Playboy's Creator Dies At 91

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

The Playboy mansion in Beverly Hills, long synonymous with lush parties, mourns the death of Hugh Hefner, the creator of the famous adult magazine, on Wednesday.

In a statement issued by Playboy Enterprises it was reported that the businessman died of natural causes in his Californian home at age 91.

One of his sons and the company's creative director stated that Hefner had lived “an exceptional and impressive life as a pioneer of the media and culture and as a prominent voice in some of the most important social and cultural movements of our time, defending the freedom of expression, civil rights and sexual freedom”.

At the same time, he emphasized that the style and values outlined by him will remain at the heart of the brand.

The businessman, whose full name was Hugh Marston Hefner, was born on April 9, 1926 in Chicago Illinois. He was a student at the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Illinois and Northwestern University, institutions in which he studied writing, art and psychology.

One of his first jobs was for Esquire magazine. But in 1953, upset that they didn't give him a pay raise, he mortgaged his home for $ 600 and, with the help of other investors, founded his own adult magazine. Her first cover, with Marilyn Monroe without clothes sold 50,000 copies.

The bunny magazine became a publishing empire that encompasses editions of this magazine in other languages, a wide range of product and content initiatives that reach 180 countries, and whose value exceeds $ 50 million.

The tycoon who was married three times, is survived by his children Christie David, whom he had with his first wife Mildred Williams, and Cooper and Marston, the result of his marriage to Kimberly Conrad.