Haresh Shah
Not Following In The Boss’ Footsteps
‘No one aspires to Hef’s (Hugh M.Hefner) lifestyle anymore.’
Talking to us at our 1982 International Publishing’s Annual Conference is the US Playboy’s Editorial Director, Arthur Kretchmer. After having them held all over the world including at Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, we have brought the group of about sixty to the home turf in Chicago. Seamlessly connected to Playboy’s 919 North Michigan Avenue offices by a passageway is Playboy Towers, right next door at what used to be the landmark Chicago hotel, The Knickerbocker, now renamed Millennium Knickerbocker Hotel. We are breathing nothing but Playboy, practically day in and day out for four days and four nights.
Arthur is not the man of many words. But when you get him to say something, nobody can say it better than he could. Even though Hugh M. Hefner crowns the magazine’s masthead, being his eyes and ears, it’s Arthur who builds the magazine with his editorial team, nut and bolts, brick by brick. What he just said must have been obvious to most everyone present in the room, but coming from Arthur’s mouth makes it official – confirmed beyond doubt.
I for one had frequently felt that I was actually living the Playboy lifestyle in the real world, traveling first class around the globe, picked up and brought back home by stretched limos, staying at the best hotels in Paris, Munich, Milan and wherever else my assignments took me, eating in the best restaurants and having animated conversations with the crème de la crème of the publishing world, having a time of my life, while by then Hefner himself had slid into the surreal fantasy world of his own.
When he first started publishing Playboy in December of 1953 at the age of 27, and was putting together his magazine on the kitchen table of his apartment on the University of Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park, he aspired to the lifestyle of, if not famous, certainly well to do, who in his imagination occupied the penthouse apartments in the highrises that lined North Shore Drive of the city. Just like I had aspired to be living in a similar flat on Bombay’s Marine Drive, famously known as the Queen’s Necklace. He aspired to living a life of an affluent young man about town showing up at the “in” spots of the city with an enviously pretty thing hanging on his arm. One of those “in” spots was the Gaslight Club, established also in 1953, which inspired Hefner to open Playboy Club scant seven years later, also in what is now known as River North neighborhood.
Not only that, the way Playboy sky rocketed to an unprecedented heights that even surpassed his wildest dreams, he never got to live on the umpteenth floor of any of the skyscrapers he dreamed about but went way beyond by bringing the whatever good life was happening up above, down to the ground level when he bought a 70 room classical French brick and limestone mansion at 1340 State Street in the exclusive Gold Coast of Chicago – only a stone’s throw away from those tall and the glittering dwellings and at the intersection of the trendy Division, State and Rush streets where Chicago’s thriving night life overlapped. Just a short stroll away were Chez Paul and Biggs, the two of Chicago’s most elegant restaurants of the time and Ricardo’s, where Chicago Sun Times and Chicago Tribune gang hung out. As it turns out, he didn’t even have to take those walks. He brought everyone and everything he desired within the confines of his famed Chicago mansion. Complete with underwater bar and firemen’s pole to slide down to the swimming pool down below the main floor.
I could probably see myself being aspired to something to that extent. But beyond?
Not even his most ardent imitators such as Bob Guccione of Penthouse, Daniel Filipacchi of Lui (Oui in the US, published by Playboy under cross licensing agreement in which Filipacchi published the French edition of Playboy) or even Larry Flynt of Hustler aspired to imitate his lifestyle. They emulated Hefner to an extent and then stopped. None of them went as far as to buy a private jet. Serial marriages yes, but Guccione stayed true to Kathy Keeton and Flynt to Althea Leasure till death did indeed them part. Filipacchi never even married. And most importantly, none of them retreated inside the confines of their habitats.
Their publications never became impersonation of themselves as did Playboy. So much so that the mere mention of the name Playboy conjures up an instant image of Hugh M. Hefner. His Playmates and his Bunnies, his silk pajamas and robes, his ubiquitous pipe and his private jet and his clubs, and of course his mansions. Did I ever envy his world? Did anyone at Playboy? God NO! Not even the men who worked closest to him. They all lead what can easily be termed as normal American lives with wives and kids, houses with white picket fences in the suburbs, SUVs, dogs and all.
If you are thinking of us Playboy-ites to be submerged in the underground swimming pool of the Chicago mansion or the Grotto of the Los Angeles estate, frolicking with the most beautiful and desired naked women swarming all over us – you will be absolutely and horrifyingly disappointed, shaking your head in utter disbelief. As did then seven year old Graham (Miller), Anjuli’s littlie cousin from Minnesota. Carolyn’s sister LeAnne was visiting Chicago with her younger son and they all stopped at my office in Playboy Building. While they sat down to visit for a while, Graham jumps off his chair and promptly runs out the door and I hear him run up the corridor. I could sense his running up and down the passage and then returning back to my office, slowed down, looking disappointed and shaking his head in disbelief. Even before anyone could ask him where he ran off to, he just blurts out: There are no naked ladies! I don’t even have any juicy Christmas party stories of “squeezed together in the closet” to tell – a la Playboy cartoons in its holiday issues.
There were parties of course. But not much different than any other business get togethers. Among them my division’s annual conference and other divisional affairs in New York and Los Angeles, every year the spring/summer soirée at Christie Hefner’s rooftop apartment in the Gold Cost, where she invited her top managers with their spouses and dates that allowed everyone to let their hair down and partake in good spirits, good food and almost always enjoy the good weather from top of the building and feel the breeze coming in from Lake Michigan. Informal as it was, it was still prim and proper business affair. Add to them the bonding events such as a weekend at Kohler Design Center, in Kohler, Wisconsin, where we mingled amidst the latest bathroom fixtures, shower stalls and huge bathtubs, Jacuzzis and bidet. State of the art toilet bowls and bathroom sinks. We would be invited to a day of golfing at exclusive Westchester Country Club and meet up at the Playboy Mansion West for an informal drink and dinner event one evening during the long traditional Playboy Jazz Festivals in Los Angeles. Hefner himself would show up for a while during these evenings and mingle and make small talk with some of us. A Playmate or a Bunny may wander out once in a while, but looking no different than any well dressed good looking young woman at any other social gathering. Not to forget the employee Christmas Parties every year. Sumptuous and fun, but not unlike any other corporate sponsored holiday event. And that would be the extent of it.
If I were to tell this to my ex colleagues at Time, even unbelieving, they would believe me because of my status as an outsider insider and sum up the Playboy crowd as being an L and a 7. A perfect boring square.
We at Time worked hard. Very hard. That’s what it took to get three weeklies and one monthly out on the trucks and the airplanes. But then we played as hard. Prairie House? Coach House? Booze & Bits? Butch McGuire’s? Name it, and you could have found us there. And we didn’t even have to scout for the liaisons outside of the group. Between our production and traffic offices on the 22nd street and the data processing /administration offices on Ohio – yes we socialized. We had softball teams and the bowling leagues. Those activities followed by ending up at one of the night spots or even at one of us single member’s apartments in the city. Including mine. There were plenty of young men and women, married and unmarried. But did it matter? These are the late Sixties and early Seventies. Bars with juke boxes. Us dancing to the Carpenters’ Close to you and Rainy days and Mondays. Squeezed together in the dim lit back room of the Prairie House or wherever. Hormones raging, falling in love and falling out. It was like the musical chairs of the coupling and uncoupling. A real Peyton Place if there was one! Eventually I would define the Time crowd as being the most incestuous group of people I have ever worked with. And from what I understood from the photo editors and the art directors we worked with, it weren’t any different in the New York office. Only more lavish and most every foray even paid by the expense accounts. This was confirmed by The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd – who too worked at Time in her early days, recounts in her recent musings: After my sting in Washington, Time moved me to the New York headquarter, with its “Mad Man” aura of whiskey, cigarettes, four hour sodden lunches and illicit liaisons…On Friday nights when the magazine was going to bed, there were sumptuous platters of roast beef rolled in, and bars in editor’s offices. You get the picture.
Back to Playboy, whose offices were only three blocks north of our Ohio Street offices and thirteen blocks north of the production offices where I worked. Two different worlds. Could it be that we at Time represented New York of the era and Playboy, Chicago of the Midwest?
I am not saying that nothing of the sort ever happened at Playboy. That would be not natural. When you put a bunch of men and women together, cupids are going to hover up above. So Playboy people too fall in love and get this: get married. Just to mention some at the top – the editorial director Arthur Kretchmer has always been married to Patricia as long as I have known him. Gary Cole, the photography director met his wife Nancy at Playboy. Okay she is his third wife, but they’ve been married almost thirty years now. Photo editor Jeff Cohen met Gayle, as well at work and they have been married decades and so did Jim Larson who married Gary’s assistant Renay. What is this with the photo department executives? Cupid must have been playing favoritism around the studios. They’re all still married. And note that none of them married a Playmate or a photo model – the most likeliest scenario. Ditto, my bosses at various times, Lee Hall, Bill Stokkan and Mike Perlis, all married in the conventional sense and so are Jan Heemskerk, Rainer Wörtmann, Freddy Baumgärtel and Albert Cheng across the oceans. Even the star photographers, Pompeo Posar and Richard Fegley. Both married to their wives for long times until deaths indeed did them part.
So yes, how right Arthur is when he says No one aspires to Hef’s lifestyle anymore. Certainly not the ones shrouded in his aura and living in his orbit. Someone’s got to put out the magazine!!
© Haresh Shah 2013
Illustration: Celia Rose Marks
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SCENES FROM MISS PLAYBOY INTERNATIONAL BEAUTY PAGEANT
In the winter of 1987, Playboy held its one and the only beauty pageant ever in cooperation with Albert Cheng, the publisher of the magazine’s Hong Kong based Chinese language edition and TVB, the major television channel. When broadcast live, 95% of Hong Kong tuned in.
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