Al Goldstein

Alvin Goldstein (January 10, 1936December 19, 2013) was an American pornographer best-known for helping normalize hardcore pornography in the United States.

Goldstein was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to a Jewish family.

He attended Boys High.

He captained the debate team at Pace College and interviewed Allen Ginsberg for the college newspaper.

He served in the Army in the Signal Corps as a photographer, He worked as a photojournalist, taking pictures of Jacqueline Kennedy on a 1962 state trip to Pakistan and spent several days in a Cuban jail for taking unauthorized photos of Fidel Castro's brother, Raúl.

He also sold insurance, wrote freelance articles, ran a dime pitch game at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair, sold encyclopedias, rugs and his own blood, drove a taxi (he kept his taxi license active until his death), and landed a job as an industrial spy infiltrating a labor union, an experience that so appalled him he wrote an exposé about it for the radical newspaper New York Free Press, a weekly periodical.

In November 1968, Goldstein and his partner Jim Buckley, investing $175 each (equivalent to $ today), founded Screw, a weekly New York City tabloid.

It featured reviews of porn movies, peep shows, erotic massage parlors, brothels, escorts and other local offerings of the adult entertainment industry.

Such items were interspersed with news concerning sexual topics, critical reviews of sexual books, and hardcore "gynecological" pictorials.

Goldstein regularly ran, without permission, photos and drawings of celebrities.

"Screw grew from a combination of many factors, chief of which was my own dissatisfaction with the sex literature of 1968 and my yearning for a publication that reflected my sexual appetites," Goldstein wrote.

"I may be making a lot of money, but I really believe I'm doing some good by demythologizing a lot about sexuality", he said in a Playboy Interview.

It was described as "raunchy, obnoxious, usually disgusting and sometimes political."

The initial price was 25¢.

At its peak, Screw sold 140,000 copies weekly.

In 1973, "Screw Magazine present[ed]" It Happened in Hollywood, a pornographic movie, produced by Goldstein's partner Jim Buckley.

Goldstein played a character in the movie, and is also credited as "fourth unit director."

At the 2nd Annual New York Erotic Film Festival it won awards for Best Picture, Best Female Performance, and Best Supporting Actor.

Arrested 19 times on obscenity charges, he spent millions of dollars on First Amendment lawsuits, ultimately scoring a major victory when a federal judge dismissed an obscenity case in 1974.

(Goldstein believed that the case began as a result of Screw article, "Is J. Edgar Hoover a Fag?", the first published comment on Hoover's sexuality. ) Venue-shopping prosecutors selected conservative Wichita, Kansas, to prosecute Goldstein for obscenity; when he was found not guilty, he flew the jury to New York to attend a party at the swing club Plato's Retreat.

His long-term attorney was Herald Price Fahringer.

According to Will Sloan, "Goldstein was the first journalist to seriously review porn films. Had he not written a rave review of a low-budget film called Deep Throat ('I was never so moved by any theatrical performance since stuttering through my own bar mitzvah'), it would never have become a hit at New York's World Theater, would never have been targeted by the vice squad, would never have spawned a First Amendment cause célèbre, and might not have led to the modern porn industry."

In the March 11, 1974 issue of Screw, Goldstein ran an ad seeking subscribers to a new magazine, Bitch, which "brings women's sexuality out of the closet for the first time" and also "takes women out of politics and puts them back on their back where they belong."

(Note: there have been several other magazines also called Bitch.) The first issue "contain[ed] an explosive symposium about blowjobs by four women who talk about giving head and what they like and don't like about it".

Also included in the premiere issue was an interview with actor James Caan, and a centerfold of a man shot by a female photographer.

In the same March 11, 1974 issue of Screw, Goldstein also ran an ad seeking subscribers to Smut, a magazine "so filthy that not only do you have to wash after every page, but every reader must disinfect after reading! SMUT is so dirty, so scummy, that once you have it on your hands you can't get it off!"

The magazine offered pornography in images and words, without the news articles found in Screw.

In 1974 Goldstein began Screw Magazine of the Air, soon renamed Midnight Blue, a thrice weekly hour-long adult-oriented public access television program that ran for nearly 30 years on Manhattan Cable Television's Channel J; federal regulations regarding public access to cable TV systems made it impossible for the cable system to refuse his program.

(Similarly, Goldstein used a legal prohibition on the censorship of political advertisements to force television broadcast of pornography, under a transparent, but legal, veil of "political candidacy".) In it, he regularly interviewed porn stars, other adult industry figures, and sympathetic celebrities and "freaks", and ran advertisements for brothels, phone sex services, and Sammy's Roumanian Steakhouse.

In the later years, after departure of original director Alex Bennett, Goldstein featured on each program a "Fuck You" segment, a few minutes in which he viciously attacked celebrities, politicians, the judge who presided over his latest trial, the New York County District Attorney, and businesses he felt had wronged him.

In 1976-1977 National Screw was published; the place of publication was given as Secaucus, New Jersey.

The June 1977 issue of the magazine contained, according to its cover, a new story by William Burroughs and an interview with Allen Ginsberg.

It is known to have published at least nine issues (76-77), also containing original adult comic strip work from comic artist legends Wally Wood and Will Eisner.

In 1979, Goldstein began Death magazine.

It lasted four issues.

In 1979-1980 Goldstein's company, Milky Way Productions, published Screw West out of an office in Hollywood, California.

According to an advertisement, it was intended to answer such questions as, "Where can I get laid in San Francisco? What's the best swinger's club in Los Angeles? How do I find all those out-of-the-way Pacific Coast nude beaches? And what are those bawdy brothels outside Las Vegas really like?"

It is known to have published 54 issues.

The February, 1980 issue had a picture of Elvis Presley on the cover, "Grim Reaper Awards", "Eulogy to a War Lover", "Death by Hanging", "Femme Fatales", and other articles.

"In its early years, Midnight Blue captured porn star Georgina Spelvin doing her nude tap-dance act at the Melody Burlesque; Tara Alexander attempting the world's biggest gang bang at Plato's Retreat, the New York swing club; the 10th anniversary Screw party, where Buck Henry and Melvin Van Peebles hobnob with Goldstein's jurors; and an early look at the S&M community in New York. Throughout its run, Midnight Blue interviewed almost every major porn star, and regularly tested the limits of what was acceptable for cable television."