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While Mr. Skin once kindly referred to my magazine and persona as ‘The Origin of Our Species’—in the evolution of celebrity nudity—there’s no doubt that Hugh Hefner was the ‘The Creator of the Universe’ in terms of men’s magazines!
And without question the inspiration for launching both of our careers toward “Seeing Stars!” and “Fast Forwarding to the Good Parts.”
I know it’s a cliché, but Sleuth really did first discover nude celebrities by finding Playboys ‘under my father’s bed’ {actually, the nightstand beside it}. And even more hackneyed, actually ‘read it for the articles’—in particular, the landmark 20-part Sixties series called “The History of Sex in the Cinema.”
Which led to a quintet of paperback publications—the first featuring then-No. 1 sex symbol Raquel Welch on the cover (below left) and the last, showing the move toward greater explicitness, with porn queen MarilynChambers (below right).
Not only did this bring adult films into the mainstream … but also porn stars into the Playboy publisher’s bed!
In the year 1977 alone, Hef had confirmed affairs with ‘Golden Age of Porn’ legends Serena, Constance Money and Sue Nero (below left to right).
And each posed nude while staying in the West Coast Mansion … in the same order below, with Nero fiddlingaround in the infamous pool Grotto.
That’s horny Hef with live-in love Sondra Theodore and a sextet of centerfolds signing off on an orgy in ’77:
Even one of Sleuth’s favorite Playmates and foxy friend Devin Devasquez—always classy and elegant—was one of the Eighties ladies who got all hot and bothered in the Grotto: getting ‘Politically Incorrect’ with Mansion mainstay Bill Maher (below left) before cooling off by herself by candlelight.
Which is why Sleuth’s first stop on first trip to the Playboy Mansion was to snap this image of the well-used watering hole.
After all, when late-night host Conan O’Brien asked Hugh Hefner about the “greatest quantity” of women he’d had at once, the satyr smiled: “Shortly before my stroke in the ’80s, on one birthday eighteen Playmates surprised me in the Grotto {as the audience gasped}. So that may be why I had the stroke.”
Sleuth also had eighteen Playmates at once … when they treated him to dinner one night in 2002. And, would you believe, they split the check 18 ways—with Mensa-level Miss February 1968 Nancy Harwood (the blonde giving the thumbs up at top right above} doing the math.
Which, in her curvy case, worked out to be 36-22-35 … a figure she had maintained 35 years after posing for her centerfold (below left).
And after collecting the cash from her colleagues, heavenly Harwood signed the bill (above right).
At the time of her tragic death from cancer at 65 in May 2014, Nancy was president of the Centerfold Alumni Association—which “cares for former Playmates in need, with Hugh Hefner as a donating member.”
Which brings up a less-known aspect of Hef’s history: his loyalty andcommitment to the women he featured in his pages throughout the decades. “Once a Playmate, Always a Playmate” was his motto … and the publisher wouldn’t allow anyone to be called “a former Playmate.”
As former gatefold {Dec. 1979} and girlfriend Candace Collins cried upon learning of her mentor’s death: “I have known him almost all of my adult life, and the fact that he is gone breaks my heart.” Let’s hope neither broke the other’s in their forty years of close and "intimate" friendship:
“Hef was a game changer,” Candace comments … and in their time together (inset below) she was often a clothes changer.
“He was a man who saw no color barriers before any other,” Collins continued, “one who gave a voice to some of the greatest writers of our time as well as artists”—both traits epitomized by the first-ever interview published in Playboy: jazzman Miles Davis profiled by Alex (Roots) Haley. In fact, the longest interview ever granted by Dr. Martin Luther King was to Haley for Hefner!
“And yes,” Candace makes clear, “Hef also gave voice to LIBERATED women like me to choose what they wanted to do with their life {and loins, below right} regardless of the thoughts of narrow-minded people.”
Such as—regrettably and reflexively—those feminists and journalists who used the occasion of Hefner’s death to condemn him as a ‘chauvinist’ who ‘objectified women.’
You mean, like Renaissance artists such as the Italian Titian (1488-1576) whose name SNL’s Dan Aykroyd sleazily pronounced ‘Titty-un’?
Or the Dutch painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), born the year after Titian’s death?
And how could a man be more ‘unenlightened’ than Spain’s Francisco Goya (1746-1828) … whose classic 1800 painting The Naked Maja …
… was recently cited by the Huffington Post as “the first totally profane life-size female nude in Western art—surely one of the first explicit depictions of female pubic hair.”
Think of where world culture would be today without these earlier ‘chauvinists’ who ‘objectified women’?
And let’s not forget that—like Sleuth and Skin were later inspired by Playboy—Hefner was moved to launch his magazine by his teenage fondness for the pinup Petty Girls and Vargas nudes published in Esquire in the 1940s …
… Alberto Vargas, in fact, produced 152 paintings that appeared in Playboy from 1959-1975!
After all, the Marilyn Monroe nude calendar came 5 years before the publisher used it for his first centerfold.
“Isn’t that really what you’re selling? A high-class dirty book?” a frowning Mike Wallace {father of Fox’s Chris} asked Hefner in a 1955 television interview.
“Such scolding sounded quaint by the time crasser competitors like Penthouse and Hustler appeared in the 1960s and ’70s,” the New York Times noted in its full-page obituary. “Playboy began showing pubic hair on its models, while the others doubled the dare with features on kinkier sexual tastes and close-up photos that bordered on the gynecological. Mr. Hefner would decide, after furious debate among the staff, not to compete further.”
Which remarkably echoes why Sleuth began his magazine in the early Eighties: As a reaction to the other publications becoming ‘gynecological gazettes,’ as he wrote in the foreword to the very first issue …
… he wanted to focus on “not how much, but whom, you can show!”
As classic centerfold Candace Collins concluded: “I was around when Playboy changed up its editorial content to compete with Penthouse. The pictures were down and dirty—just like the kind Bob Guccione loved, but it wasn’t Hef’s taste and his original concept was what had made the magazine great.”
The pair rolled with the times (below left) … until Hugh declared enough was enough. And Candace could take a cold shower.
“I loved the Golden Years of Playboy in the ’70s (of course!),” proclaims Miss December 1978, “when the girls were not completely nude {she wore a necklace, above}, but rather enticingly photographed.”
So, she wrote as an epitaph: “I’m forever thankful for Hef and Playboy. Without them, I wouldn’t be where I am today.” Which is equally as lovely at age 60 in recreating her Feb. 1979 cover this past June!
“The photographer’s first words to me were, ‘Boy, I really think you’re brave to do this,’” she reveals. “I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.”
Though Collins was sure about thinking that “Hef’s decision {announced in late 2015} to ‘drop nudity’ or make it ‘PG-13 and less produced—more like the racier sections of Instagram,’ according to Cory Jones, the top editor at the magazine, is patently the wrong thing to do.
“If the plan is to emulate the naked poses found on Instagram,” Candice complained, “count me out as a fan. I know that every kind of nudity you can imagine is just a click away on the Internet—which is why I find it incredible that they’re following this herd mentality by incorporating images inspired by this particular social media platform. Although it hasn’t hurt the Kardashian clan now has it?”
And of course Kim was among the first to tweet her publicity-conscious condolences after the publisher’s death which, as these things now go, was much more about her than him:
“I found these old photos from my December 2007 Playboy magazine shoot by Hype Williams,” Kardashian continued in a series of posthumous posts, “and I had to put up some of the behind the scenes fun we had on set.”
Sleuth feels it was considerably less fun with her protective ‘titty tape’ so conspicuously applied, above.
“This was probably the first time I met stylist Clyde Haygood and worked with him,” she specified. “My makeup was done by Matthew VanLeeuwen.” And will no doubt be again … gratis, after all the plugs.
“Today I am reminiscing about the legendary Hugh Hefner {oh yeah, him}, my Playboy shoots and the incredible parties at the Mansion,” the enterprising entreprenude explained to her 56.2 million followers.
Her first Mansion bash (below right) came as an unknown personal assistant cleaning the closets of party girl Paris Hilton {with Hef Holly, below left} in December 2007—just two months before Kim’s sex tape enabled her to eclipse her employer!
Paris and sister Nicky Hilton couldn’t keep their hands off Hef’s live-in love Kendra Wilkinson (above left) … or each other (above right) during the Mansion mayhem!
No word on whether either—or both sisters—brought out the devil in the then Viagra-popping patriarch …
Of course Paris sought to upstage her protégé Kim by adding a trio of pix to her self-serving salute:
Which is what made former Saturday Night Live cast member Taran Killam’s clever tweet so refreshing:
’Course it’s easy to be smug when you’re married to captivating and covetable Cobie Smulders (above right).
In conclusion … and at the risk of making it ‘all about me’ … Sleuth was privileged to visit both the Chicago headquarters—where the publication was put out—and the California mansion where so many had ‘put out’ for the publisher!
And in their two meetings, Mr. Hefner was never less than gracious and generous.
When he first introduced himself to the mogul and then-wife Kimberley Conrad (below left) at a convention, Hef replied: “Celebrity Sleuth? You people do a fine job, it's an excellent magazine!”
To which Kimberley added in a confidential whisper: “We like to read it in bed” (above rt).
They split soon after … but Sleuth has this signed gift to remember hers by:
A second conversation took place in May 2006 at the Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills—immediately imposing upon arrival that afternoon.
Sleuth and Skin attended together—their first (and only) mutual public event—which naturally got the paparazzi in a frenzy …
… and the Famous Shamus scrambling to keep his identity concealed.
They shared a table adjacent to that of Hef and his Girls Next Door, from which Sleuth snapped these candids:
In case you’re wondering, that’s the side boob of Shauna Sand sticking out at far left.
Hugh Hefner basically wrote his own epitaph with this appreciative tweet shortly before he passed away …
“My life is continually filled with young women,” Hef said in his twilight years. “And it is what keeps me alive.”
Alas, no more … so, like him, it’s time to sign off:
May he rest in piece.
