Penthouse, "the international magazine for men," became a household name along with its number one competitor, Playboy, during the 1960s and 1970s era of "free love" and sexual revolution. Following the 1953 debut of Hugh Hefner's erotic magazine, Bob Guccione rightly sensed that men might prefer to see a bit "more flesh" than was being offered by Playboy. In 1965, Guccione launched the London-based Penthouse, with slightly racier pictorials as well as investigative stories.

In 1969, the magazine was moved to the United States, where it expanded into a publishing dynasty that included Forum (1975), Penthouse Letters (1981), and several non-erotic ventures, such as Omni, a consumer science magazine (1978), Compute (1979), and Longevity (1989). Although Penthouse (a subsidiary of General Media Publishing) continued to grow and diversify over the next three decades, the company remained privately owned by Guccione and his companion, Kathy Keeton, whose operation was something of a Mom-and-Pop arrangement, staffed by several...