A descendent of Plymouth governor William Bradford from back in America's colonial days, Hefner was born in Chicago in 1926. He always had smarts (he had an IQ rating of 152 as a child) and showed an interest in the journalistic life early on when he started a high school newspaper. Upon graduation in 1944 he enlisted in the Army as an infantry clerk; during Basic Training he won a sharpshooter badge for firing the M1 and made it through "Killer College," in which troops went through maneuvers while throwing real grenades. Posted at Camp Adair in Salem, Oregon, and Camp Pickett in Virginia, Hefner contributed cartoons for Army newspapers.
Upon his release from the Army in 1946 he continued his pursuit of art with classes at the Chicago Art Institute, along with a bachelor's degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In the early 50s Hefner made his first mark in the publishing world with a job as a copywriter at Esquire magazine in Chicago, but ended up leaving the magazine in 1953 after he was refused a $5 raise. Determined to make his own name, and wanting to create a magazine that appealed to spicier tastes. In his words, "Esquire was always for older guys but it had changed and like other magazines that were more popular, it was very much devoted to male bonding and outdoor adventure... I wanted to read a magazine that was a little more sophisticated and was focused really on the romantic connection between the sexes from a male point of view."
Hefner raised $8,000 on his own (including a $1,000 contribution from his own mother) to launch his magazine; the name "Playboy" came from a suggestion to adopt the name of a defunct auto company in Chicago (originally the publication was to be called Stag Party, but Stag magazine owned the rights to the name). The first issue was produced in Hefner's kitchen, but when he included a nude photo of Marilyn Monroe in the middle of the magazine, a new word ("centerfold") and a phenomenon was born.
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