Porn supplier Larry Flynt, which Hustler magazine built into an adult entertainment empire while championing First Amendment rights, died Wednesday. He was 78. A statement from Flynt’s PR manager said, “He was quietly sleeping in his sleep at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center” with his wife and daughter by his side. Flynt’s cousin said Flynt was in frail health and died of heart failure.
From his beginnings as an Ohio strip club owner 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 the religious right and feminist groups.
Flynt scored a surprise U.S. Supreme Court victory over Reverend Jerry Falwell, who sued him for libel after a 1983 alcohol ad by Hustler suggested Falwell lost his virginity to his mother in an outhouse.
Flynt’s company not only produced 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 Hustler name to strip clubs that were independent.
In a CBS “Sunday Morning” profile In 2014, Flynt said 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 if it were a jar of peanut butter or a can of green beans,” Flynt told CBS News’ Erin Moriarty. “You know, it’s a product, and if you’re not making money, you have to move on.”
Flynt has faced controversy and tragedies over the years.
Shot by a sniper in 1978, Flynt became paralyzed from the waist down and used a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He battled drug and alcohol addiction, and his fourth wife died of a heroin overdose.
His daughter, Lisa Flynt-Fugate, died in a car accident in Ohio in 2014 at the age of 47.
With a fortune in excess of $ 100 million, Flynt spent his later years in the political arena. When Gov. Gray Davis was recalled by California voters in 2003, Flynt was one of 135 candidates to replace him. He called himself “a dirty guy who cares” and collected over 15,000 votes.
Flynt, who described himself as progressive, was not a fan of it former president Trump. Before the 2016 election, he offered payment of up to $ 1 million for video or audio recordings of Mr. Trump engaged 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 showing Trump lying 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 to Trump’s boast that he could commit such a murder and not lose votes.
Flynt’s life was portrayed in the critically acclaimed 1996 film “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” which garnered Oscar nominations for director Milos Forman and Woody Harrelson, who played Flynt.
