Other scenes provided the popular pornographic conventions expected in a nudist exploitation film. The popularity of volleyball among nudists provided an excuse to focus the camera’s attention on topless women. As evidenced by Judge Kirkland’s rulings permitting the display of topless women in S&H, the exposure of breasts in postwar society did not necessarily provoke the same moral condemnation aroused by the exhibition of genitalia. The emphasis placed on exposing the breasts in popular men’s magazines such as Playboy and Esquire suggested that the prolonged display of the female breasts in Garden of Eden also held an erotic appeal for audiences. The eroticism of the volleyball match in Garden of Eden becomes apparent as a topless woman centers the shot directly in front of the camera, while the entire scene progresses through the voyeuristic gaze of Susan Lattimore’s fully clothed father-in-law. Using a character in the film to watch naked figures or sexual acts constitutes one of the defining characteristics of hard-core pornography. In addition, the wearing of bright red pants by the game’s participants turned the attention of the audience away from the whole body and toward the exposure of the breasts. The abandonment of specific movements and postures to hide the naked body resulted in a particularly titillating scene.
Despite Garden of Eden’s high production values, intricate family-oriented narrative, and highly choreographed scenes, the Board of Regents of the State of New York denied Bibo a license to show his film unless he removed all scenes that displayed naked bodies. Placed with the responsibility to protect the “educational interests of children and adults of the State,”90 the Board of Regents felt that the film would almost certainly encourage juvenile delinquency. They asserted that it does “not take much imagination” to know what effect the “exhibition of young children, especially girls,” would have on the “morons of all types, sex deviates, and even teenagers of little moral stamina . . . scattered in the audience.”91 Raising the specter of pedophilia and juvenile delinquency, they believed that “nothing is more likely to encourage these people to commit sex offenses than the exhibition of children.”92 The requirement that all nudity be removed from the film, however, undermined the main purpose of Garden of Eden and forced Bibo to appeal the Board of Regents’ decision.
In the early 1950s, independent filmmakers, empowered by the deregulation of the studio system, challenged film censorship across the country. In New York, a number of cases put the Board of Regents on the defensive and forced the powerful censor to alter its legal arguments in the Garden of Eden case. In the past, the Board of Regents relied on the New York Appellate Division to automatically deny appeals from filmmakers who challenged its use of “prior restraint” to deny film licenses. Due to the size and influence of the New York market, the Board of Regents indirectly determined the content of films across the nation because it proved impractical to produce different versions of the film for individual states. In 1952, however, the U.S. Supreme Court undermined the authority of the states to censor films in its landmark Miracle decision (Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495). Although it did not overturn all film censorship, the Court rejected the Board of Regents’ use of “prior restraint” in films that the censorship board deemed “sacrilegious.” After the Court’s Miracle decision, state courts began to question the use of “prior restraint” in other obscenity cases involving a wide variety of content. By 1956, when the New York Appellate Division took up the Garden of Eden case, the Board of Regents felt compelled to supplement its arguments for “prior restraint” with the 1935 New York Penal Law 1140-b, which banned all nudist activities in the state. The Board of Regents argued that the film should be judged as if it were an actual nudist camp since there was little “difference between picture and reality.”93 This new legal strategy attempted to shift attention away from the issue of “prior restraint” and rearticulated the exhibition of naked bodies in the film as a violation of the penal code.
Bibo welcomed the opportunity to debate the legal merits of displaying the naked body. In his brief, he invoked the United States Court of Appeals’ 1940 Parmelee decision when he asserted that “mere nudity, standing alone, is neither indecent nor obscene, and in this picture, besides nudity, there is nothing which could possibly corrupt the morals of its viewers or tend to do so, or could incite lascivious thoughts, or arouse lustful desires.” He then claimed that almost every issue of Life magazine exhibited an image with more nudity than the scenes featuring naked bodies in the Garden of Eden.94 Bibo also found it inconsistent that the Board of Regents had licensed several motion pictures that contained scenes of “nude men, women, and children in such locales as the South Seas, Africa, and other parts of the world . . . dancing alone or together, and in other poses and postures far more intimate than any shown in this picture.”95 Bibo demanded that the courts provide his film “equal protection under the laws . . . without regard to the color of the skin of the players or the locale of the main action.”96 Bibo saw no reason that nudity should be treated as inherently indecent under state law, and he asserted that the Regents’ attempt to use New York Penal Law 1140-b had no validity.
In 1956, the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court of New York annulled the Board of Regents’ decision to deny Garden of Eden a license, and the court signaled that the New York obscenity statutes were likely unconstitutional. Following similar rulings in other state courts across the country, the Appellate Division ruled that the film did “not reach a magnitude . . . that would warrant prior restraint” since there was “no full exposure of any adult nude body.”97 The court, however, stopped short of voiding the entire New York obscenity statute. While one judge recognized in his concurring opinion that the statute had been “voided or diluted in piecemeal fashion by the court so that practically no power remains,” the judges all agreed that an “intermediate appellate level” court should not decide the constitutionality of the statute.98 Despite this reluctance to overturn New York State’s obscenity statute, the Appellate Division ignored the Regents’ attempt to use New York Penal Law 1140-b to deny Garden of Eden a license, and in the process, it questioned the censor’s legal authority.
Just as the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roth forced the Post Office to stop censoring S&H, the 1957 decision enabled the New York State Court of Appeals to overturn the obscenity statutes that empowered the Board of Regents to deny Garden of Eden a license. In Roth, the Supreme Court protected sexual expression that exhibited “redeeming social importance” according to “contemporary community standards” and when judged in its entirety. The justices accepted, however, that prurient materials could still be ruled obscene. Taking up the Garden of Eden case immediately after the Supreme Court issued its Roth decision, the New York State Court of Appeals struggled to reach a consensus on the issue of obscenity. Writing for the majority, Judge Charles Desmond, who had written two procensorship law-review articles in 1953 and 1956, ruled that the scenes in Garden of Eden did not constitute indecency since they were “honestly relevant to the adequate expression of innocent ideas.”99 The majority accepted that the film depicted “wholesome” and “happy people in family groups practicing their sincere if misguided theory that clothing is deleterious to mental health.”100 Yet Judge Adrian P. Burke wrote an extensive dissent that contended that the film presented a “more alluring portrayal of those actions upon the screen” than one would see in a nudist camp.101 He observed that the movie showed “protracted scenes of women in unwholesome, sexually alluring postures which are completely unnecessary to—and in fact a radical departure from—the activities of the nudist camp depicted.” He specifically referred to a dream sequence in which Jamie O’Hare, “a comely young lady,” disrobes “in a manner not unlike that generally utilized by professional ecdysiasts.”102 Burke believed the nudity featured in Garden of Eden served an illicit commercial purpose and should be considered obscene according to Roth. Ultimately, just as the Supreme Court had done with S&H, the majority decision pointed to the respectable characteristic of American
nudism to argue that Garden of Eden did not constitute obscenity. By making it difficult to distinguish the illicit from the respectable, nudism played a significant role in the legal process that led the New York State Court of Appeals to reverse twenty-six years of precedent by declaring a term in its own statute unconstitutional, and according to the historian Laura Wittern-Keller, the Garden of Eden case established that the “state could no longer ban a film for indecency.”103
“Gray Can Be a Very Drab and Dirty Color”
Politicians took notice when both federal and state courts consistently ruled that censors could no longer suppress nudist magazines and films. In 1961, the House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service held several hearings to reevaluate the issue of “obscene matter sent through the mail.”104 Representative Kathryn Granahan, a Democrat from Pennsylvania and chair of the committee, in her opening statement expressed concern about the new threat posed by “gray area products” such as nudist magazines.105 In her interpretation, the recent Supreme Court decisions on obscenity benefited publications that “pussyfoot around the edges but shrewdly stay just clear of subjecting themselves to prosecution.”106 Granahan considered magazines such as S&H to be “more poisonous in their appeal to young boys and girls” since they “tend to overcome home and church and civic guidance.” She declared that “gray can be a very drab and dirty color.”107
Ironically, many longtime nudist leaders joined Granahan in expressing concern about the movement’s legal victories. Although the nudist movement took advantage of the recent Supreme Court decision to finally display the naked body without the shame communicated by censorship, many leaders feared that the original ideals and principles of nudism would be lost to an unregulated market of magazines and films that linked nudity and nudism to the commercialization of sex. For decades, nudist leaders and advocates had struggled to balance the movement’s therapeutic goals and its family-oriented recreational character with the erotic appeal of its magazines and camps. This struggle ultimately contributed to the creation of a “gray area” in American obscenity law that allowed the marketing of sexual display.
The commercial potential of the naked body in the United States had posed the greatest threat to the respectability of the American nudist movement. The majority of Americans understood the naked body as illicit and worthy of censorship when sold as an image in a magazine or paraded onstage in front of mostly male audiences. Early attempts by nudists to go naked in urban gymnasiums and on city beaches or parks came under attack because police, moral reformers, and city officials associated these gatherings with an illicit underworld. Censors also targeted nudist books, magazines, and films because their sales often far exceeded the number of members claimed by the movement. Indeed, the editors of nudist publications often deliberately chose images that marketed the eroticism of the naked body to both heterosexual and homosexual men in order to financially support a national organization, to fund the movement’s many legal battles, and to help maintain a sprawling network of camps and clubs. At the same time, the nudist movement maintained its respectability through a religious leadership that rejected the shame and scorn attached to the naked body while celebrating the therapeutic benefits of going naked with other men, women, and children. Furthermore, to avoid comparisons to risqué performances, many nudists established camps in rural areas, where a culture of skinny-dipping and camping muted the perceived eroticism that defined public nudity in the city. Through camps, magazines, and films, the nudist movement promoted the physical and mental benefits of going naked while also appealing to men and women of all sexualities.
Sundial
The legal victories won by the American nudist movement initially allowed S&H to celebrate the display of genitalia. Regular subscribers of the flagship nudist magazine had long complained that the censoring of genitalia from its images betrayed the principles of mental and physical health advocated by the nudist movement. After Sunshine Book Company v. Summerfield (1957), the editors began to openly display full-frontal male and female nudity. The November 1958 issue, for example, featured numerous images—large and small—showing solitary figures posing for the camera or several men and women engaged in nudist activities. The inside cover exhibited a large image of a solitary woman walking ankle deep in a shallow, tranquil lake surrounded by thick vegetation.108 Past issues very likely would have been forced to airbrush a similar image or would have resorted to positioning her body deeper in the water or showing her backside.
Another full-page image in the middle of the issue symbolized the new liberated feeling of the long-censored magazine. The photo showed a standing, smiling woman holding a towel around her waist while a refreshing breeze uncovers her full-frontal naked body.109 Unconcerned with censorship, the editors of S&H abandoned the props, awkward posing, and airbrushing that had long defined the flagship nudist magazine.
The display of genitalia in S&H likely pleased health enthusiasts as much as it appealed to men and women of all sexualities who had yearned for uncensored images of the naked male and female body. One picture exhibited a man and woman looking at a camera positioned just above their exposed genitalia.110 In previous issues, the camera likely would have been used to block views of the genitalia in order to avoid conflict with censors who considered the appearance of both sexes in the same photo sexual and illicit. After the 1958 Supreme Court ruling, however, the picture used the placement of the camera to draw attention to the midsections of the man and woman in the photo. By showing the man and woman deliberately glancing down at the camera—and at each other’s genitalia—the image communicated to male and female readers that they too can look and suggested that members can use their own cameras to take similar pictures. S&H also did not hesitate to include images of male bodies that appealed to a gay male audience. One illustration featured a strong, athletic nude man holding a bow and arrow at the level of his genitalia.111 It could easily have been included in one of the many physique magazines available to gay men in the early 1960s. Like the previous photograph’s use of the camera, the bow and arrow serve to draw the reader’s gaze to the penis while indirectly alluding to a more erotic image of a man firing an erect arrow. No longer restrained by the censors’ guidelines, S&H included images once considered far too sexual for publication.
After Sunshine Book Company v. Summerfield (1957), Sunshine and Health’s editors began to openly display full-frontal male and female nudity. (Sunshine and Health, November 1958, 9; courtesy of the Sunshine and Health Publishing Company)
The new freedom that S&H enjoyed inspired other nudists to begin producing more daring magazines that did not turn away from explicitly promoting the sensuality of the naked body. Ed Lange, a former fashion photographer who had been part of organized nudism since 1938 and had contributed numerous photos to S&H, wanted to create a nudist magazine that would allow readers to “discover a way that would acknowledge the innate sensuality of all humans . . . without shame.”112 Carrying a reputation as a hedonist and rumored to be a swinger, Lange wanted to end what he considered to be nudist prudery. In 1962, he took advantage of the legal battles won by the nudist movement to begin publishing Sundial. In many ways, Sundial resembled S&H. Lange named the magazine after the club he frequented in Southern California and included information about other groups, upcoming events, and the philosophy of nudism. Yet Lange relied on Martin Luros, a publisher of girlie magazines such as Adam, Knight, and Cocktail, to produce and distribute his new magazine. Sundial, because it included content that represented nudist ideals and activities and used photos from nudist clubs, evaded the legal restraints that continued to prevent girlie magazines from displaying male and female genitalia, and it quickly became one of Luros’s most profitable magazines. Hoping to build on this success, Luros gave Lange his own building and department to develop additional nudist titles. Although many nudists criticized Lange’s sensual photos and worried that they would lead nudism away from its familial character and respectability, Lange’
s influence continued to grow in the nudist community. He later established the nudist resort Elysium Fields in Topanga Canyon, California, and eventually started his own press under the name Elysium Publishing Company. The partnership between Lange and Luros produced a market of nudist magazines that made it very difficult to disentangle the erotic from the respectable.
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