Larry Flynt
Larry Claxton Flynt, Jr. (born
November 1,
1942) is an American publisher, the head of Larry Flynt Publications (LFP). LFP mainly produces
pornographic content, including videos and magazines, with
Hustler being the best known. The company has an annual turnover of around $150 million. Over the course of his life, Larry Flynt has taken part in several legal battles involving the
First Amendment, and has run for public office a number of times. He suffers from
bipolar disorder and is paralyzed from the waist down due to an
assassination attempt.
Born in
Salyersville,
Kentucky, he spent his childhood in
poverty. His mother divorced his
alcoholic father and when Flynt was ten, and he moved to
Indiana with his mother. Flynt joined the
US Army in 1958 at only fifteen, leaving after barely a year. He then joined the
Navy and served on the
USS Enterprise. He left the Navy in 1964 and opened a strip club in
Dayton, Ohio. He later owned several
strip clubs and started his magazine
Hustler in July 1974.
According to Flynt's
autobiography, his first sexual experience was a mistaken encounter with a
chicken after he'd heard from older boys that sexual intercourse with a chicken was similar in sensation to sexual intercourse with a woman. He proceeded to have sex with a chicken, killing it afterwards to avoid any suspicion.
He was married five times, the longest marriage was to his fourth wife,
Althea, from 1976 until her death in 1987. She had been suffering from
AIDS and drowned in a bath tub, possibly as a result of a
heroin overdose. He has five children.
He had a one-year flirtation with
evangelical Christianity, converted by evangelist
Ruth Carter Stapleton (sister of President
Jimmy Carter) in 1977. He continued to publish his magazine, vowing to "hustle for God," became "born again" and claims he had a vision from God while flying his jet.
During a legal battle related to
obscenity in
Gwinnett County,
Georgia, on
March 6,
1978, he and his local lawyer Gene Reeves Jr. were shot from ambush near the county courthouse in
Lawrenceville.
White supremacist serial killer
Joseph Paul Franklin has confessed to the shootings, claiming he was outraged by an interracial photo shoot in
Hustler. Franklin, who is serving a life sentence in prison, was never brought to trial. Flynt has made statements indicating he believes Franklin's story, and some law enforcement officials have the same opinion. There remain skeptics, however, and the issue may never be resolved. Flynt's injuries left him paralyzed from the waist down, though Reeves recovered more fully. The injury caused Flynt intense, constant pain, and he was addicted to painkillers until multiple surgeries deadened the affected nerves. After the attack, he renounced Christianity and moved with Althea to a
Bel-Air mansion in
Los Angeles.
He also suffered a
stroke; he recovered but has had pronunciation difficulties since.
Flynt disowned his eldest daughter
Tonya Flynt-Vega after she became a Christian
anti-pornography activist. In her 1998 book
Hustled, she claims that Flynt sexually abused her as a child. Flynt denies the charges.
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Flynt Publications Headquarters in Los Angeles |
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Larry Flynt Hustler Club on West 52nd Street in New York |
By 1970, together with his brother and life-long business partner Jimmy, he ran eight strip clubs throughout Ohio in
Columbus,
Toledo,
Akron, and
Cleveland.
In July 1974, Flynt first published
Hustler as a step forward from the
Hustler Newsletter which was cheap advertising for his businesses. The magazine struggled for the first year, partly because many distributors and wholesalers refused to handle it as its nude photos became increasingly graphic. The magazine targeted working-class men and grew from a shaky start to a peak circulation of around 3 million (current circulation is below 500,000). In November 1974 it showed the first "pink-shots," photos of open
vaginas. The publication of nude paparazzi pictures of
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in August 1975 was a major fillip.
Hustler has often featured more explicit photographs than comparable magazines and has contained depictions of women that some find demeaning, such as a naked woman in a meat grinder or presented as a dog on a leash - though Flynt later said that the meat grinder image was a self-criticism of the pornography industry.
Flynt created his privately held company
Larry Flynt Publications (LFP) in 1976. LFP published several other magazines. It also included a distribution business, something that may have angered the
Mafia, which traditionally organized the distribution of porn. LFP did not expand beyond
pornography until 1986, but later its output included more mainstream work. The distribution business as well as several mainstream magazines were sold beginning in 1996. LFP started to produce
pornographic movies in 1998.
On
June 22,
2000 Flynt opened the
Hustler Casino, a cardroom located in the
Los Angeles suburb of
Gardena. After it opened, many observers in the public and in the gaming industry speculated that because of Flynt's past legal troubles he could not get a license to operate a cardroom. This speculation proved to be nothing more than myth when the California Gambling Control Commission confirmed that Flynt is the sole proprietor and gaming licensee of the Hustler Casino.
Other ventures either wholly owned by or licensed by Flynt or LFP, Inc. include the Hustler Club, a gentlemen's club, and the Hustler Store, owned by Larry Flynt's brother Jimmy. He also publishes
Barely Legal, a pornographic magazine featuring young women who have recently turned 18, the minimum age for a pornographic or erotic model.
In 2001, Larry Flynt stated his net worth as $400 million.
His autobiography is
An Unseemly Man: My Life as a Pornographer, Pundit, and Social Outcast. The film
The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) was extrapolated from his life, starring
Woody Harrelson as Flynt,
Courtney Love as Althea and
Edward Norton as Flynt's attorney
Alan Isaacman. Flynt himself made a cameo appearance as an Ohio judge. The film was directed by
Miloš Forman and co-produced by
Oliver Stone. Critics accused the film of presenting a fictional and highly romanticized version of Larry Flynt.
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Larry Flynt and Althea Leisure in 1971 |
Flynt was embroiled in many legal battles regarding the regulation of
pornography and
free speech within the United States, especially attacking the
Miller v. California (1973)
obscenity exception to the
First Amendment. He was first prosecuted on obscenity and organized crime charges in
Cincinnati, Ohio in 1976 at the behest of
Charles H. Keating Jr., who headed a local anti-pornography committee. He was sentenced to 7 to 25 years and served six days; the sentence was overturned on a technicality. One argument resulting from this case went up to the
U.S. Supreme Court in 1981 (
Larry Flynt v. Ohio, 451 U.S. 619).
Because of a derogatory cartoon published in
Hustler in 1976,
Kathy Keeton, then girlfriend of
Penthouse publisher
Bob Guccione, filed a
libel suit against Flynt. Her suit in Ohio was eventually dismissed as she missed the statute of limitations. She then filed in
New Hampshire, where
Hustler's sales were minimal. The question whether she could sue there anyway reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1983. Flynt lost the case. (
Keeton v. Hustler, 465 U.S. 770) -- a case that is occasionally reviewed today in first year law school Civil Procedure courses due to its implications regarding personal jurisdiction over a defendant. During the proceedings, Flynt reportedly shouted "Fuck this court!" and called the justices "nothing but eight assholes and a token cunt". Chief Justice
Warren E. Burger had him arrested for contempt of court but the charge was later dismissed.
Also in 1983, during a trial about his refusal to disclose the source of the
John DeLorean surveillance tapes potentially embarrassing to the
FBI, he wore an American flag as a
diaper and was subsequently jailed for six months for desecration of the flag.
Larry Flynt won a landmark Supreme Court decision on
February 24,
1988 (
Hustler v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46), after having been sued by
Jerry Falwell in 1983 over an offensive ad parody in
Hustler that featured Falwell. The ad suggested that Falwell's first sexual encounter was with his mother in an out-house. Falwell sued Flynt citing emotional distress caused by the ad but lost in court. The decision clarified that public figures cannot recover damages for "intentional infliction of emotional distress" based on parodies.
In April 1998 he was charged with a number of obscenity related charges concerning the
sting sale of sex videos to a youth in a Cincinnati adult store owned by Flynt. In a plea agreement in 1999 LFP, Inc. (Flynt's corporate
holdings group) pleaded guilty to two counts of pandering obscenity and agreed to stop selling adult videos in Cincinnati.
In June of 2003
Hamilton County, Ohio prosecutors attempted to revive criminal charges of pandering obscene material against Flynt and his brother Jimmy. Prosecutors charged that Flynt and his brother had violated the 1999 agreement. Larry Flynt claimed that he no longer had a vested interest in the Hustler Shops and that prosecutors had no basis for charging him with pandering obscene material.
*Flynt is a
Democrat and his magazines defend a mixture of
liberal and
libertarian positions. He briefly ran for U.S. President (as a
Republican) against
Ronald Reagan in 1984.
*Flynt's promotion of antiwar causes became a matter of controversy within the Leftist antiwar movement during 2004 and 2005. In 2004, the antiwar activist group
Not in Our Name (NION) publicized Flynt's support for one of their campaigns, drawing sharp criticism from feminist activist
Aura Bogado, who charged that Leftist leaders were tacitly supporting
racism and
misogyny by aligning themselves with Flynt. (In addition to NION, Bogado criticized
Greg Palast,
Amy Goodman,
Susie Bright, and
Amy Alkon for what she saw as soft-pedaling of Flynt and
Hustler.) After being attacked in a series of articles and sexual caricatures in
Hustler, Bogado made her criticism public in
"Hustling the Left", published on
ZNet in June 2005, and the discussion of her article inspired similar criticism of Leftist leaders cooperating with Flynt by feminists such as
Nikki Craft [
1] and pro-feminist Leftists such as
Stan Goff ([
2]). Shortly after the publication of her article, the
Not in Our Name Steering Committee issued a
public apology to Bogado and objected to the treatment of Bogado in
Hustler.
*During the impeachment proceedings against
President Clinton in 1998, he offered a million dollars for evidence about sexual affairs of Republican lawmakers explaining that "desperate times require desperate measures." He published a magazine about the results, entitled
The Flynt Report. His investigations eventually led to the resignation of incoming House speaker
Bob Livingston. He also accused Congressman
Bob Barr of having committed perjury when testifying about his wife's
abortion.
*Flynt was a candidate in
2003 California recall of Governor
Gray Davis, calling himself a "smut peddler who cares". He placed
7th in a field of 135 candidates.
* Flynt claims to have purchased "fully nude" photographs of
Private First Class Jessica Lynch for $750,000 by soldiers who took the pictures in an Army barracks. Lynch made headlines as a prisoner of war when US troops freed her from her Iraqi captors. The media and
Defense Department focused on her as a "hero" while others such as Flynt have claimed she was used for propaganda purposes of the Defense Department and Bush Administration. Despite being opposed to the Bush White House, Flynt did not release the alleged photographs citing she was a "good kid" who became "a pawn for the government." "Some things are more important than money," he said. "You gotta do the right thing." Many still question whether he even has such photos.[
3]
"You take a picture of a murder, which is illegal, and you can win Picture of the Year for TIME Magazine. You take a picture of two people having sex, which is not illegal, and you can get thrown in jail."
The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996 film on Flynt's legal battles)
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Official website*
Detailed history of Flynt's numerous legal cases (
Court TV)
*
Hustling The Left ~ anti-Flynt website
*
Biography by Jonathan Dunder*
Larry Flynt by Luke Ford*
Larry Flynt: He built an empire as the Barnum of smut*
Flynt won't publish topless Lynch photos 11 November 2003. CNN
*
Satirical Article from The Onion on Larry Flynt*
Slate magazine article compares events in The People Vs. Larry Flynt to Flynt's real life.
