Top 10 Party Schools in America 2011

Playboy:

1. University of Colorado at Boulder
2. Pennsylvania State University
3. Arizona State University
4. University of Western Ontario
5. University of Texas at Austin
6. University of Wisconsin
7. University of Georgia
8. University of Tennessee at Knoxville
9. University of Central Florida
10 University of California, Santa Barbara

Princeton Review:

1. Ohio University
2. University of Georgia
3. University of Mississippi
4. University of Iowa
5. University of California, Santa Barbara
6. West Virginia University
7. Pennsylvania State University
8. Florida State University
9. University of Florida
10. University of Texas at Austin

Playboy's Online Porn Stash

From CNBC.com:
Good news for those who thought their copies of Playboy were gone forever when their moms found them and threw them away.

Playboy launched a Web-based subscription service Thursday called i.Playboy.com that allows viewers to see every single page of every single magazine — from the first issue nearly 60 years ago that featured Marilyn Monroe to the ones hitting the newsstands today.

"They no longer have to store 57 years — 682 issues — of Playboy under their mattress," said Jimmy Jellinek, Playboy's chief content officer.

Chicago-based Playboy has seen its circulation plummet from 3.15 million in 2006 to 1.5 million today and has been trying all sorts of gimmicks to attract readers in recent years. One issue, for example, included a set of 3-D glasses to better see a centerfold shot in 3-D; another turned over the cover to a cartoon character, Marge Simpson.

But if those moves were widely viewed as efforts to attract a younger audience, this one is also aimed baby boomers and even their parents, who might recall pictorials of long gone movie stars, interviews with the likes of John Lennon and Dr. Martin Luther King and the time Jimmy Carter famously revealed the lust in his heart.

And for those who have claimed they bought the magazine for the articles, the online service also offers a way to look at the works of such writers as John Updike, Jack Kerouac, Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter S. Thompson and Norman Mailer just by typing in their names.

Jellinek is optimistic people will pony up the $8 per month or $60 per year for a service that's "meant to appeal to that sense of collective nostalgia and affinity." He calls the website "the world's sexiest time machine" and "an anthology of cool" for a magazine he refers to as "the Mount Rushmore of literary greatness."

But one industry analyst makes Playboy sound more like a tired, dusty half-empty amusement park...

Playboy Puts Entire 57 Years of Magazines Online
Friday, 20 May 2011
http://www.cnbc.com/id/43107687

BabeWatch

Lady Gaga in Harper's Bazaar

Jordana Brewster in Maxim

Karina Smirnoff from the May 2011 Playboy cover

Jennifer Lopez, "The World's Most Beautiful Woman" according to People Magazine

 

Nicole Scherzinger of The Pussycat Dolls

Scarlett Johansson

Christina Hendricks

Jennifer Garner

Camilla Belle

Megan Fox

Awesome Website & Mag: Maxim

Okay, nobody really needs to hear from The Konformist that Maxim and Maxim.com rules. But we'll tell you that anyways. Why? Because they've given us a free subscription to the mag for being a respectable media source. So let them know you heard from Konformist.com how awesome they are. PS: Playboy, Penthouse & Hustler, we'll give you the same plug...

All We Are Saying: Three Weeks With John Lennon

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130429818

All We Are Saying: Three Weeks With John Lennon
October 9, 2010

In August 1980, writer David Sheff flew to New York for a big assignment: an interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono for the magazine Playboy. Every day for three weeks, Sheff, often with his tape recorder running, talked with the couple in their Central Park West apartment, on the street, in coffee shops and in recording studios. The Playboy interview hit the newsstands on Dec. 6. Two days later, Lennon was shot dead on the street in front of his apartment.

Sheff's interviews with Lennon and Ono were collected in his book All We Are Saying. The book is being re-released as an e-book.

Most of the audio from the conversations has never been broadcast, but Sheff shared several clips with NPR's Scott Simon. He describes his interview with the rock legend as a surreal experience.

"I had been trying to get to him for a long time," Sheff says. "And one day, I got a phone call from somebody, and he asked me when I was born and where I was born. Three or four days later, I got a call. Someone said Yoko Ono wanted to meet me in New York."

Sheff met with Ono at her New York studio. The next morning, he was having coffee with Lennon, whom Sheff remembers as gracious and thoughtful. They talked of family and philosophy, and of the love of his life.

"John spent a lot of time and energy talking about the view of Yoko that he felt was wrong," Sheff says. "He was very protective of her. It seemed to be one of the reasons he wanted to talk so much. Clearly, there was something he wanted people to understand."

Song By Song

One of Sheff's most interesting afternoons took place in the couple's bathroom. The trio sorted through stacks of Beatles albums and Lennon's solo records, discussing them song by song.

"Half of the songs, songs of my life, he'd dismiss," Sheff says. "On the other hand, there was some stuff that he was really proud of, and that was pretty exciting to hear about, too."

Lennon pointed out the stylistic differences between the tracks he'd written and those of Paul McCartney. The conversation moved on to his departure from The Beatles. Sheff asked why The Beatles weren't going to get back together.

"He would say, 'Why should The Beatles get back together? When you meet the person you're going to marry or want to be with, you leave the boys back home in the bar,' " Sheff says.

Lennon said he'd believed The Beatles were the best thing in the world from the start, even when others had dismissed the band. He read to Sheff a negative Newsweek review from 1964.

The Househusband

Other conversations took place in their kitchen. Sheff says Lennon would make tea and bake bread while describing himself as a "househusband," a man who'd stay at home to tend to the children instead of work. Lennon realized his role in the wake of a destructive, alcohol-fueled "lost weekend" in Los Angeles. The period of reflection that followed had changed his life.

Lennon said his time as a stay-at-home dad had awakened a creative urge he hadn't felt for a long time. He went to Bermuda with a guitar and wrote the songs that became Double Fantasy and Milk and Honey.

When considering why Lennon had invited him into his life, Sheff says he was merely "the lucky person on the other side of the microphone."

"When I arrived, it was a time when he just had so much to say," Sheff says. "He would talk and he would stand up; at one point, he was almost climbing on the refrigerator talking about something."

Lennon would have turned 70 on Oct. 9. Sheff says he can't imagine the singer at such an age. But Lennon, he adds, lived for the future. The singer told him that while he liked The Beatles' song "Yesterday," he was glad he had never written it.

" 'I don't believe in yesterday,' " Sheff says, quoting Lennon. "Life begins at 40, or so they promise. And I believe in what's going to come.' That's one of the last things he had said to me."

Playboy unveils 'safe for work' website

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/07/20/playboy.safe.for.work/

Playboy unveils 'safe for work' website
Doug Gross, CNN
July 20, 2010
The Smoking Jacket site features stories on STDs, how to have sex at work.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The Smoking Jacket, Playboy's 'safe for work' website, is introduced on Tuesday
Site features humor and links to racy content but no nude pictorials
Playboy.com will continue showing nudity and longer, 'more reverent' articles
The iconic men's magazine has been losing money since the advent of online adult sites

(CNN) -- The Smoking Jacket, Playboy's nudity-free, "safe-for-work" website, debuted Tuesday -- a bid by the iconic men's magazine to stay relevant in a cyberworld full of anything-goes competitors.

"Cube dwellers and office drones alike shall rejoice at this fun, sexy, satirical antidote to the drudgery of the work day," Playboy editorial director Jimmy Jellinek said in a written statement.

The site, which "provides guys with smart and sexy distractions throughout the day," according to the statement, is geared toward the blogosphere, with short posts and links to viral content from other sites.

Playboy Enterprises did not have immediate numbers on visits to the site, which went live shortly after midnight. But some pages were loading slowly Tuesday, which spokeswoman Theresa Hennessey said was due to heavy traffic.

"It's been pretty phenomenal so far," Hennessey said.

Through its decades of existence, Playboy magazine has staked out different ground from most of its skin-baring competitors, mixing nude photos with lifestyle features, interviews with celebrities and politicians, and short fiction by well-known authors.

Based on its debut content on Tuesday, though, The Smoking Jacket -- despite its lack of nudity -- may be taking a more lowbrow route.

Featured articles included "How to get laid at work," "7 signs that you've given up on getting laid," and "Americans totally dig STD-like sensations."

It provides links to such journalistic efforts as a blog post about stripper cage fighting and another on the 2010 Hooters Bikini Contest in Pelham, Alabama.

The empire's original site, Playboy.com, will continue offering its 6 million monthly visitors "nudity, as well as lifestyle articles that are typically longer, more reverent, and written in a similar style as those appearing in Playboy magazine," the company's statement said.

The new site also featured a short welcome video from Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, dressed, of course, in one of the trademark jackets that inspired the website's name.

"The Smoking Jacket isn't just something I like to wear around the mansion. It's Playboy's new safe-for-work website," he says. "Next to the mansion, it's the best hangout on the planet."

The new site rolls out as traditional adult-entertainment outlets like Playboy struggle to keep up in an online world where free pictures of nude people are just a mouse-click away.

Playboy Enterprises reported a net loss of nearly $1 million in the first quarter of this year -- actually better than what was predicted.

The company reported a loss of $13.7 million during the same quarter last year.

"We believe that 2010 will be a transitional year and that the true benefits of our strategy will be more fully evident next year," Playboy CEO Scott Flanders said in a statement earlier this year.

The rollout also comes days after the owners of rival Penthouse announced they would like to buy out Playboy, and Hefner himself publicly mulled buying outstanding shares of the company and taking it private.

Hugh Hefner's new plan to attract Playboy readers

http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2010/05/11/2010-05-11_hefs_new_plan_to_attract_playboy_readers_put_centerfold_hope_dworaczyk_in_3d_.html

Hugh Hefner's new plan to attract Playboy readers: Put centerfold Hope Dworaczyk in 3-D
BY Catey Hill
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, May 11th 2010

Struggling Playboy magazine has an eye-popping new trick to attract readers - put its centerfold in 3-D.

The magazine's June edition, which hits newsstands on Friday, features centerfold Hope Dworaczyk in a 3-D pictorial. It will include a pair of classic blue-and-red glasses so you can an eyeful of Dworaczyk's... uh, extra dimensions.

"What would people most like to see in 3-D?" asked Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. "Probably a naked lady."

This is the latest attempt by Playboy to attract new readers, as the magazine has seen circulation drop from 3.5 million in 2006 to 1.5 million today.

"In today's print environment you have to create newsstand events," said editorial director Jimmy Jellinek.

And as Playboy competes not only with other men's magazines, but also with the proliferation of racy images of women on the Internet, Jellinek is right on.

"This particular picture is one example of how books and magazines are different (than computer images)," Hefner added. "You can hold it in your hands, save them, and as Dad used to, put them under the mattress."

Hefner, who said he thought about 3-D images for the magazine long ago, but didn't move forward because of the heavy expense, happily found a partner to help absorb the cost this time around.

To promote its show, "True Blood," HBO partnered with Playboy on the 3-D centerfold project, branding the glasses with the show's name.

Now for the question that many a reader is dying to know: do the glasses really work? According to Dworaczyk, they sure do.

"It's kind of like it says on the rearview mirror," Dworaczyk joked. "Things may appear larger."

Playboy's Hugh Hefner helps rescue Hollywood sign

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100426/people_nm/us_hollywood_sign

Playboy's Hugh Hefner helps rescue Hollywood sign
Mon Apr 26, 2010

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner on Monday donated the last $900,000 sought by a conservation group for a land purchase needed to save the famed vista of the Hollywood sign from being spoiled by development.

Hefner's key role in reaching the group's fund-raising goal was announced by Los Angeles city officials, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the San Francisco-based Trust for Public Land at a news conference in the Hollywood Hills.

The land trust needed to collect a total of $12.5 million by this Friday under a deal with a group of Chicago investors who bought the 1,820-foot (555-meter) ridge, called Cahuenga Peak, from the estate of billionaire Howard Hughes in 2002.

The trust will now purchase the 138-acre (56-hectare) adjacent parcel and turn it over to the city to be incorporated into the surrounding Griffith Park, preventing any construction that would mar the postcard-perfect view of the Hollywood sign nearby.

"My childhood dreams and fantasies came from the movies, and the images created in Hollywood had a major influence on my life and Playboy," Hefner said in a statement. "As I've said before, the Hollywood sign is Hollywood's Eiffel Tower and I'm pleased to help preserve such an important cultural landmark."

Other private donors to the Hollywood sign preservation effort included actor Tom Hanks and director Steven Spielberg, the land trust said.

(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Todd Eastham)

With Playboy sale, an icon bows to changing times

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091114/us_nm/us_playboy_times_4

With Playboy sale, an icon bows to changing times
By Alex Dobuzinskis
Sat Nov 14, 2009

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Playboy founder Hugh Hefner changed American pop culture, one centerfold at a time.

With his Playboy Enterprises Inc in talks to be sold for about $300 million, the 83 year-old Hefner will be giving up control over the iconic adult entertainment empire he founded that was instrumental in shaping society's opinions on nudity, sex and free speech.

With $600, Hefner in 1953 published the first Playboy magazine with a partially nude photo of Marilyn Monroe at its center. The magazine would become not only one of the most successful publications ever, but also a brand that led many Americans to think about sex in a more carefree way.

"Hef" turned Playboy and its bunny head logo into a symbol for a lifestyle he embodied as bachelor extraordinaire, living in a mansion surrounded by wealth and beautiful women.

"This guy was one of the major players in the transformation of American culture in the second half of the 20th century and not just because he had a magazine with naked women in it," said Robert Thompson, a professor of pop culture at Syracuse University.

In 1972, Playboy had a worldwide circulation of 7 million, but that has been in decline ever since, as the liberalization of sexual attitudes Hefner promoted became more mainstream -- and more competitive.

But even as it grew ever more popular, the magazine created rivals such as Penthouse and Hustler. In the 1980s, adult videos grew into a major business and by the late 1990s, the rise of the Internet and free pornography on the Web became Playboy's greatest rival for an audience.

REALITY STAR

Hefner remains in the limelight today, showing up at media events with numerous girlfriends by his side. He enjoyed a role in reality television show "The Girls Next Door" on cable network E! and his dating life and break-up with model Holly Madison made him a staple of celebrity magazines.

Hefner has said that growing up during the depression he always looked back wistfully to the 1920s age of flappers as an era of freedom he had missed.

He has described himself as having liberated America from its Puritan past and experts agree he did make sexual images and content more acceptable to Americans.

But Playboy magazine also showed men how to enjoy stylish clothing, good liquor, sports cars and other luxuries, and became a standard bearer for that lifestyle -- real or imagined.

"All that kind of stuff just piled up issue after issue -- promoting that idea of consumer abundance as being synonymous with the good life in this country -- and Hefner is very important in promoting that idea," said Steven Watts, author of "Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream."

But as Playboy's fortunes waned, some of the symbols of wealth that surrounded Hefner became harder for him to hang on to.

In the early 1980s, he had to give up a private jet plane with a bedroom, a miniature disco and a kitchen, Watts said.

Through the decades and despite the loss of business, Hefner continued to live the good life and made sure everyone knew it.

"Hefner really tries to completely disengage the notion of guilt and sin from having a good time and, the last couple of generations, that has pretty much prevailed," said Thompson, the Syracuse professor. "Certainly, when I talk to my students, I don't get a sense they're feeling guilty about the good deal of fun they're having."

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; editing by Bob Tourtellotte and Andre Grenon)

Marge Simpson -- Playboy Cover Girl

http://www.tmz.com/2009/10/09/marge-simpson-strips-down-for-playboy/

Marge Simpson -- Playboy Cover Girl
Oct 9th 2009

This is the closest you'll ever get to finding out if the carpet really does match the blue drapes.

TMZ has obtained the cover for Marge Simpson's November issue of Playboy -- and needless to say, she's got a bangin' bod for having popped her first kid out thirty years ago (Show debuted in 1989, Bart was 10 ... and still is).

We're told Marge also strips down for her three-page spread inside the magazine -- posing in a bunch of sexy cartoon lingerie.

Roll over, Jessica Rabbit.

$150M buys you late TV producer's L.A. mansion

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g3xq9KyCRMkxjtqUBjchzzXcY9_QD9767T3O2

$150M buys you late TV producer's L.A. mansion
By ALEX VEIGA
1-27-9

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The widow of producer Aaron Spelling is placing "The Manor" in the exclusive Holmby Hills neighborhood on the market for a jaw-dropping $150 million, making it by far the most expensive home for sale in the U.S.

The French chateau-style mansion has 56,500 square feet of space on more than 4.6 acres and is the largest home in Los Angeles County. Among the neighbors are the Los Angeles Country Club and, not too far away, the Playboy Mansion.

Candy Spelling's late husband produced hit shows such as "Charlie's Angels," "Dynasty" and "Beverly Hills 90210." He died in 2006.

"Everything there is glamorous, and is luxurious and it's really great scale," said Sally Forster Jones, an agent with Coldwell Banker Previews International in Los Angeles, which is co-listing the property. "There really is nothing to compare it to."

Candy Spelling told The Associated Press that she let her dog Madison, a soft-coated Wheaten Terrier, help pick out the best real estate agent for the task. She had her security bring the dog into the room every time she met one of the candidate agents and watched how the dog reacted. If Madison didn't like them, Spelling crossed them off the list.

Prospective buyers won't have to worry about passing such scrutiny, Spelling jokes.

"Not at all," she says.

The three-story mansion, built in 1991, is gated and features a winding driveway that leads up to the three-story house, which includes ceilings that reach up to 30 feet high, Jones said.

While some published reports put the tally of rooms in the mansion at well past 100, Jones couldn't provide an exact count.

Spelling says she doesn't know either.

"You're really asking the wrong person," Spelling jokes. "There's a lot. (The house) has evolved and I actually haven't gone around and counted."

The Spellings found no shortage of uses for the many rooms in the mansion, however.

There's a bowling alley, wine cellar, wine tasting room, gift-wrapping room, a humidity-controlled silver storage room, China room, library, gym and media room, among many others.

The screening room is one of Spelling's favorites.

"I had some really wonderful times entertaining in that room," she said. "We showed movies and I still do."

The room features a movie projection system that automatically comes up from the floor at the same time that shades extend over the windows. It's an idea that came to Candy Spelling in dream as she sought to avoid having a projection screen open all the time.

"I wanted Aaron to have the best projection room anyone had ever seen, and the biggest, so I came with this solution, not realizing that we had to excavate a lot of dirt to get down that low, to have a special room that housed the screen that was totally dust free," said Spelling, 63.

The Spellings also finished the 17,000 square-foot attic that includes a barber shop and beauty salon.

The home also includes a wing for service staff, including a kitchen and seven bedrooms, and five fireplaces and four wet bars.

Lavish features also can be found outside the house, including a tennis court, fountains, a waterfall, a pool and spa, a reflection pool and a pool house with a kitchen, and 16 car ports.

The estate also boasts an 18th Century-style garden, a rooftop rose garden and a citrus orchard.

Prospective buyers won't have to worry much about parking when they host big parties. The property includes a winding motor court with space for more than 100 cars.

Spelling plans to trade her mansion lifestyle for a luxurious, two-story condo atop a residential tower in Los Angeles that she bought last year for $47 million.

"I have a lot of wonderful, wonderful, wonderful feelings about this house and special things that I went through in building it, with a love that you can't even imagine," she gushed. "Yet I feel like I'm moving on to a new chapter in my life."

1950s pinup model Bettie Page dies in LA at 85

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jJ82vzTJfZkwzNZMVZhni6WG9D5wD950V02G0

1950s pinup model Bettie Page dies in LA at 85
By BOB THOMAS
12-11-8

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bettie Page, the 1950s secretary-turned-model whose controversial photographs in skimpy attire or none at all helped set the stage for the 1960s sexual revolution, died Thursday. She was 85.

Page was placed on life support last week after suffering a heart attack in Los Angeles and never regained consciousness, said her agent, Mark Roesler. He said he and Page's family agreed to remove life support. Before the heart attack, Page had been hospitalized for three weeks with pneumonia.

"She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality," Roesler said. "She is the embodiment of beauty."

Page, who was also known as Betty, attracted national attention with magazine photographs of her sensuous figure in bikinis and see-through lingerie that were quickly tacked up on walls in military barracks, garages and elsewhere, where they remained for years.

Her photos included a centerfold in the January 1955 issue of then-fledgling Playboy magazine, as well as controversial sadomasochistic poses.

"I think that she was a remarkable lady, an iconic figure in pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion, someone who had a tremendous impact on our society," Playboy founder Hugh Hefner told The Associated Press on Thursday. "She was a very dear person."

Page mysteriously disappeared from the public eye for decades, during which time she battled mental illness and became a born-again Christian.

After resurfacing in the 1990s, she occasionally granted interviews but refused to allow her picture to be taken.

"I don't want to be photographed in my old age," she told an interviewer in 1998. "I feel the same way with old movie stars. ... It makes me sad. We want to remember them when they were young."

The 21st century indeed had people remembering her just as she was. She became the subject of songs, biographies, Web sites, comic books, movies and documentaries. A new generation of fans bought thousands of copies of her photos, and some feminists hailed her as a pioneer of women's liberation.

Gretchen Mol portrayed her in 2005's "The Notorious Bettie Page" and Paige Richards had the role in 2004's "Bettie Page: Dark Angel." Page herself took part in the 1998 documentary "Betty Page: Pinup Queen."

Hefner said he last saw Page when he held a screening of "The Notorious Bettie Page" at the Playboy Mansion. He said she objected to the fact that the film referred to her as "notorious," but "we explained to her that it referred to the troubled times she had and was a good way to sell a movie."

Page's career began one day in October 1950 when she took a respite from her job as a secretary in a New York office for a walk along the beach at Coney Island. An amateur photographer named Jerry Tibbs admired the 27-year-old's firm, curvy body and asked her to pose.

Looking back on the career that followed, she told Playboy in 1998: "I never thought it was shameful. I felt normal. It's just that it was much better than pounding a typewriter eight hours a day, which gets monotonous."

Nudity didn't bother her, she said, explaining: "God approves of nudity. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they were naked as jaybirds."

In 1951, Page fell under the influence of a photographer and his sister who specialized in S&M. They cut her hair into the dark bangs that became her signature and posed her in spiked heels and little else. She was photographed with a whip in her hand, and in one session she was spread-eagled between two trees, her feet dangling.

"I thought my arms and legs would come out of their sockets," she said later.

Moralists denounced the photos as perversion, and Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, Page's home state, launched a congressional investigation.

Page quickly retreated from public view, later saying she was hounded by federal agents who waved her nude photos in her face. She also said she believed that, at age 34, her days as "the girl with the perfect figure" were nearly over.

She moved to Florida in 1957 and married a much younger man, as an early marriage to her high school sweetheart had ended in divorce.

Her second marriage also failed, as did a third, and she suffered a nervous breakdown.

In 1959, she was lying on a sea wall in Key West when she saw a church with a white neon cross on top. She walked inside and became a born-again Christian.

After attending Bible school, she wanted to serve as a missionary but was turned down because she had been divorced. Instead, she worked full-time for evangelist Billy Graham's ministry.

A move to Southern California in 1979 brought more troubles.

She was arrested after an altercation with her landlady, and doctors who examined her determined she had acute schizophrenia. She spent 20 months in a state mental hospital in San Bernardino.

A fight with another landlord resulted in her arrest, but she was found not guilty because of insanity. She was placed under state supervision for eight years.

"She had a very turbulent life," Todd Mueller, a family friend and autograph seller, told The Associated Press on Thursday. "She had a temper to her."

Mueller said he first met Page after tracking her down in the 1990s and persuaded her to do an autograph signing event.

He said she was a hit and sold about 3,000 autographs, usually for $200 to $300 each.

"Eleanor Roosevelt, we got $40 to $50. ... Bettie Page outsells them all," he told The AP last week.

Born April 22, 1923, in Nashville, Tenn., Page said she grew up in a family so poor "we were lucky to get an orange in our Christmas stockings."

The family included three boys and three girls, and Page said her father molested all of the girls.

After the Pages moved to Houston, her father decided to return to Tennessee and stole a police car for the trip. He was sent to prison, and for a time Betty lived in an orphanage.

In her teens she acted in high school plays, going on to study drama in New York and win a screen test from 20th Century Fox before her modeling career took off.

Associated Press writers Denise Petski and Raquel Maria Dillon contributed to this report.

Penthouse wants piece of the Strip

http://www.lvrj.com/news/34543539.html

Nov. 16, 2008
NORM: Penthouse wants piece of the Strip
NORM CLARKE

Penthouse CEO Marc Bell is going public with plans to buy a "significant property" on the Las Vegas Strip and join the casino wars.

"The best time to buy is in a down economy," said the South Florida financier, whose business plan includes tying in his 10,000-Web site empire, most of them social networking sites, to generate business.

"We have no intention to rebrand the name of the hotel. We would like to see a Penthouse casino presence and a Penthouse pool presence," Bell told Vegas Confidential during an interview at Planet Hollywood Resort in what is known as the "Stripper suite."

His Web sites have 200 million members, including "phenomenal" numbers in Europe and Asia. Penthouse launched a cable television network in January and already has signed up 30 million homes, with another 30 million anticipated by next year, he said.

"It's about rethinking the way of how people think of casinos in Las Vegas, coming in with a new paradigm. Everyone tries doing cookie cutters, doing the same thing over and over again, and we believe it's time to create a new widget."

Bell said he has been talking to "numerous people and we are actively trying to find a hotel on the Strip to buy. A place where we can have the most impact ... only if it would be a significant property.

"We're looking to make a presence, take something and clean it up and fix it up and give it a new image," he said.

Penthouse's global reach allows it to reach one in four people who use the Internet.

The ranks of the casino dealers could be stocked with models from the magazine.

"We think it would be a tremendous draw," Bell said.

Asked if he envisioned a day when Penthouse could have strippers performing inside a hotel, Bell said, "I would have to imagine at some point we would be able to, as entertainment gets more risqué on the Strip, as Vegas gets more back to its roots."

Penthouse, founded in 1965 in the United Kingdom and moved to the United States four years later, competed with Playboy for years before both fell on tough times.

"We already dwarf the size of Playboy in terms of our global reach," Bell said "We far surpass anything Playboy ever dreamed."

Playboy Mansion to open in Macau

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070627/ap_on_re_as/macau_playboy_mansion

Playboy Mansion to open in Macau
By MIN LEE, AP Entertainment Writer
Wed Jun 27, 2007

Hugh Hefner is planning to open a Playboy Mansion in the burgeoning gambling mecca of Macau, complete with female "bunny" dealers, a villa-style hotel and several dozen gaming tables, his daughter said.

The 40,000-square-foot Playboy Mansion Macau, scheduled to open in late 2009, will give Hefner's company a key foothold in China after a failed attempt several years ago to build a club in Shanghai, which some blamed on the Chinese government's conservative line on public morality.

Macau, located an hour by high-speed ferry from Hong Kong, has seen its gambling revenue grow rapidly since the government ended a monopoly in 2002, letting in Las Vegas casino brands like Wynn, Sands and Venetian.

As the only place on Chinese soil where gambling is legal, Macau draws many tourists from the mainland who can't bet at home. It overtook the Las Vegas strip in gaming revenue last year.

"Asia ... is a very important region for us," Christie Hefner, head of Playboy Enterprises Inc., told reporters Tuesday.

The company is attempting to rebound after reporting a loss in 2005 and earning profits of only $2.3 million in 2006. Christie Hefner said 40 percent of the $800 million made in retail consumer sales last year came from Asia.

The Playboy Mansion Macau, styled after the original Playboy Mansion in the U.S., will follow the company's planned opening of a club at the Palms Resort in Las Vegas in October. Christie Hefner declined to say how much the new mansion will cost.

Plans for Playboy's Shanghai club fell apart in 2004 ostensibly over a disagreement between investors and local officials over how to value the amount of the investment, although some questioned whether it had to do with the company's racy reputation.

While Playboy can sell men's clothing in China, its magazine is officially banned.