Playboy Miscellany

A collection of uncommon knowledge about the most (in)famous magazine in history, obsessively compiled, curated and presented by trivia mastermind BEN SCHOTT

STOCK AND HAIRS

When Playboy Enterprises, Inc. went public in 1971, its share certificate featured a nude image of a reclining Willy Rey, that year's Miss February. The Playmate was to have appeared bare breasted until concerns from financiers resulted in the strategic placement of her long auburn locks. By the time Playboy redesigned its certificate in 1990, an estimated 14,000 people held just a single share--apparently

more than six times the norm for companies of equivalent size. This enthusiasm for owning "novelty" shares was reported to cost Playboy some $100,000 a year in investor relations and postage.

BRAILLE PLAYBOY has been published in braille, at the American taxpayers' expense, since 1970. In December 1985, the Library of Congress removed the title from its roster of 36 braille magazines after Congress voted to cut $103,000 from the library's annual budget. (It is no coincidence that this sum was precisely what it cost to produce 1,000 braille copies of an annual playboy subscription.) In August 1986, U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan ruled this decision violated the First Amendment and ordered braille production to resume. The Library of Congress still publishes braille versions of PLAYBOY--albeit just the text.

OED The Oxford English Dictionary quotes PLAYBOY to define some 150 terms, including: beer goggles, cockmanship, come shot, gazillionaire, needledick, orgasm, pointy head, postmodernism, schwag, skeezy and zing. Moreover, the dictionary credits PLAYBOY with first publishing backassward (1971), base (free-basing cocaine, 1984), disco (1964), mono-brow (1987), pimpmobile (1971), promo (1966) and snarfle (1985).

Hunter S. Thompson noted the power of even a forged playboy photographer press card: "I bought it from a pimp in Vail, Colorado, and he told me how to use it. 'Never mention playboy until you're sure they've seen this thing first,' he said. 'Then, when you see them notice it, that's the time to strike. They'll go belly-up every time. This thing is magic, I tell you. Pure magic.' "

PLAYBOY & PLAYBORE L ike many global brands, playboy has enjoyed its share of parody. In 1966 The Harvard Lampoon published a spoof entitled Playboy. Printed with assistance from Hugh Hefner, the magazine featured a "J'm's B'nd" satire, the parodic comic strip "J'm's B'nd" satire, the parodic comic strip "Little Orphan Bosom" and a Centerfold whose tan was inverted, giving her milky white skin and dark, bronzed breasts. According to the college paper The Harvard Crimson, 545,000 copies of Playboy (priced at $1.25 each) sold out within two weeks.

Seventeen years later, the American Parody and Travesty Corporation published Playbore, hoping to sell a million copies at $2.95 a pop. Playbore featured an exclusive interview with Jesus Christ, a John Updike spoof ("Rabbit Is Dead") and a girls of the PLO pictorial.

PLAY-BOY

IN its earliest incarnation, play-boy was a theater term for boy actors who took female roles before women were accepted onstage. (Above, Gwyneth Paltrow as a play-boy in Shakespeare in Love, 1998.) In 1612, Ben Jonson wrote, "The rogue playboy that acts Cupid, is got so hoarse, your majesty cannot hear him." Our modern use of "playboy"--a wealthy, hedonistic bachelor-- derives from Irish English. The word was made famous by the Irish playwright J.M. Synge, whose tragicomedy The Playboy of the Western World caused outrage when it premiered in Dublin in 1907 (and in New York in 1911). The play itself is far from glamorous. The "playboy" is a poor farmer who, claiming to have killed his father, charms the women of a small town. And the "western world" refers simply to the western counties of Ireland. Yet a gilded concept of the playboy endures to this day, and the title has been bestowed on a range of men, including Porfirio Rubirosa, Lapo Elkann, Warren Beatty, Stavros Niarchos III, Silvio Berlusconi, Jack Nicholson, Prince Azim, Albert von Thurn und Taxis, Paris Latsis, Al-Saadi Gaddafi, Kim Dotcom and Sean Parker. (Marilyn Sheppard called her husband, Dr. Sam Sheppard, "the playboy of the western world" before her murder in 1954. Dr. Sheppard's controversial conviction for this crime may have in part inspired the TV series and movie The Fugitive.)

GANG BANGERS

The government's 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment listed seven gangs that use "Playboy" in their name: Southside Playboys (California), Playboys (Colorado), Playboy Crew (Florida), Playboy and Playboy Gangsters (Missouri), Playboy Gangster and Playboys 13 (Washington). Over the years, a host of other gangs have appropriated playboy's name and branding, including: Las Vegas PLAYBOY BLOODS wear red and black colors and the Rabbit Head logo Chicago .PEOPLE NATION wear the Rabbit Head logo with both ears erect Chicago FOLK NATION wear the Rabbit Head logo with left ear cocked Chicago .ALMIGHTY VICE LORD NATION have worn the Rabbit Head logo since the early 1960s Florida DIXIE PLAYBOYS a 1980s home-robbery gang that wore the Rabbit Head logo Los Angeles PLAYBOY GANGSTER CRIPS a crack-dealing gang that used the Rabbit Head logo In 1987 the L.A. city attorney made history by filing a civil injunction against this "unincorporated association."

OPINION POLLS Some gems from past PLAYBOY surveys 1970 HAVE NEVER HAD PREMARITAL SEX BEFORE THE AGE OF 21 (college students)

NOTABLE QUOTES

"Show me any guy, of any age, anywhere in the world, at any time in history, today or tomorrow, that wouldn't give his left nut to be Hugh Hefner."--GENE SIMMONS "As soon as I pop this thing out, I want to do PLAYBOY."--KIM KARDASHIAN, while pregnant "Beyond the incalculable public service PLAYBOY performed by printing pictures of attractive naked women was the way it offered a whole attendant lifestyle. It was like a monthly manual telling you how to live, how to play the stock market and buy a hi-fi and mix sophisticated cocktails and intoxicate women with your wit and sense of style."--BILL BRYSON, The Lost Continent "To tell the truth, I never read anything in PLAYBOY. I just look at the naked women."--RED SMITH, sportswriter "One of the best interviews ever done of me was published in PLAYBOY... Really, you can read PLAYBOY for the articles."--KATHLEEN TURNER, Send Yourself Roses "PLAYBOY Centerfolds are an American trophy. The nation's hood ornament, from the limo of state. Every boy has passed under the shadow of those perfect breasts on the way to adulthood."--A.A. GILL, To America With Love "PLAYBOY legitimized looking at naked women."--bruce feirstein, writer "I have not only been reading it but suggesting it to my clients.''--DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER "There are no old men anymore. PLAYBOY and Penthouse have between them made an ideal of eternal adolescence, sunburnt and saunaed, with the gray dorianed out of it."--PETER USTINOV "Some men read PLAYBOY. I read annual reports."--WARREN BUFFETT

A CENTERFOLD MISCELLANY OF HAIR COLOR, COVER MODEL AND CONTENT

A CENTERFOLD MISCELLANY OF HAIR COLOR, COVER MODEL AND CONTENT COVER MODEL HAIR COLOR, BY MONTH (see key) CONTENT OF NOTE: COVER MODELS SUBJECTS CONTRIBUTORS 1953 Marilyn Monroe the Dorsey Brothers Norman Holland; Bob Norman; George Jennings; Margaret S. Miller 1953 1954 Yvonne Menard; Joanne Arnold Orson Welles; Frank Lloyd Wright Ray Bradbury; Erskine Caldwell; Shepherd Mead 1954 1955 Leigh Lewin; Janet Pilgrim; Barbara Cameron Louis Armstrong; Jonathan Winters Dave Brubeck; John Collier 1955 1956 Jean Moorehead; Lisa Winters Jayne Mansfield; Ernest Hemingway Roald Dahl; Benny Goodman; Alice Denham 1956 1957 Jayne Mansfield; Sandra Edwards Ella Fitzgerald; Duke Ellington Fred Astaire; Jimmy Durante; Phil Silvers 1957 1958 Brigitte Bardot; Michiko Hamamura; Joyce Nizzari; Teri Hope Harry Kurnitz; Frank Sinatra Steve Allen; William Safire 1958 1959 Clayre Peters; Eleanor Bradley Oscar Levant Jack Kerouac; Ben Hecht; Jules Feiffer; Ken Purdy; Shel Silverstein 1959 1960 Marli Renfro; Teddi Smith Billy Wilder Ian Fleming; Arthur C. Clarke; Dalton Trumbo; Art Buchwald 1960 1961 Barbara Ann Lawford Patrick Dennis Leicester Hemingway; Bernard Wolfe; Ludwig Bemelmans; J. Paul Getty 1961 1962 Cynthia Maddox; Sheralee Conners Miles Davis; Peter Sellers; Jackie Gleason James Thurber; Paul Gallico 1962 1963 Kelly Collins; Sharon Rogers Bertrand Russell; Helen Gurley Brown; Jawaharlal Nehru Graham Greene; Lenny Bruce 1963 1964 Olga Schoberová; Donna Michelle Ayn Rand; Salvador Dali; Cassius Clay Vance Packard; Bertrand Russell 1964 1965 Allison Parks; Teddi Smith the Beatles; Jean-Paul Sartre; Sean Connery; Al Capp Vladimir Nabokov; Woody Allen 1965 1966 Sissy; Mary Warren; Nancy Gould Federico Fellini; Bob Dylan; Mel Brooks Len Deighton; Kingsley Amis 1966 1967 Helen Kirk; Nancy Chamberlain; Lynn Winchell Fidel Castro; Michael Caine; Johnny Carson Norman Mailer 1967 1968 Dolly Read; Erika Toth Truman Capote; Paul Newman; Stanley Kubrick John Cheever; Kurt Vonnegut 1968 1969 Jorja Beck; Paulette Lindberg Bill Cosby; Lee Marvin John Updike; Desmond Morris; Timothy Leary 1969 1970 Mary and Madeleine Collinson Janis Joplin; Ray Charles; Johnny Cash Joyce Carol Oates; George McGovern 1970 1971 Darine Stern; Simone Hammerstrand Albert Speer; Roman Polanksi Doris Lessing; Alex Comfort; Bruno Bettelheim 1971 1972 Barbi Benton; Sandra Jozefski Germaine Greer; Jack Nicholson; R. Buckminster Fuller Calvin Trillin; Bernard Malamud 1972 1973 Bonita Lou Rossi; Mercy Rooney Milton Friedman; Bobby Fischer; Bob Hope Paul Theroux; Gore Vidal 1973 1974 Robyn Douglass; Cyndi Wood Groucho Marx; Robert Redford Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein; Susan Sontag 1974 1975 Lillian Müller; Amy Arnold Billie Jean King; Erica Jong; Muhammad Ali Benjamin C. Bradlee; George Plimpton 1975 1976 Kristine De Bell; Patti McGuire David Bowie; O. J. Simpson; Abbie Hoffman John Irving; Helmut Newton 1976 1977 Barbra Streisand; Susan Kiger Henry Winkler; Ilie Nastase; Dick Clark John le Carré; Jorge Luis Borges 1977 1978 Dolly Parton; Farrah Fawcett Anita Bryant; David Frost; John Travolta Carl Sagan; Günter Grass 1978 1979 Raquel Welch; Rita Lee Marlon Brando; Al Pacino; Neil Simon; Richard Pryor Steve Martin; Robert Morley 1979 1980 Bo Derek; Mardi Jacquet Gay Talese; Roy Scheider; Larry Hagman; Michael Douglas Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini 1980 1981 Gabriella Brum; Barbara Bach; Bernadette Peters John Lennon and Yoko Ono; Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Stephen King 1981 1982 Marcy Hanson; Shannon Tweed Cheech and Chong; Lech Walesa; Stevie Nicks Jerzy Kosinski; Arthur Schlesinger Jr. 1982 1983 Kim Basinger; Nastassia Kinski; Joan Collins Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Ansel Adams; Mr. T. Hunter S. Thompson 1983 1984 Christie Brinkley; Terry Moore Shirley MacLaine; Dan Rather; Fran Lebowitz; Paul and Linda McCartney Mario Puzo 1984

A CENTERFOLD MISCELLANY OF HAIR COLOR, COVER MODEL AND CONTENT

A CENTERFOLD MISCELLANY OF HAIR COLOR, COVER MODEL AND CONTENT COVER MODEL HAIR COLOR, BY MONTH (see key) content of note: cover models subjects contributors 1985 Madonna; Roxanne Pulitzer Steve Jobs; Boy George; Goldie Hawn; Huey Lewis; Ron Howard Terry O'Neill 1985 1986 Kathleen Turner; Brooke Shields; Devin DeVasquez Jay Leno; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; Tom Cruise P. J. O'Rourke 1986 1987 Brigitte Nielsen; Maryam d'Abo Max Headroom; Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos; David Lee Roth Bret Easton Ellis 1987 1988 Cindy Crawford; Kimberly Conrad Don King; Teri Garr; Paul Hogan; Yasir Arafat; Cher David Foster Wallace 1988 1989 La Toya Jackson; Pamela Anderson; Candice Bergen Susan Sarandon; Barry Diller; John Candy David Mamet 1989 1990 Sharon Stone; Rosanna Arquette; Sherilyn Fenn Michael Milken; Stephen Hawking; Matt Groening T. C. Boyle 1990 1991 Stephanie Seymour; the Barbi twins; Dian Parkinson Spike Lee; Robert Downey Jr.; Julia Roberts Margaret Atwood 1991 1992 Swedish Bikini Team; Sandra Bernhard; Rachel Williams Woody Harrelson; Nicole Kidman Nicholson Baker 1992 1993 Anna Nicole Smith Tom and Roseanne Arnold; Rebecca De Mornay; Jerry Seinfeld Jay McInerney; Carl Hiaasen 1993 1994 Carol Shaya; Elle Macpherson Shaquille O'Neal; Hillary Clinton; David Geffen; Bill Gates; Quentin Tarantino Ice-T 1994 1995 Drew Barrymore; Nancy Sinatra Richard Branson; Camille Paglia; Ted Turner; Courteney Cox Betty Friedan 1995 1996 Jenny McCarthy; Uma Thurman Courtney Love; Salman Rushdie; Heidi Fleiss; Julia Louis-Dreyfus Harold Robbins 1996 1997 Danielle House; Nikki Ziering Julianna Margulies; Tommy Hilfiger; Lucy Lawless Michael Chabon; Deepak Chopra 1997 1998 Ginger Spice; Katarina Witt; Julie Brown Bettie Page; Jerry Springer; Matt Drudge; Tori Spelling Arianna Huffington 1998 1999 Charlize Theron; Naomi Campbell Kirstie Alley; David Schwimmer; Lucy Liu; Kevin Spacey Tom Clancy 1999 2000 Carmen Electra; Chyna Jeff Bezos; Jon Stewart; George Clooney; John Malkovich; Jennifer Lopez Matt Taibbi 2000 2001 Gena Lee Nolin; Gabrielle Reece Charlie Sheen; Johnny Knoxville; the West Wing team; Tim Burton Brian Aldiss 2001 2002 Jordan; Dita Von Teese Sarah Silverman; Larry Ellison; Jamie Oliver; Bill O'Reilly; Milla Jovovich Gene Simmons 2002 2003 Daryl Hannah; Tia Carrere; Alison Eastwood George W. Bush; Jay Z; Rachel Weisz; Halle Berry Ethan Coen 2003 2004 Jaime Pressly; Eva Herzigova; Denise Richards 50 Cent; Jude Law; Sergey Brin and Larry Page Jonathan Safran Foer 2004 2005 Teri Polo; Paris Hilton; Christy Hemme The Rock; Kid Rock; Lance Armstrong; Thomas L. Friedman Joel Stein 2005 2006 Jessica Alba; Cindy Margolis Kate Beckinsale; Hugh Laurie; Kanye West; Eva Longoria Sloane Crosley; Junot Díaz 2006 2007 Mariah Carey; Kristine Lefebvre; Kim Kardashian Simon Cowell; Fergie; Clive Owen; Mariah Carey Tobias Wolff 2007 2008 Anna Faris; Kelly Carrington Tina Fey; Helena Bonham Carter; Fareed Zakaria Frank Luntz; Bill Maher 2008 2009 Olivia Munn; Heidi Montag Marge Simpson; Seth Rogen; Alec Baldwin; Judd Apatow Christopher Hitchens 2009 2010 Ashley Dupre; Sasha Grey; Kelly Brook Russell Brand; Conan O'Brien; Olivia Wilde Will Self; Andre Balazs 2010 2011 Lizzy Jagger; Bree Olson Frank Gehry; Chloe Sevigny; Steve Buscemi Demetri Martin; John Hodgman; Julian Barnes 2011 2012 Lindsay Lohan; Katrina Darling Jon Hamm; Andy Samberg; Padma Lakshmi Jack Abramoff; Jonathan Ames 2012 2013 Paz de la Huerta; Tamara Ecclestone Lena Dunham; J.J. Abrams; Peter Dinklage; Ai Weiwei Irvine Welsh; James Franco 2013 2014 Kate Moss Ben Affleck; Patton Oswalt Rick Moody; Mark Leyner; Gilbert Gottfried; David Mamet; Slavoj Zizek 2014

key to hair color: Blonde Dark Blonde Redhead Dark Red Brunette Brunette/Black Black Multiple cover models Cover primarily features Rabbit Head Other (e.g., an illustration) A double issue There was no March 1955 issue. A number of hair colors are open to debate. The hair color of men appearing on covers has not been included.

THE PLAYBOY LOGO HISTORY AND HIDE & SEEK A LONGSIDE Nike's swoosh, Coke's dynamic curve and Apple's bitten apple, playboy's bowtied Rabbit Head is one of the most recognized logos in the world. (Even in 1959, the USPS delivered to the Playboy offices an envelope bearing no address other than the Rabbit Head silhouette.) The logo was designed in 1953 by playboy's legendary art director Art Paul; it took him less than an hour. Since then the Rabbit has adorned a diverse panoply of items--from perfume and alarm clocks to lingerie and bottle openers. The Rabbit has also appeared in some form on the cover of every issue of playboy magazine, apart from the first. In the early years he was often featured as a character in his own right-watching a show, popping champagne, lounging poolside. But as the cover girls gained confidence and prominence, the Rabbit receded into the shadows. Soon, a splendidly curious game developed between the magazine's designers, who secreted the Rabbit Head logo somewhere on the cover, and the readers, who were challenged to find it. Below are some of the more ingenious places the Rabbit has hidden on playboy

covers through the decades:

HEFFBI THE FBI was tasked with investigating playboy and Hugh Hefner, according to records published in 2000. Bureau director J. Edgar Hoover first became concerned about the magazine in 1955 when it ran a science-fiction love story featuring space-exploring G-men. Then Hoover's ire was roused in February 1963 when Hef declared in an editorial that "J. Edgar has always been something of a nut on the subject of sex" and questioned why the FBI was more interested in censorship than "the nation's thriving crime syndicate." Hoover demanded, "What do we know of H.M. Hefner?"--a question that led to more than 200 pages of FBI reports during the 1960s.

HEF took delivery of his jet in 1969 and sold it in 1975; below are some specs: Type McDonnell Douglas dc-9-32 Registration n950pb Nicknames Big Bunny, Hare Force One Dimensions 119.3' (length), 93.4' (span) Capacity six crew, 38 passengers Hef's quarters were accessed by a private staircase and featured a king-size elliptical water bed finished in silk and Tasmanian possum fur. The three fully trained stewardess-models were known as "Jet Bunnies."