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Between the Covers
Nudist Magazines and Censorship in Midcentury America
To prosper in the United States, the nudist movement needed to overcome long-standing obscenity statutes that limited nudists’ ability to produce and distribute their publications. In addition to facing opposition from hostile neighbors in Rogers Park, being outlawed by the New York State legislature, and suffering legal setbacks in the Ring trial in Allegan, Michigan, the nudist movement chafed against federal laws designed to impede the distribution and importation of scandalous materials. In 1933, the U.S. Customs Service seized Maurice Parmelee’s Nudism in Modern Life when the John Lane Company shipped twelve copies of its British edition to the United States. Since the late nineteenth century, the Customs Service had played a central role in preventing birth control information, publications dealing with sexual themes, and potentially illicit images from entering the United States from Europe.1 The twenty-three illustrations that accompanied the early nudist treatise’s discussion of the philosophy, principles, and practicality of nudism made it vulnerable to seizure by U.S. customs agents. Yet the respectability that nudism attracted by emphasizing the physical, mental, and moral benefits of going naked put the movement in a position to challenge these obscenity statutes. The legal and financial success of nudism leading up to and during the Second World War empowered the movement to resist the censorship of its publications while also provoking state authorities to target its leaders as subversives and ultimately to suppress its flagship magazine, Sunshine and Health.
The political response to the emergence of nudism in the 1930s and early 1940s revealed a sexual politics that used individuals’ private behavior to undermine their public authority. Pushed out of the headlines by the events of the Second World War, Representative Martin Dies (Republican, Texas), the head of the House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), burst back onto the political stage by using Maurice Parmelee’s appointment to the Board of Economic Warfare to launch a broader attack against the New Deal policies of the Roosevelt administration. Dies’s campaign against nudism grabbed headlines, generated public support, and secured funding for his controversial committee because the supposed sexual perversion of nudism offered clear penalties and a palpable resolution. The prosecution of homosexual acts by the state, in contrast, remained hidden behind obscure statutes directed at limiting poverty through immigration restrictions—Depression Era social policies that only supported adult men with dependents or contemporary laws that prohibited public sexual acts by military personnel. In the decades leading up to the Second World War, according to the historian Margot Canaday, bureaucratic agencies and politicians avoided directly prosecuting homosexual acts or behavior since the government “lacked not only an adequate regulatory apparatus but also conceptual mastery over what it desired to regulate.” In contrast to the secretive and ambiguous prosecution of homosexual behavior, Congressman Dies excoriated Parmelee as a nudist and a communist by drawing on the same sensational tactics he had used against union leaders and suspected radicals in the 1930s. Despite the defense of New Deal liberals, including Vice President Henry Wallace, the persecution of prominent nudists in the early years of the Second World War exposed the movement’s ties with political radicalism and alternative sexualities.2
Regardless of Dies’s attacks, Parmelee’s vision of nudism as a place for eroticism and sexual expression as well as health benefits gained prominence in the pages of Sunshine and Health during the Second World War. The total war effort threatened to end organized nudism in the United States. Camps languished or closed completely as the rationing of tires and gas made it difficult for guests to visit. Additionally, the national organization lost several key figures and camp owners to military service and wartime employment. The sales of Sunshine and Health, however, grew as soldiers wrote to the magazine praising its pictures, while other readers scanned classified advertisements looking for companions or offering “physique photos.” Rather than object to the new interest in the flagship nudist magazine on moral grounds, Rev. Ilsley Boone saw an opportunity to sell more magazines and support his struggling movement. Boone, the longtime managing editor of Sunshine and Health, frequently placed financial concerns and interests over principle and ideology. According to Rev. Henry Huntington, one of his first conversations with Boone involved “how to get away from the consequences of bankruptcy.”3 Already selling Parmelee’s controversial book as well as Jan Gay’s On Going Naked, Boone introduced suggestive representations into the magazine, adopted a playful format, and featured articles with erotic content that appealed to men and women of all sexualities. During the war, the eroticism that Parmelee wanted to be at the forefront of nudism assumed a more prominent place alongside the movement’s therapeutic and familial character. The popularity of Sunshine and Health among men and women of a variety of sexualities put the respectability of the movement under suspicion and led to renewed efforts to censor the publication in the postwar era.
“It Cannot Be Assumed That Nudity Is Obscene Per Se”
Parmelee decided to write a book on nudism after visiting several German nudist camps while serving in Berlin as a special assistant to the Department of State. Assigned to evaluate Germany’s economic situation at the end of the First World War, Parmelee seized the opportunity to learn more about Nacktkultur and to expand on his academic interest in sex reform. Parmelee objected to the writings of Richard Ungewitter, who promoted Nacktkultur as a way to “exalt German nationalism and racialism,” but he eventually located several “liberal minded” nudist groups in which he regularly participated in nudist activities with “great profit and pleasure.”4 Parmelee thought the experience of going naked was a “remarkable opportunity to study a very significant movement from a psychological and sociological viewpoint,” and encouraged by Havelock Ellis, he began writing the book when he returned to New York City in the winter of 1923.5
After Parmelee completed what he originally titled The New Gymnosophy in 1924, he struggled to find a publisher unafraid of challenging book censors.6 He submitted the completed manuscript to “several of the more progressive publishers of New York City” only to be turned away and as a result was forced to put the project on hold for several years. In 1927, after editing out a large section of material that dealt with the more “technical and less easily understood phases of the subject,” Parmelee secured a small publisher willing to distribute his book if he contributed to the project.7 The federal district attorney for the Southern District of New York, however, immediately threatened prosecution. The publisher then distanced himself from the book, and Parmelee assumed full legal and financial responsibility and began distributing it “under the counter” at one of the most prominent booksellers in New York City.8 He also consulted with the ACLU. Its general counsel advised him to send copies to the U.S. Customs Service in order to initiate proceedings requiring the collector of customs to show cause for its official action and to create an opportunity for the ACLU to officially object through the courts. Yet, in a 1927 letter, the Customs Service did not find that the book “offends Section 305 of the Tariff Act” and, therefore, stated that “there should be no objection to its admission so far as any question of obscenity.”9 In 1931, following the lead of several British and European publishers, Alfred Knopf agreed to publish Parmelee’s book under the title Nudism in Modern Life. A new, more “liberal minded” district attorney made no objections, and the book gained a widespread readership. When the Customs Service seized twelve copies of Nudism in Modern Life mailed by the John Lane Company, Parmelee again enlisted the help of the ACLU to resist censorship of the book.
Alfred Wheat, the judge who presided over the Parmelee case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, upheld the Hicklin test when he disregarded the content of Nudism in Modern Life and focused on the erotic potential of the images in the book. According to the 1868 Hicklin test, the courts need only establish the potential of materia
l to “deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall” in order to deem it obscene.10 Beginning in 1873, Anthony Comstock and his New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV) used this broad definition of obscenity to suppress pornography, medical treatises, and reproductions of art because they all might influence morally weak individuals who found these materials stimulating or morally corrupting.11 Judge Wheat sought to protect individuals from having their morals corrupted by an extended discussion of nudity when he asked the court marshal to determine “whether any women were in the court room” and then “ordered to remove them” to honor their virtue.12 This gesture had little practical effect since no women were present at the sparsely attended opening proceeding. Rather, it revealed the judge’s belief that women were vulnerable members of society and needed to be protected from the discussion of nudity and obscenity. Following the Hicklin test to the last letter of the law, Judge Wheat only concerned himself with the “photographic illustrations which appear at various places in the book” and the impact these nude photos might have on the public. Since the photos had “no relevancy to the written text at the place in which each of said photographic illustration is set in the book,” he felt no reason to take the text into consideration.13 To protect the vulnerable members of society, such as women, the judge ignored arguments from nudists, sociologists, and health enthusiasts who defended the legitimacy of the text’s content.
Measuring two and a quarter by three and a quarter inches, most of the twenty-three illustrations did not alarm the court. They featured large groups, displayed nude figures from a distance, and obscured the genitalia. One such image that displayed a nudist wrestling match avoided the homoeroticism of exhibiting two interlocked naked men by focusing the image on the many spectators watching the event. It showed numerous naked figures surrounding the wrestlers with their backs to the camera or sitting with their genitalia hidden. Although all the people in the image lack clothing, the distance of the camera along with the positioning of the figures makes it difficult to distinguish men from women. The wide angle of the photo, which captures trees in the background, brush in the bottom right corner, and the horizon of the sandy hill where the main action takes place also sought to link the scene to nature. Images such as this one made it difficult for the court to argue that even the most depraved or vulnerable reader would be aroused or titillated by Nudism in Modern Life.
Three or four other pictures, however, of “full front views of nude female figures” and two images in which “nude male and female figures appear together” drew the court’s objections.14 Including men and women in the same picture, in the judge’s view, suggested intimacy between the sexes and hinted at potential sexual contact. One image, titled “In the Meadow,” produced this effect by showing two women exchanging a flower while a man crouches to place a crown on the head of one of them. This scene invited multiple and contradictory interpretations. On the one hand, it showed the camaraderie between nudists and nature while recalling the classical nude form that, according to the art historian Kenneth Clark, sought to represent an “organic and geometric basis of beauty.”15 The symbolism of women touching a flower while staring lovingly into each other’s eyes likely also communicated lesbianism. When read alongside Jan Gay’s On Going Naked and its descriptions of gay men and lesbians going naked in the American countryside, the image communicated homoeroticism. The presence of the man in the background preparing to “crown” one of the women added to the photo’s illicit character by raising the possibility of group sex. Another image, titled “The Javelin-Thrower,” displayed a woman holding a javelin and unabashedly displaying her breasts and her pubic hair. The full-frontal nudity shown in the image recalled the athleticism of Greek or Roman marble statues. However, as a photograph in a book, it constituted an object of erotica that could be consumed privately.16 On the basis of these select representations, Judge Wheat ruled that the book constituted obscenity.
Most of the illustrations in Maurice Parmelee’s Nudism in Modern Life featured large groups, displayed nude figures from a distance, or obscured the genitalia. (Parmelee, Nudism in Modern Life [New York: Knopf, 1931], 136)
The ACLU, along with a number of prominent writers and academics, recognized the significance of Judge Wheat’s unfavorable decision for the future of nudism and for freedom of expression. H. G. Wells wrote that he considered the book a “perfectly decent work” and quipped that the “U.S.A. seems to be afflicted just now for a mania for suppressing everything except cruelty and raucous vulgarity.” Sinclair Lewis recognized Parmelee as a “sociologist of the highest international standing” and asserted that to “interfere with its publication, would be abominable.” Havelock Ellis maintained, “No person with any reasoning power at all, indeed, could fail to see that this is a book of highly moral character . . . without a single offensive word in it from beginning to end.” Meanwhile, H. L. Mencken, the famous literary critic and editor, promised to do whatever he could to help Parmelee’s book.17 The ACLU again took an interest in this case as part of its effort to broaden its focus beyond forms of government censorship that targeted union activity and radical political organizations. Morris Ernst, who according to the historian Leigh Ann Wheeler had a “resume rich with experience defending birth control and attacking censorship,” led this transition by successfully defending Mary Ware Dennett against the U.S. Post Office in 1928, challenging the U.S. Customs Service’s 1929 ban on Marie Stopes’s Contraception, and, in 1933, defeating the prohibition of James Joyce’s Ulysses.18 Fighting against government censorship yet again, Ernst assisted in the appeal of Parmelee’s case to the U.S. Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia.
According to Judge Wheat, images that featured men and women suggested intimacy between the sexes and hinted at potential sexual contact. (Parmelee, Nudism in Modern Life [New York: Knopf, 1931], 43)
The full-frontal nudity shown in “The Javelin-Thrower” recalled the athleticism of Greek or Roman marble statues, but as a photograph in a book, Judge Wheat considered it an example of erotica. (Parmelee, Nudism in Modern Life [New York: Knopf, 1931], 22)
Due in large part to Ernst’s earlier victories against censorship, the justices on the U.S. Court of Appeals disregarded the Hicklin test and evaluated Nudism in Modern Life in its entirety; since Hicklin had been “repudiated,” the justices turned to community standards to resolve the question of obscenity.19 This proved difficult, however, because nudism had only recently emerged in the United States, and the justices felt that testimony from experts only revealed the “profound ignorance of psychology and sociology.” They also felt uncomfortable classifying its photos as clear examples of art, medicine, or erotica. Without precedent to guide them or qualified experts, the justices had to “compensate . . . by noticing, judicially, evidence which is available to [them]” and, as a result, relied heavily on the “book itself” to guide them in their decision. Taking the recent Ulysses verdict into consideration, the judges used a standard that considered the book as a “whole, in its effect, not upon any particular class, but upon all those whom it [was] likely to reach.”20
Since the courts protected materials exhibiting literary or scholarly merit, Ernst argued that Parmelee’s book examined nudism as a “serious movement” with “many supporters in the United States.”21 The respectability that nudism embodied by conforming to the heteronormative boundaries of sexual liberalism through its principles of health, heterosexuality, and family orientation and its focus on nature played a central role in swaying the court. Ernst contended that nudism had been “widely endorsed” in the United States because of its hygienic, educational, psychological, sociological, and aesthetic merits. He noted that heliotherapy maintained that the “exposure of the body to sun rays has an important health value” that might be hindered by even “scanty” clothing.22 The assumption implicit within sexual liberalism that the family precluded illicit sexual
behavior allowed Ernst to invoke the expert opinion of Dr. Howard Warren, who echoed Fred Ring by making the claim that nudism eliminated sex curiosity among children while also curing “psychological maladjustment” resulting from the concealment of the body.23 Ernst also distinguished nudism from “back to nature” movements by asserting that the movement encouraged a love for nature and was based on the principles of “true democracy.”24 Parmelee’s attorneys contended that Nudism in Modern Life did not constitute pornography, that current social mores justified the frankness of the pictures, and that the whole work must be judged according to its effect on the average man.25
The Court of Appeals equated nudism with a type of medical therapy, accepted its scholarly character, and recognized its legitimacy. The justices believed that works of sociology in which the “erotic matter is not introduced to promote lust and does not furnish the dominant note of the publication” should receive the “same immunity” as works of physiology, medicine, and the social sciences.26 In contrast to Judge Wheat’s immediate condemnation of the images in Nudism in Modern Life, the appellate judges recognized “such evident truthfulness in its depiction of certain types of humanity” and that the book “is so little erotic in its result” that they ruled that the work did “not fall within the forbidden class.”27 Echoing the arguments made by Ernst in the written opinion, the judges referred to works of art that displayed full-frontal naked female and male bodies and referenced the Encyclopedia Britannica as a source in which images containing nude men and women regularly appeared without protest. Finding similar scholastic merit in Nudism in Modern Life, the judges found the work in question to be an “honest, sincere, scientific and educational study and exposition of a sociological phenomenon” written by a “well qualified writer in the field of sociology.”28 The respectability of Parmelee and the therapeutic principles of American nudism influenced the court to see Nudism in Modern Life as an academic treatise rather than a source of illicit material.
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