1950s
Not even a year into its existence, PLAYBOY faced its first major battle against censorship. After applying for a second-class mailing permit in 1954 and being denied, initially on technical grounds and then because Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield deemed the magazine obscene, Hugh Hefner took the Post Office to court. Hefner’s 1955 victory was resounding, but until the end of his term as postmaster, in 1961, Summerfield waged a broader war to keep “obscenity”—his version of it, anyway—out of American mailboxes. In 1958 the Post Office tried once again to stop distribution of PLAYBOY (the November issue at left) on vague grounds of obscenity. Like Summerfield’s other pet postal project, delivering the mail by missile, the effort failed, landing with a thud.
1960s
When accepted the short story Nine Lives for publication, editors didn’t realize the author, U.K. Le Guin, was Ursula. After learning the truth, they still wanted the story (about clones in space) for the November 1969 issue but asked permission to keep the byline as it was, apparently afraid of alienating their male audience. Le Guin (pictured below) agreed and supplied a short bio for Playbill hinting at a secret behind the author’s identity: “It is commonly suspected that the writings of U.K. Le Guin are not actually written by U.K. Le Guin but by another person of the same name.” Sci-fi readers would get the joke: Her novel The Left Hand of Darkness, published under her full name, had made a huge splash. Later, Le Guin regretted acquiescing to PLAYBOY. “It was the first (and is the only) time I met with anything I understood as sexual prejudice, prejudice against me as a woman writer, from any editor or publisher; and it seemed so silly, so grotesque, that I failed to see that it was also important,” she wrote in 1975. The next time published a Le Guin story, Unlocking the Air, it was with her full byline.
1970s
By the time Abbie Hoffman sat for the May 1976 Playboy Interview, he was one of America’s most prominent social activists. He was also a fugitive: The Yippie co-founder, Chicago Seven defendant and author of Steal This Book had jumped bail in 1974 after being arrested and jailed for dealing cocaine. On the run, he’d taken extreme steps to hide his identity, moving frequently and undergoing plastic surgery, and was initially grateful for a platform to share his revolutionary views. “PLAYBOY is, in effect, saying that it won’t cooperate with the government in its attempt to capture and cage me,” he said. “Hugh is putting his ass on the line, no doubt about it.” But after the piece came out, Hoffman agonized to various New York journalists that the story had blown his cover. “Did Hefner’s henchman strip the mask from the Yippie desperado?” asked The Village Voice on May 3, 1976. The clear answer: Nope. Hoffman lived “underground” until September 1980 before turning himself in to authorities, ultimately serving about one year in prison.
1980s
Since 1931 the Library of Congress has published Braille versions of magazines. In 1970 PLAYBOY joined their ranks—“our gift to the government and the blind community,” editors said. But in July 1985, Republican representative Chalmers Wylie of Ohio successfully led a vote to cut off funding for the Braille PLAYBOY; it had too much talk of “wanton and illicit sex,” he complained. Outraged, blind readers, the Blinded Veterans Association, Playboy, the American Library Association and others joined forces to sue the government and overturn what they saw as “blatant, paternalistic censorship” that violated First Amendment rights. In August 1986 the courts agreed, declaring the move unconstitutional and restoring blind subscribers’ right to read PLAYBOY for the articles.
