The Other Side of Hugh Hefner

The name Hugh Hefner is all but synonymous with debauchery - the 'Playboy' founder is equally famous for his racy publication as his simultaneous relationships with young, blonde women and the notoriously raucous parties held at Playboy Mansion. But the 83-year-old ladies' man has a history of putting his money where his mouth is, politically speaking. “One of the things I find really curious is when people say I've lived an amoral life," says the paterfamilias of the Playboy dynasty. “From my perspective, it's quite the contrary. I feel I've lived a very moral life. I've been on the side of angels from the beginning."

Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel, a documentary premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival next month, shows the deeper side of Hugh Hefner - civil rights activist and political ally of women and gays. See highlights from his interview with the Daily Beast below.

“This film has less to do with the lifestyle and more to do with my commitment to social change," Hefner says of the documentary by Oscar award-winning filmmaker Brigitte Berman.

She adds, “When people think of him, they think of the babes, the boobs, the blondes. There's another side to him, one I think is too often overlooked."

Hefner was a champion of civil rights from the very beginning of the movement. He says, “I graduated from the University of Illinois in 1948, and there were the beginnings of racial integration. There were student protests against restaurants and movie theaters that had segregation, and I took part in some of those protests." Later, when he learned that two of the Southern franchises of his Playboy nightclubs were segregated, he bought back the outlets at his own expense to integrate them.

Hefner also supported gay rights at a time when the concept was nearly unheard of in mainstream America. Playboy published a short, science fiction piece wherein homosexuality was the norm and heterosexuals were considered socially deviant. The story was originally turned down by Esquire, Hefner explains, and recalls the numerous angry letters the magazine received in response. The magazine ran a rebuttal suggesting that “if it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society, then the reverse was wrong too."