Content area
Full text
His honors are bound to multiply (like rabbits, so to speak) as Playboy's 50th anniversary in 2003 draws near. This celebration, though, is for a personal milestone--Hefner's 75th birthday on August 9--and the intention was for him to make a rare, non-bathrobed appearance in New York and take the ribald verbal punches that the Friar's Club is famous for delivering. Saturday's (September 29) event is still on, we are told, but, like every post-September 11 occasion, it is bound to be more serious and somber than originally intended. Quite a difference from Hefner's first Friar's roast when he turned 50 in 1976, and, with then-amour Barbi Benton, was serenaded by the likes of Warren Beatty/ Jim Brown/James Caan/Tony Curtis.