'Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel'
April 15th, 2010
by Billy Cox
Director Brigitte Berman chooses an intriguing set of bookends to
frame her documentary "Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel."
She opens with Gene Simmons, the erstwhile lizard-tongued rocker for
KISS, looking almost sullen behind his shaded eyes in describing the
founder of Playboy magazine as the happiest man in the world. It ends
with credits rolling over a vintage clip of silky Tony Bennett
performing on Hefner's "Playboy's Penthouse" TV show in 1959. The
crooner's tune is "You Can't Love Them All." In Hefner's case, the
lyrics may or may not be ironic.
In between lies a 124-minute sketch on the man who in 1953 parlayed a
$1,000 loan and a nude calendar shot of Marilyn Monroe into the
magazine that tossed a match on the gasoline of morality in America.
And Baby Boomers who grew up hiding Playboy magazines from their
parents will probably discover something new.
The culture wars are all here, of course: the filth-mongering
accusations by Mike Wallace; feminists like Susan Brownmiller
accusing Hefner of "using women for masturbatory fantasies"; the
Meese Commission on Pornography intimidating 7-Eleven into jerking
Playboy off its shelves in the Eighties. The personal controversies
are here as well, the Dorothy Stratton tragedy, the romantic
breakups, the intrigues behind the suicide of secretary Bobbie Arnstein
Conspicuously absent, however, is Ms. Magazine founder Gloria
Steinem, whose first-person account of her undercover job as a
Playboy Bunny put her byline on the national radar in 1963. Director
Berman attempted to corral an interview with Steinem but was rebuffed
three times.
("She feels as if she has to somehow keep portraying me as sexist and
anti-feminist when I've been on her side about so many things,"
Hefner said, reminding the Herald-Tribune of his support for issues
like birth control and abortion rights. "It's bizarre.")
Having dated 20-year-old twins until late last year, the 84-year-old
Hefner constantly upstages his largely forgotten legacy as a civil
rights player. But it receives a thorough treatment here via obscure
footage of his determination to desegregate Playboy Clubs in the
South. We also get a glimpse of his then-audacious interracial
entertainment guests on the "Playboy's Penthouse" variety TV show in
1959, and the use of his magazine as a platform for Martin Luther King, Jr.
Some of "Hugh Hefner's" most memorable moments are the wonderfully
awkward. Peace activist and feminist Joan Baez, for instance, appears
on his "Playboy After Dark" show and sings an a capella antiwar tune
with hot dolled-up chicks in the background. In a contemporary
interview, the still somewhat bewildered Baez concedes she was "a
puritanical twit" back then.
Maybe it takes a shrink to determine whether or not Berman fully
reconciled Hefner's cerebral appetites for Gabriel Garcia Marquez and
Norman Mailer with a schoolkid's fixation on bra size and hip
circumference stats. Perhaps, as Berman contends, no reconciliation
is necessary. In a portrait of a man who lived life on his own terms,
the ultimately mysterious Hefner probably should and does get the last say.
"If women are animals, what's left? Vegetables and minerals," Hefner
replies to a critic charging him with objectifying females. "Of
course they're animals. We're all animals!"
"Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel" screens tonight at 7:30,
and at 2:15 p.m. on Saturday.
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