Playboy Magazine Covers in The 1950s Are Not What You Imagined Them to Be

In the 1950s Playboy was hardly puritanical (by modern standards, of course). If there was any nudity, it was only the most charmingly innocent and conventional. The covers in general exhibited photos that would make one think this was a magazine for giovial housewives or photo-collage lovers.

The magazine was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and was financed in part by a $1,000 loan from the publisher’s mother.

During those years Playboy published monthly interviews with really curious public figures. Artists, architects, economists, composers, conductors, film directors, journalists, writers, playwrights, religious figures, politicians, athletes, and race car drivers-the guests were often quite deep in their thoughts and raised the most relevant topics. In general, it was not so much about erotica as about the variety of men’s pleasures, from the mundane to the intellectual.