Hugh Hefner

Born: 9 April 1926 in Chicago, Illinois; best Known as: founder of the Playboy magazine empire. Hugh Hefner started his magazine Playboy in 1953, a mainstream lifestyle publication that celebrated sex at a time when Americans were none too willing to talk about such things in public. The first issue included a now-famous calendar photo of Marilyn Monroe and quickly sold out. Playboy, not without controversy, became a smashing success, known for its high quality of writing as well as its regular photos of naked women. Hefner also opened nightclubs in the 1960s and '70s, featuring scantily clad women known as "Bunnies." He even had a TV show, Playboy's Penthouse, in the early days of cable television. He had a stroke in 1985 that slowed his swinging lifestyle, and in 1988 he turned over business operations to his daughter, Christie. After nearly a decade of being a husband and father, Hef bounced back in the late '90s as a swinging senior citizen, once again enjoying the limelight and boasting a harem of much younger girlfriends. Mr. Hefner remained editor in chief even after agreeing to the magazine’s startling decision in 2015 to stop publishing nude photographs. Mr. Hefner handed over creative control of Playboy last year to his son Cooper Hefner. Playboy Enterprises’ chief executive, Scott Flanders, acknowledged that the internet had overrun the magazine’s province. Early this year, the magazine brought back nudes. Hugh Marston Hefner was born on April 9, 1926, the son of Glenn and Grace Hefner, Nebraska-born Methodists who had moved to Chicago. His father was a descendant of William Bradford, the Puritan governor of the Plymouth Colony. He married a high school classmate, Millie Williams, and began what he described as a deadening slog into 1950s adulthood. He wrote advertising copy for a department store, and then for Esquire magazine. He became circulation promotion manager of another magazine, Children’s Activities. When Playboy reached newsstands in December 1953, its press run of 51,000 sold out. His own public playboy persona emerged after he left his wife and children, Christie and David, in 1959. Mr. Hefner adored celebrity, his and others’. The Playboy Club, which was crushingly popular when it opened in Chicago in 1960. Playboy Enterprises still prospered, and in 1971 went public to finance resorts in Jamaica; Lake Geneva, Wis.; and Great Gorge, N.J.; and gambling casinos in London and the Bahamas. In 1974, when Mr. Hefner’s longtime personal assistant, Bobbie Arnstein, committed suicide. Ms. Arnstein had just been convicted of conspiracy to distribute cocaine, and Mr. Hefner said bitterly that investigators had hounded her to set him up. Mr. Hefner relied more and more on his daughter, Christie, named company president in 1982 and then chief executive, a position she held until 2009. Mr. Hefner suffered a stroke in 1985, but he recovered and remained editor in chief of Playboy, choosing the centerfold models, writing captions and tending to detail with an intensity that led his staff to call him “the world’s wealthiest copy editor.” In 1989 Mr. Hefner married again, saying he had rethought Woody Allen’s line that “marriage is the death of hope.” His second wife was Kimberley Conrad, the 1989 Playmate of the Year, 38 years his junior. They had two sons: Marston Glenn, born in 1990, and Cooper Bradford, born in 1991. The couple divorced in 2010. Crystal Harris married Hefner on New Year’s Eve 2012. In addition to his wife, Mr. Hefner’s survivors include his daughter, Christie; and his sons, David, Marston and Cooper.