Appearing Nude in Playboy, and Reading Playboy for the Articles

Hugh Hefner had been working as promotion copywriter at Esquire in Chicago when the magazine decided to move its offices to New York. He decided to stay behind and start a magazine of his own.



The first Playboy appeared in December 1953 with Marilyn Monroe on the cover. She had not posed for the magazine, but Hugh Hefner bought the famous nude photo by Tom Kelley from the John Baumgarth Calendar Company and initially called the picture featured inside “Sweetheart of the Month.”

Mr. Hefner has said he created the magazine with the goal of featuring “the girl next door.” For some – like Jenny McCarthy and Anna Nicole Smith – becoming a Playboy Playmate was the starting point of a celebrity career. By the 1980s, already famous actresses and entertainers including Bo Derek, Madonna and Drew Barrymore viewed appearing nude in Playboy as a way to promote, rather than hinder, their careers. Pamela Anderson has appeared in 13 different issues.

As the joke goes, Playboy was indeed known for its interviews. Among the more memorable ones included a 1962 interview with Miles Davis by Alex Haley, one with Vladimir Nabokov in 1964, one with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1980, shortly before his death, and a 1976 chat with Jimmy Carter, then a presidential candidate, in which he said “I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust.”

