Penthouse's founding father Bob Guccione dies at 79

Bob Guccione, who took magazine nudity to a new level -- or low -- with his hardcore Penthouse magazine, has died of cancer at the age of 79.

He passed away with his wife, April Dawn Warren Guccione, and two of his children by his side at his Plano, Texas home where he'd lived since last year, New York Daily News reports.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1930, Guccione started Penthouse in the mid-1960s. By the 1980s, he had created a $300 million media business and Penthouse had a circulation of 4.7 million, according to the New York Times.

Marc Bell, chief executive officer of FriendFinder Networks Inc., which now publishes Penthouse and runs adult websites, called the death "very sad" in an e-mailed statement. The company plans to release a statement today, he said, Bloomberg informs.