And it all started in Dayton.
Moving to Dayton
Flynt grew up in Salyersville, Kentucky and came to Dayton in 1962 with less than $20.
He was fresh out of the Navy and picked Dayton because his mother, Edith, lived here.
He washed dishes in a restaurant before landing a job on the production line of General Motors Corp.’s Inland Division.
He worked a lot of overtime, saved $1,800 and bought his first bar, the Keewee, in the 500 block of Milburn Avenue. He renamed it Larry’s Hillbilly Haven.
Flynt described the secret of his bar’s success this way: “Good drinks, loud music and some nice girls to look at.”
He opened a second bar, Larry’s Hangover Tavern, at 297 Linden Ave. Later, he and Dominic’s Restaurant owner Richard Mantia became partners in the mid-1960s of the first Hustler Cocktail Lounge “go-go” bar on East Third Street in downtown Dayton.
Eventually Flynt became sole owner of the Hustler club in Dayton and opened other Hustler clubs in Columbus, Akron and Toledo.
He and Mantia later opened the Talk of The Town club at 215 N. Main St.
March of Pennies
In 1968, Flynt owed $6,000 on a customized Cadillac limousine to what was then Third National Bank.
The bankers wanted their money sooner than he was ready to pay.
Upset over the situation, Flynt decided to pay the loan off in pennies ... 12,000 rolls of pennies. Flynt had his employees work for weeks rolling the coins during their down time.
Credit: NONE
Credit: NONE
The pennies were loaded on wheelbarrows and rolled down Main Street from his Talk of the Town club by girls wearing go-go costumes.
Flynt got plenty of publicity over the stunt, with TV, radio and newspapers showing up to cover the story and get photos.
Magazines
Flynt’s first venture into publishing was a local men’s tabloid called Bachelor’s Beat, which sold for 10 cents from street boxes, mainly downtown, and in clubs.
It was nothing like Hustler, although it did feature pictures of local dancing girls, all dressed in costume, along with other entertainment news. Bachelor’s Beat, which was never a financial success, lasted about a year and folded when the city made him take his boxes off the street.
By then, Flynt was seriously interested in the publishing business. While the Hustler name came from here, Flynt didn’t start publishing Hustler magazine until he moved to Columbus.
It didn’t take long before it expanded and became the centerpiece of a sprawling empire, reportedly valued in the hundreds of millions, the encompassed other pornographic and some mainstream publications, strip clubs, and adult stores.
“Sex is the strongest driving force in the world,” Flynt once said. “In fact, sex is what it is all about. I don’t know why a faction of our society tries to discount it.”
Flynt became famous after purchasing and publishing grainy, nude photos of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in his magazine.
Flynt moved his company headquarters to Columbus and later Los Angeles as the business grew.
Flynt was prosecuted in 1976 for the first time on obscenity and organized crime charges for selling obscene material in Cincinnati. He was convicted and sentenced to seven to 25 years. However, after he served only six days, the conviction was overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct and judicial bias.
While on trial for obscenity in 1978 in Georgia, a white supremacist tried to kill Flynt in a shooting that left him paralyzed from the waist down. His assailant, Joseph Paul Franklin, said he was upset by interracial photo spreads in Flynt’s magazine.
Flynt died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles in 2021. He was in the ICU and had been battling multiple health issues, including renal disease and pancreatic cancer before ultimately dying of heart failure.
Credit: Steve Helber
Credit: Steve Helber
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