It was a big day on campus. The new issue of Playboy Magazine was on the stands and the word spread fast. In a mad dash to Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, guys lined up to pick up the latest copy. In 1962, an issue of Playboy cost 60 cents, which doesn’t sound like much today, but it was triple the cost of a Life Magazine, the leading publication of that day.
We eagerly shelled out our 60c and bought a copy Playboy – to read the articles, of course. Well, not totally. There were 3 or 4 other sections we found interesting – especially the middle pages, but we absolutely read the articles and all the ads because in them we hoped to glean some semblance of coolness.
Whatever the Playboy Advisor said was gospel. We bought those dress shirts, we drank that bourbon, we smoked those cigarettes. I remember reading an article in Playboy saying that if a a gentleman is wearing a tie, his legs should never be showing when he sat down and crossed them. I wore over-the-calf socks with a tie for the next 25 years. So, yes, the articles were important.
Playboy Magazine was the brainchild of Hugh Hefner, who borrowed money from his mother to start the magazine in the early 1950s. By the 1960s, it was the hottest magazine on the planet – in more ways than one. Hefner, always in his silk robe, occupied Playboy Mansion and was known to be quite fond of younger women, even when he was up into his 80’s. I guess it was the robe that did it.
In 1967, I was the Men’s Department Manager at Leggett Barracks Road, and I recalled that at Carolina, Milton’s Men’s Shop once brought in a Playboy Bunny to sign autographs and chat with the guys. The store was jam-packed. So, I asked Bill Leggett, our Store Manager, if we could possibly run the same promotion. Amazingly, he agreed. I suppose Mr. Leggett enjoyed the Playboy articles, too.
I contacted Playboy, and I think it cost $400 to send an attractive young lady named Reagan Wilson to our store on a football weekend in September. Reagan had been a Playmate of the Month and was a striking young lady to say the least. We advertised our event, of course, and the ad caught the attention of Bill Gibson, head basketball coach for the Cavaliers. At the time, Bill was heavily recruiting a tall young man named Tom McMillen and thought that meeting a Playmate might help bring the future star to University Hall. As it turned out, McMillen wasn’t interested and later enrolled at Maryland, but all the other recruits and most of the current team were absolutely interested. After the game, some of the guys invited our Bunny to a frat party and she went – and had a great time as the story was later related.
Reagan was a talented young lady and appeared in a few movies and on TV, with even an appearance on the Johnny Carson Show.
Our event was a huge success so the next fall, we brought in another Playmate Centerfold, Gwen Wong, an attractive Eurasian model, who attended the football game with me and my wife, Nancy, who was quite pregnant at the time and would deliver our first child in about three weeks later. Playmate Gwen was more interested in helping Nancy up and down the steps than either watching the football game or interacting with her many admirers. A sweet girl, Gwen would later work at the Playboy Club in Los Angeles, and then pursued her career as an artist.
Yes, Playboy Magazine captured the minds and imaginations of millions of young men during the 1960s and 70s. They did, after all, have amazing articles.
