Free Hef's Little Black Book by Hugh M. Hefner Page B

literature and fine illustrations and urbane life advice. He was considered to be trouble, in a Leave It to Beaver era, and eras beyond. J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI started a file on him early on. Nixon later placed him on his enemies list. Meanwhile, the state of Illinois, the city of Chicago, the state of New York, the state of New Jersey, all of Great Britain—at one point or another, they allcame after him to levy punishments of one kind or another, as it was clear that he threatened a puritanical morality that creaked, was on its last legs, especially as compromised Bible-thumpers of the religious right kept getting caught in bed with compromised ladies.

    In the mid-eighties, Ronald Reagan’s commission headed by Edwin Meese successfully managed to have his magazine banned from convenience stores. That encumbrance, as with all others before it, dissolved in short order, went away, not that the setback wasn’t felt; he experienced aminor stroke in March 1985. There were female problems in the same time frame as well, with an obstreperous Special Lady. Then he got back up and reconfigured his world. “I put down the luggage of my life,” he said. “I quit burning my candle at both ends and started savoring every day.”

    a nd When All Is Seemingly Lost…
    You just have to rise again. You have to keep getting up .
    F riendships Last for a Reason
    Making a friend for life is more a matter of what kind of a friend you are. You certainly in most cases can tell—you just connect on every level, especially in terms of shared interests and sensibilities.
    But particularly when it involves the opposite sex, everything is not always out on the table, and you’re never really sure. You may remain a friend for life, but platonic friendships tend to last longer than romantic connections.
    He has often referred to those who are endlessly welcome at his home as the closely knit Family of Friends, aka The Gang. Their names are kept on the Gate List, permitting them access to the Master’s Shangri-la at any time, although lately they mostly come when expected. (They announce themselves to a speaker embedded in a boulder at the main gate—the Talking Rock!—and security staff then triggers the lowering of the drawbridge.) In the old days, there would usually be a friend or several sleeping over—Tony Curtis, Shel Silverstein, the historian Max Lerner, et cetera—living in the house, enjoying semipermanent residence, sometimes recovering from addictions (or broken loves), taking meals, taking lovers, playing games all night with him, in case he felt the need.
    A Chicago nightlife impresario who came to work for the Playboy Clubs, a sweet rogue named John Dante, for instance—he was one of the closest, one who would live in both houses, play games, and be an ever-present ear for Hef. In 1968, Dante began squandering money on football bets like never before, and suddenly he was in bookie hock for $38,000 and also mostly broke, and was therefore scared shitless of thugs looking for the return of green. (Dante was the sort of guy who talked like that, rest his soul.)
    He would recall: “I didn’t even want to think about how much I owed, but it was hanging over my head like a guillotine—and I knew that by Tuesday morning the callswould start coming in: ‘Moe Gagliano is on the line from Denver,’ and if I didn’t take the call somebody would show up at the front door.” (Don’t swing, don’t ring, please!) He somehow bought himself a week, only to get out of town, take the big powder, split from the company, the Mansion, the Life, completely on the q.t.—hey, maybe even sign on as a steward on an ocean liner bound for Italy, just to disappear. He said nothing to Hef, kept playing all-night Monopoly with him and laughing it up, but finally blurted the what-was-what to Hef’s number one, secretary Bobbie Arnstein, telling her to keep mum, which she of course did not do.
    “I was lying on my bed talking to myself