Playboy launches Hebrew-language edition in Israel
By Emily Senger - Tuesday, March 5, 2013 - 0 Comments
Playboy magazine is bringing a Hebrew-language edition to the Holy Land.
“Our target is…
Playboy magazine is bringing a Hebrew-language edition to the Holy Land.
“Our target is men who want a taste of the good life and also women who are curious about the tastes of the men in their lives,” owner and publisher Daniel Pomerantz told reporters at the magazine’s launch in Tel Aviv.
While playboy founder Hugh Hefner wasn’t there in person, he recorded a message for the launch, saying: “I’m proud to see Playboy Israel embark on its mission to play an important role in strengthening freedom of speech, freedom of choice and freedom of the press.” Continue…
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Hugh Hefner’s long-time secretary, Mary O’Connor, dies at 86
By Emily Senger - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 at 9:22 AM - 0 Comments
Mary O’Connor, 86, died Sunday after working for more than 40 years as Hugh…
Mary O’Connor, 86, died Sunday after working for more than 40 years as Hugh Hefner’s personal secretary.
Hefner announced the sad news on Twitter, saying: “Mary passed away today. We loved her more than words can say.”
And Hefner’s 26-year-old wife, Crystal Hefner, also shared the news: Continue…
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Hef’s bosom buddy
By Nicholas Köhler - Thursday, March 1, 2012 at 10:10 AM - 0 Comments
Orillia’s Doug Sneyd, a ‘Playboy’ cartoonist for 48 years, spotted Hugh Hefner’s no. 1 girlfriend first
For half a century, Doug Sneyd has worked for Hugh Hefner, publishing more than 450 cartoons in Playboy magazine from his home in Orillia, Ont. Despite that lengthy and ongoing professional relationship, Sneyd and Hefner have met exactly once, at Expo 67 in Montreal, where Hef was opening a Playboy Club nightspot. So it was an especially neat trick when, two years ago, Sneyd, who is 80, managed to introduce Hefner, 85, to 28-year-old Playmate Shera Bechard of Kapuskasing, Ont.—a woman Hefner describes as “my No. 1 girlfriend.” But let’s start this story at the beginning.
You see, Sneyd doesn’t really fit the profile of the Playboy cartoonist, whatever that is. He grew up in staid Guelph, Ont., has lived in small-town Orillia since 1969, was married for 44 years to the same woman—Shirley—and raised four children. He was a seasoned member of the Rotary Club of Orillia, did illustrations for Chatelaine and made a good part of his living supplying the Toronto Star and other papers with thoughtful, often provocative editorial cartoons. A widower since 2001, he met his current girlfriend, Heidi Hutson, a decade ago after a day of golfing. “I don’t know too much about him,” Hutson, 67, recalls a friend saying after they first encountered Sneyd at an afternoon social, “but I think he works for Walt Disney.”
Sneyd didn’t set out to become a Playboy cartoonist—or even a cartoonist at all. Far from it. Yet his sensual, silly, single-panel gags, meticulously executed and vividly coloured for the past 48 years, have become a Playboy hallmark. “He’s an ideal cartoonist for us because he has a good eye, a good sense of humour and is able to draw a very pretty lady,” says Hefner. That is made amply clear in The Art of Doug Sneyd, a lavish coffee-table book published last year with some 270 of his Playboy cartoons. “Oh, yes, I still have my virtue, but I hardly ever use it anymore,” a redhead with a beehive tells a man in evening dress (November 1979). “The way I see it, promiscuity is its own reward,” one woman remarks to another (July 1972). As one dry-as-dust clerk at Library and Archives Canada, which keeps a Sneyd collection, writes in the archive record: “Generally, the cartoons deal with male-female relations and reflect the attitudes towards women and sexual mores held by [Playboy].”
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Somehow, Sheen triumphs
By Jonathon Gatehouse - Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 8:57 AM - 5 Comments
Rock bottom? Not likely. His history of deviancy is long and accomplished.
The Hugh Hefner Sky Villa sits atop the 40-storey Fantasy Tower at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. Renting for US$40,000 a night, the two-floor, 9,000-sq.-foot suite—legal occupancy 250—boasts its own glass elevator, pop-up plasma screen TVs, a fully equipped gym and sauna, and an outdoor, cantilevered jacuzzi with the Playboy bunny symbol set into the tiles. But its true, and unspeakably sleazy, selling point is the round, eight-foot rotating bed underneath a mirrored ceiling. The perfect place, in short, for Charlie Sheen.In mid-January, the suite was the scene of an epic bender in which the 45-year-old star of the CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men holed up for days, entertaining a cavalcade of porn stars, “tattoo models,” and prostitutes. Outside, the tabloid websites gleefully catalogued the self-destructive details; from 10 a.m. Grey Goose vodka shots and cocaine, to a $26,000 hooker bill. Sheen made it back to Los Angeles via private jet just in time for his show’s Tuesday morning “call,” but missed work the next day due to what producers described as an ear infection. That weekend, Ricky Gervais stood in front of an international television audience at the Golden Globes and confirmed Sheen’s status as a punchline. “It’s going to be a night of partying and heavy drinking,” the British comedian predicted as he opened the awards ceremony. “Or, as Charlie Sheen calls it, breakfast.”
Being the highest-paid actor in television, at almost $2 million per episode, should never be confused with being the most respected. For years now, even Sheen himself has seemed to resent the fame derived from his highly successful, yet critically reviled, comedy. Once the hot, young star of such “serious” films as Platoon and Wall Street, he has watched his career devolve into slight comedies like Hot Shots and Major League, then sitcoms, the final refuge of the clapped-out Hollywood icon. Paid to play the roué on TV—the role of boozy, lecherous “Charlie Harper” was specifically written with him in mind—he has carried the performance over into everyday life, embracing a bad-boy lifestyle with gusto. “He likes hookers and he likes coke and he’s got enough money for both,” an anonymous Sheen “friend” told the gossip site Radaronline.
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Hugh Hefner’s got a new crusade
By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments
A new film highlights the Playboy founder’s other legacy—activism
MONICA ALMEIDA/ NEW YORK TIMES
Hugh Hefner is on the line from the Playboy mansion in Los Angeles. It’s mid-afternoon and, yes, he’s wearing silk pyjamas. As a pioneer of the home office as boudoir, he used to wear pyjamas for comfort as he edited Playboy. Now he owns hundreds of pairs, tailor-made, and they’re as integral to his image as the iconic bunny.
Stubbornly un-retired at the age of 84, the grandad of America’s sexual revolution is working on his legacy. But then, he always has been. Hefner’s meticulous scrapbooks of clippings and photos, which began with a cartoon autobiography in high school, now run to almost 2,500 volumes—a treasure trove that Oscar-winning Toronto filmmaker Brigitte Berman discovered only after she decided to make a documentary about the legendary lothario.
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Beatty’s 12,775 women? Ridiculous.
By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 9:50 AM - 4 Comments
The actor wanted a book for his kids ‘that gave him his due as a filmmaker.’ This isn’t it.
There’s a sad momentum in Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America. In an exhaustive, 627-page biography of the Hollywood icon, Peter Biskind sets out to prove Beatty is a serious filmmaker of historic importance, not just an incorrigible playboy. But as if governed by his subject’s roving eye, the author undermines his mission with the promiscuity of his reportage—he just can’t resist the temptation to chase every skirt that sent a ripple through Beatty’s life. An endless task.
In the course of a career that now appears to be over, Beatty made at least seven significant pictures: Splendor in the Grass, Bonnie and Clyde, Heaven Can Wait, Shampoo, Reds, Bugsy and Bulworth. Not too shabby. And he’s reaped 14 Oscar nominations as an actor, producer, director and writer. He got four each for Heaven Can Wait and Reds—a feat rivalled only by Orson Welles.
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This week: Good news/Bad news
By Michael Friscolanti - Friday, October 23, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 1 Comment
Plus a week in the life of Axl Rose
Face of the week
Feeding time: A zookeeper feeds milk to a newborn male giraffe at a zoo in Duisburg, Germany. The giraffe was born on Oct. 3.
A week in the life of Axl Rose
Welcome (back) to the jungle. Fresh off of being accused of plagiarizing material for Guns N’ Roses’ latest album, Chinese Democracy, the 47-year-old front man announced on Monday a series of Canadian tour dates that will take his band to 13 cities—from Winnipeg to Moncton, N.B. On Wednesday, The Middle, an ABC sitcom set in Indiana, debuted featuring a character named after Rose, who hails from the Hoosier state. Continue… -
Econowatch
By Steve Maich - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 3 Comments
The new normal: Call it frugality if you like. We call it sanity.
When will things go back to normal? That is the only question that seems to matter: when will this strange and frightening episode pass? It’s a fair question, but not exactly the right one. What most really mean is: when will my house price begin soaring again? How long before my stocks triple? And when will I feel safe to max out my credit cards again? Over the past 15 years that became “normal,” or at least common. But that isn’t coming back soon.The reality is, everything we see happening around us is part of the process of returning to normal. For the past decade or so the laws of financial gravity were suspended. Now they are back in force, and those who soared the highest have the furthest to fall.
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pursuant to paragraph (iv), subsection 37-f, the cable guy takes off his pants
By Scott Feschuk - Wednesday, May 14, 2008 at 5:19 AM - 0 Comments
Warning! This post – which features excerpts from Playboy’s quarterly filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission – contains some risqué language and terminology related to straight and homosexual sex (though no outright profanity). So please stop reading if you don’t want to hear about bums and stuff.
Now that I’ve guaranteed my biggest readership ever, let’s begin.
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playboy’s finances: soft, limp – are you getting the comparative image I am trying to evoke? – drooping, flaccid, a non-erect penis…
By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, May 13, 2008 at 5:21 AM - 0 Comments
It has been revealed that Playboy is losing money. Playboy! You might ask yourself: how does a company lose a million dollars a month publishing pictures of buck-naked ladies? Did futures contracts for crotchless underwear abruptly skyrocket? Has the shady cartel controlling the production of silicone gel ruthlessly scaled back implant production? Did Charlie Sheen allow his 2,000 subscriptions to lapse?
Let’s examine this matter more closely by taking actual excerpts from last week’s quarterly report by Playboy Enterprises Inc. and translating them from the tortured language of financial filings to simple, straightforward English:
Playboy: Our publishing and domestic entertainment businesses continue to face unprecedented change in the way consumers access and use media content.
Translation: Them’s got free naked ladies on those Internets! -
"remind me – which naked lady is your daughter again?"
By Scott Feschuk - Monday, May 12, 2008 at 6:38 AM - 0 Comments
So what we’ve got in this here photograph is Playboy’s Playmate of the Year, Jayde Nicole of Port Perry, Ont. She’s the one wearing the Playboy rabbit necklace and, disappointingly, clothes.
