Penthouse and Bob Guccione

Forrest Hellard

Professor Crystal Moore

LBST 2101 The History of Sexuality

UNCC

Penthouse and Bob Guccione

During a time when men were coming back from World War II, you had the consumption rates of commercialized sex skyrocketing and people wanted more and more girls exposed. Sexual magazines used to not be as exposed in the earlier 1900’s as they were during this time. They used to show very little and were in the privacy of people. Quickly times changed especially once magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse came to the forefront. The reason I chose to talk about Penthouse is because the magazine and especially its owner Bob Guccione, played a huge role in the dynamics of sex in our society. Originally an artist, he travelled all over Africa and Europe in hopes of spreading art. It wasn’t until he got back to London where he became a managing editor for London American[1]. After doing some work on his own, he quickly came up with the idea for a mail service sexual magazine, Penthouse. Sadly during this time, Playboy was the leading provider of this service and they basically had the industry in a nutshell. Guccione went on to challenge this by making his magazine more explicit, most likely from the more liberal and sexualized society that influenced him in Europe. With the amount of competition that he faced, he created his company like a monarch and acquired a great love for the roman emperor, Caligula, from which he used a lot of tactics to run his company. Some people, including the British Parliament, had a lot of problems with the way that he ran his company and even had police raid his house multiple times[2]. Luckily for Guccione, the companies subscriptions continued to flourish and he was let go. Guccione was a much different man than Hugh Heffner because Hugh lived in a house that was surrounded by all his playmates, where as Guccione saw it as more of an art form, and surrounded his house with art and pets he adored. He even went on, later in his career, to create a magazine that was the alternative to Penthouse. Known as “Viva” this magazine was basically the Penthouse for women. One reason I respect Guccione over Heffner is because he saw sexuality as something that appeals to both men and women, and as more of an art form. Even though he was the sole creator of a sexualized magazine, it ended up revolutionizing the way we view sexuality as a whole in our world today.

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[1] "Bob Guccione." - The Oral Cancer Foundation. http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/people/bob_guccione.htm (accessed April 29, 2014).

[2] A&E Networks Television. "Bob Guccione ." Bio.com. http://www.biography.com/people/bob-guccione-273678#penthouse&awesm=~oCS7k4N9TBErWw (accessed April 29, 2014).