When Hugh Hefner fired up his first issue way back in 1953, he didn't have much dough to waste on original fiction. So, for the first three issues, he snatched Sherlock Holmes stuff out of the public domain.
This famous Marilyn issue from December 1953 used some portion of The Sign of Four titled "Introducing Sherlock Holmes," with an original illo by William J. Marsh showing Holmes shooting up cocaine.
The next issue, from January 1954, featured "A Scandal in Bohemia." An eye-straining session of Googling failed to turn up any artwork from that one.
If any of you lucky ducks who possess these issues would care to scan or photograph the Sherlock art for our readers, I'd be pleased to post it here. If you scan or photograph any other contents, please send it in a plain brown wrapper.
Here's Hef and friends outside the Sherlock Museum in London. More proof he was a fan. Looks like the same "copper" I posed with some years back.
Did they have to explain to Kendra who's Sherlock Holmes?
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