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HomeEntertainmentLegendary Playboy founder, Hugh Hefner dies age 91 from natural causes

Legendary Playboy founder, Hugh Hefner dies age 91 from natural causes

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner has passed away aged 91.

The publishing legend, who helped usher in the 1960s sexual revolution with his groundbreaking men’s magazine and built a business empire around his libertine lifestyle, died at his famous Los Angeles home on Wednesday surrounded by his loved ones.

“Hugh M. Hefner, the American icon who in 1953 introduced the world to Playboy magazine and built the company into one of the most recognisable American global brands in history, peacefully passed away today from natural causes at his home, The Playboy Mansion, surrounded by loved ones,” Playboy Enterprises said in a statement.

After starting the status quo-shattering Playboy magazine in 1953, Hefner went on to launch TV and film companies, finance documentaries and preside over the Hollywood social scene from his Jacuzzi at the mansion, a frequent location for industry events.

The mansion was sold in 2016 for $100 million to his private equity investor neighbour, but the terms of the sale specified that he was allowed to live there until his death.

He was married three times and claimed to have slept with more than 1,000 women.

He is survived by his 31-year-old wife Crystal, four children, Christie, who served as CEO of Playboy Enterprise for more than 20 years, David, Marston and Cooper, who currently serves as Chief Creative Officer at the company.

Before marrying Crystal in 2012, he wed high school sweetheart Mildred Williams and later married former Playmate of the Year Kimberly Conrad in 1989.

Son Cooper led the tributes to the late icon, describing him as a “cultural pioneer”.

“My father lived an exceptional and impactful life as a media and cultural pioneer and a leading voice behind some of the most significant social and cultural movements of our time in advocating free speech, civil rights and sexual freedom,” he said.

“He defined a lifestyle and ethos that lie at the heart of the Playboy brand, one of the most recognizable and enduring in history.

“He will be greatly missed by many, including his wife Crystal, my sister Christie and my brothers David and Marston, and all of us at Playboy Enterprises.”

Hefner previously said his swinging lifestyle might have been a reaction to growing up in a repressed family where affection was rarely exhibited.

“I’m never going to grow up,” he said in a CNN interview when he was 82. “Staying young is what it is all about for me.

“Holding on to the boy and long ago I decided that age really didn’t matter and as long as the ladies … feel the same way, that’s fine with me.”

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Long before the Internet made nudity ubiquitous, he obscenity charges in 1963 for publishing and circulating photos of disrobed celebrities and aspiring stars but he was acquitted.

He created Playboy as the first stylish glossy men’s magazine and in addition to nude fold-outs, it had intellectual appeal with top writers such as Kurt Vonnegut, Joyce Carol Oates, Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin and Alex Haley for men who liked to say they did not buy the magazine just for the pictures.

In-depth interviews with historic figures such as Fidel Castro, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and John Lennon also were featured regularly.

“I’ve never thought of Playboy quite frankly as a sex magazine,” he told CNN in 2002. “I always thought of it as a lifestyle magazine in which sex was one important ingredient.”

Hefner proved to be a genius at branding. The magazine’s rabbit silhouette became one of the best known logos in the world and the “bunny” waitresses in his Playboy nightclubs were instantly recognizable in their low-cut bathing suit-style uniforms with bow ties, puffy cotton tails and pert rabbit ears.

Hef, as he began calling himself in high school, also was a living logo for Playboy, presiding over his realm in silk pajamas and a smoking jacket while puffing on a pipe.

“What I created came out of my own adolescent dreams of fantasies,” he told CNN. “I was trying to redefine what it meant to be a young, urban unattached male.”

He once declared sex to be “the primary motivating factor in the course of human history” and, using that as a business model Playboy flourished during the sexual revolution and into the 1970s with monthly circulation hitting 7 million.

He ran into trouble in the 1980s with competition from Penthouse and Hustler – magazines that had much more explicit photos – and Playboy’s social impact faded considerably by the 21st century. The Playboy Clubs closed in 1991 but would be partially revived.

After suffering a minor stroke in 1985, Hefner made daughter Christie chief executive officer of Playboy Enterprises and she gave the business a makeover before stepping down in 2009.

Cooper Hefner, who was nearly 40 years younger than Christie, assumed a major role in the company in 2014.

Playboy magazine, starting with its March 2016 issue, did away with full frontal nudity in a rebranding that would have been unimaginable in the publication’s heyday.

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