---
category: Crime & Abuse Networks
created: 2026-09-23
died: 2013-12-19
location: New York City
relations:
- fn: 1
  start: 1968
  type: founded
  with: '[[Screw (magazine)]]'
- fn: 1
  role: co-founder of Screw
  type: partner_of
  with: '[[Jim Buckley]]'
summary: Brooklyn-born publisher who co-founded Screw magazine in 1968, was arrested
  19 times on obscenity charges in its first three years, and hosted the cable show
  Midnight Blue.
tags:
- Person
- Publisher
- Pornography
- Obscenity
- RCHorsch
updated: 2026-09-23
---

Al Goldstein (died December 19, 2013) was the publisher of *[Screw](/organizations/screw-magazine/)*, which he co-founded with Jim Buckley in 1968, each putting in 175 dollars. He was arrested 19 times on obscenity charges in the magazine's first three years, and in 1974 a federal judge threw out an obscenity case against him, after which, the Associated Press reported, "the willingness of the government to prosecute such cases waned." He died at a hospice in Brooklyn, at 77.[^1]

### Before Screw

Goldstein was born in Brooklyn. Before founding *Screw* he served in the [Army](/organizations/us-army/), sold insurance, drove for the gossip columnist Walter Winchell, was jailed in [Cuba](/places/cuba/) for taking unauthorized photographs of Raúl Castro, and, as a photographer for Pakistan International Airlines, was present in 1962 when Jacqueline Kennedy visited [Pakistan](/places/pakistan/).[^1]

### Screw and Midnight Blue

*Screw* sold 140,000 copies a week at its height. "I really need the attention of being arrested, because that means I'm still bugging the establishment, that I'm still gadfly to the state," he told *Playboy* in 1974. The magazine was later outdone by Larry Flynt's *Hustler* and other publications; in 1974 Goldstein launched a cable television show, *Midnight Blue*, which ran for nearly thirty years.[^1] *Screw* reviewed [R.C. Horsch](/people/rc-horsch/)'s *[The Erotic Memoirs of a Male Chauvinist Pig](/misc/the-erotic-memoirs-of-a-male-chauvinist-pig/)* in 1973; Goldstein wrote that the sex in it was disgusting.[^2]

### Later Cases

In 2002 he was sentenced to 60 days in jail for harassing a former secretary with threatening telephone calls and editorials; an appeals court overturned the conviction, ruling that prosecutors had used overly inflammatory language at trial. In 2003 he pleaded guilty to harassing one of his four former wives with obscene telephone messages. *Screw* folded in late 2003 and Goldstein filed for bankruptcy protection; he at times slept in a car and lived in a homeless shelter in [Florida](/places/florida/).[^1]

[^1]: "Al Goldstein, Infamous Pornographer, New Yorker, Dead at 77," Associated Press, *NBC New York,* December 19, 2013. https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/al-goldstein-dead-obituary-screw-magazine/2124859/
[^2]: "How a pornographer's violent fantasies blurred fact and fiction as cops searched Olney house for missing women," *The Philadelphia Inquirer,* August 2, 2026. https://www.inquirer.com/news/a/raymond-eugene-horsch-olney-philadelphia-missing-women-history-20260802.html