LOS ANGELES (AP) – Larry Flynt, who turned his sassy Hustler magazine into an empire while fighting in numerous First Amendment court battles and skinning politicians with stunts like the Christmas card of Donald Trump’s murder, has died. He was 78 years old.
Flynt, who was in poor health, died on Wednesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, his longtime lawyer Paul Cambria told the Associated Press.
Flynt was shot in an assassination attempt in 1978 and was paralyzed from the waist down, but he refused to slow down, building an extravagant reputation along with an estimated $ 100 million fortune.
He was riding in a gold-plated wheelchair with a velvet-covered seat.
“His doctors said he should have died 30 years ago,” said his nephew, Jimmy Flynt Jr., on Wednesday. “He survived most of the doctors who took care of him.”
Born on November 1, 1942, in Lakeville, Kentucky, Larry Claxton Flynt Jr. grew up poor. Divorced twice at 21, Flynt finally found his calling by buying bars and turning them into Hustler clubs that featured topless dancers. In an effort to win business, he published a newsletter that became Hustler magazine.
Founded in 1974, Hustler was shamelessly rude, low-brow and hard-core, mocking the claims of sophisticated men’s magazines like Playboy.
The magazine featured politically incorrect humor, photos of female genitals and, sometimes, scenes of S&M and slavery with women bound and gagged. He shocked the audience with a 1978 cover depicting a woman being placed in a meat grinder.
It was no shock, then, that Flynt faced many legal struggles over obscenity laws or that he was intensely hated by the religious right and feminist groups.
“Larry Flynt must be remembered as a scourge in society; he contributed directly and profited from the sexual exploitation of women for most of his career, and our culture is poorer for that, ”said Dawn Hawkins, senior vice president and executive director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, in a statement on Wednesday .
Flynt claimed throughout his life that he was not only a pornographer, but also a fierce defender of the rights of free speech.
“My position is that you pay a price to live in a free society, and that price is tolerance for some things you don’t like,” he once told the Seattle Times. “You have to put up with the Larry Flynts of this world.”
The United States Supreme Court agreed with him at least once, when he won a long and bitter battle with Reverend Jerry Falwell. The televangelist sued him for defamation after a 1983 Hustler alcohol ad suggested that Falwell had lost his virginity to his mother in an outdoor bathroom.
This case and much of the rest of Flynt’s life were portrayed in the 1996 film, “The People vs. Larry Flynt ”, who brought Oscar nominations for director Milos Forman and Woody Harrelson, who played Flynt. Flynt had a cameo as a judge.
Flynt owned not just Hustler, but other niche publications, a video production company, dozens of websites, two casinos in the Los Angeles area, and dozens of Hustler boutiques that sold adult-oriented products.
At the time of his death, he claimed to have video-on-demand operations in more than 55 countries and more than 30 Hustler Hollywood retail stores in the United States.
Their successes were offset by tragedies.
While involved in an obscenity trial in Georgia in 1978, Flynt was shot twice by white supremacist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin, who said he was furious at the layout of a mixed-race photo of Hustler. Franklin was executed for a death, despite opposition from Flynt, who opposed the death penalty.
The shooting left Flynt in relentless pain for many years, prompting him to give up his proclaimed reborn Christianity and embrace alcohol and painkillers.
He and his fourth wife, Althea, moved to Los Angeles and spent most of their time behind the 5,000 pound steel door to their mansion. Althea, who became addicted to heroin and contracted the AIDS virus, drowned in her bathtub in 1987, at the age of 33. His death was considered accidental.
“Althea was the best thing that ever happened to me,” said a disconsolate Flynt at the time.
Flynt’s behavior in those years was extremely erratic. He was removed from the United States Supreme Court after interrupting proceedings in 1983 by shouting injuries at the judges.
He later appeared in a federal court in Los Angeles wearing a Purple Heart and a diaper made from an American flag.
A sober Flynt finally returned to work, the pain eased by the surgery.
He spent his last years in the political arena. When California voters summoned Governor Gray Davis in 2003, Flynt was among 135 candidates to replace him. He campaigned as “a peddler who cares” and won over 15,000 votes.
A self-styled progressive liberal, Flynt was not a fan of former President Donald Trump. In 2017, Flynt offered a $ 10 million reward for evidence that would lead to Trump’s impeachment, and in 2019 Larry Flynt Publications sent a Christmas card to some members of the Republican Congress that showed Trump dead in a pool of blood, with the killer saying, “I just shot Donald Trump on Fifth Avenue and nobody murdered me.” It was a reference to Trump’s pride that he could do the same without losing any votes.
Over the years, he has broadly expanded his business to the internet and the adult film industry, noting the inroads they have made in the sales of their magazines.
“You can see more about cable and satellite TV today than what I published in 1974,” Flynt told The Associated Press in 2003.
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This story contains biographical information compiled by former Associated Press writer Greg Risling.