• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 22, 2010

Bob Guccione, the colorful and influential magazine publisher who founded Penthouse in the 1960s and built it into a major multimedia company encompassing print, electronic media and even films, died Wednesday. He was 79.

Best known for creating Penthouse, Guccione helped turbocharge the sexual media revolution that was sparked by Hugh Hefner's Playboy magazine, taking an even more explicit, yet still mainstream approach.

Guccione also spawned a number of other successful magazines, including highly regarded science and science-fiction title Omni, Viva, and Longevity, and diversified into a variety of emerging electronic media, as well as movies, most notably the star-studded X-rated film "Caligula."

Guccione also inspired a second generation publishing magnate, Bob Guccione Jr., who went on to launch a line of his own successful magazines, including Spin, which was the foil to Jann Wenner's Rolling Stone that Penthouse was to Hefner's Playboy.

"My father was a great man. He was a revolutionary publisher and an advocate for free speech and the rights of Vietnam Veterans when both were shamefully abused," Guccione Jr. said in a statement. "He was also a great artist who could have ranked with the masters of the 20th Century if he had chosen that life over building one of the biggest private publishing empires in history. He was full of vision and passion and humor, larger than life but intensely private, a mogul and a corny romantic. Most of all, he was a great father. He will never not be with me."