What to Know
Hugh Hefner reportedly enjoyed having power over the celebrities and other high-profile individuals who visited the Playboy Mansion, to the point that he allegedly installed cameras everywhere—not just so he could watch the footage later, but also so he could use them as blackmail. According to a new report from RadarOnline, Hefner would use the cameras in his mansion to capture well-known people having sex or doing drugs so he could use the footage against them later.
The report cited unnamed insiders, along with Jennifer Saginor, the daughter of Hefner’s former doctor, and Stefan Tetenbaum, who used to work for Hefner.
Hefner enjoyed collecting blackmail.
During A&E’s docuseries Secrets of Playboy, Tetenbaum revealed that a lot of famous, well-known men visited the Playboy Mansion and had sex with the women there. According to him, Hefner usually didn’t participate, but he recorded what happened between them.
“Hefner taped everything in his bedroom and many men and stars and athletes came into the bedroom and had sex with these girls,” Tetenbaum said. “Most of the time Hefner never participated. He just watched, he was a voyeur.”
He added, “He would stage them. He thought of himself as a film director, he didn’t want to be on the tapes, he wanted his girls and the stars.” And while his account makes it sound like Hefner installed cameras so he could watch the footage later, Tetenbaum also touched on the power this gave Hefner, not just over women, but over the men who visited the Playboy Mansion as well.
“Well can you imagine, after he had all these tapes of you having sex with different girls, what power he had over these men?” he said.
Other people also confirmed that Hefner liked having power over people.
An insider told RadarOnline that Hefner “loved to blackmail people.” Which might, in part, explain why he had cameras “everywhere,” according to Saginor. Saginor noted that Hefner had these cameras in “every single room” and “they were going 24/7.”
The insider told RadarOnline that this footage came in handy when Hefner needed help with something. “That’s how he got all of his favors done,” they said. “If they were in the grotto or game room doing drugs or hooking up with someone, of course he would have footage of that he could expose at any time.”
Potential blackmail aside, women have talked about how uncomfortable these cameras made them.
For A&E’s docuseries, Former Playmate Sondra Theodore also said Hefner “had tapes on everyone,” but the cameras made a lot of women uncomfortable. “The first time I looked up at the two screens he had for the TV in the bedroom and I realized it was me, I’m like ‘Whoa, what are you doing?'” she recalled, per People. “And when we started bringing other people into the bedroom, some girls had the same reaction like ‘Whoa.'”
Theodore said that when women expressed this discomfort with the tapes, Hefner would offer to turn the cameras off, but would secretly keep them on anyway.
READ NEXT: Holly Madison Says Hugh Hefner Often Took Nonconsensual Nude Photos Of Her And Playmates
