Al Goldstein
Alvin "Al" Goldstein (b. ✦January 10, 1936, New York City - †December 19, 2013, Brooklyn New York) is an American publisher and pornographer.[Source 1][Source 2]
Goldstein founded the tabloid "Screw" magazine. He was also the host and producer of Midnight Blue, a New York City leased-public access cable television series.
His company, Milky Way Productions, home of Screw and his long-running cable show, Midnight Blue, went into bankruptcy in 2004. His mansion in Pompano Beach, Florida, with the 11-foot statue of a raised middle finger out back, was sold in June 2004 to pay debts.
A documentary was made by James Guardino about Goldstein, titled Goldstein: The Trials of the Sultan of Smut. In 2006, Goldstein released an autobiography, through Thunder’s Mouth Press, co-written with Josh Alan Friedman, titled I, Goldstein: My Screwed Life, which has received favorable reviews.
Al regularly rants in his blog, maintained in association with the Adult search engine, Booble - http://www.booble.com/.
Print publications
Screw
In November 1968 in New York, Al and his partner Jim Buckley, investing $175 each, founded Screw, a weekly tabloid. It featured reviews of porn movies, peep shows, erotic massage parlors, brothels, escorts and other offerings of the adult entertainment industry. Such items were interspersed with sexual news, book reviews of sexual books, and hardcore "gynecological" pictorials. He 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," he 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 a week.
Arrested 19 times on obscenity charges, he spent millions 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's 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."
Bitch magazine
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". It also included an interview with actor James Caan, and a centerfold of a man shot by a female photographer.
Smut Magazine
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.
National Screw
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 five issues.
Death magazine
In 1979, Goldstein began Death magazine. It lasted four 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.
Screw West
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.
Friendship with Larry Flynt
One of Goldstein's best friends was Larry Flynt. Goldstein said that Flynt's Hustler, founded seven years after Screw, stole the Hustler format from Screw, but that he was not angry. According to Goldstein, Flynt succeeded in creating a national publication, at which he had failed.
Life in Florida
While mostly associated with the city of New York, Goldstein was also a well-known figure in Broward County, Florida, making the cover of a local alternative tabloid, New Times.[4] He owned a 10,000-square-foot mansion in Pompano Beach, famous for its statue, 11 feet (3.4 m) high, of a raised middle finger on the back lawn, visible to boaters on the Intracoastal Waterway.
Last years
- Legal issues and financial woes
In 2002, Goldstein was found guilty of harassing a former employee, having published her telephone number and place of employment in Screw and encouraging readers to call her and tell her "to stop being such a cunt." Goldstein was sentenced to 60 days in jail. He served six days before the charges were overturned on appeal. Goldstein apologized as part of a plea bargain. Screw folded in 2003, unable to make payroll; only 600 copies were sold of the last issue.
Goldstein's company, Milky Way Productions, which published Screw and Midnight Blue, entered bankruptcy in 2004, having lost sales and subscribers as a result of the proliferation of internet pornography, abetted by Goldstein's financial mismanagement.
Goldstein lost his Florida mansion and his townhouse on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Jobless and penniless, he ended up living briefly in a Manhattan homeless shelter. He was fired from New York's well-known Second Avenue Deli for sleeping in the basement, after a brief stint there as a greeter.
He was arrested for shoplifting four health-related books from Barnes & Noble. He worked in 2005 as a commissioned salesman for New York City Bagels. Between 2005 and 2008, he blogged for booble.com, a pornographic search engine[47] he then continued on his own website until 2009.
He was financially supported in his last years by his friend the illusionist Penn Jillette[Note 1], on whose floor he once slept, and who admired Goldstein for his First Amendment activism.[ His final residence, prior to a nursing home, was a small apartment in the Far Rockaway neighborhood of Queens, paid for by Jillette.
- Death
Goldstein died on December 19, 2013, aged 77, from renal failure at a nursing home in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.
Notes
- ↑ of Penn and Teller fame
Sources
External links
- Blog of Al Goldstein
- Al Goldstein at the Internet Movie Database
- Rotten Timeline
- Screw magazine online
- Undernews (August 2004)
- Can't Stop the Bleeding (August 12, 2004)
- The Villager(September 15-21, 2004)
- The New Yorker (January 3, 2005)
- Hold the Mustard, Maybe Forever (January 6, 2006)
Chat rooms • What links here • Copyright info • Contact information • Category:Root