Pornographer became First Amendment champion
LOS ANGELES — Porn purveyor Larry Flynt, who built Hustler magazine into an adult entertainment empire while championing First Amendment rights, died Wednesday. He was 78.
Flynt had been in frail health and died of heart failure at his Hollywood Hills home, nephew Jimmy Flynt Jr. said.
From his beginnings as an Ohio strip club owner to his reign as 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 surprising U.S. Supreme Court victory over the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who had sued him for libel after a 1983 Hustler alcohol ad suggested Falwell had lost his virginity to his mother in an outhouse.
His publishing and financial successes were offset in equal measure by controversies and tragedies.
Shot by a sniper in 1978, Flynt was paralyzed from the waist down and used a wheelchair the rest of his life. He fought battles with drug and alcohol addiction, and his fourth wife died of an overdose.
With a fortune estimated at more than $100 million, Flynt spent his later years in the political arena. When Gov. Gray Davis was recalled by California voters in 2003, Flynt was among 135 candidates who ran to replace him. He called himself “a smut peddler who cares” and gathered more than 15,000 votes.
A self-described progressive, Flynt was no fan of Donald Trump. Before the 2016 election, he offered payment of up to $1 million for video or audo recordings of Trump engaging in illegal or “sexually demeaning or derogatory” activity.
Flynt’s life was depicted in the acclaimed 1996 film “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” which brought Oscar nominations for director Milos Forman and Woody Harrelson, who played Flynt.