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Quickening Stride. Criticism of PAD rolls right off Hefner's back. "I know how good the show is," he says. "It's better than the Johnny Carson Show or the Joey Bishop Show, and I do a better job hosting than Ed Sullivan does." He is so convinced that the show will be a success (and indeed, the ratings have been remarkably good) that he is already planning 26 more for next season, intends to expand Playboy's TV and movie operations. He is talking about buying a Hollywood studio.
He can afford one. While in many ways Playboy has become a bore—it seems more and more a triumph of distinctive packaging around a predictable product—the magazine sells 5,500,000 copies a month. The April issue will set an alltime record with almost $3,500,000 in advertising. The 17 Playboy Clubs and the Playboy resort hotels in Jamaica and Lake Geneva, Wis., have been so successful that plans are in the works for at least three new clubs, plus resorts in New Jersey, Nevada, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Mexico and Spain. Hefner's empire earned him and his very few fellow stockholders $6,868,165 last year, after taxes. But for all his alchemistic talent, Hefner's enthusiasm for business seems to be waning. "When a man is in his 40s," he says, "he realizes that there are only so many years in which to do certain things. I have decided that putting my philosophy in book form can wait until I'm 60." Thank God for that.
In the meantime, there are places to go, things to see, and girls to meet. "Everyone should have the right to go to heaven or hell in his own way," he says. Hefner himself is trying for heaven. What is more, the mass producer of plastic-wrapped sex, the purveyor of pop hedonism, the great anti-Puritan who is out to make every square feel that he too can be a swinger, is looking for a heaven less in the style of Playboy than the Saturday Evening Post. "You know," says Hef wistfully, "in the next ten years I would rather meet a girl and fall in love and have her fall in love with me than make another hundred million dollars." He really means it, or thinks he does.