Althea Flynt

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Photograph of Althea Flynt, 1980

Althea Flynt (November 6, 1953–June 27, 1987), née Leasure, was the fourth wife of Larry Flynt and the co-publisher of Flynt's notorious adult magazine, Hustler.

Leasure was born November 6, 1953 in Marietta, Ohio. Althea and her three sisters, Sherry, Debbie, and Marsha, and one brother, Richard, came from an abusive home; When Althea was 8, her father shot her mother and grandparents, and then shot himself. She was put into an orphanage, where she remained until she ran away as a teenager. In the movie, The People vs. Larry Flynt, it is implied that she ran away because the nuns were sexually abusing her.^{[citation needed]}

Althea met Larry at age 17 in 1971, when she applied for a job as a stripper at his club in Columbus, Ohio. Larry became interested in her when she informed him he wasn't the only one sleeping with the other strippers;^[1] they were eventually married on August 21, 1976. Althea was Hustler's first life-size centerfold, and she was involved with the management and publication of the magazine throughout her 11-year marriage; she continued to run the magazine and kept it afloat during Larry's brief return to religion in 1977.

Althea began using the drugs that Larry was prescribed for pain after he was shot in 1978, and developed an addiction. She was diagnosed with AIDS in 1983; Flynt claims that she contracted the disease from a blood transfusion during a hysterectomy, and that she always used clean needles when using drugs.

Althea died when she drowned at the couple's Bel-Air mansion in Los Angeles, California on June 27, 1987. According to reports, she passed out from an overdose and drowned in the bathtub. Flynt, however, states that by that point she was in the final stages of AIDS and would have died within a year, regardless.

In the 1996 movie The People vs. Larry Flynt she was portrayed by Courtney Love, who was nominated for a Golden Globe.