02/10/2021 21:52
Clarín.com
World
Updated 02/10/2021 21:55
Larry Flynt,
nicknamed
the "king of porn"
in the United States and a controversial media figure, died this Wednesday at his residence in Los Angeles (USA).
He was 78 years old.
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 experienced 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 which he won an
Oscar
nomination
.
Flynt had been left in a wheelchair after an assassination attempt in 1978. AFP
Of humble origins, Flynt (Kentucky, 1942)
opened his first strip club in 1964.
It was the first of a series of places that he opened throughout the United States and that reinforced his brand in the sex industry.
In 1974 he began publishing his pornography magazine, Hustler, which soon reached a circulation
of 2 million copies.
The magazine rose to fame after publishing images of
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
bathing naked in Greece
in 1975
, as the competition rejected snapshots taken by a paparazzi.
Hustler, Flynt's porn magazine.
AFP.
Later, unlike other publications such as Playboy and Penthouse, Flynt opted for another way of showing sexual relations, more crude and explicit, with the aim of making them more like the reality of the working class.
"I realized that if we became more explicit, we could get a large part of this market.
I felt that raw sex was what men wanted. And he was right," he
explained in an interview collected by the Washington Post.
But that goal gave way to a series of sadistic and disturbing images including gang
rapes,
mutilations and even the lurid photograph of a woman in a meat grinder that sparked international controversy.
Larry Flynt surrounded by women celebrating one of his birthdays.
AFP photo.
Flynt defended that this montage was an implicit criticism of the porn industry but his explanations and his agitated defense of the First Amendment of the US Constitution (freedom of expression)
did not save him from complaints and prosecutions for obscenity
.
He was even sentenced to prison for contempt.
In 1978, on the way out of a trial, the businessman was shot and killed by a serial killer, who left him in a
wheelchair for the rest of his life.
In the decades that followed, he began producing and distributing porn films, opened casinos, and flirted with politics by running for
California
governor
in 2003.
During his life he supported and criticized Democrats and Republicans.
In his last years he was very hard with the mandate of former President Donald Trump.
EFE source
AFG
Look also
Porn king Larry Flynt offers $ 10 million for data against Donald Trump
Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy and leader of the sexual revolution, has died
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