Authored by Jon Mercer in Celebrities
Published on 01-19-2009

Hugh Hefner is world renowned for his Playboy Magazine, beautiful girlfriends, Hollywood mansion, and pipe, but only a very few intimate friends know that Heff’s first foray in the world of publishing began with a comic-book autobiography loosely based on “Heff” and his friends in their early school years. That right; in a sense, the famous Playboy Magazine began as a comic book that Heffner drew for his school pals back in Chicago.

Hefner told the Los Angeles Times in a recent interview “I was most interested in writing and cartooning, I wrote short-stories and lots of mysteries and horror stories and did comic books in grade school and high school.” He said that he went into the Army directly after high school and he continued doing the cartoon while he was in the service.

When asked what cartoonist the publishing mogul most admired, Hefner stated that “Milton Caniff was his first big influence. “I actually got Caniff for Playboy during World War II, Caniff did a comic strip called Male Call with a very sexy lady named Miss Lace; it was in “Stars & Stripes” and “Yank”, and it was for service guys.” Hefner, who sometimes spends the entire day in his silk pajamas roaming around his twenty-nine room California mansion, is a true icon of American sex culture. The 82 year-old publishing genius seems right at home talking about his past, his magazine and his consuming passion….Hollywood.

“Everything that I learned about love, I learned from the movies.” “Love for me is defined almost exclusively in terms of romantic love as defined by the films of my childhood.” The reality is that Hefner will get a chance to see a version of himself as a child up on the silver screen; a biographical film is in the making, and production could be underway within the next two months.

When asked about the upcoming film Hefner said that it would be an interesting change of pace for him. He hopes that the film will be a something other than a light comedy, but that it would have something to say about the way he has changed the sexual values of the world with his eye for beauty and his vision of social freedom. Brian Grazer, who is scheduled to produce the film about Heff’s life, said “He’s the only man I know who has made love to a thousand women and they all still like him.”