Hugh Hefner: Once Upon a Time (1992)

• 67%
• 1992
• Documentary
• Robert Heath
• James Coburn
• Hugh Hefner
• Barbi Benton

Early in the 1990s, Hefner and others are interviewed on camera about Hefner's childhood and youth, the beginnings of Playboy and its later empire, what those enterprises meant to society, troubles with pundits, censors, and the government, and two crises within Hefner's world, the arrest and prosecution of a close associate and the murder of a model. Susan Brownmiller provides the basic critique of Hefner's businesses (women are objects); Hefner says he wanted to break repression, question traditional values, and present the healthy, wholesome, and real eroticism of the girl next door. By 1992, Hefner is extolling the virtues of marriage, children, and family life.