Robert Charles Joseph Edward Sabatini Guccione ( ; December 17, 1930 – October 20, 2010) was an American photographer and publisher. He founded the adult magazine '' Penthouse'' in 1965. This was aimed at competing with Hugh Hefner's ''
Playboy
''Playboy'' is an American men's Lifestyle magazine, lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from H ...
'', but with more explicit erotic content, a special style of soft-focus photography, and in-depth reporting of government corruption scandals and the art world. By 1982 Guccione was listed in the ''
Forbes 400
The ''Forbes'' 400 or 400 Richest Americans is a list published by ''Forbes'' magazine of the wealthiest 400 American citizens who own assets in the U.S., ranked by net worth. The 400 was started by Malcolm Forbes in 1982 and the list is pub ...
'' wealth list, and owned one of the biggest mansions in Manhattan. However, he made some extravagant investments that failed, and the growth of free online pornography in the 1990s greatly diminished his market. In 2003, Guccione's publishers filed for bankruptcy and he resigned as chairman.
Early life
Guccione was born in
Brooklyn, New York
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
, of Sicilian descent and raised
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
in
Bergenfield, New Jersey
Bergenfield is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the borough's population was 28,321, an increase of 1,557 from the 2010 censuscount of 26,764,"Bob Guccione, Penthouse Founder, Dies at 79" nytimes.com, October 21, 2010; accessed October 1, 2014. 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 (1949-2020). 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 Hudson, moved to London with her, and married her. They had four children.
To support his family, Guccione managed a chain of
laundromat
A self-service laundry, coin laundry, laundromat, or coin wash is a facility where clothes are washed and dried without much personalized professional help. They are known in the United Kingdom as launderettes or laundrettes, and in the Unit ...
s until he got work as a cartoonist on an American weekly newspaper, ''The London American'', while Muriel started a business selling
pinup
A pin-up model (known as a pin-up girl for a female and less commonly male pin-up for a male) is a model whose mass-produced pictures see widespread appeal as part of popular culture. Pin-up models were variously glamour models, fashion models ...
posters. He occasionally created cartoons for Bill Box's humorous greeting card company Box Cards.Anthony Haden-Gues "Boom and Bust" ''The Observer'', February 1, 2004.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
Playboy
''Playboy'' is an American men's Lifestyle magazine, lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from H ...
''. 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
Seymour Myron "Sy" Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an American Investigative journalism, investigative journalist and political writer.
Hersh first gained recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam Wa ...
, 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 rejecting 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. Owing 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
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employe ...
, establishing the diffused,
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 ...
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 at 14-16 East 67th Street on
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
's
Upper East Side
The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the wes ...
was said to be the largest private residence in the borough at . However, in contrast to Hugh Hefner, who threw wild parties at his
Playboy Mansion
The Playboy Mansion, also known as the Playboy Mansion West, is the former home of ''Playboy'' magazine founder Hugh Hefner who lived there from 1974 until his death in 2017. Barbi Benton convinced Hefner to buy the home located in Holmby Hill ...
s, life at Guccione's mansion was remarkably sedate, even during the height of the sexual revolution in the 1970s. He reportedly once had his bodyguards eject a local radio personality who had been hired as a DJ and jumped into the swimming pool naked."The Twilight of Bob Guccione" rollingstone.com; accessed October 9, 2014.
The magazine's pictorials offered more sexually explicit content than was commonly seen in most openly sold
men's magazines
This is a list of magazines primarily marketed to men. The list has been split into subcategories according to the target audience of the magazines. This list includes mostly mainstream magazines as well as adult ones. Not included here are auto ...
of the era; it was the first to show female pubic hair, followed by full-frontal nudity and then the exposed
vulva
The vulva (plural: vulvas or vulvae; derived from Latin for wrapper or covering) consists of the external female sex organs. The vulva includes the mons pubis (or mons veneris), labia majora, labia minora, clitoris, vestibular bulbs, vulv ...
and anus. Up to the end of the 1960s, it was not acceptable to display anything more than a female's buttocks or breasts in mainstream publications and anything more risked obscenity charges. Only low-budget underground magazines displayed female genitals or explicit poses. However, the counterculture movement led to an increasingly liberated sexual attitude after which a series of court rulings struck down most legal restrictions on pornography. ''Penthouse'' has also, over the years, featured a number of authorized and unauthorized photos of celebrities such as Madonna and Vanessa Lynn Williams. In both cases, the photos were taken earlier in their careers and sold to ''Penthouse'' only after Madonna and Williams became famous. In Williams's case, this led to her forced resignation as
Miss America 1984
Miss America 1984, the 57th Miss America pageant, was held at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey on September 17, 1983 on NBC Network. Debra Maffett (Miss California 1982) crowned her successor, Miss New York 1983, Vanessa Williams a ...
. The September 1984 issue in which Williams was first featured also included a layout with pornographic actress
Traci Lords
Traci Lords (born Nora Louise Kuzma; May 7, 1968) is an American actress and singer. She entered the adult film industry using a fake birth certificate to conceal that she was two years under the legal age of eighteen. Lords starred in adult f ...
, who was only 15 when the photo shoot was done and was later revealed to be underage throughout most of her career. In the late 1990s, the magazine began to show more "fetish" content such as urination, bondage and "facials."
In the early 1970s, Guccione invested around US $45 million in construction of Haludovo Palace Hotel, a luxury hotel resort in
Malinska
Malinska (german: Durischal) is a settlement (naselje) in the northwestern part of the island Krk in Croatia and an important tourist town. It lies on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, in the picturesque bay facing Opatija and Rijeka.
The municipali ...
, (island Krk near Rijeka) on the Adriatic coast of
. He invested an additional $500,000 in advertisement. Despite Yugoslavia being nominally a communist country, it encouraged foreign investments. The entire project was designed by Yugoslav architect Boris Magaš and realized through Brodokomerc, a local company. Prior to that, the project needed to be authorized through a so-called workers' council, a process which Guccione described as "ridiculously easy". The hotel was officially opened in 1972. Staff included around 50 Penthouse Pets, and the guests included the former Iraqi president
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutio ...
. However, the hotel went bankrupt the very next year.
In 1976, Guccione used about US $17.5 million of his personal fortune to finance the controversial historical epic
erotic film
Sex in film, the presentation of aspects of sexuality in film, specially human sexuality, has been controversial since the development of the medium. Films which display or suggest sexual behavior have been criticized by religious groups or hav ...
Malcolm McDowell
Malcolm McDowell (born Malcolm John Taylor; 13 June 1943) is a British actor, producer, and television presenter. He is best known for portraying Alex DeLarge in ''A Clockwork Orange.'' He was born in the Horsforth suburb of Leeds and raised i ...
in the title role and a supporting cast including Helen Mirren,
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, (; 14 April 1904 – 21 May 2000) was an English actor and theatre director whose career spanned eight decades. With Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, he was one of the trinity of actors who dominated the Brit ...
and Peter O'Toole. The film, released in late 1979, was produced in Italy (made at the Dear Studios in
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
) and was directed by
Tinto Brass
Giovanni "Tinto" Brass (born 26 March 1933) is an Italian film director and screenwriter. In the 1960s and 1970s, he directed many critically acclaimed avant-garde films of various genres. Today, he is mainly known for his later work in the Erot ...
. Guccione also created the magazines '' Omni'', '' Viva'', and ''Longevity''. Later Guccione started '' Penthouse Forum'' which was more textual in content. In the early 2000s, ''Penthouse'' published a short-lived
comic book
A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...
spin-off entitled ''
Penthouse Comix
''Penthouse Comix'' was an American mass-market, magazine-sized comic book, published by Penthouse International/General Media Communications from spring 1994 through July 1998. Founded and initially edited by George Caragonne and Horatio Weisfel ...
'' featuring sexually explicit stories.
In 1982, Guccione was listed in the Forbes 400 ranking of wealthiest people, with a reported $400 million net worth. 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.
Awards and recognition
Guccione's editorial content was praised and recognized by some in the academic field. In 1975, for example, he was honored by
Brandeis University
, mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts"
, established =
, type = Private research university
, accreditation = NECHE
, president = Ronald D. Liebowitz
, ...
for focusing "his editorial attention on such critical issues of our day as the welfare of the
Vietnam veteran
A Vietnam veteran is a person who served in the armed forces of participating countries during the Vietnam War.
The term has been used to describe veterans who served in the armed forces of South Vietnam, the United States Armed Forces, and ot ...
and problems of criminality in modern society."
Guccione was also praised by certain professional groups and associations for his dealings with them. In April 1978 he was named "Publisher of the Year" by the Atlantic Coast Independent Distributors Association in gratitude for his "leadership, his fair treatment and his continuing friendship with our members."
In 2013, director Barry Avrich made a film about Guccione's life entitled '' Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story''. The film premiered at the
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a perman ...
on September 9, 2013. It was later broadcast in Canada on
The Movie Network
Crave (formerly The Movie Network or TMN) is a Canadian premium television network and streaming service owned by the Bell Media subsidiary of BCE Inc.
Launched in 1983 as the national service First Choice, early difficulties and a subsequent ...
Epix
Epix (pronounced ''epics'' and stylized as P) is an American premium cable and satellite television network owned by the Epix Entertainment LLC subsidiary of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), a subsidiary of Amazon's MGM Holdings, Inc. The channel's pr ...
in November 2013.
Decline and resignation
Several wildly unsuccessful investments by Guccione—including the
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. Due to financial and legal difficulties, the hotel was never completed and a casino license was nev ...
(which lost $160 million) and a (never-built)
nuclear fusion
Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles ( neutrons or protons). The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manife ...
power plant—added to his publishing empire's financial woes.''Rolling Stone'', "The Twilight of Bob Guccione" accessed October 20, 2010. Guccione's efforts to regain sales and notoriety, which included attempts to get
Monica Lewinsky
Monica Samille Lewinsky (born July 23, 1973) is an American activist and writer. President Bill Clinton admitted to having an affair with Lewinsky while she worked at the White House as an intern in 1995 and 1996. The affair, and its repercus ...
to pose for the magazine (which was parodied in a sketch on ''
Saturday Night Live
''Saturday Night Live'' (often abbreviated to ''SNL'') is an American late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels and developed by Dick Ebersol that airs on NBC and Peacock (streaming service), Peacock. ...
'' in 1998) and offering the
Unabomber
Theodore John Kaczynski ( ; born May 22, 1942), also known as the Unabomber (), is an American domestic terrorist and former mathematics professor. Between 1978 and 1995, Kaczynski killed three people and injured 23 others in a nationwide ...
a free forum for his views, failed to increase readership. With the rise of online access to (often free) pornography in the late 1990s, ''Penthouse'''s circulation numbers began to suffer even more.
In 2003, General Media, ''Penthouse'' publisher, filed for bankruptcy protection. Guccione resigned as chairman of the board and CEO of Penthouse International, Inc. The owner of General Media, FriendFinder Networks Inc. itself filed for bankruptcy protection on September 17, 2013. They emerged from bankruptcy protection in December 2013, which eliminated $300 million in debt. As part of the reorganization, the company's shares were deregistered and will no longer trade on the open market. ''Penthouse Magazine'' continues to be published.
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, and Daniel C. Stanton.
Other work
Guccione gave
Anna Wintour
Dame Anna Wintour (; born 3 November 1949) is a British journalist based in New York City who has served as editor-in-Chief of ''Vogue'' since 1988 and Global Chief Content Officer for Condé Nast since 2020; she is also the artistic directo ...
her first job as a fashion editor at his magazine ''Viva''. He was an investor in the films '' Chinatown'' and '' The Day of the Locust''.
Personal life
Family
Guccione's British raised son, Bob Guccione Jr. (born 1955), was given editorship of '' Spin'', but father and son soon fell out over editorial decisions, and Bob Jr. eventually found independent investors to continue financing the magazine. They remained estranged for a long time, but reportedly reconciled before Guccione Sr.'s death in 2010.
Marriages
Guccione was married four times: he first married Lilyann Becker in his late teens. He married, secondly, to a British woman, Muriel Hudson, with whom he had four children. They divorced in 1979. His third marriage, in 1988, was to his long-time companion, Kathy Keeton, a native of South Africa. In 1997, Keeton died of complications from surgery to remedy an obstruction in her digestive tract after a long battle with cancer. She was 58. In her last few months, Keeton befriended an ex-model named April Dawn Warren, and gossip maintained that Warren was Keeton's hand-picked successor.The Twilight of Bob Guccione, Rolling Stone Culture October 21, 2010; accessed October 1, 2014. After a long engagement, he and Warren wed 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 had spent ten years as creative director of the magazine. Warren and Guccione were working on a book of reminiscences, ''Good to Know'', until shortly before his death in 2010, at age 79. He died with Warren at his side.
Residence
Guccione brought artisans in from
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
and
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
to build the largest private residence in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
. As a tribute to Guccione the artisans carved both his and his wife's faces into the marble columns near the entrance of the residence. According to '' New York'' magazine, "It's one of the biggest private houses in Manhattan, with 30 rooms, and it costs $5 million a year to maintain."Haden-Guest, Anthony (February 9, 2004) "The Porn King in Winter" nymag.com; accessed October 1, 2014.
In November 2003 the mansion, on
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
's
Upper East Side
The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the wes ...
, was foreclosed on by Kennedy Funding of New Jersey, the mortgage holder, along with an affiliate of multibillion-dollar hedge fund Elliott Associates of New Jersey. In January 2004, a group of investors came to Guccione's aid during his eviction. A London-based investor, Jason Galanis, led the investment group which purchased the property 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 forgo 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.
Guccione had to sell his country house in Staatsburg, New York. The estate was purchased by actress
Uma Thurman
Uma Karuna Thurman (born April 29, 1970) is an American actress and former model. She has performed in a variety of films, from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action films. Following her appearances on the December 1985 an ...
and hotelier Andre Balazs. Guccione's 15-room Baroque stucco mansion on a 75-acre property on the
Hudson River
The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...
was foreclosed and sold for $4 million.
Art collection
Guccione was a painter whose art premiered at Nassau County Museum of Art as well as the Butler Institute of American Art. His art continues to hang in the Borghi Fine Art Gallery, is featured in the POBA - Where the Arts Live online collection, and is a part of the Filthy Gorgeous Media art collection. Bob Guccione was a world-renowned collector of fine art. Highlights of the Guccione collection included a portrait by Amedeo Modigliani and a
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
portrait of the artist's son, Paulo. He owned paintings by
Sandro Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi ( – May 17, 1510), known as Sandro Botticelli (, ), was an Italian Renaissance painting, Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th cent ...
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in ...
,
Giorgio de Chirico
Giuseppe Maria Alberto Giorgio de Chirico ( , ; 10 July 1888 – 20 November 1978) was an Italian
artist and writer born in Greece. In the years before World War I, he founded the '' scuola metafisica'' art movement, which profoundly influ ...
Henri Matisse
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a drawing, draughtsman, printmaking, printmaker, and sculptur ...
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inc ...
.
The Guccione art collection was sold at auction by
Sotheby's
Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...
in November 2002 to pay Guccione's personal debts, originally incurred in the Atlantic City venture. The collection had been appraised by Christie's at $59 million two years prior. However, 9/11 had depressed the art market and the Guccione collection failed to sell for its appraised price. The aggregate sale price was $19 million, which was used to pay lender
Swiss Re
Swiss Reinsurance Company Ltd, Swiss Re. Retrieved on 18 January 2011. "Swiss Reinsurance Company Ltd ("Swiss Re") ...
. Swiss Re sued Guccione in New York State Court for a $4 million shortfall on the loan balance. Much of the remaining personal collection of Bob Guccione's art, photographs, and memorabilia was acquired by entrepreneur Jeremy Frommer in early 2012. The acquisition included over 60 original Guccione Oils, as well as the original illustrations and photographs by artists such as Arthur Cummings, Bill Lee, Suze Randall, Earl Miller, Berth Milton Sr. and more. The highlight of the collection is the quarter of a million photographs that were taken by Bob Guccione, himself, throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s. The items obtained by Frommer were the inspiration for his company Jerrick Ventures LLC's creation of the website, Filthy Gorgeous Media, which debuted in June 2013.
Guccione had a history of leveraging his prized asset. He borrowed $20 million from
AIG
American International Group, Inc. (AIG) is an American multinational finance and insurance corporation with operations in more than 80 countries and jurisdictions. , AIG companies employed 49,600 people.https://www.aig.com/content/dam/aig/amer ...
, the insurance company. Subsequently, they refinanced with Swiss Re Insurance.
Illness and death
By 2004, Guccione, a heavy smoker, had undergone surgery for
throat cancer
Head and neck cancer develops from tissues in the lip and oral cavity (mouth), larynx (throat), salivary glands, nose, sinuses or the skin of the face. The most common types of head and neck cancers occur in the lip, mouth, and larynx. Symptoms ...
and stated: "My cancer was only a tiny tumor about the size of an almond at the base of my tongue. 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." Guccione was later diagnosed with terminal
lung cancer
Lung cancer, also known as lung carcinoma (since about 98–99% of all lung cancers are carcinomas), is a malignant lung tumor characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. Lung carcinomas derive from transformed, malign ...
MSNBC
MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and politi ...
/''
Today
Today (archaically to-day) may refer to:
* Day of the present, the time that is perceived directly, often called ''now''
* Current era, present
* The current calendar date
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* ''Today'' (1930 film), a 1930 ...
''; accessed October 9, 2014. and died on October 20, 2010, at the age of 79, at Plano Specialty Hospital in
Plano, Texas
Plano ( ) is a city in Collin County and Denton County, Texas, United States. It had a population of 285,494 at the 2020 census. It is a principal city of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex.
History
European settlers came to the area near ...
, with his wife April at his side.. October 21, 2010. Retrieved May 5, 2012.