New York, United States
Larry Flynt, nicknamed the king of porn of the United States and a controversial media figure, died this Wednesday at his Los Angeles residence, his family confirmed to the media.
The tycoon became very popular after founding the pornographic magazine “Hustler” in 1974, with which he started an empire in the sex industry in which he lived all kinds of lawsuits, trials, imprisonments and an assassination attempt in 1978.
His life was documented in the film “The People vs. Larry Flynt“(1996), starring Woody Harrelson in the role of the well-known businessman, with whom he won an Oscar nomination.
Of humble origin, Flynt (Kentucky, 1942), opened its first strip club in 1964. It was the first of a series of venues that opened throughout the United States and strengthened its brand in the United States. sex industry.
In 1974 he began publishing his magazine of pornography, “Hustler“, Which soon reached a circulation of 2 million copies.
The magazine jumped to fame after publishing in 1975 some images of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis bathing naked in Greece, as the competition rejected the snapshots obtained by a paparazzi.
Later, unlike other publications such as Playboy and Penthouse, Flynt opted for another way of showing relationships. sexual, More crude and explicit, with the aim of making them more similar to the reality of the working class.
“I realized that if we became more explicit, we could get a lot of that market. I felt that the sex raw was what men wanted. And he was right, “he said in an interview with the Washington Post.
But that goal gave way to a series of sadistic and disturbing images that included gang rapes, mutilations, and even the gruesome photograph of a woman in a meat grinder that sparked international controversy.
Flynt argued that this montage was an implicit critique of the porn industry but his explanations and agitated defense of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (freedom of speech) did not save him from allegations and lawsuits for obscenity. He was even sentenced to prison for contempt.
In 1978, at the end of a trial, the businessman was shot dead by a serial killer, which left him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
In the later decades it began in the production and distribution of films pron, abrió casinos and flirted with the policy when postulating like aspiring to governor of California in 2003.
During his lifetime he supported and criticized Democrats and Republicans. In his later years he was very tough with the tenure of former President Donald Trump.