Al Goldstein

Alvin Goldstein (January 10, 1936December 19, 2013) was an American pornographer. He is known for helping normalize hardcore pornography in the United States. Background Goldstein was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to a Jewish family. He attended Boys High. He captained the debate team at Pace College and interviewed Allen Ginsberg for the college newspaper. He served in the Army in the Signal Corps as a photographer. He worked as a photojournalist, taking pictures of Jacqueline Kennedy on a 1962 state trip to Pakistan and spent several days in a Cuban jail for taking unauthorized photos of Fidel Castro's brother, Raúl. He also sold insurance, wrote freelance articles, ran a dime pitch game at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair, sold encyclopedias, rugs and his own blood, drove a taxi (he kept his taxi license active until his death), and landed a job as an industrial spy infiltrating a labor union, an experience that so appalled him he wrote an exposé about it for the radical newspaper New York Free Press, a weekly periodical. Print publications Screw In November 1968, Goldstein and his partner Jim Buckley, investing $175 each (equivalent to $ today), founded Screw, a weekly New York City tabloid. It featured reviews of porn movies, peep shows, erotic massage parlors, brothels, escorts and other local offerings of the adult entertainment industry. Such items were interspersed with news concerning sexual topics, critical reviews of sexual books, and hardcore "gynecological" pictorials. Goldstein regularly ran, without permission, photos and drawings of celebrities.