ASSIGNMENT AMERICA: HUGH HEFNER AT 49 (TV)
Summary
One in this series of interview programs with rotating hosts. George F. Will conducts this interview with Hugh Hefner, the forty-nine-year-old publisher of Playboy magazine, the first adult mainstream newsstand periodical to feature female nudity. The program begins with bespectacled conservative pundit George Will, driving to the Playboy Mansion (known as "Shangri-la") in a sporty convertible, to chat with Hefner, "the self-styled prince of American pleasure." Prior to the interview, Will details the expanse of the pipe-smoking publisher's new five-and-a-half acre Los Angeles estate, offering a view of the game room, tennis courts, aviary, innumerable bathing beauties, and footage of comic Bill Cosby at a party there. Will also reviews the background history of the Chicago-based Playboy company which Hefner launched with a six-hundred-dollar investment in 1953. Interview highlights include: "Hef" estimating his wealth; his admission -- while admiring a statue of his girlfriend Barbi Benton's naked torso -- that he "likes ladies a lot"; his acknowledgement that the epigram "To thine own self be true" was an inspiration to him and Will's follow-up query whether he believes Polonius intended for Laertes to "indulge his appetites" when he bestowed that wisdom upon him; Hefner's comments on the nature of obscenity and the need for a change in "puritanical" American values; his admission that he has "sexual hangups"; Will's query as to why Hefner doesn't allow photographs of bestial acts to appear in "Playboy"; the criteria Hefner uses in choosing appropriate photographs for his magazine; his denial that he exploits women, accompanied by footage of several rowdy "Bunny-of-the-Year" contestants -- clad in revealing nightgowns -- having an inspired pillow fight; Hefner's thoughts on the challenge of the upstart "copycat" magazine Penthouse, and its publisher Bob Guccione; his comments on his experiences as a father; Will's questions about the rotating, vibrating bed Hefner had in his home when he lived like a "recluse" in Chicago; Hefner's acknowledgment that he keeps video cameras in his bedroom to tape "magic moments"; Will's comparison of Hefner to F. Scott Fitzgerald's fictional character Jay Gatsby, while he reads passages from "The Great Gatsby"; Hefner's assertion that aging "holds no terror" for him; and Will's final comments about Hefner, which he makes near the stone grotto swimming area as two bikini-clad Playboy models swim in the background.
(This program includes nudity.)
Details
- NETWORK: PBS
- DATE: May 6, 1975 9:30 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:29:02
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:38592
- GENRE: Talk/Interviews
- SUBJECT HEADING: Biography; Erotica; Journalism; Obscenity (Law); Publishing
- SERIES RUN: PBS - TV series, 1975
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Carey Winfrey … Executive Producer
- Merle Pollak … Associate Producer
- Duke Struck … Director
- George F. Will … Host, Interviewer
- Hugh Hefner … Guest
- Barbi Benton
- Bill Cosby
- Bob Guccione