Mel Brooks: The Playboy Interview

By Brad Darrach Playboy February 1975 “The rich,” according to a Spanish proverb, “laugh carefully.” They have a lot to lose. The poor, on the other hand, need to laugh in order to forget how little they have to laugh about—which may be why the Depression was the last...

Furry’s Blues

By Stanley Booth Playboy April 1970 “By now there must be in the world a million guitar virtuosos; but there are very few real blues players. The reason for this is that the blues—not the form but the blues—demands such dedication. This dedication lies beyond...

Albert Brooks Is Funnier Than You Think

By Paul Slansky Playboy July 1983 It’s Thanksgiving Eve in NBC studio 6-A, and Albert Brooks is talking about bowling. “In every bowling alley, there’s a room just a little bit larger than this desk called the pro shop,” he tells David Letterman. “It’s full of balls...

The Last Show

By Dick Schaap Playboy January 1967 Lenny Bruce fell off a toilet seat with a needle in his arm and he crashed to a tiled floor and died. And the police came and harassed him in death as in life. Two at a time, they let photographers from newspapers, magazines and TV...

Herschel Walker Doesn’t Tap Out

By Steve Oney Playboy December 2011 On a hot summer afternoon, Herschel Walker, wearing a Best Damn Sports Show T-shirt and Clinch board shorts, strides into the 2,500-square-foot main room of the American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, Calif. At 6-foot-1 and 219...

The Day Bobby Blew It

By Brad Darrach Playboy July 1973 Bobby Fischer heard a knock at the door. It was sometime after ten A.M., Thursday, June 29, 1972. Three days before the first game of his match with Boris Spassky for the world chess championship. Eleven hours before the plane left...