Censorship and Early Retirement
The Kefauver Hearings of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1957 marked the beginning of the end of Irving Klaw's mail-order photography business in New York. The investigation tried to link pornography to juvenile delinquency. The McCarthy-style hearings branded Klaw as a degenerate pornographer and ushered in a new wave of media censorship. Bettie Page was also summoned to the hearings but was never called to testify. (Parts of the hearings are recreated in the film The Notorious Bettie Page.) She retired from modeling soon afterwards.
Because of the political, social, and legal pressures he faced, Klaw closed his storefront business and burned many of his negatives. It is estimated that more than 80 percent of the negatives were destroyed. However, his sister Paula secretly kept some of the better images, which can be seen today.
Read more about this topic: Irving Klaw
Famous quotes containing the words censorship, early and/or retirement:
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—Robin Morgan (b. 1941)
“The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome—not by favor of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.”
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“Adultery itself in its principle is many times nothing but a curious inquisition after, and envy of another man’s enclosed pleasures: and there have been many who refused fairer objects that they might ravish an enclosed woman from her retirement and single possessor.”
—Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667)