How I Invented Playboy

January, 1989

Late One Night in Greenwich Village, early in the Fifties, there was a scratching at my door. When I opened it, a bedraggled, sodden man fell into my apartment babbling incoherently about needing money for a magazine. I thought, of course, that he wanted to buy Time or Newsweek to catch up on the news. Since that seemed like a nice thing for a man who was so down and out to want to do, I gave him 50 cents for a magazine. Apparently, it was that 50 cents that started what became this extraordinar...