LOS ANGELES (AP) – Larry Flynt, who turned his cruel Hustler magazine into an empire as he fought numerous First Amendment legal battles and wiped out politicians with tricks like a Christmas card for the assassination of Donald Trump, has died . He was 78 years old.
Flynt, who was in declining health, died Wednesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, his longtime lawyer, Paul Cambria, told The Associated Press.
Flynt was shot in a 1978 assassination attempt and was paralyzed from the waist down, but refused to brake, building an extravagant reputation along with an estimated fortune of $ 100 million.
He rolled into a gold-plated wheelchair with a velvet-lined seat.
“His doctors had said he should have died 30 years ago,” his nephew, Jimmy Flynt Jr., said Wednesday. “He survived most of the doctors who cared for him.”
Born November 1, 1942 in Lakeville, Kentucky, Larry Claxton Flynt Jr. he grew poor. Divorced twice at the age of 21, Flynt ended up finding his vocation by buying bars and turning them into Hustler clubs with topless dancers. In an effort to boost the business, he published a newsletter that became Hustler magazine.
Founded in 1974, Hustler was blatantly embarrassing, low-fronted and hard-core, with his nose to the pretensions of men’s magazines as toned as Playboy.
The magazine featured crude, politically incorrect humor, photos of female genitals and sometimes S&M and scenes of bondage with women tied up and gagged. He surprised the audience with a 1978 cover showing a woman fed a meat grinder.
It was no surprise, then, that Flynt faced many legal fights over obscenity laws or that feminist and religious right groups disliked him intensely.
“Larry Flynt must be remembered as a scourge to society; contributed directly to the sexual exploitation of women for most of their careers and benefited from their careers, and our culture is poorer for that, ”said Dawn Hawkins, senior vice president and chief executive officer. of the National Center for Sexual Exploitation, in a statement.
Flynt maintained throughout his life that he was not only a pornographer, but also a fierce advocate of free speech rights.
“My position is that you pay a price for living in a free society, and that price is to tolerate some things you don’t like,” he once told the Seattle Times. “You have to tolerate 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 the Rev. Jerry Falwell. The televangelist sued him for defamation after a 1983 Hustler alcohol ad suggested Falwell had lost his mother’s virginity in a mall.
This case and much of the rest of Flynt’s life were portrayed in the 1996 film “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” which led to Oscar nominations for director Milos Forman and Woody Harrelson, who played Flynt. Flynt had a cameo as a judge.
Flynt not only owned Hustler, but other niche publications, a video production company, dozens of websites, two Los Angeles area casinos, and dozens of Hustler stores 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.
His successes were offset by tragedies.
While involved in an obscenity trial in Georgia in 1978, Flynt was twice assassinated by white supremacist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin, who he said was angry at a mixed-race photographic design by Hustler. Franklin was executed for murder despite opposition from Flynt, who opposed the death penalty.
The shooting left Flynt in relentless pain for many years, prompting him to leave his proclaimed born-again 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 of his mansion. Althea, who became addicted to heroin and contracted the AIDS virus, drowned in the bathtub in 1987 at the age of 33. His death was considered accidental.
“Althea was the best thing that ever happened to me,” a heartbroken Flynt said at the time.
Flynt’s behavior in those years was tremendously erratic. He was removed from the United States Supreme Court after in 1983 he interrupted the trials by calling invectives on the judges.
He later appeared in a Los Angeles federal court with a Purple Heart and a diaper made with an American flag.
A sober Flynt finally returned to work, with pain relieved by surgery.
He spent the last few years in the political arena. When California voters remembered Governor Gray Davis in 2003, Flynt was one of 135 candidates to replace him. He campaigned as a “street vendor who cares” and garnered more than 15,000 votes.
A self-proclaimed 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 ouster, and in 2019, Larry Flynt Publications sent a Christmas card to some members of the Republican Congress showing that Trump was dead in a pool of blood, with the killer saying, “I just shot Donald Trump on Fifth Avenue and no one has killed me.” It was a reference to Trump’s presumption that he could do the same and not lose any votes.
Over the years, he greatly expanded his business into the Internet and the adult film industry, observing the advances he made in the sales of his magazines.
“Today you can see more cable and satellite than I published in 1974,” Flynt told The Associated Press in 2003.
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This story contains biographical information collected by former Associated Press writer Greg Risling.