Mr Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream (2009)

The real Hugh Hefner-the extraordinary inside story of an American icon

"Riveting… Watts packs in plenty of gasp-inducing passages."-Newark Star Ledger

"Like it or not, Hugh Hefner has affected all of us, so I treasured learning about how and why in the sober biography."-Chicago Sun Times

"This is a fun book. How could it not be? Watts aims to give a full account of the man, his magazine and their place in social history. Playboy is no longer the cultural force it used to be, but it made a stamp on society."-Associated Press

"In Steven Watts' exhaustive, illuminating biography Mr. Playboy, Hefner's ideal for living – marked by his allegiances to Tarzan, Freud, Pepsi-Cola and jazz – proves to be a kind of gloss on the Protestant work ethic."-Los Angeles Times Gorgeous young women in revealing poses; extravagant mansion parties packed with celebrities; a hot-tub grotto, elegant smoking jackets, and round rotating beds; the hedonistic pursuit of uninhibited sex. Put these images together and a single name springs to mind-Hugh Hefner. From his spectacular launch of Playboy magazine and the dizzying expansion of his leisure empire to his recent television hit The Girls Next Door, the publisher has attracted public attention and controversy for decades. But how did a man who is at once socially astute and morally unconventional, part Bill Gates and part Casanova, also evolve into a figure at the forefront of cultural change? In Mr. Playboy, historian and biographer Steven Watts argues that, in the process of becoming fabulously wealthy and famous, Hefner has profoundly altered American life and values. Granted unprecedented access to the man and his enterprise, Watts traces Hef's life and career from his midwestern, Methodist upbringing and the first publication of Playboy in 1953 through the turbulent sixties, self-indulgent seventies, reactionary eighties, and traditionalist nineties, up to the present. He reveals that Hefner, from the beginning, believed he could overturn social norms and take America with him. This fascinating portrait illustrates four ways in which Hefner and Playboy stood at the center of several cultural upheavals that remade the postwar United States. The publisher played a crucial role in the sexual revolution that upended traditional notions of behavior and expectation regarding sex. He emerged as one of the most influential advocates of a rapidly developing consumer culture, flooding Playboy readers with images of material abundance and a leisurely lifestyle. He proved instrumental-with his influential magazine, syndicated television shows, fashionable nightclubs, swanky resorts, and movie and musical projects-in making popular culture into a dominant force in many people's lives. Ironically, Hefner also became a controversial force in the movement for women's rights. Although advocating women's sexual freedom and their liberation from traditional family constraints, the publisher became a whipping boy for feminists who viewed him as a prophet for a new kind of male domination. Throughout, Watts offers singular insights into the real man behind the flamboyant public persona. He shows Hefner's personal dichotomies-the pleasure seeker and the workaholic, the consort of countless Playmates and the genuine romantic, the family man and the Gatsby-like host of lavish parties at his Chicago and Los Angeles mansions who enjoys well-publicized affairs with numerous Playmates, the fan of life's simple pleasures who hobnobs with the Hollywood elite. Punctuated throughout with descriptions and anecdotes of life at the Playboy Mansions, Mr. Playboy tells the compelling and uniquely American story of how one person with a provocative idea, a finger on the pulse of popular opinion, and a passion for his work altered the course of modern history.

* Spans from Hefner's childhood to the launch of Playboy magazine and the expansion of the Playboy empire to the present
* Puts Hefner's life and work into the cultural context of American life from the mid-twentieth-century onwards
* Contains over 50 B/W and color photos, including an actual fold-out centerfold



Amazon.com Review:

Amazon Exclusive: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Hugh Hefner and the Playboy Mansion


1. He has been keeping an exhaustive “scrapbook” of his life since adolescence, which now consists of over 1800 volumes and takes up much of the third floor of the Mansion.

2. His favorite weekly event is Monday’s “Manly Night,” a gathering of longstanding male friends for an evening devoted to eating, trading friendly insults and stories, and watching old films.

3. Hefner became obsessed with backgammon in the 1970s, playing in tournaments at the Mansion that attracted world-class players and lasted for hours, sometimes days.

4. He was deeply traumatized during his college days when his fiancé confessed that she was involved in a sexual affair.

5. He nearly choked to death in the late 1970s after ingesting a small sex toy during a raucous lovemaking session with his girlfriend. She dislodged it with the Heimlich maneuver.

6. Hefner was a strong backer of the civil rights movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s, contributing money and booking African American entertainers for his television show and the Playboy Clubs.

7. The Mansion library still prominently displays a large ceramic bust of Barbi Benton, Hefner’s girlfriend from the late 1960s and early 1970s.

8. The Mansion staff is inundated with requests for invitations to Hefner’s big parties. Some are from celebrities who want to bring their friends, and many are from young women who send photos of themselves in skimpy clothing and provocative poses. Nearly all are turned down.

9. Every bathroom at the Mansion is equipped with a bottle of baby oil, bottle of aspirin, and Jergens cherry-almond skin lotion. During big parties, many of them also have bowls filled with condoms.

10. Hefner has all of his meals brought to him in his bedroom suite at the Mansion. Even when the Mansion is filled with dozens of guests enjoying an elegant buffet meal for movie nights on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, he eats in his room before joining the crowd.



Summary: Disappointing…..boring!
Rating: 2

This book is SO BORING. The author writes the same stuff over, over and over again. The book could be 1/2 the size it is. I'm getting to the last chapters and finally it is getting a bit more interesting. I won't recommend this book to anyone.


Summary: Thorough and enlightening
Rating: 4

Steven Watts, a noted biographer of books about Walt Disney and Henry Ford, has this time tackled the story of another American icon by writing a thorough, page turning, and entertaining biography of the quintessential playboy and seeker of the American Dream, Mr. Hugh Hefner.

Being born into, and growing up in the era of post war monetary depression and sexual repression, Hefner's early life reflected the aspirations of his generation. He received a good education, found solid employment, fell in love, got married and had children, but something was missing for him in that life – he wanted more.

Since childhood, writing and creating fantasy had been one of the ways Hefner escaped from reality. This led him into latching onto an idea of a lifestyle magazine for men who wanted to break free from the stifling mold set in place by previous generations. The critical importance of this magazine was not only to display photos of scantily clad women, but to create a road map for the modern male, offering a model for a new lifestyle that included everything from food to clothing to entertainment.

Of course, not every road to success is always effortlessly paved, and Hefner is definitely no stranger towards adversity. Yet, not only did he manage to create an empire through an unswerving and strong business ethic, he also managed to practice what he preached. Unfortunately, this often came at a price that at times would seem to signal the end of his reign as king of his empire. Society and the media were not always kind to this man who had the nerve to openly boast about his wild days living in his adult playground. But these dark days of societal ridicule, errors in business maneuvers and blunders in his own personal life, never deterred this man. He would pick himself up after every downward spiral and stand by his gut feelings and beliefs of what society, and most importantly, he needed out of life.

Throughout the book the author easily engages the reader with his well organized prose. Although it did appear to be a bit wordy at times, readers are not only given plentiful information concerning Hefner's life, including a few notable pictures, but they are afforded easy access to where, and from whom, the sources of information were obtained. This appears to enhance the credibility of the story, and lessens the appearance that this is an unauthorized smutty tell-all tale.

Throughout the book the author easily engages the reader with his well organized prose. Although it did appear to be a bit wordy at times, readers are not only given plentiful information concerning Hefner's life, including a few notable pictures, but they are afforded easy access to where, and from whom, the information was obtained. This appears to enhance the credibility of the story, and lessens the appearance that this is an unauthorized smutty tell-all tale.

Quill says: A thorough and enlightening examination of one man's life that is often seen as overly crude and abundant. Told through his own personal and professional quest for obtaining the American Dream, this book may afford the reader a different, more respected perspective on Hefner's life.



Summary: Brilliant
Rating: 5

Some of the illustrations fold out like centerfolds. THEY FOLD OUT. I'm sorry. That's brilliant.


Summary: PROFESSOR WATTS ISN'T OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW….
Rating: 2

I figure guys my age and olders owe a lot to Hugh Hefner. And it disturbs me when those who came years after us simply don't realize, much less understand, his enormous contributions.

Prior to the first issue of "Playboy," which reached newsstands in December 1953, men's magazines, if they were anything other than about sports, automobile mechanics or woodworking, were primarily on the trashy side.

Let's start with "Police Gazette" and count them off from there.

Most, printed on newsprint with poor art, graphics and composition, featured mindless articles thats purpose was a shallow attempt to stimulate libido, and pumped up more with photos of girls standing on their tip-toes obviously with their poking-chests the products of Frederick's of Hollywood bullet bras.

Esquire attempted to be the men's magazine bible, but it was so stodgy that it missed the mark.

So Mr. Hefner took it upon himself to design and produce a graphically artistic men's magazine, and print it on slick paper, slick paper just like "Town and Country," "Vogue," and "Vanity Fair" were.

He found known experts to write about jazz and theater and cars and cooking and manners and how to dress. He added photographs of young women who could have easily lived next door to Ozzie and Harriet Nelson. Maybe next door to me, too.

There were short stories by the same writers who were frequently published in the "New Yorker" and "Harpers."

There were business essays by one of the world's most-wealthy, J. Paul Getty.

Mr. Hefner made sure men discovered Shel Silverstein and cartoonist Gahan Wilson. We found out for ourselves that art could be something more relevant for us than the Mona Lisa because of the excitingly colorful paintings of artist Leroy Neiman.

Somewhere in the `60s, Mr. Hefner researched and wrote "The Playboy Philosophy." It discussed and drew supported conclusions on sex, religion and politics. It caused readers to think, evaluate and debate. Many, for the first time, determined precisely how they felt about some matters of life. Probably many disagreed with Mr. Hefner, but either way, that was a good thing.

Dr. Steven Watts is the chairman of the history department at the University of Missouri in Columbia. If my math is correct, he and "Playboy" were both born circa 1953.

Professor Watts wrote "Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream." Rather than talk about and discuss what Mr. Hefner brought to readers like me, readers who were at least teenagers in 1953, the story Professor Watts preferred to weave was about the shallow romantic life that Mr. Hefner has led for more than fifty years.

I think Professor Watts' book is a disservice to Mr. Hefner, and I'm inclined to think it is because he was never a boy much less a man before Mr. Hefner took it upon himself to teach males how to be cultured.

He just doesn't get it, and we shouldn't expect him to.

Perhaps someday some insightful, older author will tell about the important Hugh Hefner contributions and what they have meant to American men and women. It's long past due.

Meanwhile, thank you Mr. Hefner.


Summary: Mr Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the Amercian Dream
Rating: 4

I really am enjoying this book. If you area interested in Hugh Hefner or how Playboy got started it is a great story.