Hugh Hall Hef

This month we lost both Hugh Hefner and Monty Hall, the world’s most notorious playboy and television’s ultimate salesman and though we were told that the mystery was what was behind doors number one, two or three it was the other side of the gate of the Playboy Mansion that held our fascination. 

The carefully choreographed and extensively photographed fantasy of Hefner’s hedonistic heaven with young women so cute they didn’t need to be built and so built they didn’t need to be cute adorned his magazine and domicile even as Hef graced into the extreme codgerdom of 91. 

His perennial penile pipe and more recently adorned white yachting cap only made his forward leering posture the nightmare of the wealthy Popeye.  

Starting in the last months of the Kennedy Administration, Canadian Monty Hall created, produced and hosted Let’s Make A Deal that exploited the contestants’s needs and fantasies with a three card monte style faux giveaway show. Its “lucky” victims were chosen from a mob of desperate humdrums dressed for maximum humiliation. 

Monty carefully navigated their choices between tightly rolled wads of greenbacks and curtains hiding joke gifts, off brand furniture and appliances and off season tourist junkets. The entire program was based on duping contestants out of  their last shred of dignity with a bevy of tacky room sets and desert heat vacations. Appliances by no name companies were erotically massaged by models while the voice from above described them.  A full one third of air time was filled with outright commercials for cheap crap masquerading as enticements.

The daytime show was a perfect fantasy for housewives desexed by childrearing and isolated drudgery: a well dressed, charmless, harmless man offering gifts and excitement and drama. Choices. The unbearable horror of choices. 

Contrast this with Hefner’s two late evening television offerings, Playboy’s Penthouse and Playboy After Dark. Both short run variety shows were set in Hef’s apartment where performers and models listened to and ogled each others talents. The pretense that the fashion and passion advise of the libertine philosopher could turn even a nerdy, dirty Chicago divorcee into the world’s happiest and hippest fellow was the underlying premise of both programs.   

Monty Hall was the only thing to look forward to on my bedridden school days after I Love Lucy. HH’s magazine opened my eyes to more than just bosoms. I first read feminists and Nobel Prize winning authors, interviews with Castro,  candidate Jimmy Carter and leaders of Civil Rights movement. And I loved the cartoons.  

Farewell to thee leading purveyors of late 20th Century fantasy. For now both of you know for all of time what lies behind Door Number Three.

Don Arrup

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