Porn Provider Larry Flynt, who built Hustler magazine into an adult entertainment empire while holding the rights to the first amendment, died Wednesday. He was 78. A Flynt statement manager said: “He passed quietly in his sleep at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center” with his wife and daughter by his side. Flynt’s cousin said Flynt was weak and died of heart failure.
From his inception as a strip club owner in Ohio to his government as the founder of one of the most explicit adult magazines, Flynt has constantly challenged the business and become a target for religious right-wing and feminist groups.
Flynt achieved a surprise U.S. Supreme Court victory over Reverend Jerry Falwell, who charged him with libel after a 1983 Hustler alcohol ad suggested that Falwell had lost his virginity to his mother in an outside room.
Flynt’s company not only produced Hustler but also other niche publications. He owned a video production business, various websites, a casino in Los Angeles and 10 Hustler boutiques. He also licensed the Hustler name to strip clubs.
In a CBS “Sunday Morning” Profile In 2014, Flynt said at the height of Hustler’s popularity, the magazine had a monthly circulation of $ 3 million before the Internet and technology reduced the numbers.
“I treat Hustler the same way it was a pot of peanut butter or a can of green beans,” Flynt told CBS News’ Erin Moriarty. “You know, it’s a product, and if you do not make money, you have to move on.”
Flynt has faced controversy and tragedy over the years.
Flynt was shot by a sharpshooter in 1978 and was paralyzed from the waist down and used a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He fought drug and alcohol addiction, and his fourth wife died of a heroin overdose.
His daughter, Lisa Flynt-Fugate, died in a car accident in Ohio in 2014 at the age of 47.
With a fortune of more than $ 100 million, Flynt spent his later years in the political arena. When Gov. Gray Davis was recalled by California voters in 2003, Flynt was among 135 candidates who chose to replace him. He calls himself “a hawker hawker who cares” and collects more than 15,000 votes.
A self-described progressive, Flynt was no fan of Former President Trump. Prior to the 2016 election, he paid up to $ 1 million for video or audio recordings of Mr. Trump engaging in illegal or ‘sexually degrading or degrading’ activities.
In 2017, Flynt offered a $ 10 million reward for evidence that would lead Trump’s accusation, and in 2019 Larry Flynt Publications sent a Christmas card to some Republican lawmakers showing Trump lying dead in a pool of blood, with the killer saying, ‘I just shot Donald Trump in Fifth Avenue and no one arrested me.’ – a reference to Trump’s fame that he could commit such a murder and not lose votes.
Flynt’s life was portrayed in the award-winning 1996 film “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” which earned Oscar nominations for director Milos Forman and Woody Harrelson, who played Flynt.
