A few weeks ago, I talked about the Parkway News adult bookstore on Lisbon and I’ve previously written on the incredible run of Deep Throat at the Parkway Theatre. In the process of researching the Parkway and other theaters like it, I managed to acquire some of the FBI’s internal documents on Deep Throat, including five great pages relating to the raid at the Parkway. Since I did not get much of a chance to go into detail on the raid in the article, I’d like to talk a bit about it here and—for the first time ever publically—present the FBI memo detailing the sweep.
Page 1. The film had been showing at the Parkway for more than two months before the feds took action. While locals had been protesting the theater since late January, 1973, it was not until after a judge in New York ruled the film obscene that the FBI began to consider the operators of the Parkway for prosecution. With a declaration of obscenity on the picture, it was now possible that, in arranging for transportation of the physical reels of the film across state lines, the Parkway’s management had conspired to violate federal law. On these grounds, agents obtained a search warrant and on March 6, 1973, identified themselves to a Parkway employee and commenced to search the theater.
Page 2. Someone at the theater, however, had been tipped off about the raid. Despite having just completed a showing of Deep Throat, the film canisters in the projection booth were empty. Unable to find the reels, agents settled for a few clippings from the movie found in a trash can, likely trimmed from the lead or tail ends of the reels when staff members were preparing them for projection.
Page 3. This page presents the story of a local cop assigned to stand guard on the theater during the raid. It would be my guess that the Parkway employee he talks with was the projectionist. And this employee’s story is quite intriguing: an unidentified New Yorker whom he has never seen before gathers up reels five minutes after the end of the show and just twenty minutes before the feds arrive. According to my sources, the film never actually left the building but was kept in a secret location, evidently hidden by the man from New York City. Interestingly, the film was financed with New York mob money and was allegedly distributed by mob-connected companies. The Parkway’s lawyer in the legal matter surrounding Deep Throat was colorful Milwaukee attorney Dominic Frinzi, who also represented Milwaukee mob boss Frank P. Balistrieri and his mob connections allegedly ran very deep.
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Pages 4 & 5. I recently read, for the third or fourth time, Hampton Sides’ excellent Hellhound on His Trail, which details the FBI’s efforts to track down the killer of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The detective work in that case was amazing, certainly among the finest work the FBI has ever done. And here in Milwaukee, less than five years later, an FBI agent was in his downtown office, typing up descriptions for a handful of snips from a sex film that were found in a trash can. You can tell from these captions that the agent who wrote them is pretty familiar with the movie, adding character names and context. It is highly likely that this agent and perhaps others had been regular customers at the Parkway, detailing the allegedly obscene content of this film and others. All in the line of duty, I guess.
The week after the trash can raid, while everyone from the Parkway’s manager to the young woman who worked behind the candy counter was ordered before a grand jury to testify as to the movement of the Deep Throat reels across state lines, Frinzi filed a motion in federal court, asking them to order the FBI to return the clips they had seized from the garbage. The case was eventually dropped.
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