Barry avrich bob guccione biography

American photographer, painter and publisher (–)

Bob Guccione
Guccione in
Born	Robert Charles Joseph Edward Sabatini Guccione ()December 17, New York Urban area, U.S.
Died	October 20, () (aged&#;79) Plano, Texas, U.S.
Occupation	Magazine publisher
Known&#;for	Founder of Penthouse
Children	5, including Bob Jr.

Robert Charles Joseph Edward Sabatini Guccione (goo-chee-OH-nee;^[a] December 17, – October 20, ) was an American visual artist, photographer and publisher.

He founded the adult magazine Penthouse in This was aimed at competing with Hugh Hefner's Playboy, but with more explicit erotic content, a special style of soft highlight photography, and in-depth reporting of government corruption scandals and the art world.

By Guccione was listed in the Forbes wealth list, and owned one of the biggest mansions in Manhattan. However, he made some extravagant investments that failed, and the growth of free online pornography in the s greatly diminished his market.

Bob Guccione - Timenote: Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story is a Canadian biographical documentary film which is a biography of Penthouse magazine founder Bob Guccione. The documentary describes Guccione's life from his schooling and early career through the development of his publishing empire (Penthouse, Omni, Spin).

In , Guccione's publishers filed for bankruptcy and he resigned as chairman.

Early life

Guccione was born in Brooklyn, New York, of Italian (Sicilian) descent and raised Catholic in Bergenfield, Brand-new Jersey, the eldest child of Anthony, an accountant, and Nina, a housewife.

An altar lad, he considered but rejected entering the priesthood.^[1] He attended tall school at Blair Academy, a prep school in Blairstown, Novel Jersey.^[2]

In his teens, Guccione married his first wife,^[1] Lilyann Becker.

The couple had a daughter, Tonina (–). The marriage failed, and he left his wife and child to go to Europe to be a painter. He eventually met an English woman, Muriel Hudson, moved to London with her, and married her.

In , director Barry Avrich made a film about Guccione's life entitled Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, [12] It was later broadcast in Canada on The Movie Network and Movie Main and in the United States on Epix in November [13].

They had four children.^{[citation needed]}

To support his family, Guccione managed a chain of laundromats until he got work as a cartoonist on an American weekly newspaper, The London American, while Muriel started a business selling pinup posters.

He occasionally created cartoons for Bill Box's humorous greeting card company Box Cards.^[3][4][2]

Career

Penthouse began publication in in the United Kingdom and in North America in , an try to compete with Hugh Hefner's Playboy.

Although Playboy had always had a liberal bent and championed the Civil Rights Movement and other social justice causes, Guccione offered editorial content that was more sensational, and the magazine's writing was far more investigative than other men's magazines, with stories about government cover-ups and scandals.

Writers such as Craig S. Karpel, James Dale Davidson and Ernest Volkman, as well as the critically acclaimed Seymour Hersh, exposed numerous scandals and corruption at the extreme levels of the United States government. On the other hand, Playboy retained a certain conservatism and embraced mainstream American consumerism rather than rejecting it.

During the late s, feminist groups criticized the magazine for supporting women's liberation only in terms of making them free to engage in sexual relationships with men. While Playboy devoted extensive print to covering sports, one of Hugh Hefner's great passions, Guccione had no interest in them and never bothered discussing sporting events or athletes in Penthouse, instead preferring to cover the art world.

The magazine was founded on humble beginnings. Owing to his lack of resources, Guccione personally photographed most of the models for the magazine's early issues.^[3]

As the magazine grew more successful, Guccione openly embraced a life of luxury; his former mansion at East 67th Street on Manhattan's Upper East Side was said to be the largest private residence in the borough at 22, square feet (2,&#;m²).

However, in contrast to Hugh Hefner, who threw wild parties at his Playboy Mansions, life at Guccione's mansion was remarkably sedate, even during the height of the sexual revolution in the s.^[3] He reportedly once had his bodyguards eject a local radio personality who had been hired as a DJ and jumped into the swimming pool naked.^[5]

The magazine's pictorials offered more sexually explicit content than was commonly seen in most openly sold men's magazines of the era; it was the first to show female pubic hair, followed by full-frontal nudity and then the exposed vulva and anus.

Up to the end of the s, it was not acceptable to display anything more than a female's buttocks or breasts in mainstream publications and anything more risked obscenity charges. Only low-budget underground magazines displayed female genitals or explicit poses.

However, the counterculture movement led to an increasingly liberated sexual attitude after which a series of court rulings struck down most legal restrictions on pornography.^[3]Penthouse has also, over the years, featured a number of authorized and unauthorized photos of celebrities such as Madonna and Vanessa Lynn Williams.

In both cases, the photos were taken earlier in their careers and sold to Penthouse only after Madonna and Williams became famous. In Williams's case, this led to her forced resignation as Long for America The September issue in which Williams was first featured also included a layout with pornographic actress Traci Lords, who was only 15 when the photo shoot was done and was later revealed to be underage throughout most of her career.

(Madonna famously responded to the publication of her nude photos by stating "So what?".^[6]) In the late s, the magazine began to show more "fetish" content such as urination, bondage and "facials."^[3]

In the preceding s, Guccione invested around US$45 million in construction of Haludovo Palace Hotel, a luxury hotel resort in Malinska on Krk Island near Rijeka on the northern Adriatic coast of Yugoslavia.

He invested an additional $, in advertisement. Despite Yugoslavia creature nominally a communist country, it encouraged foreign investments. The entire project was designed by Yugoslav architect Boris Magaš and realized through Brodokomerc, a local firm.

Prior to that, the proposal needed to be authorized through a so-called workers' council, a process which Guccione described as "ridiculously easy".

Barry Avrich's entertaining if uninspired documentary chronicles the life and times of Penthouse kingpin Bob Guccione. By Dennis Harvey. Film Critic. Cutting a flamboyant public figure but apparently a pretty low-key, homey character in private, he seems at core that least interesting documentary subject — a regular pleasant guy — though naturally, his cultural imprint at the height of the sexual revolution remains colorful stuff.

The hotel was officially opened in Staff included around 50 Penthouse Pets, and the guests included the former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. However, the hotel went bankrupt the very next year.^[7][8]

In , Guccione used about US $ million of his personal fortune to finance the controversial historical epicerotic film, Caligula, with Malcolm McDowell in the title role and a supporting cast including Helen Mirren, John Gielgud and Peter O'Toole.

The film, released in late , was produced in Italy (made at the Valued Studios in Rome) and was directed by Tinto Brass. Guccione also created the magazines Omni, Viva, and Longevity.^[3] Later Guccione started Penthouse Forum which was more textual in content.

In the early s, Penthouse published a short-lived comic book spin-off entitled Penthouse Comix featuring sexually explicit stories.

In , Guccione was listed in the Forbes ranking of wealthiest people, with a reported $ million net worth.^[9] An April New York Times article quoted Guccione as saying that Penthouse grossed $ billion to $4 billion over the year life of the company, with a net income of almost $ million.^[10]

Awards and recognition

Guccione's editorial content was commended and recognized by some in the academic field.

In , for example, he was honored by Brandeis University for focusing "his editorial attention on such critical issues of our date as the welfare of the Vietnam veteran and problems of criminality in modern society."^[11]

Guccione was also praised by certain professional groups and associations for his dealings with them.

In April he was named "Publisher of the Year" by the Atlantic Coast Independent Distributors Association in gratitude for his "leadership, his fair treatment and his continuing friendship with our members".^{[citation needed]}

In , director Barry Avrich made a film about Guccione's animation entitled Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story.

The film premiered at the Toronto International Motion picture Festival on September 9, ^[12] It was later broadcast in Canada on The Movie Network and Movie Central and in the United States on Epix in November ^[13]

Decline and resignation

Several wildly unsuccessful investments by Guccione—including the Penthouse Boardwalk Hotel and Casino (which lost $ million)^[3] and a (never-built) nuclear fusion power plant—added to his publishing empire's financial woes.^[14] Guccione's endeavors to regain sales and notoriety, which included attempts to obtain Monica Lewinsky to pose for the magazine (which was parodied in a sketch on Saturday Night Live in ^[15]) and offering the Unabomber a free forum for his views, failed to increase readership.

With the rise of online access to (often free) pornography in the late s, Penthouse's circulation numbers began to suffer even more.

In , General Media, Penthouse's publisher, filed for bankruptcy protection. Guccione resigned as chairman of the board and CEO of Penthouse International, Inc.^[16]

Legal dispute

In , Guccione sued Penthouse Media Team for fraud, breach of reduce, and conspiracy, among other charges.

Some of the people named in the case included Marc Bell, Jason Galanis, Fernando Molina, and Daniel C. Stanton.^[17]

Other work

Guccione gave Anna Wintour her first job as a fashion editor at his magazine Viva.

He was an investor in the films Chinatown and The Time of the Locust.^[18]

Personal life

Family

Guccione's British-raised son, Bob Guccione Jr. (born ), was given editorship of Spin, but father and son soon fell out over editorial decisions, and Bob Jr.

eventually found independent investors to persist financing the magazine. They remained estranged for a long day, but reportedly reconciled before Guccione Sr.'s death in ^[19]

Marriages

Guccione was married four times: he first married Lilyann Becker in his late teens and their daughter Tonina was born in

His second was to a British woman, Muriel Hudson, with whom he had four children.

They divorced in

His third marriage, in , was to his long-time companion, Kathy Keeton, a native of South Africa. In , Keeton died of complications from surgery to remedy an obstruction in her digestive tract after a long battle with cancer.

She was ^[20]

In her last few months, Keeton befriended an ex-model named April Dawn Warren, and gossip maintained that Warren was Keeton's hand-picked successor.^[21] After a long engagement, he and Warren wed in and they remained together until his death.^[22] Guccione continued to list Keeton on the Penthouse masthead posthumously as president, but later added Warren to the masthead after she had spent ten years as creative director of the magazine.

Warren and Guccione were working on a publication of reminiscences, Good to Know, until shortly before his death in , at age He died with Warren at his side.

Guccione brought artisans in from France and Italy to remodel the largest private residence in Manhattan (at East 67th Street on the Upper East Side).

As a tribute to Guccione, the artisans carved both his and his wife's faces into the marble columns neighboring the entrance of the mansion. According to New York magazine, "It's one of the biggest private houses in Manhattan, with 30 rooms, and it costs $5 million a year to maintain."^[23]

In November , the mansion was foreclosed on by Kennedy Funding of New Jersey,^[24] the mortgage holder, along with an affiliate of multibillion-dollar hedge fund Elliott Associates of New Jersey.

In January , a team of investors came to Guccione's aid during his eviction. A London-based investor, Jason Galanis, led the investment group which purchased the property for $ million in cash.^[25][26][27] The house was purchased by NY Real Estate LLC, an entity set up to acquire the mansion.

Galanis contributed $ million, and two New York hedge funds, Laurus Funds and Alexandre Asset Organization, made a mortgage loan of $24 million to NY Genuine Estate LLC, which was owned by Penthouse International, the parent and debtor-in-possession of General Media.^{[citation needed]}

As a result of the continuing contentious bankruptcy, which lasted over a year, the promissory notes due to Laurus were considered in technical breach of covenants which resulted in harsh financial penalties in excess of $8 million.

Penthouse International elected to forgo refinancing the home due to the combination of the penalties and the unfavorable lifetime lease of $1 per year that was granted to Guccione, which made the property unmarketable.

Laurus sued Guccione to take possession of the dwelling from the tenant.^[28]

Guccione also missing his country house in Staatsburg, New York, as the room Baroque-style stucco mansion on a acre property on the Hudson River was foreclosed and sold for $4 million.^[29] The estate was purchased by actress Uma Thurman and hotelier André Balazs,^[30] and it is now acknowledged as Locusts on Hudson.

Art collection

Guccione was a painter whose art premiered at Nassau County Museum of Art as adv as the Butler Institute of American Art. His art continues to hang in the Borghi Fine Art Gallery, is featured in the POBA - Where the Arts Live online collection,^[31] and is a part of the Filthy Gorgeous Media art collection.

Bob Guccione was a world-renowned collector of fine art.^[32] Highlights of the Guccione collection included a portrait by Amedeo Modigliani and a Pablo Picasso portrait of the artist's son, Paulo. He owned paintings by Sandro Botticelli, Albrecht Dürer, El Greco, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, Edgar Degas, Fernand Léger, Gilbert Stone, Henri Matisse, Jules Pascin, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Georges Henri Rouault, Chaïm Soutine, and Vincent van Gogh.

^{[citation needed]}

The Guccione art collection was sold at auction by Sotheby's in November to pay Guccione's personal debts, originally incurred in the Atlantic Municipality venture.^[33] The collection had been appraised by Christie's at $59 million two years prior.

However, 9/11 had depressed the art market and the Guccione collection failed to sell for its appraised price. The aggregate sale price was $19 million, which was used to pay lender Swiss Re. Swiss Re sued Guccione in New York Articulate Court for a $4 million shortfall on the loan offset.

Much of the remaining personal collection of Bob Guccione's art, photographs, and memorabilia was acquired by entrepreneur Jeremy Frommer in early The acquisition included over 60 original Guccione Oils, as well as the original illustrations and photographs by artists such as Arthur Cummings, Bill Lee, Suze Randall, Earl Miller, Berth Milton Sr.

and more. The highlight of the collection is the quarter of a million photographs that were taken by Bob Guccione, himself, throughout the s, s and s.^[34] The items obtained by Frommer were the inspiration for his corporation Jerrick Ventures LLC's creation of the website, Filthy Gorgeous Media, which debuted in June ^[35]

Guccione had a history of leveraging his prized asset.

He borrowed $20 million from AIG, the insurance company. Subsequently, they refinanced with Swiss Re Insurance.^[36]

Illness and death

By , Guccione, a serious smoker, had undergone surgery for throat cancer and stated: "My cancer was only a tiny tumor about the size of an almond at the build of my tongue.

He founded the adult magazine Penthouse in This was aimed at competing with Hugh Hefner 's Playboybut with more explicit erotic content, a special style of tender focus photography, and in-depth reporting of government corruption scandals and the art world. By Guccione was listed in the Forbes wealth list, and owned one of the biggest mansions in Manhattan. However, he made some extravagant investments that failed, and the growth of free online pornography in the s greatly diminished his market.

The fix is probably every bit as bad as the disease. It's affected my ability to swallow the mobility of my tongue it makes it very complicated for me to talk."^[23] Guccione was later diagnosed with terminal lung cancer^[37] and died on October 20, , at the age of 79, at Plano Specialty Hospital in Plano, Texas, with his wife April at his side.^[1][37][38]

References

External links