Culture

‘Playboy’ Founder Hugh Hefner Has Died Overnight In His Playboy Mansion

The iconic publisher was 91.

by Matilda Dixon-Smith  28 September 2017
Hugh Hefner

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Hugh Hefner, Playboy magazine founder, reality TV star and serial robe-wearer, has died overnight in the US. The 91-year-old businessman died of natural causes on Wednesday, at home in his iconic Playboy Mansion.

Hefner is well-known as the founder of the Playboy brand, which began in 1953 with the launch of Playboy magazine. A rep for Hefner has said he died “surrounded by loved ones”.

His son, Cooper Hefner, who is also the Chief Creative Officer at Playboy Enterprises, has released a statement: “My father lived an exceptional and impactful life as a media and cultural pioneer and a leading voice behind some of the most significant social and cultural movements of our time in advocating free speech, civil rights and sexual freedom,” Hefner has said of his father.

“He defined a lifestyle and ethos that lie at the heart of the Playboy brand, one of the most recognizable and enduring in history.” The Playboy magazine rose to fame with its very first episode, which featured a nude photograph of screen legend Marilyn Monroe.

Hefner made various film and television cameos (hello, Sex And The City), as well as being a regular star of the E! reality TV series Girls Next Door, which followed the various activities of the women who lived in Hefner’s Playboy Mansion. The entrepreneur’s early life, as well as the period covering the peak of the brand’s power in the 1960s, was also immortalised in the short-lived NBC series The Playboy Club.

Despite what you think of Hefner as a person, or Playboy as a magazine/brand, there’s no doubt that he created a cultural touchstone for the mid-late 20th century. Additionally, he popularised the trend of sleazy cads in velour robes, for which we will all be eternally grateful. Tributes for the businessman are pouring in.