Guccione built a corporate empire under the General Media Inc. That was the part that none of our competition understood.” “To see her as if she doesn’t know she’s being seen,” he said. He added that he attained a stylized eroticism in his photography by posing his models looking away from the camera. “We followed the philosophy of voyeurism,” Guccione told The Independent newspaper in London in 2004. His wife, April Dawn Warren Guccione, had said he had battled lung cancer for several years. Guccione’s family said in a statement that he died at Plano Specialty Hospital in Plano. His company, his world-class art collection, his huge Manhattan mansion - all of it, sold off. Williams, who went on to fame as a singer and actress, was forced to relinquish her crown after the release of the issue, which sold nearly 6 million copies and reportedly made $14 million.īut Guccione’s empire fell apart thanks to several bad investments and changes in the pornography industry, which became flooded with competition as it migrated from print to video and the Internet. In 1984 it was the magazine that took down Miss America, publishing nude pictures of Vanessa Williams, the first black woman to hold the title. He was listed in the Forbes 400 ranking of wealthiest people with a net worth of about $400 million in 1982. He estimated that Penthouse earned $4 billion during his reign as publisher. It worked for decades for Guccione, who died Wednesday in Texas at the age of 79. Even more sensational letters that began, “Dear Penthouse, I never thought I’d be writing you…” Where Hefner’s Playboy magazine strove to surround its pinups with an upscale image, Guccione aimed for something a little more direct with Penthouse. The couple moved from New Jersey to Texas in 2009.DALLAS - Bob Guccione had tried the seminary and spent years trying to make it as an artist before he found the niche that Hugh Hefner left for him in the late 1960s. Guccione eventually went back to painting, and his works were shown at venues including the Butler Institute of American Art in Ohio and the Nassau County Museum of Art in New York, said April Guccione, who married him in 2006. Four years later, he was forced to sell his Manhattan mansion. The collection had been appraised by Christie's at $59 million two years earlier. Guccione's financial problems forced him to sell his art collection in 2002 at auction. The works adorned his 30-room, 22,000-square-foot mansion in New York City. Success as a publisher allowed Guccione to amass an impressive art collection, which included paintings by El Greco, Modigliani, Dali, Degas, Matisse and Picasso. After just two years, the two clashed over the direction of the magazine and the elder Guccione decided to shut it down, forcing his son to secure outside funding. In 1985, the publisher helped his son launch the music magazine Spin, with Bob Jr. Guccione's management style even sparked a rift with his own son, Bob Guccione Jr. FriendFinder made a bid this year for Playboy, which now outsells Penthouse roughly 10 to one, but Hefner has rejected it. Penthouse and related properties are now owned by FriendFinder Networks Inc., a Boca Raton, Fla.-based company that offers social networking and online adult entertainment, including some with the Penthouse brand. In 2004, a private-equity investor from Florida acquired Penthouse in a bankruptcy sale. "The future has definitely migrated to electronic media," Guccione acknowledged in a 2002 New York Times interview. Over the first six months of 2010, Penthouse reported circulation of barely 178,000. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Penthouse's circulation dipped below 1 million in the late 1990s and fell to about 463,000 in 2003, the year General Media Inc. Sales dropped after the Meese commission report and years later took another hit with the proliferation of X-rated videos and Web sites. Guccione called the report "disgraceful" and doubted it would have any impact, but newsstands and convenience stores responded by pulling Penthouse from their magazine racks. Attorney General Edwin Meese's Commission on Pornography issued a report attacking the adult entertainment industry. In 1985, Guccione had to pay $45 million in delinquent taxes.
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