Hugh Hefner’s public persona was authentic, according to the biographer who spent years pouring over his personal archive and getting to know the silk-clad playboy himself.
“I think the guy…we saw in sort of the public realm, he was not acting, he was not putting anything on, that was the real Hugh Hefner,” said historian Steven Watts. “And I guess I’m convinced he died a happy man because he really did love the life he lived.”
Hefner, the cultural icon and business mogul who founded men’s lifestyle magazine Playboy in 1953, died of natural causes at his home on Wednesday.
He was 91.
LISTEN: Historian Steven Watts joins The Kelly Cutrara Show on AM640
Watts chronicled Hefner’s life and controversial cultural legacy in the 2008 biography Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream.
The University of Missouri history professor said he spent “probably 50 hours” interviewing Hefner for the book.
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“I was around the mansion a lot over a five or six-year period and every day that I saw Hefner he was in his silk pyjamas,” he told AM640’s Kelly Cutrara on Thursday.
Watts said that through Playboy, Hefner purposely intended to “shake up the sexual order with its usual proprieties and restrictions.”
“So in many ways, I think he sort of won that war over the long haul.”
In addition to Playboy‘s impact on sexuality in popular culture — including criticisms regarding the objectification of women — Watts said Hefner will also be remembered as a key figure in a different cultural shift.
Hefner, he said, had an important role in the consumer revolution that occurred after the Second World War.
“Playboy, from the very beginning, was a kind of guidebook for young men on leading the good life,” Watts said. “And what that meant, according to the magazine, was not only sexual activity but a nice apartment, nice clothes, good restaurants, a sports car.”
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