FROM PARADISE TO THE GUTTER

The Great Pornographer went from Upper East Side family man/pornographer-next-door to Bowery bum. The First Amendment hero became destitute. But he never lost his appetite for pussy and pastrami.

Episode Links

I Goldstein: My Screwed Life, by Al Goldstein and Josh Alan Friedman

When Sex Was Dirty, by Josh Alan Friedman

Al’s Pompano Beach mansion, with the 11-foot finger that welcomed boats on the intracoastal waterway

Goldstein’s New York office

Beach Blanket Hippos: Goldstein and Ron Jeremy on Al’s beachfront

Screw ’69, front row: Jim Buckley, Goldstein, and 18-year-old Steve Heller, who would next become The New York Times art director for 33 years

John and Yoko’s Screw interview, 1969

Terry Southern in Screw #801. Cover: Julius Zimmerman

Hitler’s Worst Nightmare: Screw’s interview with surviving Third Reich architect, Albert Speer, with Goldstein as “Diddler on the Roof .” Cover: Curt Hoppe.

THE GREAT PORNOGRAPHER GETS SCREWED

With the creation of Screw and Midnight Blue, Al Goldstein liberated sex from the shadows of shame and illegal obscenity. He had no idea what it would lead to today. But in his era, the sexual revolution was a cry for liberation and the laws against sex came tumbling down in his wake.

Episode Links

I Goldstein: My Screwed Life, by Al Goldstein and Josh Alan Friedman

When Sex Was Dirty, by Josh Alan Friedman

Screw magazine, #1,024, “The Weird Sex Life of R. Crumb”, illustrated by cartoonist R. Crumb

Screw magazine, #735, “Is God Gay?”, illustration of Al Goldstein as God by Curt Hoppe

“Al Goldstein donned a fake prison outfit before his sentencing yesterday.” New York Times, 2002

Goldstein with legendary Harlem congressman, Adam Clayton Powell, in late ‘60s.

Al Goldstein’s bar mitzvah, 1949. In three years, he would wear the same undersized suit for his first hooker.