Iconic Playboy founder Hugh Hefner died Wednesday night at age 91. Much like in life, the publishing legend remains an incredibly polarizing figure—and as the tributes pour in so too do the more critical takes on his life and legacy. Even Hefner's final resting place—in a crypt next to Marilyn Monroe—has spurred controversy. 
 
 He will be buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park adjacent to Marilyn Monroe, the very woman whose nude photos appear in the inaugural issue of Playboy in 1953—Hefner has long attributed the magazine's initial success with the Monroe photos. “Spending eternity next to Marilyn is too sweet to pass up," as Hefner told the L.A. Times in 2009. Sweet, right? 
 
 Well, not exactly. Monroe never consented to have her photos in Playboy. She had posed for the photos for a photographer friend four years earlier, in 1949. Her career would begin to take off a year later, but at the time the actress, then only 23, was between jobs and hard up for cash. "She was living hand-to-mouth and she owed [the photographer] a favor—he had lent her $5 on an earlier occasion for cab fare," as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam wrote in a 1993 story on Monroe. "Besides, $50 was precisely the amount of money she needed for the monthly payment on her secondhand car." Monroe was nervous about the potential effect the nudes could have on her career, and signed the release form as "Mona Monroe." 
 
 Monroe was right to be worried—the photos would ultimately almost destroy her soon-burgeoning career. As Halberstam wrote: 
 
 
 
 In February 1952, just as her career was taking off, there was an anonymous phone call to 20th Century Fox. The naked girl in a nude calendar, said the male caller, was its newest star, Marilyn Monroe. The caller demanded $10,000. Otherwise, he said, he would take his proof to the newspapers. The studio people were terrified by the call but decided not to pay, which, they decided, would only lead to more blackmail. But they did pressure her to deny that she was the girl. It was a terrible moment for her: She was sure that her career was over. But she also decided to tell the truth and to take the initiative by leaking the story herself to a friendly writer. It was her on the calendar, she said, and there was no sense lying about it. "Sure, I posed," she said. "I was hungry." The public rallied to support her. 
 
 
 
 The next year, Hefner, then only 27 and trying to start his magazine, heard that a Midwestern advertising trade company had the rights to the by-then-infamous photo and drove out to suburban Chicago to make the buy. "It was a brilliant purchase for a magazine just being born—America's newest star caught lushly in the nude, posing coyly on a red velvet drape," according to Halberstam. 
 
 Hefner would purchase the photos for $500 and use them to launch Playboy, without Monroe ever providing permission or being compensated. "Exploitation of this type was a constant in [Monroe's] career," according to The St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. 
 
 When she was broke Marilyn Monroe posed nude for a calender for $50. Years later Hgh Hefner bought it for Playboy. pic.twitter.com/FLyVf7Htcm — The Marilyn Diaries (@MarilynDiary) June 9, 2014 
 
 The issue sold more than 50,000 copies; Hefner characterized Monroe as "the launching key to the beginning of Playboy." 
 
 "He became an instant celebrity; she had to apologize for the photos, and feared for her career," as writer Sady Doyle put it in her book Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear... and Why. 
 
 Although Hefner and Monroe never knew each other, they were born in the same year (1926) and Hef told Los Angeles Magazine in 2002 that he always felt a kinship with her. Hefner, according to Los Angeles Magazine, "bought his crypt from a private citizen who realized that, with the right buyer, his Marilyn adjacency was worth a gold mine." He purchased it for $75,000 in 1992. 
 
 The tiny, three-acre cemetery off Wilshire Boulevard also provides a last home for Farrah Fawcett, Roy Orbison, Frank Zappa and many other famous names. 
 
 In Doyle's view (her book was published in 2016, more than two decades after Hefner purchased the plot, and a year before his death), there was nothing romantic about Hefner's purchase of the final resting place: "It was a gruesome joke, 'sleeping with' the woman he'd almost ruined, and doing so without her consent—claiming her in death, as he'd claimed the right to exploit her in life." 
 
 "I'm a sucker for blondes and she is the ultimate blonde," Hefner told CBS LA (as quoted in Doyle's book). "It has a complete notion to it. I will be spending the rest of my eternity with Marilyn." 
 
 Monroe, however, wasn't the only draw at Westwood cemetery for Hefner. "The funerals that I remember being there for—Mel Tormé, Buddy Rich, Dorothy Stratten. Part of them is still there," as he told Los Angeles Magazine in 2002. "The entire ritual related to cemeteries is connected to that—that some part of you remains. So if Marilyn were at Forest Lawn, it would be different." 
 
 H/t: @brosandprose 

 Hugh Hefner's Crypt The Guy Next Door To Marilyn Monroe 
 
 Hugh Hefner's Burial Site Next to Marilyn Monroe Awaits 
 
 Hugh Hefner's so-called "better place" is waiting ... and it's right next to the woman who helped him launch Playboy. 
 
 Hef bought the crypt to the left of Marilyn Monroe's in L.A.'s Westwood Village Memorial Park. He dropped $75k on the burial spot way back in 1992 -- and once said, "Spending an eternity next to Marilyn is too sweet to pass up." 
 
 Marilyn, the cover girl for Hef's first issue of Playboy, has been there since her death in 1962. 
 
 Fun-ish fact: Marilyn's ex-husband, Joe DiMaggio, used to own the crypt above hers -- but sold it when they got divorced in 1954. 

 Playboy founder Hugh Hefner will be buried next to his iconic magazine’s first cover model, Marilyn Monroe. 
 
 Back in 1992, Hefner purchased the burial plot next to Monroe’s resting place in Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles at the hefty sum of $75,000, per The Guardian. 
 
 Hefner actually discussed the purchase in an interview, back in 2000. “Jay Leno suggested that if I was going to spend that kind of money, I should actually be on top of her,” Hefner joked, according to the New York Daily News. “But to me, there’s something rather poetic in the fact that we’ll be buried in the same place. And that cemetery also has other meanings and connections for me. Friends like Buddy Rich and Mel Torme are buried there. So is Dorothy Stratten.” 
 
 Speaking in 2012 about Monroe, Hefner explained the “double connection” he felt to the late star, as she was not only the first person to cover Playboy magazine but also born the same year as Hefner. 
 
 “She is without question the definitive sex icon of our time,” Hefner said of Monroe. “There’s something unique when an iconic legendary figure is more famous 50 years after her death than at the height of her career.” 
 
 Hefner died at his famed Playboy mansion in Beverly Hills, surrounded by loved ones. Other celebrities buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park include Roy Orbison, Truman Capote, and Dean Martin.
– Marilyn Monroe was there when Hugh Hefner started Playboy—appearing on the cover of the first issue in 1953*—and will apparently be joined to Hefner permanently in the afterlife. TMZ reports Hefner, who died Wednesday at the age of 91, will be buried in a crypt immediately to the left of the one housing the remains of Marilyn Monroe. Hefner purchased the crypt at Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles for for $75,000 in 1992—30 years after Monroe had been interred there. "Spending an eternity next to Marilyn is too sweet to pass up," Hefner had said about the purchase. Entertainment Weekly reports Hefner felt a unique connection to Monroe, who shared a birth year with the Playboy founder, though LAist points out the two never actually met. "To me there's something rather poetic in the fact that we'll be buried in the same place," Hefner once said. Westwood Village Memorial Park is the resting place of some of Hefner's famous friends, such as Mel Torme and Buddy Rich, as well as other celebrities like Dean Martin, Truman Capote, and Roy Orbison. *Monroe never consented to have her photos appear in Playboy, having posed for them for a friend when she was unemployed and hard up for cash. She was paid $50 and signed the release under a fake name. Four years later, Hefner bought the photos for $500 and used them to launch his magazine. It nearly ended Monroe's career.