Ralph Ginzburg (October 28, 1929 – July 6, 2006) was an American editor, publisher, journalist, and photographer. He was best known for publishing books and magazines on erotica and art and for his conviction in 1963 for violating federal obscenity laws.
Biography Ralph Ginzburg was born in Brooklyn on October 28, 1929, to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. He went to New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn and was president of his class. Since his parents hoped that he could be an accountant, when he first enrolled in City College of New York after high school, he majored in accounting. While Ginzburg was taking a journalism class at CCNY, his professor, Irving Rosenthal, realised his talent in journalism and encouraged him to accept an editorial job on the school newspaper, The Ticker.Williams, C. F. (2012). Eros in America: Freud and the counter culture. Ginzburg later became editor-in-chief of it, which further fostered his passion for journalism.
After graduating in 1949, Ginzburg found a job at The New York Daily Compass as a copy boy and cub reporter. He had to leave his job and join the army for the Korean War two years later, and was assigned to Fort Myer, Va, to work for the Public Information Office, where he both edited the post newspaper and took wedding photos for base marriages. Meanwhile, he worked full-time at night as a copy editor for the Times-Herald in nearby Washington, DC. One of his colleagues, an inquiring photographer for the newspaper, was Jackie Lee Bouvier (later Kennedy Onassis).
Following his discharge, Ginzburg worked briefly at NBC, then joined Look magazine as circulation promotion manager. He also worked for Reader's Digest, Collier's, and, as he put it, "other pillars of communications industry respectability". An article he wrote during his spare time, "An Unhurried View of Erotica", impressed Esquire's publisher Arnold Gingrich, and therefore he was offered a job as articles editor at Esquire. During his times there, he expanded the article to a 20,000-word manuscript and published it as a book. This rather scholarly seeming book explored an ostensible undercurrent of pornography that runs throughout English literature. Beginning with a manuscript given by Leofric, Bishop of Exeter,The Exeter Book, a codex of Anglo-Saxon poems and one of the most important existing examples of Anglo-Saxon literature, was donated to the library by Leofric. It would have been valuable, as it was about 100 years old at the time. Although accurate translation of the work is currently impossible, the poem Wulf and Eadwacer certainly references a woman's physical desire for her absent lover. A fair attempt at a translation to modern English can be found at to his cathedral in 1070 through to the outright pornographic work of the 1950s, An Unhurried View examines examples of English erotic literature in an interpretive and explanatory context. The end of the book includes a bibliography of 100 titles. He convinced the notable psychoanalyst Theodor Reik to write the introduction.The book sold more than 125,000 copies in hardback and over 200,000 in print, showing Ginzburg a large potential market for this kind of publication as well as his talents in the mailing business.Powe, J. (2010). "The Obscenity Bargain: Ralph Ginzburg for Fanny Hill". Journal of Supreme Court History, 35(2), 166–176.
In August 1961, Ginzburg managed to conduct an extensive interview of 18-year-old Bobby Fischer. Ginzburg said he got in touch with Fischer by simply giving Fischer's older sister Joan a call, and he "got along well" with Fischer. He sold the interview, entitled "Portrait of a Genius As a Young Chess Master", to Harper's Magazine, which published it in January 1962. The interview of the reclusive chess genius became one of the most famous interviews in history, especially among chess players, and has gained great popularity ever since, partly as the first public indication of Fischer's paranoia and critical behaviours.Verwer, R. (2014). Bobby Fischer for Beginners: The Most Famous Chess Player Explained. New In Chess. However, Bobby Fischer himself hated the article and denied most of it, claiming that it was not even a remotely accurate representation of his actual statements or his life,Brady, F. (2011). Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall – from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness. Broadway Books. while Ralph Ginzburg destroyed all of the research materials that would have backed his interview. The interview made young Fischer furious and "created a distrust of reporters", and therefore it became practically the last formal interview Fischer ever gave, which ironically added to its popularity.
After he finally saved enough money to rent his own office—a fifth-floor walk-up in an old Manhattan office building, Ginzburg published his first self-published book, 100 Years of Lynchings in 1962, a collection of newspaper accounts that directly exposed the history and the status quo of American racism. The book was a sign that Ginzburg had wed his business to his interest in social activism, and it was regularly adapted by African American studies as one of the primary pedagogical materials to show the harsh nature of pre-civil-rights race relations in America. During this period Ginzburg also published Liaison, a biweekly newsletter, and "The Housewife's Handbook on Selective Promiscuity" by Lillian Maxine Serett, writing as Rey Anthony.
Ginzburg's most famous publication, Eros, a high-priced magazine of classy erotica, was launched in 1962 too, and only four issues were published before he was indicted on charges of violating federal obscenity laws and had to stop publishing the quarterly. He was found guilty by the Supreme Court eventually and sentenced to five years in prison. (He was released after eight months.)
Ginzburg's next publication was Fact, a political journal with a muckraking bent, published between January 1964 and August 1967. The magazine cost him another famous lawsuit after he published a special issue claiming that Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential candidate that year, was psychologically unfit for the office. He lost the lawsuit again and had to pay $1 in compensatory damages and $75,000 in punitive damages to Senator Goldwater.
From 1968 to 1971, Ginzburg published Avant Garde, an art and culture magazine with graphic and logogram designed by Herb Lubalin, and the logo font of the magazine later gave birth to a well-known typeface of the same name. Avant Garde focused on radical politics and stopped publication when Ginzburg started serving his sentence in 1972. (He wrote "Castrated: My Eight Months in a Federal Prison" to describe his time in prison.) Although he tried to revive it as a tabloid newspaper with his wife after his release from prison, his attempt failed and the new Avant Garde lasted only one issue.
The failure to revive Avant Garde and the lost lawsuit drove Ginzburg to the brink of bankruptcy, but he was saved by the success of his next periodical, the biweekly consumer adviser Moneysworth, which was meant to resemble Consumer Reports and presumably netted 2 to 3 million a year in rentals.Heidenry, J. (2002). What Wild Ecstasy. Simon and Schuster.
Apart from publishing and editing, Ginzburg continued to be an activist. In 1968, Ginzburg signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War."Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" January 30, 1968 New York Post Ginzburg's interest in activism also extended to opposing circumcision. In 1986, he founded Outlaw Unnecessary Circumcision in Hospitals (O.U.C.H.), a non-profit organisation against circumcision, striving to stop health insurance companies from funding circumcision surgery and therefore lowering the rate of American baby boys being circumcised.
When Ginzburg turned 55, he retired from publishing and started a second career as a photojournalist. He became a freelance photographer for the New York Post, specialising in New York scenes. His last book, I Shot New York, consisted of images he took of life in New York City on 365 consecutive days.
Ralph Ginzburg died of multiple myeloma, on July 6, 2006, in Riverdale, New York City, at the age of 76.
Eros magazine
In 1962, Ginzburg began publication of his first major work, Eros, which was a quarterly hardbound periodical containing articles and photo-essays on love and sex. Herb Lubalin was the art director and second on the masthead. It was named after the Greek god of love and desire, Eros. The publication was bound in cardboard in a 13" x 10" format, averaging about 90 pages in length. Only four issues of Eros were published.Parker, G. E. (1970). "Words Speak Louder than Judgments". Chitty's LJ, 18, 75.
According to Ginzburg, Eros was published as "the result of recent court decisions that have realistically interpreted America's obscenity law that has given this country a new breath of freedom of expression".Bickel, A. M. (1978). The Supreme Court and the idea of progress. Yale University Press. Pushing and testing the boundaries of censorship after the case of Roth v. United States,Navasky, V. S. (2013). Kennedy justice. Open Road Media. Ginzburg made the best of such freedom and devoted the magazine to "the joys of love and sex".
Meanwhile, Eros, in fact, contained more sophisticated and critical subtexts. It offered a wide cover of sexuality in history, politics, art and literature. Ginzburg presented a selection of articles in Eros, including works written by renowned authors like Guy de Maupassant and Allen Ginsberg, while giving out social activism messages such as liberation from excess repression, desacralising democratisation of art, race equality, anti-war and so on.
Eros magazine is significant in American publishing history as it covered and helped to incite the sexual revolution, while it also contributed to the formation of counter-culture in the late 1960s.
Ginzburg v. United States
Trials in lower courts Attorney General Robert Kennedy was offended by the Eros after the second issue was published, which contained a photo-essay of the phenomenon of female reaction to President John F. Kennedy (brother of Robert Kennedy), in the run-up to the 1960 election. He held off his instinct to prosecute, however, afraid that "it would hurt politically by solidifying Kennedy's image as a puritanical Catholic". Meanwhile, while Ginzburg sent out millions of flyers to promote his magazines, both local and federal prosecutors received complaints from recipients of Ginzburg's mailing, and organisations like The National Office for Decent Literature even encouraged their members to send complaints to post offices.Allyn, D. (2016). Make love, not war: the sexual revolution: an unfettered history. Routledge.Day, J. E. (1966). "Mailing Lists and Pornography". American Bar Association Journal, 1103–1109. At last, the fourth final issue of Eros, with the eight pages of colour photos showing a naked muscular black man and a naked white woman embracing each other, finally convinced Kennedy to authorise prosecution. He was supported by Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and Solicitor General Archibald Cox, and Katzenbach believed that they would eventually prosecute Ginzburg because of his continual testing of boundaries of obscenity in his magazine, "so why wait".
Ginzburg was first put into charge in racially polarised Philadelphia in 1963 and was indicted for Eros, Liaison and the Housewife's Handbook. Those publications were deemed obscene by the court and Ginzburg was found guilty of 28 violations, sentenced to serve five years and fined totalling $42,000.Casper, G., Hutchinson, D. J., & Strauss, D. A. (Eds.). (1991). The Supreme Court Review, 1990. University of Chicago Press. The Trial Judge, Ralph Body, explained the finding of the court as: