'Playboy' Magazine Founder Hugh Hefner

DATE December 5, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Hugh Hefner discusses Playboy and his personal life
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli sitting in for Terry Gross.

Hugh Hefner founded Playboy magazine 50 years ago and remains its editor in
chief. Among other commemorations a 50th anniversary TV special will be shown
on A&E this Sunday, but it's not the kind of show that does its viewers or
Playboy any favors. Better to let Hefner speak for himself, which is exactly
what he did when Terry interviewed him in 1999.

In recent years Playboy has been joined and sometimes outflanked by such next
generation men's magazines as Maxim. But when Playboy had the field more to
itself in the '50s and '60s, it was for a lot of men the place to get aroused
by centerfolds, to get advice on sexual positions and the best positions for
your stereo speakers, and a source of new short stories by the top writers of
the day. To its feminist critics, Playboy epitomized a culture in which women
were expected to be cute, naked, airbrushed and air-headed.

The Playboy philosophy may seem like a throwback to another era. But Hefner,
now 77, hasn't given it up. In fact, when Terry talked to him four years ago,
he had four girlfriends; now he has six. Terry phoned Hugh Hefner at the
Playboy mansion and asked him what he thought Playboy magazine's greatest
contributions were to the sexual revolution.

Mr. HUGH HEFNER: Well, Playboy from the very beginning has been a very
personal magazine, and I think that it is a direct result of my response to my
own Puritan upbringing. My parents were typically mid-Western Puritans and
our roots go all the way back to William Bradford and the Pilgrims. And I
think that I saw things in growing up in my own home and in society around me
that I felt were hurtful and hypocritical, and after World War II I thought
that things were going to change. I think to some extent I had a romantic
notion of a time that I had missed in the roaring '20s because I grew up
during the Depression in the 1930s. And I expected the post-World War II
period to be rather like the period after World War I and it wasn't, and I
think that I started Playboy in response to all of that. And I believe and
hope that Playboy's played some small part in changing the values of--social
and sexual--of our time.

TERRY GROSS, host:

Tell me more about the sexual standards you were brought up with. You
described the background as being hypocritical sexually.

Mr. HEFNER: Well, hypocritical in the sense that--I mean, Puritanism by its
nature is very hypocritical. There is a real denial of the reality of human
sexuality, and I think that conflict, that unwillingness to deal with reality,
is the essence of what most repression is all about and what Puritanism is all
about.

GROSS: Now you worked briefly, I think, at Esquire magazine before starting
Playboy. When you started Playboy what was the initial emphasis? What did
you think this magazine was going to be about?

Mr. HEFNER: Well, it was--men's magazines in the period immediately after
World War II were almost all outdoor-oriented. They were connected to some
extent in the male bonding that came out of a war. And there was a great deal
of emphasis on getting women back into the home. World War II had brought
them out into the workplace and everything from the government to TV to--there
were powerful forces urging women to return to the home. And, you know, the
ideal kind of relationship--the togetherness that existed back then was mother
and children in the home; father, the breadwinner and spending time with other
guys--you know, playing poker, bowling, hunting, fishing, things that had no
real interest for me. And what I tried to create was a magazine for the
indoor guy, but focused specifically on the single life--in other words, the
period of bachelorhood before you settle down. And that magazine, or that
concept for a magazine, was the revelation.

GROSS: Were you a bachelor at the time?

Mr. HEFNER: I was coming out of a bad marriage.

GROSS: So you were already a father by then?

Mr. HEFNER: I accepted all of the perceptions related to a full and happy
and moral life before I began Playboy. In other words, I was anxious to get
out of college, actually doubled up because I was in the Army for two years
during World War II and felt as if I had fallen behind. And I went to the
University of Illinois after I got out of the Army in 1946 and in part because
the girl I had met right after I graduated from high school was there and
doubled up my classes and finished college in two and a half years because I
wanted to get on with my life and felt that I had fallen behind. And we
married almost immediately after I graduated and--so my expectations--even
though I had no real game plan in terms of a job--my game plan was very
typically conservative and typical of the time. Like almost all of my peers,
I got married immediately after school.

GROSS: How old were you when you lost your virginity? Was it before
marriage?

Mr. HEFNER: No, as a matter of fact, it was typical. I lost--I lost it with
the girl that I was planning on marrying and after about two and a half years
of foreplay while we were in college she was graduating and we had sex shortly
before we got married. We grat--we had sex right after--at the same time that
she graduated from college. And I think that's typical; in other words, I had
sex for the first time with the woman that I planned on marrying. The bad
news is that she went off while I finished the last semester of college and
she went off to teach and promptly had an affair and then confessed that
affair a couple of months later, and that was the single most devastating
experience of my life.

GROSS: So you ended up not marrying this woman?

Mr. HEFNER: I went on and did marry that woman.

GROSS: Oh, in spite--in spite of the affair the relationship stayed together?

Mr. HEFNER: Yes, I think my reaction was to--far from being, I think, the
notion of ending the relationship--because that would have been unthinkable.
But my reaction was actually almost the opposite; it was sort of like, you
know, wanting to put my arms around her and protect her and--but it was a
devastating experience for me.

GROSS: My guest is Hugh Hefner, founder and editor in chief of Playboy
magazine.

The first issue of Playboy had a centerfold of the now famous photo of a naked
Marilyn Monroe. How did you get that?

Mr. HEFNER: Well, I was looking for some kind of a gimmick for the first
issue, and the first thing I came up with, as a matter of fact, 3D movies were
very popular at the time. So I thought about actually putting a 3D pictorial
in the magazine and we actually shot it, as a matter of fact. Then I
discovered that putting those 3D glasses in each issue would be very expensive
and something I couldn't afford. And at the same time I was going through
that, I discovered that the already famous Marilyn Monroe calendar picture,
which nobody up to that time had seen, was owned by the John Baumgarth
Calendar Company out of the west side of Chicago, very close to where I grew
up. So I got in my--I got in my beat-up Chevy and drove out there and met
with John Baumgarth and talked him into letting me publish it in the very
first issue.

GROSS: How much did you have to pay for it?

Mr. HEFNER: Five hundred dollars.

GROSS: Oh wow, gosh. That's nothing.

Mr. HEFNER: And he threw in the color separations, and the color separations
would have cost me over a thousand dollars by themselves.

GROSS: Why did he give them to you so cheap?

Mr. HEFNER: Well, I think it was a very good and special day for me. I
think that he saw in me, perhaps, a young entrepreneurial kid, some variation
of himself at a younger time.

GROSS: What about Marilyn Monroe? What was her reaction when you published
it, and did you need to get her permission? Did you ask for her permission?

Mr. HEFNER: Well, we didn't need her permission. The photos were shot by
Tom Kelly, and those in turn--one of them, in turn--was sold to the calendar
company. But it was her reaction, of course, that changed everything, and
indeed I think was very key to her own successful career thereafter. Her
famous comment was, `I had nothing on but the radio.' And that classic
reaction in that very repressive time--because one must remember what--how
really conservative the '50s were. For a major star to appear in the
altogether and to treat it in such a casual way with humor was a revelation
and a very welcome one.

GROSS: How did you come up with the concept of the Playboy bunny? Was that
yours?

Mr. HEFNER: Well, yes, because it was our trademark. In other words,
originally the magazine was going to be called Stag Party, and fortunately
that title was changed at the very last minute because I got a
cease-and-desist from the lawyer of Stag magazine who felt that it was an
infringement.

GROSS: Oh.

Mr. HEFNER: And I was originally was going to use it because The New Yorker
and Esquire were the magazines that most influenced me related to the creation
of Playboy. Each of them had a male figure, Esqui(ph) and Eustace Tilley.
Eustace Tilley, the fellow with the lorgnette looking at the butterfly on the
cover of The New Yorker. I wanted a male figure, but I figured that an animal
would make more sense to separate myself from Esquire and The New Yorker. So
originally it was going to be a stag and it was a stag right up to just weeks
before publication. As a matter of fact, the illustration with that first
introduction in that--that I wrote for the very first issue was a stag, and at
the very last minute we simply had the cartoonist draw a rabbit's head and
paste it on top of the stag. So if you look very closely at that the picture,
the first rabbit actually has a stag's hoofs. So with the rabbit as our
emblem, when we got to the point in 1960 of opening the first Playboy Club, my
original notion was to have the girls called playmates. But that would get a
little confusing because those are the centerfolds. So one of our executives
suggested the possibility of a bunny costume. We tried it out, and I made
some modifications, added the cuffs and the bow tie and collar and the bunny
was born.

GROSS: What was your reaction when some feminists started to describe Playboy
as exemplifying, you know, woman as sex object, woman as accessory or the
image that women's main function in the world is to give sexual pleasure to
men?

Mr. HEFNER: Well, I think for a long time I didn't have the language to
respond to those accusations because, quite frankly, the women's movement from
my point of view was part of the larger sexual revolution that Playboy had
played such a large part in. So I really felt as if it was an attack from the
rear. The enemy, it seemed to me, prior to that was--was clearly the right
wing and, you know, Moral Majority and the puritan part of society.

When it came from what was called the liberal left, specifically as a part of
the women's movement--when the women's movement became anti-sexual, it was a
very confusing time for me then. It isn't now.

GROSS: Don't you think that some of the feminists then and now who had
certain objections to a certain type of men's magazines were actually--that
these women were actually pro-sex, but they thought that, you know, Playboy at
the time and some other men's magazines had a kind of backwards idea of women;
that sexuality was seen as something that--that women weren't seen as equals
to men, either in bed or out of it.

Mr. HEFNER: Yes, and I think that--and, you know, that point of view is
understandable in the context of male/female relations historically. But the
reality is that the major beneficiaries of the sexual revolution are women.
It is women who have traditionally historically been given non-human roles,
perceived as simply the daughters of Eve, perceived as either Madonna or
whore, and I think that it is the sexual revolution that plays one part in
female emancipation.

GROSS: But I think the emancipation came far beyond, you know, women being
seen as, say, a sex toy; it became women to define their own sexuality, use it
independently as they pleased, and also be equals in the workplace and home
and so on.

Mr. HEFNER: Yes. Yes, all of that. And the notion that simply because they
are perceived in some quarters as sexual objects does not necessarily deny any
of that. We are sexual objects; at our best that's part of who we are. But
it only part of who we are. We want to be attractive to members of the
opposite sex.

BIANCULLI: Hugh Hefner, the founder and editor in chief of Playboy magazine,
speaking with Terry Gross. We'll hear more of their conversation after this
break.

This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

BIANCULLI: Let's get back to our interview with Hugh Hefner. Hefner is
celebrating Playboy's 50th anniversary this month along with his six
girlfriends. But when Terry spoke with him in 1999 he only had four.

GROSS: Well, now that you're single again I've read that you're involved with
four women.

Mr. HEFNER: That's true.

GROSS: And two of them are twins.

Mr. HEFNER: That's true.

GROSS: They're 21, a third woman is 25 and the other is, I think, around 30?

Mr. HEFNER: No, the other is also is 21. She is a classmate--the three--the
twins and the other girl, Jessica, are all college students.

GROSS: So you're about 52 years older then they are?

Mr. HEFNER: It's true.

GROSS: You know, does that make you feel younger because you're with younger
women or older because you're so much older than they are?

Mr. HEFNER: It makes me feel much younger. It's a real revitalization
process, the connection with younger people and with younger girlfriends.
Without question, whether it's politically correct or not, definitely is a
reconnection with youth. And I think at this stage of my life much of what
I'm doing is kind of a recapturing of my own boyhood and my adolescent dreams,
and throughout most of my life, I've tried to stay connected as much as
possible with the boy. The boy who dreamed those dreams is who I really am
and always have been. And age, by and large, is for me--if you're healthy, is
largely a number. It's just a point of view.

GROSS: Which is something I sometimes wonder about couples in which there's a
really big age disparity between them. Like if you're 52 years older than the
woman you're seeing, in some ways she couldn't possibly be your equal because
you've lived, you know, a long time. You've been very successful, you've
amassed a fortune and published this, you know, world renowned magazine where
they're not even out of college yet. So, you know, it just like wouldn't be
possible for them to function as your equal.

Mr. HEFNER: Is that of some importance?

GROSS: Well, if I was the woman in the relationship it would be important to
me. I mean...

Mr. HEFNER: Well, I think quite frankly that people are attracted to one
another for a variety of reasons and, you know, there's more than one kind of
equality. In my relationship with women that I'm seeing now there's a very
real equality in terms of, you know, who makes the decisions in the
relationship and what we do and how we spend our time, etc. But I would say
that the relationships are more complementary than equal. Each of us brings
something different to the relationship. I bring the experience and the years
and the wisdom and whatever, and they bring a very special joy related to life
that is not so sophisticated, not so cynical and very refreshing.

GROSS: Let me know is this is too personal. But when you have a relationship
with a woman, how much of that relationship is solely about sex and how much
of it is about, you know, a relationship about other things, sharing things in
common, having, you know, intellectual interests to talk about or experiences
to share and so on?

Mr. HEFNER: I don't think that you can have a good relationship with a woman
if it isn't primarily connected to a common interest. If you don't really
like the person sex isn't going to hold it together.

GROSS: A lot of people would assume that the reason why your current lovers
are so much younger is because they're so sexually attractive to you because
of their youth.

Mr. HEFNER: True. But it is, as I said, something beyond simply sex. In
other words, there is a romantic connection that has to do with my own
childhood. I think that being a dreamer, a lot of my relationships are
projections of dreams and needs and yearnings that come right out of
childhood. You know, and I stay very much connected to those dreams, and I
have attempted in the last few years to reconnect as much as possible with the
boy and including, as a matter of fact, a lot of revisiting the films of my
youth. And a lot of my friends now are people of whatever age who share those
kind of boyhood joyous views on life.

GROSS: Well, what about the wisdom of the man though?

Mr. HEFNER: What's that?

GROSS: What about the wisdom of the man who's lived 73 years?

Mr. HEFNER: This is the wisdom of the man.

GROSS: To go back to the boy.

Mr. HEFNER: You betcha.

GROSS: Forgive me for asking this, but I know it's the kind of thing a lot of
people wonder. Do you think that your girlfriends who are in their 20s
are--do you think what they find most attractive is, you know, your body or
your fame and money and image?

Mr. HEFNER: I think they're most attracted to me because of who I am.

GROSS: The whole package.

Mr. HEFNER: I think that, you know, it's kind of like, you know, some of it
obviously has to do with money and power. But most of it I think has to do
with the fame. I think it's an attraction to who I am. And I don't have any
problem with that because I spent a lot of time becoming who I am.

GROSS: Right. No, it's funny, I was going through some old articles about
you and there was an article in Time magazine from February 14th, 1964, that
had the headline: Hugh Hefner Faces Middle Age.

Mr. HEFNER: Yes.

GROSS: So do you feel like you spend a lot of your life trying to lick the
idea that you're growing old?

Mr. HEFNER: Well, I think that I've managed to spend the second half of my
life successfully avoiding growing old. I think that all of us have to deal
with the reality of our mortality, and I'm doing a little better job than
most.

BIANCULLI: Playboy founder and bachelor icon Hugh Hefner, speaking with Terry
Gross in 1999. This month Playboy turns 50, Hef is 77.

I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

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Review: Movie "Bad Santa"
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

Filmmaker Terry Zwigoff is best known for his acclaimed documentary "Crumb,"
in which he chronicled the life and times of the underground comic artist R.
Crumb. His 2001 feature "Ghost World" was a faithful adaptation of the comic
book of the same name, about a disaffected teen-ager. In "Bad Santa," he
teams up with Billy Bob Thornton and executive producers Joel and Ethan Coen
to bring his underground sensibility to a feel-good Christmas movie. Film
critic David Edelstein has a review.

DAVID EDELSTEIN:

Two films in theaters this holiday season are melodramas of redemption that
begin with their fallen heroes stinking drunk before a horrified audience.
There's the disillusioned Indian fighter Tom Cruise in "The Last Samurai." He
ultimately joins forces with a band of fundamentalist nationalist warriors
against the armies of Western capitalist modernity. And there's Billy Bob
Thornton as an alcoholic, misanthropic, big-butt fetishizer who sort of half
discovers the maybe true meaning of Christmas at the end of "Bad Santa." Both
movies are a fascinating mixture of the conventional and the outlandish.

But only "Bad Santa" has a sense of humor about its own absurdity. It's a
cynical stunt that somehow manages to instill hope. It's also basically one
joke over and over. Billy Bob's Willie is a disgusting human being. He says
vile things to kids and viler things to their parents. And when he isn't
brusquely going through the motions as Santa Claus, he's swilling vodka or
sodomizing large women, as well as the not-too-large and very sweet Santa
groupie played by Lauren Graham. Willie is also an ace safe cracker, the one
thing his derelict daddy ever taught him how to do. The criminal mastermind
is his partner, a midget named Marcus, played by Tony Cox. Every year, they
set up shop as Santa and an elf at a different mall or department store, and
every year on Christmas Eve, they crack another safe and give themselves a
merry little Christmas, indeed.

One of the things you have to get past is that there's no way even the laziest
parents would let their kids sit on this guy's lap, and no way they'd let him
keep spewing four-letter words and waving around broken liquor bottles and
passing out and wetting his Santa suit. To feel the true joy of "Bad Santa,"
you have to step outside the narrative and put yourself in the heads of
Thornton and the director, Terry Zwigoff, and the executive producers, Joel
and Ethan Coen. You have to imagine what it felt like when the director
yelled `Cut!' and everyone collapsed with laughter on the set and said, `Can
we get away with this? Is nothing sacred?'

Here's the first encounter between Willie and the motherless and fatherless
kid, an obese simpleton played by Brett Kelly, with a big blob of snot under
his nose. The drunken Willie can't even be bothered to affix his beard
properly.

(Soundbite of "Bad Santa")

Mr. BILLY BOB THORNTON (As Willie): Next. This is not the DMV, all right?
Move along. What do you want? Well, come on, what do you want? A snot rag?

BRETT KELLY: It's not real.

Mr. THORNTON: Well, it was real but, you see, I got sick and all the hair
fell out, so I have to wear this thing.

KELLY: How'd you get sick?

Mr. THORNTON: I loved a woman who wasn't clean.

KELLY: Mrs. Santa?

Mr. THORNTON: No, it was her sister.

KELLY: What's it like at the North Pole?

Mr. THORNTON: Like the suburbs. Now get off my lap.

KELLY: You are really Santa, right?

Mr. THORNTON: No, I'm an accountant. I wear this thing as a fashion
statement, all right?

KELLY: OK.

Mr. THORNTON: Marcus, get this kid out of here. He's freaking me out.

EDELSTEIN: `I loved a woman who wasn't clean.' How did they get through it
without busting up? Billy Bob Thornton's performance is--there's no other
word--beautiful. When Thornton played the James Carville figure in "Primary
Colors," his timing was great, but he didn't have that outsized, demented,
swallow-the-world quality that Carville himself radiates.

Thornton is curdled and bilious, with sallow skin and liver lips. He doesn't
click in every part, but he's the greatest bad Santa imaginable. He's in a
tradition of Southern or Texan derelict nihilism out of Hunter S. Thompson
and Harry Crews and Terry Southern. Those of us who love it go for the
mixture of the archly sophisticated and the potty-mouthed.

"Bad Santa" is a gonzo parody of a Christmas redemption movie, but it also
hits all the Christmas redemption movie beats, which means you get a warm,
fuzzy feeling amid those four-letter words. It doesn't have subversive ideas.
It's domesticated gonzo, like the equally fun but much cleaner "School of
Rock." Willie's Christmas epiphany is when he stands up for the kid who's
being bullied by some skater boys. Later he tells Marcus, `I beat the bleep
out of some kids today, but it was for a purpose.'

The kid might be the most fascinating element here. It isn't entirely clear
if he believes that this criminal, alcoholic pervert is Santa or that it's the
best Santa someone like him could ever get, and therefore he chooses to
believe. I think it's the latter, and that brings a tear to my aged eye.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. It just depends how low you're willing
to stoop.

BIANCULLI: David Edelstein is film critic for the online magazine Slate.

Coming up, we'll hear Terry's interview with Edward Behr. He's written a book
about Prohibition in the United States. Today's the 70th anniversary of the
repeal of the ban.

I'm David Bianculli. This is FRESH AIR.

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Interview: Edward Behr on the history of Prohibition
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

Seventy years ago today marked a significant event in American history,
especially for bootleggers, drinkers and teetotalers. When Utah became the
36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment in 1933, national Prohibition was
officially repealed. But Prohibition is a chapter in America's history that
remains fascinating and a little mysterious. It was called a noble
experiment, the greatest social experiment of modern times. But although
beer, wine and liquor were illegal, speakeasies flourished and bootleg booze
abounded, leading Will Rogers to comment, `Prohibition is better than no
liquor at all.'

Edward Behr is a British journalist and the author of "Prohibition: 13 Years
That Changed America." He says Prohibition was the result of righteous
beliefs and the moral imperative to improve the health and well-being of
Americans, spearheaded by women who often were abused by their drunk husbands.
But, he says, Prohibition also reflected fear of new immigrants and their
drinking habits, and fear that men who drank would be less productive on the
assembly lines.

Terry spoke to Behr in 1996, and asked him what the Prohibition law actually
said.

(Excerpt from 1996 interview)

Mr. EDWARD BEHR (Author, "Prohibition: 13 Years That Changed America"): The
Prohibition law did not forbid the actual drinking of alcohol in one's home,
but it forbade almost everything else: its transport, its import, its sale.
You could not give a gift of a bottle of anything. It was a pretty
watertight series of laws which meant that, OK, if you had reserves in your
house, you could drink away until there was no more, but after that, you could
not buy it legally, you could not sell it legally, you could not import it.'
Every avenue seemed to be cut off.

TERRY GROSS, host:

You write that no one counted how hard it would be to enforce the Prohibition
laws, and you point out, too, that people were willing to take the risk of
being caught, and also that law enforcement officials were willing to be
bribed to overlook the law, to turn their heads.

Mr. BEHR: The Prohibition era was, I would say, the most corrupt era of
American politics in the history of America. I think most people's memories
of Prohibition here probably go back--the only thing one remembers was the old
television series about Eliot Ness. Well, that was just the tip of the
iceberg. The corruption went up to the White House.

I mean, Warren Harding, the first president of the Prohibition years, 1920 to
'24, he had liquor and vintage wines brought to the White House by Customs
officials who wanted to ingratiate themselves with him. The Senate library
was the most exclusive speakeasy bar in Washington. Harding himself had the
little house on K Street where he had private drinking parties. Everybody
broke the law.

In the Senate and House of Representatives buildings, the cellars were full of
liquor. The cellar space had been rented out to bootleggers so that they
could walk around the Senate building and sell their liquor to senators and
other officials in the building. I mean, of course, that was just the tip of
the iceberg, too, because the amount of bribery was unbelievable.

GROSS: So you're arguing that Prohibition created a lot of rackets around it.

Mr. BEHR: It certainly did. The bootleggers were very, very wealthy people.
The saloon, the speakeasy joints were, in particularly New York, practically
unhampered by police control because things were so corrupt that the police
inevitably looked the other way. Of course, they were bribed. The one thing
that one hasn't mentioned about Prohibition was why did a lot of people that
you wouldn't expect to be prohibitionists become prohibitionists? Because
among the backers of the Anti-Saloon League, you have people like John D.
Rockefeller, you have Edison, you have the DuPont de Nemours family and, above
all, you have Henry Ford.

And the reason why all these people were prohibitionists is tied up with
industrial America. This was the first time that on the assembly lines it was
very important to have skilled workers who were sober. And that's why Henry
Ford, even before Prohibition came into effect, had his own private police
force, and he would keep a watch on all his workers. A worker caught buying
liquor, even beer, was warned, and if he was caught doing it a second time, he
was fired. And Henry Ford is on record as saying, `If ever Prohibition is
repealed, I am going out of business because I don't want to have the
situation that I had before Prohibition when there was a lot of absenteeism
because people were so drunk.'

GROSS: Some of the biggest bootleggers during the Prohibition era went on to
become very wealthy, very respectable liquor distributors or manufacturers
after Prohibition. You want to name some of them?

Mr. BEHR: Yes. For instance, well, probably the best-known figure of all was
the father of President Kennedy, Joe Kennedy. Joe Kennedy had his finger in
many pies. He was a very wealthy entrepreneur and businessman, Hollywood film
producer and so on. But one of the things that he did was through, if you
like, a series of dummy companies he was a big, a major bootlegger.

Now how big was he? Well, the proof that he was pretty big came when
Prohibition came to an end, when the major liquor firms and wine companies in
France and liquor firm companies in England and Scotland legitimized what had
been a clandestine operation by appointing their former bootleggers as
official representatives. Now who became the official representative of Hague
Whiskey(ph), of Gordon's gin? It was Joe Kennedy.

Who became the representative of a series of vintage wine companies in
America, a company called Alliance Distributors that was owned by the gangster
Frank Costello? There was another company called Capitol Wines and Spirits,
which became very big after Prohibition, and this was a company that had been
set up by Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano.

So you see that what happened eventually was that the clandestine operators
became, at the end of Prohibition, the official licensees doing exactly the
same thing but, of course, at much lesser risk than they had done for 13
years.

GROSS: Do you wish you could taste some Prohibition alcohol, see what it was
like?

Mr. BEHR: Not particularly. One's got to remember, I mean, if one's
interested in the history of liquor, that the cocktail is the child of
Prohibition, and the real reason for the popularity of cocktails was that it
masked the sometimes terrible taste of bootlegger gin and whiskey. And so by
having a cocktail, you mixed it with other things and you didn't taste the
awful taste of bad liquor.

GROSS: Did you have anybody during Prohibition saying, `OK, you know,
alcohol's illegal now but, let's face it, there's still so much alcohol that's
being consumed and rackets are flourishing around it. Something's going wrong
here'? Where there people speaking out about that at the time?

Mr. BEHR: There were people speaking about that at the time, and the curious
thing is that, as Prohibition became more and more discredited, so electorally
it became more important to vote in favor of Prohibition. The crunch came
with the presidential election of 1928, when the Democratic candidate, Al
Smith, who was a wet, as they said in those days--in other words, he wanted to
get rid of Prohibition, which of course Roosevelt did in 1933--he almost
became the Democratic presidential candidate. But the forces--Anti-Saloon
League and others--were such that he was finally beaten to the post by a chin
entity(ph), who of course never won the presidency.

And there are hundreds of cases of senators, congressmen, being caught
with--after holidays in Cuba, coming back with barrels of rum and being
arrested--some of them, partly because they couldn't do otherwise because the
barrels were broken, there was a smell of rum in their luggage--being
convicted, fined, sometimes going to jail, and then being re-elected in a
prohibitionist state. So you had this incredible--the irony on it is that
there was an incredible amount of hypocrisy.

GROSS: Prohibition was repealed in 1933 under FDR. You say one of the
reasons why was the Depression. How did the Depression affect Prohibition?

Mr. BEHR: The Depression affected Prohibition in several ways. First of all,
things became so tough with ordinary people in America that they couldn't
afford the huge prices that bootlegger whiskey and gin commanded in those
days. So you had the ironic fact that it just wasn't as profitable as it had
been in the earlier days of Prohibition.

The second thing was that the movement to repeal Prohibition came from the
same people who had at one point been ardent prohibitionists. For instance,
if you take the DuPont family, huge chemical works and so on, putting a lot of
money into the Anti-Saloon League, they became very prominent after the
Depression set in because they felt, rightly or wrongly, that America was
denying itself badly needed tax money, which they would have got if liquor had
been legal. And they felt also--individual taxes rose and commercial taxes
rose after the Depression. They felt that if Prohibition came to an end, then
the tax situation would be much better for them. And it was not, I think, a
sort of moral decision; it was a very sort of self-serving attitude. But, of
course, they were right.

GROSS: You said that the farmers also had financial reasons why they wanted
Prohibition repealed.

Mr. BEHR: The farmers had in the pre-Prohibition days sold a lot of their
corn to the distillers, and of course in the early days of Prohibition before
the depression of the great market crack, '29, and the miserable years of '30,
'31, the farmers had done pretty well. They started doing miserably once the
Depression set in, and they, too, belatedly realized the market that they were
missing.

GROSS: Did you find out about how drinking habits changed after the repeal of
Prohibition? Did America go on this big drinking spree?

Mr. BEHR: Curiously not. All the accounts are that the return to legalized
drinking happened without an enormous upturn in crime, excessive drinking. It
re-entered the mainstream of society, but without all the consequences that
the prohibitionists had warned about.

BIANCULLI: Edward Behr speaking with Terry Gross in 1996. Behr is the author
of "Prohibition: 13 Years That Changed America."

(Soundbite of song)

Unidentified Woman: (Singing) You get mad when I call you old; you got the
key in your hand, but can't find the hole. You drink too much, yes, you drink
too much. You can't do nothing 'cause you drink too much. I give you money
to pay a bill, you come home smelling like a liquor still. You drink too
much, yes, you drink too much. You can't do nothing 'cause you drink too
much.

Yeah. Yeah, man. Look over yonder.

When I first met you, you wasn't cheap; everything you start to do, why, your
goal is to sleep 'cause you drink too much, yes, you drink too much. Oh, you
can't do nothing 'cause you drink too much.

BIANCULLI: Coming up, a look at the HBO miniseries "Angels in America."

I'm David Bianculli. This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Miniseries "Angels in America"
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

I'm David Bianculli, TV critic for the New York Daily News and for FRESH AIR.

This Sunday, HBO presents the first half of "Angels in America," its six-hour
miniseries adaptation of Tony Kushner's award-winning Broadway play. It's
been 10 years since "Millennium Approaches," the first half of Kushner's
"Angels in America," appeared on Broadway. The conclusion of the drama,
"Perestroika," premiered a year later. Both halves of the story, in their
respective years, won the Tony for best play.

"Angels in America" is set in the mid-1980s, smack in the middle of the Reagan
presidency, and follows a handful of key characters as their lives and
destinies intertwine. Some of the characters, including one based on the
famously acerbic attorney Roy Cohn, get AIDS. Others wrestle with conflict
about their relationships, their responsibilities and their futures. Some
meet their problems head on; others hallucinate. And more than one of them in
this play, including Roy Cohn's famous victim, Ethel Rosenberg, is a
hallucination.

On stage, many of the actors played several parts, and at the climax of part
one, there's the first but not the last appearance by an angel. It's one
heaven of a cliffhanger, and "Angels in America," a play about love and
disease and politics and forgiveness, is one amazing drama.

Ten years later, on the other side of the millennium, "Angels in America"
could seem more distant, more like a theatrical relic, but it doesn't. HBO
Films president Colin Callender spent $60 million to make this version right,
beginning with the four key collaborators. Kushner, the playwright, was hired
to adapt his own story for television. Mike Nichols, a stage director whose
brilliant film credits include "The Graduate," was hired to direct. And the
two marquee stars are Al Pacino and Meryl Streep, who work together on screen
for the first time.

Pacino plays Roy Cohn, and Streep plays several characters, including a Mormon
mother and a male rabbi. They're terrific in this, but they're not alone.
Jeffrey Wright, who won a Tony playing Cohn's male nurse, reprises that role,
and another one here, and is just as mesmerizing and touching. So are the
other players, including Emma Thompson as a nurse and an angel, and Justin
Kirk and Ben Shenkman as lovers whose romance falters when one of them becomes
ill.

Mixed in with all these characters are two others, a young Republican Mormon
named Joe and his mentally unhinged wife, Harper, whose problems stem at least
in part from their unhappy marriage. He's just been offered a powerful job in
Washington, but she doesn't want to leave their apartment, much less New York
City. Patrick Wilson plays Joe, and Mary-Louise Parker plays Harper. And
they're brilliantly believable.

(Soundbite of "Angels in America")

Mr. PATRICK WILSON (As Joe): Look, I know this is scary for you, but try to
understand what it means to me. Will you try?

Ms. MARY-LOUISE PARKER (As Harper): Yes.

Mr. WILSON: Good, good. Really try. I think things are starting to change
in the world.

Ms. PARKER: But I don't want anything--I...

Mr. WILSON: Whoa, wait, for the good. Change for the good. America has
rediscovered itself, its sacred position among nations. People aren't ashamed
of that like they used to be. This is a great thing: the truth restored, law
restored. That's what President Reagan's done, Harper. He says truth exists
and can be spoken proudly, and the country responds to him. We've become
better, more good. I need to be a part of that. I need something big to lift
me up.

BIANCULLI: Like all the other cast members in "Angels in America," Wilson and
Parker are so good in their roles, and their roles are so good, that you don't
even miss Pacino and Streep when they're not on screen. That's the highest
praise I can bestow, and HBO's "Angels in America" deserves it. Every
performance draws you in and holds you in its grip, and Nichols directs with
such inventiveness that "Angels in America" doesn't seem like a televised play
at all, but its own full-blown original movie. As a TV miniseries, "Angels in
America" is right up there with "Lonesome Dove," "Pennies from Heaven" and
"The Singing Detective." It's that ambitious, that sweeping, that
challenging, and that kind of masterpiece.

HBO is showing the first three hours this Sunday and the second half a week
later, but will also present each play in hourly installments throughout the
week. I recommend watching it in bigger doses, but however you see it, just
make sure you do. "Angels in America" didn't arrive until 2003 is just about
over, but even so, it's the TV show of the year.

(Credits)

BIANCULLI: For Terry Gross, I'm David Bianculli.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.