Larry Flynt, porn provider, who turned Hustler magazine into an adult entertainment empire while defending First Amendment rights, died on Wednesday. He was 78 years old. A statement by Flynt’s public relations manager said, “He passed by quietly while sleeping at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center” with his wife and daughter by his side. Flynt’s nephew said Flynt was in poor health and died of heart failure.
From his beginnings as a strip club owner in Ohio to his reign as the founder of one of the most explicit adult-oriented magazines, Flynt constantly challenged the establishment and became a target for religious right and feminist groups.
Flynt won a surprising US Supreme Court victory over Reverend Jerry Falwell, who sued him for defamation after a 1983 Hustler alcohol ad suggested that Falwell had lost his virginity to his mother in an outdoor bathroom.
Flynt’s company produced not only Hustler, but other niche publications as well. He owned a video production company, several websites, a casino in the Los Angeles area and 10 Hustler boutiques. He also licensed the name Hustler to independently owned strip clubs.
On a CBS Profile “Sunday Morning” In 2014, Flynt said that at the height of Hustler’s popularity, the magazine had a monthly circulation of 3 million before the internet and technology decimated those numbers.
“I treat Hustler the same way I would treat it if it were a jar of peanut butter or a can of green beans,” Flynt told Erin Moriarty of CBS News. “You know, it’s a product, and when you’re not making money, you need to move on.”
Flynt has faced controversy and tragedy over the years.
Shot by a sniper in 1978, Flynt was paralyzed from the waist down and used a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He fought battles with drug and alcohol addiction, and his fourth wife died of a heroin overdose.
Her daughter, Lisa Flynt-Fugate, died in a car accident in 2014 in Ohio at the age of 47.
With an estimated fortune of more than $ 100 million, Flynt spent his last years in the political arena. When Governor Gray Davis was called by California voters in 2003, Flynt was among 135 candidates who ran to replace him. He called himself “a peddler who cares” and won over 15,000 votes.
A self-styled progressive, Flynt was not a fan of former President Trump. Prior to the 2016 election, he offered to pay up to $ 1 million for video or audio recordings of Mr. Trump involved in illegal or “sexually degrading or derogatory” activities.
In 2017, Flynt offered a $ 10 million reward for evidence that would lead to Mr. Trump’s impeachment, and in 2019 Larry Flynt Publications sent a Christmas card to some Republican congressmen that showed Trump dead in a pool of blood, with the killer saying, “I just shot Donald Trump on Fifth Avenue and no one arrested me” – a reference for Trump’s ostentation that he could commit such a murder and not lose votes.
Flynt’s life was portrayed in the acclaimed 1996 film “The People vs. Larry Flynt”, which brought Oscar nominations for director Milos Forman and Woody Harrelson, who played Flynt.
