Obituary
Porn mogul was a free-speech champion
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Larry Flynt was most known for publishing Hustler Magazine.
PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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LOS ANGELES • American porn mogul Larry Flynt, best known as the publisher of Hustler Magazine and a self-styled free-speech champion, died in Los Angeles on Wednesday aged 78, his spokesman said.
"He passed away quietly in his sleep at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre with his wife Liz and daughter Theresa by his side," said Ms Minda Gowen in a statement, referring to the Los Angeles hospital.
Various American media outlets have reported Flynt died from heart failure.
A self-described "smut peddler with a heart", Flynt rose from abject poverty to run a vast adult entertainment empire. He published the first issue of Hustler Magazine - created as a lowbrow, explicit counterpart to magazines like Playboy - in 1974.
Sales skyrocketed a year later when it ran a nude photo of former United States first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis sunbathing on vacation, and Flynt raked in his first million.
His business empire grew to include dozens of magazine titles, Internet porn sites, clubs and a casino outside Los Angeles.
In 1978, he was paralysed from the waist down after he was shot by a white supremacist angered by inter-racial sex photos that ran in Hustler.
Flynt's empire was estimated to be worth between US$100 million (S$133 million) and US$500 million.
His other enduring legacy is as an outspoken free-speech advocate and the man behind Hustler v Falwell, a 1988 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the US Constitution protects writers and artists that mock public figures.
The case overturned a US$200,000 libel judgment against Flynt for "emotional distress" inflicted on conservative US televangelist Jerry Falwell.
The offending article was a parody ad that ran in Hustler suggesting that Falwell's first sexual encounter was with his mother in an outhouse.
The Supreme Court case and Flynt's life was immortalised in The People Vs Larry Flynt, a 1996 Hollywood film directed by Milos Forman and starring Woody Harrelson. In later life, he dabbled in politics.
Flynt was married five times and had five children.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
