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August 20, 2015

New Music Video Recalls Landmark '60s Obscenity Case

CYBERSPACE—The 1960s were a heyday of obscenity prosecutions in the U.S., and believe it or not, not even a relatively liberal state like California was immune. Among those convicted for obscenity in those days were famous names like Reuben Sturman (convicted in 1964 in Cleveland; conviction later overturned, but Sturman subsequently was convicted of tax fraud), Milton Luros (convicted in Iowa in 1968; conviction later overturned, though Luros was convicted of distribution of obscene materials in 1971) and Irving Klaw (convicted in New York in 1964; conviction later overturned), but there were plenty of lesser-known defendants, and one of those was Sanford Aday. Like both Sturman and Luros, Aday was represented by prominent First Amendent attorney Stanley Fleishman. Sanford E. Aday, a writer by training, became a publisher and distributor of "naughty" paperback books in Fresno, California in the late 1950s, releasing volumes under various imprints including Vega Books, Fabian Books and Saber Books, one of whose titles was Sex Life of a Cop by the pseudonymous "ex-cop" Oscar Peck (actually Aday himself). Sex Life of a Cop was one of seven books for which Aday and and associate Wallace de Ortega Maxey, a retired priest, were tried in Michigan for interstate transportation of obscene materials in 1963, and the only one for which they were convicted. Each defendant received 25 years in prison and a $25,000 fine—the harshest sentence ever handed down on such charges up to that point, though those convictions were eventually overturned. As one might easily imagine, law enforcement were particularly incensed by Sex Life of a Cop, and busted its shippers and sellers whenever they could. In fact, during a 1964 raid of Sturman's General Video of America warehouses in Cleveland, copies of Sex Life of a Cop were high on the list of materials to be seized. "By today’s standards, it is innocuous fluff; by Cold War standards, it was evidence of Satan’s influence upon American culture," opined journalist Stephen J. Gertz in 2010, who noted that a first edition of the novel was selling at a paperback book show in Mission Hills, California, in March of that year for $200. So it was with some surprise and, soon, a great deal of enjoyment when we received an email alerting us to a YouTube video posted by the Denver-based Reverend Lead Pipe and His Pipe-Wielding Swingers titled "Sex Life of a Cop." Taking the novel itself as their starting point, the Rev, his band and "the vocal stylings of Hermann Hessian" have created a bouncy tune (whose lyrics are somewhat difficult to understand due to audio fuzziness) and backed it with an incredible assortment of images drawn from 1950s/'60s cop movies and TV shows, as well as from the Citizens for Decent Literature's short anti-porn film Perversion For Profit. It's a tasty, fast-moving melange of clips depicting strippers, police chases (love those '50s police cars!), shelves loaded with sexy paperbacks and magazines, police stopping drivers for traffic violations, women undressing in bedrooms and elsewhere, police confronting rioters, early gay magazines and books—Aday was an early member of the pro-gay Mattachine Society—and all in all, a terrific and captivating music video reminiscent of something we might have seen from Devo or Nash the Slash "back in the day." The band does have its own website, and is offering several straight music releases there—and after seeing Sex Life of a Cop, we're guessing that plenty of folks will want to check out those other tunes.

 
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