My Life With Playboy

My Life with PlayboyHugh Hefner and I founded our magazines at the same time, 50 years ago in the summer of 1953. Both got going on a shoestring. Hef, by his own account, had less than $200 in the bank—the total investment in Playboy was just under $8,000. Our group in Paris had scratched together $1,500 to start The Paris Review, a literary magazine. Hef's first issue had the famous calendar shot of Marilyn Monroe. Ours had an interview with E.M. Forster, the great novelist who had not written...