Hef’s Legacy: Playboy In Pop Culture

You know his magazine, so did movies.

The late Hugh Hefner left his mark throughout film and TV, creating a prop that immediately defined a room. Taboo! Teen boys and gross dads! Bachelor pads and man caves! Playboy meant all these things, defining sex in an object more inoffensively than a vibrator and less specifically than condoms.

Its usefulness and popularity meant a rise in appearances, finding its way in tons of films and even inspiring a few of its own. The magazine’s legacy on America’s sexual culture is varied and nuanced, but its impact on movies is more straightforward. Masculinity of a certain kind – bold but barricaded, flaunting sexuality behind locked doors – becomes easily identifiable just by glimpsing a Playboy.

Editor Jacob T. Swinney’s new supercut finds the magazine’s proliferation in cinema, from its debut to present.