Smile of the Day Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Tuesday December 1, 2020 Smile of the Day: Playboy Magazine

On this Day:

Playboy magazine was first published featuring Marilyn Munroe as its first Playmate.

Playboy is an American men’s lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner’s mother. {Ed: Can you imagine approaching your mother for a loan to launch a magazine that features nude or semi-nude women?] 

Notable for its centerfold models, Playboy played an important role in the sexual revolution and remains one of the world’s best-known brands, having grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc. (PEI), with a presence in nearly every medium. In addition to the flagship magazine in the United States, special nation-specific versions of Playboy are published worldwide.

Now, least you think that the magazine is solely about nude women, Playboy has a long history of publishing short stories by novelists such as Arthur C. Clarke, Ian Fleming, Vladimir Nabokov, Saul Bellow, Chuck Palahniuk, P. G. Wodehouse, Roald Dahl, Haruki Murakami, and Margaret Atwood. With a regular display of full-page color cartoons, it became a showcase for notable cartoonists, including Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Cole, Eldon Dedini, Jules Feiffer, Shel Silverstein,  Erich Sokol,  Roy Raymonde, Gahan Wilson, and Rowland B. Wilson. 

Playboy features monthly interviews of notable public figures, such as artists, architects, economists, composers, conductors, film directors, journalists, novelists, playwrights, religious figures, politicians, athletes, and race car drivers. The magazine generally reflects a liberal editorial stance, although it often interviews conservative celebrities (per Wikipedia).

First, a Story:

Did you hear about the new Playboy magazine for married men? Every month it has the same centerfold.

Second, a Song:

Some Like It Hot is a 1959 American black-and-white romantic comedy film directed and produced by Billy Wilder, starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon. The film is about two musicians who dress in drag in order to escape from mafia gangsters whom they witnessed committing a crime (inspired by the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre).

Some Like It Hot opened to critical and commercial success and is considered to be one of the greatest films of all time. The film received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Actor, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. In 1989, the Library of Congress selected it as one of the first 25 films for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. It was voted as the top comedy film by the American Film Institute on their list on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Laughs poll in 2000, and was selected as the best comedy of all time in a poll of 253 film critics from 52 countries conducted by the BBC in 2017. (per Wikipedia)

Here is Marilyn Munroe singing “I Wanna Be Loved by You” from the film Some Like It Hot. I hope you enjoy this.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eDHlgnRuaM)

Thought for the Day:

“If you let society and your peers define who you are, you’re the less for it.” – Hugh Hefner

Cheers!

Have a great day!

Dave & Colleen

© 2020 David J. Bilinsky and Colleen E. Bilinsky