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Martin Hodas introduced the first Times Square peep shows while managing a vending machine route in Brooklyn.

"One day," says Hodas, "I was talking to this repair guy over on Tenth Avenue near 42nd, and the guy says, 'I bet you could do something with these old film machines.' They were like nickelodeons. So you could say, the modern peep show was born by accident." (Tales of Times Square, p. 74)

Hodas bought 13 of the machines and installed them in bookstores whose hardest material was nudie pictures. Martin's machines played loops of naked dancing girls. Customers flocked in and demanded more explicit fare, driving a porno takeover of Times Square. Smut peddlers like Hodas bought up leases, paying up to $5000 for 600 square feet.

Most of the early hardcore loops came from the West Coast though Hodas eventually shot his own grainy product such as Flesh Party and Elevator Orgy. In 1970, the Mine-Cine, in the Wurlitzer Building on 42nd Street, charged spectators for studio tours of sex loops filmed in progress. (Tales)

The mob muscled into the business in 1968. By March, Hodas competed with John "Sonny" Franceze, a family boss who oversaw numerous peeps. Between 1968-71, Hodas paid $150,000 in mob protection. The returns were far larger, enabling him to set up operations in other cities.

Martin entered the "massage" business in 1971, turning three adult book stores into parlors. He drilled holes in the walls of The Harem to check the money exchanges between girls and customers.

The parlors typically pulled in $5000 a week. By 1971 the cops estimated that 90% of the storefronts and parlors were now mob-financed, as opposed to 1967, when Hodas paid his own way. The mobsters didn't bother with street prostitution, though when several black pimps opened parlors in 1971 without paying the mob, their shops got firebombed out of existence. (Tales of Times Square, p. 143)

In 1972, journalist Gail Sheehy figured out who really owned the real estate of Times Square. The true landlord for Hodas' Harem massage parlor, for instance, was Sol Goldman, of Goldman-DiLorenzo, one of the 1984 Forbes 400's half-billionaires of real estate. Goldman's properties hosted more than a dozen peeps, massage parlors and whore houses. (NY Times Magazine, 11/13, 11/20/72)

In 1971, Hodas was shot in his office by gangland thugs. His massage parlors were nailed by a series of bombings. In 1972, Hodas was charged with trying to bribe a police sergeant.

Rattled, Martin complained to a reporter that his life was a nightmare. "I wish I could sell out. But with all this heat, nobody wants to buy." (NY Daily News, 4/8/99)

In 1973, Hodas was implicated in the firebombing of a rival massage parlor. His gun permit was revoked and then he was convicted of illegal possession of a firearm. In 1975, he was convicted of income tax evasion. He spent ten months in prison. Martin's attorney told the judge at sentencing that Hodas' wife had suffered a nervous breakdown. He had witnessed, said the lawyer, "the virtual destruction of this man and his family."

In 1984 Hodas went to jail again, this time for distribution pornographic videotapes across state lines and into Canada. After his year behind bars, he began selling off his empire. "I don't want to have anything to do every again with the porn business," he said. "It's shown me nothing but misery." (Daily News, 4/8/99)

Mafia associate Martin Hodas, the flamboyant entrepreneur who introduced the coin-operated peep machines to Times Square, transforming 42nd Street into a porno-amusement park, returned with three sprawling emporiums in 1994.

According to the New York Daily News, the reemergence of Hodas is the most striking revelation in its 1994 investigation of the storefront porn industry which seemed to be dying a slow death but steady death in the late '80s, "but has become a neighborhood scourge across the city. The City Planning Commission counts 177 storefront sex shops, a figure even higher than in the mid-'70s, when the Times Square scene was still close to its height.

"Behind the increase is a dramatic transformation in the sex industry. No longer is it the sole domain of the mob, whose grip has been weakened by rubouts and prosecutions."

The investments of Hodas placed him in direct competition with Mafia associate Richard Basciano and threatened New York's makeover of Times Square.

At one time, Richard owned eleven sex shops in the area, employing 400 people.

By 1996, Basciano and Hodas made peace with City plans to transform the area and sold their shops.

Copyright 1995 Daily News, L.P. Daily News (New York) November 12, 1995, Sunday SECTION: News; Pg. 21 LENGTH: 730 words HEADLINE: PEEP SHOW KING EYES NEW TIMES BYLINE: By DAVE SALTONSTALL BODY:

Martin Hodas, the so-called Peep Show King of Times Square, was trying to explain why he has not spoken to a reporter in 20 years about New York City, about the business of pornography and how he once changed both forever. "Remember the witches of Salem?" began Hodas over lunch last week. "Try defending yourself in a situation like that."

"When the world is trying to build a scapegoat for an entire industry, your words always get twisted and turned, so I found out it is better just not to talk. But right now I am 64, and I'm just trying to roll with the punches."

Today, Hodas' empire has dwindled to almost nothing following a conviction for transporting obscene videos in 1985. It was then that he got out of the porn business entirely, only to return in a much smaller way in 1993.

Over a lunch of roast chicken and French fries at Cafe Un Deux Trois on the edge of Times Square last week, Hodas called himself an investor in what is believed to be three porn shops The Playpen II in the old Adonis Theater on Eighth Ave. between 43d and 44th Sts., the Playground on 41st St. and Peep-O-Rama on 42d St. He also has a stake in the original Playpen on 43d St., which the state condemned earlier this year.

"I have an interest in a couple of places, but I don't even come in," said Hodas, dressed in casual denim pants and a striped shirt, unbuttoned just enough to expose a shock of gray chest hair and a heavy gold necklace. Between sips of Diet Coke he spoke of a changing industry, one run today mostly by Sri Lankans and Indians rather than the wiseguys of yesteryear. He also spoke darkly of his own run-ins with the Mafia, which once kidnaped his young son as a warning over his independence. Two mobsters picked up the child from nursery school, bought him ice cream, then dropped him at home with a note for daddy. "Hi Marty," it read. "Just to let you know we're thinking very seriously of you."

Unlike fellow Times Square porn king Richard Basciano who will get nearly $ 14 million for four midtown properties condemned by the state Hodas owns no Times Square buildings anymore. The only state buyout he will profit from is at the Playpen, where, as a tenant, Hodas and his fellow investors will receive some money something in the five-figure range, he said for improvements they had done to the building before it was condemned. All of what Hodas once owned he sold in 1985 to Basciano at roughly one-third the price Basciano is receiving from the state. "I am not sorry," he said, betraying no bitterness. "Now I have two grandchildren and one coming, and if they knock me out of business, I'll just spend more time with my three grandchildren."