In the wake of Hefner’s passing, we look back on his love of horror cinema.
Hugh Hefner, who passed away at the age of 91 this week, is of course most known for his biggest contribution to the world of popular culture: Playboy Magazine. Founded in 1953, Playboy’s first issue was put together by Hefner with a mere $8,000 investment that he scraped together from friends, family, and a loan taken out on his own furniture.
The rest, as they say, is history.
What you might not know about Hugh Hefner is that his first foray into the print world dates back much further than 1953; he created his first newspaper when he was just 10 years old, and launched several different papers and magazines throughout his early childhood years.
One of those magazines, believe it or not, was all about horror movies!
When he was 15 years old, Hefner created Shudder Magazine, which ran for 5 issues and profiled the horror films he was voraciously consuming at the time. In conjunction with the magazine, Hefner also launched Shudder Club, allowing fellow horror fans to come together and talk horror in the days long before the internet united us.
“I grew up loving the classic horror movies of the 1930s. I created a club & fanzine in my teens titled Shudder,” Hefner tweeted back in 2010. He added in a subsequent tweet, shortly thereafter, “I created a Shudder Club & Shudder Magazine as a boy as tribute to my love of horror films, books, stories & radio shows.”
As author Steven Watts wrote in his book Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream, Hefner even managed to convince a few horror icons to join the club.
“The boys were delighted when Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre replied to their solicitation and accepted honorary positions in the club,” Watts wrote.
Under the Shudder Club Productions banner, Hugh Hefner even directed his own horror film when he was 16, which was titled Return from the Dead!
Hefner himself played a scientist in the film, which also starred his friends Jim Brophy as the monster and Hefner’s high school crush Betty Conklin as the scientist’s wife; Conklin is often cited as the inspiration behind Hefner’s “The Hef” persona, as his failed attempts to win her over in his youth compelled him to adopt a new style and attitude.
Never leaving his love for horror behind, Hefner appeared in the docu-series “100 Years of Horror” back in 1996, talking classic horror in 13 of the series’ 26 episodes.
Lifelong horror fan. Pioneer. Legend. Rest in Peace, Hef.
