Hugh Hefner

Hugh Marston Hefner (April 9, 1926 – September 27, 2017) was an American magazine publisher and businessman. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine, a publication with sexualized photographs of women, articles, and fiction, and lengthy interviews with politicians, musicians, artists, and writers. Hefner extended the Playboy brand into a world network of Playboy Clubs. He also resided in luxury mansions where Playboy Playmates shared his partying lifestyle, fueling media interest.

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

Hefner was a descendant of Plymouth governor William Bradford through his father's line. He described his family as "conservative, Midwestern, Methodist.” His mother had wanted him to become a missionary.

Hefner attended Sayre Elementary School and Steinmetz High School, then served from 1944 to 1946 as a United States Army writer for a military newspaper. He graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1949 with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and a double minor in creative writing and art, having earned his degree in two and a half years. In the spring of 1950, he took a semester of graduate courses in sociology at Northwestern University, but he dropped out soon after.

In January 1952, Hefner left his job as a copywriter for Esquire after he was denied a $5 raise. In 1953, he took out a mortgage loan of $600 and raised $8,000 from 45 investors (including $1,000 from his mother—"not because she believed in the venture," he told E! in 2006, "but because she believed in her son") to launch Playboy, which was initially going to be called Stag Party. The first issue was published in December 1953 and featured Marilyn Monroe from a 1949 nude calendar shoot she did under a pseudonym. That first issue sold more than 50,000 copies, but Monroe was not paid by Playboy or Hefner for the photos. (Hefner never met Monroe, but he bought the crypt next to hers at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in 1992 for $75,000.)

Esquire magazine rejected Charles Beaumont's science fiction story "The Crooked Man" in 1955, so Hefner agreed to publish it in Playboy. The story highlighted straight men being persecuted in a world where homosexuality was the norm. The magazine received angry letters, so Hefner responded, "If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society then the reverse was wrong, too." In 1961, Hefner watched Dick Gregory perform at the Herman Roberts Show Bar in Chicago, and he hired Gregory to work at the Chicago Playboy Club. Gregory attributed the launch of his career to that night.

Hefner promoted a bon vivant lifestyle in his magazine and in the television shows that he hosted, Playboy's Penthouse (1959–1960) and Playboy After Dark (1969–1970). He was also the chief creative officer of Playboy Enterprises, the publishing group which operates the magazine.

On June 4, 1963, Hefner was arrested for promoting obscene literature after he published an issue of Playboy featuring nude shots of Jayne Mansfield in bed with a man present. The case went to trial and resulted in a hung jury.

In the 1960s, Hefner created "private key" clubs that were racially diverse. During the civil rights movement in 1966, Hefner sent Alex Haley to interview American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell, much to Rockwell's shock because Haley was black. Rockwell agreed to meet with Haley only after gaining assurance that he was not Jewish, although Rockwell kept a handgun on the table throughout the interview. In Roots: The Next Generations (1979), the interview was recreated with James Earl Jones as Haley and Marlon Brando as Rockwell. Haley had also interviewed Malcolm X in 1963 and Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966 for the newly established 1962 "playboy interview".

Hefner was known to friends and family simply as "Hef". He married Northwestern University student Mildred ("Millie") Williams (1926–2025) in 1949. They had a daughter named Christie (born 1952) and a son, David (born 1955). Before the wedding, Mildred confessed that she had an affair while he was away in the army. He called the admission "the most devastating moment of my life." A 2006 E! True Hollywood Story profile of Hefner revealed that Mildred allowed him to have sex with other women, out of guilt for her own infidelity and in the hope that it would preserve their marriage. The couple divorced in 1959.

Hefner remade himself as a bon vivant and man about town, a lifestyle that he promoted in his magazine and television shows. He is often known for wearing a robe as his signature look. He admitted to being "'involved' with maybe eleven out of twelve months' worth of Playmates" during some years. Donna Michelle, Marilyn Cole, Lillian Müller, Shannon Tweed, Barbi Benton, Karen Christy, Sondra Theodore, and Carrie Leigh were a few of his many lovers; Leigh filed a $35 million palimony suit against him. In 1971, he acknowledged that he experimented in bisexuality. Also in 1971, he established a second residence in Los Angeles with the acquisition of Playboy Mansion West, and moved there permanently from Chicago in 1975.

In January 2016, the Playboy Mansion was put on the market for $200 million, on condition that Hugh Hefner would continue to work and live in the mansion. Later that year it was sold to Daren Metropoulos, a principal at private equity firm Metropoulos & Co, for $100 million. Metropoulos planned to reconnect the Playboy Mansion property with a neighboring estate that he had purchased in 2009, combining the two for a 7.3-acre (3-hectare) compound as his own private residence.

In May 2017, Eugena Washington was the last Playmate of the Year to be announced by Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion.

In 1964, Hefner established the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation to "facilitate individual rights in our democratic society". The foundation funded Marty Goddard's prototype of the rape kit as part of its efforts to support women's empowerment. Additionally, the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award was created by Christie Hefner "to honor individuals who have made significant contributions in the vital effort to protect and enhance First Amendment rights for Americans."

Hefner debated The Playboy Philosophy with William F. Buckley Jr., on Firing Line in Episode 26, recorded on September 12, 1966.

Hefner donated and raised money for the Democratic Party. In 2011, he referred to himself as an independent due to dissatisfaction with both the Democratic and Republican parties. Nonetheless, in 2012, he supported Barack Obama's reelection campaign.

In 1978, Hefner helped organize fund-raising efforts that led to the restoration of the Hollywood Sign. He hosted a gala fundraiser at the Playboy Mansion and contributed $27,000 (or 1/9 of the total restoration costs) by purchasing the letter Y in a ceremonial auction.

Hefner stated in a 2000 interview with Playboy, "It's perfectly clear to me that religion is a myth. It's something we have invented to explain the inexplicable." Lee Strobel, a Christian author who interviewed Hefner regarding his theological positions, later described Hefner as having a "very minimalistic, deistic view of God."

Hefner died at the Playboy Mansion on September 27, 2017, at the age of 91. The immediate cause of death was cardiac arrest and respiratory failure, with Hefner going into sepsis brought on by an E. coli infection.

He is interred at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles, in the crypt beside Marilyn Monroe, for which he paid $75,000 in 1992. "Spending eternity next to Marilyn is an opportunity too sweet to pass up," Hefner had told the Los Angeles Times in 2009.

The Amazon original series American Playboy: The Hugh Hefner Story was released in April 2017. It stars Matt Whelan in the title role, along with Emmett Skilton and Chelsie Preston Crayford. The ten episodes are a combination of interviews, archival footage (including moments found in Hefner's vast personal collection), and cinematic re-enactments that cover the launch of the magazine as well as the next six decades of Hefner's personal life and career. The series was filmed in Auckland.

In October 2017, Playboy Enterprises announced that a Hugh Hefner biopic directed by Brett Ratner with the screenplay by Jeff Nathanson was greenlit with Jared Leto rumored to play Hefner. In November 2017, it was indefinitely put on hold following sexual harassment allegations against Ratner, and Leto's representatives stated that reports of him being attached to the film at any point were false.

A highly fictionalized version of him appears in James Ellroy's 2026 novel Red Sheet.