Bob Guccione
Encyclopedia
Bob Guccione was the founder and publisher of the adult magazine Penthouse
Penthouse (magazine)
Penthouse, a men's magazine founded by Bob Guccione, combines urban lifestyle articles and softcore pornographic pictorials that, in the 1990s, evolved into hardcore. Penthouse is owned by FriendFinder Network. formerly known as General Media, Inc. whose parent company was Penthouse International...

. He resigned from his publisher position in November 2003.

Early life

Robert Charles Joseph Edward Sabatini Guccione was born in Brooklyn, New York, of Sicilian descent, and raised as a Roman Catholic in Bergenfield, New Jersey
Bergenfield, New Jersey
Bergenfield is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 26,764.Bergenfield was formed on the basis of a referendum held on June 25, 1894, from portions of Englewood Township and Palisades Township at the height of the...

. His father Anthony was an accountant. His mother, Nina, was a house wife. He considered, but rejected, entering the priesthood. He attended high school at Blair Academy
Blair Academy
Blair Academy is a private, coeducational, secondary boarding high school with an enrollment of about 448 students for grades nine through twelve. The school has 78 faculty members...

, a prep school in Blairstown, New Jersey.

Guccione married the first of his four wives, Lilyann Becker, before the age of 20, and had a daughter, Tonina. The marriage soon failed. He left his wife and child to go to Europe, where he wanted to be a painter. He eventually met an English woman, Muriel, moved to London with her, and married her. They had two children, Bob Jr. and Tony. To support his family he 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
Studio cards
Studio cards were tall, narrow humorous greeting cards which became popular during the 1950s. The approach was sometimes cutting or caustic, a distinct alternative to the type of mild humor previously employed by the major greeting card companies....

.

Career

Penthouse
Penthouse (magazine)
Penthouse, a men's magazine founded by Bob Guccione, combines urban lifestyle articles and softcore pornographic pictorials that, in the 1990s, evolved into hardcore. Penthouse is owned by FriendFinder Network. formerly known as General Media, Inc. whose parent company was Penthouse International...

began publication in 1965 in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

 from 1969. The magazine was an attempt to compete with Hugh Hefner
Hugh Hefner
Hugh Marston "Hef" Hefner is an American magazine publisher, founder and Chief Creative Officer of Playboy Enterprises.-Early life:...

's Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...

on several levels. One approach Guccione took was offering editorial content that was more sensational than that of 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. Due to his lack of resources, Guccione himself photographed most of the models for the magazine's early issues. Without professional training, Guccione applied his knowledge of painting to his photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

, establishing the diffused, soft focus
Soft focus
In photography, soft focus is a lens flaw, in which the lens forms images that are blurred due to spherical aberration. A soft focus lens deliberately introduces spherical aberration in order to give the appearance of blurring the image while retaining sharp edges; it is not the same as an...

 look that would become one of the trademarks of the magazine's pictorials. Guccione would sometimes take several days to complete a shoot.

As the magazine grew more successful, Guccione openly embraced a life of luxury; his former mansion is said to be the largest private residence in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 at 22000 square feet (2,043.9 m²). However, in contrast to Hugh Hefner
Hugh Hefner
Hugh Marston "Hef" Hefner is an American magazine publisher, founder and Chief Creative Officer of Playboy Enterprises.-Early life:...

 (who threw wild parties at his Playboy Mansion
Playboy Mansion
The Playboy Mansion is the home of Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner. Located in the Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles, California, the mansion became famous during the 1970s through media reports of Hefner's lavish parties.-History:The house is described as being in the "Gothic-Tudor" style...

s), life at Guccione's mansion was remarkably sedate even during the hedonistic 1970s. He reportedly once had his bodyguards eject a local radio personality who had been hired as a DJ
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...

  for jumping into the swimming pool naked.

The magazine's pictorials offered more sexually explicit content than was commonly seen in most openly sold men's magazines of the era, being the first to show female pubic hair
Pubic hair
Pubic hair is hair in the frontal genital area, the crotch, and sometimes at the top of the inside of the legs; these areas form the pubic region....

, then full-frontal nudity, and then the exposed vulva
Vulva
The vulva consists of the external genital organs of the female mammal. This article deals with the vulva of the human being, although the structures are similar for other mammals....

 and anus
Anus
The anus is an opening at the opposite end of an animal's digestive tract from the mouth. Its function is to control the expulsion of feces, unwanted semi-solid matter produced during digestion, which, depending on the type of animal, may be one or more of: matter which the animal cannot digest,...

. Penthouse has also, over the years, featured a number of authorized and unauthorized photos of celebrities such as Madonna
Madonna (entertainer)
Madonna is an American singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983...

 and Vanessa Lynn Williams
Vanessa L. Williams
Vanessa Lynn Williams is an American pop-R&B recording artist, producer, dancer, model, actress and showgirl. In 1983, she became the first woman of African-American descent to be crowned Miss America, but a scandal generated by her having posed for nude photographs published in Penthouse magazine...

. In both cases, the photos were taken earlier in their careers and sold to Penthouse only after Madonna and Williams became famous. In Williams' case, this led to her forced resignation as Miss America
Miss America
The Miss America pageant is a long-standing competition which awards scholarships to young women from the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands...

 in 1984. The issue in which Williams was first featured also included a layout featuring porn actress Traci Lords
Traci Lords
Traci Lords , also known as Traci Elizabeth Lords and Tracy Lords, is an American film actress, producer, film director, writer and singer...

, who was later revealed to be underage during most of her porn career (including her Penthouse session). In the late 1990s, the magazine began to show more "fetish" content such as urination, bondage, and "facials".

In 1976, Guccione used about US
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

 $17.5 million of his personal fortune to finance the controversial historical epic pornographic film, Caligula
Caligula (film)
Caligula is a 1979 American-produced Italian biographical film directed by Tinto Brass, with additional scenes filmed by Giancarlo Lui and Penthouse founder Bob Guccione. The film concerns the rise and fall of Roman Emperor Gaius Caesar Germanicus, better known as Caligula...

, with Malcolm McDowell
Malcolm McDowell
Malcolm McDowell is an English actor with a career spanning over forty years.McDowell is principally known for his roles in the controversial films If...., O Lucky Man!, A Clockwork Orange and Caligula...

 in the title role and a supporting cast including Helen Mirren
Helen Mirren
Dame Helen Mirren, DBE is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards.-Early life and family:...

, John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...

, and Peter O’Toole. The film, which was eventually released in late 1979, was produced in Italy (made at the legendary Dear Studios in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

) and was directed by Tinto Brass
Tinto Brass
Giovanni Brass , better known as Tinto Brass, is an Italian filmmaker. He is noted especially for his work in the erotic genre, with films such as Così fan tutte , Paprika, Monella and Trasgredire...

. Guccione also created the magazines Omni
Omni (magazine)
OMNI was a science and science fiction magazine published in the US and the UK. It contained articles on science fact and short works of science fiction...

, Viva
Viva (magazine)
Viva was an adult woman's magazine that premiered in 1973 and ceased publication in 1980. Its full title was Viva, The International Magazine For Women, and it was published by Bob Guccione and his wife, Kathy Keeton. Guccione was the editor of Penthouse, an adult men's magazine, and he wanted to...

, and Longevity. Later Guccione started Penthouse Forum which was more textual in content. In the early 2000s, Penthouse published a short-lived comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 spin-off entitled Penthouse Comix
Penthouse Comix
Penthouse Comix was initially an American mass-market, magazine-sized comic book, published by Penthouse International from its inception in spring 1994 through July 1998, and thereafter by General Media Communications, parent company of Penthouse magazine. Initially edited by writers George...

featuring sexually explicit stories.

Decline and resignation

Several wildly unsuccessful investments by Guccione—including the Penthouse Boardwalk Hotel and Casino
Penthouse Boardwalk Hotel and Casino
The Penthouse Boardwalk Hotel and Casino was a proposed hotel and casino that was to be built in Atlantic City, New Jersey during the late 1970s...

 (which lost $160 million), and a (never-built) nuclear fusion
Nuclear fusion
Nuclear fusion is the process by which two or more atomic nuclei join together, or "fuse", to form a single heavier nucleus. This is usually accompanied by the release or absorption of large quantities of energy...

 power plant—added to his publishing empire's financial woes. Guccione's efforts to regain sales and notoriety, which included attempts to get Monica Lewinsky
Monica Lewinsky
Monica Samille Lewinsky is an American woman with whom United States President Bill Clinton admitted to having had an "improper relationship" while she worked at the White House in 1995 and 1996...

 to pose for the magazine; (which was parodied in a sketch on Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...

in 1998, but did not have someone impersonating Guccione) and offering the Unabomber a free forum for his views, failed to increase readership. With the rise of online access to (often free) pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...

 in the latter 1990s, Penthouse's circulation numbers began to suffer even more. In 2003, General Media (the publishing company for Penthouse) declared bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....

. Guccione resigned as chairman of the board
Chairman of the Board
The Chairman of the Board is a seat of office in an organization, especially of corporations.Chairman of the Board may also refer to:*Chairman of the Board , a 1998 film*Chairmen of the Board , a 1970s American soul music group...

 and CEO of Penthouse International, Inc. The magazine as of 2010 was still in publication, and had an online presence; its circulation had fallen to about 463,000 in 2003.

Legal dispute

In 2006, Guccione sued Penthouse Media Group for fraud, breach of contract, and conspiracy, among other charges. Some of the people named in the case included Marc Bell, Jason Galanis, Dr. Fernando Molina, Charles Samel, and Daniel C. Stanton.

Other work

Guccione gave Anna Wintour
Anna Wintour
Anna Wintour, OBE is the British-born editor-in-chief of American Vogue, a position she has held since 1988. With her trademark pageboy bob haircut and sunglasses, Wintour has become an institution throughout the fashion world, widely praised for her eye for fashion trends and her support for...

 her first job as a fashion editor for his magazine Viva. He was an investor in the films Chinatown and The Day of the Locust
The Day of the Locust (film)
The Day of the Locust is a 1975 American drama film directed by John Schlesinger. The screenplay by Waldo Salt is based on the 1939 novel of the same title by Nathanael West...

.

Family

Guccione's English-reared son, Bob Guccione, Jr.
Bob Guccione, Jr.
Robert Charles Guccione, Jr. is the eldest son of Penthouse founder Bob Guccione. He is best known for founding music magazine Spin.-Publishing career:...

 (b. 1956), was given editorship of Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...

, but father and son soon fell out over editorial decisions, and Bob Jr. eventually found independent investors to continue the magazine. Father and son remained estranged for a long time, but reportedly reconciled before Bob Guccione, Sr.'s death in 2010. Nicky, Guccione's youngest child, retained some contact since Nicky gave Guccione his only grandchild, Benjamin.

Marriages

He married his long-time companion, Kathy Keeton
Kathy Keeton
Kathryn "Kathy" Keeton was a magazine publisher along with her partner, and later husband, Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione. Her title was President/COO of General Media Communications, Inc. She was also plantiff in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Keeton v...

, a native of South Africa in 1988. In 1997 Keeton died of complications from surgery to remedy an obstruction in her digestive tract; she was 58. In her last few months, Keeton befriended an ex-model named April Dawn Warren. Gossip maintained that Warren was Keeton's hand-picked successor. After a long engagement, Guccione married Warren in 2006 and they remained together until his death. Guccione continued to list Keeton on the Penthouse masthead posthumously as President but later added Warren to the masthead after she spent 10 years as creative director of the magazine. She and Guccione were working on a book of reminiscences, Good to Know, until shortly before his death in late 2010.

Illness

Guccione was later diagnosed with throat cancer and stated: “My cancer was only a tiny tumor about the size of an almond at the base of my tongue”, he explains. “The cure 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 difficult for me to talk..." He was later diagnosed with terminal lung cancer
Lung cancer
Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...

.

Residence

Guccione brought artisans in from France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 to build the largest private residence in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

. As a tribute to Guccione the artisans carved both his and his wife's face into the marble columns near the entrance. According to New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...

magazine, "It's one of the biggest private houses in Manhattan, with 30 rooms, and it costs $5 million a year to maintain." In November 2003, the mansion on Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

's Upper East Side
Upper East Side
The Upper East Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, between Central Park and the East River. The Upper East Side lies within an area bounded by 59th Street to 96th Street, and the East River to Fifth Avenue-Central Park...

 was foreclosed on by Kennedy Funding of New Jersey, the mortgage holder along with an affiliate of multi billion-dollar hedge fund Elliot Associates of New Jersey. In January 2004, a group of investors came to Guccione’s aid during his Sheriff-enforced eviction. A London-based investor named Jason Galanis
Jason Galanis
Jason Woodruff GalanisJason Woodruff Galanis is an American financier focused on structured finance in distressed debt and venture capital investments-Investment History:...

 led an investment group that purchased the house for $26.5 million in cash. The house was purchased by NY Real Estate LLC, an entity set up to acquire the mansion. Galanis contributed $2.6 million, and two New York hedge funds, Laurus Funds and Alexandre Asset Management, made a mortgage loan of $24 million to NY Real Estate LLC, which was owned by Penthouse International, the parent and debtor-in-possession of General Media.

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 severe financial penalties in excess of $8 million. Penthouse International elected to forego refinancing the house due to the combination of the penalties and the unfavorable lifetime lease of $1.00/year that was granted to Guccione, which made the property unmarketable. Laurus sued Guccione to take possession of the house from the tenant. It was reportedly sold for $49 million, well below the asking price of $59 million, to Wall Street financier Philip Falcone
Philip Falcone
Philip Falcone is an American businessman and the founder of Harbinger Capital and LightSquared.-Biography:Philip Falcone grew up in Chisholm, Minnesota with nine siblings in a three-bedroom house. He attended Harvard University on financial aid and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics in...

.

Guccione also had to sell his country house in Staatsburg, New York
Staatsburg, New York
Staatsburg is a hamlet in Dutchess County, New York, United States. The population was 911 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Poughkeepsie–Newburgh–Middletown, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area as well as the larger New York–Newark–Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA Combined...

. Guccione’s Manhattan mansion. It has 27 rooms, eight fireplaces, and a Roman-style indoor swimming pool on the first floor. It was marketed as the “Milbank Mansion” rather than the "Guccione Mansion" and sold in 2008 for $49 million to investor Philip Falcone—a $10 million reduction from the original $59 million asking price. The estate was purchased by actress Uma Thurman
Uma Thurman
Uma Karuna Thurman is an American actress and model. She has performed in leading roles in a variety of films, ranging from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action movies. Among her best-known roles are those in the Quentin Tarantino films Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill...

 and hotelier Andre Balazs
Andre Balazs
Andre Balázs is an American hotelier and residential developer. He created the Standard Hotels line of hotels and operates many hotels and residences in New York and other U.S...

.

Guccione also owned a 15-room, Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 stucco mansion on a 75-acre property on the Hudson River
Hudson River
The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...

, which was foreclosed upon and sold for $4 million.

Art collection

Although Guccione was a talented painter, during his life he went unrecognized as a successful artist. He was also a world-renowned collector of fine art. Highlights of the Guccione collection included a portrait by Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form...

 (1884–1920) and a portrait of the artist's son, Paulo, by Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

 (1881–1973). He also owned paintings by Sandro Botticelli
Sandro Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance...

, Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...

, El Greco
El Greco
El Greco was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" was a nickname, a reference to his ethnic Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος .El Greco was born on Crete, which was at...

, Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...

, Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

, Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico was a pre-Surrealist and then Surrealist Italian painter born in Volos, Greece, to a Genovese mother and a Sicilian father. He founded the scuola metafisica art movement...

, Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...

, Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...

, Gilbert Stone, Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

, Jules Pascin, Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas . His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as he was the only artist to exhibit in both forms...

, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...

, Georges Henri Rouault, Chaïm Soutine
Chaim Soutine
Chaïm Soutine was a Jewish painter from Belarus. Soutine made a major contribution to the expressionist movement while living in Paris....

, and Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...

.

The Guccione art collection was sold at auction by Sotheby's
Sotheby's
Sotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being founded in 1731, all Swedish...

 in November 2002 to pay Guccione's personal debts originally incurred in the Atlantic City
Atlantic City, New Jersey
Atlantic City is a city in Atlantic County, New Jersey, United States, and a nationally renowned resort city for gambling, shopping and fine dining. The city also served as the inspiration for the American version of the board game Monopoly. Atlantic City is located on Absecon Island on the coast...

 venture. The collection was appraised by Christie's
Christie's
Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...

 at $59 million two years before. However, September 11, 2001 had depressed the art market and the Guccione collection failed to achieve its appraised price. The aggregate sale price was $19 million, which was used to pay Swiss Re
Swiss Re
Swiss Reinsurance Company Ltd , generally known as Swiss Re, is a Swiss reinsurance company. It is the world’s second-largest reinsurer, after having acquired GE Insurance Solutions. The company has its headquarters in Zurich...

, the lender. Swiss Re sued Guccione in New York State Court for a $4 million shortfall on the loan balance.

Guccione had a history of leveraging his prized asset. He borrowed $20 million from AIG
AIG
AIG is American International Group, a major American insurance corporation.AIG may also refer to:* And-inverter graph, a concept in computer theory* Answers in Genesis, a creationist organization in the U.S.* Arta Industrial Group in Iran...

, the insurance company. Subsequently they refinanced with Swiss Re Insurance.

Forbes 400

Guccione was once listed in the Forbes 400 ranking of wealthiest people, with $400 million net worth in 1982. An April 2002 New York Times article quoted Guccione as saying that Penthouse grossed $3.5 billion to $4 billion over the 30-year life of the company, with a net income of almost 500 million dollars.

Death

Guccione died of cancer on October 20, 2010, two months before his 80th birthday, at Plano Specialty Hospital in Plano, Texas
Plano, Texas
Plano is a city in the state of Texas, located mostly within Collin County. The city's population was 259,841 at the 2010 census, making it the ninth-largest city in Texas and the 71st most populous city in the United States. Plano is located within the metropolitan area commonly referred to as...

. He had been suffering from lung cancer for some time, according to his wife, April Dawn Warren Guccione. She was at his side when he died.

External links

  • Official Penthouse magazine web site
  • Bob Guccione biography from The Biography Channel
    The Biography Channel
    The Biography Channel is an American digital cable television channel owned by A&E and based on the television series of the same name. A version of the channel also airs on ONO and Telefónica in Spain and on Sky Digital and cable television in the United Kingdom, a version of the channel also...

  • Bob Guccione: Life in the Penthouse in LIFE
    Life (magazine)
    Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....

  • Most Expensive Homes In America 2003 in Forbes
    Forbes
    Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...

  • Bob Guccione: Penthouse king laid low from BBC
    BBC
    The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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