ΝORTH HOLLYWOOD CALLED LEWD MAGAZINE CAPITAL

1962

North Hollywood is one of the publishing capitals of “girlie” and “nudist” magazines, a shocked audience at a meeting on “obscene literature” was told.

Crowded about a lengthy table on which two score of “indecent” magazines collected from North Hollywood newsstands were displayed for critical examination, one indignant woman exclaimed, “I didn't have any idea this was going on.”

Two of the bigger magazines exhibiting women posed in various states of undress were plainly marked as being published in North Hollywood.

Los Angeles Police Department vice officer Louis McClary told the meeting, “Some of the biggest operators in this trash literature in the United States are right here in Southern California.”

He was one of a panel of four experts answering questions at the Walter Reed School meeting called by the “Committee for Decent Literature,” affiliated with the North Hollywood Coordinating Council.

A black and white film, “Pages of Death” was also shown. It depicted in an emotionally hardhitting message how a decent high school boy is poisoned, as surely as if it were dope, by the easily available “indecent” magazine, until he ravishes and murder an innocent 12-year-old girl.

Pierce College sociology Professor Thomas Devine scored materialism, Freud and Kinsey, for overemphasis on sex which paved the way to the present “sorry state.”

The Kinsey report gave a certain license to this sort of thing “when it said 95 per cent of men, and probably as many women, would be in jail if the existing sex laws were enforced,” Devine said.

He concluded, “Freedom of press, the mask behind which these indecent publishers operate, translated into French means hogwash.”

McClary laid a major upswing in local crime against persons, such as murder and criminal attack, at the door of the magazines. Murder increased 3.2 per cent in 1961 over 1960 in the country, and criminal attack came from 1085 to 1156, he said.

This is particularly striking in view of a decrease in other types of crime, McClary said.

Psychiatrist Richard Thomas, M.D., said, “Pornography is the symptom of a sick society. We live in an area where responsibilities of parenthood are denied or given to somebody else.”

“The decline in morals began with women's reaction to new found freedom which began in the early part of the century.”

He scored the replacement of the once dominant father by the now dominant mother in many homes, reversing the parent roles “until kids don't know who to identify with. Many sex problems are caused by this difficulty of identification.”

Dr. Thomas added “parents have abdicated their responsibility to teach sex. So many parents don't accept sexuality in children, so children have to turn to someone who does. Too often it's the newsstand drug store man.”

He took exception with Prof. Devine's comments on Freud, however, defending Freud's “clinical contributions.”

Nor could the psychiatrist go along with a woman member of the audience who thought changing the term “sex” to something else would make it easier for parents to teach their children. “Sex by any other name is still sex.”

Edward George, successful prosecutor of “Tropic of Cancer” fame, flayed the difficulties of the prosecution in obscenity cases because of “loopholes” in existing laws. McClary also participated in the recent trial which ended in the conviction of a bookseller. Prof. Devine was also one of 19 expert witnesses for the prosecution in the trial.

The Rev. George Wall, pastor of the First Baptist Church of North Hollywood, concluded the meeting by urging the audience to take individual action “to stamp out the menace. A basic first step is education of the public to the menace. Write, write letters of complaint to police, and to legislators urging adequate laws. tell your neighbors.”

President of the North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Jack Elliott promised forthcoming action by that organization.

(Source: The Nudist Newsletter no. 127/1962)