January 10: The King of Porn

Al Goldstein, publisher of Screw, a porn tabloid launched in 1968, was born in New York on this date in 1936. Within five years of its founding, Screw had a weekly circulation of 150,000. “[W]hen he and Jim Buckley founded Screw,” writes Steven Heller in the New York Times Book Review, “nothing like it — not Hugh Hefner’s Playboy or Ralph Ginzburg’s Eros or Barney Rosset’s Evergreen Review — had come close to addressing sex with such unvarnished candor and biting wit. Goldstein . . . raised the bar for porn from socially unredeemable smut to ironic social commentary.” In 1974, after Screw ran a feature titled, “Is J. Edgar Hoover a Fag?”, the FBI brought a 12-count federal indictment against its publishers for violating postal laws. (Their conviction was reversed on appeal.) Screw became more vulgar and debased over time and ceased publishing in 2003, after some 1,800 issues. Ultimately, Goldstein lost his millions and his health, was jailed for harassment of a former employee, and spent a couple of years homeless on the streets.