Penthouse is a men's magazine founded in London by American Bob Guccione, with the first British 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.Dian Hanson, The History of Girly Magazines, 1900–1969 (Cologne: Taschen, 2006), pp. 441–443.
Unable to compete with the internet, the British edition folded in 1999 (an attempt to revive it in 2001 was short-lived).Jonah Bloom, "Penthouse returns with a new look", Campaign, March 5, 2001. Accessed August 19, 2025. The American 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 regular issue of the American edition appeared in 2023. The current owner of the masthead, Los Angeles–based Penthouse World Media, said a year later that it would return,Subscribe to Penthouse Magazine, Penthouse. Accessed August 17, 2025. The last modification date on the page at the time of access was September 13, 2024. repeating in early 2026 that "plans for a return to print are still in the works".Subscribe to Penthouse Magazine, Penthouse. Accessed April 27, 2026. The last modification date on the page at the time of access was March 13, 2026.
The Guccione era, 1965–2004
Penthouse magazine began publication in the UK in March 1965. Its symbol was a skeleton key, or three keys in some applications."Housecall", Penthouse USA, volume 4, number 5, January 1973. "The [key symbol] was apt, not only because every penthouse requires a key, but because a key is traditionally a phallic symbol — in Italian the word is chiave, yielding the verb chiavare, slang for copulation. In designing the Penthouse key Bob neatly united the standard symbols for male and female, the circle and arrow and circle and cross. So, the key enshrines the ineluctable equation: Man plus Woman equals Penthouse. Later, when the London Penthouse Club was launched, the key was triplicated to provide a distinctive symbol. Though some have suspected papal inspiration in this development, Bob's explanation is simpler: 'Three is my lucky number, and I've found things happen in threes.'" The magazine started on a shoestring, and its future looked far from certain — it took Guccione twenty months to produce his first twelve "monthly" issues. By the late 1960s, however, it was firmly established in the marketplace: "the all-time, biggest selling quality magazine in the history of British publishing" (according to Guccione),Bob Guccione, "Housecall", Penthouse, U.S. Edition, September 1969, p.4. The paragraph is unsigned but Guccione identifies himself in the text. and "the best-selling erotic magazine in Europe" (according to Dian Hanson).Dian Hanson, The History of Girly Magazines, 1900-1969 (Cologne: Taschen, 2006), p. 441. The magazine sold well on the Continent — notably in France — as well as in the UK. It was this success, and especially reports that British Penthouse was outselling Hugh Hefner's Playboy among American troops in Vietnam,Hanson, The History of Girly Magazines, p. 441 that inspired Guccione to produce an American edition, with the first issue appearing in September 1969.
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. 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.
Pictorial style Due to Guccione's lack of resources, he personally photographed most of the models for the magazine's early issues.Anthony Haden-Guest, "Boom and Bust", The Observer, February 1, 2004 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.Lords, Traci Elizabeth. Traci Lords: Underneath It All. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.
The same issue also caused controversy with nude pictures of Vanessa Williams that caused her to be stripped of her Miss America crown.
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.Anthony Haden-Guest, "Boom and Bust, Part Two", The Observer, February 4, 2004. Accessed August 18, 2025. 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 British 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, 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".
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.
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. Pdf.
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.Carr, David. "Cybersmut and Debt Undermine Penthouse". The New York Times, April 8, 2002.
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.
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. 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.
After Guccione, 2005–present
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.Latest figures from the Audited Bureau of Circulation