The Big Business

On newsstands all over the U.S., "pornography is big business." So reported a special House committee last week, after investigating what it called an "incredible volume" of "cheesecake girlie magazines," "salacious" pocket-size books, and "flagrantly misnamed 'comics.' " The committee, headed by Arkansas Democratic Congressman E. (for Ezekiel) C. Gathings, found a big increase in "lewd magazines" and in the number of "obscene" books among the 200 million pocket-size books sold in 1951. In addition, the committee declared that of the 70 million comic books sold last year in the U.S., many (e.g., "war horror comics") are not only unfit for children but have even been banned from military bases.

Said the report: "The extent to which the profit motive has brushed aside all generally accepted standards of decency . . . has become a national disgrace."

Cheesecake. Among the worst offenders, said the committee, are nudist magazines supposedly "published in the interest of sunshine and health," and straight cheesecake magazines. Sample cheesecake titles: Candid Whirl, Glamorous Models, Wink, Whisper, Keyhole, Titter, Foo, Nifty, Pepper, Zip, Wham, Paris Life.*

The committee also upbraided the publishers of pocket books for putting out such "obscene" books as Marijuana Girl (Chapter II: how to "sniff the stuff"), Virgie Goodbye, Gin Wedding, Love-Hungry Doctor, Private Life of a Street Girl, She Made It Pay. Pocket-size reprints, the committee said, "originally started out as cheap reprints of standard works, have largely degenerated into a medium for the dissemination of artful appeals to sensuality, immorality, filth, perversion and degeneracy."

Dirty Corners. Despite the four weeks of testimony, neither the committee nor witnesses were always sure of the difference between obscenity and respectable writing. Writer Margaret Culkin Banning decried "filth on the newsstand," said that more than 1,000 magazines published in the U.S. are nothing more than "pictorial prostitution." Three days later the committee discovered that Writer Banning herself was the author of an article titled "Is Virginity Old-Fashioned?" (her answer: no), which appeared in Personal Romance flanked by such other titles as "Kidnaper's Kisses," "I Was Accused of Adultery" and "Betrayed by Sex."

On its part, the committee's brand of "obscene" was also slapped on some books by such well-known writers as John Steinbeck, James T. Farrell, Erskine Caldwell and Italian Novelist Alberto (Woman of Rome) Moravia. Throughout the hearings the committee showed a disturbing fuzziness over what it meant by "objectionable matter." Since the committee itself could not decide, it seemed dangerous to recommend that existing federal laws be strengthened making it an offense for private carriers to transport "lewd, obscene or lascivious" books and magazines in interstate commerce. This could mean that a motorist might be arrested for carrying a book by Steinbeck. However, publishers and readers alike could agree with the committee's suggestion that the publishing industry try to clean out the dirty corners in its own house.

* The committee's gauge for cheesecake: "Photographs of girls dressed in scanty attire, or partly clothed, or fully dressed but in revealing poses, but always emphasizing shapeliness."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.