Still a Playboy

Kirk Baird

Friday, Sept. 12, 2003 | 5:23 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION: Sept. 14, 2003

Hugh Hefner was 22 when he created Playboy magazine in the kitchen of his south-side Chicago apartment in 1953. A half-century later the magazine stands as a cornerstone of the sexual revolution.

Celebrating Playboy's 50th anniversary Friday through Sept. 21 at the Palms, the self-described "happiest guy on the planet" spoke to the Las Vegas Sun over the phone from the Playboy Mansion about the magazine's milestone and its ongoing redesign, and the wonders of Viagra.

Las Vegas Sun: When did you first become aware that the magazine was becoming an institution?

Hugh Hefner: Well, it's always like a snapshot in the moment of time and you don't realize what's coming ahead, but I would say fairly early we were enjoying remarkable success from where we started.

I started with no money -- it was a borrowed $600 -- a total investment from friends and relatives of $8,000 and everything was built on that. By the fifth anniversary ... the magazine had passed Esquire and we had a million circulation and I felt hugely successful. But at that point, I didn't know what lay even immediately ahead. It was 1959-1960 that I started hosting a television show called "Playboy's Penthouse," I acquired the first Playboy mansion in Chicago and we opened the first Playboy Club. And that, of course, changed everything. And then it became much more than a magazine and my life became more than that of an editor-publisher.

Sun: You are synonymous with Playboy.

HH: I used it in a unique way as a promotional vehicle and also (laughs) to improve the quality of my life.

Sun: The magazine has changed considerably over the years. What direction lies ahead?

HH: Obviously there were things in the '60s and '70s when Playboy was the catalyst for truly dramatic social-sexual change. I have some new editors -- Jim Kaminsky and some others -- who have come aboard here in the last six months that are revitalizing the magazine and recapturing some of the vitality of its earlier years. It's a very exciting time.

Sun: At a half-century old, can Playboy still appeal to a younger generation?

HH: Well, I would say, the remarkable thing is the extent to which it's already happened in terms of the brand. In the last four or five years, Playboy and my life at the Playboy Mansion have become hotter than at any time since the very early days. We're in the process of doing the same thing with the magazine. Young women are now wearing the Playboy logo. Stories of that have been featured on television and Vogue and the women's magazines.

Sun: Has the magazine always reflected your lifestyle?

HH: I grew up in a very repressive, Puritan home in the 1930s in the Depression era, and I look back when I was a kid at the images of the Roaring '20s -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby" and jazz, etc. -- as the party that I had missed. I think that when I started Playboy I was trying to capture in the pages of the magazine and in the lifestyle projected by it, that party.

I think young people who grew up in the more conservative times of the 1980s and the early 1990s, that more politically correct time, they feel to some extent that they missed the party, some of which is reflected in stories and images related to Playboy and the Playboy Mansion and some other things retro: from the Rat Pack to the old days of Vegas to memories of things past. I think part of the great appeal of the brand and of the magazine is all related to that.

Sun: Society seems to go through a 20-year cycle of repression. Why is that?

HH: I think that's who we are. I'm an 11th-generation direct descendent of William Bradford, one of the Puritans who came over on the Mayflower, so my roots in terms of Puritanism run deep. The Puritans came over here to escape from religious persecution and turned on and started persecuting the people who didn't agree with them. Our Founding Fathers gave us a constitution to separate church and state. But that conflict, that schizophrenic attitude related to play and pleasure -- in particular related to sex -- is as American as apple pie. And I think that's part of what it's all about.

Sun: I've read where you said Viagra changed things for you. Did it make that much a difference in your life?

HH: Well I've got six girlfriends, so, yes, it helps. It definitely helps. I'm also the living embodiment that age is just a number.

Sun: Have you ever been approached about appearing in a Viagra commercial? A Hugh Hefner testimonial could only help sales.

HH: No, but as soon as I started using it I bought some stock. I saw the future.

Sun: With the restructuring of Playboy, are you going after a much younger audience now?

HH: Yeah, sure. Not much younger, but sure. The age of readers has always been around 30, even in the very beginning. It's for young males, but it's adult males. The key audience runs from 18 to 45, with 30 pretty much in the middle. We're a little over that now and we're looking for ways to reinvigorate the magazine in terms of the youthful connections but the qualities of the magazine in the past as well.

Sun: Given the difference in your age -- 77 -- and the target age of Playboy's readers, do you identify with them? Do you feel they identify with you?

HH: Well, they seem to, they keep mentioning me in all their rock numbers. There are more references to Playboy and to me personally in rock music in the last couple of years than ever.