MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Hugh Hefner: Once Upon a Time’: An Airbrushed Life

A saxophone on the soundtrack insinuates its hot-diggity lushness; the camera roams seductively across glistening, unfocused vistas. James Coburn’s voice-over narration intones the proper note of Olympian lasciviousness. Suddenly it all comes clear.

Hey, we’re in Hef’s pad!

“Hugh Hefner: Once Upon a Time” (UA Coronet) is a Hefner-commissioned bio-pic--a prelude to his upcoming autobiography. This being a David Lynch/Mark Frost production, you keep hoping the documentary will strike a connection between the Playboy Philosophy and “Twin Peaks” and “Blue Velvet.” After all, Hefner’s ascendancy came about in the Eisenhower ‘50s, the same era Lynch doesn’t want to unglue himself from. (These renegade libertines have a way of cleaving to the puritanism that forged them.) But the movie was directed by someone named Robert Heath, and he doesn’t have the right attitude: He directs like a man who only reads Playboy for the articles.

The sociological insights in this piece of dubious hagiography are almost as skimpy as a centerfold’s nightie. The basic point seems to be that all that tight-vested Eisenhower ‘50s conservatism led inevitably to bunnies--er, Bunnies. It’s not much of a point, but then neither is the film’s explanation for the Playboy empire’s decline: the Reagan ‘80s knocked out all those swinging key clubs and turned wholesome sex into something unwholesome again.

Actually, the declining fortunes of Playboy Inc. are airbrushed. What we get for the most part is a fuzzy chronology of events beginning with Hefner’s repressive Methodist upbringing in Chicago, followed by his blossoming into a fun guy in college. (He edited the college humor magazine, complete with demure co-ed pin-ups: Even then he knew!) Then Hefner hits upon the idea of a men’s magazine that would demonstrate “nice girls like to have sex too.” But there’s almost no bankroll. James Coburn reinforces the point for us: “All he had was his dream.”

Not quite. He also had Marilyn Monroe’s infamous nude calendar photo, which, when reproduced in the magazine’s first issue, contributed heartily to its sellout.

The film has its warts-and-all aspects: The wrongful prosecution on drug charges of Hefner’s personal assistant Bobbie Arnstein, who killed herself shortly after sentencing; the Dorothy Stratten story; a description of Hefner’s ruinous dexedrine habit. Clips from interviews with spoilsport nay-sayers like Susan Brownmiller and Mike Wallace punctuate the odyssey. Even William Buckley, who has occasionally written for Playboy, can’t resist a few oleaginous demurrals. (For aficionados of irony, there’s even a too-good-to-be-true clip of a youngish Charles Keating haranguing Hef on behalf of an organization called Citizens for Decency.)

But most of the film (Times rated Mature for--natch--nudity) has a stroll-down-memory lane softness. It’s about as hard-hitting as an infomercial. Hefner himself comes across as a surprisingly clenched swinger. We see him crooning on one of his “Playboy About Dark” TV soirees and he seems about as comfortable as a deacon in a sauna. Everyboy’s fantasy king doesn’t seem to be appropriately gung-ho about the babes and the private Big Bunny jet and all the other pasha’s accoutrements.

But this approach is a ploy. “Hugh Hefner: Once Upon A Time” is just what it sounds like: a debauched fairy tale. It’s a morality play about a repressed Methodist boy who strays from his traditional roots and then, in his 60s, following a stroke, settles down and marries Kimberley Conrad (Miss January 1988) and sires two sons. The movie is about how you have to take a few side trips in order to come full circle. You can have it all as long as you end up where you started.

You can have the Good Life without staples.

‘Hugh Hefner: Once Upon a Time’

An IRS release. Director Robert Heath. Producers Gary H. Grossman and Robert Heath. Executive producer Mark Frost. Screenplay by Gary H. Grossman, Michael Gross and Robert Heath. Cinematographers Van Carlson, Dustin Teel, Tony Zapata. Editor Michael Gross. Music Charlotte Landsberg. Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes.

Times-rated Mature (nude photos).