Hustler magazine founder Larry Flynt dies

Larry Flynt, who built a million-dollar empire around pornography, died Wednesday at age 78. He died in his sleep at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, his manager said.

How did he get started? Born in Lakeville, Ky., Flynt had divorced twice by age 21 and eventually started his career by turning bars into strip clubs. He began to publish a newsletter about the clubs in 1974 that later grew into the explicit Hustler magazine.

Flynt announced he was a born-again Christian in 1977 with the help of evangelist Ruth Carter Stapleton, the sister of former President Jimmy Carter. But he rejected faith and fell back to alcohol and painkillers after a white supremacist serial killer shot him in 1978 over the magazine’s mixed-race photo layout. The shooting left him paralyzed from the waist down.

Feminists and Christians found a shared cause in opposing the sexual exploitation of women in the pages of Flynt’s magazine. He claimed he wasn’t just a pornographer, but a defender of free speech as his publications faced many legal battles. In 1988, he won a case in the Supreme Court as the judges decided a parody ad of Jerry Falwell as an incestuous drunk was protected free speech because Falwell was a public figure and the parody was not believable.

At the time of his death, Flynt operated more than 30 Hustler Hollywood retail stores across the United States and had video-on-demand operations in more than 55 countries. He is survived by his fifth wife, Elizabeth Berrios, and his children.

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archive, read Pamela Johnson’s review of the movie, The People vs. Larry Flynt.