tee in California on June 18, 1955, at Los Angeles. Mary Tager testified that the partnership used various trade names, such as Standout Products, Novel Arts, T. & R. Sales, and others. She further stated that the company used approximately 200 different trade names and addresses, primarily for the receiving of orders from people who desired the indecent pictures and film that was distributed by the Ross-Tager partnership.

She

In order to determine the extent of the business of the Ross-Tager combine and others in the Los Angeles area, Mrs. Tager was questioned as to the volume of business done by the partnership which she estimated at $3,000 per day, or over $1 million per year. also pointed out that there were approximately 200 companies in the Los Angeles area that operated the same type of business as operated by the Ross-Tager combine, which would give an indication of the enormity of the distribution of pornographic material by mail from the Los Angeles area alone.

One cannot readily visualize the operations of a business such as the Ross-Tager combine without reading the transcript of testimony while Mrs. Tager was on the stand.

"In this business, what was the merchandise which you sold, Mrs. Tager?" questioned Mr. James H. Bobo, general counsel.

Mrs. TAGER. I sold nudes, straight nudes, nothing pornographic, consisting of slides, black and white films, 8- and 16-millimeter, 50-, 100-, 400-foot reels. Mr. Boво. In these nudes which you sold, many of them were in various suggestive poses. Would you mean by the fact that they were not pornographic, that they might not be considered under the present laws pornographic"

Mrs. TAGER. Well, no. Personally, I don't consider a picture of a nude woman as pornographic. I think it definitely depends on the way the woman is posed, or now, to me pornographic material would be more in a strip sequence that would be very suggestive, more so than a straight nude.

Mr. BOBO. Did you sell these particular nudes and novelty cards through the United States mail?

Mrs. TAGER. Yes, sir.

Mr. BOBO. How would you secure the names of customers to whom you were sending this?

Mrs. TAGER. Well, there are many sources. Of course, magazine advertising is one of the main sources of your names. There are many ads appearing even today in magazines or comic books, which is more or less a come-on actually for nude picture buyers. So over a period of time from the replies you get from these various magazines, you accumulate a very large mailing list ***

Mr. Bово. Did you ever purchase any mailing addresses from any of the so-called legitimate magazines.

Mrs. TAGER. No, I purchased mailing names from Mosley, who was—well, that is a legitimate place of business where they

Mr. BOBO. Mrs. Tager, in mailing these photos through the mail, although you did not regard them as pornographic, you had a great deal of difficulty with postoffice authorities; is that right?

Mrs. TAGER. That is right.

Mr. BOBO. You attempted in many ways to avoid the various postal regulations dealing with mailing this type of material out to the country?

Mrs. TAGER. That is correct. ***

Mr. BOBO. Was there ever any question asked you as to the type of merchandise which you were selling through this advertising?

Mrs. TAGER. No; I can't say that truthfully we were questioned too much about what we were selling.

Mr. Bово. In drawing these ads and preparing the advertising copy, it was your idea to make them as sexually suggestive and as sexually attractive as possible, would you say?

Mrs. TAGER. Oh, yes. After all, we were advertising material that the buyer Any ad has to be-well, an ad is a come-on to buy the materials, so naturally our ads, we would go as far as possible with them ***.

hadn't seen.

Mr. BOBO. Do you know the names of any of the magazines in which your advertisements have appeared?

Mrs. TAGER. Yes; there are many. I mean, all of the girlie magazines they have appeared in.

Mr. BOBO. You speak of "girlie magazines." You are speaking of what type of magazine?

Mrs. TAGER. Well, you have got Pic and See and Hit and Miss and Male and Man, and all that.

Mr. BOBO. You also advertised, in addition to the strip series of photos which you made, movies of nude girls.

Mrs. TAGER. Yes, sir.

Mr. Bово. The girls go through some sort of contortions or dances or some type of action?

Mrs. TAGER. Yes. I had one that did a swimming_act in the water. That, to my way of thinking, was quite-it was very good. I mean, there was nothing that could be classed-I mean, you could go to a moving-picture show and see practically the same thing today.

Mr. BOво. Except for the fact that they would be dressed?

Mrs. TAGER. Well, sometimes they are not always dressed completely *** Mr. Boво. Did any of your ads ever suggest such as this: "You must have Georgia in the nude. Georgia has been named the showgirl of the year because she has so much to show and she knows how to show it. You will sit and sigh over her beautiful figure and what she does with it. She is your open door to a girl's private life"?

Mrs. TAGER. No; I am afraid my advertising wasn't quite that strong.

Mr. BOBO. Well, most of the advertising that you see in this particular business, that would give the idea that these are just not straight nude scenes.

Mrs. TAGER. That is true. That is very true.

Mr. Bово. And for a sexually inquisitive youngster of 12 or 16

Mrs. TAGER. Well, he would really think he was getting something.

Mr. BOBO. Yes. This is another copy of a letter. Is that one of the particular types of mailing advertising which you sent out?

Mrs. TAGER. No. I am afraid this is another one that was sent out after I left the business.

Mr. BOBO. Would I get a letter of inquiry back as to my age, or would I get the strip photos or whatever other merchandise you had to sell?

Mrs. TAGER. Well, no. When you place an ad in a magazine-of course, I am going by my own experiences; what some of the others do might be entirely different. When an ad is placed in a magazine and you, perhaps, answer the ad, you send me a dollar. Well, naturally, for that dollar you are not going to get nudes. You get four pinup pictures. Your name is kept on file, and in order for me to keep or try to keep children out of my files, I would send them a letter of inquiry as to their age, and I would get that letter of inquiry back from them before I would attempt to send them any of these advertising pieces for nudes. Mr. Bово. The original was just a come-on?

Mrs. TAGER. That is right.

Mr. Boво. And actually it was more or less a fraudulent ad because the person got not what he thought he was asking for?

Mrs. TAGER. Well, that is very true. ***

Chairman KEFAUVER. And what is the biggest one you ever sent out?

Mrs. TAGER. Well, you see, I believe the biggest mailings from the business. I was associated with, oh, I believe they were sending maybe a quarter of a million pieces a month.

Chairman KEFAUVER. A quarter of a million a month. Do you have a sample of the kind of things that were sent?

Mr. BOBO. Would this be a representative sample of the copy matter?
Mrs. TAGER. Yes. ***

Chairman KEFAUVER. Say the peak year.

Mr. BOBO. The biggest year that you had, your peak year.

Mrs. TAGER. Well, of course, the peak came actually-actually the peak to this business came right after I walked out on the business and my husband and Mr. Ross, through my instructions and through another party's instructions, went all out; and I believe it is on record in the bank, something like $750,000 in a period of a very few months.

Chairman KEFAUVER. HOW large a territory did your mailing list cover?
Mrs. TAGER. It was nationwide; worldwide, in fact.

Chairman KEFAUVER. You mean you got orders from all States in the Nation
Mrs. TAGER. All over the world.

You mean Canada, Mexico?

Chairman KEFAUVER. All over the world?
Mrs. TAGER. Even Ceylon.

***

Mr. BOBO. Did you find it necessary or were you ever a part of any type of organization where people in this particular business organized to evade the Post Office Department officials?

Mrs. TAGER. Well, yes. I belonged to an organization that many of the operators in this business joined. We formed a group more or less to pool our notes and try to stay in business.

Mr. Bово. Approximately how many members altogether did this association have?

Mrs. TAGER. Oh, I would say roughly maybe 20, because there were many that would have liked to have gotten into it, but we didn't want them in the organization.

Mr. Boво. Well, there were approximately 20 in this association. Do you know from your association with this business how many people there are in this particular business, or were at the time that you were in it in this particular area? Mrs. TAGER. Well, the figure is high. I believe when I was operating there must have been well over 200, at least 250 operators.

Mr. BOBO. That is all you had knowledge of. Is that over the country or in California?

Mrs. TAGER. No. In the Los Angeles area alone.

Mr. Bово. Do you have any idea as to the estimate of the number of people who might have been engaged in this business over the country?

Mrs. TAGER. Well, I imagine the figure is quite high because Los Angeles, I believe, is the main port for all this material. I think New York runs a close second.

Mr. Boво. The group that you were associated with was handling none of the lewd and lascivious, really obscene perverted type of material?

Mrs. TAGER. No. We were handling all more or less the same thing. That is why, as I say, there were several that would have liked to have gotten into the organization and we just didn't want them in with us.

Chairman KEFAUVER. Mrs. Tager, you said at that time. Did the organization deteriorate as time went on?

Mrs. TAGER. Yes; it was very short-lived; very short-lived.

Chairman KEFAUVER. Pornographers did get into the organization?

Mrs. TAGER. Yes; I believe a couple did.

Mr. BOBO. Did you ever hire an attorney to represent the organization or to defend any of the members in any respect?

Mrs. TAGER. We approached attorneys to represent us, but we did not have one attorney to represent the whole group. 18

Mr. Ralph E. Stapenhorst, postal inspector, Glendale, Calif., testified that Louis Tager pleaded guilty to the first five counts in an indictment which charged him with mailing obscene matter and to count No. 51 which charged conspiracy to violate the law regarding obscene matter. A trial was had before Federal Judge Peirson M. Hall on about March 29, 1954, and the judge, after viewing a number of the films and examining the slides and photographs, declared that the material he had viewed was not obscene; that Roy J Ross, the partner with Louis Tager, was found not guilty.

Louis Tager then moved to have his plea of guilty set aside, which motion the judge accepted, and the United States attorney was ordered to proceed with the prosecution later that afternoon. When the United States attorney informed the court that he wished to have some of the juveniles appear as witnesses at the trial and further that he needed time, the action against Louis Tager was dismissed for want of prosecution by the Government.

The subcommittee is at a loss to understand the action of the court in dismissing the case against Louis Tager for want of prosecution in view of the explanation given by the United States attorney that he needed time to have certain witnesses appear for the trial. It seems,

18 Tager, Mary Dorothy, see testimony, op. cit., pp. 315-339.

that in view of the great wave of pornographic material that was being distributed throughout the country as testified to by police officers, and post office inspectors, that no great injustice would be done to the defendant in this matter if time had been given to the United States attorney to have in court the necessary witnesses who would be in a position to give the full facts to the court. The subcommittee believes that all of the constitutional guarantees should be given each defendant irrespective of the nature of the criminal case involved; however, the subcommittee feels that the court showed a lack of discretion in this matter in dismissing the case for want of prosecution and not giving the United States attorney sufficient time to get witnesses for what appeared to be a very, very important case dealing with the production and distribution of pornographic material through the mail.

Sugarman-Tager partnership

Calvin Sugarman of Providence, R. I., together with Mary Dorothy Tager, of the Ross-Tager partnership in Los Angeles, Calif., who later moved to Providence, R. I., after severing her relationship with Ross-Tager, combined sometime during the spring of 1954 to put into operation a scheme to send out circulars through the mails under fictitious names offering photographs of nudes for sale.

Calvin Sugarman, in furtherance of the scheme, used fictitious names and arranged for "drops" to receive mail sent in response to the circulars as follows: Robert Adams in Providence; Joseph V. Bush in Pawtucket, R. I.; Jon Carter in Worcester, Mass.; Earl Drake in Hartford, Conn.; and Jeff Ellis in New Britain, Conn.

Sugarman opened bank accounts under the fictitious names of Adams and Bush in banks in Providence and Pawtucket; deposited cash, money orders and checks in the amount of several hundred dollars that had been received through the mails in response to the circulars previously mailed by him and Mrs. Tager to prospective customers all over the United States, and made withdrawals from said accounts for himself and Mrs. Tager, and in one instance for the payment of a bill incurred for the printing of the circulars.

He personally collected the mail from the Adams and Bush "drops" and opened it and made deposits of the cash, money orders and checks received.

Mrs. Tager arranged for the mail sent to the "drops" in the names of Carter, Drake, and Ellis to be forwarded to her home in Narragansett, R. I., where she opened it and deposited the cash, money orders, and checks received in her own bank account in a bank in Narragansett.

Mrs. Tager made additional mailings of circulars to customers directly from her address using the fictitious name of M. Miller and G. Wallis. She arranged a "drop" in Boston, Mass., for the receipt of the Wallis mail and had it forwarded to her home in Narragansett. Enclosed with the Wallis circular was a lewd and obscene photograph as "bait" to stimulate orders.

No merchandise was ever sent to fill any of the orders received by Sugarman and/or Mrs. Tager, thereby establishing that a scheme to defraud existed. On the other hand, the Post Office Department had in its possession complaints and other evidence of nondelivery of

merchandise showing that some 2,500 to 3,000 persons had been defrauded, some even 2 or 3 times.

Mrs. Tager was indicted for sending the obscene photograph through the mails. Neither Mrs. Tager nor Sugarman were indicted for using the mails to defraud.

As mentioned earlier, the scheme to send out the circulars soliciting orders was conceived by Sugarman and Mrs. Tager in the spring of 1954. The circulars were mailed during the months of May, June, and July, and the orders were received during those months. The deposits in the banks in the fictitious names of Adams and Bush by Sugarman and by Mrs. Tager in her personal account were also made during these same months.

The post office inspectors became aware of the operation not long after its inception and their investigation was proceeding almost concurrently with the activities of Sugarman and Mrs. Tager. It was his identification with the Adams and Bush mailings, and subsequently with the Carter, Drake, and Ellis mailings that led to the discovery of his association with Mrs. Tager in the general operation.

The substance of the testimony of the post office inspectors before the subcommittee on November 8, 1955, was that all of the facts relating to the activities of both Sugarman and Mrs. Tager had been brought to the attention of Mr. Jacob S. Temkin, United States attorney in Providence, R. I., at the time, and that he alone made the decision to prosecute Mrs. Tager on the obscenity charge and that he alone refrained from any prosecution of Sugarman and/or Mrs. Tager on the fraud charge. They explained further that they are not empowered to make any recommendations, and that their sole function is to gather and present the facts of any individual case.

Mr. Temkin maintained before the subcommittee that the post office inspectors never made any recommendation to him that there be any prosecution of Calvin Sugarman and that, at a conference in his office on September 10, 1954, they asked only for the issuance of a complaint against Mrs. Tager. Mr. Temkin denied that he had ever read the case file or that he had ever perused the statement obtained by the post office inspectors from Calvin Sugarman before the conference. After the conference on September 10, Mr. Temkin said he turned the case over to an assistant in his office and never had any more to do with it.

Less than 24 hours after the announcement was made that this subcommittee planned to hold hearings in Providence, R. I., on November 8, 1955, regarding the Sugarman-Tager operation the present United States attorney in Providence, R. I., Mr. Joseph Mainelli, obtained an indictment against Calvin Sugarman on 24 counts of using the mail to defraud. Sugarman is now awaiting trial.

VIII. CONCLUSIONS

Members of the subcommittee are greatly concerned with the widespread production, distribution, and sale of pornographic materials, especially that portion which falls into the hands of children and adolescents. The fact that a large segment of the American people have no understanding or knowledge of the existence of this material so easily available is also a source of concern.