Reviving the Playboy empire

Daughter Christie Hefner remaking her father's life's work

Web posted August 7, 1997

Associated Press

CHICAGO - Hugh Hefner is on the blower from the mansion in L.A., talking up his all-time favorite Playboy girl. ``I have a million reasons to be proud of her, a million,'' says Hef emphatically. ``We have a wonderful partnership. Our views and values are just about identical.'' Pause. ``You know,'' he adds, significantly, ``she was there when I needed her.''

The self-styled legend and former grooviest cat on the planet gets all mushy like this when he's talking about his daughter, Christie. Hef - never Hugh, never Hefner, just Hef - can rattle off Christie's academic honors as if she'd won them last week, instead of 22 years ago. ``She's been an overachiever since kindergarten on,'' he gushes.

There is perhaps more than the usual paternal pride at work here. Christie Hefner, 44, has effectively remade her father's business and life's work, Playboy Enterprises Inc. Since becoming chief executive of the house that Hef built nine years ago, the younger Hefner has stuck to Dad's original vision of blondes, breasts and bunnies. But at a time when the magazine was beginning to seem about as hip as Hef's old Nehru jackets and love beads, Christie Hefner has pushed the Playboy's brand of sunny sexuality into new realms, such as satellite TV and the Internet, and into markets abroad where the rabbit-head logo still bespeaks good old American decadence.

The result: While Playboy magazine itself is a pokey middle ager - monthly circulation has fallen to less than half its 7 million-copy peak of the late 1970s - its parent company is starting to stir again. Next week, when the company reports its annual results, Wall Street analysts expect Playboy Enterprises' profit to double (to around $8.3 million) on revenue that is twice what it was at the start of the decade. That will make fiscal 1997 the best since Christie took over. ``We want to be the adult Disney,'' says Hef the younger, ``and we're moving in the right direction.''

It's taken a good 10 years for Christie Ann Hefner to be able to say that.

The legend of Playboy's founding is perhaps better known than the midlife crisis that beset it a decade ago, just as Christie was ascending to the CEO's suite. Way back in 1953, after Hef was denied a $5-per-week raise at Esquire magazine's promotions department, he borrowed $600 from his mother and others, and started his own men's magazine. He originally wanted to call his creation Stag Party, but a copyright conflict with another publication compelled him to think again. (``Can you imagine if we'd had clubs where the women wore antlers instead of bunny ears?'' he asks.) The rabbit logo was Hef's answer to two other cheeky literary symbols, New Yorker magazine's Eustace Tilley and Esquire's Esky.

The magazine's then-daring mix of journalism, big-name fiction and glossy female nudity (its first centerfold was Marilyn Monroe) made it a near-instant success. By 1960, the swaggering, ascot-wearing Hef was opening Playboy Clubs across the country featuring scantily clad hostesses called Bunnies.

Yet by 1982, the year Hef named Christie, then 29, company president, Playboy was a sprawling mess. The company had expanded into hotels, casinos, restaurants, movie and record production, book clubs, along with the night clubs and magazines (Playboy added the raunchier and long-gone Oui in the 1970s to compete with harder-edged imitators such as Penthouse). The Playboy logo had been exploited to the hilt, too, slapped on everything from beach towels to air fresheners. The magazine and casinos were profitable, but not much else was. The company that year lost $51.8 million.

Hef admits that he didn't have much interest in actually running the businesses that had blossomed from his original brainstorm. ``The day-by-day details have never lit my fire,'' he says. ``I have always been intrigued by the entrepreneurial and creative end of it.'' (In fact, at age 71, Hef still picks the magazine's cartoons and centerfold models.)

With Hef ensconced at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, the company lurched from crisis to crisis during the early and mid-1980s. In 1981, government officials in London and Atlantic City alleged a variety of regulatory breaches by the company and began challenging Playboy's casino licenses, its most profitable assets. This came just as the flagship magazine began its slow descent, a trajectory that accelerated after a Reagan administration commission issued an attack on pornography in 1986. What's more, in 1985, Hef suffered a mild stroke, leaving the business entirely in the hands of his unseasoned daughter and a revolving group of hired guns.

Christie's efforts to right her father's sinking ship led to some painful decisions. Rather than contest what Christie calls a series of ``unwinnable'' political fights with the Thatcher government and Atlantic City officials, Playboy gradually sold off its casino holdings between 1982 and 1984. In addition, she consolidated divisions, cut overhead and sold or closed unprofitable ventures, including the iconic night clubs.

``The clubs made a lot of money for years,'' Christie says, sitting in Playboy's ultra-modern, art-bedecked offices overlooking Lake Michigan. ``They were great image builders for us. When you think about it, they were the original theme restaurants.'' Indeed, the Hooters chain has reinvented the Playboy Club's original PG-13 naughtiness in a less swanky setting.

``The world changed on us,'' continues Christie. ``In a world where there were singles bars in every city, women weren't going to go out and hang out in a Playboy Club.''

With her famous name and sharp-tailored business suits, the younger Hefner is a dashing figure. Articulate and confident, she speaks rapidly, and a notch or two above normal conversational level. Her lineage and position make her a frequent orator on topics such as freedom of expression and women's rights.

Christie's glamorous stature also comes in handy with would-be advertisers, says Playboy publisher Richard Kinsler. ``If I'm running up against a stone wall on a sales call,'' he says, ``she'll jump right in and show up with me. She is most definitely a hands-on CEO.''

Dad and daughter aren't the only ones involved in the family shop. Christie's mother, Hef's long-ago first wife Millie Gunn, works in Playboy's human resources department at headquarters in Chicago. Christie's husband, William Marovitz, a former Illinois state senator, also has been a consultant to the company.

To rebuild Playboy's frayed brand image, the younger Hefner has moved cautiously. She has pared the company to four lines: magazine publishing, entertainment (essentially video and TV operations), product marketing (through licensing deals) and catalog sales. Just as important, she has canceled many of the deals that contributed to the pollution of the company's image in the 1970s and 1980s.

``What you don't do is as important as what you do,'' she says. ``We have had to find places where it made sense to have our mark on something and not just put it on everything. ... A Playboy cigar is a great idea, but a Playboy air freshener is a stupid idea.'' Playboy, she adds, stands for ``sexy but not sexually explicit. It's the difference between `Body Heat' and `Debbie Does Dallas.' ''