newjerseynewsroom.com

BY BOB HOLT

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

The man who introduced full-frontal nudity to newsstands through Penthouse magazine and created an erotic empire around it has died. Bob Guccione died of cancer on Wednesday, his family said. The Bergenfield, New Jersey native was 79.

A statement issued by the Guccione family says he died at Plano Specialty Hospital in Plano, Texas. His wife, April Dawn Warren Guccione, had said he had battled lung cancer for several years.

Penthouse magazine reached the pinnacle of its popularity in September 1984, when it published nude pictures of Vanessa Williams, the first black Miss America. Williams, now a singer and actress, had to give up her crown after the release of the issue, which sold nearly 6 million copies and reportedly made $14 million.

According to Reuters, in July 1988 and again in January 1989, Penthouse upset the worldwide television ministry of Jimmy Swaggart with "confessions" from women who said they acted out pornographic fantasies for Swaggart. The preacher was defrocked by his denomination.

Guccione, who graduated from Blair Academy in Blairstown, N.J., started Penthouse in 1965 in England mainly to subsidize his art career and was the magazine's first photographer.

NPR.org reports that Guccione built a corporate empire under the General Media Inc. name that included book publishing and merchandising divisions and Viva, a magazine which featured male nudes aimed at a female audience. He also created Penthouse Forum, the pocket-size magazine created from the success of the racy letters to the editor.

The New York Times reports Guccione started with an old mailing list, so that promotional brochures with pornographic samples went out to clergymen, schoolgirls, old-age pensioners and wives of members of Parliament.

The outcry was huge. And there was a $264 fine for mailing indecent materials.

All 120,000 copies of the first issue of Penthouse sold out in days, and Guccione, a struggling artist from New Jersey who had been kicking around Europe for over a decade, was on his way to being a tycoon.

He introduced the magazine to the American public in 1969 at the height of the feminist movement and the sexual revolution.

Guccione estimated that Penthouse earned $4 billion while he was publisher. He made the list of Forbes 400 ranking of wealthiest people with a net worth of about $400 million in 1982.

According to aolnews.com, in 2003, General Media Inc. filed for bankruptcy. A private-equity investor from Florida acquired Penthouse the following year in a bankruptcy sale.

Penthouse and related properties are now owned by FriendFinder Networks Inc., a Boca Raton, Fla.-based company.

Married four times, Guccione had a daughter, Toni, from his first marriage and two sons, Bob Jr. and Nick, and a daughter, Nina, from his second marriage.

April Guccione married him in 2006, and the couple moved from New Jersey to Texas in 2009.