"What avails it a man to give his soul for the whole world? But for
[Halliburton]?" --A Man For
All
Seasons
"Put enough distance between a crime/victim and the perpetrator(s) and
there is no end to the evil that can be perpetrated." --from a review
of The
Constant Gardener
Please contact me with comments or corrections
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last update: Sept. 2006 (click on
"Artists and Writers ...", scroll
down to "Two Dramas")
By the end of World War II, Times Square was a
general entertainment area in which tourists, young people on dates,
gamblers, con men, street preachers,
taxi dancers, frequenters of bars, prostitutes, panhandlers, readers of
smut and fans of movie sex
and violence all mingled. It had become a rival of Coney Island in
providing energetic and raffish
amusement for a mass audience. The media, politicians and clergy
deplored the “honky tonk”
atmosphere just as strongly as they did the hard core sleaze of the
late 70s and 80s. Even in its
most sinister state, many imaginative people–artists, predators,
thinkers, even mystics--went to
Times Square, with the promise of victims, converts, comrades, the
release of sexual tension,
and an escape from “should” and “ought to” very much on their minds. It
was the outsiders’
America, and from it you could look up at the hard driving, busy,
fashionable one as at a
oversized billboard proclaiming gratification of the successful
citizens’ needs. Down at street level,
amidst the noise, con men, greasy food odors, and street people of many
countries, colors, and
social classes, you looked
around, checked out what you were here for, wondering what you might
experience, whether you wanted to or not. In that mood, you might duck
into one of the
bookstores or back date magazine shops. Three king-sized images that sum up the
history of Times Square (1940s, 70s, and 90s). Artists and Writers on pre-Disney
Times Square
"I
love this dirty town" -- J.
J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) in
the powerful 1957 film Sweet Smell of
Success. Click
on the image for
a discussion of the film.
Image
from Brecht's opera about the archetypal "Suckerville."
He used American settings and characters, knowing European
mass popular entertainment was modeled on both the
upscale and honky-tonk busineses of Coney Island, the
Bowery,
the lower west side Tenderloin, Soubrette Row, Broadway, and
Times
Square. "Now
I see it. When I came to this city, hoping that my money would
bring me joy, my doom was already sealed. . . . I was the one who said,
'Everybody must carve himself a piece of meat, using any available
knife.' But the meat has gone bad. The joy I bought was no joy; the
freedom they sold me was no freedom. I ate and remained unsatisfied; I
drank and became all the thirstier. Give me a glass of water."
--Bertold Brecht, The Rise and Fall
of the City of Mahagonny (1927)
"[The citizens'] boredom became more and more terrible. They realize
that they've been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their
lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on
lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, love nests, fires, miracles,
revolutions, wars. This daily diet made sophisticates out of them. . .
. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and
bodies. "--Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust (1933).
Click
on the red-backgrounded title for information onTimes Square as
honky-tonk carnival (1930s to mid-1990s) vs Times Square as
corporate office tower and entertainment complex (mid-1990s to date)
It was understandable why general interest
bookstores were part of Times Square, with its proximity to bus
terminals, subways, counter restaurants, bars, hotels,
and round the clock “grinder” movies. Passersby wanted “how-to” and
civil service
preparation manuals, horoscope pamphlets, joke books, romances, war
stories, westerns, and scandal and
gossip items, as well as sexually oriented materials of many varieties.
Erotica could be
furtively scanned by readers whose body language indicated that
they liked the anonymity the bookshops
provided. On the streets outside, sexual adventurousness was part of
the vibrant atmosphere. In
the midtown night clubs, theatrical agents introduced wealthy men,
often garment center
executives, to glamorous dates with whom they visited swank East Side
apartments to enjoy “sex circuses.” That cost a bundle. Men and
women of modest means had to substitute the disreputable, more
heavily policed entertainments of the bright light zone. Since the
Crash, prostitutes
had strolled the area, and a gay subculture had existed in rooming
houses which had once been
expensive homes. Booksellers
learned to cater to the compulsions of the Johns and the “inverts.”
Their stores were another phase, like the night clubs and prurient
movies, of the
“commercialization of sex” and the “eroticization of leisure time”
which mark the business of popular
culture in the 20th century.
Times Square movie marqee,
1940. "Mutint," "Forbidden rendevous," "mystery," "Paree,"
girls, Mickey Rooney, two-gun Hart: "stupendous." Two features 15
cents. Photo by Andreas Feinnger for Life Magazine, copyright Andreas
Feininger. Source:
http://photography.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.geh.org/fm/feininger/htmlsrc/feininger%5Fsum00009.html
The first book shop in the Times Square area was
Concord, which opened in 1933, next to the Paramount Theater on
Broadway. Allan J. Wilson (not the original
owner) shepherded this well-respected place (in 1965, the New York
Times did it the honor of a
eulogy) through most of World War II, the gray flannel suit era,
and the heady de-censorship
period of the early 1960s. Allan was able to carry the first legal
editions of Lady Chatterley,
Tropic of Cancer, Fanny Hill, and, earlier, the books
of the “pinko” Citadel Press, which
featured socialist analysis of American politics. Concord was one of
the first shops to feature
publishers’ remainders. Movie and theater patrons, and office workers,
had visited steadily until
paperback book stores drew them into their nets. Another discouraging
factor was the increasing
number of predatory types among the street people hanging out at the
movie houses, and at the
book and magazine stores specializing in sex and beginning to carry the
new peep booths.
The Jack Woodford Press hardback
sex pulps, 1946-59 [please click on the
image for more information]
The Main Stem's "Tourist Book Stores"
locations of some stores, matetrials
sold, the stores' settings
[please click on the
image for more information]
Bob's Bargain
Books
[please click on the
image for more information]
a brochure issued by Bob Brown, c.late 60s
Two Pariah
Capitalists
[please click on the
image below for more information]
Irving Klaw with model Bettie Page
The Times Square Book Stores Before
Gentrification
[please click on the
image below for more information]
special note:
click on this link for Earl Kemp's
magnificent fanzine issue about West Coast erotica publishing in the
1960s and 70s. Images and text of the unique significance for
twentieth century publishing history.
[please click on the
image below for more information]
Underworld and Upperworld Symbiosis
[please click on the
image below for more information]
Sammy The Bull Gravano, who on orders of
John Gotti murdered
Robert DiBernardo, one of the owners of Star Distributors LTD, a
New York based publisher-distributor of hard core (but not legally
obscene)
paperbacks, magazines, films, and videotapes. DiBernardo was a member
of the Gambino crime family, and through his connections was able to get
pornography-related products nationally distributed.
(Earl
Kemp's electronic fanzine on paperback erotica.
Click on the image for the issue with my article
"1950s Sleaze and the Larger Literary Scene")
Also: "Milton Luros' Times Square Wise Guy" (click here)
My article is "There Has Been
No Sexual Revolution"
Jahsonic.com:
A Vocabulary of Culture
(image from Michael Powell's "Peeping Tom" [1960],
a classic film about voyeurism and the nexus between
sexual desire, violence, and substitution of the fetish
for trust and human contact)
Times Square movie marqee,
1940. "Mutint," "Forbidden rendevous," "mystery," "Paree,"
girls, Mickey Rooney, two-gun Hart: "stupendous." Two features 15
cents. Photo by Andreas Feinnger for Life Magazine, copyright Andreas
Feininger. Source:
http://photography.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.geh.org/fm/feininger/htmlsrc/feininger%5Fsum00009.html
Jahsonic.com:
A Vocabulary of Culture