Playboy founder dead, to be buried next to Marilyn Monroe

Los Angeles : Hugh Hefner, who founded the Playboy magazine and quickly made it a part of the American cultural landscape as universal as Disneyland and Coca-Cola, has died at his Playboy Mansion near Beverly Hills. He was 91.His death on Wednesday night was announced by Playboy Enterprises via Twitter, leading to a string of tributes from Hollywood stars, models, musicians and Playboy bunnies.

His son Cooper Hefner of Playboy Enterprises said: "My father lived an exceptional and impactful life as a media and cultural pioneer and a leading voice behind some of the most significant social and cultural movements of our time in advocating free speech, civil rights and sexual freedom."

Sherlyn Chopra, the first Indian woman to pose nude for the men’s magazine, said he was "a true visionary who chose to not conform to the dogma set by the self-proclaimed guardians of society but instead followed his bliss by acting on his excitement consistently".

After quitting the Esquire magazine because he was denied a $5 raise, Hefner went on to create Playboy with $8,000 in his Chicago apartment when he was 27 years old.

Its iconic first issue, featuring a centre-fold of a naked Marilyn Monroe, who was no star then, quickly sold almost 54,000 copies at 50 cents each, helping Hefner to eventually expand the magazine into a media and entertainment-industry giant. In the no-Internet era, the circulation of Playboy magazine -- with its regular dose of centre-spread Playmates -- touched a whopping 5.6 million in 1975.

Hefner became an icon and Playboy a household name in America. Hefner will be buried in a cemetery plot here next to Monroe. He had reserved the plot at Westwood Memorial Park decades after her death in 1962. He had bought it for $75,000 in 1992, the Daily Mail said.