Hugh Hefner dead at 91

Someone once asked, 'What's your best pickup line?' I said, 'My best pickup line is, 'Hi, my name is Hugh Hefner.'
- Hugh Hefner

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.

-Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton

Mr. Hugh Marston Hefner, (1926-2017), entrepreneur, publications editor, anthologist, writer, illustrator and arguably the most celebrated American male cultural icon of the 20th Century died of natural causes at his residence, the Playboy Mansion & corporate guest quarters, at the 10200 block of Sunset and Charring Cross Rd., in Holmby Hills, CA. on Wednesday, September 27th at the age of 91. His ashes have been interred at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

The ‘beau bachelor’ is best recognized as the face of Playboy Magazine and has been steadily and increasingly heralded for his seven decade tenure at HMH Publishing Co., and Playboy Enterprises, as a media entertainment pioneer as well as sociological advocate and philanthrope for his contributions to the non-traditional gender identification counter culture revolution following WWII. Many of his best works are found in his Playboy Editorials, Interviews, letters and the encomium for his protégé and muse, Marilyn Monroe, the actress and diarist.

Mr. Hefner’s passing, is striking a signature chord for a man sometimes decried as having been, merely, the chief creative officer of the nation’s foremost WASP magazine. Presently, a national debate in the U.S., concerning systemic erosion of Americans' Constitutional 1st amendment rights, such as the inalienable capacity to unhindered speech and the safeguard protections entitled to the employments of an American [entertainment and media] press, is reemerging and with revitalized confrontation that is ominously too familiar, both, on and off the newsstands.

Hefner, who turned 91 in April is survived by his wife, of five years, Mrs. Crystal Harris-Hefner, 31, and his four adult aged children from two previous marriages.

The enduring publication of Playboy Magazine to date, that in 1968, William Masters called “the best available medium for sex education in America today.”, began from Hefner’s Chicago based apartment home in 1953 before taking offices at 232 E. Ohio St. Playboy Magazine, entertainment for men, most notably depicts full color page insert photography of elite and dynamic women in alluring modeling poses who are either lingerie clad, half bare or exhibited in the nude.