"When the first issue of Playboy hit the streets in 1953, the United States had no counterculture to speak of…the Beats were still a few years away, and Elvis was driving a truck in Memphis. Toting around a copy of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer could get you branded a degenerate, maybe even land you on a chain busting rocks." – The Los Angeles Times
Since its founding in 1953, with a premiere issue left undated for fear that there wouldn't be a second, Playboy Magazine has transitioned from an out-of-bounds affront to the supposedly "moral" America of the 1950s, to a veritable national treasure. The Playboy Cover to Cover — the 50's package features every page of the magazine from its inaugural decade (an archive's worth of interactive discs), a coffee table book detailing Playboy's rise, and a facsimile of the first issue.
It is part history text, part nostalgic glance into the past, and a wholly worthwhile read.
The only complaint I'd lodge about the disc portion, and indeed about the entire Cover-to-Cover package, is that it centers around the 1950s. Subsequent decades, especially the 1980s, would have been just as interesting in showing the magazine's transition from one that men bought and quickly shuffled into their briefcases, to an icon that has featured such interviews as Bob Dylan, and pieces by such notables as William F. Buckley Jr.
The coffee table book, and its 200 plus pages of high-quality, glossy photos, is the MVP here, with the facsimile first issue running a close second. While the discs are better for private enjoyment on one's personal computer, the coffee table book not only looks good on your coffee table — big shock — it also provides a rare hint of the World Before Hef (that grim reality so aptly described in the L.A. Times passage above).
After a December 1952 alumni review at his high school, during which Hefner was forced to appraise his life in serious fashion for the first time, he stood on Chicago's Michigan Avenue Bridge "with tears in my eyes, realizing I had to make a change in my life."
Article comments
1 - Yahweh70
Surely a series of retrospectives has to start somewhere, and where better to start than at the beginning. I reckon PEI must have put this package together to test the waters, as well as allow recent collectors/buyers of Playboy a cheaper way of seeing how it all began, than spending thousands on Ebay tracking each individual issue.
I see Rolling Stone are about to embark on a similar product run.
2 - Jordan Richardson
Looks like a hell of a set. Good article, too.