Requiem for a Dream

When the pitiful octogenarian Hugh Hefner got ditched by his scheming fiancée a few weeks back, it was a pitiful reminder that the only living “playboy” who can still be considered suave, debonair, sexually irresistible, and, well, cool, is the middle-aged man in the Dos Equis commercials.

Hugh Hefner on the dance floor

RW3 WENN Photos / Newscom

With the primavera suicide of über-playboy Gunter Sachs, the passing of director Blake Edwards (whose films helped create “Gstaad Chic”), the dismal reception accorded the feeble Russell Brand remake of Arthur, Hefner’s ignominious repudiation by his runaway bride, and the low profiles kept by geriatric roués like Warren Beatty, Robert Evans, and George Hamilton, it seems that the age of the playboy—stretching all the way back into antiquity—has run its course.

The Most Interesting Man in the World is no longer Lord Byron or Beau Brummel or Porfirio Rubirosa. And it is certainly not Taki. It is an actor in a beer commercial. A Mexican beer commercial. Women will probably not mourn the passing of this golden age. But men will. Most men.

God, you ask yourself, what happened?

The term “playboy” traditionally refers to well-heeled predators who do not have to work for a living, whose primary concern is the pursuit of pleasure, and who are obsessed with beautiful women. If the women are not technically beautiful in the purest sense of the word, being rich will do. The classic, archetypal playboy has mysterious economic underpinnings, a preternaturally radiant tan, resplendent incisors, and fabulous hair—though sometimes veering a bit too far on the Waffen SS side.