On the [same bill at Cinema 1] as Three Fables of Love…is an extraordinary 30 minute short, called The Most — a devastating documentation of Hugh M. Hefner, the editor and publisher of Playboy Magazine. In it Mr. Hefner and some of his associates endeavor to explain him and his enterprises against a shifting background of his office and his Playboy Clubs. It concludes with a candid-camera look at a frenzied party in Mr. Hefner’s home. “I am, ” he frankly tells the camera, “the most successful man I know.” The picture makes one wonder what his notion of success really is.
– Bosley Crowther
New York Times August 21, 1963