HE was the porn king who challenged Hugh Hefner’s crown and became one of the world’s richest men, with a £250million fortune and the most opulent mansion in New York.
But Bob Guccione – whose Penthouse magazine once outsold rival Playboy – was penniless and estranged from most of his five children when he died in 2010, aged 79.
Now a new documentary, The Secrets of Penthouse, looks into the rise of fall of the entrepreneur.
It lays bare the shocking treatment of the young models he recruited – known as Pets – who were cajoled into orgies, fed contraceptive pills to “make their breasts bigger” and forced to watch bestiality videos before romping with the magnate.
Guccione’s children Nina and Nick, by British mum Muriel Hudson, reveal he was a distant dad, more interested in bedding models than being with his kids, and that they were exposed to sex from a young age.
“Our family revolved around sex, which is kind of creepy,” says Nina, 63.
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For Nick, the plush Penthouse mansion on Manhattan’s Upper East Side became a playground for his teenage hormones and he slept with Pets from age 15.
"The Pets, I loved them all,” he says. ”It was like the fourth of July going off in my head.
"We weren’t allowed to ‘fraternise’ with the Pets but when I was 15, I had the opportunity to have my first girlfriend and she was a Penthouse Pet. She was 23.
“Most 15-year-olds could only fantasise about having sex with one of them, I was having sex with ALL of them. I was horny, but I was a gentleman."
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16Naked shoots at home
New Yorker Guccione moved to London in 1956 after meeting second wife Muriel, who sparked the idea of a girly mag when she launched her own mail order business selling postcards of bikini-clad women.
Guccione founded Penthouse in 1965 as a direct competitor to Hefner’s Playboy.
It gained the “edge” by being more explicit, featuring fully naked girls who showed their pubic hair.
Nina was eight when she stumbled across one of her dad's ‘shoots’ at home, adding: “I look through the keyhole in the living room and he's sitting on the floor with a girl completely naked. And I thought, that's odd. What are they doing?”
I look through the keyhole in the living room and he's sitting on the floor with a girl completely naked. And I thought, that's odd. What are they doing?
Nick – the youngest of the couple’s four children – says his father’s appetite for young women tore his parents' marriage apart.
“My dad used to ask my mother to leave the house, so mum would go. And he would invite some strange chick into his apartment and shoot her," he recalls.
“I was watching my mum so heartbroken that her husband was more interested in the magazine, which involved many different women wanting to model for him.
“But Pandora's box was opened and my dad was a horny guy.”
Twisted sex tape
By 1969 the mag was outselling Playboy, flogging 700 million copies each month.
Despite the marriage failing, Muriel moved to the States with kids Bob Jr, Tony, Nina, then nine, and Nick, who was just four.
Their half sister Tonina, from Guccione’s first marriage, was already in the US.
Charismatic Guccione looked every inch the Seventies porn baron – with designer shirts open to the navel and a hairy chest dripping with gold.
The young girls who posed for the shoots, snapped by Guccione himself, fell under his spell – and he took advantage.
Brit Jane Hargrave, who went to a Catholic school, was 18 and sitting A-levels when she spotted an ad for models and went for an interview.
“He had quite a presence. He had a lot of power and this very deep God's voice,” she recalls.
“He said that he needed to have a look at me. I have to go upstairs into the bathroom, take my clothes off and he's sitting in the bedroom. I stood there naked. I just had to overcome my shyness."
Two weeks later she flew to New York, then to a private island near Honduras for a shoot, where she and Guccione “developed a friendship”.
She adds: “He asked if I would mind if he trimmed my pubic hair.”
By this time the millionaire was living in the 42-room New York townhouse with new partner Kathy Keeton, an executive at the company.
Jane moved into the couple’s “dressing room” – linked to the bedroom through an adjoining shower room – and Guccione would come to her bed while Kathy slept next door.
“When Kathy was away he asked me into the master bedroom,” she says.
“He had a video of women having sex with animals. A girl with a pig. I think he wanted to shock me.”
Gold-plated tub and £100m art
Jane was part of a rotating harem of women living at the spacious six-floor mansion, decorated with imported marble and £100m worth of art.
The main bathroom featured a £200,000 solid gold bathtub with 22 karat gold taps and toilet roll holders – plus an original Picasso – and downstairs Judy Garland’s gold-plated grand piano took pride of place.
Although they initially lived with Muriel – by now an alcoholic depressive – Nina and Nick moved to the house when they were 16 and 13 respectively.
Nina says she was “terrified” of living with her father and the women made her “self-conscious”.
"The only boundaries were no men in the house,” says Nina. “Only dad was going to have sex, apparently. Nobody else was allowed to.”
Nick was forced to sleep in the "maid's quarters" while the Pets shared beautiful rooms on the fifth floor, and remembers an early sexual awakening.
“When I was 13 there was one lady. She just raised her skirt and I was like, 'Whoa!' – and then in about one second I bolted. She wasn't wearing panties, of course,” he recalls.
Nick went on to form romances with the Pets and incurred his dad’s wrath when he fell for Sheila Kennedy, who was just 16 when she started modelling for the magazine.
She recalls Guccione’s anger after Nick accidentally cut his wrist on a champagne glass in Sheila’s room.
“At 2am Bob’s banging on the door and said, ‘Don't ever go near my son again, or you'll be sorry.'
“After that night Nicky and I really connected. We were together after that – sexually together. The sex was amazing.
“But we had to keep it on the down-low because Bob made it very clear to his sons that they weren't allowed to sleep with the Pets, and I was still sleeping with Bob.”
Sheila, who lived at the mansion for 10 years, says Guccione coerced her into sleeping with Kathy, who had a fractious relationship with the girls.
“No one wanted to sleep with her. They eventually broke me down," she says. "I knew that I was going to be out if I didn't do it. If there's one thing I regret with Penthouse, it's that.
“After I was with Kathy, they fired me. I don't know why. It shocked me.”
Nina says her dad slept with numerous young girls.
“He used to put them on birth control pills. He said it makes the girls more voluptuous before a shoot… maybe your breasts get a little larger," she recalls.
“But he was probably trying to prevent the girls from being pregnant. It's disgusting, but he didn't care.”
Filmed orgies
Jane realised she was being used after Guccione forced the models to appear in the 1979 movie Caligula, starring Helen Mirren, Malcolm McDowell and John Gielgud.
Helen described the movie – which cost £15m and was shot in Rome – as “an interesting mixture of art and genitals” but Guccione wanted more sex.
“He wanted us all to take part in an orgy. I was literally still a teenager,” says Jane.
She realised “how unimportant I was to a man we're supposed to trust” and decided to leave.
At 18, Nina remembers being forced to go to the screening and found it "absolutely horrifying".
"I'd never seen a sex film. I was speechless and very upset," she says.
“No good parent should expose their child to that. But being a narcissist, he had no empathy.”
Downfall
The movie flopped and was panned by critics, costing Guccione millions.
As the Eighties dawned and right-wing president Ronald Reagan took power, backlash against porn gained a strong voice in the US, with Penthouse and Playboy its focal point.
In 1986 the magazine was banned from 7-11 convenience stores and numerous drugstores.
Guccione’s fortune dwindled after a series of failed investments including a £130m Atlantic City hotel and casino, which was never completed, and a £250m luxury hotel in Yugoslavia which went bust after a year.
He also invested in a nuclear power plant that was never built.
Family fall-out
The rise of online porn in the 90s meant Penthouse's circulation plummeted.
Guccione also fell out with his children as they attempted to turn the company around.
Bobby Jr launched his own magazine, Spin, under the company umbrella but after two years his dad shut it down – leading to a bitter rift.
Second son Tony took over as heir but resigned in 1997, claiming his father refused to take on ideas, and Nina, his successor, quit in 2002 for similar reasons.
Nick spearheaded a shift towards video content, but felt his father was slow to move with the times.
In 2003, Penthouse publisher General Media filed for bankruptcy and Guccione resigned as chairman.
The Manhattan mansion was sold for £40m in 2009 and Guccione died a year later in Plano, Texas, with fourth wife April Warren by his side.
Estranged from all his kids apart from Tonina, his divisive rule also saw the siblings falling out.
“Siblings should have a relationship together. We didn't,” says Nina. “There was a lot of rivalry there.”
Nick says his father was both genius and monster: “It was amazing that he had the wherewithal, the power and the foresight to accomplish what he did.
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"But on the other hand that ego did get in the way. I didn't have a father.”
The Secrets of Penthouse is on Crime+Investigation from October 29.
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