The Lonesome Death of Bob Guccione

There are two interesting stories behind the magazine pictured to the left. The first involves Vanessa Williams.

Williams is now an internationally famous singer, actress and acne medicine pitch woman. But in 1984, she was the first black Miss America. Because of Penthouse magazine, she would also be the first Miss America to be forced to resign the title.

In 1982 Miss Williams had participated in a nude, lesbian themed photo shoot that she had apparently thought would never see the light of day. She was wrong. After Playboy refused to publish the photos because Williams had never signed a release and the magazines disinclination to disgrace the first black Miss America, Bob Guccione of Penthouse bought and published them in the September 1984 issue. Ultimately, the Vanessa Williams issue became the biggest selling in the magazine's history, grossing $14 million.

The second story about the September 1984 issue of Penthouse involves why it's illegal for you to own it: a small matter involving child pornography.

That issue's Pet of the Month was porno star Traci Lords, who happened to be only 15 years old at the time of the shoot. However, her true age would not be revealed for nearly two years afterward, causing a scandal that very nearly brought down the multi-billion American pornography industry.

Since the magazine was in my house, that was my one and only experience with child pornography, although I didn't know it at the time and six million other people were also so ensnared. Besides, I was only fourteen myself at the time. But I would strongly caution you against trying to get a copy of the September '84 issue of Penthouse today.

My father loved Penthouse, and through him, I learned to love it, too. It was mandatory bathroom reading in my home and it provided the seeds of the compulsive, frenzied onanism that I'm internationally famous for today. My first experience in wallpapering was covering the walls of my bedroom with Penthouse centerfolds when I was about fifteen. In many ways, Bob Guccione shaped the man I am today.

Started with a $1,700 loan in England, Penthouse largely accomplished its goal of being bolder than its main competitor, Playboy, both sexually and editorially. It was the first major mainstream publication to show "pink" and later, graphic intercourse, in its pages. It was also far more politically in-your-face at a time when Hugh Hefner's empire was comfortably becoming part of the establishment.

While Playboy was interviewing and endorsing presidential candidates, Penthouse was running explicit photos of two presidential paramours, Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones, both of whom looked far better naked than you would think. Penthouse was also more strident in its battles against both censorship and the federal government, particularly during the Reagan era and its most threatening by-product, the twisted, evil and factually incorrect Messe Commission Report on Pornography.

In the end, Bob Guccione lost everything, including his company. Time and technology had passed him by, and the velocity of his fall was compounded by bad and very often insane business decisions.

The last twenty years weren't kind to Guccione, who died yesterday at 79. The Internet was already destroying print pornography, just as it's annihilating home video sales today. Unfortunately, Penthouse tried to compete with online porn's ever more graphic content and, by the mid-1990s, entered its horrible and wrong "pee period," which is when the magazine lost its charm for all but the most thoroughly dedicated perverts.

In 2002, General Media, Penthouse's parent company, went into bankruptcy and in 2004, the magazine itself was sold to a Florida hedge fund. Guccione's own personal financial situation forced him to sell his Manhattan mansion, the largest private residence in the city, and his $59 million collection of fine art. His final years were spent battling both creditors and lung cancer.

But Guccione was a cultural pioneer, but in public sexuality and publishing generally. He was an important crusader in the battle for free speech and should be remembered that way. His stellar rise preceded an equally cataclysmic fall and he died a lonely death in Plano, Texas yesterday.