Business: Hutch Trouble

The playboy pays for perks

Nobody takes Playboy magazine's philosophy of the good life more seriously than Hugh Hefner, the man who started it all on his kitchen table back in 1953. He rules his empire and maintains his image as a protean ladies' man from a fieldstone fortress in Los Angeles. It is equipped with battlements in the backyard, outdoor Jacuzzi baths built into a stone grotto and sprawling lawns where flamingos and pet peacocks roam. Mansion West, as the place is called to distinguish it from Hefner's 54-room Chicago playpen now on the block for $2.5 million, cost the company...

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