No Place to Go but Up

On newsstands now inundated with naughties, nudies and assorted onetime no-noes, the bestselling hard-sex publication is Screw, the tabloid that has inspired imitation by more than a dozen equally raunchy rivals.

Screw's rags-to-riches story has been one of continuous legal troubles, but until now none of them had forced any change in format. Last month a three-judge panel in New York City's Criminal Court found it obscene, and Screw is taming itself a trifle in a sort of legal lobotomy.

The judges' objections went beyond the newspaper's editorial content--typically, unretouched photos of men and women, singly and in enthusiastic groups, performing all manner of sexual acrobatics. The decision specifically found illegal the many ads offering dildos and other sex paraphernalia, and classified ads soliciting participants in sex acts that clearly violate New York's penal law. So Screw did away with dildo display ads and printed a notice to all of the would-be users of its classified columns that henceforth it "can no longer accept personal ads which solicit persons to break the law." But retreat hardly meant repentance. "We will still accept personal ads," the notice went on, "but they must be phrased in such a way as not to compromise the integrity of Screw or the integrity of the law, as ridiculous and unfair as that may be."

The obscenity conviction brought only a comparative wrist slap to Screw's cofounders, Publisher Jim Buckley, 26, and Executive Editor Al Goldstein, 35. Each could have received a $6,000 fine and six years in prison, as demanded by the district attorney. But the judges levied only fines of $1,500 apiece. Both men promptly paid up, announced appeals and went back to publishing. But two more obscenity trials for Screw lie ahead, both based on specific seizures of relatively recent issues.

Stablemates. Buckley and Goldstein started Screw in 1968 with a stake of $350, half from Buckley, the other half from Goldstein's wife Mary, then a stewardess for Pan Am but since fired because of her association with the publication. Bribes induced some two dozen Manhattan news dealers to handle the first issue's 7,000 copies. Screw grossed $650,000 in its first year and more than $1,000,000 in 1970.

Buckley and Goldstein piously proclaim that their sheet is not just another specimen of sado-sex journalism, but the distinction seems elusive in Screw. The writing style is often prosaic and juvenile, and the four-letter argot is flung against a wide variety of institutions and individuals--among them the New York Times (which once unwittingly carried an ad for Screw), the TV networks, J. Edgar Hoover, Billy Graham and Richard Nixon. On the tamer side, there have been interviews with Joe Namath and Timothy Leary and an in-bed session with John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

If anything distinguishes Screw from its many imitators, it is a simple humor of sorts. Buckley claims that "we're at least 65.3% spoof." Whatever Screw is, it makes money. Though legal costs ($77,000 in less than three years) cut heavily into net profit, Buckley and Goldstein clear enough to pay themselves salaries ($25,000 a year for Buckley, $7,800 for Goldstein) and support a staff now expanded to 22. They also publish a pair of Screw Stablemates called Gay and X. Last week, as if to prove that sex is not the only thing on their minds, Goldstein and Buckley said they would soon bring out a monthly travel magazine called Nomad. Goldstein promises that it will be "slick, straight and swinging--but totally without sex."

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