Playboy was almost called Stag Party, and its first issue carried no date
Hugh Hefner planned a magazine named Stag Party until an unrelated title called Stag threatened to sue. His friend Eldon Sellers suggested Playboy instead. Hefner assembled the first issue in his Chicago kitchen in 1953 and left it undated, because he was not sure there would ever be a second.
Hefner, a 1949 psychology graduate of the University of Illinois, had written promotional copy for Esquire and worked in magazine sales and circulation before striking out alone. He raised just over 8,000 dollars, including a 1,000-dollar loan from his mother and money from his brother. Before Sellers proposed Playboy, the founders had weighed names such as Top Hat, Gentleman, Satyr and Bachelor.
The debut issue, published in December 1953 at 50 cents, sold out within weeks with known circulation of 53,991. Its promotion leaned on a nude calendar image of Marilyn Monroe that had been shot for a calendar, not for the magazine. Mint copies of that issue fetched more than 5,000 dollars in 2002. Playboy went on to play a significant part in the sexual revolution and grew into one of the most recognised brands in the world.
It also built an unexpected literary reputation. In 1954 it serialised Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 across three issues, giving a novel that had appeared to little notice a major boost. Under fiction editor Robie Macauley, from 1966 to 1976, it published writers such as John Updike, Doris Lessing and Kurt Vonnegut, and it ran long interviews with public figures and full-page cartoons by artists including Shel Silverstein. Art Paul designed the rabbit logo. In the 1960s the Playboy Philosophy column argued about censorship, gay rights and women's rights, and in 1970 the company helped found the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
Critics were loud too. Feminists protesting the 1968 Miss America pageant threw copies into a Freedom Trash Can, and Robin Morgan's pamphlet compared the pageant to the centerfold. After peaking in the 1970s, circulation slid under competition from Penthouse, videos and later lad mags such as Maxim. Christie Hefner, the founder's daughter, ran the company as chief executive from 1988 until early 2009.
Source: Playboy
