Larry Flint – Hustler Gentlemen Club

August 23, 2008


Larry Claxton Flynt was born on November 1st, 1942 in Lakeville, Magoffin County, Kentucky , to Claxton Flynt and Edith (Arnett) Flynt. His family was very poor. His father was a soldier and went to fight in the Second World War , so he was raised by his mother until 1945.In 1952 his parents divorced and he went to live with his mother in Hamlet, Indiana when he was 15 years old, in the summer of 1958 he joined the army using a counterfeit birth certificate. It was around this time that begun his passion for the game of pocker. In those years the world was temporarily at peace so the army decided to prune the ranks, he was among the ones discharged. In early 1965 he took $1,800 from his savings and bought his mother’s Dayton, Ohio bar called the Keewee. He refitted it and soon he was making $1,000 a week from it which allowed him to buy two other bars. At that time he was working up to twenty hours a day. All his bars were located in working-class neighborhoods of Dayton , so he frequently had to intervene to break fights between drunken customers. One time he almost killed a customer with his firearm.This risky situation led him to open a new higher class bar which would be the first in the area to feature naked hostesses who danced; he named it the Hustler Club . From 1968 onward with the help of his brother Jimmy and his girlfriend Althea Leasure

hustler gentlemen club

, he opened Hustler Club in Akron, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo. Soon each one of them earned him between $75,000 and $100,000 each year. It was also in those years that he started a company specialized in the renting of vending machines, a risky decision since the vending machine business was known to be run mainly by organized crime. In March 1972 he created the “Hustler Newsletter”, a small 4 pages black-and-white publication detailing information about his clubs. The new publication was so well received by the customers that by May 1972 it had 16 pages and in August 1973 32 pages. Toward mid-1973 the United Staties sunk into recession , which had a catastrophic impact on the Hustler Club , as people tightened their spending. Heavily in debt, Flynt had to find financing or he would risk bankruptcy. He decided to turn the “Hustler Newsletter” into a national sexually explicit magazine.

In July 1974, the first issue of Hustler was published. It was first published in July 1974 by Larry Flynt . Hustler showed the first “pink-shots”, naked woman photos. ( Now Hustler is a monthly pornographic magazine aimed at heterosexual men and published in the United States)

Flynt had to fight to publish each issue as many people, including his distribution company, found the magazine too sexually explicit and threatened to have it removed from the market.

Shortly thereafter, Flynt was approached by a paparazzo who had nude pictures of former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis taken in 1971 when she was 41 years old. He purchased them for $18,000 and published them in the August 1975 issue.That issue brought widespread attention, and one million copies were sold within a few days. Now a millionaire, he bought a $375,000 (1976 dollars) mansion .

During a legal battle related to obsenity in Gwinnett County, Georgia , on March 6, 1978, he and his local lawyer Gene Reeves Jr. were shot in an ambush near the county courthouse in Lawrenceville . White supremacist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin has confessed to the shootings , claiming he was outraged by an interracial photo shoot in Hustler. Franklin, who is currently serving a life sentence in prison for unrelated murder charges, has never been brought to trial for the attempted killing . Flynt has made statements indicating he believes Franklin’s story, and some law enforcement officials have the same opinion. There remain skeptics, however, and the issue may never be resolved. Flynt’s injuries left him paralyzed from the waist down, though his lawyer Reeves recovered more fully. The injury caused Flynt intense, constant pain, and he was addicted to painkillers until multiple surgeries deadened the affected nerves. After the attack, he renounced christianity to be an atheist and moved with his wife in Los Angeles.

Flynt has been married five times; his longest marriage was to his fourth wife, Althea , from 1976 until her death in 1987. He has five children.

He had a one-year flirtation with evangelical Christianity , converted by evangelist Ruth Carter Stapleton (sister of President Jimmy Carter ) in 1977. He continued to publish his magazine, vowing to “hustle for God”, became ” born again” and claims he had a vision from God while flying his jet.

Flynt disowned his eldest daughter Tonya Flynt-Vega after she became a Christian anti-pornography activist . In her 1998 book Hustled, she claims that Flynt sexually abused her as a child, often calling her names. Flynt has denied the charges. Flynt has been the subject of much criticism, especially from feminists.

Flynt created his privately held company Larry Flynt Publications (LFP) in 1976. LFP published several other magazines. LFP started to produce porographic movies in 1998. In 2000, Flynt opened the Hustler Casino, a card room located in the Los Angeles suburb of Gardena . In many countries there are gentlemen’s club named “Hustler”. He also publishes Barely Legal, a pornographic magazine featuring young women who have recently turned 18, the minimum age for a pornographic or erotic model.

He currently resides in the Hollywood Hills .

Flynt also reportedly has a house on the Caribbean Islands of Antigua and Barbuda neighbouring Eric Clapton’s house.