"Youth In Danger"- Anyone Know About This Book?!?

[dgillock]

So, I was running around the NYC Flea-Markets today and I picked up this 1956 book called "Youth In Danger". It was written by Robert C. Hendrickson, a US Senator (from NJ), who sat on the infamous Senate investigation into comicbooks:

Front cover:

Back cover:

 

It includes a chapter called "Exposing Horror Comics" (chapter 12, p 193-227), which is mostly made up of testimony from the hearings, but is interesting because it was assembled by someone actually involved in the dialogue. Sadly, no pictures (aside from the UP picture on the BC which I believe I've seen before), but still an interesting take on the proceedings. His account of the testimony by Bill Gaines in especially thorough with a number of quotations and info. tid-bits that I have never herard before.

 

I consider myself pretty well schooled in this period of comicbook history (a la SOTI, POP, etc.), but I've never seen any mention of this book. Curious if this is a "new find" or if others are well-aware that it existed as a piece of source material for the history of comic industry legislation.

 

If folks are interested, I'd be happy to transcribed the relevent text.

Publishing Info:

Youth In Danger, Hendrickson, Robert C., w/ Fred Cook. Harcourt, Brace, and Company. New York, 1956. LOC #56-6658.

[Point Five]

Wow, cool book, Doug. Never seen it before either! Great pickup for the back cover alone!

[Comicdey]

I've never seen it. Very cool.

[markseifert]

Great find.

[dgillock]

First 5 pages of Chapter 12, "Exposing Horror Comics":

________________________________________

One of the most atrocious youth crimes committed in our nation, a savagery so wanton and so vicious that it created a shock wave of horror from coast to coast and became the subject of speculation and analysis in most of our leading magazines, occurred in Brooklyn in August 1954.

 

Four youths, ranging in age from fifteen to eighteen, were arrested and accused of conducting a unique reign of terror in Brooklyn parks. They horsewhipped teenaged girls whom they found loitering in dark places with their lovers. They touched lighted cigarettes to the feet of derelicts asleep on park benches. They poured gasoline on one man and then flipped a lighted match at him, turning him into a living torch and almost taking his life. They aroused, burned, and beat another sleeper, then escorted him to an East River dock and shoved him to his death in the river. When the four were rounded up after this last climactic deed, the leader of the gang, eighteen-year-old Jack Koslow, gave authorities a statement that made parents across the nation shudder.

 

"I have an abstract hatred of bums," he said. "I despise them. They are parasites on society and should all be removed. This night [the night of the murder] has been a supreme adventure for me."

 

It was not known at the time, but subsequent in vestigations disclosed that the pattern of sadism followed by this Brooklyn youth gang had been blue-printed almost word for word and act for act in a cheap pulp publication entitled Nights of Horror. A complete file of Nights of Horror was found in Jack Koslow's possession. It had been well thumbed.

 

Study of the publication by investigators revealed that it depicted a youth gang committing just such atrocities as those in which Koslow and his associates had indulged. Even Koslow's words, which had so shocked our nation—This night has been a supreme adventure for me"—were parroted from the lips of a character in Nights of Horror.

 

This is probably as striking a single instance as can be found of the close connection between abnormal printed stimulus and abnormal youth action. I cite it here because one of the most difficult problems we faced in our investigation was the necessity of determining what importance to attach to the flood of sadistic and abnormal suggestion that is being placed on our newsstands before the eyes of our teen-agers.

 

As our committee went about the nation investigating the causes of juvenile delinquency, witness after witness stressed the dangers inherent in the multimillion-copy spate of lurid comic books that are placed upon our newsstands each month. Many experts advanced the belief that this kind of printed, visual suggestion had led to some of the more violent and incredibly vicious youth crimes that had so shocked our nation.

 

Our committee decided, therefore, to devote a special phase of our investigation to this problem. Before I tell you some of the things that we discovered, let me make a few basic points clear.

 

We began this investigation with no intent to impose censorship or to curb the historic freedom of the press, which is one of the cornerstones of democracy. But we felt that, if this right is being abused to justify the printing of erotic and sadistic suggestion, the American public and the parents of America should know about

it.

 

We entered this part of our investigation with no preconceived idea that comic books, in themselves, are bad. But we did feel it was conceivable that comic books which are not comic, but are erotic explorations into all kinds of depravity and unnatural horror, could have an unhealthy influence on the minds of the children who were devouring their contents so avidly. And, finally, we were under no delusion that the reading of comic books was a basic cause of juvenile delinquency. From the Gluecks' exhaustive studies and other expert testimony, we were convinced that the basic causes lay deep within the family lives of delinquent youths. But we did want to know if it was possible for a disturbed and potentially delinquent youth, exposed to the abnormal visual stimulus of vividly illustrated horror comics, to be impelled to turn fantasy into fact and to commit some of those wild excesses that have marked the conduct of our worst youth element today.

 

Within this framework, then, we set out to explorethe potentialities of comic books. And we quickly learned that the printing of crime and horror comics is a large, exceptionally remunerative business.

 

The pattern for present-day comic books was set in 1935 when New Fun, a sixty-four-page collection printed in four colors, appeared on the newsstands. This

was followed by Action Comics in 1938 and Superman Quarterly Magazine in 1939. These were the pioneers in what became, almost overnight, a mammoth industry. By the most conservative of estimates, there were about 150 comic-book titles on the newsstands in 1940, and annual revenues had grown to over $20,000,000.

 

This was only the beginning. Ten years later, some 300 comic-book titles were being issued and annual revenues had reached nearly $41,000,000. And just three years later, in 1953, there were 650 comic books being published and their gross had risen to about $60,000,000.

 

We are concerned here with only a portion of this huge industry—the section that specializes in the production of lurid crime and horror comics. This, however, is no inconsiderable part of the industry. The best statistics available to our committee indicated that, by the spring of 1954, over 30,000,000 copies of crime and horror comic books were being printed each month.

 

This was about one-fifth of the total output of the comic-book industry, and our experts estimated that, if only 50 per cent of the printed crime and horror books

were sold by retailers—an exceedingly low percentage —the annual gross revenue would reach about $18,000,000.

 

Against this general background, let us now examine some of the crime and horror comics being sold to any child who has a dime with which to buy them. I would like to say at the outset that the examples I am about to cite are not unusual or extreme. We saw many that were more horrible; these, I would say, are typical.

 

Richard Clendenen, the executive director of our committee, had prepared colored slides of these typical crime and horror comics, and he threw the illustrations on a screen at the opening of our hearings in New York, where the editorial and publishing offices of the nation's comic-book industry are concentrated. Mr. Clendenen accompanied the slides with a running commentary, outlining the plot and content of some of the stories.

 

"The first such crime comic is entitled 'Black Magic,'" he said. "Now one story in this comic is entitled 'Sanctuary,' and the cover shots relate to this particular story. You will note that this shot shows certain inhabitants of this sanctuary which is really a sort of sanitarium for freaks where freaks can be isolated from other persons in society."

_______________________________________

 

I'll post more as I can get the pages scanned in- Thank You OCR for making this so easy! Hope you all enjoy this.

[markseifert]

 

"The first such crime comic is entitled 'Black Magic,'" he said. "Now one story in this comic is entitled 'Sanctuary,' and the cover shots relate to this particular story. You will note that this shot shows certain inhabitants of this sanctuary which is really a sort of sanitarium for freaks where freaks can be isolated from other persons in society."

_______________________________________

 

I'll post more as I can get the pages scanned in- Thank You OCR for making this so easy! Hope you all enjoy this.

 

Hey, thanks for sharing this stuff. Very interesting. I've been fascinated with this little chapter of comics history over the years, and had the opportunity to look over Seduction, Parade, the Senate Subcomittee report, and a few magazine articles of the era several years ago.

 

It gives one pause about the care taken in the investigations that he can single out Black Magic as an example in both the pic and the text and call it a crime comic in the text -- and after all the examination of the medium which the hearing supposedly entailed. A fine point to an industry outsider I suppose, but still.

[esquirecomics]

Ok, rub it in further. Let me guess, you paid $5!

 

Great find!

[rjpb]

Cool! - It would be fun to recreate that presentation board on the BC

[dgillock]

Ok, rub it in further. Let me guess, you paid $5!

 

Great find!

 

Well, actually I paid $10, so there! Happy you guys are enjoying this. I'll get some more posted tomorrow.