When we discuss people who made a difference — technical, scientific, social — in the fabric of America in the 20th century, it's hard to avoid Hugh Hefner, and a new documentary, "Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel," opening today, is an interesting, if totally favorable, look at the man who put sex front and center on every newsstand in the nation.
Brigitte Berman directs a lengthy compilation of film clips, from Russell Simmons to Ruth Westheimer to William Buckley to Mike Wallace to Susan Brownmiller to Joan Baez to Jim Brown to Pete Seeger to Sammy Davis, Jr. There are many others, too, most lauding Hefner for his defense of liberty, liberal spirit, democratic attitude and leadership in the fight for racial equality.
There are a lot of Playboy bunnies in various stages of dress and undress, too, though Hefner never takes his clothes off, and some fine interior shots of the Chicago mansion and its pool. Is it pool-dropping to note that I attended a splendid post-football game party there one night?
Hefner, now 84, gained fame and fortune by convincing, or hiring, women to take their clothes off in front of a camera, but very few of them are interviewed at any length, and no one discusses what Hefner does–or how well he does it–in bed. There is, however, one marvelous tale involving a young author who was unable to sell a science-fiction novel to a publisher and finally accepted $400 from Hefner, who ran it in issues two, three and four back in the 1950s. The writer? Ray Bradbury. The story, "Farenheit 451," a classic in the field, a tale of book burning with a brilliantly ironic title, the temperature at which paper burns.
Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel, opens today at the Tivoli
—Joe