Victor Lownes, American businessman, Died at 88

  Business

Victor Aubrey Lownes III was born on April 17, 1928, in Buffalo, New York, and died on January 11, 2017.

He was an executive for HMH Publishing Company Inc. (later known as Playboy Enterprises) from 1955 through the early 1980s.

Then after that, Lownes met Hugh Hefner in 1954, Hefner started Playboy magazine.

Then, eventually, he joined his publishing company, serving in various capacities as vice president.

He was a close confidant of Hefner and gained a reputation of dating Playboy Playmates.

He headed Playboy Europe and the UK Playboy Clubs from the mid-1960s until his dismissal in the early 1980s.

He oversaw Playboy Enterprises’s move into casino gambling in the UK in the 1960s, which became Playboy’s most successful business other than its publishing until the advent of cable television.

Lownes managed the most successful part of Hefner’s attempt to diversify out of publishing and into motion pictures, hotels and casino gambling.

At that time, as the head of Playboy Europe, he was Britain’s highest paid executive, drawing a large salary and eventually becoming Playboy Enterprises’s second biggest shareholder.

He was credited with creating Playboy Clubs in the United States.

He was the elder son of Victor Aubrey Lownes Jr. and Winifred (née Mark) Lownes, a wealthy couple with ties to the Yale time-lock fortune in Buffalo.

Victor Aubrey Lownes III passed away at 88 years old.