I just finished reading Mike Edison's very entertaining history of "the four horsemen" of pornography: Playboy, Penthouse, Screw and Hustler. As well as being a joint biography of Hugh Hefner, Bob Guccione, Al Goldstein and Larry Flynt, the book is also a cultural history of seedier side of culture in the United States from the founding of Playboy in 1953 until today.
Edison is the former publisher of High Times and editor in chief of Screw magazine. Edison's opinionated and foul mouthed tome is highly enjoyable. Who knew that there was so much to know about titty magazines?
Four a full review, I can't do better than this from Kirkus Review. Highly recommended.
Hef in his heyday with main girlfriend Barbi Benton.
According to Edison, Hef was an ambitious nerd who got lucky
and was in the right place at the right time.
Hef was always selling a lifestyle and not just a titty magazine.
The "Playboy Philosophy" is basically that every guy can be well dressed,
have expensive toys, be an intellectual and still get laid at the same time.
These days the 85 year old Hef has to take lots of Viagra
and have gay porn playing in the background to be able to
service his "girls next door".
Bob Guccione originally wanted to be a Catholic Priest!
Guccione thought that everything he did was art.
After losing millions of dollars on the movie Caligula and
losing millions more unsuccessfully trying to build a casino in Atlantic City,
Guccione died penniless in 2010.
The heyday of Penthouse was the 1970s and 80s.
At one time, Penthouse was fresh and daring and made Playboy look like what it was:
your Dad's magazine
Screw magazine publisher Al Goldstein was a multi-millionaire, and owned a mansion in Florida. Unwilling to expand into video and the internet, he died penniless in a nursing home.
In the good old days before the internet, Screw was hardcore and politically incorrect.
Champion of the First Amendment. The guy who cussed out the Supreme Court to their faces. Shot and paralyzed by a guy mad because Flynt published pictures of a black man with a white woman in Hustler, Flynt is sort of a martyr to the First Amendment.
By far the most successful pornographer of all time, by going with the times and expanding into video and the internet, Flynt currently has a net worth of around
$400 million.
Flynt admits he's a pornographer, unlike Hef the sophisticated gentleman and Guccione the artist. Between hardcore porn, the pages of Hustler contained hard hitting social and political commentary.
