Playboy, Monroe, and the Beginning of a Media Empire
1949 to Dec 1953
When creating the first issue of his new gentleman’s magazine, Hugh Heffner needed a hit. And by the end of 1953, there was no bigger hit than Marilyn Monroe. Monroe had been in numerous photo shoots, pageants, and films that highlighted her physical beauty and her talent as an actress. Hefner then sought out and bought the rights to a series of nude photographs taken by photographer Tom Kelley in 1949. The cover featured Monroe from a separate event; her in the Miss America Pageant Parade from 1952. After purchasing these rights for $500, Hugh used Monroe as the centerfold for the first issue of Playboy in December 1953. Despite the main draw of the magazine being cobbled together from previous work, it was an immediate success and sold an estimated 50,000 copies. Playboy quickly grew at a time where sexuality as a market to be explored likewise was becoming larger and more public. The contrast between the story of the first issue and January 1955 is evident. In just barely over a year, Playboy had grown to feature work from multiple respected and popular artists, and could commission the work of those artists and models directly without needing to purchase the rights secondhand. It was now hard to find a brand name that had become more synonymous with sexuality, one associated with as much sleaziness as it was with class and a promised image of sexual prowess, than Playboy.
