All language subtitles for American Playboy s01e01 Before The Bunny Marilyn Monroe.eng

- Synced and corrected by chamallow -
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[disco music]

[Hugh Hefner] That's me...

Hugh Hefner.

[Hugh Hefner] I took a
personal investment of $600...

and turned it into a global empire.

[Hugh Hefner] You may
think you know me...

the guy who has it all.

Would you welcome Hugh Hefner.

[applause]

[Hugh Hefner] The lavish mansion.

[crowd cheering]

[Hugh Hefner] The legendary parties.

[James Caan] He would invite
all these beautiful girls.

I mean, you talk about, like,
dying and going to heaven.

It was amazing.

[Hugh Hefner] And, of course, the women.

[crowd chattering]

Can you estimate

just how many ladies you have known?

No, I can't.

[Hugh Hefner] And what started it all...

Playboy magazine.

[Hugh Hefner] But for
everything you've heard about me,

there's probably a lot you don't know.

For all the people who loved me,

there were plenty who
wanted to take me down.

Playboy openly advocates the overthrow

of Judeo Christian standards.

There were times when I felt worn down,

trying to escape.

You know, you pick yourself
up and you fight it again.

[Hugh Hefner] I've been
investigated by the FBI and the DEA.

[reporter] Hefner said that
prosecutors kept pressuring

Miss Arnstein to testify
against her boss in drug cases.

[Hugh Hefner] Attacked by the
media and religious groups.

[Mike Wallace] Well, with
this I think that you'll agree,

it's a sniggering kind of sex.

It certainly isn't a
healthy approach to sex.

[Hugh Hefner] And pushed
to the brink of bankruptcy.

Hef, you are killing yourself.

[Hugh Hefner] But my magazine
wasn't just about naked women.

It was breaking down barriers,

starting a cultural
conversation about sexuality,

and standing up for social justice.

[Jesse Jackson] Hugh Hefner
identified unequivocally

with the civil rights
movement of that time.

Giving a platform to Dr.
King, a platform to Malcolm X.

By any means necessary.

[Hugh Hefner] I've been
called a pornographer...

a smut peddler...

and a sexist.

The day that you are
willing to come out here

with a cottontail attached
to your rear end...

[audience laughing]

[Hugh Hefner] And my lifestyle
hasn't always been easy

on the people closest to me.

He dates other girls,
and... I don't like it.

And he knows I don't like it.

[Hugh Hefner] I've gained enemies...

and lost friends.

An already emotionally troubled woman

was pushed beyond endurance...

and she killed herself.

[Cooper Hefner] The
conception of Playboy

came from my dad's irritation
with the status quo.

So, the entire magazine came to be

because of one guy who was pretty upset

with how most people
interpreted and defined sex.

[Hugh Hefner] I've lived a
life most could only dream of.

This is my story.

Or at least how I remember it.

[crickets chirping]

[heavy breathing]

Hef?

Oh! Bobbie.

- Hef!
- What is it?

The cops are downstairs.

Just tell them I'll
deal with it tomorrow.

They're here for you.

This morning a man is
on trial in Chicago,

charged with violating that
city's laws against obscenity.

He's Hugh Hefner, publisher
of Playboy magazine.

The issue has been the
cause of many court cases

involving motion pictures,
books, and magazines,

and various court decisions have left

considerable gray areas

in determining just what
is salacious and obscene.

[man] Men who would stand
by and see their women

degraded and debased, as
they are with the breast

and the buttock presentation by Playboy,

are not men at all.

[Hugh Hefner] What you're
accusing me of, in essence,

is taking things that
previously were taboo

and considered obscene and objectionable

and making them tasteful and acceptable.

[Mike Wallace] Tonight,
the first of three

special reports on the controversy.

[Hugh Hefner] The only thing
wrong with sex is the fact

that we have a great tendency
to treat it as something

shameful and guilty and taboo-ridden,

and this is what causes

the major problems, not the sex itself.

Mr. Hefner...

why did you start Playboy?

Well...

that's a tough question.

Just take your time.

[slow guitar]

[Hugh Hefner] Long before the
mansions, before the clubs,

the parties, before the
women, before the magazine...

there was just me.

Hugh Marston Hefner.

I was born in Chicago in 1926.

My parents were hardworking
Midwestern protestants

who didn't allow dancing,

drinking, or swearing in the house.

My father spent most of
his time at the office...

and my mother was
emotionally distant toward me

and my younger brother, Keith.

I think that the major
thing that I missed,

and that my parents missed
in their own childhood...

because it's been passed from
generation to generation...

was the inability to show love

in an emotional and physical way.

No hugging.

No show of any kind of emotion.

[Hugh Hefner] With my home life
lacking the affection I craved,

I escaped into a world of fantasy.

And for me, that was cartooning.

[Keith Hefner] As a young
man, he was quite shy,

and so he created his fantasy
life by writing stories

and by cartooning his life...

... where he could live
out the kind of life

that he really wanted,
that he fantasized about.

This was a way of
compensating for that shyness,

and it has continued on
through his whole life.

[Hugh Hefner] By the time
I reached high school,

I'd even created an alter
ego named Goo Heffer...

who was confident and popular.

But when I wanted to imagine a life

far more exciting than my own,

there was only one place to go.

[traffic noise]

[film projector clacking]

When I was in my teens,

I got a job at the local movie theater.

I was taken to movies
when I was very young,

and from very early
on, up on that screen,

were all the dreams
of the possibilities.

You'd come out of that
movie and you'd feel like

you were Bogart or the leading man.

The heroine loved you
in a very pure way,

and I think that was what
I was really looking for.

[Hugh Hefner] The heroine
I wanted in my life...

was Betty Conklin.

Everyone who's ever been a teenager

has known a Betty Conklin.

[Hugh Hefner] I was
just overwhelmed by her.

There was a brief period
of time in which I thought

it might really be, you
know, a romantic relationship.

She picked my buddy instead of me,

and that told me more
than I wanted to know.

And that was the period
when I reinvented myself.

[swing music]

[Hugh Hefner] Over the next few years,

I was determined to transform myself

into the leading man I'd seen on screen.

So I turned to my favorite
magazine for help... Esquire.

[David Granger] Esquire was
the first men's magazine.

It was the only magazine
that sort of went after

the general interests of men.

The reason there weren't
more magazines for men

is because magazines,

and to a slightly
lesser extent, reading,

was seen as like a
pursuit that women did.

And it was kinda revolutionary
to create a magazine for men

and that it would be successful,

and it was successful pretty rapidly.

I had just discovered Esquire

for the very first time,

and the world suggested by Esquire.

The cartoons, the fiction, the fashion,

and certainly the pin-ups,
which were called Petty Girls.

The Petty Girls became
my first favorite pin-up.

And I covered my walls with them
when I was first in high school.

[Hugh Hefner] Esquire
just opened my eyes

to a whole other world
that was only hinted at

in the movies of the time.

[Hugh Hefner] Reading Esquire
changed my whole approach to life.

I was more confident and outgoing.

[Hugh Hefner] And, by
the end of high school,

I met someone.

Her name was Millie Williams.

[Hugh Hefner] I felt an
instant connection with Millie.

She got my sense of humor,

liked the way I dressed.

But most importantly...

she understood me.

I met Hef at a graduation
party, the week of graduation.

He made me feel very important
and that he liked me a lot.

[laughing] And he was fun to be with.

[Keith Hefner] I
really think that Millie

was the first girl that he really loved,

rather than just being
in love with from afar.

That he really loved,
who loved him back.

[Hugh Hefner] We
started getting serious,

and when Millie registered for college

at the University of Illinois...

I decided to follow her.

[Hugh Hefner] But, like
most couples of the day,

our private life was pretty innocent.

Everyone, I think, had the same routine,

in which sexually you did many things,

but you didn't do the thing.

And this was very typical,
and somehow that kept you,

you know, God wasn't frowning.

[orchestral flourish]

[Hugh Hefner] My college
life was fairly typical

for the first few semesters.

But in my junior year,

everything changed...

when a groundbreaking
psychological study came out...

that would open my eyes

to a completely different side of life.

[Carrie Pitzulo] In 1948,
sexologist Alfred Kinsey

published a massive study
of American male sexuality.

In this study, he showed
that American men and women

had a lot more sexual experience

than most people were
willing to admit to.

Affairs, same-sex
experiences, multiple partners.

And it made news all across the country.

[Hugh Hefner] You have to remember,

back in the '40s, no one
was talking about sex.

In Hollywood pictures, a man and a woman

weren't allowed to be
shown in bed together...

not even married couples.

[Hugh Hefner] That
attitude was reflected

in books and other mass media.

There was a kind of a...

Norman Rockwell view of the world

that didn't exist,

and it bothered me very much.

[Hugh Hefner] Kinsey's expose
of the hypocrisy in our country

was a revelation to me...

and I was inspired to start
voicing my own opinion.

We've got it down to these six.

[Hugh Hefner] I became editor
of the college humor magazine...

called Shaft.

This one.

And, taking a lead from Kinsey...

I used it as a sounding board
for my own sexual beliefs.

[Hugh Hefner] Shaft
magazine had an editorial

about the Kinsey report
and about sexual repression

and the hurt and hypocrisy of it.

I wrote a great deal about
the really moral issues.

That what we call moral,

in every other area of human activity,

is what is good for people.

And our traditional
values related to sex

are not good for people.

They hurt people. They're hypocritical.

[Hugh Hefner] I started
drawing racy cartoons,

writing essays about sex,

and challenging conformity.

I think what my father taught
me about freedom of expression...

is that it's okay to not be PC

when you're having a conversation

about something that really matters.

It's okay to challenge
other people's beliefs

and your own beliefs.

[Hugh Hefner] I also
introduced a feature

that was an instant hit on campus.

When Hef was working on Shaft magazine,

he started Coed of the Month.

And it would be a girl,

and it would have career information

and her statistics

and what she was into
and what she liked.

So he already had
that idea pre-Playboy.

[Hugh Hefner] I loved
the creative freedom

that writing for Shaft offered me.

[Hugh Hefner] And the best part was

I could use my cartoons to
send hidden messages to Millie.

[Millie Gunn Williams] As he
was talking about these laws,

these restrictive laws
and repressive things,

it was very easy to
discuss this together

and say how wrong this
all was, because we both,

we felt the same way,
despite my Catholic background

and his background.

And um, we found we had a
lot of the same attitudes.

[Hugh Hefner] Our shared
views brought us closer...

both emotionally and physically.

My romance with Millie, then,
was an extended, uh, foreplay

until she graduated from college.

We had sex for the first
time the summer of '48.

I would've been 22.

[Hugh Hefner] A few
months after graduation...

I did what everyone
else did in those days.

I proposed to my college sweetheart.

[woman in film] And we should
be able to trust one another.

[man in film] Don't smile it away...

[Hugh Hefner] But then one night...

Millie dropped a bombshell.

[man in film] You were in
love with a schoolgirl notion

of a popular novelist!

Millie.

[crickets chirping]

Millie!

What was that about?

I just want to go home.

Everything okay?

[Hugh Hefner] That night...

Millie told me she had an affair.

Can we please go home?

I was completely blindsided.

[crowd chattering]

[Hugh Hefner] Nothing in my life
had prepared me for that moment.

I was just absolutely devastated.

It may be difficult to imagine,

related to the publisher
of Playboy magazine.

But I had been intimate with
only one woman in my life,

the woman I was gonna marry.

How I dealt with it,
I don't really know.

I just dealt with it
by, I think somehow,

putting it out of my mind.

[Hugh Hefner] This was,
after all, the 1950s.

And back then, you married
the girl you were in love with,

no matter what.

And, truth be told, I was
still in love with Millie.

[Hugh Hefner] Our wedding
was in the summer of '49.

[Hugh Hefner] We had our
whole lives ahead of us.

And in January of 1951...

That's great news.

... I landed my dream job.

I'd just be writing copy
in the ad department,

but I'd be working for
my favorite magazine...

[Hugh Hefner] ... Esquire.

[Hugh Hefner] This was my
chance to do something creative.

[typewriters clacking]

[Hugh Hefner] But I quickly realized

it wasn't what I'd imagined.

Esquire had changed.

[David Granger] The 1950's was
kind of a down period for Esquire.

I think they were probably reeling

from the end of World War II

and the beginnings of a
more repressive society

and probably tended toward
being a little more conservative.

[Hugh Hefner] They'd moved
away from all the things

I'd been drawn to growing up.

The full-page cartoons, the jokes,

and most of all, the pin-up girls.

The job turned out to
be a huge disappointment.

And when they refused my request

for a five dollar raise...

I quit.

But everything changed in 1952...

[Hugh Hefner] ... when Millie gave birth

to our first child.

[Hugh Hefner] We named her Christie.

[Hugh Hefner] And while
I loved being a father...

suddenly, I had a family to provide for.

[Hugh Hefner] And I
needed to find a job...

... any job... as quickly as possible.

So I took a low-level position
at a publishing house...

crunching numbers and
trying to improve sales.

But the job was about as
mind-numbing as it gets.

[time clock clicks]

And, as time went on...

[click]

I realized I'd become
just one of the masses.

[Patty Farmer] The 1950's
was a time of conformity.

The course was set
out... you went to school,

you got married, you had children,

you got the best job you
could to support your family.

There was not a lot of
room for individuality,

and that did not appeal to Hef at all.

[patrons chattering]

[upbeat record playing]

[Hugh Hefner] I only went
into that bar to be alone.

[Hugh Hefner] And I certainly
wasn't expecting what happened next.

[Hugh Hefner] I knew what
I was doing was wrong...

but for the first time in
a long time, I felt alive.

[light switch clicks]

The affair ended as
quickly as it started.

But it sparked something in me.

I'd always been happiest being creative,

and as I looked back on
my cartoons, short stories,

and articles from Shaft magazine,

I saw what I was missing.

[Hugh Hefner] I became
convinced very early

that older people became cynical

and somehow sold out those dreams.

And that's what I was unwilling to do.

I was not willing to make that tradeoff,

to get in line and lock step march away

the rest of my life.

My father was still
trying to find himself,

and had a number of jobs

that I think were less than satisfying.

He was always, I think, drawn
to both visual expression

and also to big ideas.

[Hugh Hefner] It was then
that I made a decision

that would change the
course of my life forever.

I decided to create
a magazine of my own.

One that would appeal to guys like me...

featuring articles about music,
literature, art, and culture.

[Richard Rosenzweig] When
he started the magazine,

he actually created the
magazine for himself.

There was no magazine out there

that he found of
interest for a young guy.

Most of the men's magazines

were hunting and fishing magazines,

gun magazines, not
sophisticated magazines.

The only sophisticated magazine

that was out there at
the time was Esquire.

[Hugh Hefner] It was going to
be, uh, what Esquire used to be.

And it was a magazine

that would really be
for the young urban male.

[Hugh Hefner] But my magazine
would be so much more.

In the same way that
Kinsey blew the cover

off sexuality in America...

I wanted my magazine

to confront the topic of sex head on.

[Bill Maher] For Hef, I
think the message about sex

has always been that it's healthy.

And natural.

And, that we shouldn't be ashamed of it.

And we should embrace it.

That was not the popular
opinion in the 1950s.

And it's hard to remember now,

when you look back, that
this was fairly revolutionary.

[Hugh Hefner] It was one
thing to talk about sex,

but I wanted to do more

Growing up, my favorite parts of Esquire

were those drawings of the pin-up girls.

But I thought my magazine
could go one step further...

by showing photos of nude women.

[Christie Hefner] I think the
brilliance of the magazine was

it spoke to all the
interests of young men.

So those were cultural and political.

It was fashion, it was travel.

But it also was an unabashed
recognition of the interest

that young men had in beautiful women.

[Hugh Hefner] I knew that
there would be nothing that was

outside, uh, the boundaries

of what was already being published.

In other words, there were magazines,

art photography magazines,
sunbathing magazines,

with nudes in them.

I wanted to package it in a way that...

suggested that this was not art.

It was... something with
an editorial message,

and the editorial message
was that sex was okay.

[Hugh Hefner] I was going to
combine a modern lifestyle magazine

with nude photos of women.

And I had the perfect name for it.

Stag Party.

[Hugh] What magazines do you read?

Why?

Just name some.

I... I don't know.

[Hugh Hefner] I knew I liked the idea...

Now I just needed to see
if anyone else would, too.

And the first guy that I thought of

was my old friend Eldon Sellers.

What if there was a magazine

that didn't fall into any one category?

That took all your favorite things

and put them into one place.

And it'll have a full-page color photo

of a real life pin-up girl...

completely nude.

[both chuckling]

It's gonna be great, Eldon.

It sounds like it.

It's going to be a
progressive magazine for men.

He came to me and said that
he would like to have some help

raising some money for a magazine.

He did a terrific job
of promoting the idea

and explaining it, and he was...

he was extremely articulate about that.

I like that.

[Hugh Hefner] Eldon liked it so much,

he chipped in $2,000

and even offered to help
me find more investors.

And, honestly, I was going to
need all the help I could get.

Just to give you a sense of how
much money I needed to raise,

Time magazine was started
with an initial investment

of $86,000.

And that was all the way back in 1923.

Today, that's the equivalent
of over $1.2 million.

[Christie Hefner] Even
when Playboy was started,

it was unusual to have
that little capital

and those few resources.

Today, it would be almost
impossible to consider

starting a magazine without having
millions and millions of dollars

and the capacity to
sustain losses for three,

four, five, six years.

[upbeat music]

[Hugh Hefner] I figured
after Eldon's investment,

I was still going to
need at least $6,000

to get my idea off the ground.

[Hugh Hefner] So we started
meeting with investors in Chicago.

What do you think?

A lot of them said no.

[Hugh Hefner] But a
few of them said yes.

Hello, Fred? Hugh Hefner here.

Well, I'm happy you asked.

Okay...

I was hoping for
slightly better than that,

to be honest with you.

Okay... that sounds great.

[Hugh Hefner] No matter what,

I was going to make this happen.

And, after weeks of calling...

we got my younger brother, Keith,

and my neighbors to pitch in.

Even my puritanical
mother gave me $1,000.

[Christie Hefner] I never had a
long conversation with my grandmother

about her investment in the magazine,

but, knowing her as I did,

I would say that... she would have said

it was not a magazine for her,

but that she believed in her son.

[Hugh Hefner] But even
with my family and friends

pitching in,

I was still about $600 short.

So, out of desperation,

I put my furniture in hock.

It included some pretty
nice pieces by designers

like Herman Miller and Eames.

[Hugh Hefner] And
finally, I hit my goal.

With the money finally in place,

I was ready to start making my magazine.

But I quickly realized

I couldn't do this on my own.

[Hugh] So... what did Frank tell you?

Well, not much.

Just that you're...
you're starting a magazine,

and you might be looking
for an art director.

Well it's not just any magazine.

It's a lifestyle
magazine with a full-color

nude spread of a girl in each issue.

But I want this magazine
to be more than that.

A look that nobody has ever seen before.

I want this magazine to be beautiful.

You want to do a
magazine with nude girls,

and you want the
magazine to be beautiful?

[chuckles]

That's right.

[Hugh Hefner] I had my art director...

a popular graphic designer

from the Southside of Chicago...

named Art Paul.

[Stephen Martinez] Art
Paul was ahead of his time.

His designs were modern

and different from Esquire, and
that's what Hef was looking for.

And Hef has a knack
for finding that talent.

[Hugh Hefner] With Art Paul
on board, I had my team.

I'd write the copy,

Art would create the design...

and Eldon would handle promotions.

My small apartment became
Stag Party's offices...

and it was finally time to get to work.

[Jason Buhrmester] Playboy was never

a corporate magazine.

It was never part of a
giant publishing house.

You're talking about a magazine
that is as DIY as it gets.

It's one man started it at
his kitchen table in Chicago.

[Hugh Hefner] We came
up with countless ideas

for how to make the magazine stand out.

At that time, 3-D movies
were hugely popular...

so we considered
featuring our girls in 3-D.

But attaching a pair of
glasses to every issue

proved too expensive.

In the end, we realized it
wasn't about the gimmick.

We just needed to find the perfect girl.

[Hugh Hefner] In the 1950s,

if you wanted a nude photo of a model,

and you didn't have
your own to photograph...

the only places you could get them from

were calendar companies.

And, for a price, you could purchase

the rights to their pin-ups.

[Hugh Hefner] We reached out
to countless calendar companies

and gathered hundreds of options

for our first cover girl.

What about her, huh?

No, she's not right.

This one?

No, no.

Maybe if you tell me exactly what

you're looking for,
we can find the girl.

Well, that's the problem.

We're not looking for a girl,
we're looking for the girl.

What does that mean?

We need to find a girl that
no guy would be able to resist.

Someone who will make it impossible

for a guy not to open the cover.

Oh, well, if that's all...

I don't know where she
is, but she's not here.

[Hugh Hefner] I'd spent weeks
looking for a cover girl...

and I was starting to lose hope.

But in the fall of 1953,

the solution would come out of nowhere.

[Hugh Hefner] In those days,

Marilyn Monroe was every
man's ultimate fantasy.

[Hugh Hefner] She was the
very pinnacle of sexuality.

[Hugh Hefner] But years
before she was famous...

when she was still known
as Norma Jean Baker...

the young model had
posed nude for a calendar.

[Hugh Hefner] She was the
hottest star in Hollywood.

I heard about, uh,

the Marilyn Monroe calendar picture,

which everybody had heard
about, but nobody had seen

because they were afraid
to show it back then.

[Hugh Hefner] But I knew I
had to put it in the magazine,

because she was the
absolute perfect choice.

[Brett Ratner] Hef had a real
understanding of pop culture

and the public's
fascination with celebrity.

So that Marilyn Monroe image,

he knew that was the golden ticket.

That was thing that was
going to launch that magazine.

[Hugh Hefner] You have to remember,

this was before the Internet,

so getting access to photos this rare

was almost impossible.

But now, I knew who had the originals,

and what's even crazier...

was that he was right here in Chicago.

But I only had $1,000 left in my budget.

I just had to hope that would be enough.

[man] Okay, uh, what
can I help you with?

Well, I'm interested in
purchasing one of your photos.

That's all?

[distant phone ringing]

It's, uh, it's not just
any photo, Mr. Baumgarth.

It's Marilyn.

Look... people pay me a lot of money

just to look at those pictures.

Buying them won't be cheap.

Well, uh, I only need one.

But I have to have
full rights to print it.

[chuckling]

This is Marilyn Monroe
we're talking about.

Uh, I couldn't let you have it

for any less than, uh...

600.

600?

Yeah.

That's a lot of money.

[sighs]

Make it 500.

Done. But you pay me now.

In cash.

Agreed.

[chuckling]

There she is.

[Hugh Hefner] Marilyn didn't disappoint.

Apparently, the
photographer was so nervous,

he forgot to change the film...

leaving some of the photos

with two images overlaid
on top of each other.

Thank you.

I could hardly believe it.

There I was, holding what was probably

the most valuable
photograph on the planet.

[Hugh Hefner] After months of planning,

I was ready to take the world by storm.

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