Larry Flynt, who has died aged 78, was an American pornographer who picked wild legal fights in his efforts to protect freedom of speech - or to attract publicity for his magazines - and built a business empire of publications, strip clubs and adult shops worth $400m (€330m) in 2015.
Much of his life was spent promoting Hustler, the magazine he founded in 1974. It pioneered a demotic brand of pornography and outsold Playboy and Penthouse. It was not enough for Flynt to shock people with pictorial content. I wanted to offend everyone on an equal-opportunity basis, he boasted.
It was his muck-raking that got Flynt into the greatest trouble. His first visit to the Supreme Court was to appeal against a libel conviction - he had alleged that Bob Guccione, the founder of Penthouse, had given his girlfriend a venereal disease.
Larry Flynt, pornographer, provoker and scabrous champion of Americans’ right to free speech – obituary
After his 1988 Supreme Court win Flynt said: ‘If the First Amendment will protect a scumbag like me, then it will protect all of you’
Flynt, founder of Hustler magazine, giving a press conference in 2007
Credit: Gus Ruelas/REUTERS
Larry Flynt, who has died aged 78, was an American pornographer who picked wild legal fights in his efforts to protect freedom of speech – or, depending on one’s point of view, to attract publicity for his magazines and himself – and built up a business empire of magazines, strip clubs and “adult” shops estimated to be worth $400 million in 2015.