Customer Reviews

Mr Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

I could have used more fact and less guessing about what goes on inside Hefner's head, as if anyone could really know. A better history of his life can be found inside Gay Talese's book "Thy Neighbor's Wife" which is a great read. Find a copy of that and stay away from this one.

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.

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.

Ever wanted to take a fascinating subject and make it a bore, but didn't know how? Watts shows you how. Hugh Hefner's life has always fascinated me. I can't imagine anyone not being interesting in him male or female. When I saw a dozen of these books at a bookstore on clearance, that should have been a tip off to what I was getting into. However, I choose to buy it anyway because, considering how interesting Hugh's life is, how can you mess this up? This book was written using 2 things. #1: Assumptions and guesses of what Hugh was thinking. Then ramble on for several pages about said guesses. It becomes very evident early on that the author at no time interviewed or spoke to Hef when writing this Biography. Why would he? He had #2. #2: Pepper the book with quotes from hundreds of other articles and books that others got from Hef. No need to interview Hef right? You can just read an interview Rolling Stones magazine and the others did with him, snatch the quotes and stuff them in your book. Then revert back to #1 and begin assuming and guessing. Throw in some filler composed of uninteresting and irrelevant details and bam, you've got a book.
I wanted to hear about Hef's hardship starting the magazine. Instead, I got several pages of how the Kinsey Report MAY have had some dramatic impact on Hef's life. This very important aspect of his life is glossed over with basic facts surrounded by more theories. The whole starting the magazine is pretty much covered in 3 or 4 pages when you really break it down. Most of the book should have been the early years, but instead we get assumptions and theories on why Hef is the way he is. If you are still thinking of buying this book after these low star reviews, simply take the money you plan on using to buy it, flush it down the toilet, and you will have accomplished your goal. If you are concerned about the hours upon hours of reading this uninteresting drivel about a fascinating man that you had planned on wasting, then purchase some paint, apply to a wall, then assume an uncomfortable position and watch it dry. Rinse and repeat.

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.

I was so thoroughly taken with this book. Hef is a very very interesting and unique character in my opinion. If you choose to read this book, I think you'll find it takes much more of a historical perspective on the influence of Hef and Playboy. The author mentions occasionally the mix ups Hef would get into.. but the sex mishaps are light and the focus is on the history of the man. It's unlikely this book will disappoint.

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.

It is easy to criticize Hugh Hefner for sometimes having poor judgment or questionable taste (though compared to his many imitators and competitors, he's a veritable paragon of these virtues). But in this book, equal parts business biography, intellectual history, and sensationalism/scandalmongering (but in the best sense of the terms, only in that he honestly tells about the more shocking aspects of his subject's life when they are relevant to the bigger picture), Steven Watts gives a fuller, more nuanced account of the man and his life, and his place in and influence on American culture.

He begins with with the background leading up to the creation of Playboy magazine during the Eisenhower era, and follows Hefner's personal life and the development of the company through the succeeding decades. from early support for equal rights for blacks (the Playboy Clubs in New Orleans and Miami were the first such establishments in the South to be integrated) and women (the Playboy Foundation, the company's charitable/activist arm, assisted in the Roe v. Wade case), to battles against radical feminists in the late '70s and anti-obscenity zealots during the Reagan administration, and beyond.

Interestingly, Watts discusses Ayn Rand's influence on Hefner---The Fountainhead was one of his favorite books during the period of Playboy's founding, and she was later interviewed in the magazine---but incorrectly labels her a conservative based on her support of the Barry Goldwater presidential campaign (failing to mention, for instance, her opposition to Ronald Reagan because of his association with religious conservatism and the so-called "Moral Majority"). Indeed, Hefner's twenty-five installment "The Playboy Philosophy" which ran in the magazine during the early '60s was obviously inspired by her ideas---in it, he advocated individualism, enlightened self-interest, and capitalism. Unfortunately, however, his grasp of Rand's philosophy was somewhat superficial---he had a much clearer idea of what he was against than what he was for. If he had understood and practiced these ideas more consistently, he might not have been so baffled when he came under attack from both sides of the political spectrum during the late '70s and throughout the '80s. Still, when Gloria Steinem, Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, and Barbara Ehrenreich ally themselves with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson against you, you know you must be doing something right.

On the whole, Watts paints a portrait of a man who is surprisingly intellectual and principled, even ethical. He of course shows Hefner's influence on the sexual revolution ("Part of the sexual revolution is bringing rationality to sexuality," according to Hefner, but here again he was more clear on what he was against than what he was for), but more broadly on postwar American culture, with his emphasis on personal freedom, political freedom, and economic freedom. As Watts demonstrates, Playboy is not just about sex and crass materialism---it is about romance, class, and living well in general, with world-class literature and journalism in addition to (usually relatively) tasteful nude pictures of beautiful women. It might seem counterintuitive at first to think of Hefner as a representative of the American dream, when his own lifestyle is so far outside the norm of American life---but he, through his business enterprises, really did a lot to shape what the American dream has come to mean, and Watts places him in the tradition of the subjects of his two previous biographies, Henry Ford and Walt Disney, in tracing the development of American culture through the twentieth century.

Four and a half stars.

The story of Hugh Hefner is the story of the American dream. A small town boy dreams big and in his pursuit of glamorizing the good life has virtually changed the American Psyche. Hugh Hefner, the original "Playboy" became a pop culture icon long before most modern day celebrities were a gleam in their parent's eyes.

Steven Watts in Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream asserts that Hefner and the iconic image of Playboy rode a wave of post WWII consumerism, helped shaped the social movements, and paved the way for societal acceptance of sexual expression.

Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream by Steven Watts goes beyond a typical biography attempted to psychoanalyze this very public but private man, but documents the turbulent road less taken by the man in the silk pajamas.

The book does titillate as it peeks behind the veil of the Playboy mystic, but it is a fascinating portrayal of an astute innovator who tapped into the American psyche and in a sense mirrored the transformational changes from the 1950s American past the roaring new millennium.

With extraordinary access to the man himself, archives, and countless interviews, Watts paints a multidimensional portrait of this man who is simply known to the world as "Hef".
In an age before Facebook allowed individuals to post "hey I am having a good time without you", Playboy magazine facilitated a way to witness the lives of the beautiful people and the inner sexual kitten that rest inside the girl next door.

Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream by Steven Watts is a quick read on the world's most notorious pop culture figures of the ages, Hugh Hefner.

This book is a fascinating study into understanding how much our world has transformed within the last century. More than another girlie magazine, Playboy allowed us to feel comfortable with living our dreams.