Joel J. Tyler, Judge Who Pronounced ‘Deep Throat’ Obscene, Dies at 90
Joel J. Tyler, who as a Manhattan judge ruled, in a particularly explicit and colorful opinion, that the pornographic film “Deep Throat” was obscene and that the New York City theaters showing it were breaking the law, inadvertently helping it become perhaps the most popular X-rated movie of all time, died in Yonkers on Nov. 9. He was 90.
The cause was a heart attack, his daughter Alexandra said. She said the family did not report his death until now because her father did not want the acknowledgment. But in the weeks after his death, she said, she and her sister, Lisa, “came to feel overwhelmingly that he deserved it.”
Judge Tyler, a former city commissioner of licenses, had been on the Criminal Court bench for four years when “Deep Throat” opened at the New Mature World Theater on West 49th Street on June 12, 1972. The film, about a woman whose quest for sexual satisfaction is frustrated until she discovers that her clitoris is in her throat, almost immediately became a touchstone in the culture wars of the day.
On one side was outrage over the film’s flagrant and unashamed depiction of sex acts; on the other was cheering for its daring to confront social taboos and to present a woman’s sexual needs as being equally robust as a man’s.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/nyregion/joel-j-tyler-judge-who-ruled-deep-throat-obscene-dies-at-90.html?pagewanted=all
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