Hugh Hefner

Continued from Page 8 Playboy Philosophy and we got very much involved in social causes and that was predicated on the notion that a book in our times can hardly be devoted to fun and games if you don't deal with a lot of the problems that keep the fun and games from an awful lot of people. Playboy is an attempt to bring sex into the fabric of the rest of the things a person is interested in, because that's the way we are. Sex is the greatest civilizing force on this planet, not religion.

How did you get women to pose for you at first?

In the beginning it was just a matter of picking up calendar pictures. For about the first year we were using material from elsewhere, starting with Marilyn Monroe. As time passed it got much easier. What the Playmate became, which was a personalized kind of pin-up, was something that developed. An entire generation has grown up with Playboy. We're about ready to start publishing the daughters of our original Playmates.

In a recent Playboy interview, Erica Fong said that the Playmates are not real women to her, "they're almost figments of the imagination." What is your opinion of this?

Okay, all right. Now take a quick look at what the history of pin-up and erotic art photography has really been all about. It has been exactly that. And how is Playboy different We humanized the pin-up picture. Instead of taking the glamour queens of stage and screen, or the Petty girls and Gibson girls that were simply drawings, we took girls off the street: secretaries, clerks, college coeds, stewardesses.

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The whole girl-next-door concept in pin-up photography, which Playboy invented, was an attempt to humanize-admittedly in a very simplistic and superficial way and to say, look, female beauty is all around you, Charlie, sitting at the next desk, waiting on you when you go into the store, passing you on the street, sitting next to you at the movie.

There is no way of turning a picture into real life and the notion, incidentally, that a certain amount of voyeurism is not healthy comes from people who do not understand sex or the pscyhological aspects of sex, which I think I understand rather well and rather extensively. When you repress the images and communication related to sex in the media, in your one-to-one and group conversations and communications of various kinds in society, you get repressed and sick sex when you go into the bedroom. And sex in the media, prior to Playboy and there was lots of it, from the Reader's Digest on tionalized and repressive and destructive.

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Regarding fantasies, I've only recently become aware that if you put a number of centerfolds to the light you see something unusual. That is, the images from the preceding page filter through, and create a striking erotic effect. It's unplanned.

You may have always wondered

why you've been so successful. More seriously, what criticism of Playboy has stung the most?

The thing that has probably bothered me most is the number of people of very similar political and social values who have not understood. That's been true mostly in the last few years with the woman's lib thing. It's that woman's exploitation thing that's probably the most bothersome.

The usual thing is that women are demeanded because they pose with their clothes off. Really? That's exploitation? How? It's such simplistic pop-sychology. It really comes down to this: Women have been treated as only sexual objects rather than as full human beings in society; therefore, in order for them to be recognized as real human beings we must eliminate the sexual parts. Well, that's no solution.

As sexual beings, both male and female, we become more truly human. What we need is more of a celebration in our society of male and female sexuality. And I won't even get into the suspicions that since there was a significant lesbian aspect in the early portions of the highly visible parts of the women's movement that may have been a part of it. I just think they're simply, in that area, off base.

The Playboy Foundation has been a major supporter of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) has it?

We're the major funder of NORML. We had a lot to do with the sexual revolution in the '60s, but it is less well recognized that as we are moving into a more reasonable attitude toward drugs, and grass in particular, that Playboy is the major influence there as well.

While we're on the law, what is your opinon about sex and the law?

There are a number of things Playboy has done in terms of trying to change the laws in regards to sex. The police and the magistrates have no business in the bedroom. We're attempting to implement through the structure of law moral values, which become highly immoral in their application.

You've been credited with giving sex back to the people. How does that strike you?

I haven't heard that before. There's probably some truth to that.

It's been written that you have sex virtually every day of your life. You've been quoted as saying: "I'm more potent, less jaded and enjoy it more than I ever have." Any secrets to share?

Sex is largely psychological. The major sex organ is not between your legs it's in your head. I do enjoy sex more now than I did 10 years ago, but I don't make a point of going to bed with a different girl every night. I went through that stage a long time ago.

Has anatomical interest in the female body changed over the last 20 years?

We're probably a little less hung up on the breast. I don't consider, incidentally, an interest in breasts a fetishism or, as it's been suggested, an immature or adolescent form of sexual interest, or an example of somebody who wasn't properly weaned as a child. Interest in secondary sexual characteristics of the opposite sex has been there through history. Breasts are one of them.

You've described your attraction to young women "as a way of holding onto your youth and the enthusiasm you first felt about love and life.” Have you ever been sexually attracted to women over 35?

executive liaison between various parts of the company. I don't know what the women libbers are going to make out of this. Eventually she'll have some say in terms of control nobody lives forever.

Who and what were some of the early influences on your life?

I grew up in the '30s. I'm probably a very dramatic example of a McLuhanesque editor, if there is such a thing before we knew who McLuhan was. I was more influenced by films than books or anything else the man alone against injustice films, like "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." The kind of things Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper used to play. If it's true that I have sex every day, it's also true that I see on an average. of two movies a day every day of my life. One of my early idols was the lawyer Clarence Darrow. H.G. Wells and Poe were the first authors that made any impression on me. I was raised in a very puritan but very idealistic home.

What does money mean to you?

The great virtue of money is that you then no longer have to think about money, so that you can think of other things that are really important. The most precious thing in life is time and your health; the amount of allotted time to be able to enjoy the experience of living.

When it comes to assess our century, how do you think you'll be judged?

That will depend upon the time and. the climate that exists when it's written. If it's the kind of society that I hope it will be, which is a more humanistic, rationalistic, egalitarian kind of society, then I guess that I will be recognized as a force of some significance in terms of social change, and I guess I will be more highly esteemed than I am today. The wonder of much that has happened is not being reported right not. It's a wonderful taleand I'm glad it happened to me. There may be other people that are deserving out there, but I'm glad it was me!

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"The great virtue of money is that you then no longer have to think about money, so that you can think of other things that are really important."

Do you remember the first time you made love to a woman?

The first time was in college. It was with the girl that I married. How do you feel about marriage?

If there are fewer marriages there'd be fewer divorces. I'm not anti-marriage or anti-home and family, but there are other lifestyles. I was married right out of college. I have two children and they're dynamite and my ex-wife is dynamite. My daughter graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brandeis a year ago and is coming to work for me now. She's going to be an