NEWSHustler Founder Larry Flynt Dead At Age 78
Feb. 10 2021, Updated 7:06 p.m. ET
Controversial Hustler publisher and porn pioneer Larry Flynt has reportedly died at the age of 78.
Family sources say the Hustler founder passed away on the morning of Wednesday, February 10, in Los Angeles from heart failure.
His daughter Theresa Flynt confirmed to NBC News that she was with her father, alongside his wife, when he died Wednesday morning at Cedars Sinai hospital in Los Angeles.
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Flynt famously launched the first issue of Hustler magazine in July 1974. The magazine struggled for the first year, partly because many distributors and wholesalers refused to handle it as its nude photos became increasingly graphic. It targeted working-class men and grew from a shaky start to a peak circulation of around three million.
The publication notably ran nude paparazzi pictures of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in August 1975, attracting widespread attention and selling over a million within a few days.
Flynt later grew his empire to include a film studio, a Hustler Casino in the Los Angeles suburb of Gardena, Hustler Clubs and the Hustler Hollywood Store.
Throughout his career, Flynt has fought several high-profile legal battles involving the First Amendment. His legal issues were memorably chronicled in the Oscar-nominated 1996 film, The People vs. Larry Flynt, starring Woody Harrelson.
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People may remember Flynt being in a wheelchair, as he was paralyzed from the waist down due to injuries sustained in a 1978 murder attempt by serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin.
At the time of his death, Flynt was married to his Elizabeth Berrios and had five daughters and a son, as well as many grandchildren and great grandchildren. (His daughter Lisa Flynt-Fugate died in a car crash in Ohio in October 2014 at the age of 47.)
