Hugh Hefner, who created Playboy magazine and spun it into a media and entertainment-industry giant — all the while, as its very public avatar, flaunting attractive young women (and sometimes marrying them) well into his 80s — died in 2017 at his home, the Playboy Mansion, in the Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles at the age of 91. Hefner the man and Playboy the brand were inseparable. Both advertised themselves as emblems of the sexual revolution, an escape from American priggishness and wider social intolerance. Both were derided over the years — as vulgar, as adolescent and exploitative. But Hefner was a success from the moment he emerged in the early 1950s and his life was unique- to put it mildly! Love him or hate him, one couldn’t ignore him. Through this exclusive insightful series, we look at who Hugh truly was, and the unconventional choices and decisions of Hefner’s life.