Bob Guccione
| Bob Guccione | |
|---|---|
Guccione in 1993
|
|
| Born |
Robert Charles Joseph Edward Sabatini Guccione December 17, 1930 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Died | October 20, 2010 (aged 79) Plano, Texas |
| Occupation | magazine publisher |
| Known for | founder of Penthouse |
Robert Charles Joseph Edward Sabatini "Bob" Guccione (pronounced "goo-chee-OAN-eh", December 17, 1930 – October 20, 2010) was the founder of the adult magazine Penthouse in 1965. This was aimed at competing with Hugh Hefner's Playboy, but with more extreme erotic content, a special style of soft-focus photography, and in-depth reporting of government corruption scandals. By 1982 Guccione was listed in the Forbes 400 wealth list, and owned one of the biggest mansions in Manhattan. But he made some extravagant investments that failed, and the growth of free online porn in the 1990s greatly diminished his market. In 2003, Guccione’s publishers declared bankruptcy and he resigned as chairman.
Guccione was born in Brooklyn, New York of Sicilian descent, and raised Catholic in Bergenfield, New Jersey. His father, Anthony, was an accountant and his mother, Nina, was a housewife. He considered but rejected entering the priesthood. He attended high school at Blair Academy, a prep school in Blairstown, New Jersey.
In his teens, Guccione married his first wife, 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, moved to London with her, and married her. They had four children: Robert Jr., Nina, Tony and Nicky.
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.
Penthouse began publication in 1965 in England and in North America in 1969, an attempt 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 highest levels of the United States government. On the other hand, Playboy retained a certain conservatism and embraced mainstream American consumerism rather than reject it. During the late 1960s, 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. Due to his lack of resources, Guccione personally photographed most of the models for the magazine's early issues. Without professional training, Guccione applied his knowledge of painting to his photography, establishing the diffused, soft focus look that would become one of the trademarks of the magazine's pictorials. Guccione would sometimes take several days to complete a shoot.
...
Wikipedia