"Everything is so clean," Hefner said.

"They paved the alley," Keith said. "It used to be cinder. A lot of these houses were prairie then." "Prairie?" asked a visitor from out of town.

"That's what you called a vacant lot in Chicago," Hefner said. "When I was a child, the street lights were still gas. And you got your milk and coal and ice delivered by horse-drawn wagons."

"You could hear the horses clomping down the street," Keith said. "They knew the routes by heart."

"And at night, you could hear the train whistles," Hefner said. "One of the loveliest sounds in the world." He reached out impulsively and hugged his brother, who is a couple of years younger than he is. "Wanna walk over to the park?" he said. "Sure," said Keith. They set off down the block toward Sayre Park, two multimillionaires coming back to see where they were raised. For years it seemed as if the party would never stop for Hugh Hefner, who founded the Playboy empire and ran the magazine as an extension of his famous lifestyle. The Playmates came and went, the Bunnies and their bunny-dip flourished and faded, and Hefner alone endured, presiding over a permanent house party, at first in the fabled Playboy Mansion on State Parkway in Chicago, and since 1971 in the Mansion West, in Holmby Hills, up the hill from Beverly Hills.

Then came the stroke, the coronary event that brought Hefner to a standstill half a dozen years ago. It was nature's way of requesting his attention, and so sobered Hefner that after his recovery, he stopped playing the permanent host in his own home, and eventually did what he calls "the unthinkable' - he married and began a second family, 40 years after his first marriage to a sweetheart named Millie, whose daughter Christie is now running the family business.

All of this and more is to be found in "Hugh Hefner: Once Upon a Time," a documentary of Hef's life and times which premiered Wednesday in the Chicago Film Festival and will open Friday in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. Hefner brought his second wife, a former Playmate of the Year named Kimberley Conrad, back to Chicago for the premiere and a trip to the haunts of his childhood. He also brought their 2-year-old son, Marston, although the baby, Cooper, was too young to make the trip.

"I got my library card in the Sayre Park clubhouse," Hefner was saying, marching across the grass toward a viaduct. "Remember this park, Keith? This is where that girl from your class brought all the boys."

"Jeez, I wonder what happened to her," Keith said.

"Remember, she came to school in that coat with the fur collar?"

"Very advanced for her age."

"Here's the viaduct."

"We used to think this was haunted at night."

"Remember this, Betty?" Hefner was talking to Betty Conklin, the girl he had a crush on in high school. She lives in San Francisco now, but he'd invited her back for the premiere. "Remember the time we went to the square dance with your family?"