‘Riveting Watts packs in plenty of gasp-inducing passages.’ --Newark Star Ledger ‘Like it or not, Hugh Hefner has affected all of us, so I treasured learning about how and why in the sober biography.’ --Chicago Sun Times ‘This is a fun book. How could it not be? Watts aims to give a full account of the man, his magazine and their place in social history. Playboy is no longer the cultural force it used to be, but it made a stamp on society.’ --Associated Press ‘InSteven Watts' exhaustive, illuminating biography Mr. Playboy, Hefner's ideal for living -- marked by his allegiances to Tarzan, Freud, Pepsi-Cola and jazz -- proves to be a kind of gloss on the Protestant work ethic.’ --Los Angeles Times When Hugh Hefner quit his job at Esquire to start a magazine called Playboy, he didn't just want to make money. He wanted to make dreams come true. Thefirst issue of Playboy had a Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,an article on the Dorsey brothers, and a feature on desk design for the modern office, called ‘Gentlemen, Be Seated.’ Hefner wrote much of the copy himselfand drew all the cartoons. But the most memorable part by far was the set of pictures he bought from a local calendar printer of a scantily clad Marilyn Monroe. In this wise and penetrating biography, intellectual historian Steven Watts looks at what Hugh Hefner went onto become, and how he took America with him. Hefner became one of the most hated and envied celebrities in America, dating a long list of his magazine's beauties and always standing just barely on the wrong side of decency and moral uprightness. He also, at one time, had 7 million subscribers to his magazine. Though in time he would lose readers to more explicit magazines on one side and ‘lad’ magazines on the other, the Playboy brand never lost its luster.
- ISBN: 978-0-470-52167-0
- Editorial: John Wiley & Sons
- Encuadernacion: Rústica
- Páginas: 544
- Fecha Publicación: 09/09/2009
- Nº Volúmenes: 1
- Idioma: Inglés