Thy Neighbor's Wife (60 page)

Still, the scrutiny of Hefner and his associates continued after the funeral; and although the Justice Department eleven months later would announce that it was dropping the drug case due to insufficient evidence, the media kept the spotlight on Hefner and focused on his problems with his company. In front-page stories it reported that
Playboy
magazine had lost advertising revenue because of the publicity linking Hefner to drugs; and the negative publicity, together with the belief that Hefner’s corporation was too loosely managed, caused the First National Bank of Chicago to deprive Hefner of two lines of credit totaling $6.5 million. During this period, two men who were influential on Wall Street resigned as members of Hefner’s Board of Directors; and Playboy’s corporate stock, which in 1971 was selling to investors for as much as $23.50 a share, had at one point in 1975 dropped to as low as $2.25 a share. Although Playboy’s gambling casinos in England, patronized prominently by oil-rich Arabs, were earn
ing $7 million a year; and although
Playboy
magazine, despite its monthly circulation drop to below 6 million, was still the world’s most profitable men’s periodical, the media continued to stress the circulation gains of Hefner’s rival publishers. Robert Guccione’s
Penthouse
, offering readers “pinups without the hangups,” was edging to 4.5 million in monthly sales; and Larry Flynt’s
Hustler
, begun in June 1974, was already approaching a circulation of 2 million—and it had astounded the men’s market in August 1975 by publishing a series of color photographs showing Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis sunbathing in the nude on the island of Skorpios, pictures taken by an Italian photographer using a telescopic lens and crouched in a fishing boat.

Flynt also had in his possession, and was planning to publish in
Hustler
, a photograph of a nude Hugh Hefner having sex with a young woman, a picture that Flynt had somehow acquired after it was taken from Hefner’s personal files in Chicago. When Hefner first learned of Flynt’s intentions—being told by
Playboy
executive Nat Lehrman, who had been tipped off by Al Goldstein of
Screw
—Hefner urged Lehrman to contact Flynt and ask that the photograph be returned, explaining that it was stolen property and that its unauthorized publication would be very unfair to the woman involved. While Flynt was noncommittal after Lehrman had first discussed it, Lehrman came away with the impression that Flynt could be reasoned with. An eighth-grade dropout, a dirt-poor Kentucky sharecropper’s son who had grown rich by shocking the magazine world with clinical closeups of life in the haystack, Flynt might be flattered by an invitation to dine and be entertained at Hefner’s Los Angeles mansion; and when Lehrman suggested this to Hefner, an invitation was proffered, and Larry Flynt accepted. Throughout the visit, Hefner was charming and solicitous; he introduced his fellow publisher to attractive guests, and personally took Flynt on a tour of the mansion and the surrounding grounds. Although Larry Flynt had arrived with certain misgivings about Hefner, doubting that Hefner would fully support any cause except his own, Flynt was nonetheless impressed with what Hefner had achieved with his
life and had bought with his money; and before leaving the mansion, as a gesture of friendship, Larry Flynt reached into his jacket pocket and turned over to Hefner the desired photograph, assuring him that no duplicate had been made.

It was not only Nat Lehrman who successfully served Hefner’s interests during this uncertain period—Victor Lownes, the Playboy casino viceroy in London, was also summoned to alleviate certain difficulties, especially the financial problems of Playboy’s resort hotels and clubs. During the past four years, the hotels alone had lost in excess of $10 million; and, with Playboy’s clubs also unprofitable—along with the movie and record division—the corporate profits had dropped in 1975 to $1.1 million as compared with $11.3 million two years earlier.

Victor Lownes, a privately wealthy Chicago divorcee who in recent years had been living in an English country manor and traveling to his office in a chauffeured Rolls-Royce, was a self-assured, pragmatic man of forty-seven who had never sought approval or popularity from his fellow executives at Playboy; and the fact that Lownes would agree to leave even temporarily the good life in London to become Hefner’s hatchetman in Chicago, was less an act of altruism than a response to his own self-interest as Playboy’s second largest stockholder. Lownes was tired of seeing the earnings of the casinos, and the profits of
Playboy
magazine, siphoned off by a number of slipshod subsidiaries; and immediately after arriving in Chicago, he began to carve the corporate fat, to cut excessive spending, and to fire unessential employees, caring little that in the home office he was commonly referred to as “Jaws.”

Aware that the Chicago mansion, which Hefner had all but abandoned, had a house staff of fifty, Lownes cut the number to twelve; and after trimming the service staffs in the Chicago hotel and the local Playboy Club, he discontinued a magazine called
V.I.P
. that was circulated to Playboy Club key holders around the nation, thus saving the company $800,000 a year in publish
ing costs. Striving to attract convention business, Lownes removed Playboy’s name from the hotels in Chicago and Great Gorge, New Jersey; and, with Hefner’s approval, plans were soon made to dispose of the resort hotel in Jamaica and to eliminate the unprofitable clubs in Baltimore and New Orleans, San Francisco, Montreal, and Atlanta. The company’s recording business was phased out, and Playboy film production was held in abeyance. While Lownes had no authority over the operation of
Playboy
magazine, which had achieved editorial distinction under Arthur Kretchmer, the successor to the late A. C. Spectorsky, Lownes’ mere presence in the editorial offices was enough to stir some editors’ snappish complaints to Hefner—who, while always a sympathetic listener and sometimes even himself critical of Lownes’ peremptory nature, secretly endorsed what Lownes was doing, so long as it did not greatly inconvenience Hefner’s own life-style.

Having already taken a 25 percent pay cut, reducing his annual $300,000-plus salary to $230,000, and having relinquished $1,200,000 by refusing three semiannual dividend checks that were credited instead to Playboy’s other shareholders, Hefner believed he had sacrificed sufficiently in the name of solvency; and when Hefner learned through the newspapers of Lownes’ announcement that the Chicago mansion was probably for sale, along with Hefner’s airplane, the astonished publisher no longer was so impressed with Lownes’ cost-cutting talents.

After chiding Lownes in private, Hefner publicly denied the report; and while the Chicago mansion remained in his custody, complete with cool cases of Pepsi awaiting his unscheduled arrival, Hefner stubbornly clung to his favorite toy, the Playboy jet, which sat idly in the California sun because, if it were to fly, its operational cost to the company would be at least $16,000 a day. However, when the company received an offer of $5 million for the five-year-old plane, Hefner’s practical German genes dominated his Fitzgeraldian romanticism, and he felt compelled to agree to its sale, especially since the new owner would be painting the black plane a different color, would not be exploiting the
fact that it had belonged to Playboy, and also would be operating it far from American borders. The purchaser of the Big Bunny was the Venezuelan government.

Still, when the DC-9’s ownership officially changed hands—after Hefner had reacquired from the plane his stereo equipment, his flying robes and pajamas, and the Tasmanian opossum fur coverlet that had fit over his round bed—it was a mournful day at the Los Angeles mansion, not only for Hugh Hefner but for his friends who had grown accustomed to the many free joy rides in sumptuous surroundings; and they would have perhaps been even more depressed had they witnessed the fate of the Playboy plane after its final flight from Los Angeles.

It was flown to Wilmington, Ohio, where in time special workmen completely gutted the interior, destroyed the colorful banquettes, Hefner’s step-down shower, and his special round bed. Along the aisles where Hefner had installed his gaming tables and dance floor, the workmen now bolted tidy rows of nearly one hundred standard passenger seats. The plane was repainted white, and instead of the familiar Playboy rabbit on the exterior there was now the seven-starred flag of Venezuela.

When it finally arrived in 1976 in the Venezuelan capital, the DC-9 looked like any other domestic commuter plane; and the sober, serious-looking bureaucrats and businessmen who soon boarded it each day, and flew it back and forth between Caracas and Maracaibo, had no idea that the bland cabin in which they sat elbow to elbow had recently been a pleasure craft of popping corks and laughter, of sybarites in silk shirts and buxom backgammon players without bras.

Although Hefner remained in psychic contact with his departed airplane by often watching home movies that showed him climbing aboard the black jet and hosting revelries in the sky, no amount of fantasizing or reminiscing could comfort him in March 1976 when, in order to attend the gala opening of the renovated Playboy Club in New York, Hefner and his retinue were obliged
to stand in line holding tickets at the Los Angeles Airport and to board a commercial carrier whose scheduled departure would in no way be influenced by the sleeping habits or moods of the
Playboy
publisher. The trip thus required some mental adjusting not only from Hefner but also from his long-pampered traveling companions; and while he had purchased every seat in the first-class cabin to ensure ample room for his ten friends (three seats, however, had been presold to jockeys traveling from Santa Anita to Aqueduct), Hugh Hefner announced with a forced smile to his group before they settled in their seats and had opened the backgammon boards: “Somehow I feel I owe you people an apology.”

But the New York visit, if not the ride itself, was a source of satisfaction to Hefner. For the first time in years, Playboy received a favorable press. The remodeled club on Fifty-ninth Street off Fifth Avenue was complimented on its appearance, its superior cuisine and entertainment, and dozens of photographers wandered through the crowded bar and dance floor taking pictures of everyone from Howard Cosell to Lenny Bruce’s mother. While Hefner in his new white suit and Barbi Benton in her long black gown served as the host and hostess, much more attention and curiosity seemed to be directed toward the stunning young brunet who stood at Hefner’s side, smiling with alert dark eyes that matched his own—she was his twenty-three-year-old daughter, Christie, and, in a sense, this night in New York was her coming-out party.

Brought into the organization as a junior executive in 1975, a year after she had graduated
summa cum laude
from Brandeis University with an A.B. in English literature, Christie Hefner had already demonstrated to many skeptical
Playboy
editors in Chicago an astute mind and mature disposition, an ability and desire to learn without ever expecting or wanting special treatment as the boss’s daughter. Although special treatment was unavoidable within the Playboy building—particularly after her father had publicly stated that she might one day take over the organization—Christie’s tact and sensitivity made the best of a situation that could have easily caused resentment; and by the time of the New
York opening, she had already earned the goodwill and respect of nearly all of her father’s associates.

Beginning with the interviews she gave in New York, and the subsequent ones in other cities around the nation, Christie Hefner diverted the press from its predominantly critical coverage of
Playboy
to the personal story of herself and her sudden rise to the position that
Cosmopolitan
called “Hare Apparent.” Described by writer Judy Klemesrud as having the “wholesome, well-scrubbed face of a Big Ten cheerleader grown up to become a Breck girl,” Christie was clearly the type that would appeal to her father; and, by her own admission, they shared a mutual attraction that was far more romantic than familial.

During most of her girlhood her father had been a virtual stranger, a kind of reclusive uncle living in mysterious and opulent notoriety that she found both alluring and confusing. He had moved out of the family apartment when Christie was two, and, following her mother’s remarriage in 1960, the eight-year-old Christie and her younger brother of five took the surname of their stepfather and she resided quietly, if not happily, in the North Shore community of Wilmette. After Christie had entered high school she occasionally was allowed to visit her father at the mansion, there to sit in wonderment at his extraordinary toys and women; but it was not until her college years that she and her father were able to communicate in a personal way, and to recognize and appreciate the traits and qualities that they had in common. Like him, she had a quick mind and high I.Q., a strong ego and a drive to succeed, and a commitment to individualism and sexual freedom.

During her freshman year at Brandeis, she began living in an apartment with a male student she had met on the campus; and while her mother was initially not pleased when Christie brought the young man home during a holiday and shared with him the same bed, her father wholeheartedly approved of the relationship after he had met Christie’s friend, and he preferred to believe that his daughter’s happy private life had contributed to her suc
cess as a student and her eventual election in June 1973 to Phi Beta Kappa.

For this occasion, Christie insisted that her surname on the honored scroll be printed as “Hefner,” a decision that pleased her father immensely; and after she had graduated in 1974 from Brandeis and had spent a year in Boston as a freelance writer-while her boy friend went on to law school at Georgetown University—she accepted her father’s offer to return to Chicago and work in the Playboy building as his special assistant. During her first year on the job, she periodically visited the company’s paper mill and printing plant, its casinos and clubs, attended business meetings and familiarized herself with the corporate structure and the individuals who headed the various departments. She also attended office parties and conventions, and, like her father, she did not adhere to the adage that discouraged sexual activity among office acquaintances. One of the men with whom Christie became temporarily involved, with her father’s full knowledge and limited enthusiasm, was a senior officer in the company with wide corporate responsibilities. In truth, Hefner had more confidence in his daughter’s capacity to handle the situation than he did the older man; and when the affair finally ended amicably, and with no resultant signs of corporate disarray or bruised egos, Hugh Hefner was relieved. On her part, Christie Hefner did not hesitate to tell her father what she thought of his young women friends; and while she was never harsh in her opinions, being aware of her own lack of objectivity in this area, she believed that none of his lovers was really as important in his life as he liked to think—and
none
, in her view, came close to possessing the intelligence and substance of the lady who had once been his wife.