Chicago Strip Clubs: Hugh Hefner in six volumes

With an $8,000 loan ($1,000 from his mother, who had hoped he’d become a missionary), the 27-year-old Hefner produced a pasted-together but vital magazine. He bought the rights to an old pin-up picture of Marilyn Monroe and used it as centrefold bait to drum up 70,000 advance orders: “It immediately classed us as big-time with the news dealers,” Hefner wrote, “and probably with our readers, too.” Within two years, Playboy was selling 500,000 copies a month, at 50 cents a go; by the end of the decade this figure had doubled. Hefner made readers feel part of a knowing, sophisticated, elite gentlemen’s club. In 1957, he offered them the chance to buy, for $150, a lifetime’s subscription, which they could bequeath to an heir. The first issue was hand-delivered by a Playmate.

See the full article from “The Guardian”