William Hamling (publisher)
In 1940, he entered the University of Chicago, but left school less than a year later because he had already begun to write fiction and was selling a great deal of the material that he wrote.
[3] His first sale as a writer was the science fiction story, "War with Jupiter,"[4] a collaboration with fellow Lane Technical High School classmate, Mark Reinsberg.
Reinsberg and another friend of Hamling's, and fellow Lane Tech classmate, Melvin Korshak, would go on to found Shasta Publishers.
It carried fiction by well-known professionals such as L. Sprague de Camp, Robert Moore Williams and Jack Williamson, and was much more impressive than most magazines produced by fans.
According to L. Sprague de Camp's 1953 Science-Fiction Handbook, Hamling was at that time a "slim, dark man who looks too young to be not only an independent publisher but also the father of five.
I had been buying fantasy cartoons from him for several years (they were so bad I never published them but he needed the money and to this day we have a running routine where I threaten to issue them as a nostalgic bonanza but defer to his pleadings of personal embarrassment) and one evening he and his charming wife, Millie [Mildred Williams], visited Fran and me and I responded to his suggestion of Playboy with the remark, 'Hef, you can't sell sex to the American public.'
While I refused financial participation in Playboy (the greatest economic error in publishing history) I helped him secure authors and artists and indeed over the early years actually provided a training school for his editorial and art personnel.
I trained the editors and he hired them away..."[15] Greenleaf, then, published Rogue and a photographic magazine in book form called Model Art, as well as different numbers of science fiction publications.
Coupled with the recent liquidation of the major US distributor for magazines, American News Company, Hamling ceased publication of his science fiction digests and began to concentrate solely on Rogue.
Nightstand Books was an imprint for paperback original sex novels by authors working under house names.
Ellison had returned to Chicago, to set up William Hamling's black box operation for publishing pornography under the false front company of Blake Pharmaceuticals, housed in the offices next door to the headquarters for Rogue.
Writing and editing for William Hamling's Rogue magazine was the "story" to cover Ellison's real activities.
[22] Under the Regency imprint Hamling published novels and anthologies by writers such as B. Traven, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Bloch, Philip José Farmer, and Clarence Cooper Jr.
After this internal reorganization Hamling paid Ellison to write back cover blurbs for Nightstand Books, and then cut him off cold.
With Ellison out of the way Hamling had the blurbs written by the Blake staff, then numbering about four (Kemp among them), not counting his stepson Eddie Yerxa.
A subsequently formed corporation, Corinth, published paperback books, and Reed Enterprises was organized to do the distribution.
Pseudonymous writers for Kemp/Hamling included Lawrence Block, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Harlan Ellison, Evan Hunter, Robert Silverberg, Arnold Hano, and Donald E.
The dismissal followed rulings by the Supreme Court of the United States that books virtually identical to those involved in the Houston case were not obscene.
His appeal of his conviction on obscenity charges for selling two Greenleaf Books (Lust Pool and Shame Agent) in 1965 went to the Supreme Court of the United States, where it was overturned in Redrup v. New York in 1967.
"[27] Hamling and editor Earl Kemp were given prison sentences for distributing the book, but served only the federal minimum.
[29][30][31] On September 18, 1970, Charles Keating, the head and founder of the Citizens for Decent Literature, and President Richard Nixon's only appointee to the eighteen-member panel commissioned by former president Lyndon Johnson to produce the report, disputed the findings and petitioned a federal court in Washington, D.C., to issue a temporary restraining order preventing the publication of the final report, which called for the legalization of all pornography in the United States.
On November 11, 1970, copies of Greenleaf Classics' 352-page The Illustrated Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography were published, and two weeks later, on Monday, December 13, 1970, went on sale throughout the U.S. for $12.50.
Hamling, Greenleaf, and Reed were also charged with two counts of shipping obscene matter by truck from San Diego to Dallas.
[41] On June 21, 1973, following the Supreme Court of the United States decision in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, Hamling immediately ceased publishing works with pictorial content and withdrew from the marketplace vast numbers of such books which had been distributed prior to that date.
"It's hell to go to jail knowing I'm an honorable man," said Hamling to Los Angeles Times newspaper reporter Gregg Kilday in an interview following the Supreme Court announcement.
A question of personal taste and legal ambiguity that swings the scales of justice 5 to 4 either way, as capricious as the changing wind at sunset.
[46] On January 5, 1976, by court order, all involvement in any aspect of producing pornography by all members indicted, charged, and convicted, and now imprisoned, ceased.
Hamling was also ordered to pay a total of $87,000 in fines ($43,000 for Reed, $12,000 for Library Services, $10,000 for the conspiracy charge, and $2,000 for each of the 11 counts of mailing an obscene brochure.
[49] Of the original 21 indictments, all four Greenleaf company officers and the two corporations were convicted of the same twelve counts on Monday, February 7, 1972, following a two-month jury trial.
[51] Novelist Victor J. Banis, one of Hamling's authors, says that once Greenleaf proved how much of a market there was for erotic gay fiction, other publishers soon joined in.
