, Norman Lear, declared Hefner "a true explorer, a man who
had a keen sense of the future . We've lost a true explorer, a man who had a
keen sense of the future. We learned a lot from you Mr. Hefner. #HughHefner
Kim Kardashian said it was an honor to have been part of Team Playboy. "Love
you
Hef! she added. RIP to the legendary Hugh Hefner! I'm so honored to have
been a part of the Playboy team! You will be greatly missed! Love you Hef! Xoxo

Filmmaker Joss Whedon tweeted the dichotomy that was Hugh Hefner . "Wait, is it
possible that Hugh Hefner did good AND bad things? Wait, is it possible Hugh
Hefner did good AND bad things? But...

" Few did more for writers , (including) myself, breaking boundaries," comedian
Richard Lewis wrote. RIP HF.

Actress Donna D'Errico, who credited Hefner with igniting her career by putting
her in Playboy, saluted him as " an icon of epic proportions . Hugh Hefner put
me in Playboy &
ignited my career. I am forever indebted, Hef. You will forever live on as an
icon of epic proportions. #RIP

And Dennis Hof, star of HBO's Cathouse! and owner of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch,
hailed'Hefner's " profound vision and enormous courage . Mourning my friend and
hero Hugh Hefner tonight. He was a sexual
pioneer and a man gifted with profound vision and enormous courage .

*****
In the corset: Detroit Playboy Bunnies recall their time in the Clubs Detroit
Free Press Staff

This article was written by former Free Press staffer Patricia Montemurri; it
was originally published in 2011.

Hugh Hefner, the man who created a magazine empire, died Wednesday at the age
of
91 and his legacy includes some of the most famous Playboy playmates ever to
grace the cover.

Editor's Note: Several year's ago, before the debut of NBC's "The Playboy
Club,"
the Free Press talked to several former Playboy Bunnies who worked at the
legendary Playboy Clubs
in Detroit. On Tuesday, after the passing of Playboy's Hugh Hefner, former
Bunny
Renee Burton, 68, of Farmington Hills expressed admiration for the many who
helped revolutionize America's pop culture landscape.

"I was lucky enough to meet Hugh Hefner. He was a class act," said Burton, who
worked at Detroit's Playboy Club from 1968 to 1972. "What he did for women's
right's, these girls just don't understand. What he did for human rights,
everything. "He was
a pioneer."

At the end of a good night working Detroit's old Playboy Club , the former
Union
Lake schoolgirl known as Bunny Jill would unzip her corseted costume and clouds
of money would fall from the satiny bosom. "We used to put all of our tips in
the top of
the costume and we'd unzip our costume and there'd be money everywhere,"
recalls
Joy Percival, a.k.a. Bunny Jill. "We'd all sit there and count our money and
have a cup of coffee. It was a wild kind of padding."

Percival, who now lives in North Carolina, was hired when she was 18. She
worked
at the Detroit club from 1963 to 1971, eventually becoming a "Bunny Mother" who
trained others in bunny protocol, and earned enough money to buy her own
lakeside house in Oakland County in 1970. Her first car was a Corvette.

Playboy Club is a chain of nightclubs owned and operated by Playboy
Enterprises.
(Photo: Joe Lippincott,
Detroit Free Press)

Nearly five decades after their heyday, the atmosphere and allure of the
1960s-era hot spots are being resurrected in "The Playboy Club," a show set to
debut this month on NBC. And the Playboy bunny - whether you consider her the
seductive clarion of the sexual liberation era or a
scorned symbol of women as sex objects - will get mainstream attention, both
good and bad.

"This NBC show seems to signal that we're reverting to a vision of women that
works against all the gains of the last half-century or so," says Meenakshi
Gigi
Durham, the author of "The Lolita Effect" (Overlook Press, $24.95) and
professor
of media and gender studies at the University of Iowa. "The show, and its
celebration of the Playboy bunny, falls in line with every other objectified,
one-dimensional, ludicrously hypersexual representation of women out there,"
Durham says. "It certainly sends a powerful message to young girls: that
parading around in stupid costumes to turn men on is a worthwhile occupation;
that being viewed as a subservient sex object is the route to success; that
hotness as defined by the media, matters more than anything."

But the women who worked at Detroit's Playboy Clubs -- there was one on East
Jefferson at the edge of downtown and one in northwest Detroit -- say they were
empowered by their jobs, not exploited.

Joy Percival, who was once known as Bunny Jill at the Detroit Playboy Club in
the 1960s is seen in this 2011 file photo. Percival now lives in North
Carolina.
(Photo: Family
photo)  The Detroit Playboy Bunny of 1970 still calls it a highlight of her 62
years.

No amount of feminist reasoning or argument will convince Renee Burton of
Farmington Hills that she was exploited or objectified. She was 19, just a year
removed from graduating third in her class of 680 at Detroit's Cody
High, when she was hired at the Detroit Playboy Club in 1968. "It was fabulous.
It was a great experience for a young person. It was very glamorous. We were
the
stars. We were the attractions," says Burton, who now owns a cleaning service.
"It was like we were on stage. Everybody looked up to us. It was our 15 minutes
of fame."

The stage was the restaurant/bar. The women performed in 3-inch heels and a
corseted costume, a ladylike tease, former bunnies say. There were strict rules
against fraternizing with the customers, although the uniform accentuated every
body curve and amplified the sexual tension.

Bunnies couldn't divulge their last names and customers couldn't touch them. "I
saw a girl give her number out, and she was fired immediately," Burton recalls.

Burton worked at the downtown club from 1968 to 1972 and she said she was
treated "like royalty" - albeit one who had to know how to mix more than 100
drinks, work for tips and serve boozy men. Burton does not think she was a
victim of sexism. But age-ism, she says, was another story.  "They liked
(women)
18 to 22. It wasn't a published thing. But I trained them. I knew the hiring
practices," says Burton, who also worked for a time at a Playboy Club in
Jamaica. "I was 24 when the club was almost closing down. And they were telling
me I was getting old."

The NBC show, set in a Chicago Playboy Club, is already being decried by
feminist Gloria Steinem, who famously wrote a 1963 magazine article about her
undercover stint as a Playboy bunny. Groups such as Morality in Media and the
Parents' Television Council also stepped in to say that the show will further
glorify Hugh Hefner's creation of male sexual fantasies.

Ingrid Rigney donned the bunny ears to put her husband through the University
of
Michigan-Dearborn where he was pursuing a bachelor's degree in electrical
engineering. She shaved a couple years off her age, thinking it would help her
get the job. She was 26, but said she was 24. She said she had just emigrated
from Germany and was working as a dental assistant.
"I was not able to meet the bills, so I saw an ad in the paper," says Rigney,
who applied without telling her husband. Unlike other bunnies who remember
making big money, Rigney remembers the many hours she had to put in to win
large
tips. "It was not an easy job if you wanted to make money," she says.
She took two or three buses from Dearborn to get to the club. She'd work lunch
and dinner, from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m., in the showroom to up her take. She
remembers that diners could eat steak and salad for $1.50 and add another
buck-and-a-half for a drink -- not a big base from which to glean a tip. But
she
says she enjoyed every minute. She didn't feel like a sex object, more like a
"glorified waitress."

"I was never ashamed of telling people that I was a Playboy bunny," she says.
"Hefner did a great job of creating an image. Four years into the job, she was
fired. "I was a Playboy bunny until I got too old. They found out I was almost
30 and terminated me," says Rigney, 73, of Orchard Lake. "When they hire
18-year-olds and you're almost 30, you do feel old."

There were some 30 Playboy Clubs around the U.S. from the 1960s through the
'80s, with the clientele paying a membership fee for a symbolic bunny key and
entry.

Now, only three clubs remain in the world.  The Playboy brand still includes
the
flagship magazine, pornographic movies and a cable-TV reality show - "The Girls
Next Door" - that features octogenarian Hefner cavorting with live-in bleached
blond girlfriends. While the new show will juice up the drama by featuring a
bunny's high heel as a weapon used to deter a sexual predator, the real life of
the bunnies was a bit more structured.

The work of a Playboy bunny was grueling. Bunnies got one week of vacation
after
one year of employment. They got free copies of Playboy magazines - available
in
the Bunny Mother's office two weeks before general availability. There were
Bunny Finder Fees for girls who hired talent. Bunnies were not permitted to
chew
gum or eat while on duty, or drink alcoholic beverages. They could partake of
lemonade and pop, but not in the view of guests. They could earn extra cash by
earning merit points for daily good service, or selling the most Playboy mugs
to
customers. They could earn demerit points -- and possible dismissal -- for
unpolished fingernails, improperly centered bunny ears or an "unkept tail," as
misspelled in a 1960s-era "Bunny Manual."

A room in Mandy Callahan's Livonia home pays tribute to her years as Bunny
Mandy. There's
a photo of her, with Hefner, just a few years out of Robichaud High School in
Dearborn Heights. Her given name was Deborah, but she liked her bunny moniker
so
much that she had her name legally changed to Amanda. Her bunny tail is framed,
and her bunny cuffs and collar are on display.

"It was all in a box, and then when I went through a divorce, part of my
re-creation was pulling all of this out and celebrating it," says Callahan, who
works as a Realtor and manages an investment sales office. She remembers
competing with hundreds of other young women for the job.
"I knew it was about being the girl next door," she says. She wore a
high-necked
jumpsuit to her audition.
Callahan worked at the downtown Detroit club, and then helped open the
northwest
Detroit club, then left after she was married and three months pregnant. She
says she took the job, in part, because she hoped it would be a stepping stone
to an acting
career in New York or Los Angeles.
"I went to Playboy for the theater of it," Callahan says. "It would just feel
like it was showtime. We walked into that room and we owned it."

Those who criticize the job, and the bunnies, are missing the point of it all,
Callahan says. "It implies that we're dumb and we were taken advantage of,"
Callahan says. "No one was conscripted into that job.  We had power.  Gloria
Steinem was so wrong. We all had lots of fun. We worked real hard -- and we
smiled and looked good doing it."

*****
Michigan is full of forgotten Playboy history Detroit Free Press staff

From wild parties to iconic clubs, Michigan has a rich history when it comes to
Playboy.

The first Playboy Club opened at 1014 E. Jefferson in Detroit, replacing the
former Stockholm Restaurant and directly across from Christ Church Detroit. In
its heyday, the Detroit club was a fixture for Detroit jazz musicians, and it
featured celebrity performers. It closed in 1972 and today, it's an office
building.

A second Detroit Playboy Club opened in 1974 at 20231 James Couzens, or the
Lodge Freeway service drive, at 8 Mile in northwest Detroit.  That club
replaced
another popular restaurant -- William Boesky's Restaurant & Bar. William
Boesky's son, Ivan Boesky, would make headlines and go to prison in the insider
trading scandal in the 1980s. The second club lasted until 1978.

A Playboy Club opened in Lansing in 1982 in a Hilton Hotel. It was the last
remaining Playboy Club in the country when it closed in July 1988. The club
originally was limited to members, who paid $25 a year. But when business
declined, it dropped the fee and opened to the general public in May 1987.

Michigan had other brushes with Playboy fame. The late Detroit Mayor Coleman A.
Young had an honorary membership to the Playboy Club. In 1962, @Freep reported
#HughHefner would bring a #Playboy club to Detroit. During 1970s, Mayor
Coleman Young was given a comp membership. pic.twitter.com/kXQ5AFDg7h And in
2006, when Detroit hosted Superbowl XL at the newly opened Ford Field, Playboy
hosted a lavish party at Coleman A. Young International Airport. Some 26,000
square feet of silver carpet was installed throughout the hangar space.
Hip hop artist Kanye West poses for a photo with fans during the Playboy Super
Bowl Party at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport, Saturday, Feb. 4, 2006.

And former Detroit Free Press Executive Editor Derick Daniels, who oversaw the
paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the 1967 riot, went onto become
president of Playboy. Daniels, who died in 2005, was credited with keeping Hugh
Hefner's empire afloat through
some rocky patches in the 1970s.

Follow-Ups:
- [msb-alumni] Re: Playboy Founder Hugh Hefner Dies at 91,
  - From: Marcia Moses

[msb-alumni] Playboy Founder Hugh Hefner Dies at 91,

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