New York Society For The Suppression of Vice - Noteworthy Actions Pursued By The NYSSV

Noteworthy Actions Pursued By The NYSSV

• 1900: Encouraged authorities to arrest Olga Nethersole and others for "violating public decency" in Clyde Fitch's Broadway play Sapho. All were found innocent at trial.
• 1915: Forced off the market Stanisław Przybyszewski's Homo sapiens
• 1916: Forced off the market Theodore Dreiser's The Genius.
• 1916: Opposed Margaret Sanger and publishers of birth control books.
• 1919: Failed in its effort to suppress the fantasy novel Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice by James Branch Cabell and ended up giving it considerable publicity and boosting its sales.
• 1919: At its urging a police raid at the Everard Baths resulted in nine arrests.
• 1920: After the magazine The Little Review serialized a passage of the book Ulysses dealing with the main character masturbating, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, who objected to the book's content, took action to attempt to keep the book out of the United States. At a trial in 1921 the magazine was declared obscene and as a result Ulysses was banned in the United States.
• 1922: Encouraged the arrest of bookstore employee Raymond D. Halsey for selling the "obscene" novel Mademoiselle de Maupin by Théophile Gautier, which depicted adultery and homosexuality. Halsey was acquitted, and successfully sued the Society for false arrest and malicious prosecution. This case established that literary experts could offer testimony in support of a book to guide the judge's opinion.
• 1920s and '30s: Prosecuted a long war against the so-called "girlie pulps," which featured titillating fiction, sometimes accompanied with nude photography.
• 1925: Attacked as indecent the magazines Artists and Models and Art Lovers' Magazine.
• 1927: Attacked publisher Bernarr Macfadden's newspaper, the New York Graphic.
• 1927: Shut down Mae West's first starring role on Broadway, the play Sex. West spent ten days in jail.
• 1929: Seized 3,000 books from three book dealers; titles included Ulysses, Lady Chatterley's Lover, and novels by Oscar Wilde, Frank Harris and Clement Wood.
• 1930: Forced pulp publisher Harold Hersey to suppress the depiction of violence and lawlessness in his new line of gang pulps, which included Gangster Stories and Racketeer Stories.
• 1932: Falsely arrested a bookseller for displaying a book on nudism in his store's window. John S. Sumner, secretary of the society, was ordered to pay the bookseller $500 in restitution.
• 1933: Lost fight to have Erskine Caldwell's novel God's Little Acre declared obscene.
• 1934: Raided magazine "back-number" shops to confiscate four new magazines with the titles Real Boudoir Tales, Real Temptation Tales, Real Forbidden Sweets, and Real French Capers.
• 1935: Charged that Jim Tully's novel Ladies in the Parlor was indecent and emphasized "dirt in the raw."
• 1937: Attempted to block circulation of James T. Farrell's novel A World I Never Made for using obscene language.
• 1946: Charged Edmund Wilson's Memoirs of Hecate County with obscenity.