Goldstein, Al 1936- (Alvin Goldstein)

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Goldstein, Al 1936- (Alvin Goldstein)

PERSONAL:

Born January 10, 1936, in New York, NY; married Gina Goldstein (divorced); married Patricia Flaherty, 1989 (divorced, 1994); two other marriages; married fifth wife, Christine Ava Maharaj, January, 2004; children: Jordan. Education: Attended Pace University.

CAREER:

Cofounder and editor, Screw (adult magazine), 1968; Midnight Blue (television series), executive producer, director, and star, 1974. Also a licensed taxi driver in New York, NY; Worked as a photographer for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and as a press photographer for Pakistan International Airlines. Appeared as an actor and as himself in numerous adult films and videos from 1973 to 2002, including Screwed: Al Goldstein's Kingdom of Porn. Producer of It Happened in Hollywood, 1973; S.O.S., 1975; and Peepshow, 1994.

MEMBER:

National Press Club.

WRITINGS:

The Best of Screw, Lyle Stuart (New York, NY), 1970. (Author of foreword) Larry Flynt, An Unseemly Man: My Life as a Pornographer, Pundit, and Social Outcast, Dove Books (Los Angeles, CA), 1996.

(With Josh Alan Friedman) I, Goldstein: My Screwed Life, Thunder's Mouth Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including Hush Hush News and the National Mirror.

SIDELIGHTS:

Al Goldstein is a writer, publisher, editor, and, some would say, a pornographer. As the driving force behind the adult magazine Screw, he served as a pioneering force in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Screw magazine, founded in 1968, was an artifact of that revolution, along with other magazines such as Playboy. Unlike the tamer men's magazines, which dealt with serious social issues and tastefully presented nude photography and sexual material, Screw was raw, lurid, and intent on presenting sex in its most animalistic sense. Screw served as a precursor to Larry Flynt's Hustler and other hardcore magazines. When Screw was founded, no other magazine "had come close to addressing sex with such unvarnished candor and biting wit," commented Steven Heller in the New York Times. Heller, who once served as the magazine's art director, continued: "Goldstein was an equal opportunity exploiter of men, women and art directors, but his raunchy humor raised the bar for porn from socially unredeemable smut to ironic social commentary." Goldstein, as the editor and publisher, participated fully in the debauched, hedonistic lifestyle endorsed and celebrated within the pages of his magazine. In I, Goldstein: My Screwed Life, Goldstein offers a personal and professional biography of his own life and professional development, as well as a look at his role at the forefront of American sexual politics and freedom of speech. "While Goldstein, over the years, has been vilified, satirized, and marginalized, he has also been one of America's more complex and interesting outlaws," pushing for causes of free speech, freedom of sexual expression, and the vilification of what, to him, is inane and witless.

In his heyday, Goldstein became very wealthy and consorted with the top echelons of celebrities, writers, and intellectuals. He developed a reputation as brutally difficult to work with, as a man of extensive sexual appetites, and as an iconoclast and rebel. Yet as Goldstein aged, life's vicissitudes took a toll. His fortunes were depleted by divorce, lawsuits, and the declining favor of print men's magazines. Goldstein lost Screw in 2003, and soon found himself bankrupt, ignored by his former friends and colleagues in the publishing and pornography business, scorned by his son, in declining health, and facing a bleak future with few prospects. Yet he continues to survive with the tenacity that drove him to the top of the subculture he largely created himself. With his memoir, he "summarizes and justifies a life lived on the cultural barricades," commented Booklist reviewer Mike Tribby. "Without his wealth or health," observed a Kirkus Reviews contributor, "Goldstein retains his talent for lewdness."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Goldstein, Al, I, Goldstein: My Screwed Life, Thunder's Mouth Press (New York, NY), 2006.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 15, 2006, Mike Tribby, review of I, Goldstein, p. 9.

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2006, review of I, Goldstein, p. 820.

New York Times, May 18, 2002, Andy Newman, "Six Days in Jail Broke Him, Freed Pornographer Says," p. B3; November 19, 2006, Steven Heller, "My Dirty Life and Times," review of I, Goldstein.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL), April 28, 2004, Sean Piccoli, "Porn Is Just a Business to Veteran Publisher Al Goldstein," profile of Al Goldstein.

Time, October 25, 2006, "Admitted, Al Goldstein," p. 25.

UPI Newstrack, August 3, 2005, "Judge Lets Porn Publisher Off in Court."

Variety, January 13, 1997, Todd McCarthy, review of "Screwed: Al Goldstein's Kingdom of Porn," p. 152.