Larry Flynt Bio Biography LFP Hustler Enterprises

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.[1]

Flynt was married five times; his 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 currently serving a life sentence in prison for unrelated murder charges, was never brought to trial for the attempted killing. 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 his lawyer 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 caused from one of several overdoses to his painkiller medication; 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.[2] Flynt has denied the charges.

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[citation needed], 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 might not be able to 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.

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[4], though Flynt lost the case. This case 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".[5] Chief Justice Warren E. Burger had him arrested for contempt of court but the charge was later dismissed. [citation needed]

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. [citation needed]

Larry Flynt won an important Supreme Court decision on February 24, 1988[6], 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.