Larry Flynt, Creator of the Hustler Empire, Has Died

LOS ANGELES—There are arguably two names associated with the adult entertainment industry that are known throughout the world: Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt. Hefner died in 2017, and now Larry Claxton Flynt, Jr. has also passed, reportedly from heart failure in Los Angeles, according to TMZ. He was 78 at the time of his death. In all ways, Flynt seemed bigger than life. From humble beginnings—he was a sharecropper's son born in Kentucky—Larry Flynt's first business was a bar in Dayton, Ohio that he bought from his mother, but not long after making that and two other bars he'd purchased into successes, he parlayed the profits from those into opening the first Hustler Club, also in Dayton, in 1968, which featured both strippers and scantily dressed hostesses. The same year, Flynt also launched his first foray into publishing with a small Dayton tabloid called Bachelor's Beat, according to the Dayton Daily News. Within a few years, there were Hustler Clubs in every major city in Ohio, and to help promote them, Flynt created a two-page Hustler Newsletter, which he gave out free at the clubs and for which he also had a small subscriber base. The newsletter proved to be so popular that Flynt expanded it, and by July, 1974, the newsletter had become a full-fledged magazine, Hustler, which featured significantly more nudity than its closest rival, Playboy magazine. With the nationwide distribution of Hustler, Flynt became a household name, and it's that notoriety that's thought to have inspired serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin to attempt to murder Flynt in 1978 as he was heading to court for an obscenity hearing in Gwinnett County, Georgia. The shooting left Flynt paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, although he did manage to get relief from the constant pain caused by his spinal cord injury by having his nerves in the area deadened through surgery.  With the early success of Hustler and the Hustler Clubs, Flynt created an umbrella organization, Larry Flynt Publications (LFP), in 1976, which published several magazines including Taboo, which was edited for a time by author Ernest Greene. Later, LFP expanded its reach into producing adult videos beginning in 1998, and five years later, he bought what was then one of the reigning adult video producers, VCA Pictures. By the late '90s, Flynt and LFP were on a roll. In December of 1998, Flynt opened the first of what would become a nationwide chain of adult video/novelty stores, Hustler Hollywood, on Sunset Blvd. in Beverly Hills, and in June of 2000, Flynt opened a card room in Gardena, just outside of Los Angeles, which he called the Hustler Casino, and later purchased a second such business nearby which he named the Lucky Lady Casino. Flynt had also been involved in his share of legal battles over the years, perhaps the most famous of which was the lawsuit filed in 1984 by well-known evangelist Jerry Falwell after Hustler had published a cartoon implying that Falwell was a drinker who'd had incestuous sex with his mother. The case went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of Flynt because the justices decided that the cartoon was a parody that intended no malice toward Falwell, a requirement in any case of alleged libel against a public figure. (The case served as the main focal point of the Oscar-nominated 1996 biopic The People vs. Larry Flynt from late director Miloš Forman, with popular actor Woody Harrelson essaying the titular role.) Flynt had long been involved in politics, and when California Gov. Gray Davis was recalled from office in 2003, Flynt was one of the candidates to replace him. (The eventual winner was actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.) Flynt also created several newspaper campaigns where he offered $1 million for scandalous material on congressional leaders, and in 1998, one such offer led to the resignation of then-House Speaker Bob Livingston. In October of 2017, Flynt took out a full-page ad in The Washington Post, offering $10 million for information leading to the impeachment of Donald Trump. Flynt had been married five times, and was the father of five daughters—one, Theresa, currently serves on the Free Speech Coalition Board of Directors—and a son, Jimmy.