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

by Steven Watts (Author)
Key Phrases: stag party, comic autobiography, erotic pictorials, Hugh Hefner, Playboy Mansion, Los Angeles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

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.

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From Publishers Weekly
As he did in his previous books on Henry Ford (The People's Tycoon) and Walt Disney (The Magic Kingdom), Watts carefully details the life of Hugh Hefner and the influence his Playboy magazine has had on American culture. Using unrestricted access to the magazine's archives, Watts skillfully charts the intersection of Hefner's professional and personal history: the sexual titillation of his first issue; his mid- to late-1960s championing of leftist politics and writers such as Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut; his 1970s retrenchment after assaults by the women's liberation movement; his financial and personal troubles in the '80s and '90s; and his current position as the retro cool figurehead of an institution that is now a midsize communications and entertainment company. Watts evokes a time when Playboy was seen by its critics as a key symptom of decadence in American life, and is at his best when exploring his subject's early years, showing how Hefner's sexual and material ethic of self-fulfillment drove him to challenge the social conventions of postwar America. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1ST edition (October 6, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471690597
• ISBN-13: 978-0471690597
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #23,163 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Contrary View, January 5, 2009

By	QueenMom (Allison Park, PA USA) - See all my reviews

I am listening to the audio version, with two disks still to go. Yawn.
Perhaps the print version would have been better since it would have been supplemented with pictures. How is it possible to make Playboy this boring??? The book alternates between the author's numerous textbook-analyses of Playboy's and society's changes over the years, to dry recitations of timelines and reported facts (names of authors published in the magazine, names of Playmates, names of artists playing at a concert, etc). Even the Playmates and special girlfriends are not given any life in this ponderous book. IMO, anyone looking for entertainment and fun stories about Playboy or its publisher should keep looking.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hef's Not Only Living the Dream, He Created It, November 26, 2008

By	J. M. Tapson (Los Angeles CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've been waiting a long time for the definitive biography of Hugh Hefner, a guy I've always had a certain fascination and admiration for - and here it is. Not just a shallow pop bio, this is a highly readable, insightful, and entertaining look into the life and times of one of pop culture's most recognizable, controversial, and ultimately beloved icons.

Mr. Playboy digs past the popular assumptions about Hef and even his own self-created image to lay bare the truth about the man who was the tip of the spear of the sexual revolution, and who literally invented the lifestyle of the modern playboy. The author does a great job of situating the Playboy phenomenon and its creator in the larger social, political, and cultural setting. The book even includes material on the successful The Girls Next Door reality TV show, so it's as up-to-date as it could possibly be.

Lots of good photos, including - naturally - a centerfold. It's a wild ride. If you have any interest or curiosity at all in the man and the magazine, you won't be disappointed by this book.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and surprisingly substantial., November 16, 2008

By	LC (NYC) - See all my reviews

I work for the publisher and got a copy of this book from the editor. I was expecting a fun read, and it is, but it also makes a strong case for Hefner as a major force affecting American culture. There's a lot of good storytelling along the way (and quite a few pictures).

Also, the centerfold cracked me up.