Like A Phoenix From Our Ashes:
The Rise and Fall of Al Goldstein
by Nick Douglas
His biography was way overdue, but the fact it’s coming out now, rather than back in 1996 when Larry Flynt was having his latest moment-in-the-sun, gives Alvin Goldstein’s life a story arc which reads like Greek Tragedy.
In many ways it would seem that Goldstein led a charmed life, which is exactly why lots of lonely, horny guys envied him. But to hear him tell it through his grandmotherly kvetching, his charmed life was full of various hardships, namely his ex-wives and legal difficulties. It was this combination of legal difficulties and ex-wives that eventually knocked him off his charmed porn pedestal.
Was that the cause of his downfall, legalities and ex-wives? Or was it something more? Maybe something closer to Al’s center, something less tangible? Everyone loves to see an asshole crash and burn, right?
It says something about us when we envy someone who can indulge himself to near death and then crash hard as a result of such indulgences. People hate a bigmouth. Unless that bigmouth has something worthwhile to say, the public tends to hold the person in contempt. Goldstein made so many enemies through his dual soapbox of Screw and his late-night cable show, MIDNIGHT BLUE, that he once commented if he should ever be assassinated, the amount of suspects would fill Yankee Stadium.
“I’d just plea-bargained guilty on harassment charges from my ex-wife Gena and received three years probation. In effect, it stipulated I couldn’t be in the sex business. The only business I had expertise in. I couldn’t relocate to L.A. to accept the few measly offers from the porn industry. They would rather I work the deep frialator at McDonald’s. Anyone who wished ill on me felt vindicated because my life turned into a horror. Everyone who hated me could now laugh… I’ve burned bridges. I have regrets.”
With this statement of regret, Goldstein manages to evoke sympathy for his downfall. The man now has so many health conditions that even if only half of them are real, he’d still be in terrible shape.
Young Al Goldstein.
It’s important to keep in mind though, that even if one is willing to accept the proposition that the long line of previous attacks on him are “evil,” it doesn’t necessarily, in and of itself, make him “good.” It would be naive to view this portion of his story in such extreme black and white terms.
Since starting Screw with Jim Buckley in 1968, it seemed as if the mob, the government, the puritans, the feminists and his ex-wives were all gunning for him. But he did have millions of supporters who consisted of the nameless, faceless masses of the New York City streets. They were the ones who kept subscribing to Screw, who kept watching MIDNIGHT BLUE and who kept his business alive. It was these masses for whom Goldstein seemed to be fighting. When Al was on top, he always seemed to be fighting the good fight for the common folk.
At one point, Goldstein led a porn lover’s dream life—interviews with top porn stars, a public soapbox where he could rant at whomever pissed him off, the top public-access TV show in Manhattan, millions of dollars, free meals at some of Manhattan’s best restaurants, blowjobs from some porn’s greatest starlets (including Linda Lovelace and Seka), limousines, swinger clubs, every physical desire catered to and satisfied with a wink and a smile. He was able to speak his mind and tell his version of the truth. He was porn’s favorite jester, who unlike Hustler’s Larry Flynt, pioneered more sexing of our culture than anyone else.
Before starting Screw, Goldstein worked various jobs. He spent a couple of years in the Armed Forces and was discharged honorably in December 1956. This allowed him to attend Pace University on the G.I. Bill and transform himself into their resident beatnik, nicknamed “Weird Beard.”
After tiring of scholastic pursuits, Goldstein became a driver for gossip columnist originator, Walter Winchell. Al would pick Winchell up at the Copa after midnight and they’d zip around NYC covering stories and in some cases, even arriving as they happened. Goldstein was able to absorb a lot of Winchell’s shorthand style and later referred to himself as “the Winchell of Porn.”
Time was spent as a photograph apprentice for a William Randolph Heart newspaper and Al even got an assignment in Cuba for an agency called Pictorial Parade. This particular assignment landed Goldstein in jail for the first time, charged with spying, at a place called Morro Castle, a military prison. Word reached the American Embassy, and after one uncomfortably tense night, Goldstein was released.
From there, it was back to writing freelance True Confession-styled trash stories, following Jackie Onassis on her trip to Pakistan, working as an industrial spy for a subsidiary of the Bendix Corporation in Queens, meeting Buckley at the New York Free Press and then the birth of Screw, the world’s greatest newspaper.
“The first issues were basically written by me alone. I was first to actually review porn films and test drive sex aids… I went to all the early porno theaters… Screw was the first to interview sex actors, which in 1969 would have been akin to doing interviews with terrorists, or bed lice, today. Considering the playing field today, maybe it would have been better if we never started the trend.”
Innocence as Experience
It’s interesting to note that according to a January 1977 article by civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz, the Nixon/Mitchell Justice Department listed pornography, but not gun control, among the five most important law enforcement priorities. It’s no wonder that Screw came under such intense fire on all fronts. In 1977, Dershowitz mentioned “there are now [many] imitators of Screw’s format and many hundreds of other periodicals that publish equally raw pictures. But Screw has been singled out for federal prosecution because it sells pornography cum politics.”
So Screw hit nerves on two levels, and perhaps this is why Goldstein and Larry Flynt were arrested so often throughout the ‘70s. They were both pornographic and political. What made Goldstein’s Screw and Flynt’s Hustler different from Hefner’s Playboy and Guccione’s Penthouse was their unrestricted savaging of authority. It’s this political satire which makes Goldstein’s story so important (even to the schmucks who’ll never open his “auto” biography): Al took on authority in ways most of the yuckles in the “freest country in the world” benefit from but hardly ever consider.
And this is where Al’s tragedy begins.
There are basically two major trials in Goldstein’s story—the first centered on Screw, whereas the second was more personal. Goldstein was able to beat the first, but not the second.
“Screw’s headline, ‘Is J. Edgar Hoover A Fag?’ broached this hushed question for the first time ever, while Hoover was still alive and kicking… I was in the vortex of chaos. I was a madman. I ran a centerfold illustration of Nixon’s two daughters eating each other, and Attorney General John Mitchell fucking Tricia. Public taunting of scumbags J.Edgar Hoover and Nixon would soon reach critical mass.”
Even though he was arrested 19 times on charges of second-degree obscenity during NYC Mayor Lindsay’s term alone, the first major battle for the magazine occurred in Wichita, Kansas during a trumped-up trial propagated by Nixon’s government to close Screw’s doors forever.
It used to be that in order to be legal, any questionable adult material must appeal to the “prurient interest,” i.e. it must have some sort of redeeming social value. After many years, it was finally proven in court that literary works by such luminaries as Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence, William S. Burroughs, James Joyce, etc. have value outside the more explicit aspects of the work.
Goldstein leaves his lunch tip.
According to Goldstein though, arousal is its own redeeming value. There was real intrinsic value in the very fact that someone could get turned on. Why should material have to go above and beyond arousing the reader or viewer? Is there a problem with being turned on? The material in Screw wasn’t propped up by any “academic bullshit,” and in December 1974, Goldstein and Buckley were “charged with a 12-count federal indictment for mailing obscene material into Kansas.” They each faced over 60 years of jail-time.
Luckily they were to be defended by First Amendment lawyer Herald Price Fahringer who once stated “I find much of the material I defend extremely distasteful… What bothers me more is that the government interferes in any fashion with our right to read what we want.” Fahringer’s clients included jazz drummer Buddy Rich and, later, Larry Flynt.
The trial would stretch over three years. The legal fees alone ran into six figures. As the trial meandered through countless hours and dollars, Jim Buckley decided to call it a day. In 1975 he sold his share of the magazine to Goldstein for a cool million and by 1978 would go on to produce one of the top five bestselling adult videos of all time, DEBBIE DOES DALLAS.
Nonetheless, the “Screw Two,” as they were now called in the tabloids, were found guilty on November 30, 1976. There was a quick reversal and a retrial was posted for October 25, 1977 in what the attorneys called “the contrived venue” of Kansas City, Kansas. The Screw Two were a long way from their hometown arena of NYC.
Support came in the form of personal letters to the court from figures such as Kurt Vonnegut, Nora Ephron, Lynn Redgrave, Gay Talese, SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE stalwart Garrett Morris, Playboy’s Hugh Hefner, Jann Wenner and publisher of MAD magazine, William M. Gaines.
Al by Peter Bagge—about as
accurate a depiction as we’ll get.
The retrial ground to a halt when the jury became deadlocked 9 to 3 in favor of acquittal and the judge declared a mistrial. The prosecution elected not to go for a third trial. It was a supreme victory, for those who wished to be aroused without the academic bullshit of redeeming social value but most especially for Al.
Goldstein began reviewing porn videos for Penthouse in October 1984. Was this an attempt to make his reputation reach a larger readership, or was it an attempt to make more money? The amount he was paid couldn’t have been too substantial, but Penthouse certainly had better distribution and therefore more readers than Screw.
The difference between the culture of contemporary times and that of Screw’s birth is vast. Even watching Blue Underground’s MIDNIGHT BLUE collection easily points the way that our culture could have gone. The commercials shown between MIDNIGHT BLUE segments advertised “synth coke,” “the Kik machine” used to heighten the effects of pot, numerous “leisure spas,” swing clubs and escort services. Screw helped propagate all of this and even though Goldstein didn’t commandeer this ship singlehandedly, he most certainly guided the Babylonian streets of NYC to levels of excess that hadn’t been seen before.
Or at least that’s the way it feels looking back on it all. With Screw and MIDNIGHT BLUE, Goldstein used humor (which it must be said was not always effective) to take away the shame of American sexual hang-ups. For the male half of the population anyway.
“Attacking corporate America over the years had validity; but attacking those close to me is another story. As I walked the streets in my homeless year, unable to feed my gluttonous hunger for the material world, with nothing but time to reflect, I came to the realization I was wrong. And I will never be forgiven… I went too far.”
The second major trial of Al’s life was the one that brought him to his knees and caused the once great man they called “the pride of the Yankees” to have regrets. This is the one that sent him to Riker’s Island and subsequently broke his spirit.
The years 2001 and 2002 weren’t good ones for Goldstein. In a nutshell, it comes down to the dismissal of a secretary named Jennifer Lozinski, an angry phone message where he threatened to “take [her] down” and more running of his big mouth during the trial—all of which is documented on the Blue Underground DVD, MIDNIGHT BLUE Vol.5: PORN KING. The First Amendment defense didn’t work this time, and Goldstein’s constant ridicule of the Judge and prosecuting attorneys probably didn’t help either. He was found guilty on six counts of misdemeanor harassment and ordered to begin serving his time in Rikers.
This Man Wants Your Vote.
Due to paying various alimonies, his constant materialistic spending and the ever- increasing legal fees, the money was all gone. Compared to the material now found on the Net, Screw almost seems redundant and Goldstein gave it up. He was homeless on the streets of NYC and was given a couple of jobs by friends from which he was soon fired. Howard Stern and Ron Jeremy helped by giving him cash out of their pocket. Penn Gillette stepped up to assist by paying the rent when Al finally found an apartment, but by all accounts it’s been a long, hard night of the soul for him these recent years.
But despite it all, Al still retains his sense of humor. He’s running for President in the 2008 election and some of his platform promises include:
He is “pro-tit, pro-clit, pro-pot, pro-books, pro-thinking, anti-war.” We could do much worse. In fact, let’s be honest, we already have. And more than once...
I, GOLDSTEIN: My Screwed Life
By Al Goldstein and
Josh Alan Friedman
Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006
Hardcover 271 pages
In Josh Alan Friedman’s book about Goldstein’s life, I, GOLDSTEIN: MY SCREWED LIFE, there are many entertaining chapters detailing Goldstein’s views of John Holmes and the Wonderland Ave. murders, the Mitchell Brothers, Larry Flynt, DEEP THROAT, eating scream queen Linnea Quigley’s ass, how feminists turned into neofascists, the best places to buy pastrami in NYC, etc. You don’t necessarily get the full story, perhaps not even an accurate story but you do get to hear Al cast his pearls of wisdom to the four winds, which is worth the cover price alone.
I, GOLDSTEIN might be Al’s story, but it’s Friedman’s book. One gets the impression that Friedman is the one most responsible for putting this “auto” biography together, and having spent time working for Goldstein and writing the classics TALES OF TIMES SQUARE and WHEN SEX WAS DIRTY, he proves himself to be the right man for the job. At one point Friedman even said that he thought the book was worth doing because he believed Goldstein was a figure like Lenny Bruce, a man who’d stood up for civil rights, the freedom of speech and been nearly destroyed for his efforts.
Whether or not you believe Goldstein was a crusader for free speech, a loudmouthed asshole who got what he deserved, or just a horny publisher from Brooklyn is all beside the point. After reading his story and gazing back on the difference between Screw’s glory days and our own culture, one must recognize what Goldstein’s work has given us, and then consider just how much we’ve lost.
