Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel
Teeming with commentary from well-known celebrities, this exceptional
doc about Hugh Hefner and the ascent of liberalism celebrates both
the iconic Playboy founder and the receding of taboos and prejudice
over the past half-century.
July 20, 2010
By Doris Toumarkine
What fascinates most in Oscar-winning filmmaker Brigitte Berman's
slick and sublime Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel is the
reminder (or news to many) that the publishing magnate and lifestyle
revolutionary was every bit as much activist, rebel and reformer as
he was playboy. This lively documentary, which conveys the magnitude
of change Hefner inspired, will rivet viewers of every age and
persuasion who value human rights, respect for human nature, and the
unexpected from human genius.
As an important and effective liberal progressive, Hefner abetted the
civil-rights movement and helped emancipate women from their
circumscribed rolesso graphically etched in '50s/early-'60s pop
cultureof housebound wife and mother. A revolutionary in the realm
of ideas, he fought the right-wing forces of anti-Communism and
fundamentalist Christianity, intolerance, sexual repression and
hypocrisy. And he had a very good time doing it.
Sure, women's-lib leaders like Gloria Steinem and Susan Brownmiller
weren't Hef fans, as the doc makes clear. The Playboy bunnies
(Steinem went underground as one of them), whether in print or
on-site at the mansion, might have been victims of their illusions
but certainly not of any kind of coercion or sex trafficking.
Media titan Hefner, who shed some very thick Puritanical skin as an
Illinois WASP, helped many in his inner and outer circles and in the
country at large. These circles included some of the country's
smartest celebs, artists and activists who, thanks to Hefner, helped
forge a more tolerant, honest, less hypocritical world.
The film follows Hefner from his early years as working drone to his
break from conventional life (and marriage) and founding in 1953 of
Playboy magazine, which he grew into a global empire and force for
change. The magazine, propelled by the infamous Marilyn Monroe cover,
begot star-packed, Hef-hosted TV variety shows ("Playboy After Dark,"
"Playboy's Penthouse"), the wildly popular Playboy clubs and mansions
and huge Playboy Foundation. As the franchise exploded, the magazine
grew in importance and seriousness; bunnies shared pages with
in-depth interviews with some of the most important thinkers and
shakers of the past 40 years.
While his image is imbedded in collective minds as a pipe-smoking,
decadent, robe-donning swinging Don Juan in heaven, Hefner is on the
battlefront, fighting for civil and gay rights, First Amendment
rights and for a sexual revolution that will reflect what men and
women of all orientations need and deserve.
His enemies are the religious and political right, the latter
embodied by Nixon, Reagan and J. Edgar Hoover. Also across the
barricades are religious fundamentalists, anti-porn activists and
militant feminists who deem Playboy bunnies as traitors and symbols
of an exploitative Playboy philosophy.
An endless stream of famous personalities pass through this doc, many
as talking heads, others by way of an abundance of archival footage
from Hefner's old TV shows, Dick Cavett and William F. Buckley
interviews, etc. To cite just a few, the film is a rich collection of
Hefner allies (Mike Wallace is a convert), rock and jazz greats (Tony
Bennett, Buddy Rich, Sammy Davis, Jr., Gene Simmons), anti-war and
civil-rights activists (Joan Baez, Jim Brown, Rev. Jesse Jackson),
anti-Playboy combatants (Pat Boone, Charles Keating, Steinem and
Brownmiller), and intellectual-provocateurs (Buckley, Gore Vidal).
And then there are the boys who just wanna have fun (James Caan,
David Steinberg, Tony Curtis). Hefner's mansion gave them just that.
Hefner, whose magazine and wealth fought the bullies, began by
betting big on male lust and used the windfall to back the big
causes. Berman's film, a picture of effective, unexpected liberal
activism, perhaps inadvertently asks where would this country be now
without Hugh Hefner and begs the question: Where can we get another one?
.
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