![]() Success as a publisher allowed Guccione to amass an impressive art collection, which included paintings by El Greco, Modigliani, Dali, Degas, Matisse and Picasso. After just two years, the two clashed over the direction of the magazine and the elder Guccione decided to shut it down, forcing his son to secure outside funding. In 1985, the publisher helped his son launch the music magazine Spin, with Bob Jr. Guccione's management style even sparked a rift with his own son, Bob Guccione Jr. He could be warm and funny one minute and cold and detached the next." "He hired and fired people - then rehired them. ![]() "He was a mass of contradictions, engendering fierce loyalty and equally fierce contempt," wrote Patricia Bosworth in a 2005 Vanity Fair article about Guccione, for whom she had worked as executive editor of Viva. Guccione's staff, which included family members, often described the publisher as mercurial. He wandered Europe as a painter for several years.Īpril Guccione said her husband was working as a cartoonist and a manager of self-service laundries in London when he got the idea of starting a magazine more explicit and aimed more squarely at "regular guys" than Playboy, which cultivated an upscale image. He spent several months in a Catholic seminary before dropping out to pursue his dream of becoming an artist. Guccione was born in Brooklyn, New York City, and attended prep school in New Jersey. Penthouse and related properties are now owned by FriendFinder Networks Inc., a Boca Raton, Florida-based company that offers social networking and online adult entertainment, including some with the Penthouse brand. A private-equity investor from Florida acquired Penthouse the following year in a bankruptcy sale. "The future has definitely migrated to electronic media," Guccione acknowledged in a 2002 New York Times interview. Probably his best-known business failure was a $17.5 million investment in the 1979 production of the X-rated film "Caligula." Malcolm McDowell was cast as the decadent emperor of the title, and the supporting cast included Helen Mirren, John Gielgud and Peter O'Toole. Guccione lost much of his personal fortune on bad investments and risky ventures. Keeton died of cancer in 1997 following surgery, but Guccione continued to list her on the Penthouse masthead as president. Guccione and longtime business collaborator Kathy Keeton, who later became his third wife, also published more mainstream fare, such as Omni magazine, which focused on science and science fiction, and Longevity, a health advice magazine. He also created Penthouse Forum, the pocket-size magazine that played off the success of the racy letters to the editor that began, "Dear Penthouse, I never thought I'd be writing you." umbrella that included book publishing and merchandising divisions and Viva, a magazine featuring male nudes aimed at a female audience. Guccione built a corporate empire under the General Media Inc. He was listed in the Forbes 400 ranking of wealthiest people with a net worth of about $400 million in 1982. Guccione estimated that Penthouse earned $4 billion during his reign as publisher. That was the part that none of our competition understood." "To see her as if she doesn't know she's being seen," he said. He added that he attained a stylized eroticism in his photography by posing his models looking away from the camera. "We followed the philosophy of voyeurism," Guccione told The Independent newspaper in London in 2004. Penthouse quickly posed a challenge to Hugh Hefner's Playboy by offering a mix of tabloid journalism with provocative photos of nude women, dubbed Penthouse Pets. He introduced the magazine to the American public in 1969 at the height of the feminist movement and the sexual revolution. ![]() Williams, now a singer and actress, was forced to relinquish her crown after the release of the issue, which sold nearly 6 million copies and reportedly made $14 million.Ī frustrated artist who once attended a Catholic seminary, Guccione started Penthouse in 1965 in England to subsidize his art career and was the magazine's first photographer. ![]() Penthouse reached the pinnacle of its popularity in September 1984, when it published nude pictures of Vanessa Williams, the first black Miss America.
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