What kind of “man” read Playboy? Young boys searching for titillation

It was a scene towards the end of the 1978 film “Animal House” that seems to be all too appropriate as we note the death this week of Hugh Hefner – the man who gave us Playboy as a magazine and lifestyle, and took the concept of girlie mags away from the ancient images of nudists playing volleyball on the beach.

A four-decade old cinematic moment ...

That scene was the one where the Homecoming parade at fictional Faber College was being thrown all awry by the vengeful Delta House fraternity that had just been closed down by the venal Dean Vernon Wormer.

ONE FLOAT IN the parade got slammed into – and a girl onboard the float dressed in a Playboy bunny costume got tossed into the air, where she went soaring through the sky and into an open window of a nearby house.

... that somehow seems relevant today

Where she came to rest in the bed of a young boy who, from the looks of it, had been sneaking peaks at a Playboy magazine.

“Thank you, God” was his response at the thought of a real-live girl to accompany the photographic images he had been checking out just moments earlier.

An image like this may well be the perfect visualization of the Playboy legacy. Not that I’m saying every kid who ever checked out a magazine suddenly got a real girl thrown into his midst.

Playboy Building and Mansion still stand in Chicago ...

BUT WHILE HEFNER himself liked to claim some sort of high-minded image for himself as a sexual liberator who even made women themselves free to enjoy sex, I wonder if throughout the years Playboy, the magazine, became something that young kids went out of their way to sneak peeks at in order to try to figure out what the big deal was.

Which, of course, meant the generations of kids who got caught, and got punished, for “sneaking a peek” at daddy’s copies of girlie mags.

Just the other day, I saw a rerun of a “Friends” episode – the one in which Courteney Cox’ “Monica” character was obsessed with finding out why she didn’t get invited to her cousin’s wedding.

When brother “Ross” (played by David Schwimmer) tried defending the cousin, Monica got him back on her side by informing him that the cousin had been the one who, as a child, snitched to their mother that Ross had been sneaking peeks at Playboy.

... but their hedonistic days are long past

PERSONALLY, MY MEMORY of first seeing Hugh Hefner’s creation came when I was about 8 (I think). It was something I stumbled across (and inspected) when the parents weren’t around. Because I’m fairly sure my mother, in particular, would have disapproved. I also remember around that same time seeing an episode of "The Odd Couple" in which Hefner himself appeared.

I do recall one other time when a copy of Playboy stirred up some attention – it would be the summer I worked for the Cook County recorder of deeds. The magazine had a feature on Marla Collins – whom hard-core fans of the team remember as the one-time ball girl who on-field worked in short shorts and a tight Cubs pullover jersey.

But for the feature, she appeared in various pieces of lingerie – which is what got the Cubs management all riled up to where she got fired.

Which is why a group of county employees (fairly low-ranking) felt compelled to pass around the magazine copy we had obtained so we could see what the big deal was. A tad too prudish on the Cubs part, was our reaction. Although I'm sure our boss, then-county Recorder Harry "Bus" Yourell, would have had a fit if he had caught us goofing off with Playboy when we were supposed to be working.

Generation of Cubs fans see Marla as glamour girl

I HAVEN’T SEEN a copy of Playboy in years – yes, I’m too cheap to pay the $12.99 newsstand price, and don’t feel compelled to get a subscription. The articles that allegedly are of such a high quality that you want to actually READ the magazine aren’t what they used to be.

Then again, many printed word publications aren’t what they used to be. Too much trash available on the Internet, where the written word somehow loses something in translation.

Besides, I wonder if the younger generation thinks of Hefner as being something more of a “dirty old man” who appeared on television living with various incarnations of three girls at a time. Something more to be pitied than envied.

So as we note the passing Wednesday of Hefner at age 91, it should be pointed out that future generations of youngsters will figure out ways to get at websites their parents don’t want them to see. But somehow, the computer screen and downloading some explicit, trashy video doesn’t offer the same experience as that glossy-paged centerfold, while listening for the sound of parental footsteps off in the distance.

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Is the Playboy Club’s place in Chicago a couple of lines in the history books?

It seems that Hugh Hefner is making a serious bet that the proposed television show “The Playboy Club” will be a success.

The program to air this autumn on NBC is set at the Playboy Club of old on Walton Street back in the early 1960s when the concept of waitresses showing ample cleavage (with uniforms designed in a way to push-up and accentuate their assets even further) was something new.

IF THE PROGRAM becomes a success (it is supposed to be about the culture clashes that were beginning to take place in those early years of the decade), I could well see some people wanting to check out “the real thing.”

They’re going to want to go to the Playboy Club to see if it is truly as lush, luxurious, elegant and sophisticated as Hefner always claimed it was – or if it is really nothing more than tacky kitsch.

The reality, of course, is that the Playboy Club is nothing. The club in Chicago closed down in 1986 (which also was the year that I first could have legally entered the club – I never went), along with all the other large-city clubs. It took a few foreign sites to keep the brand name going, but even those have all been gone since 1991.

So there’s nowhere to go.

UNTIL EARLY NEXT year, perhaps.

For it seems that Playboy Enterprises Inc. is working out a deal by which a private company would operate a nightclub that would be allowed to use the name “Playboy Club.” It won’t be run by anyone connected with Playboy, but they’ll get a share of the proceeds in exchange for use of the brand name.

Crain’s Chicago Business reported Monday that Boston-based Tremont Realty Capital LLC is the company that would operate the club, and that they are considering a one-time mansion on Dearborn Avenue just south of Division Street.



Can a modern-day namesake match the original Playboy Club image?



So the new Playboy Club would be a part of the Gold Coast neighborhood. It would be just a couple of blocks from the original club on Walton, and just about five blocks from the old State Parkway mansion where Hefner himself presided during his Chicago years.

CLOSE YOUR EYES, envision a few decades past, and you could almost envision Hefner walking these very same streets – on those occasions when he wasn’t holed up in his office, engaged in an all-night binge putting together the magazine, followed by a mid-day romp with a bunny or two.

The key word in this paragraph being “almost.”

Because somehow, I can’t help but think that the idea of a sexy, but sophisticated nightclub is passé – if not a complete contradiction of terms.

Not that sex won’t sell. But I’m wondering how many people of today will walk into a Playboy Club and will think the waitresses are wearing bathing suits with funny ears? Compare it to a “Hooter’s Girl” and that’s probably what many people are going to think.

IS THE PLAYBOY of old still sexy enough? Or perhaps the real question is, Do things have to become raunchy these days before they are considered titillating?

I couldn’t help but notice the observation of Wirtz Beverage Group Chairman Rocky Wirtz, whose father rented to Hefner the site of the original Playboy Club. He thinks the whole Playboy image is irrelevant to people under 30.

While at 58, he still recalls what Playboy once was, he told Crains, “You don’t want to open a place that would attract my age group.”

I could see a club that people visit once, just to see if it really is an over-luxurious orgy. When they figure out it isn’t, they’ll quit coming back. Which means I could see the new Playboy Club being gone within a year.

AND THAT’S ONLY if the television show becomes a hit. If it winds up flopping to the point where it doesn’t even last five episodes, I could see where the brand name becomes a serious drag on the club.

They won’t be able to ditch the name quickly enough.

Will a new Playboy Club be the butt of as many wisecracks as New Comiskey Park was? Photograph provided by State of Illinois.

For the old-timers, there will be nothing more enjoyable for them to do than to compare this new club to the original Playboy Club, and list all the ways in which the 21^st Century version pales in comparison to the original.

It won’t matter how nice a place the club might be or what luxuries it will offer. The modern reality will fall short of the sepia-covered memories of the “real” Playboy Club.

IT’S NOT LIKE we in Chicago aren’t familiar with this phenomenon. Take the Chicago White Sox, who began playing in a new stadium with modern amenities some 20 years ago, and even put the same name – Comiskey Park – on the building as the old stadium carried.

Even though the old building had its flaws, the old-timers will still insist that the new building falls far short.

Which makes me wonder if “Playboy Club” will become to sex what the White Sox became to stadiums – something that can never live up to the original.

Perhaps it is best to leave the Playboy Club imagery in its place in Chicago history books.

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EXTRA: The wedding is off!

Gee. Playboy founder Hugh Hefner is not getting married after all.  There won’t be a “June wedding” come Saturday at the Playboy Mansion. The girls and games and images of orgies will continue.

What a shock. And that is meant with the heaviest of sarcasm. Now we can get on with our lives.

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Will Hef make it to the altar?

I’m not about to mercilessly mock Hugh Hefner for getting engaged yet again, even though a part of me isn’t sure this stunt is something real.

For one thing, the founder of Playboy magazine and all its business offshoots is of an age where I seriously have to wonder if he’ll make it long enough to have a wedding. Unless the engagement that was announced on Christmas Day (via Twitter, by Hefner himself) is going to result in a quickie wedding.

NEW YEAR’S EVE in LasVegas? Hefner could be wed by an Elvis lookalike, with a Wayne Newton impersonator standing in as the “best man.”

If you think that image is a bit cheesy, I’d say it is totally in character with the event itself.

For what we have here is an 84-year-old man deciding that his current female partner in life ought to become his legal wife.

People all over the Internet have been making snide comments about the age difference (such as how he’s old enough to be her great-grandfather, or one person who wrote on their own Twitter account “Does Hugh Hefner realize that his fiancé was younger when ‘Schindler’s List’ came out than he was when Schindler’s actual list came out?”

PERSONALLY, I SAY that if Hefner can actually attract women that much younger than himself and they both want to go along with this, then why not? It’s their life.



If it turns out that Hefner’s bride-to-be (who would be his third wife, intermixed with many thousands of girlfriends, mistresses and one-night-stands throughout the decades) winds up somehow taking the company for some sort of serious financial settlement in the future, then that is Playboy Enterprises’ dumb luck.



Hugh Hefner's latest "fiance" wasn't even alive when the ultimate underage girlfriend ruled the Playboy roost.



For all we know, we could someday see a court battle right here in Chicago to try to undo such an act (Hefner daughter Christie, along with husband – and former state legislator William Marovitz – both are Chicago residents). Such a trial could very well get screwier than the legal hijinks we saw last summer in U.S. District Court when former Gov. Rod Blagojevich was on trial.

The reason I’m finding this “story” so laughable is that a part of me really feels like it’s somehow a fix. A stunt, meant to draw attention to Hefner or Playboy, the company.

THE IDEA THAT Hefner feels the need to have a legal wife at this stage in his life feels almost like the time that then-Chicago Bull Dennis Rodman let it be known he would be involved in a wedding. Sure enough, at the appointed time and place, he showed up wearing a wedding gown. It was all a stunt to promote his attempt at autobiography.

Then again, Rodman was once married to the actress Carmen Electra. So I guess anything is possible.

One part of this saga amuses me – the age of the bride. Just about any account of Hefner’s life will recall his relationship back in the 1970s with aspiring actress/singer/model Barbi Benton, whom he supposedly started dating when he was in his early 40s and she was 18.

She supposedly told Hefner she had never dated anyone in her life older than 24, to which Hefner is famously said to have replied, “Neither have I.”

IT SEEMS THAT some things don’t change. For the “bride-to-be” is, depending on which source one wants to check, either 23 or 24. Perhaps Hefner is maturing in his old age? Just a few years ago, any woman trying to gain the magazine publisher’s attention would likely have been about 19.

If Hefner really wanted to scandalize us, he’d get himself engaged to an 18-year-old. Then, we’d find out in the days after the wedding that she had lied about her age and was perhaps only 17.

Just picture the image of the police being called out to the Playboy Mansion. Underage girls! Hef taken away for possible prosecution! Let’s not forget that Cook County officials once tried to prosecute Hefner and Playboy when one of its girls turned out to have fudged her age upward a few months to appear to be 18. It could be a case of, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”

So what should we truly think about the fact that Chicago native (who hasn’t actually lived among us since before the Days of Disco) feels the need to take on another wife – one who happens to be six decades younger than himself? I haven’t named her in this commentary, mainly because I can’t tell any of the Hefner women of recent decades apart – they all fit that generic bleached blonde look. The only one that had any real personality of her own was the one who later married a football player now with the Indianapolis Colts.

IT STRIKES ME as being more trivia that got attention beyond its significance because it became known on a slow (the Christmas holiday weekend) news day. I’m sure there are people who give it extra credence because it was initially learned about through Tweeter – although I consider that to be a source of trivial blather (Did we really need to know that the Sunday night movie shown at the Playboy Mansion is “The Fighter”)?

If anything, what shocks me the most about this whole thing is that it makes me realize how long the whole Hefner persona has been with us. After all, the original ultimate underage Hef girlfriend was Benton herself, who next month will turn 61.

Now, the two would be the perfect pair age-wise. The only scandal would be that Hef was messing with a married woman. Then again, that would fit the Playboy image of old just as well.

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Could we someday see a broke Playboy?

Chicago’s own Hugh Hefner (who hasn’t actually lived in Chicago for nearly four decades, if you want to be exact) managed to work his way into the news on Monday. He wants to “buy” Playboy.

The man who founded the magazine (the first issue supposedly was put together on the kitchen table of his then-Hyde Park apartment) and turned it into an iconic brand that Chicagoans like to brag about whenever it suits our public image desires is determined to ensure that the company that has evolved from his brand name lives on – regardless of how much longer he may have to go.

HEFNER IS 84, after all.

Now why should Hefner, whose official title is editor in chief and chief creative officer, have to buy what he created?

It’s like everything else when it comes to media companies. The trend back in the 1970s was to turn to Wall Street. Go public. Take advantage of the potential for huge revenue streams that can come from having stock traded publicly. People who buy in and cash out at the proper time can become very wealthy.

Look at Hefner. He is a wealthy man and the company has to be taking in serious amounts of money to maintain that suburban-Los Angeles mansion and the constant parties that perennially take place there on assorted cable television shows.

THE PROBLEM WITH “going public,” however, is that one becomes susceptible to fulfilling the whims of Wall Street – which have very little interest in the actual product.

Shareholders buy stock because they want it to continually go up. When it doesn’t, they become upset. The concept that there are up and down quarters in the operation of any business is not one of interest to stockholders. The idea of Playboy controlled exclusively by Hugh Hefner brings to mind the days when the magazine was published from the former (and now once-again) Palmolive Building. Does Hefner know something that could pull off this idea? Or is the long-term fate of the company as dead as the one-time Bunny Beacon? Photograph provided by American Architecture.

Thinking about it that way, it makes Wall Street sound like organized crime, at least as described by the “Henry Hill” character in the 1990 film “Goodfellas.” Businessmen who get pressured into taking on the mob as a partner now have a financial obligation to meet, and the mob isn’t interested in anyone’s problems.

As actor Ray Liotta’s “Hill” character said, “the guy’s gotta come up with Paulie’s money every week, no matter what. Business bad? (Obscenity) you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? (Obscenity) you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? (Obscenity) you, pay me.”

THE SIMPLE FACT is that the “stockholders” ultimately don’t care about the long-term fate of the company, because when things get really bad, they will hope to have sold out long before and made a nice profit. Some people who invest even take on the attitude that nothing is meant to last forever – and that everything must come to an end.

Even Playboy magazine, and all the merchandise that attracts people because it carries that “bunny” logo (which company officials admit is probably worth more than the magazine itself).

It would seem that Hugh Hefner is sick of being told “(Obscenity) you, pay me.” Which is why Playboy Enterprises issued a statement Monday saying that company founder Hefner told the Board of Directors that he wants to buy all the outstanding shares of common stock that he does not currently own.

According to a statement issued by the company, there are two classes of common stock, and Hefner currently owns 69.5 percent of one class and 27.7 percent of the other. In short, Hefner is going to have to be willing to risk a good chunk of his wealth in order to get back control of the company.

IN SHORT, HE wants to make one big payoff now so that he can get rid of all those people who aren’t devoted to the concept of keeping alive the magazine that some view as a symbol of sexual liberation, and others think of as an essential part of wet dreams (I still remember the scene from the film “Animal House,” where the Homecoming Parade is disrupted and a girl dressed as a Playboy bunny is flung from a float, through an open window, and onto the bed of a young boy reading a Playboy magazine).

To that end, Hefner is talking with financiers, who presumably would find some way of putting up that much money to buy back all that stock.

Does this mean Hefner is risking putting himself in so much debt just so he can claim to be the sole owner of Playboy that he’s risking bankrupting himself? If the thought of Playboy going bankrupt sounds absurd, just think, who would ever have thought the Tribune Co. would have to declare bankruptcy?

I’m sure financial experts, particularly those being paid by Playboy Enterprises, will claim I am oversimplifying my explanation of what Hefner has in mind, and that there are elements of the deal that will reduce Hefner’s financial risk.

BUT I CAN’T believe any deal would eliminate it, which means it sounds like Hefner is making the same move that many newspaper companies did in recent years by continually buying more properties and expanding – thereby creating so much debt that they now owe more money than their publications are taking in during this current period of economic struggles.

Some newspapers have had to cease operations as a result. Could this ego-driven business move have the same ending for Hefner’s magazine (which no matter how much they want to boast has an image that sells merchandise in China is the item that props up the whole company).

Would anyone buy a “bunny” logo sweatshirt if not for an association with the centerfold?

I’d hate to think of the sight someday of an auction at the Playboy Mansion, with all of its contents and the property itself being put up for the highest bidder (would the Gucciones show up just for kicks) to try to repay some of the debt incurred just because Hefner has dreams of once again being the sole boss – just like the days when he lived and worked out of the Near North Side.

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