This may be most...unexpected...from me.
Bless me brethren...
Hugh Hefner is dead.
He took a magazine concept sold at seamy bookstalls, just down from THAT theater across the tracks, added tonnes of erudition and professional photography, and made a legend of it.
"I read it for the articles."
Old gag.
The first Larry Niven story I ever read as a callow yout' was in a Playboy magazine, so yeah.
I am...impatient with the whole porn industry. I am not a reader of Playboy...too many problems with it, and too many opportunities to cause someone to stumble, nor do I encourage its reading. I MUST say, though, what I must laud Mr. Hefner for.
What he did, he did with excellence.
He took a dreadful market of pulp-printed dirty magazines, with dreadful stories, and turned it into art. He sought the best writers of the day. The prettiest women, the coolest cars.
Excellence.
The ex-Methodist-Sunday School teacher rejected the religious niceties, but exported the Doing With All Your Might.
So, Mr. hefner, I salute you for your striving for Doing It Well. I pray in your latter days, you returned to the savior of your youth, and took full advantage of His Excellence.
I wish that those in the churches could have caught your vision for excellence.
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When secular, his was the only decent mag. Wasn't full nudity, either. And, for the secular and male, yeah, it was everything cool and hot in one package. Still porn is porn. Then again? Solidly Christian as I am? I don't recommend marriage to secular men. So... carry on, with this, if you are secular. Going to hell, might as well enjoy, as empty as that pleasure really is, and they do know it.
Playboy's dalliance with SF hardly ended with Larry Niven. Among other things the magazine also ran George Langelaan's classic story "The Fly" (from which the films were based).
On a somewhat lower rung, the magazine was a source for people occupying the big screen. Susan Drenberg, the August 1966 Playmate of the Month, was one of the titular characters in the Star Trek episode "Mudd's Women". Marilyn Hanold (June 1959) played Princess Marcuzan in "Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster". Of course we're familiar with Dorothy Stratten. To date: the valedictorian of the bunch has to be Stella Stevens (January 1960), perhaps the one Playmate who actually justifies being in motion pictures.
How bad is it that even I remember the Mudd's Women episode? :p knew nothing of a bunny in there though.
On the other hand when have starlets ever been anything but dubious? No matter of when H.W. tried to cover and hide that.
It's generally agreed that Playboy's starlets (let's be kind and go with that description) were definitely not there for their thespian skills. Ask most of them and they'd probably tell you Laurence Olivier was the guy who read the meter at the Mansion.
Let's take, for example, the 1980 SF film "Galaxina". Directed (and written by) William Sachs, and featuring the late Dorothy Stratten. A few nice touches, but any film which put Avery Schreiber in a major role was automatically doomed to failure. As for Stratten, she was a serene and radiant presence . . . and then she tried to deliver lines and the whole thing just fell apart. Sad.
Don't bother trying to remember Sue Drenberg's work in "Mudd's Women". She was the one who delivered the fewest lines.
Which, when all is said and done, reinforces the notion that Stella Stevens was a mutation.
Your web page is mucked up. It's got blue tint like what one sees when one highlights a link only all over the page. That's what I'm seeing from my end anyway.
Don't forget, Betty Page, Marilyn Monroe, Shannon Tweed and Mara Corday.
Mara Corday was Miss October '58. In the movie, Space Cowboys, Donald Sutherlands' character is looking at a centerfold in a flashback scene from 1958.
"Ah, Miss October!" He says to himself.
Thing is, it wasn't Ms. Corday. Eastwood messed up!
I forgot about Shannon Tweed, and am really ashamed for forgetting Mara Corday. As for Marilyn Monroe I didn't include her because she was already an actress by the time Playboy began.
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