Bob Guccione (December 17, 1930 – October 20, 2010), who founded Penthouse magazine in the 1960's and built a pornographic media empire that broke taboos, outraged the guardians of taste and made billions before drowning in a slough of bad investments and Internet competition, died in his home in Plano, TX.
Guccione was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised as a Roman Catholic in Bergenfield, New Jersey, considering, but rejecting, the choice of going into the priesthood. He came from a Sicilian family. He was married for the first time before the age of 20, and had his first child, Toni. He left wife and child to go to Europe, where he wanted to be a painter. He traveled widely, and had adventures with friends like William S. Burroughs in Tangier. He eventually met an English girl, Muriel, moved to London with her, and married her. They had two children, Bob Jr. and Tony. To support her he managed a chain of Laundromats. He eventually 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.
Penthouse was started in 1965 in England and began to be published in America in 1969. Penthouse was an attempt to compete with Hugh Hefner's Playboy on several levels. One approach Guccione took was offering editorial content that was more sensationalistic than Playboy. The magazine's writing was aimed more at the middlebrow reader than Hefner's upscale emphasis, with stories about government cover-ups and scandals.
Guccione can be credited with helping launch the careers of some notable media professionals. He gave Anna Wintour her first job as a fashion editor for his magazine Viva.
(sources: NY Times, Wikipedia)
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