The Press: Playkids

On U.S. newsstands this month is arrayed the biggest, bawdiest, bestselling collection of stag magazines in publishing history. Just as Confidential's peep-and-tell formula sent a horde of imitators yipping after pay dirt, the sex-fueled three-year flight of Playboy ("Entertainment for Men") has shaken out a pack of wolf-whistling periodicals. In all, there are more than 40 playkids on the market, and they are fast outstripping the scandal sheets. The most successful of the upstarts are monthlies, with such names as Caper, Nugget, Rogue, Escapade and Cabaret. Like Playboy ( TIME, Sept. 24), they trade in the smirk, the leer and the female torso—only more so. Latest addition to the wolf pack, out this week, is a Negro monthly called Duke.

Last week the stag mags* were in the midst of a censorship battle that raged all the way from Boston to Los Angeles, from suburban mothers' clubs to the Supreme Court. In New York, where police in the past six months have seized some 2,000 copies of 15 different magazines under city obscenity laws, a publishing newsletter protested: "Never in the history of the magazine industry have the newsstands been flooded with so many borderline, semi-obscene and actually pornographic periodicals." Legislatures in ten states were considering bills that would make it illegal to distribute or sell the magazines. In Missouri the house is expected to pass a bill already approved by the senate to lower stiff penalties against offending magazines so that it will be easier to get convictions. In Pittsburgh, after a six-day investigation, a grand jury warned: "Immediate action must be taken to save our young people from being corrupted by lewd literature. Printed filth is seriously threatening our moral, social and community life."

Literary Chloroform. But the stags lave yet to be brought to bay. The trouble with attempts to ban them is that most legal definitions of obscenity ineviably trap serious-intentioned publishers and writers in the censor's net. Last month district attorneys from 38 Pennsylvania counties met to "discuss new methods of combatting the obscene literature pouring into the state." but were anable to agree on any fair or workable censorship formula. Even churchmen do not agree that the stag magazines drive children to delinquency. The Rev. Owen McKinley Walton, executive director of Pittsburgh's Council of Churches, denounced them as "literary chloroform, deadening the moral and spiritual strength of our youth.'' But Unitarian Minister Irving R. Murray, chairman of the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, who "deplores dirty magazines properly defined.'' quoted extensive psychological studies showing that "literature, decent or indecent, is without effect on juvenile delinquents, practically none of whom read anything."