Penthouse (magazine)
Erotic magazine From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Penthouse is a men's magazine founded in London by American Bob Guccione, with the first UK issue appearing in March 1965. An American edition was launched in September 1969 and became Guccione's flagship. Other national editions, published under franchise, came and went. Guccione challenged Playboy with a more provocative editorial line and more revealing nude photography.[2]
 | This article may be confusing or unclear to readers. (October 2023) |
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 The December 2009 American issue of Penthouse | |
| Categories | Men's, lifestyle |
|---|---|
| Frequency | Monthly (1968–2018) Bi-monthly (2018–2023) |
| Total circulation (2012) | 109,792[1] |
| Founder | Bob Guccione |
| Founded | March 1965 (UK) September 1969 (U.S.) |
| Company | Penthouse World Media |
| Country |
|
| Based in | Los Angeles, California |
| Language | English |
| Website | penthouse |
| ISSN | 0090-2020 |
Unable to compete with the internet, the UK edition folded in 1999 (an attempt to revive it 2001 was short-lived).[3] The U.S. edition tried to adapt by switching to hardcore content between 1997 and 2004. Returning to softcore under new ownership in 2005, it continued to appear with diminishing frequency (there were five issues in 2020). The last printed issue of the U.S. edition appeared in 2023, although the current owner of the masthead, Los Angeles–based Penthouse World Media, said a year later that it would return.[4] It remains in limbo.
The Guccione era, 1965–2004
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Perspective
The magazine was founded on humble beginnings. Penthouse magazine began publication in the UK in March 1965.[5] Its symbol was a skeleton key, or three keys in some applications.[6] In September 1969, in an attempt to compete with Hugh Hefner's Playboy, the first American edition was published.
Editorial style
Guccione offered editorial content that was more sensational than that of Playboy, and the magazine's writing was far more investigative than Hefner's upscale emphasis, with stories about government cover-ups and scandals.
Writers such as Seymour Hersh, James Dale Davidson, and Ernest Volkman exposed numerous scandals and corruption at the highest levels of the United States Government.[citation needed] Contributors to the magazine included Isaac Asimov, James Baldwin, Howard Blum, Victor Bockris, T. C. Boyle, Alexander Cockburn, Harry Crews, Cameron Crowe, Don DeLillo, Alan Dershowitz, Edward Jay Epstein, Chet Flippo, Albert Goldman, Anthony Haden-Guest, John Hawkes, Nat Hentoff, Warren Hinckle, Abbie Hoffman, Nicholas von Hoffman, Michael Korda, Paul Krassner, Michael Ledeen, Anthony Lewis, Joyce Carol Oates, James Purdy, Philip Roth, Harrison E. Salisbury, Gail Sheehy, Robert Sherrill, Mickey Spillane, Ben Stein, Harry Stein, Tad Szulc, Studs Terkel, Nick Tosches, Gore Vidal, Irving Wallace, and Dr. Ruth Westheimer.[citation needed]
Pictorial style
Due to Guccione's lack of resources, he personally photographed most of the models for the magazine's early issues.[7] 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.
The magazine's pictorials offered more sexually explicit content than what was commonly seen in most openly sold men's magazines of the era. It was the first to show female pubic hair, followed by full-frontal nudity, and eventually, the exposed vulva and anus. Penthouse has also featured a number of authorized and unauthorized photos of celebrities, such as Madonna and Vanessa Williams. In both cases, the photos were taken earlier in their careers and sold to Penthouse only after Madonna and Williams became famous.
The September 1984 issue of Penthouse magazine would eventually become controversial because of its centerfold, Traci Lords. Lords posed nude for this issue at the beginning of her career as an adult film star. It was later revealed that Lords was underage throughout most of her career in pornography and was only 16 when she posed for Penthouse.[8]
The same issue also caused controversy with nude pictures of Vanessa Williams that caused her to be stripped of her Miss America crown.[9]
In 1997, Penthouse changed its format and began featuring sexually explicit pictures (i.e., actual oral, vaginal, and anal penetration), beginning with photos from the Stolen Honeymoon sex tape featuring Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee. It also began to regularly feature pictorials of female models urinating, which, until then, had been considered a defining limit of illegal obscenity as distinguished from legal pornography.
In a desperate attempt to boost sales, the magazine began to feature hardcore material, including women urinating and couples engaged in real sex.[10] When this was featured, companies no longer wanted their products associated with or featured in Penthouse and quickly had their advertising removed. For the magazine, once respected and successful (and would outsell Playboy beginning in the late 1970s and continuing for several years there after), it was inevitably the beginning of its decline. Observers have commented that Guccione created an empire and also destroyed it.
A different approach to restoring sales was attempted by the UK version of the magazine in 1997. Under the editorship of Tom Hilditch, the magazine was rebranded as PH.UK and relaunched as middle-shelf "adult magazine for grown-ups". Fashion photographers (such as Corinne Day of The Face magazine) were hired to produce images that merged sex and fashion. The magazine's editorial content included celebrity interviews and tackled issues of sexual politics. The experiment attracted a great deal of press interest, but failed to generate a significant increase in sales. PH.UK closed in late 1998.
Reception
In 1975, for example, Guccione was honored by Brandeis University for focusing "his editorial attention on such critical issues of our day as the welfare of the Vietnam veteran and problems of criminality in modern society".[11]
In March 1975, Penthouse published an article headlined "La Costa: The Hundred-Million-Dollar Resort with Criminal Clientele", written by Jeff Gerth and Lowell Bergman. The article indicated that the La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, California, was developed by Mervyn Adelson and Irwin Molasky using loans from the Teamsters Pension Fund and that the resort was a playground for organized crime figures. The owners, along with two officials of the resort, Morris B. Moe Dalitz and Allard Roen, filed a libel lawsuit for $522 million against the magazine and the writers. In 1982, a jury absolved the magazine of any liability against the lawsuit from the owners. The plaintiffs appealed, but in December 1985, before a new trial could begin, the two sides settled. Penthouse issued a statement that they did not mean to imply that Adelson and Molaskey are or were members of organized crime. In turn the plaintiffs issued a statement lauding Penthouse publisher Guccione and his magazine for their "personal and professional awards". Total litigation costs were estimated to exceed $20 million.[12][13]
In December 1984, a group of radical feminists began a civil disobedience campaign against Penthouse which they called a National Rampage. Led by Melissa Farley and Nikki Craft, they went into stores selling copies of the magazine and ripped them up, and they also burned an effigy of Bob Guccione in front of a bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin. In late 1985 the group began to focus on the printer of Penthouse, Meredith Corporation. They bought shares in the company and attended their annual stockholder's meeting. The women were not allowed to speak, but they removed their coats, revealing images from a Penthouse shoot about Japanese rope bondage—among which two poses were construed by Farley to evoke dead bodies—ironed onto [their] shirts.[14]
Commercial decline
An April 2002 New York Times article reported Guccione as saying that Penthouse grossed $3.5 billion to $4 billion over the 30-year life of the company.[15]
However, in the late 1990s, Guccione made poor business decisions — from failing to embrace new digital opportunities to changing the content of the magazine — and publishing control gradually slipped away from him.
In 1999, hoping to raise cash and reduce debt, Penthouse sold several automotive magazine titles from its large portfolio Peterson Automotive, raising $33 million in cash. However, two of their retained publications, science and health magazines Omni and Longevity lost almost $100 million, contributing to financial problems.[16]
On August 12, 2003, General Media, the parent company of the magazine, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Immediately upon filing, Cerberus Capital Management entered into a $5 million debtor-in-possession credit line with General Media to provide working capital.[17][18] In October 2003, Penthouse magazine was put up for sale as part of a deal with its creditors. On November 13, 2004, Guccione resigned as chairman and CEO of Penthouse International, the parent of General Media.
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, Fernando Molina, Charles Samel, and Daniel C. Stanton.[19]
After Guccione, 2005–present
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Perspective
Penthouse Media Group / FriendFinders
Starting with the January 2005 issue, the new owners significantly softened the content of the magazine. Penthouse no longer showed male genitalia, real or simulated male-female sex, nor any form of explicit hardcore content (it does still feature female-female simulated sex on occasions). While this change was followed by the return of a limited number of mainstream advertisers to the magazine, it did not significantly raise the number of subscribers; total circulation is still below 350,000.[20]
Penthouse filed for bankruptcy protection on September 17, 2013. The magazine's then-current owner FriendFinder's current common stock was wiped out and was no longer traded on the open market. In August 2013, FriendFinder's stock was delisted from Nasdaq because it consistently failed to trade for more than $1.[21]
As of 2015, General Media Communications, Inc. publishes entertainment magazines and operates as a subsidiary of FriendFinder Networks Inc.[22]
Penthouse Global Media
In February 2016, Penthouse Global Media – a new company headed by Penthouse Entertainment managing director Kelly Holland – acquired the Penthouse brand from FriendFinder Networks.[23] Holland overhauled the brand and its properties, with guidance from then-publisher of Penthouse's Australian edition, Damien Costas.[24] Costas had acquired the masthead in 2013, repositioning it away from adult content toward commentary on cultural and political issues.[25]
Penthouse Global Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 11, 2018, to address debt-related issues.[26]
WGCZ Ltd / Penthouse World Media
Penthouse Global Media, Inc. were acquired by WGCZ Ltd., operators of XVideos,[27] on June 4, 2018, after winning a bankruptcy auction for US$11.2 million; other companies, such as MindGeek, also participated in the auction.[28] Penthouse Global Media, Inc. was later spun off from WGCZ and renamed Penthouse World Media.
Transition to digital and disappearance
In January 2016 it was widely reported that Penthouse was ceasing print publication.[29][30] The company quickly clarified that this was not the case, blaming a "weakly crafted press release"[31] for the confusion. In fact the difference between the two announcements was semantic. The first had said print would end when the transiton to digital was complete; the second said the print edition would continue as long as it was profitable, which did not necessarily guarantee it a longer life.[32]
The nominal publication frequency of the magazine had been reduced in 2009 from twelve to eleven issues a year. It was reduced again in 2019 to six issues a year. The fourth issue of 2023 (July-August) was the last to appear in print. On a web page last updated in September 2024 — a year into the print hiatus — the company said that it would continue to produce print magazines and that new publication schedules for Penthouse and Penthouse Letters would be revealed by the end of 2024.[33] As of summer 2025 — two years into the print hiatus — there had been no further announcements.
The company published a digital-only "annual" edition of Penthouse at the end of 2023 to round out that year. In January 2024 it launched a new digital-only product combining Penthouse and Penthouse Letters. It retained the look and feel of the print magazines, along with their most notable features, and it appeared with reassuring regularity each month until December 2024, when it, too, ceased publication.[34]
Since then, the company has continued to nominate a monthly Penthouse Pet, adding photographs of the model to its website during her four-week reign.[35] For now at least, this is its only nod to Penthouse's origins as a print periodical.
National editions
Active
- German edition
Suspended
- United States edition
Discontinued
- Australian edition (2007)
- Bulgarian edition
- Hong Kong edition (2004)
- New Zealand edition (2014)
- United Kingdom edition (1999)
Status unknown
- Dutch edition
- Greek edition
- Hungarian edition
- Portuguese edition
- Russian edition
- Spanish edition
- Thai edition
Other ventures
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Perspective
Film
In 1974, Guccione invested in the film Chinatown and the end credits read A Paramount - Penthouse Presentation.[36]
In 1976, Guccione used about $17.5 million U.S. dollars of his personal fortune to finance the controversial historical epic pornographic film Caligula, with Malcolm McDowell in the title role and a supporting cast including Helen Mirren, John Gielgud, Teresa Ann Savoy, and Peter O'Toole. The film, which was eventually released in late 1979, was produced in Italy (made at the Dear Studios in Rome) and was directed by Tinto Brass.
In 2001, Penthouse Presents began running on Hot Choice.
Publications
Guccione also created the magazines Omni, Viva, and Longevity.[7] Later Guccione started Penthouse Forum, which predominantly featured erotic writing and stories. In 1993, Penthouse published an adult comic book spin-off entitled Penthouse Comix, featuring sexually explicit stories. After an initial success, Penthouse Comix expanded into a line of four illustrated magazines with the addition of Penthouse Max, Penthouse Men's Adventure Comix and Omni Comix. In 2023 Penthouse revived the comic label as Penthouse Comics. The first issue launched in February 2024 to 30,000 copies sold.
Penthouse Variations is a monthly magazine containing ostensibly reader-generated erotic stories (primarily) and some pictures and reviews. It is a spin-off magazine from Penthouse Letters. It was initially published in 1978.[37] Variations focuses on "kinkier" topics of sexuality, such as bondage, fetish clothing, exhibitionism, voyeurism, foot fetishism, water sports, female dominance, bisexual exploration, transsexualism and sadomasochism, among others.
Home video
In 1983, Penthouse teamed up with Vestron Video to launch the Penthouse Video label.[38] In 1991, Penthouse Video signed a deal with A*Vision Entertainment to release videos designed for an adult audience.[39]
Casinos
In 1970, the Penthouse Club in London, England operated a casino. However, the next year the casino license was revoked by the gaming authorities.[40] In 1972, Penthouse opened the Penthouse Adriatic Club casino on the island of Krk in Yugoslavia (now Croatia) at a cost of $45 million. However, the casino filed for bankruptcy the following year and was closed.[41] In 1978, Penthouse began construction of the Penthouse Boardwalk Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. However, Penthouse was unable to raise additional funding and construction stopped in 1980. The project sat idle until Donald Trump acquired the site in 1993.
Auto racing
Penthouse sponsors the "1X" car of driver Randy Hannagan in the World of Outlaws sprint car series. The magazine previously sponsored cars in the Formula One circuit from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. Teams included Hesketh Racing and RAM Racing.
Penthouse TV
January 2011, Penthouse announced the first 3D HD porn channel, to be available from the second quarter of 2011. Shot using dual lenses, it would consist of available Penthouse HD Channel lineup covering over 30 platforms in more than 15 countries.[42] It was launched on 1 March 2011.[43]
Wine and spirits
In January 2015, Penthouse announced its entry into the wine and spirits industry. The line of products were to debut at the 2015 Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas.[44] Called Libido Libations, the spirits line is distributed by Prestige Imports LLC and produced by The Melchers Group BV.[45] The wine offerings are the result of a partnership with California vintner John Crossland and Randal Tomich of the Australian winery Tomich Wines.[46]
See also
References
External links
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