Hugh Hefner and Marilyn Monroe, the iconic actress who appeared on the cover of the first Playboy magazine in 1953, will have side-by-side plots at the exclusive Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles, "Entertainment Tonight" reported.
Hefner, the founder of Playboy magazine who died Wednesday at 91, had purchased the crypt next to Monroe 25 years ago for $75,000, the television program stated.
Others stars buried in the cemetery include Truman Capote, James Coburn, Rodney Dangerfield, Eva and Zsa Zsa Gabor, Merv Griffin, Dean Martin, Natalie Wood and Farrah Fawcett, "Entertainment Tonight" stated.
Monroe, who died in 1962 at age 36, appeared on the December 1953 issue, wrote People magazine. Hefner pulled together $8,000 to introduce the magazine with Monroe on the cover, People stated.
The actress was riding high with hits like "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" debuting with Jane Russell in August of that year followed by "How to Marry a Millionaire" with Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall in November.
Hefner, who set up his original headquarters in his hometown of Chicago, paid a calendar maker $500 for Monroe's photos wearing "nothing but the radio on," the Los Angeles Times wrote.
The magazine, which sold all 70,000 copies, had a cartoon by Hefner, party jokes, black-and-white pictures of nude sunbathers in California, articles on football and the Dorsey brothers. He printed fiction by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Ambrose Bierce for free because they had passed into public domain, the Times wrote.
By Playboy's first anniversary, he had more than doubled the circulation to 170,000 and by its fifth anniversary it had reached 900,000. The magazine's circulation would peak in the 1970s at 7 million per issue, the Times reported.
Hefner shifted his operations from Chicago to Los Angeles in 1975 where he established the Playboy Mansion, where it would become his residence and site for Playboy-linked parties and events until his death, the newspaper stated.
Hefner died at his residence in the landmark Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills on Wednesday, Playboy representative Teri Thomerson told the Los Angeles Times.
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