Mr. Hef

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Hugh Marston Hefner is the name his parents Glenn and Grace Hefner gave him in Chicago April 9, 1926. The older son and his parents were conservative Protestant.
He attended Sayre Elementary School and Steinmetz High on the West Side of Chicago, where he was no more than an average student, despite a genius IQ (152), distinguishing himself instead with his extracurricular activities, founding a school paper, writing, cartooning and serving as president of the student council, where he championed student causes.
He graduation from high school in January 1944, Hef (a nickname preferred since teenage) joined the army serving as an Infantry Clerk and drawing cartoons for various Army newspapers. In 1946, he spent the summer taking art classes at the Chicago Art Institute, enrolling that fall at the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana. Hef earned his bachelor´s degree in two and a half years by doubling up on classes while drawing cartoons for the Daily Illini and editing the campus humor magazine Shaft, where he introduced a new feature called Coed of the Month.
He subsequently took a semester of graduate courses in sociology at Northwestern University where, pursuing his interest in individual freedom, he wrote a term paper examining U.S.
In June 1949, Hef married a classmate, Mildred Williams.
Their ten-year marriage produced two children: Christie in 1952 and David in 1955.
Hef tried his hand at cartooning and, failing to sell any of his ideas for a cartoon strip, published a book of satirical cartoons about Chicago titled That Toddlin´ Town.
In 1949 Hef worked as an assistant personel manager for the Chicago Carton Company for $45 a week and in 1950 as an advertising copywriter for the Carson, Pirie, Scott department store for just $40 a week.
In January 1951 His future seemed uncertain when he landed a promising job as a promotion copywriter at Esquire at $60 a week. When Esquire moved its offices to New York, his request for a five-dollar raise was denied, and he decided to stay behind and start a magazine of his own.
Hef and a fellow copywriter from Esquire tried to raise enough capital to launch a Chicago magazine and failed. In 1952 While working as the newsstand promotion director of Publishers Development Corporation, he became convinced there was a market for a sophisticated men´s magazine that would reflect the views of the post-War generation and he was the man to start it.
In January 1953, to support his family, he took a better-paying job as circulation manager of Children´s Activities magazine, but that spring and summer the dream of starting his own magazine became an obsession.
He got friends and family to invest in the venture, raising just $8000, including $600 of his own money borrowed from a bank using his family´s furniture as collateral.
The first issue of Playboy magazine, featuring the now-famous calendar photo of Marilyn Monroe, was produced on a kitchen table in his South Side apartment. In December 1953 on the newsstands, Hef was not sure when or if he would be able to produce another.
The first issue sold more than 50,000 copies, enough to pay for the paper and printing costs and to finance another issue.
Playboy grew at a phenomenal rate. By the end of the decade, the magazine was selling more than a million copies a month and, to celebrate, Hef held the first Playboy Jazz Festival at the Chicago Stadium.
He hosted a popular syndicated television show called Playboy´s Penthouse, purchased the Playboy Mansion at 1340 North State Parkway. On February 29 1960 he opened the first Playboy Club on the Near North Side of Chicago.
The magazine became the largest-selling, most influential men´s magazine in the world.
By 1971, when Playboy Enterprises went public, the magazine was selling 7 million copies a month and there were 23 Playboy Clubs, resorts, hotels and casinos with more than 900,000 members worldwide.The corporation also included book publishing, merchandising, a modeling agency, a limousine service, a record label and a TV and motion picture company. It was truly an empire ruled by one man.
Hef hosted a second syndicated television show, Playboy After Dark, taped in Hollywood in 1968 and 1969, and in 1970 acquired the famed black Big Bunny jet, a DC-9 from McDonnell Douglas, in which he regularly commuted between Chicago and California, and toured the world.
In 1971, he established a second residence in Los Angeles with the acquisition of a five-and-one-half acre estate in Holmby Hills, which quickly became known as Playboy Mansion West, where he was able to more closely supervise Playboy Enterprises´ increasing interests in television and film production.
In 1975, Hef decided to make Los Angeles his permanent home.
In 1980, Hef championed the reconstruction of the Hollywood sign and was honored with a star on the Hollywood walk of fame for his efforts.
Playboy also produced such popular television movies as Third Girl From The Left,
with Kim Novak and Tony Curtis; The Death of Ocean View Park; The Cop and the Kid; and A Whale For The Killing.
In 1985, he suffered a stroke that changed the direction of his life. He referred to it at the time as "a stroke of luck."
The world´s most famous bachelor was married on July 1, 1989 to Kimberley Conrad,
Playboy´s 1989 Playmate of the Year. Their fairy tale courtship resulted in an uncommonly romantic wedding ceremony conducted at the wishing well at Playboy Mansion West where Hef proposed. Their first son, Marston Glenn, was born on Hef´s birthday, April 9, 1990, and their second son Cooper Bradford, was born on September 4, 1991.
The Hefners are currently separated, and Mrs. Hefner and the boys live on an estate adjacent to the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.
Since the mid-Eighties, daughter Christie Hefner has served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Playboy Enterprises,but Hef continues to serve as the magazine´s editor-in-chief, plays a key role in determining the path of Playboy Enterprises and directs other areas of the corporation including cable television and video production.
In 1994, Hef established and Playboy founded the Playboy Jazz Film Festival, the first-ever showcase on the West Coast for many of the best and rarest films in the jazz lexicon.
In 2000, Hef guest-starred on an episode of HBO´s Sex and the City, and in 2001, he appeared in the 1000th episode of NBC´s Just Shoot Me.
Most recently, Hef has become a fixture on the Hollywood celebrity club scene and the Mansion has once again become a mecca for entertainment industry superstars including a new wave of young motion picture and television celebrities, rock groups and more.
His dreams are soon expected to reach the large screen theatrically in a feature film.

Hef on TV:


*The Late Late Show
*Just shoot me
*Sex and the city
*Politically Incorrect
*Conan O´Brian
*The Daily Show
*V.I.P
*Sex in the 20th Century
*Buddy Faro
*Roseanne
*Biography
*The fresch prince

*Blossom
*The today show
*The Larry Sanders Show
*The Simpsons
*...