Hefner Agrees to Tell His Life Story : Playboy Publisher Gets Seven-Figure Advance for Book

A contemplative Hugh Hefner confirmed this week that he has entered into an agreement with Leo Janos, co-writer of the top-selling biography “Yeager,” and Bantam Books Inc., publisher of both “Yeager” and the wildly successful “Iacocca,” to produce an as-yet untitled autobiography.

With the exact amount of the seven-figure advance undisclosed, the book is said by all parties to be, in the description of Kathy Robbins, the New York literary agent who represented Hefner and Janos, “an extraordinary and complex financial arrangement for world publishing rights in a single-volume autobiography.”

Bantam expects to publish the book as part of its Bantam Books hard-cover line in late 1987.

Hefner, reached at his legendary mansion in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles, said: “Well, I guess the time has come to put it down.”

“I can think of few people whose influence on our culture has been so monumental as Hugh Hefner’s,” said Linda Grey, Bantam vice president and editor-in-chief. “But despite his being an international household name, few of us understand what really makes him tick. Now, finally, Hugh Hefner has decided the time has come to tell his own story in his own words.”

A stroke March 6 had prompted “a rather dramatic change in terms of priorities,” the founder of Playboy magazine and Playboy Enterprises Inc. said in explaining his decision to tell his story. Coupled with his impending 60th birthday, Hefner said he found himself reassessing his goals.

“When you are touched on the shoulder, so to speak,” Hefner said, “and are fortunate enough to be given rather dramatic evidence of your own mortality, I think the things you might have been worrying about the day before suddenly fall into a very different sort of perspective. The meetings, the things that seemed pressing, stressful, seem very, very unimportant.”

Hefner, founder of a publishing empire that Bantam said “revolutionized social and sexual mores internationally,” said his book would encompass three interwoven stories. There will be the story of his family and his background, Hefner said, beginning with his birth to “strong Protestant parents from the farmlands of Nebraska.

“My parents are very typical of the early part of this century, and my life has been very much both a reflection and a response to the way they were raised.

“My life and Playboy,” Hefner added, “are a truly American phenomenon.”

Hefner’s book also will document the growth of Playboy magazine and its subsidiaries, beginning with a first issue published when Hefner was 27 and featuring the now-famous calendar photo of Marilyn Monroe.

That first issue, Bantam noted, bore no cover date because Hefner “was not sure when or if he would be able to produce another.”

Playboy went on to become the most successful men’s magazine in history, with Hefner continuing to serve as its editor, publisher, and chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Playboy Enterprises Inc.

As creator of the centerfold concept, Hefner adopted a flamboyant, somewhat eccentric and often reclusive way of living that came to be synonymous with the fabled “Playboy life style.”

Married once, Hefner has been linked romantically and otherwise with a string of beautiful women, many of them featured on the pages of his own magazine. Much of the corporate side of Playboy’s activities has been assumed by his daughter, Christie, 32.

But Hefner said he was particularly interested in exploring the change in sexual mores and attitudes that has paralleled the growth of Playboy and similar publications. Playboy, Hefner said, “isn’t simply a magazine and a life that came out of a whim or an accidental set of circumstances. The roots of it all lie in our society in the early part of this century, and in my upbringing, and Playboy is truly a response to this, to the Puritanism and the repression of attitudes and values with which I was raised.”

Hefner called his life “a Rorschach test for journalists,” in that as if he were some sociological ink blot, “reporters come away with a little bit of Hefner, a little bit of Playboy, but also a little bit of their own fantasy and the prejudice of our time. One of the curious things about the phenomenon of my life is that so very much of it has been lived out in a public way that is related to people’s views of sexuality and social conscience.”

Hefner said he and Leo Janos began working in four and five-hour sessions several weeks ago, and have now progressed from his childhood to his days at Chicago’s Steinmetz High. “Those sessions,” Hefner said, “are like therapy.”

Janos, Hefner said, was his first choice as a co-writer. Hefner said he was impressed by pre-publication excerpts that Playboy ran of “Yeager,” but said also he felt comfortable because Janos “has similar liberal Democrat Midwestern origins to mine.”

A former ghost and speech writer for such politicians as President Lyndon B. Johnson and Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, Janos said “a fortunate set of timing” had made the Hefner project an ideal one for him. As to the challenge of matching his success in capturing Gen. Chuck Yeager, the flying ace who was the first man to smash the sound barrier, Janos observed that “one thing they both have in common is that they are entirely focused men. No matter what is going on in their lives at a given moment, their minds don’t wander. And they are also totally similar in standards of excellence: Hefner for the standards of his magazine, Chuck for the standards of his flying.”

In spite of the controversial elements of Hefner’s life and magazine, Janos said “the book will be tasteful.” Controversy, Janos said, “is in the eye of the beholder. What we’re doing is, we’re going to tell the story as Hugh Hefner sees it and believes it.”

While Hefner said the book “will tell all,” Janos cautioned against expecting the most intimate details of Hefner’s life. Quipped Janos: “Don’t dwell on lingerie.”

In Chicago, Nat Lehrman, former president of Playboy Enterprises Inc. publications and the “facilitator” of Hefner’s book project, said one other fact made Janos the perfect partner for Hefner. “He’s the right age--51,” Lehrman said. “He’s been through the important period of Hef’s life.”

Timing was in large part what made Robbins, Janos’ New York literary agent, so interested in the project. “On nonfiction projects,” she said, “time either runs for you or against you. Could you have sold ‘Yeager’ in the ‘60s? No. Could you sell Woodward and Bernstein today?” Of Hefner and the timing of his forthcoming autobiography, Robbins said: “Once again I think he has been instinctively brilliant.”

But beyond that, Robbins said, “Hefner accesses several decades of our culture--our political, social, sexual, publishing culture--in a way that really nobody else does. I think it’s irresistible.”

“In some ways,” Hefner agreed, “our society in the middle ‘80s is strangely similar to the early ‘50s, when Playboy began. That makes this a fascinating time to be looking back.”

Fueled by the monumental success of “Iacocca,” the fastest-selling adult hard-cover book in history, and “Yeager,” which hit seven printings totaling 500,000 copies one month after its publication, Bantam’s Linda Grey said she expected the Hefner book to generate similar interest and attention.

“I think Hefner is perhaps more controversial in some ways than Yeager and Iacocca,” Grey said. “And he is definitely larger than life. Whether he is an American hero in the tradition of Yeager and Iacocca is up to people to decide when they read the book.”