High Society is a U.S. pornographic magazine. In addition to hardcore pictorials of nude models, it also has feature articles and occasional celebrity pictorials.
It is published monthly, with an extra end-of-year issue, by Blue Horizon Media (formerly Crescent Publishing, formerly Drake publishing) owned by the reclusive publisher Carl Ruderman. In 2000, Crescent was charged by the FCC for over 180 million dollars of credit card fraud on its websites, much of which was conducted on the High Society site. Then-president Bruce Chew was criminally indicted along with several members of the Gambino crime family. Ruderman escaped prosecution, alleging that he was abroad and unaware of the criminal activity at his company.
In November of 1981 a spin-off magazine, High Society Live!, was first published, featuring "real people, real stories, real photos". There is a section called "Rich Bitch of the month" which features amateur photos. It also has occasional celebrity photos along with girl solo, girl-girl, boy-girl and group photosets.
One of the first "editors" was Gloria Leonard, an adult film star, who joined the magazine as a figurehead editor in 1976. It was during her editorial reign that 976 pay phone numbers were first used to advertise upcoming magazine issues. It eventually evolved into the very first "phone sex" line.
Although Carl Ruderman is generally given credit for inventing phone sex lines, former High Society editor Jeff Goodman claims to be the true inventor behind the 976 pay lines. Goodman was fired by Ruderman, supposedly after asking for a share of the early phone sex profits.