Hugh Hefner kept extensive journals and video logs of his sexual exploits and former lovers, according to witnesses who have seen the goods. The new burning question is, who gets the diaries now that the sexual icon is gone?
A 1999 profile of Hefner, who died at age 91 on Wednesday of natural causes, revealed the editor and mogul kept “logs of his sexual activity on legal pads that he locked in a private cabinet in his bedroom.”
“There were stacks of them,” late-80s Hefner paramour Carrie Leigh told TheWrap Founder and CEO Sharon Waxman, then a correspondent for the Washington Post.
“On the left, it would say the names of the people. Next to that, it would say the type of sex … and to the right of that, he would grade it. A-plus-plus-plus was the highest grade, down to C-minus,” Leigh said at the time of the interview in 1999.
Leigh, and other individuals who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Hefner also kept cameras hidden throughout his bedroom that recorded his romps from the ’70s and ’80s. Leigh said Hefner would often replay the tapes during their lovemaking, inspiring feelings of jealousy.
As the relationship faded, Leigh panicked that the tapes would come back to haunt her as she chased a career and family.
“I said, ‘We might break up, I might go on and have children, and I can’t have you having these tapes –someone else might get a hold of them,’” she explained.
Hefner told Waxman that he destroyed the footage after Leigh managed to walk off with some. But he did acknowledge the logs were habitual and remained.
“I’m a writer-editor. I’ve done that kind of thing since early childhood,” he told Waxman. “Do you think it’s unusual? As a writer, the first thing you do is keep observational notes.”
A friend of Leigh’s, Kelli Moore, who saw the logs, described them as “bizarre. That was just inexplicable to me. Weird.”
Whether the video archive remains or not, the sex diaries would still be a beyond-juicy read (imagine those letter grades next to famous faces). The question is — who gets it?
Representatives for Hefner’s estate did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.