Hugh Hefner was laid to rest in a crypt alongside Marilyn Monroe at the Westwood Village Memorial Cemetery.
Hugh Hefner, who founded Playboy magazine in 1953 and built the company into an iconic brand, was buried on Sat. Sep. 30 at Westwood Village Memorial Cemetery in a crypt beside Marilyn Monroe, according to TMZ.
It was an extremely private funeral and memorial. Hefner’s four children and widow, Crystal Harris, were reportedly all in attendance.
Hefner had purchased a crypt beside Monroe – Playboy magazine’s first-ever cover girl – all the way back in 1992 for a reported $75,000, even though the two had never even met in person.
Hefner, who died from natural causes at the age of 91 on Sep. 27 at his famous home – the Playboy Mansion in Holmy Hills – told the Los Angeles Times in 2009, “Spending eternity next to Marilyn is too sweet to pass up.”
Hefner published the first issue of Playboy in December 1953, working from his kitchen table.
A big chunk of Hefner’s meager budget for the first issue was consumed by the pictorial: He paid a Chicago calendar maker $500 for photographs of Marilyn Monroe with “nothing but the radio on,” according to The Times.
He quickly sold out the complete run of 70,000 copies.
The magazine was an instant sensation and would become the world’s largest-selling and most influential men’s magazine, spawning a number of successful global businesses, including nightclubs.
The magazine is published in more than 20 nations around the world and products featuring the company’s trademarks drive more than $1 billion in sales annually, according to the company.
