The adult film actor Jamie Gillis died ten years ago this week.

I started The Rialto Report because I wanted to show that there was much more to the world of adult films than just adult films. And Jamie was one of the best examples of that.

Jamie was one of the great performers in film history, but he was much more than that. He was a French literature graduate, a theater actor, mime artist, traveler, gambler, writer, lover of fine food, and much more. He was someone who enjoyed life and lived it to the full. I knew him well, yet every time I saw him, I discovered a new story about him.

This is one of those stories.

This episode’s running time is 45 minutes.

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Jamie Gillis

On April 20^th, 2008, I went over to Jamie’s house to celebrate his 65^th birthday.

He lived in a townhouse in midtown Manhattan, and his girlfriend, who owned a Mexican restaurant, cooked a meal for the two of us. Afterwards we went over to the Garden to see a boxing card. Jamie knew the promoter so we had ringside seats, and we sat down next to glittering stars such Eric Estrada, Eric Trump, and Dr Ruth.

Somehow watching two people covered in sweat, engaging in strenuous physical activity in front of us, seemed an appropriate night out to have with a porn star like Jamie Gillis. It seemed even more appropriate when I saw Dr. Ruth offering advice to Jamie. If only she knew who she was talking to, I thought.

As we left the hall, five or six kids barely into their 20s rolled towards us, a mass of uncontrolled arms, legs, beers and burgers.

I stepped to the side, but one of them stopped in his tracks, frozen to the spot. He’d seen Jamie.

Jamie looked back with a wry smile as the kid started pointing at him.

They clearly recognized him, and they probably wanted a selfie or an autograph with their porn hero, one of the greats of the adult film industry.

Then the kid shouted out: “You! I know you! You’re the one who fucked Vanessa del Rio!”

Jamie looked slightly disappointed, and then bemused. “Maybe that’s the best I could wish for,” he said as we left the building. “Because I’m definitely the one who fucked Vanessa Del Rio”.

When we grabbed a drink afterwards, I asked Jamie about the kid’s reaction. And I asked him about how people treated him because of his adult film history.

Jamie said that it was a mixed response. The adult industry was a bubble: within it, he was well-known, respected, almost an elder statesman. And that lulled him into a false sense of security. It obscured the way that the rest of the world reacted to him. He called the rest of the world, ‘the Perfect People’, with more than a small amount of irony. The Perfect People were different. At best, they looked at him with indifference. More often they were cold and contemptuous.

I asked him when he first became aware of the way that the Perfect People looked down on him.

Jamie got a faraway look in his eyes. “When I was arrested for murder,” he said.

And then he told me the story. He didn’t talk about it much, but it changed his life and he still lived with it. It was the story of three people whose lives intersected one summer’s night: there was an aspiring supermodel, there was a famous Canadian radio and television presenter, and then there was Jamie, a renowned porn star.

It all came together June 1982 in a New York townhouse at 246 East 23^rd St. And none of them would be the same afterwards.

*

Marie-Josée Saint-Antoine

Let’s face it, the 1980s was the decade when America became a spoiled brat.

It was the time of ‘The Art of the Deal’, ‘Barbarians at the Gate’, and Gordon Gekko’s pumped-up mantra that ‘Greed is Good’. And lo Reaganomics begat disposable income, which begat rampant consumerism, which begat materialism, which begat the Sony Walkman, Air Jordans, and Jennifer Beals in a baggy sweatshirt.

Yes, the Greed Decade was materialistic, claustrophobic, and obsessed with escaping the past: no wonder its first major craze was Pac Man, a computer game about a character who devours dots in a maze while trying to escape ghosts.

So it was inevitable that the fashion world was similarly brash and superficial, a mess of shoulder pads, big hair, spandex, and mullets that consigned subtlety and minimalism to the past.

Amidst the plastic fakery stood Marie-Josée Saint-Antoine – and someone like Marie-Josée Saint-Antoine really stood out.

Marie-Josée was the real deal, the new kid on the block, the next big thing, and the future It Girl – all rolled into one.

When the decade started, she was a 21-year-old unknown brunette from a middle-class family in Montreal, Canada. She was a happy-go-lucky, friendly kid, popular and gregarious, innocent and unaffected by the world around her. She was normal too: her middle-of-the-road life was a dime-a dozen existence with a run-of-the-mill future. She would’ve continued down any number of paths if it hadn’t been for one striking quality: she was knock-out, drag-down gorgeous. Sure, she’d always been pretty, but as she grew into an adult, she was transformed into a tall, lithe beauty that made grown men sigh. Which was a big deal, because this was the decade when physical beauty like hers could be monetized.

It was the start of the era of the super model, the new million dollar faces of the beauty industry. Forget film stars: models like Shelley Hack, Iman, and Cheryl Tiegs were the new symbols of luxury and wealth. They negotiated previously unheard-of lucrative deals with giant cosmetics companies, and they became instantly recognizable. For the first time, they endorsed products with their names, not just their faces.

So naturally Marie-Josée was curious. She wondered if she could get in on the action. And why not? People told her she was most beautiful girl in Montreal. So she picked up a few local modeling gigs, and before long she was snapped up by the prestigious Ford Model agency. There was only one catch: if she wanted to be a success, they told her she had to move out of Canada and go to New York.

The move made sense professionally, as well as personally. New York, along with Paris, was the epicenter of the universe for any aspiring model. But more than that, Marie-Josée had outgrown Montreal, and she wanted to see the world, the glamour, for herself. She was sad to leave close friends behind, after all she’d known some of them her whole life. One confidante was Paule Charbonneau who was her closest childhood girlfriend. They’d gossip about friends, boys, clothes, and parties. But New York was only an hour’s flight from her hometown, and she had every intention of nipping back to catch up with Paule between jobs.

In late 1980, she packed her bags, and arrived inManhattan. She moved into an anonymous fourth floor walk-up apartment in the Gramercy Park area, and started modeling work straight away.

Marie-Josée found instant success, appearing on the cover of tens of magazines in the first few months, and reportedly earning well over $100,000 a year. At first glance, Marie-Josée looked like a typical 1980s model with her frosted dark bouffant hair and exaggerated make-up – think Sheena Easton in Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted To Love’ video – but there was more to her than that. She had an X-Factor that could sell a product – whether it was cosmetics, clothes, or a sports car. The bigger magazine titles noticed, and the size of her gigs – and paychecks – increased. John Casablanca, the owner of Elite Models spotted her. Elite Models was a cooler, younger agency that was on the crest of a wave. Marie-Josée was offered a big money opportunity with them, and she took it. Now she was an Elite girl. This meant she was in demand socially too, attending parties where she rubbed shoulder pads with the celebrities of the day.

And so it came down to what happened in June 1982. On June 16^th, she went to a party at Xenon, a fancy nightclub that was big in New York at the time. The event was thrown by Elite Models, and it was attended by New York royalty – which in 1982 meant John Kennedy Jr, Tony Curtis, Grace Jones, and Valerie Perrine, among others. Marie-Josée danced all evening, made new friends, and picked up a few telephone numbers from admirers. She was happy with how her new life was turning out: she had a career, attention, friends and money.

After the party, she returned to her apartment at 246 East 23^rd St.

*

Alain Montpetit

If Marie-Josée was a symbol of a wide-eyed and innocent girl-made-good in Montreal, Alain Monpetit couldn’t have been more different.

A charismatic, attractive rake of a man – ten years older than Marie-Josée when the 1980s started – Alain was already a famous television and radio personality in Quebec, Canada. Year after year he was placed on numerous ’The 10 Best Looking’ lists.

Alain just seemed to be a lucky guy: for a start, he’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. His grandfather was Édouard Montpetit, founder of one of the faculties at the University of Montreal, and his father was a prominent judge on the Quebec Superior Court. The 1970s was an era where that kind of background could perhaps be considered uncool, but not for Alain. He was proud on his monied roots, boasting that he never had to do a real day’s work in his life. He made no excuses for not being a working-class hero. No surprise he was frequently referred to as the “poor little rich boy”.

As a teen he studied at the National Theatre School of Canada before heading to California to attend UCLA. He got experience in radio working at KMET in Los Angeles, and then ran a pirate radio station near the Canada–United States border. But by the mid-1970s, he was bored. He was aimless, kicking around, acting in theater and the odd exploitation film, such as Luigi Scattini’s The Night of the High Tide (1977). He was, by his own account, living off cigarettes, cocaine and whiskey.

But Alain was always engaging, sexy, and entertaining, and he could talk the hind legs off a donkey. When he returned to Montreal in his mid 20s, he became the host of a radio show on CKMF-FM at the start of the disco craze. It proved to be the perfect job for him: Alain was in the right place at the right time.

Montreal in the 1970s was a city of broken dreams, riven by demands for French-speaking separatism, a billion-dollar deficit created by the 1976 Olympics, and chronic local government financial mismanagement. Montrealers needed distractions, and so disco music became a salvation of sorts and discotheques their new cathedrals. The nightclub business boomed: as burlesque superstar Lili St Cyr noted, “Every night in Montreal is like New Year’s Eve in New York!” And if there was one thing that Alain liked, it was a party.

When Alain first joined CKMF-FM, the station was in dire straits, with low listener numbers, and even lower numbers of advertisers. But thanks to his shows, he grew the audience from under 50,000 to over 500,000, and as a result became a star. Overnight he was a flamboyant jet-setting playboy. The television channels snapped him up, and he started hosting a disco dance show on Montréal’s private French-language TV station, Télé-Métropole. There he became known for his one-off specials with disco icons such as the Village People and Amanda Lear. He even released his own disco single called ‘Dracula Disco’. The Quebecois couldn’t get enough of him, and he was dubbed the ‘King of Disco’ by the admiring Montreal media.

The irony was that Alain didn’t even like disco music. He was a child of the 1960s, and found the idea of a 15-minute dance version of a song to be vaguely ridiculous. But he rode the wave – he was an expert at taking advantage of an opportunity – and that included receiving sizable payments in cash, or piles of drugs, from club owners for spending time at their establishments.

Most nights he’d be found at the Lime Light club, the center of the Montreal disco scene, which rivaled New York’s Studio 54, attended by stars like Alice Cooper, Grace Jones, James Brown, David Bowie and Iggy Pop.

His most frequent wingman at the Lime Light was another iconic Canadian disco radio and TV personality, Douglas ‘Coco’ Leopold, who also worked for CKMF-FM. Coco was openly gay, and took the nickname because he peppered his speech with the word ‘Coco’ as a form of punctuation. Together Alain and Coco were ubiquitous on the disco scene: they were in the clubs, in demand, and in the money.

Ostensibly Alain was married – to a classical ballet dancer named Nanci Moretti, and had two children with her – but in truth he was a serial philanderer, having affairs with many other women, including a brief fling with Marie-Josée Saint-Antoine before she left for New York. One of his more serious affairs was with Paule Charbonneau, Marie-Josée’s best friend back in Montreal. Alain and Paule’s relationship was a turbulent one, characterized by frequent arguments, physical fights, and regular break-ups. Marie-Josée followed the soap opera of their love affair from a distance, and on one of her regular visits back to Quebec, she convinced Paule to break up with Alain for good.

As so it came to June 1982. Alain traveled to the US. He was visiting record companies, night clubs, investors and girlfriends. He also had some personal business to deal with.

On 17^th June 1982, he was at 246 East 23^rd Street in Manhattan.

*

Jamie Gillis

By the 1980s, Jamie Gillis was on top of the world, though by his own admission, his world was a small one.

He was entering his second decade as a porn actor, and not just any porn actor. He was the pre-eminent fuck-thespian on the east coast, winner of various Best Actor awards – one of which he claimed he won by finishing ahead of a dog and telegraph pole. The sweaty skin flick industry had become almost unrecognizable since its early days. Gone were the anonymous films – and Jamie’s equally anonymous roles – such as The Blowhard (‘guy on rug in blue’) or Sometime Sweet Susan (‘Rapist # 1’). He’d recently starred in a string of XXX hits, including The Ecstasy Girls (1979), 800 Fantasy Lane (1979), Dracula Exotica (1981), and even had a part in the Sylvester Stallone vehicle, Nighthawks (1981).

But porn success came with a price. Such as the time when Jamie’s sister complained to him that she had to abort an amorous interlude with her boyfriend in front of their new-acquired VCR when Jamie’s smirking O-face appeared onscreen engage in explicit action in front of them. But what Jamie resented most was the social opprobrium that came with the job. Or as Jamie termed it, the far-away look of disgust in someone’s eyes the moment they learned that his living was earned by getting a hard-on on demand. For a guy who’d once envisioned a career in theater, the notoriety, not to mention contempt, that accompanied his career choice was hard to swallow.

But Jamie was pragmatic: in general, his porn perks outweighed his porn problems. He was never short of female company for example, and somehow managed to stay on good terms with his ex-girlfriends – from fellow porn actress Serena, to New York magazine food critic Gael Greene, even his first love Kathleen from a different lifetime when he was a French literature student at Columbia University in the mid 1960s.

In fact he turned to Kathleen in 1982, when he found himself briefly homeless. Kathleen’s mother had just passed away, and she was living alone in a Manhattan apartment. Jamie made her an offer she couldn’t refuse: he’d pay her full rent in return for the pleasure of sleeping on the fold-out couch in her living room which he’d turn back into a couch every day. Kathleen worked during the day, meaning that Jamie had privacy to indulge in his twin passions: entertaining female company on the couch, usually his new girlfriend Vallerie, and betting his dwindling porn earnings gambling on horses.

Jamie’s church was the racetrack, his Jesus was Len Ragozin, and his bible was The Sheets. Ragozin was a fellow New Yorker who Jamie knew – a Marxist, anti-war, Harvard grad with an IQ of 180, who published a daily newsletter, The Sheets, a handicapping tool prized by serious players. It cost a steep $30 a day, but Jamie swore by it, and went to sleep with it every night, studying the next day’s races, and formulating a winning gambling strategy. It mattered not a bit: next day came, and Jamie consistently lost a bundle.

So each night, he’d return, penniless again, to the fold-out couch at Kath’s apartment at 246 East 23^rd Street.

*

Three Lives, One Death

246 East 23^rd Street. June 17^th, 1982. The lives of Marie-Josée Saint-Antoine, Alain Montpetit, and Jamie Gillis coincide.

Jamie knew Marie-Josée because she lived in one of the other apartments in the building. They exchanged the occasional pleasantry when they ran into each other. Jamie liked her. He didn’t much know her, but he liked her. He thought she was high-class and gorgeous obviously, so of course he liked her. Marie-Josée once told him she’d just broken up with her boyfriend. She said solemnly, “I am too young to be unhappy.” Jamie and Kathleen smiled when they repeated the story.

Alain knew Marie-Josée from the Montreal scene. They’d hardly been in touch since their brief fling, but Alain followed her modeling success through his on-off lover, Marie-Josée’s best friend Paule Charbonneau. When Alain found out that Marie-Josée had encouraged Paule to break off from Alain, he decided to stop by and visit her during his US trip to try and win over her support.

On the evening of June 17^th, 1982, Jamie returned from the New Jersey racetrack, and walked into the apartment building. He noticed a message in French taped on Marie-Josée’s mailbox. Then he noticed a pair of women’s white high-heeled shoes in the hallway.

That evening, Jamie mentioned the shoes to his girlfriend and Kathleen. They decided to go upstairs and ask Marie-Josée if the shoes were hers.

They found her door slightly ajar. When Jamie pushed the door open, he saw Marie-Josée sitting up against a wall. She was wearing blue jeans and a gray-and-white blouse but had no shoes on. She was bruised around the face, and she’d been stabbed several times in the chest: she was clearly dead.

Jamie and Kathleen called the police, and Jamie retrieved the message taped to Marie-Josée’s mailbox. The note was from someone saying they’d stopped by to see her but she didn’t appear to be home. In was written in French, which Jamie translated for the cops. Kathleen remained calm, but Jamie became excited when he figured out a theory: the note said “personne” was home. This meant “nobody”. “Nobody” or “No body”. This was significant he argued. Perhaps the person who wrote the note was the killer – and this person was trying to suggest that there was “no body” when he was there. And perhaps this person was an ex-boyfriend?

The cops were amused by Jamie’s idea – and took him in for questioning.

*

The Investigation

The murder made splashy front page headlines in the city’s tabloid rags, the Daily News and the New York Post. Even the serious New York Times covered it in detail. The crime captured the public imagination: a beautiful model killed in her own home in the heart of the city. Just after she’d partied with the stars, no less.

‘Model Is Found Fatally Stabbed On East 23^rd St’, New York Times, June 19^th 1982:

Inspector Joseph G. DeMartino of the Manhattan Detective Area said that it did not appear that the woman, Marie Josee Saint-Antoine, had been killed during a robbery or burglary. ”There were no signs of a forced entry and the apartment was not ransacked,” he said. There were also, he added, no indications that she had been sexually molested.

The murder weapon was not found, detectives said.

Elite Models issued a statement singing her praises: “Everyone here loved her. She was just a bright wonderful person and all of us at Elite felt great warmth and affection for her.”

Under pressure to crack the high-profile case, the police interviewed over 40 people in the three days after the murder. They had little information. All they knew was that that Marie-Josée had been stabbed eight times in the chest and shoulder sometime between 4:30 p.m. and 5:45 p.m. As there was no evidence that the killer had forced their way into the apartment or that Marie-Josée had put up a struggle, the detectives focused their attention on Marie-Josée’s friends and those who lived in her apartment building, which included Jamie and Kathleen, and the person in the other apartment, a struggling actress named Kim Delaney.

Kim Delaney was a key witness: she’d noticed Marie-Josée’s shoes in the foyer of the apartment building, and she’d also been the last person to see Marie-Josée alive – walking along East 23^rd St just before the murder – accompanied by a dark haired, good-looking male, in his mid to late 30s. Kim’s memory of the guy was good, and she helped a police artist produce a drawing of the suspect.

Within a week, the NYPD had narrowed their interest to two principal suspects: Alain Montpetit and Jamie Gillis.

Alain was taken in for questioning. He resembled the artist’s impression of the killer, and a possible motive was that he was unhappy with Marie-Josée interfering with his love life. Friends revealed that he told them he wanted to convince Marie-Josée to butt out of his entanglement with Paule. The investigators figured that if Marie-Josée refused to play ball, perhaps he snapped, and then he snapped her.

Alain was interviewed by a New York Post reporter, and said that he was shocked at the slaying – and hinted he was worried an inquiry might ruin his rep: “I was completely overwhelmed. I simply didn’t believe that they think that someone like me could be involved,” he said.

But after a short investigation, Alain was rejected as a suspect by the cops: he had a water-tight alibi, provided by a girlfriend in New York, a DJ named Jackie Lee. She told the investigators she’d been with him for the three days around the murder. He’d never left her side. How could she be so sure? Easy… they were having sex in a Manhattan hotel the whole time.

So that left investigators with their remaining suspect: Jamie Gillis. He too looked like the police identikit picture of the murderer. As for the motive… well, the prime suspect was a porn star, a lowlife who preyed on women for money for a living. One cop even said as much to his face: Jamie was a misogynist, a pervert. It wasn’t a stretch to think that he’d want to stab a beautiful woman to death, right?

Jamie was incredulous. He told them he had nothing to do with the murder, that there was nothing linking him to it. He was questioned endlessly for days. Unfortunately he didn’t do himself any favors in the process. First he was given a lie detector test which he failed – twice. Then he was told that his fingerprints were found at the scene. To cap it all, the cops then told him they had a witness who saw him running from the building with a knife. Jamie erupted in anger.

But Jamie too had an alibi – or so he thought: every afternoon, after the day at the racing track was over, he stopped at the LIRR bar for a drink. That would be approximately at the same time the murder was committed, thus ruling him out of the neighborhood at the time of the crime. Investigators were dispatched to the bar, only to learn that on the day of the murder, Jamie had left the track early, skipped his usual trip to the bar, and disappeared for a few hours. In fact no one could vouch for his whereabouts during that time. Theoretically he would’ve had enough time to kill Marie-Josée.

Jamie was living in a nightmare, an existential crisis: he asked people who he knew whether they thought he was even capable of such an act. Some said that it was a possibility, which made him wonder if they really knew him. Other friends abandoned him, and refused to return his calls when they learned of his arrest.

Some were more supportive: his ex-girlfriend and current roommate, Kathleen, told him she was certain of his innocence, and after a lengthy police grilling one day, she embraced him and said: “they will take you over my dead body”. His new squeeze, Vallerie, was interviewed by the cops, and said she thought Jamie was innocent and being framed, but then added that the main reason she was sure Jamie didn’t do it was that he was claustrophobic and couldn’t stand the idea of being locked up in prison. The police raised a collective eyebrow.

Jamie’s plight was getting worse by the day. The police relentlessly pursued him, tapping his phone, and obtaining a subpoena for his phone records. They showed him gruesome photos of Marie-Josée’s body hoping to get a remorseful reaction. They asked about his porn films, and whether he’d been involved in a snuff movie. They asked him about how he treated women on set. And they got a search warrant for his apartment, where they found handcuffs, gags, and blindfolds in his drawer. Of course they did: this was Jamie Gillis’ bedroom.

And Jamie didn’t help his own cause: at one point, he told the police he’d never stab anyone to death because he was squeamish about blood. So the investigators asked him how he would’ve killed Marie-Josée, and so Jamie said that perhaps he’d use a baseball bat. What’s more he added, it couldn’t be him: he’d never kill a pretty girl without first sexually molesting her. One of the detectives looked at him coldly in disgust, and said: “You shouldn’t have said that.” Damn right.

Jamie’s lack of self-awareness and restraint extended to his ignorance of the legal process. One day, the cops asked him if he was ready to make a statement. Jamie agreed enthusiastically. He figured he was being given the opportunity to put the record straight. So he was taken to a police room where the district attorney and a camera were waiting, and told: “Go ahead and make your confession” Jamie almost fell off his chair. He explained that he was there to proclaim his innocence, not make a confession that he was guilty. The D.A. stormed out, angry with the detectives who had dragged him there for nothing. Jamie looked at the humiliated detectives, and figured that just made them even more determined to nail him.

Jamie had a friend in the NYPD who told him that they were sure that Jamie was the killer, but they just lacked “the clincher”, a final piece of definitive evidence that would make the case against him a slam dunk. Jamie was frantic: he called Gael Greene, an ex-girlfriend and one of the people who’d unquestioningly accepted his innocence. She put him in touch with a high-powered lawyer who’d once been a DA. The lawyer wasn’t happy with the way Jamie had handled the interrogations – in particular, Jamie’s comment that he’d prefer a baseball bat over a knife as his weapon of choice. The attorney told Jamie the cops were already out to get him, and the next time that someone was murdered with a bat, Jamie would be the first suspect.

Nevertheless, the lawyer took on Jamie’s case in a muscular fashion, and slowly the police backed off. Jamie was free to pick up his life again. The case was officially unsolved, and gradually faded away.

*

Montpetit vs. Coco

Alain Montpetit found the murder case difficult to live down too.

He returned to Montreal to pick up where he’d left off: broadcasting on the radio and appearing on television. But there were some who refused to let him forget the murder – and some of these people were among his closest friends.

Douglas ‘Coco’ Leopold, for years his confidante and colleague on radio and in the disco clubs of Montreal, took to the airwaves where he made a startling public announcement. Coco said that he knew Alain was the murderer. He said that he had information that indicated Alain had gone to the US with the specific intention of intimidating Marie-Josée. In her apartment, he’d lost his temper with her, and stabbed her multiple times.

The whole of Montreal waited for Alain’s response, which came swiftly. Alain announced that he was completely innocent, and had nothing to do with murder. He said he had several people who vouched that he was nowhere near the scene of the crime. As a result of the false claims, Alain indicated that he was suing Coco for defamation.

The public argument fascinated fans of both men, and the court case was eagerly anticipated. It was shaping up to be a public inquest on the death of Marie-Josée, but at the last moment it was stopped. Coco backed off suddenly, and admitted he was mistaken. The defamation argument was mysteriously settled out of court when Coco paid Alain $30,000 to compensate him for the damage to his reputation.

*

1987: Death of the Disco King

By June 1987, Alain was running on fumes. Friends observed that since Marie-Josée’s murder, his life had gone downhill and off the rails. He frequently went on air while drunk or under the influence of drugs. The manager of the station advised him to take time off and get help. The station assured him that his job would be there for him when he sorted himself out.

Alain booked himself into rehab, which he was due to start on June 12^th, 1987. Four days before that, he travelled to the U.S. to Washington DC. He walked into a hotel in the city, six blocks from the White House. He had no reservation, and carried only a shoulder bag. The front desk staff remember him as polite, exhausted, and clearly not sober. He ordered a room service drink but went to sleep before consuming it. At noon, the following day, a hotel cleaning woman found him dead.

The autopsy showed that Alain died of cardiac arrest due to an overdose of alcohol and cocaine with traces of morphine. He was 36 years old.

It took two days for the news to trickle back to Montreal media – which announced that police did not suspect play. Alain’s passing was marked by an outpouring of grief from his many fans in Canada. La Presse, a French-language daily newspaper announced “Montreal was a major center of disco in the 1970s, and Alain was the king here”. Few of the obituaries made mention of Marie-Josée.

Alain’s one-time friend and nemesis, Coco, died six years later. He’d turned his career into a commentator of new trends in fashion and lifestyles. He was outspoken about the AIDS crisis, and claimed publicly that he was in perfect health and did not have the disease. Coco was living a lie,. He died on April 6^th, 1993 of AIDS.

In 2011, a film, Funkytown, was released. It was a fictionalized version of Alain and Coco’s relationship, and the disco scene at the Lime Light club.

The movie made no mention of Marie-Josée.

*

2000: Case Re-Opened

Over the years, the murder of Marie-Josée regularly appeared on lists of unsolved crimes in the history of New York City. Each article revisited the gruesome details of the murder, and each increased pressure on New York City Police to re-open the case. The truth was that they had no new information, leads, or clues, so the crime files gathered dust.

By 2000, the Cold Case Squad decided to re-open the case, and re-interview all the surviving witnesses.

At this time, Jamie Gillis was living in San Francisco. He was in his late 50s, still in the adult film business, but his output had slowed down considerably.

One of his favorite haunts was a coffee shop, Caffe Greco in North Beach, which is where he was when he was approached by four cops. One of them asked if he was Jamie Gillis. Jamie assumed that he wanted an autograph. Not so. When Jamie identified himself, the cops forcibly picked him up, took him outside, tied his hands behind his back, and handcuffed him to a bench – where he was held for several hours. Drinkers in the coffee shop were shocked. They asked what was going on, and the arresting officers said that Jamie was wanted in New York for a murder that had taken place nearly 20 years ago.

Jamie was taken to the precinct where the officers tried to reach the detectives in NYC. After several hours in a jail cell, Jamie was released without any explanation, and told that he may be called in for questioning at a later date.

Jamie was incandescent with anger. The murder case and his own arrest in 1982 still haunted him, and now almost two decades later, it was all being repeated. He got a lawyer and sued the police, claiming harrassment and reached a settlement with them.

Incident report

Jamie takes the police to court

The police didn’t interfere in Jamie’s life after that – not because he’d sued them, but because, unbeknownst to him, the Cold Case Squad had made a breakthrough in the murder case.

One of the people re-interviewed was Alain Montpetit’s old New York girlfriend, Jackie Lee. She stunned the cops with an admission: she confessed that Alain went off by himself for several hours on the afternoon of June 17^th, 1982. She’d lied when she said she was with him at the time of the murder. She’d lied about being in the hotel room with him all the time, and she’d lied about the three days in bed having sex. She’d lied out of love for Alain. She’d lied out of fear when he threatened her. She’d lied because sometimes life is just easier that way.

When news of Jacky Lee’s confession hit newspapers in Montreal, cops suddenly had people coming forward offering new information incriminating Alain. New York detectives flew up to Canada and found two women who told them that Alain had confessed his guilt to them. It was the corroborating evidence they’d been looking for.

The newspapers loved the story. Even more so because Marie-Josée’s former neighbor, Kim Delaney, the actress who’d provided the police with a likeness of the killer, was now a big TV star appearing in NYPD Blue. The press claimed that not only was she a cop on television, but she’d cracked the case by identifying Alain as the killer. It wasn’t true of course, but it made great copy.

Associated Press, December 6, 2002

NEW YORK (AP) _ Twenty years after a rising French-Canadian fashion model was stabbed to death in her apartment, police have named her alleged killer: A top broadcaster known as the king of Montreal’s high-flying early ’80s disco scene.

Radio and television personality Alain Montpetit confessed to at least two women that he attacked Elite agency model Marie-Josée St. Antoine in the foyer of her apartment, New York Police Detective Stefano Braccini said in an interview this week.

Montpetit died of a cocaine overdose in a Washington hotel five years after St. Antoine was killed.

His sister, Francine Montpetit, declined to comment on the allegation when reached at her home near Montreal.

“That’s an old story,” she said. “I’m not interested in commenting.”

*

2009: Aftermath

In 2009, I headed over to midtown Manhattan to see Jamie again, this time going to eat at his girlfriend’s restaurant.

As soon as I saw him, I knew something wasn’t right. He shuffled over to me as if his legs were rigid. He looked like a black and white impression of the person I knew, severe and full of dark shadows. And when I hugged him, all I felt was bones.

We exchanged the usual chit-chat, and then he told me the news: he’d been diagnosed with cancer. He had only a few months left to live. He wanted to spend his last days quietly and refused to tell many of his condition. This wasn’t surprising; he was always a private man. Whenever someone said that he should’ve had a successful career in mainstream films, he always disagreed. Why would he want to be recognized everywhere when all he wanted to do was pursue his particular lifestyle in private without interference? He had no interest in that. And so now here he was: sick, tired, with only a short part of his life remaining.

Over the next few months, we met often. He asked me to be the executor of his will, so we also spoke often by phone. He talked about the meaningful parts of his life, the women, the food, the travel, the sex, the friends. We conversed at length of weighty, important concerns and of inconsequential trivialities. At this stage, there was no distinction between the two. He spoke with happiness about his life. He had no regrets. No unfulfilled wishes. He said he only had reasons to be grateful.

But one night he returned to the time when he’d been a suspect in a murder case. He said it wasn’t something that he told many people: in fact, it was something he tried to avoid because he found it painful. It still affected him: not the disruption, or the actual arrests, or the questioning. And perhaps not even that he’d been accused of a violent crime. It was more that the experience had briefly shown him exactly how he was viewed by others: and that was something that he rarely saw. Never before had he felt that his choice to become a porn actor had made him such a social outcast. People he thought were friends disappeared overnight, they abandoned him thinking that he was mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Within the porn bubble, he was still a star. Outside of it, it turned out he was an easy and credible suspect for murder. That’s what making adult films did for me, he said, and for the rest of his life, he carried that knowledge like a heavy burden.

Jamie wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t one of the Perfect People. He knew that. He never claimed to be. He was one of the first porn stars, and sometime the first person to do something learns difficult lessons that make it a little easier for anyone who comes after.

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The post When Jamie Gillis Was Accused Of Murder… Twice: The Price of Porn Notoriety appeared first on The Rialto Report.

We continue our review of the history of east coast publication Cheri, looking at the magazine’s third year in business: 1978.

These issues include articles and photo spreads with Annie Sprinkle, Cherry Bomb, Jill Monro, Honeysuckle Divine, Fanne Foxe, and many more.

Fully digitized copies of each Cheri magazine can be found in the article below. You can find The Rialto Report’s growing collection of digitized resources by choosing Library in our site menu. 

Click on the covers below to access the full magazines. Due to the fact that the magazines are scanned in high definition, allow time for each page to load. If you are viewing on a phone, view in landscape orientation.

Magazines are fully searchable; use the icon displayed in each magazine to search by keyword.

Publications are being shared here purely for the purpose of research. They should not to be used or reproduced for any commercial gain.

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Cheri: The Complete 1978 Issues

January 1978 (Vol 2, No. 6)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Interview with photographer Eric Kane -Best swing ads -Annie Sprinkle limericks -Model pictorial by Ed Seeman -Portrait of punk band ‘The Sick Fucks’ -Cheri’s crusade for nude beaches -Two years of Midnight Blue

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February 1978 (Vol 2, No. 7)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Best swing ads -Atlantic City pussy pageant -Cherry Bomb & The Dead Boys -Moral depravity quiz –Veri Knotty pictorial -The Happy Cookers pictorial -Nancy & The Slits – a punk rock legend -Model pictorial by Ed Seeman -Fire Island nude beach

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March 1978 (Vol 2, No. 8)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Best swing ads -Erotic bakery –Jill Monro profile -Black’s beach battle -Jimmy Angel & fan pictorial -Loretta Lou profile -Wendy O. Williams profile -A secretary’s revenge -Flashing in Frisco

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April 1978 (Vol 2, No. 9)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-The continuing saga of Jill Monro –Plato’s Retreat party –Honeysuckle Divine profile -The Ballad of Queen Adrena –Al Goldstein wrestling match

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May 1978 (Vol 2, No. 10)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Jill Monro: how to be a woman -The Swinging Turtles -Diana Hardy profile -Puritan profile -Miss Vickie submits -Hooker & ladder -How men’s mags humiliate models -Jane Gross profile -Queen of the fanzines -Miss Mash-Punk

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June 1978 (Vol 2, No. 11)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Gail Palmer column -Best swing ads -69 ways to do the dirty deed -June 1978 Hustler insert -Eating out on the sex circuit

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July 1978 (Vol 2, No. 12)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Best swing ads -Joan Collins profile -Cherry Bomb gives Motorhead

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August 1978 (Vol 3, No. 1)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Jaye P. Morgone profile -The erotic adventures of Gail Palmer -Best swing ads -Nona Hendryx profile -Fellatio follies -Cherry Bomb & The Young Ones -The best cocksucker in the world -Ilah Davis profile

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September 1978 (Vol 3, No. 2)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Sex in Poland -Best swing ads -The great vibrator test –Annie Sprinkle portraits

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October 1978 (Vol 3, No. 3)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Best swing ads -Erotic isometrics -Model pictorials

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November 1978 (Vol 3, No. 4)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

–Fanne Foxe answers letters -S/M report -Miss Nude World

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December 1978 (Vol 3, No. 5)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Best swing ad -Getting down with Irwin Corey -Cheri calendar girls -Church of Satan

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The post Cheri magazine in 1978: <br />The Third Year – An Issue by Issue Guide appeared first on The Rialto Report.

If you popped a porno tape into your VCR anytime from the late 80s on, chances are you’d be watching Randy Spears in action before long. Randy was a good-looking guy with solid acting chops and a talent for comedy, and he made close to 2000 adult movies between 1988 and the early 2010s. He performed with the biggest names in the business, like Sharon Kane, Nina Hartley and Tori Welles – and won a ton of industry awards.

It wasn’t an obvious career choice. Randy started life as a solid midwestern boy, growing up in a churchgoing family. He worked in a nuclear factory before joining the military and becoming an anti-submarine warfare operator. But Randy felt the pull of performing, turning to modeling and acting in commercials before becoming a Chippendales dancer. Lured by Hollywood, he made his way to LA and found some early mainstream success while dating Linda Blair. But in 1988, the writers’ union went on strike and the town shut down for almost half a year. But not the Valley, where porn was thriving and looking for handsome young men who could read lines and come on command.

Hungry for work and money, Randy began nude modeling before eventually making his way into adult films. The business embraced him with open arms and Randy quickly became one of the most prolific actors on the scene. But then after a full 25 years of performing sex on screen, Randy made a very public statement – he was done with porn. Not only that, but he was dedicating himself to becoming a more devout Christian.

On this Rialto Report, April Hall talks to Randy Spears to find out why. It’s a tale of porn and love, drugs and jail, death and god – even a turn into politics when Greg found himself in the middle of Stormy Daniel’s public affair with Donald Trump.

This episode is 101 minutes long.

You can follow Randy on Twitter @itsrandyspears, on Instagram @realrandyspears, and book him through Gitoni Productions.

The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify.

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Randy Spears

Randy in his service uniform with his grandmother

Randy Spears and ex-wife Gina Rodriguez

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The post Randy Spears: Hear My Prayer – Podcast 96 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

The Adult Film Association of America (AFAA) was a non-profit membership organization of adult film producers, distributors and exhibitors. The group stated purpose was “to create respectability and present a positive image to the public.” They did so primarily through political lobbying efforts and the annual Erotica Film Awards which the organization referred to as the adult industry’s Oscar Night.

In this Rialto Report, we look at the history of the AFAA by reprinting an article by Dave Friedman in which he outlines the origins of the AFAA.

We’re also re-publishing a curated selection of the AFAA’s monthly bulletins and convention booklets from the 1980s. These rare documents were never published commercially, and had only limited distribution to AFAA members.

Click on the publication covers to access the full documents. Due to the fact that they are scanned in high definition, allow time for each page to load. If you are viewing on a phone, view in landscape orientation.

Documents are fully searchable; use the icon displayed in each magazine to search by keyword.

Publications are being shared here purely for the purpose of research. They should not to be used or reproduced for any commercial gain.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

A History of the Adult Film Association of America (AFAA)

By David Friedman, Chairman of the Board AFAA
First published in Boxoffice, March 1982

On a cold and dreary day in January of 1969, about a hundred of us who were ngaged in the production, distribution and exhibition of adult pictures – there were no ratings in those days, but our pictures were usually labeled “adults only”, which at the time meant the nudie cuties, and the roughies, the kinkies and the ghoulies – gathered in a second-rate hotel, the Belle Rive, in Kansas City, to form what became known as the Adult Film Association of America.

We had gathered because a few of us had learned by then that, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, “we must all hang together, or assuredly we will all hang separately.” There was “heat” throughout the land, although the pictures we were making at the time would today be rated at worst as R, and perhaps as PG. Time determines what is and is not pornography.

Sam Chernoff, an exhibitor of adult films, had had the idea of forming an adult film association, a sort of “Nudie NATO.” The original title of the group we formed in Kansas City was the Adult Motion Picture Association of America, but the MPAA strongly objected to that, and I came up with the present title.

Adult Film Association of America (AFAA) member David Friedman

Four of us signed the corporate charter, incorporating as a nonprofit organization under the laws of Texas. A board of directors was voted on. I was elected the chairman of the board, and Sam Chernoff was named president. A very important exhibitor in the New York area, Conrad Baker, became vice president.

In the ensuing year we held a number of meetings around the country, and hired three attorneys: Stanley Fleischman in Los Angeles, Tom Gudgel in Oklahoma City, and Frierson Graves, from Memphis. These three drew up the bylaws and so on, and more importantly they put together a legal kit for the use of our members.

At the time there were perhaps four or five attorneys in the entire country acquainted with First Amendment and censorship law. A lot of our exhibitor members were getting busted for showing these pictures, and their local attorneys would not know how to proceed. With the use of these legal kits, the local attorney would know how to defend the cases and attack the obscenity laws. If necessary, we would bring one of the three AFAA attorneys into the cases.

The following year we electing Connie Baker as president, and I was named vice president. That was the year that the President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography was doing its work at the request of Lyndon Johnson. They recognized the AFAA as the spokesman for the adult film industry, and David Isacson, an associate of Connie Baker’s, and I were invited to speak to the Commission.

Adult Film Association of America (AFAA) member Anne Perry-Rhine

We told them about the industry, the theatres involved, facts and figures, and so on, and arranged to screen about half a dozen pictures of this genre for them. We all know the outcomes. After two years of work and about $5 million, the Commission stated that they saw no harm in adults viewing erotic material, and could not see it was of any great concern to the government as long as children were protected. It was one of the great tragedies of civil liberties in this country that these recommendations were essentially ignored.

At this time the AFAA’s credo was formulated and published; it basically states that we make films for adults, with adults, by adults, and that no one under the legal age in their community should attend these films. We based this on the belief that adults have certain privileges that non-adults do not have, the same way the liquor, tobacco and gambling industries reserve their products for adults. There is nothing we are doing in the way of restrictions that other industries had not been doing for many years, and rightly so.

It followed that if we were not going to let anyone in to see these films under the legal age, we would not use anyone in these films under legal age. This became the foundation of our attack on children pornography and our testimony before Congressional committees pledging the aid of the AFAA in stamping out traffic in child pornography. It is totally outside our interest and outside the area of anything we would want to protect, because it is not sex between consenting adults. Eight years later Ann Perry-Rhine and I appeared before a Congressional hearing held in Los Angeles and reiterated the AFAA’s opposition to this material.

We started publishing a monthly newsletter early on, and by the time of our third convention at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, we were a full-fledged organization. In that year I became president, and held that position for five years, until 1976, when I moved up to the position of board chairman, a post I have held ever since.

With this, our fourteenth convention, our membership is approximately 200, representing perhaps 96 percent of all of the people in the United States engaged in the production, distribution or exhibition of adult films.

Over the years we have set some standards by which the large majority of our industry lives. We have certainly functioned as a very vital trade and trading organization. And we have been involved in a number of legal issues, including the submission of amicus curiae briefs. We even filed a lawsuit against the United States government in 1975 or so, asking for an end to the tremendous harassment of films in interstate commerce and for a definition of “obscenity.”

During my tenure I did manage to demolish the myth of the “snuff film.” It first surfaced in a speech by a paid employee of Citizens for Decency Through Law, Raymond Gauer, to the Holy Name Society. He said, “Since the producers of these films are no longer satisfied to simulate sex, it must follow that they will no longer be satisfied to simulate murder.” That is, people would actually be killed in films. Seeing the reaction, he very son came up with the name “snuff film,” from the gangster jargon to “snuff” or murder someone, and then went on to say he had heard of such a film or had never seen one. He was a very effective, evangelical spearker on radio and television.

Naturally law enforcement at all levels began to look into his allegations, and a police sergeant in New York claimed the Mafia had such a film and was charging $100 a head to show it.

We got involved, and the AFAA offered a $25,000 reward for anyone who could bring us a print of such a film. We got no takers, of course, but did get some media exposure. Finally the FBI had to admit, after several months of investigation, that they could find no evidence of such a film ever having existed in this country.

Adult Film Association of America (AFAA) member Sidney Niekirk

There was a member of our association who took and old South American film, a blood-and-guts picture like the ones I used to make years ago, and retitled it “Snuff.” Interestingly, none of the AFAA-member theatres would touch the picture, but a lot of the so-called “respectable” general release theatres did carry it. Vince Miranda, head of the Pussycat Theatres chain, was then president of the AFAA, and we actually went out and picketed the theatres on Hollywood Blvd. showing the film. We called a press conference to say the film was a phony, and that we were proud to say we would not show it.

The man who distributed the picture was drummed out of the AFAA. I knew the picture, and knew that of course no one had been killed during its production.

One goal of the AFAA has consistently been to encourage the members to upgrade the quality of their films. At our conventions we have had panels of major film critics, discussion why they did or did not review adult films, and what they thought of them. I think to a large extend we have promoted an upgrading of these films – better production values, better acting, better direction.

Even from a legal standpoint alone, it is to our advantage. If it looks like someone has tried to create an entertaining product, a product of interest, then the likelihood of conviction by a jury is much less.

In addition, the audience has gotten much more selective.

We have training seminars every year at our convention. But what has done the most to upgrade film quality in our industry is the Erotica Awards, the credit for which belongs to Ann-Perry Rhine and Tod Johnson, who came up with the concept and staged the first one almost single-handedly. The Best Picture awards can mean $100,000 in the pocket of the producer of the film. To the performer who wins an award, it is worth perhaps another $20,000 or more per year in income. Because of the timing of the awards, the winning picture is virtually assured of a second major release.

Adult Film Association of America (AFAA) member Maria Tobalina

A producer can enter as many pictures as he or she likes, with the payment of the entry fee. The membership then votes on the films, and in years past they picked the winner. Because of a desire to get away from any notion of “politicking” for an award, this year the final selections will not be made by the membership at large. Instead, after the membership votes to select five finalists, a panel of film critics and writers will screen the films and, voting in secret, will select the winners. The panel consists of Mollie Williamson, David Rensin, Bruce Williamson, Andrew Sarris, Robert Rimmer, Arthur Knight and Diane Grosskoft.

One question that comes up regularly is whether people move from adult films into the pool of talent for general release productions. I know of no actor or actress that has gone on to big careers in Hollywood, although many of the male stars of adult films work regularly in TV commercials, and of course Marilyn Chambers has built a successful Las Vegas show. I can say that the average actor working regularly in adult films makes a lot more than the $4,000 average income of the 20,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild.

From behind the camera, among those who have moved on to careers in general release include Francis Coppola, who made “Tonight for Sure,” a nudie-cuties, while still a colleage student; John Avildsen, whose first picture was X-rated; and cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs, who shot half a dozen nudie-cuties for me in the mid-60s.

On the other hand, there are people in this business who only know that you put film in one end of the machine and money comes out the other – people who have no knowledge of film or feel for it, directors who could not direct traffic, and producers who don’t understand that you need a story as well as sex. Increasingly, however, our people understand that adult films need a story, a flow, a sense of drama as well as a series of clinical sex scenes.

We need more such filmmakers. Unfortunately, the industry seems to have become locked into a rigid formula. That may in part be the fault of the exhibitors, who seems to be afraid that the customers won’t accept anything outside the standard formula.

Ironically, the financial success of adult films may have held back their quality. Well over 90 percent of adult films at least make back their cost of production. On the one hand, the virtual guarantee of profit means that filmmakers may not strive to do more than make an adult film that’s just good enough.” And, on the other hand, the poor filmmakers are not driven out of the business as they are in general release. That may change as the public gets more selective. But in the meantime, efforts such as the AFAA’s Erotica Awards can do a great deal to encourage everyone to improve, and to recognize the best among us.

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AFAA Bulletins

June 1979
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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April 1980
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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June 1980
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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August 1980
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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September 1980
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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November 1980
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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January 1981
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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March 1981
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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April 1981
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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May 1981
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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July 1981
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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August 1981
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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April 1982
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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June 1982 (partial)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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August 1982
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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September 1982
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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November 1982
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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February 1983
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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March 1983
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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April 1983
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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May 1983 (partial)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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August 1983 (cover reprint)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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January 1984
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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February 1984
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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August 1985
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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September 1985
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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AFAA Convention Booklets

13th Annual Convention
Hollywood, March 26-29 1981
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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14th Annual Convention
New York, March 5-7 1982
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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15th Annual Convention
Hawaii, February 25-27 1983
(click on cover to view full magazine)

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Sample ads submitted to AFAA:

The post A Brief History of the Adult Film Association of America (AFAA) appeared first on The Rialto Report.

At the end of 2018, The Rialto Report published three articles detailing the history of the Avon chain of theaters and the notorious films they generated.

The first story focused on Murray Offen, and the creation of the Avon empire.

The second story told how a coterie of female performers was shipped in from Maine for live sex shows and explicit films in Avon theaters.

The third story featured Phil Prince, the legendary Avon director and one-time live show performer, who endured the killing of his wife, drug abuse, and a prison stretch, to make some of the most controversial adult films.

In this episode, we look into the life of Joe Davian – the most mysterious figure in the Avon world. He directed some of the earliest of the Avon movies, and many of the most outrageous too.

Since his disappearance in 1981, his life and career has been the subject of conjecture and shrouded in misinformation.

Until now.

With thanks to Joe Davian, Vanessa Del Rio, Jake Teague, Carter Stevens, and others who prefer to remain nameless.

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Vague Memories and Half-Truths

It’s remarkable how a little information can go a long away.

It’s even more remarkable when that same information – published in a variety of under-researched books and poorly-sourced articles over the last 30 years – is largely false. Perhaps when the truth is unlikely to emerge, the misinformed and lazy are emboldened.

Take the story of Joe Davian.

He was the notorious director of roughie hardcore films produced in the mid 1970s for the infamous Avon theater group, owned by Murray ‘the Jew’ Offen. The movies featured many of the usual New York XXX acting suspects, before his films gave way to the equally-outrageous cinematic visions of Phil Prince.

But unlike many prolific directors from the era, virtually nothing is known about Joe Davian. Even those who worked with him remember only scant details.

Consider the evidence: Carter Stevens, who appeared in half a dozen Davian films and was something of a go-to actor for Joe, only vaguely recalls the man himself. Sharon Mitchell’s sole recollection is that she was grateful for the consistent work he gave her, but that he was not someone with whom she mixed socially. Jake Teague, the industry’s most consistent old-man character actor, found Davian distant and strange, and speaks of an uneasy menace that enveloped his film sets. And Roger Caine, who did some of his most intense acting work for Davian, only remembers that Joe was a heavyset, stout man, and believes he was an Israeli.

This dearth of information has not prevented people from jumping in to fill in the gaps. Most of the widely-accepted information comes from Bill Landis’ colorful, well-written, though often wildly inaccurate article The Avon Dynasty from the late 1990s: “Davian was a member of an Israeli cadre of pornographers. He had a Dacchau (sic) tattoo. Whether he was actually in a Nazi death camp or it was a ruse so he could return to Israel if he needed to flee the country was a matter of speculation. His associate, Toby Ross, director of gay ‘chicken classics,’ snickered that Davian’s tattoo was the perfect out for an international criminal.”

A few years later, in an article written for Vanessa Del Rio’s Taschen-extravagant coffee-table busting biography, Landis described Davian physically: “a middle-aged man with a full salt-and-pepper beard, medium-length salt-and-pepper hair, and an intimidating Dachau tattoo. He sported the faded mark of the death camp like a signifier, and accessorized it with a khaki military-style jacket. Accentuating this package was the thick foreign accent and deep-set stressed eyes that Vanessa del Rio remembers so well. He had an intense, brooding and mysterious manner that attracted those who could respect his severity and his efforts to translate it into filmmaking.”

Joe Davian’s ‘Night of Submission’ (1976)

To say that Joe liked Vanessa Del Rio would be an understatement: if the purveyor of the sleazy, dirty S/M films can be described as having a muse, Davian’s was the Latin from Manhattan. He cast her as the lead in many of his films, and so unsurprisingly her memories are clearer than most: “Joe Davian’s real name was Joseph Lividovich. He was a nice guy, a really nice guy. I made all my Avon films for him: we all worked on his films. I ran into everybody in the business doing them. In the 70s it was a form of rebellion, to try everything. Joe had been in a concentration camp, had numbers tattooed on his arm and always directed dark movies coming from his experiences.”

Vanessa Del Rio, in Joe Davian’s ‘Night of Submission’ (1976)

The death camp tattoo. It’s an omnipresent detail. It is mentioned in every story about Joe.

And up to now, that’s the sum total of the published information concerning Davian. So what happened to him after he made Manhattan Mistress, his last film, in 1981? On that question, everyone seems to agree. Landis claimed: “Joe Davian disappeared. Carter Stevens says he was shot to death, but others believe he is in Israel, living as a returned Jew.”

George Payne too is adamant that Davian was killed in late 1981, and Vanessa De Rio agrees: “Joe Davian disappeared and we all knew something bad had happened, that he hadn’t just gone away. Everyone heard he’d been ‘disappeared’, if you know what I mean. So I guess that roughies were even rougher than we thought…”

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

Who was Joe Davian?

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The Real Joe Davian

Joseph Davian was born on January 7, 1934.

His family were eastern European Jews who fled to France at the end of the second world war when Joe was eleven. In 1948, after several traumatic years of moving around the continent fleeing anti-Semitic persecution, the family settled in Nice on the south coast, thirty miles down the road from Cannes. Joe attended Lycée M. Sebastien where he was a half-decent student but excelled as an athlete. Even as a teen, he was strong as an ox and was particularly adept at throwing sports, such as the discus and shot. But it was the hammer where Joe found his biggest success and a natural home.

He joined his local athletic club and dedicated himself to learning the highly technical event, practicing every moment he had. His dedication brought rewards, and he was selected by France to represent the country in international junior competitions. After graduating high school in 1952, he picked up a number of short-term jobs allowing him to stay focused on his training and helping him develop into an elite hammer thrower. Expectations were great: between 1951 and 1955, Joe was always ranked in the top three throwers in Europe in the Under-21 category.

In 1956, disaster struck: Joe suffered a serious injury to his right shoulder that cut short his throwing career. Throwing the hammer had been his life. He had few other interests, and fewer qualifications. So he enrolled in a school for athletic instructors. After completing the qualification he returned to his local club in Nice as an assistant throwing coach. His disciplined approach and technical background were an immediate success, and after two years he was asked to join the French junior national team as an assistant coach for throws – a role he held for four years.

The 1960s was a time when the Communist bloc countries invested heavily in track and field events, hoping to see this reflected in Olympic medals and national glory – and throwing events were specifically targeted. The Romanian athletic federation saw Joe’s success in France, and hired him to be guest coach and lecturer at their Institute for Physical Education (I.C.E.F.) for two years.

After his experience lecturing, Joe returned to France in 1964 keen to bolster his academic credentials. He enrolled in a STAPS course (Sciences and Techniques of Sports and Physical Activities) at the University of Nice where he obtained Bachelor and Master degrees between the years 1965 to 1971.

Armed with his qualifications, not to mention twenty years of experience, Joe set up an athletics consultancy to advise coaches and throwers. The driving force behind his business was a video-driven approach that analyzed and deconstructed a thrower’s technique in slow motion and made recommendations for improvements. Joe had bought himself a camera, and taught himself rudimentary filmmaking techniques. He applied his method to all throwing events, and his revolutionary approach caught on quickly. His consultancy model was simple: he received videos of throwers from around the world who were anxious to improve, and for a fee, he mailed back video instructions, advice, and coaching tips.

Joe now found himself in demand across Europe with many of the athletic federations. The Israeli sports federation was the first to sit up and take notice, hiring Joe to lecture at the Wingate Institute for Physical Education and Sports, an advanced sports training facility established in 1957. While working there, Joe traveled to Germany: where he advised the country’s elite shot putters, Finland: where he worked with their world-class javelin throwers, and Poland: where he coached their discus athletes, while he also picked up coaching opportunities in Canada and the UK. He lived in Russia for three months to study the country’s training methods.

Joe’s reputation as one of the most forward-thinking coaches grew and he became respected internationally. It helped that he was fluent in French, English, Romanian, and Hebrew, and had a basic knowledge of Italian and Russian.

In 1973, Joe started traveling to the United States, taking part in professional throwing clinics on both the west and east coasts. It was clear that for all his success and contacts in Europe, there were more profitable opportunities in America, especially in the sphere of college-funded sports programs. Joe made New York his base, moving into an apartment on West 12th St, and eventually becoming an American citizen.

At first, Joe found it difficult to break into the elite level of US track and field athletics where many of the key jobs were in the hands of long-term appointees. Looking for alternative sources of income while he established his credentials as a throwing coach, Joe found an opportunity to make films. Not coaching films, but definitely not mainstream films either.

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Joe’s entry into the adult film industry was coincidental. It was only when he met a fellow resident in his apartment building that he considered putting his interest in film to a different use. The neighbor in question was Joe Peraino, a New York mobster in the Colombo crime family, and one of the clan who’d financed the ground-breaking pornographic film Deep Throat (1972).

Davian had been fascinated with the sexual abundance of Times Square ever since his first visit to New York. Peraino told Joe that his family weren’t interested in funding any more explicit sex films as they intended moving their newly-founded film operation into the mainstream. But he hooked Joe up with some contacts – including Jack Deveau, owner of the explicit all-male adult film production company, Hand In Hand.

Joe vaguely remembers directing gay movies for Deveau, making friends with X-rated actor and all-round adult business personality Marc Stevens in the process. Marc was well-connected, and introduced Joe to a number of people – including a well-known entertainment attorney friend who was interested in financing a one-off porn film.

Joe made Blow Some My Way (1975) for the attorney – a thin satire of the cigarette marketing industry, starring Marc Stevens in the lead role, and supported by Annie Sprinkle, Carter Stevens and Jake Teague. The movie also featured a well-endowed, black live sex show performer named Steve, who preferred the name Red Baron, and who was making a name for himself in 8mm loops. Steve appeared in live shows at the Avon theaters, and he quickly became a favorite of Joe featuring in several of his future films.

Marc Stevens, in ‘Blow Some My Way’

‘Blow Some My Way’ was a low budget learning exercise for Joe. It was a sorry, unfunny mess, with all semblance of plot abandoned a third of the way through its running time in favor of a badly-filmed sweaty orgy. Bizarrely the film also featured a combination of Pink Floyd ambient rock and Eric Weissberg’s dueling banjo soundtrack to Deliverance (1972). Whatever its shortcomings, the experience had served its purpose: Joe was learning the ropes as a filmmaker, and the movie made money. Indeed it was still being shown three years later in theaters across the country.

The film also put Joe on the map. Marc took Joe to meet Stella Stevens, a straight-talking, sassy yenta responsible for operating a string of cash-cow exploitation grindhouses, many featuring ‘Avon’ in their name. The theaters were owned by the shadowy but brilliant Murray Offen. Murray was looking to find people to make cheap sex films that he could show exclusively in his venues

Murray and Stella saw ‘Blow Some My Way’, and figured that Joe could be their man. They offered Joe money to make a series of films for them, but their proposal came attached with conditions: Murray knew what brought the customers into the theaters – and it wasn’t just sex. He made it clear that he needed these movies to be dirtier, more perverse, violent, and nasty, and more misogynistic than the competition. And mindful of the gay films Joe had made, Murray insisted that there was to be no gay male sex. Rape, beatings, and kinky S/M scenes were in: gay sex was completely beyond the pale. Joe agreed to the deal: it was ready money, and that would buy him time while he explored coaching opportunities in the U.S.

Joe’s first film for Avon was Assault of Innocence (1975) – another cheap effort starring Marc Stevens, perhaps best explained by its alternate title ‘Rape! Rape! Rape!’. Remarkably it featured the same Pink Floyd and Deliverance soundtrack as ‘Blow Some My Way.’ It was an inauspicious debut but Joe was up and running.

Over the next few years, Joe assembled a stock company of reliably unhinged performers – including Vanessa Del Rio, Sharon Mitchell, and George Payne – and delivered a succession of increasingly sleazy efforts.

Vanessa describes Joe’s films succinctly: “Today they call them roughies. But back then there was no special name: they were just the ones with sex and S/M in the same movie. They weren’t a fetish thing, like S/M movies today. There were no special clothes, and not many props. They all included spanking, whipping, not much bondage, some ball gags, and fucking, which fetish films usually avoid. Many years later it became that if there was penetration and rough sex, the woman had to have a smile on her face to show that she was enjoying it. Not the men though. You could always punish men. And yes, I did enjoy making them.”

As for the Avon theaters themselves, Vanessa’s memories are equally vivid: “They used to let me in and tell me where I could sit so I wouldn’t be bothered. I was curious to see what I looked like on film, so I’d go to the Avon. It turned me on to sit in the balcony and watch guys jerking off at me.”

Vanessa Del Rio

As a director, Joe was a strange contradiction: he had a crystal-clear mandate and a ruthless and single-minded vision for what he wanted, but at the same time he preferred a hands-off, unobtrusive style on set. He left the performers to rise to the  occasion, relying on their personal kinks to come forth. Perhaps that’s why he repeatedly returned to the sexually-voracious Vanessa: “He liked me because I could always get into what he was trying to do. I was in on it with him, he liked to whisper motivation in my ear before each scene. He always had a mysterious and mischievous look in his eye when he looked at me as if thinking, ‘Boy, what I can do to her!’ and I think it was in that B/D, S/M sorta way! I saw something sadistic in him.”

Rather than being put off by Joe’s misogynistic imagination, Vanessa was fired up by it: “Rape scenes are hot, but I understand objections to them, though I hate to give these things up for other people’s problems. S/M films were good because there was strong physical acting. It got my adrenaline going and we had so little chance to act when everything was one take. There’s a lot of pressure in having to say your lines good one time.”

Sometimes Vanessa was so simpatico with Joe, that she helped him direct scenes: “I did a film called Domination Blue (1976) for him. It was about women in prison and I was one of the prisoners and the guards were supposed to take advantage of us and beat us then we’d all get together and escape and take advantage of the guards. Joe came and whispered to me, “Remember what they did to you the day before,” trying to give me motivation like a real director. I went over to the other actresses and said, “He’s really serious about this scene so I’m just going to whack you really hard because otherwise he’s going to want to keep doing it over and over.” They all agreed that I’d just give it to them really good and that’s how we’d do it. Then most of the footage had to be cut away because of the intensity!”

Jake Teague remembers Joe’s fly-on-the-wall directorial style, but also the occasional outburst when he didn’t get the commitment from his performers that he required – and that was sometimes tough for a performer that was older than the rest. Teague knew nothing about Joe’s athletic background but commented: “He was like a sports coach on set: he’d bark instructions about exactly how he wanted you to position – and he was always looking for something more. More than you’d ever given before. More than he’d ever seen before. Like he wanted you to beat your personal best.”

George Payne liked the physical challenges that Joe set, even if they came with the occasional discomfort: “I remember an S/M sex scene in Manhattan Mistress that we shot in a freezing basement. I was freezing my balls off, but Joe was intense and sweating. He kept saying, ‘This is good. I love this. Keep going!’”

R. Bolla, an actor not known for his extreme tastes, remembered being fascinated with Joe as a person: “I only worked for him a few times, but always found him strangely secretive. I was used to directors who expressed themselves in direct or flamboyant ways. But Joe was different. It was like he was trying to hide for some reason – even though he was the center the shoot! One time I tried to get him to go out with me for dinner or for a drink, saying that I wanted to discuss some movie that he was making… but he was never interested. He seemed a loner to me.”

The truth was that Joe kept to himself for good reason. He never gave much information away because he was smart enough to know that one day he’d probably need to get the hell out of the porn business, and he didn’t want to leave a trail behind him. But being secretive was a double-edged sword: by being uncommunicative, Joe knew that people would add two and two together and get five. They’d get suspicious. In their minds, his Ruskie-accent probably meant that there was something shifty and untoward about him. Joe knew that people had questions about him, but some days he found that amusing. So he played into them, inventing stories about a mysterious, shady background.

Another reason for his secrecy was the extreme nature of his adult films – which certainly weren’t for the fainthearted. Using extortion, assault, revenge, and punishment as his leitmotifs, he fashioned cruel sexual melodramas onto which he built intense and exaggerated sexual scenarios that exuded an unpleasant threat. The often-elaborate plots were driven by noir-ish dialogue and punctuated by sex that wouldn’t be out of place in an illustrated gynecology manual.

Take Domination Blue (1976): ostensibly it’s a woman-in-prison flick, but how many films have you seen involving masturbation scenes that use forks, truncheons, dildos, and Barbie dolls? Or that feature incest, cat-fights, a golden shower, nipple-clamping, whipping, and multiple rapes? Or where the prison food is served on the prison guard’s genitals? Exactly. And just when you can relax because our heroines escape, their freedom is cut short when they all die in a car accident. It’s that kind of film.

Or Appointment with Agony (1976): it may be low on script but it makes up for it in unrestrained sleaze. Hitchhiker Vanessa Del Rio is picked up and gang-raped at knifepoint by a group of criminals. Their next caper involves the abduction of a family who are similarly abused and forced into incestuous sex. And that’s about it. If you ever walked out of Last House on the Left wishing it was more hard-hitting, this was the film for you. (Needless to say Pink Floyd music adorn the sex scenes once again – as it would in most Joe Davian films.)

Joe’s films were devoid of humor – at least intentional humor. In Night of Submission (1976), Joe hired C.J. Laing, one of New York’s most extreme performers, in the lead role of a journalist investigating the bizarre sexual rituals of a cult voodoo underground. The only problem was that C.J. quit after the first scene was shot due to a huge bust-up with Joe, and so Carter Stevens was hired as a narrator to stitch over the plot holes created by C.J.’s absence.

Sometimes the humor was off-screen: in Intimidation (1977), Joe needed to shoot on a yacht so he hired the ever-reliable Carter Stevens to keep the unsuspecting boat owner occupied above deck while he shot two sex scenes in the cabins. Carter enjoyed a bottle of Jack Daniels and a free shipping lesson with the owner, before the ship’s captain confessed that he’d known all about the sex shoot taking place on the boat all along.

The same performers crop up with regularity – many of them lesser names of the business including Suzaye London, Tia von Davis, David Pierce, Clea Carson, Dave Ruby, Crystal Sync and others – each one prized for their unique kinky prowess. Even Joe makes the occasional appearance – such as at the beginning of Night of Submission (1976), where his voice, with its strong European accent, can be heard in voiceover.

Each film was made in a couple of days on a low budget – inexpensive even by the meagre standards of 1970s pornography. Many were shot in Joe’s apartment building on West 12th St, and at apartments belonging to friends in the area. Revenge And Punishment (1977) for example was shot at The Chelsmore at 205 West 15th St, and The Cambridge at 175 West 13th St, among others.

Davian consistently delivered what Murray the Jew demanded, but within a couple of years, he became a victim of his own success – and ambition. Seeing the profitability of his films, Joe demanded more money, more control over the finished product, and more ownership on the back end. Murray wasn’t interested. He had no shortage of perverse volunteers eager to take over. Some of them, like Phil Prince, had no filmmaking experience whatsoever, but it didn’t matter. Murray was ready to move on.

Joe felt cheated. He’d made big money for Murray, and he felt short-changed. So he decided to extract compensation in his way. Phil Prince, who was working for Murray as a theater manager at the time, remembers what happened: “Davian was a thief. He robbed prints from Murray. Murray would pay for the negative then send Davian a copy of the print. You understand what I’m saying, a copy of the negative. But then Davian started making prints himself, and selling them all over the country. When Murray found out about Joe’s side-business, he was mad as hell. Murray called Joe in for a sit-down, and I was on-hand to be the muscle. We shook him down for the money he’d made, and threatened that if he ever did it again, he’d be dead.”

Joe’s relationship with Murray was severed and he was left seeking new patrons for his art. Joe formed his own production company, ‘Joe Davian Productions’, and set out to attract investors. He made a couple of bigger budget films, Girls U.S.A. (1980) and Manhattan Mistress (1981), which featured many of his favorite performers, but this time they were more plot-oriented and avoided the excesses upon which he had built his name. Not that they were entirely devoid of non-consensual sex: in ‘Girls USA’, George Payne and Vanessa play out a scorching abduction scene, involving interrogation and rape, with Vanessa tied to an X-frame.

By his own admission, Joe could’ve continued to make bigger budget adult films into the 1980s. He’d developed a loyal following of actors whom he could rely on for strong sexual performances. And he knew plenty of distributors and investors, who thought of him as someone who could produce cost-efficient pictures that were as-near-as-dammit guaranteed to deliver healthy profits. But there were two roadblocks to Joe’s continued porn career.

Firstly, Joe yearned to get back to track and field athletics. He missed coaching, and he wanted to get involved in developing young athletes who had potential. And secondly, he wanted a family. He’d met a woman and they’d got engaged. She knew nothing of his pornographic film career, and he was determined to keep it that way. He casually mentioned that he’d done some work as a cameraman – mainly on documentaries – but that was in the past. He was a throwing coach now.

And he figured that the only way he could move into the next phase of his life, to erase his history as a XXX filmmaker, was to sever all ties with the adult film world – immediately and completely.

So he did.

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By 1982, Joe was 48 years old. Not old by any stretch, but athletics is a young man’s game, and he needed to take work where he could find it. He started coaching on a part-time basis with high schools in the New York area, where he also officiated in regional athletic meets. He took the relevant qualifications, became a certified master official, and slowly started to coach elite throwers again.

Over the next 30 years, Joe became one of the most prominent and successful throwing coaches in the north east, working for colleges, athletics clubs, universities, and ultimately USA Track & Field. He held regular clinics for throwers and coaches, some of them with Soviet hammer great, ex-World and Olympic Champion, Yuriy Sedykh. Occasionally his bluster and inflexible discipline got him into trouble with administrative authorities, but his dedication to success usually won people over. He was still involved in coaching into his 80s.

All the time Joe stayed in New York state, and raised a family. He changed his name a couple of times, but never spoke about his adult film past to anyone until contacted by The Rialto Report.

In January 2020, Joe passed away. A life that had been shrouded in mystery and misinformation had come to an end.

But wait. One more thing: the oft-mentioned tattoo? The proof that Joe had been held in Dachau? The evidence that seemed to explain where Joe’s tortured and violent inspiration came from? The one detail that featured in academic essays, fan-published books… even in the memories of people he worked with?

It never existed. Though the lives of Joe’s relatives had been severely disrupted by the war, Joe and his family insist that none of them were ever detained in concentration camps. And Joe never had a tattoo.

R.I.P. Joe.

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The post Avon Films: Joe Davian R.I.P. – Part 4, The Enigma appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Bill Rotsler created Adam Film Quarterly in 1966. It was later renamed Adam Film World as a sibling magazine to Knight Publishing’s Adam magazine. The magazine provided commentary about the adult film industry – a subject that Rotsler was intimately involved in, first as a stills photographer on adult film sets, and later as a director and actor.

We look back at Rotsler’s background in the adult film industry, and republish all the issues published in 1975. (Other issues of Adam Film World that have been digitized can be found in our Library.)

These issues include articles on the the undercover sexual history of Hollywood, a continuing survey of the sex film field, and a visit to a porno motel by Bill Margold, features on films such as Sodom and Gomorrah (1975), A Dirty Western (1975), Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS (1975), Delinquent School Girls (1975), and interviews with Gerard Damiano, Barbara Bourbon, Carol Lynley, and much more.

Fully digitized copies of each 1975 magazine can be found in the article below. You can find The Rialto Report’s growing collection of digitized resources by choosing Library in our site menu. 

With thanks to the work of David Church.

Click on the covers below to access the full magazines. Due to the fact that the magazines are scanned in high definition, allow time for each page to load. If you are viewing on a phone, view in landscape orientation.

Magazines are fully searchable; use the icon displayed in each magazine to search by keyword.

Publications are being shared here purely for the purpose of research. They should not to be used or reproduced for any commercial gain.

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Charles William Rotsler (July 3, 1926 – October 18, 1997) was a Renaissance polymath. He was an sculptor, artist, cartoonist, and science fiction author for which he was a four-time Hugo Award winner and one-time Nebula Award nominee.

And from the late 1950s, he was a successful pornographer. As with everything Bill turned his hand to, he got involved with the sex film business on just about every level imaginable. He started by shooting nude pictures and stills from adult film shoots, before graduating onto directing and acting in films.

Starting in 1958, Rotsler worked in the pornography industry, first as a stills photographer on the set of adult films, and later as a film director and actor, a writer creating novelizations of sexploitation films, an interviewer, scriptwriter, and publisher of several books on the business – including the seminal Contemporary Erotic Cinema (1973). He used a number of pseudonyms for his various roles, including ‘Shannon Carse’, ‘Cord Heller’, ‘Clay McCord’, and ‘Philip Dakota’. Sometimes he even interviewed himself as these characters in Adam Film Quarterly.

Bill’s work in different fields meant he could use his friends and contacts in different capacities to assist him in his various endeavors. Take the issues of Adam Film World that were published in 1975 for example. They feature a variety of writers from different parts of Bill’s social circle: Marv Lincoln – adult film magazine publisher, writer and photographer, Charles D Anderson – science fiction author, Charles A Fracchia – investment banker/academic/author of 15 books/co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine, Nancy Bacon – pinup model/big cat trainer/celebrity gossip journalist, Michael St. John – pop culture artist, Richard Sawyer – history and biography writer, Leo Guild – Liberace biographer and described as the worst pulp author of all time, Bill Margold – all-round adult film personality, and other assorted science fiction writers.

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William Rostler: My Life as an Adult Filmmaker

(The following was written by William Rotsler in the late-1980s and early-90s for his legendary fanzine Masque and as he said, “pasted up … but not printed.” Elements of it appeared in several other fanzines over the years.)

I guess I’d always wanted to make movies, but this is not something you can just do. It’s very technical, if nothing else. I’d been a sculptor after art school, and decided to be a photographer, and was strongly influenced by Andre de Dienes. I got to know him, volunteered some of my sculpture to be in his photos. (He, I and Marilyn Monroe went house-hunting for her in 1951.) I began seriously photographing nudes (which was my interest) in 1958.

The first nude I shot (excluding girl friends and my wife) was Diane Webber, against an 18-foot high wall of sculpture I was making in a rented barn in the Malibu hills. I sold that first set right away—and in fact, it sold for almost 20 years—and I did others but I didn’t really get into it until 1960.

Bill Rotsler featured in an ad in Adam Film Quarterly, 1969

In 1961 I shot stills on my first nudie-cutie in Searchlight, Nevada (I’m blanking on the title, but it had Virginia Gordon in it), and all during the 60s I shot still photos on all kinds of naked lady movies—Kiss Me Quick, (aka Dr. Breedlove), Knockers Up (where I met one of the great loves of my life), The Butler Did It, Coupled, The Hippie and the Square, Norma, The Joys of Jezebel, Matinee Wives, One More Time, Last Step Down, Pinocchio, Love Thy Neighbor and His Wife, Southern Comfort, Astro-Naughties, Come Play with Me, Casting Call, Hot as Hell, Kama Sutra ‘71, Paradise Lust, and Erography.

I was to do The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet but Harry Novak found someone to do it cheaper, so I was stuck with only playing a part, something which was unusual (I wasn’t directing or taking pictures, so we just played grabass.) I played the prince of Verona. In one scene I was right up front with the married Vincene Wallace who I’d not fooled around with at all, and we got so hot I think if we had been in the back of the orgy we’d have done it for real. (Two years later she called me up from Seattle, said she had left her husband and could she come live with me? I said, “You mean, like in sin?” She did. We toured the USA in 1973, en route to me being Guest of Honor at the Toronto World Science Fiction convention and I took nudes of her everywhere.)

I also did stills on the Exotic Dreams of Casanova, Drop Out, Below the Belt, Country Cuzzins, Sweet Georgia, Please Don’t Eat My Mother, Little Miss Innocence, The Notorious Cleopatra, and The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill, where I played a part as well. (In fact, I did so much and took it to a local publisher, he started a magazine Adam Film World because of it). I did many more, but I didn’t own the negs so I don’t remember them.

In 1960 I thought I should learn how to make movies. Dwayne Avery and I did a lot of fun things—single-framing down Hollywood Blvd. at 700 mph (apparently), a cutie called Rock Fight (about 5 or 6 minutes of film) and other stuff. One noon I went into a big, hip ad agency, Carson/Roberts, where Ken Sullet (an ad writer who I’d met through Stan Freberg) worked. “Got something to show you,” I said. “Great,” he said and grabbed his brownbag and went around gathering up everyone in the agency. I was embarrassed—it was only a few minutes of “fun film” not a product reel. The film was still running when one of the agency heads turned to the other and said, “We ought to have Bill do the Mattel film.”

I was launched. I soon started my own industrial film production company, Nova Productions (which had to change to Greentree Productions, when we found that Nova was a holding company for one film, Twelve Angry Men). My partner was Dan Easton, who had been a child actor (Little Danny Mummert), who had been the nasty boy-next-door in the Blondie movie series). In the next five years I did everything—product animation, live action, animation—wrote, shot, directed, edited, whatever . . . for such companies as Carnation, McCullough Chain Saws, Mattel, Lockheed, etc. I had zoomed low over Lake Arrowhead in the Cinerama B-25, piloted by the legendary Frank Hill, for a beer commercial. I’d dropped out of helicopters, stood in front of the Ben Hur chariots at full gallop, shot the first hot air balloon ascension under official rules, with one of the famous Picard brothers, shot charging bulls in rodeos . . . .
All the time I was shooting nudes and doing stills. Then one day I said, “I know how to do everything. It’s time.” I went into Harry Novak’s office and walked out with a two-picture deal. I know now and I knew then it was because Harry got me cheap.

Frankly, since so many of my early films were in cheap black and white I never thought they’d be put on tape. That, and the fact they were very tame. In those days we weren’t sure what we could show. No crotches or cocks, and. breasts were not to be touched or “displayed prominently.” No body part was to be “dwelled on.” No real sex, of course—all the guys kept their pants on and the women their panties. Restrictions galore, but we were working in unknown areas then.

I was told that when they’d first open as a sex film house, Agony of Love was used by theaters a lot for some years, since it was so “cool,” had a “Moral”, and was well-crafted by the standards of the time.

The lead was a busty stripper named Pat Barrington, whose pics I’d seen in stills from Orgy of the Dead and wanted instantly. I played the “artist” in the epic. She took me off at the end of shooting and had her way with me. For two or three weeks I’d edit at night, then pick her up at work and we’d go do nasty things. The first night, I was in the saddle, as it were, and she raised me up off the bed. I had my hands on her bottom and she had lifted my 200 pounds right off the linen. “My god, you’re so strong, you could throw me out of bed!” I said, and she did! And without dropping back to the bed to get leverage either! I stood up, said “You know what they say about getting thrown.”

She finally came to my house toward the end of these little sexual playoffs. I expected her 2:30 AM or so. I lived in the Hollywood Hills in one of those houses where you come in at ground level and the bedrooms are down stairs. When she came in, never having been there before, she found a dotted white line (of cut shirt cardboards) with a rose between each. (Roses grew with wild abandon all over the lot.)

I’d heard her come in but it seemed to take her forever to get downstairs. Then I saw her backing down the stairs on her hands and knees, writing (it turned out later) a poem-part on each white card. She followed the dotted line to the foot of my bed, were there was a huge white X. She proceeded to do a full production striptease at the foot of the bed. When she got into bed I took a gallon container of loose rose petals and scattered them all over her. Nothing that romantic, apparently, had ever happened to her.

The next morning the petals were withered, rolled-up black things, so I dumped the rest on her and we started again.

I just looked at Agony of Love for the first time since 1965 and it seems very slow. True, I had cast the lead because I wanted to bed her, but she couldn’t act, so most if her lines were dubbed—without even a picture to look at—by another former lover of mine, Gloria Saunders, who was in Captive Women O.S.S. and played The Dragon Lady in the Terry and the Pirates series. The Corvette at the end was mine and the bashed-in front was the result of a slight accident, so it worked well.

Bill Rotsler in ‘The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet’, using his pseudonym Shannon Carse

I did Agony of Love and The Girl with the Hungry Eyes back to back. The first was an idea suggested by Harry Novak, and the other, he said, was to “do something with lesbians.” He suggested the titles, too. About ten years later I found he had intended each title to be on the other film.

When I had shot and virtually finished editing them, Harry said to add “10 or 15 minutes” to each, but gave me no money to do it. ($100 each I think.) Reason: They would be so heavily censored in Europe and in some USA areas there wouldn’t be enough left to make a show. Why he didn’t tell me this before, I don’t know. He probably didn’t know. This is the reason so many scenes are dragged on, to gain time. I added the psychiatrist scene after Pat Barrington had used her movie money to get her nose changed and a new hairstyle—thus the dark glasses.

I had enough money for a camera, film and one girl to add to The Girl with the Hungry Eyes. I played Vicky Dee’s lover—as I come cheap—just a bit at the end in the first cut, but after Harry wanted more footage, I shot the swimming pool dream, which ended very sexy, actually, when the camera stopped. So, by accident, I ended up as the male lead, you might say.

I had used a water theme to shoehorn in the extra minutes, starting with the terminally-cute Vicky in a shower, who remembers her heterosexual affair. We cut to romantic interludes, then to both of us in my swimming pool. Now I’d talked a buddy, Mitch Evans, into turning the camera off and on and while she was naked, I had on dark blue bathing trunks. Mitch said they showed, so I took them off. Now I’d used Vicky in countless photo sessions, and we were comfortable together, but this was the first time I’d -been naked with her. This amused her no end, and despite being married, she started playing with my cock. Naturally, I got an erection.

I had blurred the lens for this dream-like sequence, added a star filter, so each drop of water would star-up. I had her lightly oiled so the water would bead up. I lifted her up and she spread her arms and I let her slid back down. My erection went right into her. We could have practiced all day and not done that.

I pulled back at once and you can’t see it on film, but it really turned her on. After we did a scene faking making love in my harem tent. (Okay, okay, so I had a harem tent, where many interesting things went on. Theodore Sturgeon, among others, pronounced it fantastic.) The moment we were done I looked at Mitch, he looked at me, and he vanished with the equipment and we continued without him. (Think of that if you ever see the picture.)

The Corvette Cathy Crowfoot drove was still mine. When she pulls into the slanted parking lot of Barney’s Beanery to make a phone call, she forgot to set the brake and once she was out the car it started to roll backward. I was festooned with expensive camera gear, which I couldn’t just dump, so the ‘Vette was well on the way to shooting out backwards in Santa Monica Boulevard when I flung myself on its back. I reached for the brake, but she had put it on just part way. I had no leverage, and there was a tripod in the passenger seat. I had to turn around, insert myself behind the wheel (which in a sports car is like putting on a glove) then put on the hand brake. Just in time, too.

Cathy—who was always very, very “cool”—had her cool blown completely, a most unusual sight. An hour later, at my house in the Hollywood Hills, where the end is filmed, we stopped for a drink. Joanne Rotolo (the girl in the ad for Bare Hunt in the Something Weird Video catalog, is aka Jody Lynn) was living with me then. I found her in the kitchen, wearing only panties, standing before the open refrigerator. For reasons I don’t know she said, “Look!’ and shoved me the biggest clitoris I’d seen. “Go show Cathy,” I said.

Cut to the living room. Cathy is looking the other direction. “Look at this,” Joanne said and. when Cathy turned her head a contender for The World’s Largest Clitoris was three inches away. Blew her cool, too.

I thought The Girl with the Hungry Eyes and the other black and white films were transferred from a not-so-good-looking print, or the transfer itself was, um, casual. They look dim, with none of the good, crisp quality of the originals. As if the houses were lit with 20-watt bulbs.

I had done Agony of Love and The Girl with the Hungry Eyes at $15,000 each, Suburban Pagans and Four Kinds of Love for about $11,000 each. No wonder I couldn’t get real actors.

Bill Rotsler from a scene in his 1972 film ‘Street of a Thousand Pleasures’

Pagans and Four Kinds were ad-libbed. I scripted only the first part of Agony of Love. Harry Novak, who never ever called me, called me up and started telling me how bad my films had done. Which told me right away he wanted me to do more. I asked if he wanted budgets like the previous films ($15,000) and he said yes. I wrote half-page outlines, he selected two. And I worked a week to get them down. He said, “Too much.” So I worked… I had cut all the fat and was into meat when I finally asked what budget he did want. “$10,000-$11,000,” he said, which annoyed me.

If you are going to do the invasion of Normandy you don’t do it on a $1.98 budget, you pick a squad or a team, do it as best you can within that budget. So I wrote stories you could do at that. VERY low budget in the late Sixties. They okayed two new ideas and wanted a script. I heard myself saying, ‘‘No. You want two scripts or two movies?” They said, of course, they wanted two movies, so I said to just give me the money and leave me alone. They annoyed me.
Everyone in the film had fun. I knew most of these women pretty well, and would cast them accordingly, but said they had to “act” when they were really just being themselves. I was in it and Mitch Evans, an improvisational-trained friend. I’d give everyone an idea of the scene and we winged it. They said they never had so much fun making movies. Only once did no one talk, and only once did two people talk at once.

But Novak gave some film to a new lab as a gesture of goodwill and they screwed it up. I had to reshoot. This gave me an opportunity to fill up holes . . . and more fun.

One of the actresses had been after me for months—the busty brunette—and when we wrapped she said, “Now, can we do it now?” I had a house full of cast and crew and the lady I was living with (we were breaking up) was out of the house. She came on strong and one of the actors wanted in on it too, and we didn’t know a nice way to get him out We were trying to get it up on the bed—when you make these features you KNOW you aren’t going to get laid, so you don’t get an erection, usually—but neither of us were getting anywhere. The lighting guy kept wrapping and moving lights and finally said, “Are you guys gonna do it or not?”

We moved into the shower (seen in that and many of my films) and she did EVERYTHING she could—but neither of us were hard. It just seemed so weird, after all the time of “not.” Finally I got about half an erection, then he did, and we moved to the bed. But I kept hearing the cast and crew and just couldn’t concentrate. I left her with him—not what she wanted—to pay everyone off and we never did make it, ever.

You couldn’t show real sex in these things, not even feel a breast (on camera), not even a good simulation—so we did a lot of cutaways, fooling around, etc. and today that seems damned quaint.

I’m also the writer-director of Four Kinds of Love, and Suburban Pagans using the pseudonym of Shannon Carse. (They were shot back-to-back and used parts of the same cast in both.) I think I used Carse on Shannon’s Women, too, or maybe I used it as the sex film director’s name, which I played. The film is jerky and has jump cuts which are the fault of the print used to transfer—not my editing. The lab also lost a roll of film by putting it in the silver recovery vat instead of developer, which required a re-shoot, so I roughcut both Suburban and Four Kinds, then got everyone together to bridge the losses.

Like It Is was made from a number of silent mail order (8mm) films shot in 16mm, but I really had fun putting it together. Very “psychedelic” and I did all the “effects” for $1.98. It was filled with ladies I’ve known Biblically, including late 1960s footage of Los Angeles “love-ins” and of Haight-Asbury. The guy who stole the 8mm film for Lilia had it blown to 35mm!

Of the 27 films I’ve done, Mantis in Lace and A Taste of Hot Lead (which sometimes may be known as The House of Pain and Pleasure, or just Hot Lead—don’t ask me why) are the two films I did not write.

The house in Suburban Pagans and of Four Kinds of Love- was my house and it was nostalgic to see the place high in the Hollywood Hills again. As those few short years passed that house was the scene of many wonders. It was transferred into a kind of harem tent inside, which you can see in A Taste of Hot Lead.

I was going to do a picture for Harry Novak in ‘69 or ‘70, about a hit man, then almost at the last minute they had a fight with the money-man (who I think got into it for sex, a common enough reason) and they parted. The accountant apologized, I said that’s the way it is, and we hung up. Two minutes later he called back. He’d gone in to see Novak to break the news and Pete Perry was there, who said, “You mean Bill is available?” (Like I was some hot director).
Pete said, “There’s this film coming out called The Godfather. Could your story [about the hitman] be retitled?” I said no, but I’d write a new one, which I did [The Godson].

I auditioned and cast a sexy blonde, who could act a bit. We shot the end of the film first, on an abandoned farm miles in the country. The second bad guy has staked out a whore (the blonde), and put her out as bait as they put out goats to attract tigers and, terrorized her to attract the attention of the Good Guy (only slightly less bad than the Bad Guy). We do a take and there she is, having been shot dead, with a sweet smile on her face. I explain to her “no smile”, and we are in the middle of the second take and the “terrorized” girl is still smiling. I rewrote the picture before I called, “Cut!”
I hire another girl for one day’s shooting, then she goes to the beach and is so sunburned—big red bands—that I can’t use her. So Uschi Digart finds me a stunning girl (Lois Maxwell, I think was her name), absolutely gorgeous, to be the third woman to play what in essence was the same part.

We’re doing a fake sex scene and she is brilliant. Then my assistant, who was sitting elsewhere, whispered that they did it for real. She thought she was supposed to and just put the guy in and since I hadn’t called cut, he went ahead.
One of the things I hated most about pseudo-sex scenes is that they are dull. I’d always wanted to do a scene with a time bomb under the bed, so the very thing that makes you bored does the opposite. I shot some hitmen looking at the hotel, taking guns out of a briefcase, attaching silences, getting keys ready . . . meanwhile always cutting to the simulated sex scene. Building tension: Will the Good Guy be finished in time?

It worked well with the shootout that followed. Only after I’d turned in the director’s cut, Pete Perry wanted surprise, not tension, and cut everything out but the breaking in. Thus the couple in bed do jump cuts to this position and that. He moved sex scenes from the back of the film to the front, thus making it make no sense whatever. You look at two people doing it, then three others, then go on with the story. It’s an abortion!

The negative cutter made terrible, sloppy mistakes. For example, we had no money for special or mechanical effects. Blanks for the guns were all. In one shot I had a guy run past a junk pile, and I put a real .38 slug into it and exploded a gallon jug. Only this was missed by the neg cutter, so you just stare at this jug a bit and go on. Perry ruined a well-constructed sim-sex film.

In one scene, I had the voluptuous Uschi plus a black girl (who later became married to Richard Pryor) do a double bit on a john. I’d cast a rough tough guy but the agency sent me a fella who . . . let’s put this charitably . . . probably liked a different gender. Two of the sexiest women around and this jerk doesn’t even know where to put his hands, he looked embarrassed and uncomfortable. Uschi saved the scene and I wrote some quick dialogue to cover, but it was so dumb. We shot it in Harlan Ellison’s house, by the way, and he is in a scene, though you don’t see his face. Same with me, I’m all over the future Mrs. Pryor.

In Mantis in Lace (not my title) the same thing just happens, over and over, so I just shortened and shortened the routine to speed it up. But the lead was Lila, played by a woman (now a real estate agent in the San Fernando Valley, I heard) who couldn’t act her way out of an open phone booth. But she was a “comes-with” with the script and budget which was the biggest I had to that date (early 1968), a monstrous $35,000.

The next film my cameraman, Laszlo Kovacs, did after this was Easy Rider.

Mantis in Lace was released as that, then the owner of several theaters in the Washington, D.C., area thought there wasn’t enough blood in it—I had deliberately downplayed the blood—so he hired Susan Stewart again, even the same stage—and I shot the stills as she used my father’s meat cleaver with wild abandon. Every time she struck, two fat guys below her would throw up a paper cup or two of fake blood. He retitled it Lila because I think he didn’t know what a mantis was.

The psychedelic sequence was made projecting motion picture film and slides on faces. The chopped leg sequence was a big tan squash getting the axe.

When Pete Perry was re-editing it, I saw that they had used a “psychedelic” film I had made for mail order, but they begged me not to get upset, as the Washington guy was a pain and they just wanted to get him out of their hair.
You see me in Mantis as the guy who puts his hand on Pat Barrington’s stomach. (She had become a blonde and a belly dancer and was often known at Pat Barringer.). And I’m the bearded guy in Agony, Suburban and Four Kinds. The last two we ad-libbed—all the spoken dialogue you see was made up as you see it.

Bill Rotsler

Something Weird Video was kind enough to send me copies of five of these films recently, along with two reels of trailers. Looking at the video of trailers was fun, too. I saw former lovers, one-night stands, and so on.

Street of a Thousand Dreams was the result of kind of a hobby. Almost every time during the 60s, when I shot a nude set, or did a whole (ha-ha) “nudist” magazine, I’d also shoot a few feet of 16mm. I had no real idea what I was going to do with any of it. Some of it showed up in Like It Is. I’d load a 16mm Bolex and run it off past the punch marks as I was walking back to where the naked ladies were. It got so that they were so used to this they’d do crazy things, just for the fun of it. I remember Christine (the girl from the no-sex-in-the-shower) who, when I re-entered the bedroom, had hooked her hair “fall” in her pubic hair, and was dancing on the bed, sucking at one of her big breasts.

Another time I had just finished reloading the Bolex when my huge soundman (Frank Coe) came into the room and dumped a very lumpy, black, camera changing bag on the bed. I started shooting. Frank unzipped the bag and here was a fine, round, perfect ass. He took a naked Karen Thomas out of it. She went, “Ta-Da!” and he stuffed her back, threw in 16mm Kodak boxes and tried to put a trombone in, zipped it up. I’d shot a roll and had to reload.

I did a lot of “Point of View” footage, where the camera was the point of view of the onlooker. I’d put my hand out, trail it across naked breasts and buns, sometimes as many as five women. Since it was a hand-wound Bolex I had only 10 or so seconds, so I’d move down to “kiss” some portion of the anatomy, stop, rewind, start with a pull back from black. In one shot I went into the mouth of a girl I’d dubbed “Supertongue” and came out her vagina. It was all fun and all the models cooperated. There was no sex.

In my backyard I’d made some arches and some Arabian-esque wall units, which I could shift around. I set-dressed the place with fabrics, screened overheads, pots, maybe cast an Arab (Mitch Evans). Then I’d go into a shot hanging over an arch, and “discover” beyond, anywhere from one to four slave girls. I’d “roam” over them, go on into the next piece of fabric, or “kiss” them. One of these pieces of film is Uschi Digart’s first nude photo session and first movie session. (Uschi is a wonderful, highly intelligent, utterly charming woman, who I say is The World’s Most Famous Figure Model, since probably more pictures of her have appeared in magazines than any other woman.)

But what was I to do with all this luscious footage? I was approached by a successful naked lady film producer we’ll call Mr. Ripoff, for reasons you’ll soon see. He seemed honest and we made a deal to use all this Arabian slave girl stuff and shoot new stuff to frame it. I went up to my family’s ranch, used an empty building to construct a slave market set and a club interior. (One of the young assistants was the future excellent science fiction writer Tim Powers.)

We shot at an airport (I hung a sign in Arabic on a fence saying this was such-and-such airport in Arabia), in a plane . . . . Then we did a slave auction, pseudo-sex scenes and more.

Some time later, we began to realize we were getting NO money out of the release of this film. Excuses, excuses. My partner saw him in a car, chased him across Hollywood, got the brush-off and told him we’d be at his office at 9 in the morning for an accounting. When we arrived at 7:30 we saw him driving away. So I took a quarter-inch, felt-tip marker and wrote our complaints on his office door, along with two cartoons, so everyone in the building understood our annoyance.

When we got together later he looked at me sadly, and said (of the door), “That wasn’t a nice thing to do.” I looked at him with one of those looks with steel in it and said quite calmly, “Oh, don’t worry, we won‘t do that again.” He bought us out.

I was in San Francisco, courtesy of the Mitchell Brothers, shooting extra stills on a huge orgy for Resurrection of Eve, along with a lot of reporters, even LIFE and a couple of TV stations. (They were eagerly shooting stuff they could never use!) It was wall-to-wall fornication and sundry perversions. I remember I stopped dead as I was crossing to stare at Johnny Keyes, who was lounging on a sofa, and Marilyn Chambers, who knelt on the sofa, fellating him. Every time she sucked in, her body undulated as if she was drawing him deep, deep, to the very end of her body. It was, and is, the most erotic fellation I’ve ever seen. No still picture would do it justice, and no movie camera was on them at the time. Later, when it was, they weren’t doing it.

Later (in 1969-1970) I wrote and directed Wet Lips, Midnight and others whose names I cannot now remember.

It was a lot of fun and you bedded a lot of beautiful women, the kind of let’s-have-fun-no-strings-attached kind of sex. I got out of it because I was sick and tired of the Front Office, and their dumb, penny-pinching ways. Especially when not one of them had ever made a movie or knew how to, although they always said they knew “everything.”

Bill Rotsler featured in a 1974 ad for Swingers World magazine

*

Adam Film World: The Complete 1975 Issues

February 1975 (Vol 5, No. 3)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Film reviews: Teenage Jailbait, Who Did Cock Robin (aka Who Killed Cock Robin), Angie Baby, The Liberated Woman, international films -Interview with Gerard Damiano -The girl that was Marilyn Monroe -Video discs and porno movies for the home -The undercover sexual history of Hollywood -The hired mouth –Carol Lynley: a liberated female -Talking about sex and acting with Honey Graham -Hollywood then and now -Fragments of porno -Hollywood hot flashes

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April 1975 (Vol 5, No. 4)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Adam Film World contents:

Film reviews: Lil Angel Puss, Consenting Adults, Jes’ Countryfolks, Beach Party Bango, international films -A continuing survey of the sex film field -The adventures of a sex film actress –Sodom and Gomorrah revisited -Visit to a porno motel by Bill Margold -Porn potpourri: the latest from the sex film scene -The foreign film scene -An interview of ‘Juicy Jennifer’ -Swinging on film

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June 1975 (Vol 5, No. 5)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Adam Film World contents:

-Numerous film reviews including Brother & Sister, Angel Above-Devil Below, and Swinging Ski Girls –Brittany Laine profile -One of these girls will be Marilyn Monroe -Porn potpourri: the latest from the sex film scene -Rear ended -In the eyes of the horny -Civil liberties group views hardcore films -The porn film I’d most like to see contest -All time favorite porno film hits -Porn film industry survey

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August 1975 (Vol 5, No. 6)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Adam Film World contents:

-Numerous film reviews including Panorama Blue, Tobacco Roody, and A Dirty Western -Winners: the porn film I’d most like to see contest -Rape in the movies -S/M on the screen -Barbara Bourbon: porn’s new head mistress -Directing the erotic film -James Archibald O’Henahan: mad, mad, mad Irishman -All-time favorite porno film hits

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October 1975 (Vol 5, No. 7)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Adam Film World contents:

-Numerous film reviews including Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS, Swinging Sorority, and Delinquent School Girls -The porno film star system -The blue Oscar -The life and times of Samantha McLaren -Ultra-kore -Further winners: the porn film I’d most like to see contest -Private sex lives of the porno stars -Ships that pass in the night -Hicks dig porno flicks -All-time favorite porno film hits

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The post Bill Rotsler & Adam Film World in 1975: <br />An Issue by Issue Guide appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Have you ever had that experience when you’re watching a film – and you become fascinated with one particular actor?

You’re seeing them play a part in the movie, and you know it’s just a performance. It’s fiction. Acting is just acting, right? But then you wonder how much of their real self might be coming through the screen.

A few years ago, I saw an unusual piece of film that featured an actor called Mary Stuart. Mary was a reasonably well-known X-rated performer in 1970s New York. She featured in a number of successful adult films, like like The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976), Naked Came the Stranger (1975), Wet Rainbow (1974), Memories Within Miss Aggie (1974). She was a sweet-looking and spontaneous presence, always engaging and interesting. But outside of her films, hardly anything was known about her. And when she eventually disappeared from the screen around 1977, she seemed to disappear from the world too.

Now this film I watched was actually an old sex loop. It was a silent and primitive thing that I doubt anyone else has ever even seen. It was similar to hundreds of others that were made around that time: it was a plotless, pretty pointless exercise. And it had bad camerawork too.

But then something in the loop happened that surprised me. And that one moment captured on film made me wonder what I was seeing. Was this an intentional part of the movie, or was this a real moment and something else was actually going on?

That moment sent me on a journey that lasted for several years, as I set out to piece together Mary Stuart’s eventful life – in and out of film – and see if she could be found to tell her story, and answer my question: Whatever happened to Mary Stuart?

Mary Stuart

This episode is 37 minutes long.

The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify.

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I carefully pick the reel of 8mm film out of the tin in which it has sat for decades. Inside the metal container, there’s also a piece of paper on which a handwritten note has been scribbled: “Mary and Levi and other – 9/23/1973.” I wonder if anyone has seen this film since it was first made.

I spool the film reel onto a projector, and switch it on. Images from the fragile strip start to flicker across a white-washed wall that acts as a makeshift screen. There’s no title card or credits or clue as to what’s about to unfold.

Two figures materialize in primary colors, sitting on an unpleasantly brown couch. They seem to be talking to each other, though there’s no sound except for the flicker of the projector. The film zooms in, clumsily and without warning, on the face of the male. He is recognizable as adult film performer Levi Richards. He smirks gently at his female companion, flirting shyly with her.

The camera jerks sideways to study his partner, clumsily re-focusing so we can linger on her features. She has a lean ballet-dancer body, cropped dark hair, and wears round Billie Jean King glasses that are comically large on her puckish, boyish features. Her mouth pouts in an asymmetrical and asexual way and, when she smiles, her teeth protrude unevenly like a white zipper. She’s not conventionally attractive, but her face invites attention. She projects a vulnerability that makes you feel you’re intruding on a private moment.

But this is a porn loop, and there are conventions that must be obeyed, so within minutes our players disrobe, their modesties are abandoned, and a sexual encounter – with its multiple mutations – begins. Surprisingly it is the coy female who takes the lead, dictating the positional variations.

Their interaction continues obliviously – even when a third person, a light-skinned black man, enters the room. Without being invited, he too undresses and quickly enters the fray.

And that would be that – except for one brief detail, a disturbing moment towards the end of the single-scene movie. The camera is framing the female’s expression,  a perspiring and wide-eyed gaze. Out of nowhere, she is slapped in the face by Johnny-come-lately. It’s a shock. It’s a hard slap. Nothing leading up to this moment had suggested this outcome. She appears surprised, and bewildered too, that it has happened in this scenario. And for a brief moment she turns her head and casts a confused look towards you, the viewer, that implicate you in what’s just happened.

And then, just as quickly, the picture flicks to black, as the single disconnected reel of film flails noisily announcing the end of the show.

I turn the projector off, and the room returns to darkness.

*

I saw the loop years ago, and it left an impression on me.

Firstly, there was the actress with the quirky, androgynous features. I recognized her as a New York adult film performer who went by the name Mary Stuart. While never rising to the level of Times Square box office porno queen in the vein of Linda Lovelace, Georgina Spelvin, or Jennifer Welles, her happy-go-lucky – and often just plain goofy – presence had brightened twenty or so features over a three-year period in the mid-1970s.

And then there was the startling end to the short film. X-rated loops in the 1970s often showcased content considered taboo for sexplicit feature films, but those themes were always an integral part of the storyline. They weren’t introduced spuriously, without context or explanation: they were the film’s raison d’être. But the slap in this loop appeared random and gratuitous enough that it seemed unplanned and spontaneous. It transformed the loop from a contrived sex vignette into a fleeting documentary.

Thousands of loops were produced in the early 1970s. They were usually made cheaply by hacks, and sold expensively by the mob. They were distributed via mail order or in adult bookstores – often furtively, under the counter, especially in areas lacking the community standards required by law to sell them legally. Nearly all were forgettable and forgotten – both by those who made them and by those who watched them. But they make up a critical missing link in the development of adult film, a nexus often neglected by the higher-profile success of porno chic among the intelligentsia and chattering classes.

But what was the story behind this 8mm film? How did it come about, and who made it? Did anyone see it? Did Mary Stuart know she was going to be slapped and, if so, how did she react to the idea?

A few days later, I met up with Levi Richards, the first actor in the loop, and brought along a copy of the film to see if he had any memories of it.

Levi watched the film clip in silence, before sitting back and shaking his head. He had no recollection of this one. He said he’d made far too many loops, far too long ago, for any to leave an impression. But he did remember Mary Stuart.

She’d been around from the early days of adult films, and he’d first noticed her when she showed up in several cheap and grim one-day-wonder films. Levi hadn’t found her attractive at first, thinking that she resembled a teenage boy in body and demeanor. They appeared in a few films together, but weren’t particularly close.

Mary Stuart and Levi Richards, in Pen Pals (1974)

Then Radley Metzger cast them both in his sexually explicit adaptation of the literary hoax, Naked Came the Stranger (1974) – Levi played a successful radio show host who is more interested in his affair with his lover, played by Mary Stuart – so they wound up spending more time together. At first, they just rehearsed lines, then they dated a few times. Levi changed his mind about Mary: he’d mistaken her zany ways for immaturity, but once her got to know her better, he liked her a whole lot more. She was smart – she told him she had two degrees from a college in Rhode Island – and was good company and fun.

But before their relationship could develop further, Mary broke it off unexpectedly. She’d become more serious about another boyfriend – he was possessive, she said – so she wanted to be exclusive to him.

“Story of my life,” smiled Levi. “I don’t know if I ever saw her after that. It was no big deal. We weren’t serious or anything. I think the truth was that I was too square for her. But it didn’t stop me from wondering what happened to her – especially after I heard the rumors.”

What rumors, I asked?

Levi insisted that it was probably nothing, but he’d heard that she’d got involved in a heavy, rough sex scene, and was then swallowed up by drugs.

Levi remembered one other detail.

“Mary’s boyfriend, the one that was possessive? I think that’s him in the loop. He’s the guy who shows up halfway through, and slaps her.”

Mary, in Chamber Maids (1974)

*

I brought up Mary’s name with a couple of the more notable directors she worked for, Gerard Damiano and Radley Metzger. Both remembered her instantly, and spoke of her unusual but photogenic features, as well as her professionalism on set. Neither of them knew anything about her private life.

I called up Harry Reems, veteran of the industry trailblazing film Deep Throat (1972), at the time living out a well-deserved retirement in Utah. He’d appeared in several films with Mary such as Wet Rainbow (1973) and Memories Within Miss Aggie (1974). He’d also mentioned her in his 1975 autobiography Here Comes Harry Reems, commenting on swinger parties that took place at her apartment.

Harry’s memory was hazy on the best of days, and he didn’t remember her name, so I sent him a picture. He responded immediately in his usual exuberant way. Mary was a doll, he exclaimed. One of the sweetest people you could meet. No hang-ups, pretenses, or airs and graces. She didn’t just act in the films, she helped the other actors with their lines, assisted with scenery and props, and fluffed any soft and needy male performers too.

Mary and Harry Reems, in ‘Memories Within Miss Aggie’ (1974)

I asked Harry about the swinger parties at Mary’s apartment that he had referred to in his book.

Harry said that he’d only been to two, maybe three, and they’d been as good, clean fun as a sweaty New York orgy could be. But then the atmosphere at the gatherings changed. Harder drugs were introduced, and there was a sharper edge to the evenings. Harry couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something strange about Mary’s new boyfriend, a mixed race guy named Bob, a sleazy character who treated partygoers as pawns to be manipulated for his sexual entertainment. Harry stayed away from Mary and Bob after that – besides, he was more occupied by his legal problems stemming from the prosecution of ‘Deep Throat’, and the potential jail sentence that he faced. Harry suggested I speak one of Mary’s friends – and an old flame of his – one-time porn queen cum disco queen Andrea True.

Andrea, and fellow porn performer Valerie Marron, were two of Mary’s girlfriends from the early days. The three of them were an unusual combination: Andrea was the materialistic older bird intent on getting her monetary just deserts from the exploiters of her carnal talent, Valerie was the under-aged, troubled kid who was as directionless as she was clueless, and Mary was the intelligent, fun-loving, well-balanced member of the threesome. When I spoke to Andrea, she’d recently moved back in with Valerie, decades after they first became friends.

Andrea said that Mary was a dancer, and had made half-hearted attempts to pursue a theatrical career, but lacked the discipline to gain a foothold. They all shared an apartment for a brief moment, before Mary moved in with Bob.

Mary and Valerie Marron, in ‘Chamber Maids’ (1974)

Andrea and Valerie remembered the good times with Mary: the parties, the friendship, the brief snatches of notoriety from the porn films. They also recalled how their contact with Mary disappeared overnight after she moved out. Occasionally they bumped into Mary after that, but were disturbed by her physical deterioration. She had large bags beneath bloodshot eyes, and lacked the same happy spark.

Mary and Andrea True, in Sexual Freedom in the Ozarks (1973)

*

Anyone making adult films in the mid 1970s came across Sandi Foxx: if you were an actor, you’d probably shared a sex scene with her, and if you were a filmmaker you might have gone to her one-woman talent agency looking for performers to hire.

Sandi knew most of the X-rated talent well. She knew what they were like on camera, and just as importantly, knew what they were like away from the set. Knowing them personally was important to her: if someone was going to flake on a director, Sandi wanted to know in advance. Being unreliable was a cardinal sin for anyone appearing in a low budget movie.

It was Mary who’d first introduced Sandi to the adult film industry: “It’s a long time ago now, and my memory is even foggier due to all the pot smoking, so the exact sequence of events is hazy at best. I remember going to a swinger’s party, and meeting Mary there with Don Allen. Don was an ex-army guy with a huge tattoo of a crying Jesus on his back. He and Mary had done sex loops for a couple of TV documentarians, Peter and Iris. At the time, I was struggling to pay bills, feed myself and my cat, and get around by subway or cab, so Mary and Don introduced me to the world of porn films.”

Sandi remembers two separate stages to her friendship with Mary: “At first she was a sweetheart, happy and friendly to everyone, just a nice girl. But then she met Robert Hollis…”

Bob Hollis, in Lady on the Couch (1974)

Sandi’s voice trails off.

Sandi remembers that Bob Hollis was an intelligent, charismatic, mixed-race man who dressed fancy, and looked like he’d just walked off the set of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. Though he’d appeared in several adult films – usually in dominant S&M roles – using the name Marc Anthony or Mel White, the porn scene only held occasional excitement for him. What ignited his lusty fuse was exerting control over people in real life. He had parties at his apartment, where he orchestrated manipulative scenarios using drugs, sex, and occasional threats of violence, and preyed on people’s weaknesses.

Sandi continues: “Mary and Bob started dating, and when she fell under his spell, he started taking hold over her life. They moved in together, and their sexual behavior became more transgressive and riskier. They were heavily into extreme S&M play.

“I remember seeing Mary wearing a necklace. I asked her about it. She said it referenced ‘The Ultimate Orgasm’, and that Bob had told her never to take it off.

Mary and Bob Hollis, in Honeypie (1976)

“But I don’t want to paint the picture that Mary was being used either. She seemed just as into the S&M scene as Bob was, and even though he had a controlling personality, she seemed to enjoy the ride off the far end of erotica.”

I pushed Sandi on the question of Mary’s free will.

Sandi replied: “I partied with Mary and Bob both alone and in groups, and Mary didn’t seem coerced to me. For sure, there were a variety of mind-altering drugs that were passed around, but she seemed a willing participant, even though she’d clearly become a more withdrawn and druggy person since I first met her.

“Bob handed out LSD and cocaine at their gatherings. And this wasn’t the type of crowd that just wanted to relax and pass out like I was used to. They wanted to be up – wired, feeling good, and partying.

“Pretty quickly, I realized it wasn’t my scene. It became scary, so I got out.”

I ask Sandi if she knows what happened to Mary after that, but she doesn’t. Sandi, like several others, thought about Mary often over the ensuing years, and worried about her fate.

Bob Hollis, in Sensuous Flygirls (1976)

*

If Bob Hollis remained an enigma, there are clues to him in some of the adult films he made. He was often hired by directors wanting to enact a realistic S&M scene for the camera – scenes that sometimes featured Bob and Mary in front of the camera as well.

Veteran pornographer Howard Ziehm remembers a scene he shot for Honey Pie (1976) with Bob, Mary, and the actress Bree Anthony: “Bob was a tall, articulate African American, and Mary was an attractive but intense brunette in her mid to late 20s. Bob wrote and directed a scene for me based on the sexual rituals routinely performed in his private life. Bob directed it, and all I had to do was film the action. We shot it at Bob and Mary’s apartment in a small, windowless room painted black, where hooks, chains, and other bondage paraphernalia were securely attached to the walls.”

The scene left a lasting impression on Ziehm, and he wrote about the dynamic between Bob and Mary over several pages in his autobiography, Take Your Job and Shove It (2012).

“(Bob) promises her that if she endures the pain, it will take her to a sexual nirvana. Once there is no doubt that she wants to go forward, her wrists and ankles are bound with leather cuffs attached to the chains connected to the hooks on the wall. She is left with her arms incapacitated and her legs pulled back over her head.

Mary, in ‘Honey Pie’ (1976)

“(Bob) directs Bree Anthony to begin using a small leather whip to lightly lash Mary’s buttocks. When he sees that her skin is only turning pink, he takes the whip away, and lashes her more intensely, repeatedly demanding that Mary beg him to continue.

“Her flesh has now turned red, just short of bleeding, and she begins to sweat and writhe in anguish. Bob offers her a chance to stop. She refuses.

Bob Hollis, in ‘Honey Pie’ (1976)

“Bob returned to an even harsher orgy of pain – one that I could not have imagined on my own. From a nearby table, he grabbed a chain about two feet long with a pair of nipple clamps attached to each end.

“Mary’s face, drenched in sweat from a combination of the additional pressure that is being applied to Mary’s nipples and the thought of the excruciating pain that she is enduring is not contrived.

“Mary’s eyes had rolled back in her head. Only the whites were showing as she made a last concerted effort to pull the clamps free. She reminded me of a zombie in ‘Nights of the Living Dead.’

Mary and Bree Anthony, in ‘Honey Pie’ (1976)

“A smile appears on Mary’s soaking wet face. Her ordeal is over and she shows no sign to indicate that she did not enjoy every minute of it. Hard to believe it was their normal sex routine.”

This wasn’t an isolated incident. One of the first New York sex film performers, Jason Russell, also remembers a scene involving Bob that appeared in the film Dominatrix Without Mercy (1976). Russell’s memories are of a similarly intense scenario playing out for the camera – one which disturbed even his own jaded perspective.

This time however the female submissive in the scene with Bob was C.J. Laing.

Bob Hollis, C.J. Laing, and Marc Stevens, in ‘Dominatrix Without Mercy’ (1976)

*

C.J. Laing still remembers Mary Stuart – which is understandable, given they were once close friends. And she still remembers Bob Hollis too – which is also understandable given the effect he had on her life.

C.J., usually voluble and enthusiastic, imparts thoughts of Bob curtly and economically. Many years have passed since the events she describes, but some memories linger for the wrong reasons.

She recalls Mary instantly: “She was lovely, a beautiful girl, and graceful too, always moving effortlessly… She had clear white skin which contrasted with her dark hair. Most of all, she was a kind and gentle person, and non-judgmental – which was important to me.”

Mary, with Darby Lloyd Rains, in Naked Came The Stranger (1975)

C.J. believes she first met Mary and Bob through Don Allen, the tattooed ex-army porn star who introduced Sandi Fox to the adult film business: “Bob was good friends with Don and his girlfriend Barbara. We all used to hang out together, going out dancing at the Loft, or staying in and having sex and doing drugs.”

C.J. moved into the apartment Bob and Mary shared, a small ground-floor one bedroom in the West Village at 71 West 12th St. It was there that C.J. saw Bob’s controlling ways first hand.

“Bob used drugs to control people – and he did it all the time. It was Bob who introduced me to shooting cocaine. He was dealing out of our apartment, and Mary and I were enlisted to help him, whether we liked it or not. It wasn’t a casual operation. I mean, we went to Columbia once to bring back drugs for him…

“He was at his most manipulative when it came to sex. He also introduced me to S&M. Basically he was a pimp, and tricked Mary out. He made me do pay-for-play too.

“Once he got a hold on you, it was difficult to break away. Mary managed to leave at one stage, but I stayed. Then I left, and Mary returned to Bob. Then I went back too.” It was a revolving door of abuse.

Mary, in Rollerbabies (1976)

Eventually Mary did get away – and didn’t return. C.J. said Mary started a new life in Arizona.

I ask C.J. what happened to Bob after that: “He hung himself.”

C.J. pauses.

“Mary came back to New York for the funeral, but after that, we lost touch.”

Mary, in Two Senoritas (1975)

*

Over the years, I tried looking for Mary.

Part of the reason was mere curiosity. I wondered how someone lives a normal life after such an intense chapter in their youth.

But the other reason was a misplaced investment in her life. Seeing her in an early loop, lithe, wide-eyed, and expectant, and then hearing about her and the way she lived engendered many questions. What had become of her? How did her story continue after she left New York?

I once read of a son’s search for his mountaineer father, a man who’d gone missing many years before on an expedition to a wintry peak. When the son found his father’s remains, perfectly preserved by ice and frozen in time, he was confronted with a man much younger than he was. In an instant, the son had become the older man, now taking care of his younger father.

In the case of Mary Stuart, she is forever trapped on screen in her films, a perpetually young elf, incapable of growing old. But Mary may still be alive, and would now be in her mid-sixties. Had I overlaid a victim narrative to her life that she’d find amusing or offensive today? Or conversely, had the events years earlier damaged her core, irretrievably and cumbrously? Looking for answers felt like caring for a young person who no longer existed.

Mary, in ‘Memories Within Miss Aggie’ (1974)

After several false starts, a series of coincidences led me to Mary several years ago. She was living by herself in a coastal city on the eastern seaboard of the U.S. I debated whether to contact her, but in the end took the plunge and phoned her one evening.

A professional voice answered the phone. After listening to my preamble, Mary responded. Her tone was purposeful and frosty. She said that she was doing well, but that her time in New York in the 1970s was not a period of her life that she wished to re-visit. She thanked me for my interest, but made clear that she discouraged further dialogue. And then hung up.

On the face of it, I was reassured that a person I’d wondered about for years was still around. I was relieved that she was alive after the stories I’d heard. And I couldn’t begrudge anyone who was reluctant to open themselves up to prying, intimate questions from a complete stranger. I was fine to quietly close the chapter.

A few weeks later, I received an unexpected return call. It was Mary. She said that she’d taken time to think about our brief chat. It had sparked an uneasy feeling inside her, which had surprised her. She thought she’d emotionally dealt with this part of her life, but her inner reaction suggested otherwise. She didn’t want to continue carrying around any unresolved feelings, preferring to confront them head-on. As a result, she was open to talking about her life – up to a certain point. She would set boundaries. There were people and events that she had no intention of addressing: she would indicate who and what those were when they arose, and I should not push her.

Over the course of a series of calls, I gingerly spoke to Mary about aspects of her life. She was assiduously thoughtful with her answers. Sometimes she was amused by my interest, other times there were signs of a quick temper flashing.

She was born north of New York City in 1949. She’d had a happy childhood, and as a kid dreamed of performing on stage one day. But instead of pursuing a career treading the boards, she attended Rhode Island School of Design, graduating with two degrees, one in landscape architecture.

When she moved to New York in 1972 her life drifted. She said she couldn’t settle down fully because she had too many, often contradictory, ideas in her head. For example, she was committed to working in the countryside, yet was drawn to the excitement of the city. She was naïve and inexperienced when it came to sex and drugs, yet fearless in subjecting herself to new experiences. She was shy and self-conscious in company, but readily appeared in front of pornographers’ cameras. She was gentle and kind, but drawn to pain and mind-games. And she believed in women’s rights, but had been attracted to men – and a business – that exerted undue control over her.

I asked about Bob Hollis, and the role he played in her life. It was one of the boundaries she preferred not to breach – at least not in detail. She spoke about him being a tortured, difficult soul, who had his own variety of demons to fight. It had been exciting to be together for a time, but when life soured, it became very nasty, very quickly.

Bob Hollis, in Dominatrix Without Mercy (1976)

She was more at ease speaking about the films she made, and the people with whom she worked: Radley Metzger (“a handsome, distant aristocrat who we all looked up to, and were secretly a little afraid of”), Gerry Damiano (“a funny little guy who had his own vision and ideas, and was convinced that his porno films would one day merge into mainstream cinema where he would be recognized as a genius..”), Marc Stevens (“a lovable ego-maniac who was happiest when he was the center of attention entertaining everyone”), C.J. Laing (“a crazy, wild girl who I was close to for a bit – and who I’ve worried about since I left New York”), and Harry Reems and Levi Richards (“two sweet and gentle men that made me comfortable with who I thought I was”).

Mary’s mood changed when she named a director with whom she’d worked several times – someone she knew and trusted. She heard from a fellow female performer that he filmed her when she was experiencing emotional and physical pain during a simulated rape scene. The actress had pleaded with him to stop, but the director continued regardless. Mary spits out her contempt for the man. She stopped working with him after she found out, and wishes she’d found out sooner. She still regrets not confronting him, but insists this was an unique and isolated incident in the business.

I asked if Mary was interested in getting back in touch with anyone from this period. She thought for a while, and then said no. That was a different time, and she was a different person. She tells me she chose her adult film name from Mary, Queen of Scots, also known as Mary Stuart. “I’m not Mary Stuart anymore,” she says.

We spoke about Mary’s life after she left New York, and escaped Bob’s clutches. She built a career as a passionate and leading figure in environmental conservation, working with farmers, land-owners, and advocacy groups, developing policy and delivering public education programs. She was employed, first in government then as an independent consultant, on a variety of issues – such as preventing city encroachments on rural areas, enforcement of the federal Clean Water Act, and preserving farmland. She saw her overriding mission as raising awareness of environmental issues by showing how they affect people’s lives.

Many of her personal interests were off-shoots of her love for nature – whether it was horses, trekking, fishing or gardening – but she also loved making jewelry which she sold privately. She didn’t miss city life any more, but sometimes wondered how New York had changed.

After a few months, our conversations began to peter out. She’d shared most of what she wanted to, and I didn’t want to be a perpetual intrusion from the past. Sensing that our talks may be coming to an end, I said I had one more question: I asked if she remembered a specific loop she made. It featured Levi Richards and Bob. It was shot back in 1973.

Mary dismissed the question before it had been formed. Her temper flared briefly, disdainful at the idea that her memory would have preserved an event so trivial, so meaningless. A loop was just a forgettable two-hour transaction in exchange for $40. Why would this one have been any different?

I stretched my luck. I told her that this particular loop was unique in that it ends in an unusual way, and has disturbed me since I first saw it. It concludes with her being slapped. The slap, and the effect, is unexpected and jarring.

Mary was silent for a long moment. When she spoke again, it was hesitatingly.

“I don’t remember it specifically. But I do recall a turning point. Or perhaps it was an awakening. I remember when I first experienced someone’s sexual power. Someone, probably Bob, hit me. To a relatively sheltered girl like I was, I’m embarrassed to say I had mixed feelings about it. I was repulsed and angered, but also fascinated by what it meant in that context.

“I don’t know… if it was that moment on film, but when I was slapped, I changed. My life followed a different path. It consumed me. It was irreversible. I never went back to the person I had been.”

Mary, in Naked Came The Stranger (1974)

*

In one of our last calls, Mary said she had cancer. It was an aggressive form of the illness, and her fight was short. She died in 2013 at the age of 63.

After her passing, life seemed quieter. I hadn’t been in contact with any of her family or friends, so there was no one with whom to share her memory or legacy.

A few days after she passed, I opened the tin with the 8mm reel of film. I held it up to the light to catch a few glimpses of the flickering young woman sitting on a couch wearing Billie Jean King glasses.

It seemed strange to grieve someone who I’d first got to know on screen one day long ago, when she was briefly younger than me.

*

Mary

*

The post Whatever Happened to Mary Stuart? – Podcast 97 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Adult films. Magazines about adult films.

The relationship between the two has always been symbiotic: sexually explicit movies needed the oxygen of publicity provided by newsstand publications… and magazines have always relied on pornographic films to give them salacious stories and images that guaranteed high circulation figures.

So when did this first start? What were the first magazines specifically dedicated to covering sex films?

Was it Adult Video News, the industry juggernaut that still continues today, that also produces the annual porn Oscars? Hardly. That only started in 1983.

What about Adam Film World, which dates back to the sexploitation days, and ran for 32 years until it was shuttered in 1998? Not even. It started early in 1966, but was still not the first.

The honor of being the first magazines dedicated to adult films may go to a group of titles that started with Wildest Films, and quickly expanded to a portfolio that included Daring Films, Torrid Films, Cinema Keyhole, and more. These publications began in 1965 at the dawn of sex films, before the magazines had ads and featured known porn stars of the day. They contained plot summaries, movie credits, and most importantly, titillating still photos from the films themselves.

Remarkably this portfolio of magazines all came from one man who single-handedly created the template for a business that lasted for the next 50 years.

That pioneer was Marv Lincoln. He has never spoken in detail about his critical role in the development of the industry. Until now.

This is his story – one that includes Lee Frost, Marsha Jordan, Dave Friedman, Bob Cresse, Fetish Times… and the hippy religious commune featured in the recent hit TV series Wild Wild Country.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Marv Lincoln: Magazines

Where are you from?
I was born and raised in Ralston, Nebraska – a tiny town of maybe 1000 people near Omaha. My parents had three boys – I’m the oldest.

My father owned a little local market called The Ralston Supermarket. He wanted us sons to take over the business but that was never my goal. It was too much hard work, and Ralston was a very bigoted small town. We were the only Jews, and sometimes anti-Semitic things would be scrawled on the windows of my father’s store.

Was magazine work something you wanted to do from the start?
Well – I was a writer from my teenage years. When I was 16, I was a sports reporter – a baseball reporter – for The Ralston Recorder, the local newspaper. Then I started writing other stuff for the paper – stories about things going on around town.

After high school I went to Missouri University because they had one of the best journalism schools in the country.

How did you get on there?
Basically I flunked out. Even though I was a pretty clever boy, I had terrible grades and after the first year my father refused to pay for my education anymore. I was more interested in the fraternity life than the scholastic life.

So I transferred to Omaha University and became a reporter for the local paper. My writing was really sharp at that time – I did a series of articles on all the businesses in town, reviewed movies and theater, and wrote a gossip column about local teenagers. The articles were substantial and well-researched: I think I kind of surprised myself at how good I was at the work.

During this time, I met my future first wife and got married at a very young age, about 21 or 22. We quickly had a daughter, and so I needed to find full-time work. I went to work for her family business in a son-in-law job that had nothing to do with writing or newspapers.

But I really wanted to write so I started crafting short stories and selling them to so-called men’s magazines.

Why men’s magazines?
I did some research in the market and found out that they’re easy to write for because they would take just about anything. And they all paid promptly too.

How did you know who to contact?
I think I just went to a newsstand, looked inside the covers, took down some addresses for these companies and wrote them to ask about submitting stories. I can’t remember exactly though – this was 1962 so it was a long time ago.

I’d write these erotic short stories that just came out of my imagination. It was around that time, I discovered that I wrote better when I was half drunk, so I got into drinking. Drinking and writing, it’s an old tradition.

Did you do all this in Nebraska?
At first, yes. Then one of my brothers decided to move to Los Angeles and I decided to follow him. I moved my family out there but I couldn’t find work as a writer, so I worked in the advertising departments of the big Los Angeles papers. I also became known as a sort of typist because I could type 100 words a minute.

How did you get back to magazines?
Eventually I met a guy named Lou Kimzey. He’d started these car magazines and he asked me to work for him. Lou’s real love was biking – he rode those big Harleys. Eventually he went on to publish magazines like Iron Horse and Easyriders – very popular biker magazines – starting in the 1970s.

But when I met him in the early 1960s, he was publishing car magazines like Modern Rod and Drag Racing. He also had a teenage magazine called Teen Set. I wrote for him for a while, and eventually became the managing editor for his titles.

Lou Kimzey’s Modern Rod magazine

What brought you into the world of softcore film magazines?
Lou’s business was going downhill – the company wasn’t doing well. So, he started putting out these so-called girlie magazines featuring pictures of nude women. Well really it wasn’t nude, just topless. My job was to write fake stories about the models. I gave them a personality and a life that was far from true.

Where did the pictures of the girls come from?
The girlie pictures were coming from a guy named Bill New, a pretty good photographer. I got to know Bill and found out that he was the stills photographer for some nudie movies – that’s what we called them in those days. We’re talking, like, 1963, 1964.

Did the girlie magazines turn Lou’s business around?
Not really. The girlie magazines made more money but not enough to save Lou’s business so he told us we should start looking for other jobs. Bill New approached me and suggested we do something together, on our own. Bill had access to all these sexploitation movie stills and there weren’t really any film-specific magazines out there so I thought: why don’t we produce a magazine solely devoted to sexploitation movies?

We formed a company; I think we called it New Link – New for Bill New, Link for Marv Lincoln. We got a mail drop location – 6311 Yucca Street in Hollywood right by the Capital Records Building – and we came up with our first copy of Wildest Films and sold it to a distributor. By the way, 6311 Yucca was well known in the porn trade. A lot of the adult-related companies and individuals had their mail delivered to that business that ran that mail drop.

Logistically, how did you run New Link publications?
In those days you’d make what we called packages. A package means you put together the magazine by taking photos, writing copy, pasting it all together – and then selling the whole thing to a distributor who’d buy it outright from you.

When Lou Kimzey had made his girlie magazines , he used a distribution company called GSN – Golden State News – one of the biggies in the girlie field. So, I went to GSN with a sample magazine and made my pitch.

Golden State News (GSN) was a popular and prolific California-based distributor of adult-themed books and magazines that operated out of 2211-2219 S. Union Avenue in Los Angeles. The company incorporated in April 1964 and was owned by Joel Warner whose son Lee Warner also worked in the family business. Joel was born in Poland in 1898, and emigrated to the United States in 1947.

GSN was one of five major adult magazine distributors in California in the 1960s. The others were Parliament News, Columbia News, All American and Buy-Rite. According to a 1967 report to the California Legislature on obscenity, these five companies accounted for 90% of the 170 mens magazine titles published in California in the mid 1960s, with 30-40 of these titles appearing in any given month. GSN distributed books and magazines for a number of publishers including Orbit, Utopia, Spectrum, and Cine-Art. The business also briefly employed low budget and sexploitation director Ed Wood.

Who did you deal with at GSN?
I met and eventually got somewhat friendly with GSN’s owner, Joel Warner. He had a thick accent, and he was a funny guy with a great sense of humor. And he was always after me to get him girls – almost like a pimp! – even though he was married with kids and grandkids. He’d have parties at his nice house, and my wife and I would go sometimes. Everyone there knew what Joel did and what I did. It was all very friendly.

Joel Warner (right) facing arraignment in 1964 for obscenity

But in terms with our dealing with Golden State, we worked pretty much exclusively through GSN’s attorney, Frank Laven. He was the one I made the original pitch to, and he was the one who said OK, make a magazine for us and we’ll buy it from you.

Your first title for GSN was Wildest Films?
Yes, we started with Wildest Films. To create the magazines, we used film set photos that Bill New already had in his files, and I wrote reviews of the movies to accompany them. I would get hold of the little press sheets that had the synopses of the plots, and I wrote the reviews using those.

We put the name Gold Line Publications on our first magazine. New Link was our business organization but we started by operating as Gold Line. Later on, GSN put other names on the cover of our magazines, like Cougar Publications and Classic Publications, but that had nothing to do with us.

Cover of Wildest Film’s first issue, 1965

Are you saying that you didn’t actually see the films – yet still wrote the reviews about them in the magazine?
That’s right – I never saw the films. I didn’t need to. The press sheets were enough. And some of the stuff, I just plain made up out of the blue. I’d do fake features on the actresses too. It was all fantasy – I had a really good fantasy mind. I don’t know if I was horny, or just a sexy guy, but it just came out of me.

Did GSN provide you with guidelines as to what was permissible and what wasn’t?
Nothing formal but we had conversations. At a high level, they laid out examples of what we could and couldn’t do. And they shared what they generally expected – number of pages, color versus black and white, any layout requirements. For example, there had to be eight pages in color and they were certain page numbers. The center spread was always in color. It was like an industry standard, probably because the printing companies were printing a lot of titles and it was cheaper to keep them consistent. That said, I think GSN had their own printing presses.

There was just a common understanding of what was expected. The magazine community was a small fraternity; we all sort of knew each other. We spoke to each other about developments around standards. Over time I understood the rules in part by looking at other magazines in the field – like those put out by Parliament News. And because I was focused on movies, I knew that if a movie could show something, then we could show it too.

But in terms of sexual content, it was the attorney’s responsibility to make sure we weren’t breaking any obscenity or other laws when we put the publications together. And Frank Laven, the GSN attorney, was a very conservative guy.

On occasion GSN did come back to us and ask us to change something in a package – like, “this sexy picture is too large to get away with, go away and make it smaller.” But the standards were changing so fast that if something wasn’t allowed in one package, you know it was just a matter of time, and it might be allowed in the next. For example, when I started you couldn’t show even a single pubic hair. But we – along with everyone else – were pushing the envelope, trying to be more daring all the time.

Marv Lincoln’s Wildest Films magazine

Did you ever get in trouble with the law?
Never. My company…we were pretty conservative. Even when we were pushing a bit, we still stayed within bounds because our titles sold well like that. There was no reason to take risks if there was already high demand for what we were selling.

And GSN did extra things to protect themselves and by extension us. For example, they’d print a notice on the front of our magazines warning that the contents weren’t suitable for minors. That’s something they did – we had nothing to do with that.

Joel Warner was a frequent target of the State’s efforts to fight obscenity

If GSN bought the packages from you, how did you get the money up front to make them?
We had to put up the money. But it didn’t cost us a lot to put the packages together. Bill already had all the photos and that was the main expense. I was the writer. Then we brought in an art director. And that was about it.

We sold GSN a paste-up so we didn’t pay for any of the printing. A paste-up is just what the name implies: page after page of pictures pasted down with text, like all magazines used to be made. That’s what we called them: paste-ups, or flats.

What sort of money would you get for each issue?
We were getting about $1,800 to $2,000 per package. Most of it was profit, and this was 1965 so that was good money. We paid the art director about $200 per package and Bill and I split the rest.

But when we were paid, we didn’t get it in cash, and we didn’t get paid by company check either. We got paid with something called a Trade Acceptance or TA. It basically meant that payment was deferred – something like a promissory note. If you held onto it for 3 or 6 months, you would be able to get the full amount. But there were companies that would cash the TAs for you immediately for a fee of say 10%. And we always cashed them right away – we never waited.

According to Charles Nuetzel, an author who worked with GSN head Joel Warner, Joel also had a stake in the company that would cash the TAs: “The way [Joel] worked, you’d go to him and get a contract and he’d pay you with an IOU that was cashable in 3 months. But he’d tell you about this company that was willing to cash them immediately for a l0% charge. Then we found out later that he was a partner with this company too. He had you coming or going.
 
“[Joel] got a lot of people started in the business. Milt Luros [a key adult magazine publisher who helmed Parliament News, the influential company defended by groundbreaking first amendment attorney Stanley Fleishman] started with him. Even Dave Zentner [an early publisher of adult books under the name Bee-Line Publications who later worked with Cheri managing editor Peter Wolff] did some books for Warner.”

How did your first magazine, Wildest Films, turn out?
Laven, the attorney, told us that if it sold, GSN would take more from us. And it sold well. So I think after that we started making one a month. And then we started thinking about creating other titles.

We became the movie specialists. Los Angeles was the epicenter of this new industry, and Bill New had it all covered. He was pretty much the only one taking photos on the sexploitation film sets at that time. Bill Rotsler didn’t come along until later.

Did you ever go with Bill New to any of the movie sets?
Yes. Bill probably told the producer or director that he wanted to bring his assistant or whatever along and I went with him to see how the movies were made. They were quickies and most of them weren’t too artful. Often, they were made in five and six days – some of them were shot in only two days.

I only went with him a few times because it didn’t take long for it to become pretty boring.

Marv Lincoln’s Wildest Films magazine

Did you interview the starlets that you profiled in the magazine?
I might have interviewed them, but if I did it was probably just to get a date with them. Most of the writing just came from my head. I took my stylistic cues from Hollywood and European movie magazines.

So what happened after Wildest Films sold well?
Wildest Films was such a big hit, GSN asked us to start other magazines. I came up with Daring Films next, and made it more about European movies.

How did you put that together?
I found a couple of respectable magazine sources for sexy European films, good films – well-made. These magazines were made in Paris and Rome – and they had nudity. We’re talking about the mid ’60s when America was still pretty repressed but Europe wasn’t.

Anyway, I’d just lift the images out of these magazines – literally cut them out and use them. I mean… these publishers were in Paris – what were they going to do to me?

So Wildest Films focused on local film production in California and Daring Films was European-focused?
Not all European. I just made it a bit more sophisticated so it would be different from Wildest. We’d have different layouts, more like the European magazines. And little side stories about the starlets, and maybe I’d do an article on film censorship or other related topics. I just upped the level of my writing and added more content.

What was going on in your private life at the time?
I was in the middle of a divorce. My marriage – a terrible marriage – ended about 1965. I’d been married for five years and we had two kids. As I said, I took to drinking in a big way. I could still function pretty well – but the marriage ended.

After that I was free, so I had little affairs with some of the starlets which was fun. I don’t remember any of their names – they were mostly one-nighters. Occasionally, I’d have a longer affair. For example, there was a girl named Pam who went by the name Sunny. She was a topless dancer. We were together for a bit.

Back to the magazines: did Daring Films start shortly after Wildest Films?
A couple of years later – maybe ’66, ’67. I think they were monthlies, or we alternated – one month was one title, one month was another.

Soon after that came Torrid Films – we started that one a few months after Daring Films.

Was that because Golden State News kept asking for other titles?
Yes. The more success they had with what we were producing, the more magazines they wanted. And these magazines were hot. The demand for them was big.

We produced the packages as fast as we could. We didn’t think to ourselves, “this magazine will be monthly; this will be quarterly” – we just worked as quickly as possible.

Did you have any idea how much Golden State was making off the magazines?
No. I know the print run started at about 10,000. And they charged about $1.50 for the first issue which was twice as much as Playboy cost at that time. The price rose to $3 or $3.50.

The magazines mostly sold in adult bookstores. But occasionally they sold on major newsstands – for example, they would carry Daring Films because it was more sophisticated.

According to the 1967 Report to the California Legislature on obscenity, magazine distribution was lucrative. A nudist publication with a cover price of $1.25 cost about 21 cents a unit to produce and a publisher could expect to make about $8,000 on a 20,000 print run. Distributors like GSN would typically sell between 5-10 titles a month, leading to a healthy profit.

California sex-related market size, 1967 Report to the California Legislature

And at this point is the core team still just you, Bill, and the art director?
After a while Bill and I parted ways. We’d been together just under two years, but got a work divorce because frankly I couldn’t stand him anymore. He was a very strange character in a realm of very strange characters. A real right-winger who was always preaching this right-wing dogma to me.

Also he had some strange habits. He’d take pictures of women in his studio where we both worked. He had a dressing room for the women – and it had a two-way mirror. He would go back there and watch the women get undressed. He would invite me back there sometimes and we had to be very, very quiet. The women didn’t know. It was creepy.

So we separated and I took over the publishing of the magazines: I’d been the editor and I knew how to do it. Bill had been a photographer, that’s all. I started my own business and I think I called it Spectrum Publications, but I’m not sure about that.

Every time you handed over a package, was there paperwork that you signed?
Yes. It was very official. I signed over the rights to the package but I still owned the rights to the photos.

How did the business work for you after the split from Bill?
I got my own office in central LA, on Larchmont Boulevard. I told the landlord – a lady who never came around – that I was in the advertising business. It was a nice little place. We put together the magazine layouts there.

I quickly started expanding the magazine business to more titles. Adult Film Review was one of them. Also Cinema Keyhole. And I might have had a title called something like Sizzling Films.

Cover of Cinema Keyhole’s first issue, 1968

This was in the late 1960s, though I can’t remember exactly when because it was a very strange and transformational era. This was the time of psychedelics and rock music and big outdoor concerts. I was experimenting with LSD and so my memory is a little rusty. But I think the LSD helped my creativity.

Who did you have working for you?
When I went into business for myself, I had four or five photographers working for me, and their assignment was to go to the movie sets.

The movie producers and directors were happy to have them because they wanted stills for their ad campaigns. So we would shoot on set, the producers would get some of the images, and then they were happy for us to use whatever we wanted in our magazines because it promoted their films. No money ever changed hands with the film producers or directors – I just gave them photo stills.

The movie guys would usually want 20 or 30 shots that covered the key scenes for their publicity. So my photographers would shoot from different angles, get close ups, maybe shoot a few on the side with the girls so I could do a little feature on the starlets.

I had set requirements: don’t keep clicking away – shoot the key scenes. I often would go with them on set to make sure they got all the shots we needed. I would direct my photographers – and every so often land a date with one of the actresses.

Marv Lincoln’s Cinema Keyhole magazine

I assume the photographers were all male?
Oh yeah. There was a sort of a fraternity of guys who were in the girl shooting business. They were mostly young guys.

And did you pay the photographers a flat fee?
Yes – they got a set amount each day: I think it was $50. They got the money, and I owned the rights to what they shot.

Do you remember any of the names of producers or directors that you were dealing with?
Lee Frost was the big director. He started out with sexploitation films in the 1960s and continued into the 1970s with crazy exploitation fare. Early on, he often worked for Olympic International Films – a major production company. Olympic was the classiest outfit – they made the best films, the most colorful films. They had plots, they had real actors, like the western ‘Hot Spur’ – which Frost directed.

What was Lee Frost like?
Lee was kind of aloof. I think it was his ego. He had an attitude like “I’m a big-shot director and the rest of you are just small fry.” I saw him out and about once in a while but he wasn’t really involved with the girls – he was married and had a life outside of the business.

Bob Cresse was the owner of Olympic International and he was a close collaborator with Frost in the early days. Bob was a funny little gay man who spent a lot of time in the adult bookstores. He had parties at his home in the Hollywood Hills. He too had a two-way mirror on the side of his house looking into his bedroom so you could stand outside and watch people having sex inside. Bob liked to watch.

Everyone in the business knew about his house and his parties. He invited me over a few times and I had sex in his bedroom once with people watching just for the experience. I also watched from the outside a couple of times but I find watching people having sex pretty boring, especially if it’s just conventional sex.

Did you work with any other directors at the time?
Another guy who made quality films was David Friedman. I did some work with him after I went to his office and pitched my services as a photographer and publicist. One of my photographers was Dave’s favorite guy so he would arrange his shooting schedule around him.

David Friedman

Dave was a really great guy. He was a fun, friendly and intelligent – and a really good business man. He was like the quintessential chamber of commerce member. And along with Bob Cresse, he produced some of the best sexploitation films on the west coast.

So business was good for you?
By early 1968, my magazine empire was at its peak. It swelled to about twelve titles. I can’t even remember them all. Then, around 1969, things started to change. Things were getting hotter and hotter – more explicit. And I didn’t really like that. I wasn’t into hard core pornography as such. I liked the softcore, the suggestive stuff, but it started getting a lot more lurid.

Was that why you got out of the magazine business in the later 1960s?
In part. Also I had more competition by this stage: guys like Bill Rotsler and others came on the scene, copying what I did so I no longer had it all to myself.

Did you get to know Bill?
I first met Bill in the mid 1960s but found him quite conceited and a know-it-all. I’d see him around at parties with his writer friend Harlan Ellison. Bill was really into LSD – like I was at the time. So I knew Bill, but we never really liked each other. Maybe it’s because we were business rivals. Also I was probably a little jealous of him. I wanted to be a successful sci-fi writer, and he was one.

Bill Rotsler in an ad in Adam Film Quarterly, 1969

Anyway I tried to be more competitive. I sold photos to other publishers – I saved the best shots for my magazines and sold what was left. And I also started to sell packages to other distributors, not just Golden State News. At first, I was very faithful to GSN. But people approached me to do packages for them and I thought, “What the hell..” I can’t remember any of the company names, but I’d sell original packages to these other distributors as well.

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Film

Can you tell me about the movie you made in 1969?
Yes, it was a softcore movie made under my real name. I thought I could be a big shot producer and make my own film and get rich and famous. But the thing was such a loser that I try not to think about it.

It was a 35mm film I called SMUT. It was a tricky title, because distributors couldn’t use it in their advertising. Smut was considered a dirty word by a lot of publications and they wouldn’t print it. So, I had to make up words to fit the letters: ‘Salvation of Mankind from Unnatural Temptation.’ The distributor shortened the title to Salvation/Temptation.

The main character in the film was Beaverella – a takeoff on Barbarella with Jane Fonda which had come out the year before. She was a school teacher type – I think, it’s been so long and I’ve blocked it out! – who wore granny glasses and was very, very strict.

The popular sexploitation actress Marsha Jordan played the role of Sandra Smudge – I gave the character that name because she had a dirty mind and was a dominatrix type. Her foot servant was called Captain Climax. Marsha was a large-breasted, small-waisted married woman and a pretty decent actress. She was like a housewife. We never slept together or anything but she was very friendly.

Sexploitation actress Marsha Jordan

My then-friend George – last name Ruben or Rubenstein – wrote the screenplay and was going to direct it. George had been around Hollywood for a while as a screenwriter and he wanted to be a big director. George helped me come up with the budget for the film and then I got investors, including my mother, my best friend, and an ex-girlfriend. I think the movie cost $40,000. That was a lot in those days.

Our plan was to make the film and then sell it to a big distributor. We were going to work out a deal with Roger Corman and AIP (American International Pictures).

When the time came to start shooting, George told me he’s not going to be the director. He wasn’t happy with the screenplay he wrote. Needless to say, I was very angry at George, very disappointed.

So what did you do?
I was going to have to be the director and I’d never directed a film. I’d watched a lot of films being directed, so I knew something, but that was about it. But I became the director because I had to.

We’d already hired the crew and actors and everybody. They were people I knew from the business but I don’t remember their names.

Anyway, I directed it and put it together but it was too crappy to sell to a distributor. There were too many mistakes that an inexperienced director would make, like not having all the angles covered. So I had to re-shoot some scenes and I had to add several new scenes.

Who shot them?
The cameraman that I wanted for the additional scenes was working on another film, so I went with a guy named Paul Hipp, a cinematographer for hire who went on to work on a bunch of different films into the early 1980s. He was okay, but he thought he was a big-time cinematographer so he brought in all these people – the guy who wheeled the dolly around, the best boy who’s kind of the handyman around the set. He had a whole crew. And I had to pay all these people.

One of the guys Paul brought on was a cameraman named Gary Graver. Gary worked on Orson Welles films – he was a good buddy of Orson. And he was a really great cinematographer. Everything was hand-held with him. Gary shot a lot of scenes, and he was a really nice guy. Also he was very hip – a true hipster.

Orson Welles and Gary Graver

The movie originally took about a week to shoot, but the reshoots and additions added another week to the production. For post-production, I’d lined up an editor I knew from my social life. He was an experienced editor, but after a while I fired him because he was criticizing everything. He hated the whole film and pointed out so many errors. The film was so amateurish he really didn’t want to do it.

So, I brought in an experienced Hollywood editor whose name I can’t remember. He was really expensive but he was also really good – he put the whole thing together and the film was finally finished. But even after the re-shoots and the professional editor, it was pretty amateurish.

Were you finally able to sell the movie?
The film was so bad that Corman and AIP was a no go, so I approached Dave Friedman. Dave wanted the film but he wouldn’t take it because his partner was offended by one of the scenes: it was a sequence where we were kind of mocking the Salvation Army. My wife and I and George and his wife, Naomi, were pretending we were with the Salvation Army marching band. We had the uniforms and played instruments. Well Dave’s partner was a big Salvation Army booster, and because of that scene, he told Dave he would not distribute the movie.

Finally, I found a distributor willing to take it. It was a relatively new company whose name I can’t remember but I liked the guys and they had experience in the nudie business. And they were the only ones willing to pay me an advance. They paid me $20,000 and I was able to pay back my investors – I paid back my mother, and I paid back George.

I thought the movie was in good hands. They had a whole press campaign set up and all the stills that I had given them that my friends had shot. But the movie died – it just died. And the company wound up going bankrupt. They had all the elements associated with the film and all of those disappeared. Everything went up in smoke and to this day I can’t find any record of the movie. It’s almost like the universe said “Okay buddy, you tried, you failed.”

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Dave Friedman had taken on distribution of my movie because he was so good at what he did. I think it probably would have made money and I probably would have gone on to make more movies.

What happened after SMUT?
I decided to move with my wife – my third wife I think – and her kid to the South of France to start a new life. I’d made a lot of money in the magazine business so even though I probably lost $20,000 on the film, I still had money to burn.

I left the business. I left the whole thing behind me.

Before you left, do you remember being featured in the documentary film ‘American Sexual Revolution’ in 1971?
A little bit. They interviewed me for this movie. I think it was a regular film studio that made it. I have no memory of how they pitched it to me – or why I said yes. I don’t even remember doing it.

Too much time has passed and too much memory is lost. I’m 83 years old now. So you know, memory starts to fade. So much has happened over a lifetime.

Marv Lincoln in American Sexual Revolution (1971), courtesy of Something Weird Video

Ultimately you had gotten out of the adult film magazine business because you didn’t want to be associated with more explicit content?
Yes. At first I could pretend like I was a real magazine publisher and hang out in those circles as a big shot. But it got sleazier and more explicit and the Mafia got involved. GSN wanted me to make my stuff more explicit, and include these gynecological close-ups. And I didn’t want to do it so they decreased their order of magazines. I went from having all these different titles down to one or two, and finally just one a month. Then it was over.

The whole business started to slide downhill when the hardcore magazines started to take over. People like Stanley Fleishman, the famous attorney over at Parliament News in the San Fernando Valley, broke down the barriers.

Stanley Fleishman was a leading first amendment attorney who argued several obscenity cases before the Supreme Court. In 1959 he won a case that held that adult booksellers could not be held accountable for all content that they carried. He later represented the Pussycat Theatre when it was charged with obscenity for exhibiting ‘Deep Throat’ and Rubin Gottesman for selling films with a then underaged Traci Lords.

So you moved to France – how long were you there for?
I spent two or three years in the South of France and I had an incredible time. While I was there, I sold some short stories to a couple of adult magazines. I was also taking photos – and I was a good photographer. I was taking pictures around the South of France and Nice. I went to the Cannes Film Festival as a photographer and made up some stories and sent them to adult publications. I got maybe $100-200 per article with photos.

Eventually the French government came after me because I was in the country illegally. I had never bothered to register when I arrived. They took away my car, my stereo, everything I owned. So I had to come back to the States.

*

Newspapers

What did you do when you got back to America?
I came back to California from France in 1974. I was totally broke, no prospects, no place to live, no car, no wife anymore, no girlfriend, no nothing. And the adult business was all hardcore. But a friend of mine named Larry Ross approached me to work with him. Larry had this girlie magazine empire, and he also put out a couple of sex newspapers. One was called San Francisco Ball – it was basically a west coast imitator of Screw, and Larry asked me to work on it.

The San Francisco Ball was never as big as Screw or as profitable, but it was a money maker. And Al Goldstein was kind of a buddy of mine. I knew him through the business. We first met at a sex conference in Amsterdam and liked each other and hit it off. Al was a great larger-than-life character.

Anyway, Larry also had a newspaper called Fetish Times, a monthly paper. And because I had nothing else to do and needed money, Larry also asked me if I would also work on Fetish Times. I was kind of a kinky character anyway, so I said OK.

Larry basically turned Fetish Times over to me because of my experience. I was writer, photography director – sort of like an editor-in-chief. My nom de porn was Marvin X and I became pretty famous.

I did that work for three years, from about 1974-1977, basically running Fetish Times and a few fetish offshoots, like one for feet and one for enemas called Water & Power. We actually had two or three enema magazines that came out quarterly or bi-monthly. Surprisingly enemas were a big moneymaker, and power was a big part of the fetish.

Jamie Gillis reads an issue of Water & Power in the film Water Power (1977)

I started as an employee for Larry. I just was paid a salary – I didn’t own anything. But then with the fetish offshoots, we started another company in which I was a partner, so we shared in the profits.

The fetish content didn’t bother you like the explicit adult content had?
It was fascinating to me. The whole fetish thing is barely about sex. It’s a different phenomenon. It was really shining a light on a whole other world I knew nothing about. The fetish world really took me way, way out there.

Did you go to any of the fetish clubs?
No. Let’s just say I did a little experimenting on my own and leave it there. We did sponsor a couple of fetish parties where I did some demonstrations.

Did you write from your imagination as you had with the sexploitation films?
I didn’t need to do as much of that because fetishists love to talk about their fetishes. We got all this mail in from readers with all kinds of stories. We picked the best and printed them as reader submissions.

Marv tries to outdo Screw’s Peter Meter by introducing the Master Meter

What brought your work for the fetish papers to an end?
I would say burnout. I think I just got tired of it. It just went about as far as it could go for me. It was successful, I made a lot of money with this, and so did my boss Larry Ross, but it got tiresome.

At the time, I was kind of caught up in my own downhill spiral. I was depressed, which was new for me. I was sick of the porno business, and getting more into drugs like cocaine and drinking too much and having weird friends and weird sex… group sex and more.

So I decided to make another shift in my life. I left the business. Larry paid me off, and six months later, I was in India.

Wife number three had turned me on to dynamic meditation, a very active and cathartic practice. Anyway, dynamic mediation really kind of saved my life. So I went to India to study with the guy who created it. Did you see that documentary Wild Wild Country? It was Osho, also known as Bhagwan.

Osho/Bhagwan started the Rajneesh movement in the 1970s. It was a non-sectarian religion focused on meditation, mindfulness, love and open sexuality. Founded in Poona, India, the movement later relocated to rural Oregon where tensions immediately arose with local residents who were much more conservative. The movement also faced internal dissension and prosecution by the U.S. government over allegations of bio-terrorism.
 
Ultimately the movement was forced out of Oregon and leader Osho returned to India where he died in 1990. The movement continues to this day with small centers of practice in a number of countries.

Wait – you studied with the guy that was profiled in the documentary ‘Wild Wild Country’ that was produced by the Duplass brothers?
Yes. It was a good documentary, but a real hatchet job because I was there and I know what’s real.

I started by going to a meditation center in Los Angeles a couple of nights a week. The first time I went, I was loaded. But in the first two minutes of that meditation, this is a very special kind of breathing, I was stone sober. Those two minutes totally changed my life. I started doing meditation regularly and reading Osho’s books. And then I went to Poona One, the ashram in India. Then I was on the ranch in Oregon for maybe a year and a half around 1983-1984.

Osho (right), founder of the Rajneesh movement

I knew Sheela who was profiled in the documentary. She was pretty scandal-ridden even though she started the whole thing, the ranch in Oregon, with good intentions. She was power hungry and she got into some pretty weird drugs. She was like a secretary but she took on a whole lot of responsibility, because here is this strange cult in the middle of the Eastern Oregon High Desert, which is a very, very right-wing and bigoted location.

Anyway, I’m still practicing today. I’ve now been involved with this for over 40 years.

And have you been writing all these years since the adult magazine and newspaper work?
Yes. I’ve written and published three or four books. A couple are sci-fi novels – I’m a big sci-fi fan.

So you and Bill Rotsler had that in common too…
Yes. Bill was an excellent science fiction writer. He was also a really excellent photographer.

And what are you doing now?
I’ve become a ghost writer. I wrote a book called 93 Rolls-Royces because of the cars Osho became famous for. I ghost-wrote the book for a disciple who painted several of the Rolls-Royces in psychedelic colors. And I’m ghost writing a book for a motivational speaker, who formerly worked with Tony Robbins.

And I live happily with my wife Liberty Lincoln. She was in mainstream movies for years. And we’ve been married for over 30 years. It took me a few tries but I finally found my muse.

Marv Lincoln today with Liberty, his wife and muse

Is there anything you regret about your time in the adult business?
I had a great time. For one thing, I was a very successful businessman, which I had never been before. I made a lot of money, I did a lot of creative stuff, I met a lot of interesting people. I’d say it was a very, very valuable time. It wasn’t just the money and the eroticism or the getting laid all the time – which I was. I wouldn’t have gotten laid nearly as much if I wasn’t in the business.

Rather, it was a period of great changes and shifts in the zeitgeist. We’re talking about extreme censorship in 1965 and nudist magazines and the whole transition that I went through up through the 1970s. The porno world sort of opened things up, as far as sex and drugs were concerned.

Do you think the porn world was a stimulus or do you think it was a symptom of a change that was happening anyway?
I think it was a stimulus. It was really about legality and the Supreme Court, as far as publishing was concerned. But it was also LSD and smoking pot that opened up a lot of people to experiencing their bodies. It was just a period of great opening.

But then, as often happens with these kinds of successes, it turns sour because the big money gets in. The Mafia took over the porn business. Around the Fetish Times period I had a girlfriend who owned movie theaters in LA that were showing ‘Deep Throat’ and sometimes we’d go out to dinner with the Mafia man for the movie.

But the shady and lurid side wasn’t that commonplace for me. All said, it was an amazing time.

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The post Wild, Daring, and Torrid – Confessions of Marv Lincoln, the Original Smut Publisher appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Crossover success: The ability to go from porn stardom and achieve acclaim in the mainstream world.

This was the mythical desire of countless golden age adult film performers. But the stigma of having appeared in front of the camera in a sex film production invariably meant that such aspirations were doomed from the outset. Rather than bolster their prospects, participation in a sex film ruined any chance they might have had to make it in the regular film industry. The exceptions are rare – with perhaps Andrea True‘s brief success as a disco diva in the 1970s the most notable example.

But what about Claire Wilbur? Just a few years after Claire appeared nude on stage in two theatrical productions, and barely a year after she starred in Radley Metzger’s sexploitation film Score – a movie brimming with nudity and sexual content – Claire Wilbur was on stage in Los Angeles receiving an Oscar at the Academy Awards.

How did she succeed where so many other adult industry participants had failed? What led her to appear in sex films to begin with, and what did she do after winning the highest honor in film?

This is Claire Wilbur’s story.

Many thanks to John Janetatos, Jerry Douglas, Radley Metzger, Robin Lehman, and Victor Desjardins for their memories of Claire.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

In 1974, Radley Metzger traveled to western Croatia to shoot the film Score. Based on the off-Broadway stage play written by Jerry Douglas, ‘Score’ told the story of a bisexual married couple – Jack and Elvira – who seduce and sexually liberate young newlyweds, Eddie and Betsy.

As always, Radley preferred to cast performers he hadn’t worked with before. Gerald Grant, an actor with bit parts in films like In Harm’s Way (1965), Love Story (1970), and Bananas (1971), starred as Jack. There was Cal Culver in the role of Eddie, who’d appeared in the seminal gay film Boys in the Sand (1971) under the name Casey Donovan. Lynn Lowry, an actress and model who’d worked as a Playboy Bunny, played Betsy.

And then there was Claire Wilbur as Elvira, a role she’d played off-Broadway in Jerry Douglas’ stage production of ‘Score’ in 1970. Claire seemed perfectly cast in the part. The character of Elvira is confident, composed – at times haughty, but always elegant. Claire carried the role with ease, as if born for it. But when asked about Claire and what she brought to the role, Radley was tight-lipped – even more so than normal for a man who could be parsimonious with details.

Since the, information about Claire has been in short supply. Her only other film role was in Teenage Hitchhikers (1974), a sexploitation film in which she again played a predatory older woman with a penchant for young ladies.

And then in 1976, she won the Oscar for Best Short Documentary, achieving the mainstream success many adult industry performers longed for but found elusive.

So what brought Claire Wilbur to the stage and screen? And what happened to her once she put the world of entertainment behind her?

*

Beginnings

Claire Wilbur was born Claire June Janetatos in Moosup, Connecticut on June 8, 1933. The Moosup that Claire was born into was a small town dealing with the aftermath of the Great Depression and the prospect of a world war. The textile mills the area had long depended on for their prosperity began to close down. What had once been a booming industrial zone that drew immigrants with promises of work and a better life was now an area in crisis.

Claire’s father Peter Janetatos – born in the coastal town of Kalamata, Greece – had been one of the first generation of immigrants drawn to the area. Peter met Claire’s mother – Estelle Grocki, from Western Massachusetts – and the two worked together in the food industry, eventually setting up a business together, Highway Restaurant Inc., soon after Claire’s birth. Money was in short supply so it was an impoverished upbringing for Claire, one that included time spent in foster care when her parents divorced in the early 1940s.

Claire Wilbur, née Janetatos, bottom middle, age 16

But Claire was determined to make the best of it, taking an active part in school life at Plainfield High School. She was on the student council, and she was president of the Future Homemakers of America, attending the association’s national leadership conference in 1950. She was assistant editor of the Hermiad, Plainfield High School’s yearbook. And she was an active member of the Dramatic Club, featuring in school productions of ‘A Date with Judy,’ ‘The Christmas Carol,’ and ‘He Couldn’t Marry Five.’

Claire Wilbur, née Janetatos, top right, with the Plainfield High School student council of 1950

Victor Desjardins, a classmate at Plainfield High School, remembers Claire well – not because they were close friends, but because of Claire’s striking good looks and the way she always seemed to hold herself apart from others. While most students at Plainfield would cluster in the halls, where groups of boys and girls would playfully tease each other, Claire would walk alone with her shoulders back and her head high, a posture that made it seem as if she was acting a part. Victor describes Claire as always “well put together” – and that’s saying something for a time when all the girls were trying to look their best and the fact that Claire’s family did not have money to spend on fancy clothes and shoes. When Victor acted with Claire in a school play, she continued to keep to herself, avoiding the camaraderie of the student theater crowd. And she kept herself apart from others in her own neighborhood as well.

When Claire’s mother remarried, she and her new husband moved the family to the same Union Street in Moosup where Victor lived. Victor describes it as a poor but lively neighborhood, filled with small houses in close proximity that had been built decades earlier for the mill workers. While other kids stayed out on the street, playing and socializing, Claire and her brother never hung out with the locals. Victor wasn’t sure what was happening in Claire’s household – he just knew that her family was different.

Claire Wilbur, née Janetatos, in the Plainfield High School 1951 yearbook

Upon graduating from high school, Claire left for New York City with a steely sense of independence and dreams of Broadway. She took an office job with the Vicks Corporation to pay the bills before returning home to study at the University of Connecticut. Later in life, Claire would claim that she worked her way through college running a pool hall and an answering service for bookmakers.

After college, Claire was back in New York to continue her acting education with programs at the Stella Adler Theatre Studio, Charles Kebbe Workshop (for television commercial technique), Bob Seed Studio (for movement and gymnastics), and with Elizabeth Parish (for Shakespeare).

As Claire honed her craft in the classroom, she regularly auditioned for parts that would expand her acting experience. She had a good degree of success with a number of small companies, and her stock and dinner theater appearances included ‘Blithe Spirit,’ ‘Hedda Gabler,’ ‘Accent on Youth,’ ‘Flowers in the Garden,’ ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,’ ‘The Trojan Women,’ and ‘Barefoot in the Park.’ She was also in off-off Broadway productions of ‘Reunion of Sorts,’ ‘Island Surrounded by Sketches,’ ‘Four on the Couch,’ and ‘No Exit.’

But the theater scene in New York was changing dramatically in the late 1960s, reflecting the hippie counterculture and sexual revolution of the times. Plays like Hair!, which debuted in 1967, and Oh! Calcutta!, which opened in 1969, now contained profanity, illegal drugs, irreverent humor – and nudity. Lots of it. Suddenly Claire was auditioning for plays that were far removed than anything she’d learned about in acting school.

The cast of Oh! Calcutta!

Claire knew that she’d have more opportunities if she shed her inhibitions, and so in 1969/70, she made her off-Broadway debut in a production of ‘Dark of the Moon’. The drama-fantasy described as a story about “mountain witchcraft,” first staged on Broadway in 1945, was being revived with what The New York Times called “an omnipresent cluster of male and female witches, who wear nothing at all.” Among the nude thespians was Claire Wilbur in the role of the Fair Witch.

Her acting efforts earned Claire entree into the SAG-AFTRA and AEA actors unions. This in turn led her to a contract with the Stephen Draper Agency, a reputable firm that represented notable actors such as Geraldine Page and Richard Kiley. She also taught a course in theater appreciation at New York Nassau’s Community College.

As the 1970s dawned and she was approaching her 40th birthday, Claire was still finding her way as an actor in the theater capital of the world.

*

Score – The Play

Writer and director Jerry Douglas clearly remembers the first time he met Claire Wilbur. He was casting for his play ‘Score’, the story of a swinging couple keeping score of their sexual conquests.

Claire answered an ad placed in a local industry paper by Jerry’s stage manager. It was a cold call, meaning Jerry had never seen Claire or her work before that day. Claire walked into the audition, exuding elegance and a confidence that edged on haughtiness. She was there to read for the role of Elvira, an arrogant married swinger who prides herself on her sexual prowess and appeal.

After that reading, Jerry knew he had found his Elvira. He credits her striking physicality and beauty, her sophisticated manner of dress, and her deep and seductive voice with winning her the part. He was also struck by the way she treated people at the audition – as if they were somehow below her, rather than equals. While that was Claire, it was also integral to the role of Elvira.

Claire’s participation in Jerry Douglas’ play ‘Score’ is announced

Another of the lead roles in ‘Score’ was given to an unsuccessful, jobbing film actor, credited as Sylvester E. Stallone. Stallone’s acting resume’ at the time consisted of a non-speaking background role in the Robert Redford sports drama, Downhill Racer (1969), and a starring role in the softcore pornography feature film The Party at Kitty and Stud’s (1970). He’d only made the sex film because he was desperate for work ever since he’d become homeless after being evicted from his apartment. In his words, “it was either do that movie or rob someone, because I was at the end – the very end – of my rope”. When Stallone was offered the part in ‘Score’, it was the chance to prove his acting ability in a new, edgy play that would attract plenty of media interest.

Once rehearsals began it quickly become clear to Jerry that Claire was a hard worker. She was also intelligent and had plenty of ideas, though Jerry admits she wasn’t perhaps as clever as she thought she was. Oh, and she was argumentative: she wasn’t shy in sharing her thoughts on what Jerry should change to improve the production. Their debates were heated but Jerry says that, for the most part, they were also healthy. Jerry was used to working with a lot of divas and Claire was far from the worst.

Claire was certainly self-protective and not afraid of advocating for herself. Most of ‘Score’’s second act was performed barefoot, and Claire was displeased with the way her dirty soles made her look. She insisted that the stage manager put towels down at every stage entrance so she could wipe down her feet before every scene. It was clear that Claire took her own image very seriously.

Playbill for Jerry Douglas’ stage production of ‘Score’ at New York’s Martinique Theater

The staging of ‘Score’ received scorching reviews from mainstream critics, most of whom focused on the nudity in the play. One Rockland Journal reporter called the show an “unsavory mess” with “some of the most inept dialogue since silent movies.” New York magazine said it wished the play would have continued in previews and left critics to perform other chores.

Nearly all of the reviews focused on the nudity: when a reporter from the Daily News asked Claire why she took a part requiring her to be undressed, she responded, “None of us has achieved star status yet. Where else would we get to play a leading part?”

Review of Jerry Douglas’ stage production of his play ‘Score’ (1970)

Claire’s performance itself received mixed reviews. A critic in the Chronicle was impressed, writing “On the performance side, Claire Wilbur is astonishing to watch as Elvira, captivating the audience with a curious air of self-esteem.” Another at radio station WRVR said, “Claire Wilbur as the wife Elvira moves around in an artificially languid manner wearing a deadpan expression much of the time.” New York magazine stated that with better material Claire might be able to show some acting ability – but as for the current performance, all the reviewer could say was that she had the most beautiful breasts he’d seen in a long time.

The only actor to receive consistently positive reviews was Stallone. Variety wrote “The best performance is given by Sylvester E. Stallone as the comically lecherous, lower-middleclass repairman.”

Score ran for 23 performances at the Martinique Theatre from October 28 to November 15, 1971.

Claire Wilbur performs with future superstar Sly Stallone in the stage version of ‘Score’

*

Score – The Movie

While not everyone loved Jerry Douglas’ play, one person who was intrigued by the production was the film director, Radley Metzger. After reading a review in the New York Times, Radley went to see the show and immediately thought that it fit the profile of his production company, Audubon Films: namely it had a small cast in a single location and dealt with intersecting sexual relationships. The only thing that did not fit was the location: Radley planned to change the play’s Queens, NY setting to a mythical country that would be represented by the Dalmatian Coast in Yugoslavia – an affordable way to capture the feel of the French Riviera.

Radley acquired the rights to Jerry’s play and brought him on to write the screenplay. As part of the agreement, Jerry – who wanted to try his hand at making films – was invited to travel with the cast and crew to Yugoslavia and observe the process of filmmaking first-hand.

Radley also hired Claire Wilbur to revive her role as Elvira. Radley had been impressed with her stage performance and felt that the production would benefit from having a cast member already familiar with the work. When Radley met Claire for the first time, in addition to providing him with her acting resume, Claire took time to share some of her non-work interests with the director.

She was an ardent student of astrology, she said, claiming that her teacher was among her heroes. She studied graphology, the analysis of handwriting to identify a writer’s personality characteristics, and parapsychology, the world of psychic phenomena and other paranormal claims. She was a practicing vegetarian and Buddhist. And she was a devoted fan of Eleonora Duse, the renowned Italian stage actress considered by some to be the greatest performer of her day.

Claire (left) and cast on location in Yugoslavia to film Radley Meztger’s film adaptation of ‘Score’

As Radley started the film’s pre-production, Claire’s familiarity with the material and the role of Elvira seemed like it would benefit the production. But soon, he and the rest of the cast began to witness the defensive behaviors that Jerry had observed during his stage production several years earlieir. It started on the flight over to Europe when fellow actress Lynn Lowry off-handedly shared how much she was making for her participation in the film, assuming everyone was making more or less the same. It turned out Lynn was making substantially more than the others – and that turned Claire against her:

There was a huge conflict between us. Claire Wilbur basically hated me. She made my life pretty much a living hell when I had to do those love scenes with her. She didn’t want me to touch her. She wanted to keep herself covered. I mean, it was just very, very difficult.

At one point, Radley Metzger gave me some amyl nitrate on set, which I had never had in my life but there’s this scene where she cracks one of those open and Radley says, “You know? Why don’t you just go ahead and try it.” And I thought, ‘Well, what could it be?” So I took a sniff, and of course, it makes you really, you know, pretty high and I think I got really into the scene for a minute and I like, messed Claire’s hair all up.

Oh she just was furious with me. I mean, if she didn’t hate me already, messing her hair up was like… ‘That’s it!’ It was really a shame. She was concerned about the fact that she wasn’t getting close ups. That was true but she was wonderful in the film, and she’s gorgeous and she’s very funny. It was sad that that had to happen. I think it would have been a lot of fun if we had all gotten along.

Claire (top) shooting ‘Score’ with Lynn Lowry

Claire and her male co-stars under the set lights

Jerry Douglas saw first-hand the difficulty wrought by Claire’s conflict with Lynn when Radley was filming a scene in which Lynn was meant to look like she was performing oral sex on Claire. As Radley prepared the shot, Claire insisted that she cover her pubic area with a cloth whenever Lynn got near her. No matter what Radley did to obscure the covering as he filmed, it kept edging into the shots causing endless retakes.

Regardless of the obstacles, Radley finished the film and released it with a fanfare. Back in the States, there were premieres on both coasts attended by cast and crew.

Claire at a premiere for ‘Score’ with director Radley Metzger (second from right) and his producing partner Ava Leighton (right)

Once again, ‘Score’ was received with mixed feedback. The Boston Phoenix called it a “passable fuck film” which by any other standards is “a laughable mess.” Variety wrote, “In short, ‘Score’ doesn’t as film comedy but does as something of a sexploitation milestone.”

A review warns ‘Score’ is entirely unsuitable for children – and possibly for adults

As for Claire’s performance, the Dilettante publication claimed she brought “precisely the right bitchy brio and glib glamour.” The Advocate magazine wrote “Claire Wilbur is fantastic… She is breathtakingly attractive, has the gift of timing and nuance that actresses with twice her experience have yet to master. She holds the whole plot together with commanding presence and exquisite delivery of Jerry Douglas’ archly acerbic dialog. There are many, many funny lines in the picture, and Wilbur does justice to every one of them.”

Directly after ‘Score’, Claire appeared in ‘Teenage Hitchhikers’ (1974), another sexploitation film. It was a smaller but similar role: an older woman sexually targeting younger prey, this time exclusively young women. Cameraman Bill La Mond joked that “Claire Wilbur certainly didn’t seem to mind doing the lesbian scenes.”

A largely generic 70s sex romp, the movie did little to advance Claire’s acting career.

Claire Wilbur as a predatory lesbian in the sexploitation film ‘Teenage Hitchhikers’

*

Oscar!

Shortly before Claire began working with Radley Metzger, she met Robin Lehman. Robin is the son of Robert Lehman, longtime head of the now defunct Lehman Brothers investment bank. Rather than follow his father, grandfather and great-grandfather into the world of financial services, Robin became a filmmaker, working as a producer, director, screenwriter, and cinematographer.

They met in the office of a fellow filmmaker, and Robin was immediately taken with Claire’s beauty and poise. He asked her to join him for a drink and shortly after that, they wound up in bed together. It was the start of a relationship that would last several years.

Jerry Douglas remembers the first time Claire told him about Robin. They were in a bathroom in Yugoslavia, and Jerry was keeping Claire company as she shaved her legs in preparation for filming the following day. Jerry remembers that Claire was drawn to Robin in part because he owned the apartment that had belonged to the author Dashiell Hammett – and she told Jerry that she loved sleeping in the bed that Hammett had shared with playwright Lillian Hellman. It was clear to Jerry that Claire had learned early on in her life that she could use sex as a way to survive and get what she wanted.

Claire made it clear to Robin that she wanted to make feature films. Robin hadn’t seen her act on stage, so he took himself off to see the film version of ‘Score’. He wasn’t overly impressed with Claire’s performance in the movie but was so seduced by what was going on between them in the bedroom that he decided to try working together.

What happened next depends on who you talk to: what is clear is that Claire became co-producer on two documentary shorts that were written and directed by Robin. The films were Nightlife, a study of creatures found in the Irish sea, and The End of the Game, a film about African wildlife. Robin claims that while he put Claire’s name on the films, her involvement was not significant and that she did next-to-nothing. Claire’s nephew, John Janetatos says his aunt told him that she did almost everything on the films, from on-site production management to editing them on her living room floor. Jerry Douglas believes the truth lies somewhere in between.

When the films were released in 1976, both were well received, with particular praise given to ‘The End of the Game’, which the Daily News described as “one of the most haunting and strikingly photographed nature films we’ve seen.” ‘The End of the Game’ was so well regarded it was nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary, Short Subject. Dressed to the nines, both Claire and Robin were in attendance at the ceremony. When their film won the award, their joint acceptance speech was warm and respectful.

The media was slightly less respectful in its coverage of Claire’s achievement. Headlines like “Former X-Rated Starlet Oscared,” “Something Better,” and “X-Rated Starlet is now a Realist” focused on Claire’s sexploitation past more than her documentary win. Almost all articles contained the same quote from Claire: “I used to think I had to face society, take off my clothes, be free. But then I felt there was really something else I wanted to say and this wasn’t it. The dewy-eyed idealist had to wake up and become the realist. I covered my beautiful breasts and decided I had to do something better. “

After their Oscar win, Robin and Claire embarked on the production of a feature film. Robin remembers it was a disastrous endeavor that never made it to the editing stage.

He claims they fought constantly on and off set and that, thanks to Claire, everyone left the production: “She was absolutely impossible to work with. Lot of disagreement; lots of arguing and screaming. To make a long story short, everybody to do with this film quit. The actors quit acting, the camera person quit camera work, I quit doing documentaries, and I quit her as a girlfriend. I threw all the footage out. It was a nightmare. We severed all ties.”

Many years later, Robin got in touch with Claire and asked her to dinner for old times’ sake. He thought it would be good to say hello after many years and laugh at their past disagreements. But things didn’t go well: as they sat down to dinner, Claire pulled out a cigarette and started smoking. When Robin asked her if she could wait until after dinner, she stared at him and declined. Robin stood up, walked out of the restaurant, and never saw Claire again.

Robin wasn’t the only person who fell out with Claire. Jerry Douglas had grown close to Claire in the years since he first cast her in the stage production of ‘Score.’ After the play, they got together every few weeks and grew even closer when they traveled to Yugoslavia for the film version of the story. They grew so close that when Claire opened a film production office funded by Robin’s money, Jerry went to work for her. But a few months into the arrangement, Claire blew up at Jerry, claiming he overstepped his role in some way. While another person might have given their employee a stern warning, Claire chose to sue Jerry. The matter wound up in court and Jerry remembers the day as an ugly one. He didn’t talked to Claire after that.

Without access to Robin’s finances and Jerry’s creative support, Claire decided to leave the worlds of film and theater in the late 1970s.

*

Life After Acting

When John Janetatos moved to New York in 1985, one of the first people he looked up was his aunt Claire. Without any children of her own and limited contact with her family, she welcomed John warmly and the two became close.

When John reconnected with his aunt, he couldn’t have been more impressed with her. Claire may have been in her early 50s at that point, but John said she looked 15 years younger, still turning heads wherever she went. And John was blown away by her intelligence: her brain was always juggling multiple ideas at the same time, analyzing them, and coming to conclusions before anyone else even got off the mark. He found her to be the smartest person he ever met.

When it came to Claire’s spiky personality, John admits that his aunt was an unusual mix. She was kind, compassionate and joyful, quick to smile and help someone in need. But she could also be ruthless. Even when she was laughing you could see the steel behind the veneer, a seriousness that could become menacing.

But John cuts Claire a lot of slack for her defensiveness. He cites Claire’s difficult upbringing – in what he describes as “the hellhole where she was raised” – and her drive to survive when she showed up a young woman alone in New York in the early 1950s.

Much of what John learned about Claire was through other family members, or from snippets of information that she shared with him. She didn’t like to talk about her past; she was one to look forward and focus on what was ahead. But over the years he learned more and more. For example, John found that Claire was married in her early years, taking the name Wilbur from her husband, though he doesn’t know anything about the union. It’s unclear if Claire was separated, divorced or widowed – there are no official documents of the marriage and its dissolution. John broached the subject with Claire once but she wouldn’t talk about it.

John doesn’t believe that Claire avoided her past because she was embarrassed by it. When he asked about the sexploitation films she made, and the fact that her Oscar win resulted in media bringing up her sex film past, Claire laughed. While she wasn’t necessarily proud of the film work she’d done as an actress, she’d say that there were ways of filming that make it look as if you were doing things that you really weren’t, and she certainly wasn’t ashamed of anything she’d done. She’d done what she wanted and didn’t care what anyone else thought, not even her family – a statement somewhat hard to believe considering the care she took to cultivate her refined image.

When John asked Claire why she hadn’t parlayed her Oscar win into something bigger, she told him she’d become tired of the world of performing. She said she’d come to the conclusion that it was just a game, and once she figured that out, she just didn’t find it interesting any more. She lost respect for the acting business and she was bored with it. And she had no desire to pursue fame.

When her acting career was over, Claire needed to find new sources of income and wound up trying different things. At one point, Radley Metzger heard a rumor that Claire was driving a New York City taxi cab, but quickly laughed it off. It turned out Claire did in fact get her hack license as a way to make money. She thought it would be something of an adventure. But the truth was that she only wound up driving the cab for a single day. The reason was simple: one of the people she picked up lived in her building, and she found that driving someone around who she knew socially to be humiliating. She quit immediately, and so had little for her efforts except a good cocktail party story.

She started writing and became prolific. She mostly wrote short stories, though she turned her hand to plays as well. It is not known whether she sold or published any of her work. One poem which did make it out into the world was an ode to the Japanese porcelain feline, Mankei Neko. Claire was fond of the figurines and had several in her Upper East Side apartment.

Excerpt
Maneki Neko: The Japanese Legend of the Beckoning Cat
Rendered in Verse by Claire Wilbur

So much of life is a mystery,
Just a heartbeat away from tragedy;
But then, we find a good luck charm,
That seems to keep us safe from harm.

Who can explain? Oh, who can tell why?
Who can affirm or who can deny
The power of the talisman
That works again . . . again . . . again.

Was there a moment back in time,
A magic instant — rare, sublime —
When from that void, that great unknown,
Sprang an enchanted force full-blown?

If such a moment could exist,
When the plight of man by fate was kissed,
Then there was one in that shadowed yore
Of history, legend, apocryphal lore,

When a sweet small cat faced uncertain fate,
When all hope seemed to evaporate;
The temple where this poor cat dwelled,
By poverty had been sorely felled.

Another source of income were parties Claire hosted at her apartment. Her nephew, John, went to a couple of these gatherings and remembers crowded rooms of laughing guests. Some were Claire’s friends, including the actor Cleavon Little who starred as the black sheriff in the Mel Brooks’ film Blazing Saddles (1974). Jerry Douglas says these types of parties were common occurrences for many unemployed actors: they had a party, invited actor friends, then charged non-actors an entrance fee for the pleasure of celebrity company.

In the 1980s, Claire, now calling herself ‘Catt’ Wilbur, pursued a unknown business opportunity that involved travel to Europe and Africa. She put together a detailed plan and began actively looking for investors. While she wasn’t a household name, her entertainment profile could still open doors. She aggressively pitched her business but, in the end, it didn’t work out. When John asked Claire why she’d been unsuccessful, she told him “the boys wouldn’t let the girls play.” As a self-described feminist with a firm belief in equal rights, the rejection clearly stung.

In addition to embracing feminism, Claire was a strong supporter of civil rights. Her awareness began when she first moved to Manhattan and was turned away from a restaurant because her dinner party included several black friends. John says she talked about the injustices inflicted on people of color a lot and advocated for equality.

But while Claire was always a proponent of justice, her beliefs didn’t preclude her from befriending people who operated outside of of the law. According to John, Claire had some dangerous allies who were attracted by her charisma, though he stresses that she was never involved in any crime. Jerry Douglas is a bit more skeptical about Claire’s supposed ties to the underworld. He said Claire told him she was involved with members of the Mafia, but he was of the opinion that she just wanted to shock him. Jerry says Claire was always trying to impress everyone with how beautiful, smart, wealthy and connected she was, only some of which was true. Rumors of her links to the underworld persist however.

One element that everyone agrees on is that Claire was beautiful. John remembers that even when Claire was in her late 60s, she couldn’t walk down the street without people turning their heads and looking at her.

In 2003, Claire’s lifetime smoking habit caught up with her. She was diagnosed with lung cancer and died a year later at the age of 70.

Before she passed, Claire made arrangements for her body to be donated to science for medical school use. This enabled a team of medical students to study the human body in detail. As part of the donation contract, the medical school agreed to dispose of Claire’s body in a dignified manner. While John wasn’t aware of the specifics, there’s a record of Claire’s internment on New York’s Hart Island under her ‘Catt Wilbur’ name.

Hart Island contains New York City’s 131-acre potter’s field, or public cemetery. It has variously been described as the largest tax-funded cemetery in the United States, and one of the largest mass graves in the United States. It is the final resting place of the poor and disenfranchised, stillborn children, and veterans dating back to the Civil War.

In 2014, the Hart Island ‘Traveling Cloud Museum’ was started. It invites people to contribute stories, photos, or epitaphs about the buried to prevent them from remaining anonymous in eternity. A ‘clock of anonymity’ records the length of time each person has been anonymous so far. Before the date of this story, Claire’s clock read almost 13 years.

Today, Claire’s story is shared.

*

The post The Porn Star Who Won an Oscar (and Starred With Sylvester Stallone) appeared first on The Rialto Report.

1983 was the last year in which the east coast publication ‘Porn Stars’ was published. The last issue was in September 1983, followed by a ‘Best Of’ edition in November 1983.

The final year’s issues include interviews with Serena, Veronica Hart and Lisa De Leeuw, features on films such as Consenting Adults, Puss ‘n Boots and Mascara, and pictorals with Vanessa Del Rio, Shauna Grant, Candy Samples, and much more.

‘Porn Stars’ first appeared in mid 1980. It only lasted for four issues before undergoing a name change and becoming ‘Skin Flicks’. ‘Skin Flicks’ was even more short-lived and lasted only two months before it was renamed ‘Starlet.’ ‘Starlet’ lasted for four issues, before reverting to the magazine’s original name, ‘Porn Stars’, once again.

The Rialto Report previously profiled the early years of the magazine through the memories of two of the magazine’s editors, Richard Milner and Manny Neuhaus.

By the time ‘Porn Stars’ ceased publication, it was an established name on the newsstands, and one of the best magazines covering the adult film scene. The crew behind the scenes consisted of many familiar faces from another legendary sex publication, Al Goldstein’s Screw magazine, including Art Director, Yossarian, and Contributing Editors, Richard Jaccoma and Norman Jackson.

Fully digitized copies of each 1983 magazine can be found in the article below. You can find The Rialto Report’s growing collection of digitized resources by choosing Library in our site menu. 

Click on the covers below to access the full magazines. Due to the fact that the magazines are scanned in high definition, allow time for each page to load. If you are viewing on a phone, view in landscape orientation.

Magazines are fully searchable; use the icon displayed in each magazine to search by keyword.

Publications are being shared here purely for the purpose of research. They should not to be used or reproduced for any commercial gain.

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‘Porn Stars’: The Complete 1983 Issues

‘Porn Stars’ first appeared in mid 1980. It only lasted for four issues before undergoing a name change and becoming ‘Skin Flicks’. ‘Skin Flicks’ was even more short-lived and lasted only two months before it was renamed ‘Starlet.’ ‘Starlet’ lasted for four issues, before reverting to the magazine’s original name, ‘Porn Stars’, once again.

The full story of the early years is told through the memories of those who were responsible for the magazine in an earlier feature in The Rialto Report – two of the magazine’s editors, Richard Milner and Manny Neuhaus.

By 1982, ‘Porn Stars’ was an established name on the newsstands, and one of the best magazines covering the adult film scene. The crew behind the scenes consisted of many familiar faces from another legendary sex publication, Al Goldstein’s Screw magazine, including Art Director, Yossarian, and Contributing Editors, Richard Jaccoma and Norman Jackson.

January 1983 (Vol 4, No. 1)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Profile of 1982 Erotica Awards -Interview with Serena -Porn stars’ private lives Q&A -Porn scene “newcummers” -Sex stars speak out -Guide to porn movies -Profiles of All American Girls and Daddy’s Little Girls -Porn stars in the office –Susaye London feature -A fond farewell to Jill Munro –Lenora Bruce pictoral

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March 1983 (Vol 4, No. 2)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Porn star party pictoral –Veronica Hart interview -Profiles of Widespread Scandals of Lydia Lace, That’s Outrageous, Consenting Adults, and Puss ‘n Boots -Sex stars speak out -Women for porn: screen stars against WAP -Guide to porn movies –Loni Sanders profile -10 best porn picture picks

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April 1983 (Vol 4, No. 3)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Porn star mardi gras party –Tanya Roberts profile -Sex stars speak out -Interview with Lisa De Leeuw -Porn scene “newcummers” -Profiles of Danielle and John Holmes -Guide to porn movies –Vanessa del Rio and Victoria Knoll pictorals -Meet Phil Prince: The Prince of Porn -Profile of I Like to Watch -10 hottest scenes of all time -Hollywood’s hottest love team: Joey Silvera and Anna Ventura

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May 1983 (Vol 4, No. 4)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Dave and Tish Ambrose feature -Sex stars speak out -Porn scene “newcummers” -Guide to porn movies -Name that porn star -Bad girls sit on good food: Sue Nero, Sharon Mitchell, Velvet Summers, Susaye London -Profiles of Sorority Sweethearts, Peepholes, and Oriental Techniques –Juliet Anderson interview

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July 1983 (Vol 4, No. 5)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Profiles of Mascara, The Mistress. Wild Dallas Honey, Nasty Girls and The Girl from S.E.X. -Pictoral of Loni Sanders with Samantha Harley, Drea with Randy West -Sex stars speak out -Swedish Erotica home video girls -Profiles of Seka, Linda Shaw, -Guide to porn movies -Interviews with Vanessa del Rio and Susaye London

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September 1983 (Vol 4, No. 6)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Porn star beat: Alan Adrian scoops the stars -Pictorals of Shauna Grant and Candy Samples -Porn film reviews including The Sinners/Forgive Me, I Have Sinned, Seduction of the Party Girls/Maneaters –Bobby Astyr recounts his grossest porn film, Blonde in Black Silk -Profiles of Lisa De Leeuw, Cheri Champagne, Athena Star, Mai Lin, Rachel Orion/Rachel Ashley -Interview with Ashley Welles –Herschel Savage describes how to get into the porn industry

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The Best of Porn Stars
November 1983 (Vol 4, No. 8)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Profiles of Hot Dreams, Cafe Flesh -The best of sex stars speak out -How to get into porn films by Richard Jaccoma -Profiles of Lorri Smith, Sharon Kane, Pia Snow, Anna Ventura, Nicole Noir/Nicole Black and Jacqueline Lorians -The best of Seka -Porn’s hottest couples -The four hottest sex scenes of all time

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The post ‘Porn Stars’ in 1983: <br />An Issue by Issue Guide appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Samantha Fox, iconic actress from the golden age of adult film, passed away on April 22, 2020 at the age of 69. The Rialto Report spoke to her sister who indicated the suspected cause of her death was related to cardio-vascular illness, with possible Covid-19 complications.

To remember her life and career, we are re-publishing three pieces:

• Actor Richard Pacheco remembers his personal connection with Samantha Fox
• Sex journalist Veronica Vera spoke with Samantha Fox just as she was leaving the adult industry
• Samantha Fox shared her inspiring and moving philosophy on life and the adult industry with photographer Vivienne Maricevic

She will be greatly missed by fans of the golden age of adult film.

With thanks to Richard Pacheco (and his autobiography Hindsight: True Love & Mischief in the Golden Age of Porn). Veronica Vera (and her blog Veronica Vera – Now & Then) and Vivienne Maricevic (and her golden age photos).

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Samantha Fox: A Life

Samantha Fox was born Stasia Micula on December 3, 1950 – not in 1951 as widely documented – to Stanley Micula, a foreign diplomat, and Elizabeth Johnston Jones, a Scottish immigrant who worked as a bookkeeper. Stasia, the oldest of five children, was a twin sister, and her family traveled extensively overseas on United Nations missions.

She studied art at Sarah Lawrence College, and got into modeling at the encouragement of her then-husband John Block. Shortly after, she started performing in adult films:

“It was in 1976 and I had done some still photography layouts for people. An agent sent me to go see a producer and I didn’t really know what it was for. When I walked in the man said, ‘You’re the star,’ and I said, ‘Are you kidding, what are you talking about?’

“‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m doing an X-rated film and I just know I have to have you for the star, I think you’re beautiful.’ This was a totally wonderful thing to hear. He hired me right on the spot, and I did my first film.”

“If there could be such a thing, in this day and age, outside of the Hollywood syndrome: I was discovered. In the beginning, I didn’t take it seriously, it was pocket money, it was exciting, it was being an exhibitionist, it was being sexual.”

Samantha Fox went on to act in over 100 films, both porn and B-movies, including comedy, drama and horror genres. She is best known for her work in golden age classics such as Babylon Pink (1979), Her Name Was Lisa (1979), Jack + Jill (1979), Tramp (1980) and Babe (1981), Amanda by Night (1981), and Roommates (1982).

She was especially known for her work with director Chuck Vincent.

“I did my first film for Chuck, which was Bad Penny (1978). We bonded instantly. I just loved him.”

But Chuck didn’t immediately recognize Samantha’s appeal, as he later recalled:

“When Samantha first worked for me four years ago, she was terrible. She couldn’t act, her makeup and hair looked awful. But, she’s worked hard and today she’s a complete professional who could appear in any kind of film.”

In 1978, Samantha met her life partner, adult film actor Bobby Astyr, while filming Double Your Pleasure (1978). She initially found him to be “something of a jerk.”

“This guy with curly hair, a little shorter than me, comes springing over, and he goes, ‘Hey tits, how are you doing? I hear you’re the hot new chick on the block.’ and I thought, ‘Oh, spare me!'”

But then she invited Bobby and another actor that she was particularly attracted to, to a party. “So here we were at this party,” she recalled, “and I got really drunk, and this guy I had the crush on started going off with other people, and Bobby was the only one paying attention to me.”

Bobby Astyr and Samantha Fox

The couple courted for two years, and finally wound up sharing neighboring apartments for nearly 24 years.

Samantha was one of the most decorated performers in adult film. She was nominated for awards almost annually and won some of the most coveted honors including AFAA Eroticas for Best Actress in 1980 for her performance in ‘Jack+Jill’, and in 1981 for ‘Tramp’.

By the mid 1980s her drug use had escalated and become a problem in her life. It reached a breaking point after she appeared in Jack n’ Jill 2 (1984), the last movie she said she was proud of.

“I was detoxing at the time from alcohol and drugs when I went to finish that movie. I had walking pneumonia and didn’t know it. I had a 102 degree fever, and I was really ill for a long time after that. That movie was sort of a blur. I realized I had to close the door on porn and see if I could start from scratch.”

Samantha continued acting in the occasional mainstream film, such as Chuck Vincent’s Warrior Queen (1987) alongside Sybil Danning.

After leaving the film industry, Fox attended Hunter College for physical therapy and worked as a fitness instructor. She nursed Bobby Astyr for months before he died of lung cancer in April 2002.

In her final years, Samantha was an active member of her East Village community, involved in advocacy groups such as the East 2nd Street Tenants Association Coalition.

*

Richard Pacheco remembers Samantha Fox

Extract from Hindsight: True Love & Mischief in the Golden Age of Porn

1982.  Samantha Fox had won Best Actress at the L.A. Erotic Awards two years in a row. That made her the reigning Queen of the industry. She was coming in from New York to San Francisco to play my wife in Irresistible. I wanted to greet her in style.

I rented a limo and picked her up at the airport with a big bouquet of roses. Summer Brown, the producer, thought it was such a good idea that she even split the costs with me. That was nice of her. Samantha was properly tickled by the whole circus of it. Samantha and I were put up at a hotel in San Francisco where we shared adjoining rooms. We had a week to wait before our one and only sex scene in the movie.

Early on, we spent a lot of time together rehearsing our dialogue and doing some getting-to-know-you. I was full of pregnancy stories of me and my wife. She was telling me all about Bobby Astyr, the boyfriend back in New York. He was a big X-rated star in his own right, often referred to as “the clown prince of porn.” I had met Bobby once. I remembered his comment that “God was in-between Samantha Fox’s legs.” I was looking forward to gaining insight into Bobby’s views of theology.

Samantha and I wondered if we were supposed to be having offstage sex. Should we practice? Rehearse? Find the lust? See if the plumbing worked? What?

Somehow, it didn’t seem like the right thing to do. We decided on just being buddies and saving it all for the cameras.

I was grateful. I had to do six sex scenes in five days. I would need a lot of sleep, but I would still be very much looking forward to meeting Samantha Fox at the end of the rainbow. She was a talented, delicious woman.

Every day on the set with her became foreplay. I enjoyed watching her work. She was clearly a top-of-the-line professional. It was called The Golden Age because a lot more juice went into the performance aspect of the movie. And among the best of us, there was always great pride taken in the acting. A lot of us enjoyed that as much as the sex. And a lot of the others thought it was a complete waste of time. Well, fuck them.

Backstage, Samantha and I spoke a lot about relationships. She was trying to figure out how to get Bobby to propose marriage. I enjoyed the scheming with her. Hell, I was happy just to know her.

When our sex scene finally did come around, it was spectacular. I couldn’t have written a better script for it than the way it unfolded.

Late in the afternoon, we were doing some dialogue in bed. There had been no sex yet, just a lot of talk. During a break, Samantha had to leave the set to take a phone call from her Bobby. He was at the New York Adult Film Critic’s Awards Show. When she got back in bed with me, she told me that I had just been given their Best Actor and their Best Supporting Actor Awards for that year.

Wow, that was a stunning bit of foreplay! The reigning Queen had just crawled into my bed and told me I’d been chosen King. Her eyes revealed a happiness and a respect. My spirits soared. I felt that I had earned my place to be next to her.

We finished shooting the dialogue and then dressed for the climactic love scene of the movie. Costumed in 1964 wedding finery, we were going to shoot the love scene of our wedding night. We’d been building up to it all week.

When the sex was about to commence, director Eddie Brown made a gesture of genius. He put on some mood music. It was Air Supply’s ‘Every Woman In the World,’ a popular love song of the day.

It was ten pounds of uncut schmaltz. I adored it. They would later edit it out of the film so that they wouldn’t have to pay anybody residuals, but Eddie wanted to use it during shooting for the effect it would have on us. It was brilliant! It was a majestic home run right out of the ballpark!

The music elevated the beast. A sex scene became a love scene. Our spirits entwined. We were a husband and wife in the movie who had just rediscovered each other after surviving an intense marital crisis. This was the healing. This was the consummation. This was a romantic joining of love and lust. What a joy it was to be feeling all of those feelings while the cameras were actually rolling. The specialness of this scene came from the intimacy and trust we had earned with each other.

Samantha Fox was strong, and proud, and beautiful. She was creamy and free. I marveled at Eddie’s touch and then I marveled at hers. I ate it up. She was every woman in the world to me. She was my Carly. I was her Bobby. For one brief moment, it was all the same stuff. It was transcendent. In that scene, we were two actors at the height of our powers on a free trip to paradise.

The music was one of the finest triggers any director had ever pulled for me.

It was the best sex scene of my entire career, again. This scene with Samantha Fox completed the trilogy of the three I’ve called “the best sex scenes of my career.”

When my parents wanted to see one of my movies, Irresistible was the one I chose. I showed them the R-rated version, ‘Simply Irresistible.’

It played on Showtime for a while. What a kick it was to see my name in the TV listings. My dad confessed that he was surprised I actually spoke lines in the movie! “You were good,” he said. “My son, the actor!”

And my mother wanted to see me on the Johnny Carson Show. Couldn’t give her that one. It never happened.

*

Samantha Fox Shoots for the Top

Article by Veronica Vera in Adam magazine, March 1986

Samantha Fox is a woman with a past. She is an X-rated super-star who’s won almost every award this industry has to offer, some of them twice: CAFAs, the AFAA’s Eroticas… you name ‘em, she’s got ‘em. She has played the role of the sex goddess both onscreen and off. She’s been adored by the public; lived for the moment; floated in a sea of over-indulgence, lots of sex, drugs, and alcohol. She’s been arrested, protested, screen-tested. Samantha Fox has a provocative past, and she plans to have an even more exciting future.

Veronica Vera and Samantha Fox

Word spreads quickly in the adult movie biz. When Samantha Fox landed a role opposite Donald Pleasance in Pompeii, a mainstream film, it was big news. This was a straight acting role and she’d worked hard for it. When she made Jack & Jill 2, Samantha Fox announced that she would no longer perform sex. She wanted to be hired as an actress.

It was not easy to stick to her panties, but she did it, and she looked great on the screen. Her comedy timing was perfect. Her talent shone. It was not that she was down on sex roles. They just weren’t for her anymore. It was time to do a lot of things differently.

Performers make X-rated movies for a variety of reasons, but the simplest one is to be a movie star. It’s not easy to go from X into straight films. For most performers, it is only a fantasy. I wanted to talk to Samantha to find out what life is like when your dreams start to come true.

She answers the door in a turquoise silk dress. The fabric floats over her body. Two round points protrude where her nipples rub against the silk. Ms. Sprinkle and I follow her up the steps to her apartment. I notice the curve of her ankles wrapped so delicately in black stockings and pumps. Samantha knows how to dress. She uses her clothes to enhance her womanhood, to reflect her moods, to seduce her audience.

I remember Samantha dressed in a pin-stripped suit, playing reporter at the CAFA awards. Pen and pencil in hand, with a skillful mixture of charm and persistence, she coaxed her fellow performers to feed her some info for her gossip column. She got what she wanted.

Lesllie Bovee, Marlene Willoughby and Samantha Fox

I remember her in a skin-tight black leather dress, dancing to a packed house at Show World’s Triple Threat Theater. She had rehearsed her dance well. She knew what to do with her hands, moving them to the beat like a New Wave robot. She knew how to shimmy, so the slits in her dress lined up just right to tease the audience with just a little pubic hair, just a hint of ass. And then she was naked and down on all fours, doing the best floor work I’ve ever seen. She was no longer Samantha. She was a growling lioness in heat. She spread her legs to let the spotlight find the soft fur between her thighs. She got what she wanted then too. She held me and the entire audience in her talented hands.

Samantha’s apartment is very bright and cheery. There are fresh-cut flowers and green grapes on the table. She makes us feel very welcome. In fact she gushes over us. Samantha Fox likes to make other people feel good. She finds it’s a pleasant way to go through life.

There was a rumor that a producer of ‘Pompeii’ had tried to use his position to take advantage of the actress, the old casting couch story. I ask Samantha if she had to deal with that. She answered that she simply treated the producer like a human being. “I even gave him a neck rub on the set. He gave me no problems.”

“Were you nervous about the role?” I ask. “No,” says Samantha. She did not feel nervous, she felt ready.

For the past two years, Samantha Fox has been preparing herself to be ready. She has slowly but surely regained control of her life. She rode to the top of her profession, but did not escape a self-destructive romance with drugs. She credits her best friend and lover Bobby Astyr with helping her see the light. “Bobby told me simply that if I did not straighten out, he would not be with me anymore. The truth hit me. He was telling me, the great Samantha Fox, that I was a drag to be around.”

Samantha turned her life full circle. She had lived fast and loose, now she lived in a world of tight regimentation. Every minute of her time was filled with a meeting, an exercise class, a medication workshop…

She completely transformed her body at the gym. She went from chubby little girl to pumping-iron dynamo. Her tits and ass appear to be chiseled from marble. That’s how she looked at the 1984 Screw anniversary party when she received The Goldstein Award. She has relaxed her routine a bit. Now there is more of a softness about her, mentally as well as physically. It’s a powerful combination. She radiates energy.

Bobby Astyr walked across the hall to say, “Hello.” At first, I think he must be painting his apartment because his clothes are spattered with paint. Then I learn that Bobby Astyr is an artist and a very good one. It’s funny, the intimate details we don’t know about each other in this business of intimate acts.

Samantha tells me that in Pompeii she uses her real name, Stasia Micula. I ask her how that feels – to get back to her real name again. She tells me: good, more self-accepting. I know exactly how she feels because I have been writing about myself as Mary, my name as a little girl. Now the little girls and women are coming together.

An interesting fact about ‘Pompeii’, a costume drama directed by Chuck Vincent, is that Samantha Fox puts in a cameo appearance. “When the actress hired to do a belly dance could not make it, I volunteered to do the role as Samantha.”

“Then you’re obviously not afraid to let the whole world in on the deep dark secret of your porno past,” I say, admiring the neat way she’s put her cards on the table.

Samantha is learning about sex all over again. She recalls one of her most memorable experiences. It was with a young man who spoke no English. “We had a lovely one-night affair. It was very beautiful. We tumbled all over the bed, unable to say a word to each other. Our mouths were used only to bring each other pleasure.”

Samantha Fox and Candida Royale

“Yes,” I agree, “sometimes words get in the way.”

A week later, I meet Samantha at an industry cocktail party. There is a young man there who has won a date with her through a contest sponsored by a magazine. He is a handsome truck driver nicknamed ‘Axel.’ Axel is not exactly thrilled that his date with Samantha is watched over by about 50 people, but he still has a good time.

At one point, the happy couple take some publicity photos on a canopy bed. “Axel really taught me something,” says Samantha. “When it came time for the photos, I started to suggest all these wild poses. Axel said simply, ‘Why don’t we pretend that we’re just about to kiss?’ He made me see how porn has colored my thinking. He made me understand how powerful the idea of a kiss can be. I was his dream date and he just wanted to kiss me.”

“These days,” she tells me, “I find myself stumbling about when dealing with love and sex. I am no longer the wild porn star who knows all the answers.”

That same night, I meet a very handsome producer, a man who seems to have everything. But, he tells me, he believes he is doing too much coke. He claims to want to stop, but tells me that his lifestyle makes it impossible. “That’s just a cop-out,” I tell him. “Look at Samantha Fox,” I say challengingly. “She did it.”

Maybe Samantha Fox can do anything. Maybe we all can. She still has a hard road ahead. One or two straight acting roles do not guarantee and Oscar nomination – or even another role. But Samantha’s in fighting shape, and between her and Stasia, they’re gonna work their way to the top.

*

Samantha Fox’s Philosophy on Life and the Adult Industry

As told to photographer Vivienne Maricevic

It was in 1976 and I had done some still photography layouts for people. An agent sent me to go see a producer and I didn’t really know what it was for. When I walked in the man said, “You’re the star,” and I said, “Are you kidding, what are you talking about”.

“Well,” he said, “I’m doing an X-rated film and I just know I have to have you for the star, I think you’re beautiful. “ This was a totally wonderful thing to hear. He hired me right on the spot, and I did my first film.

If there could be such a thing, in this day and age, outside of the Hollywood syndrome: I was discovered. In the beginning, I didn’t take it seriously, it was pocket money, it was exciting, it was being an exhibitionist, it was being sexual. I didn’t realize that it could also be manipulative, it could be abusive, if I’d let people take advantage of me.

But actually through this business I got myself together. I stopped taking drugs, I started to learn how to negotiate business dealings, how to book myself all over the country, and how to promote myself.

Society places stigmas on women who are sex symbols, and that can be threatening at times. It is the world against you. They tell you that you cannot be a sex symbol for more than certain amount of years. But people who I have learned to respect, probably because of their longevity, have proven otherwise. As I see that women can be stronger, even though the male-oriented society is saying, “Listen, you can’t last in an industry beyond a certain amount of time, your beauty goes at the age of 30, you develop cellulite.” They forget to tell you as long as you exercise and keep your mind alive and interesting, life doesn’t get stale, nothing is going to happen. So being an optimist, whether it’s living in a very real world, or my own Disney world, is the safest thing for me. Deciding that people are good, until they screw me, is another safe thing because it takes away those hard lines. When you feel like you’re endangered, when you’re frightened, you get fright lines.

My philosophy is that good wins out. I happen to be on the side of good, and you can’t lose if you’re good. I’m probably not a superstar in looks or anything, but my nature has been consistent enough to seep into the industry and leave my mark. I’m not going anywhere. They’re going to have to move me out, blot out the stain, have me dry-cleaned, try anything they want to do, if they want to get rid of Samantha, but she is there. She’s not leaving.

I’m trying to get away from it all. If this career doesn’t work out – it’s been wonderful, thanks for the party. I hope it continues, but I’m not taking it as seriously. I think everyone in life should learn acceptance. I think the word acceptance carries through your life. Just accept everything that happens. If you don’t like it, you can change it. There is so much a person can do to create their destiny. There is fate, which is comprised of the God power and the people around you, who you can’t instruct to do everything according to your bidding, you have to deal with mankind. So, if you can accept that reality, which I think is the very basic truth, I don’t think that there is any problem. That’s how I live my life. It’s my philosophy and it extends into my career as a ‘movie star.’ I haven’t really tried to become a 100% legitimate star yet, although Samantha Fox is growing out of her cage. I tell the producers, you’ve created a monster, she’s feeding me, give me more to do. As a result, I’m spreading into the lifeline of all facets of the X-rated industry. I’m now bordering on the R-industry and going into legitimate. I hope to do something like a Walt Disney film one day. I’m very pro-children, pro-light comedy, pro-being a fool, a clown, it’s all part of being an actress and the bottom line is, I feel I’m an actress.

I love sexuality. I just hope to see prettier films. I hope men will learn how to be sensitive enough so they can make it the male point of view where men and women mesh. I don’t want to see it this radical, ‘Yes, it’s the woman’s point of view, dear, come be my slave.’

I don’t want it to go radical. I think through not being a threatening woman, just being a human being, you can show your sexuality and perhaps it will rub off on the industry. If nothing else, I would like to make this industry a forum for people to express their sexuality.

*

The post R.I.P. Samantha Fox (1950-2020) appeared first on The Rialto Report.

The Rialto Report has always been intrigued by the little-known New York adult film Alexandra (1983).

It starred an impressive cast of favorites of the time, including Rachel Ashley, Joanna Storm, Lauren Wilde, Veronica Hart, Sharon Kane, R. Bolla, Eric Edwards, and Michael Gaunt.

But what is even more intriguing were the people behind the scenes – which reads like a who’s who of filmmakers who got their start in the business via 1960s sex movies:

• Dave Friedman was one of the producers alongside Bondi Walters, daughter of legendary Time Square theater owner Chelly Wilson
• Radley Metzger was an un-credited on-set consultant
• The script was written by Don Walters, who directed the early sex films Snow Job (1969), Felicia (1969), How Many Times (1969), and Franchette: Les Intrigues (1969). Don was also the assistant director on Monte Hellman’s cult film Cockfighter (1974). Don also appears on-screen as an actor in ‘Alexandra’ billed as Reg Wilson
  
• The film was edited by Ron Wertheim, who’d started out directing softcore films such as Invitation to Lust (1968), The Spy Who Came (1969), It’s Not My Body (1970), and Gabrielle (1970), as well as writing the scripts for Memories Within Miss Aggie (1974) and Through the Looking Glass (1976)
• Larry Revene, maker of 8mm loops in the early 1970s and subsequent director of feature length adult films, was the cinematographer

After a number of years of research, The Rialto Report recently unearthed a series of previously unseen documents and production stills from the film, which we present here for the first time.

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‘Alexandra’ (1983)

Joanna Storm as Diane Ballard

Rachel Ashley as Pat Cooper and Steve Douglas as Cliff Ballard

Rachel Ashley

Steve Douglas and Joanna Storm

Joanna Storm

Steve Douglas and Joanna Storm 

R. Bolla as Foster Halloway and Lauren Wilde as Jennifer Halloway

Eric Edwards as Martin Cooper and Rachel Ashley

Joanna Storm

R. Bolla and Lauren Wilde

Rachel Ashley

Eric Edwards and Rachel Ashley

Rachel Ashley and Michael Gaunt as Jason Starrett

Lauren Wilde

Joanna Storm and Lauren Wilde

Joanna Storm

Michael Gaunt

Rachel Ashley and Michael Gaunt

Sharon Kane as Anita

Sharon Kane and Rachel Ashley

Michael Gaunt, Sharon Kane and Rachel Ashley

Don Walters (Reg Wilson) as Nick Booth and Lauren Wilde

Don Walters, Rachel Ashley and Joanna Storm

Rachel Ashley and Lauren Wilde

Joanne Storm, Rachel Ashley and Lauren Wilde

Veronica Hart as Darlene and Michael Gaunt

Lauren Wilde and Eric Edwards

Michael Gaunt and Lauren Wilde

Don Walters and Michael Gaunt

Eric Edwards and Rachel Ashley

Lauren Wilde and R. Bolla

*

The post ‘Alexandra’ (1983): The Sexploitation Gang Rides Again appeared first on The Rialto Report.

One of the first adult film interviews that we ever conducted, over 20 years ago, was with the director Jaacov Jaacovi. Before we contacted him, we marveled and laughed at the innuendo-filled cheek of his over-the-top nom-de-porn: “Jackoff Jackoffi” anyone?

And then we found out that was actually his real name. Umm, sorry sir.

Jaacov told us about his memories of two of his most well-known films, Little Orphan Dusty and Taxi Girls.

Both movies were controversial because of their publicity campaigns – which likened the film’s stars, Rhonda Jo Petty and Nancy Suiter, to cast members from the most popular TV show at the time, Charlie’s Angels – Farrah Fawcett and Cheryl Ladd.

Legal threats and law suits exploded. Did they help or hinder the success of the films, and what was the effect on Jaacov himself?

This is the untold story.

With thanks to Jaacov Jaacovi, Jourdan Jaacovi, Svetlana, Bob Chinn, Richard Aldrich, and Rhonda Jo Petty. And to Nancy Suiter, just because.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

The Origin of Jaacov Jaacovi

Jaacov Jaacovi:

I was born in Israel. Tel Aviv to be precise, back in 1945.

My name has probably been misspelled more than anyone else’s in history. Jacob Jaqcovi. Yacob Jackofi. The list is endless. Anyway I’m Jaacov Jaacovi in the United States. Or Jourdan Alexander, which is the name I used to make videos in the 1980s.

Jaacov Jaacovi

Jourdan Jaacovi (Jaacov Jaacovi’s son):

My father was a tank mechanic in the military in Israel before he came to America to attend film school in about 1970. He had two sisters who already lived over here: one of them worked as a producer for ABC for 25 years and was involved in several TV shows. My father was always very interested in photography so he came over and went to the Hollywood Film School, as it was called at the time.

I don’t know if he graduated – he was the kind of guy who would do something for while and then say to himself, “I can do this,” and then go off to do his own thing.

Jaacov Jaacovi

Jaacov Jaacovi:

I wanted to become a filmmaker. I made a few shorts, and then in 1971, I made a western with a friend of mine, Jack Holzman. It starred a large-breasted stripper from Minneapolis named Roxanne Brewer. We called it A Fistful of 44s. It was inspired by the Sergio Leone films, but with sex scenes. All soft-core obviously, because it was only 1971. It wasn’t a big hit, but I learned how to make a film.

Jourdan Jaacovi (Jaacov Jaacovi’s son):

He always wanted to make straight, mainstream movies. I’m not sure if he didn’t know the right people, or if he just didn’t have the talent to be successful.

Jaacov Jaacovi:

I didn’t know what to do next because I didn’t have the industry connections I needed.

Then I met Dick Aldrich.

Richard Aldrich (aka Damon Christian):

I left my home state of New England in 1965 with a spirit of adventure and freedom. I got as far as Denver, Colorado, before getting arrested for picking a flower from a flower pot that was city-owned.

It didn’t get any easier after that: I ended up broke in Las Vegas so I took a job at Proctor & Gamble. That bored me so much, so I moved to Los Angeles where I was homeless for a while, living under the downtown freeway bridge.

Around 1967, I got a job at Permafilm, which specialized in nudie cutie movies. This was the era of guys like David Friedman of Entertainment Ventures Inc., Bob Cresse – who owned Olympic International Films, and Chris Warfield – who was a big sexploitation producer and director. My first job for the company was as a shipping clerk sending film cans around the country. These were films like House on Bare Mountain (1962), Mondo Freudo (1966), and Thar She Blows! (1968), which showed as much of the female anatomy as was legally possible – and that wasn’t much.

That time was a real education for me. There were thousands and thousands of movie theaters across the country exhibiting these films, so I got to know the B-movie theater circuit like the back of my hand.

Jaacov Jaacovi:

When I met Dick Aldrich, he was everything I wasn’t. He was a smooth-talking, good-looking, sales guy. And even though he was still young, he seemed to know everyone in the film business.

We became friends, and decided to work together.

Richard Aldrich (aka Damon Christian):

Jaacov was an interesting guy. An Israeli war veteran who wanted to make films in Hollywood. We formed a partnership, and created a company called Mirage Film Corp.

Jaacov Jaacovi (below):

In 1973, Dick and I made The Maids (1973). It was a soft-core film, and this time the star was Uschi Digard, another large-breasted stripper.

Dick was helpful in finding distribution for the film, but he had his finger in lots of pies and was always away making other deals.

I looked around for other collaborators.

Then I met Svetlana. She was an aspiring actress.

Svetlana Mischoff:

I’m Ukranian, born in Russia in 1949. My family escaped from Russia to Poland, and I grew up there.

We came to America when I was 16, and I had to learn English. I went to the University of Illinois, but nobody would talk to me.

I became an actress in the 1960s. I was doing a lot of shows on television, like My World And Welcome To It, where I played an exotic secret agent. I did a lot of Don Rickles’ shows as a dumb blonde, and quiz shows too, I won the $1.98 Beauty Show and The Gong Show.

Svetlana Mischoff

Jaacov Jaacovi:

Svetlana had had bit parts in some movies (The Christine Jorgensen Story (1970), and Myra Breckinridge (1970)) though it wasn’t easy because she had the thickest eastern European accent you ever heard. But was she was ambitious and aggressive, and through sheer force of will… Svetlana usually got what Svetlana wanted.

Svetlana Mischoff:

As an actress, I couldn’t get a break. What really annoyed me about Hollywood was the casting couch with the producers. You hear famous actresses say, “Oh I never had to fuck anyone and now I’m a big star. I had talent. They hired me right away.”

That’s a bunch of bullshit, excuse me. It just doesn’t happen. Men are men. If I was a whore, I would probably be a star by now. Sometimes I think if I could do it again, I’d just fuck every producer in Hollywood. I would have every part in the world! But I just couldn’t do it.

Svetlana

Jaacov Jaacovi:

Svetlana and I became a film production team.

We made a couple of soft-core sex films, The Chaperone (1974) and Female Chauvinists (1976) – which featured both Roxanne Brewer and Uschi Digard – but we weren’t going anywhere.

Roxanne Brewer

Jaacov Jaacovi:

Svetlana and I got married, which is a whole story in itself. We struggled personally – and professionally. The market for soft films was drying up, so I took work on other people’s movies.

That’s how I met Bob Chinn.

Bob Chinn:

Jake worked as a cameraman for me on Disco Lady (1978) and also as an assistant director/post-production supervisor on China Cat (1978).

I liked him – he was engaging, smart, and ambitious, and he always had a crazy scheme that he was working on. Maybe I liked him just a little too much – because he often took advantage of my good nature, convincing me to do things that I shoulda turned down.

When he and Svetlana decided to go into hardcore films for themselves, he called me up and asked me to read the script that they’d written.

That was Little Orphan Dusty (1978).

*

Little Orphan Dusty (1978)

Jaacov Jaacovi:

By 1978, I’d learned enough about the business to start my own production and distribution company, Jaacov Jaacovi Productions, with offices at 6604 Hollywood Blvd.

Svetlana and I wrote a script called ‘Little Orphan Dusty’. The problem was that my name wasn’t worth anything. I knew that if I directed the film myself, it wouldn’t be as successful as it could be. I needed a more established director’s name on the poster. So I sent the script over to Bob Chinn.

Bob Chinn

Bob Chinn:

To be honest, I didn’t like the script that much. It was violent and nasty, and the dialogue was corny and melodramatic. Not that I had the courage to tell Jake that…

When he asked me what I thought of it, I just said it was great… but then he asked me to direct it! And, as usual, he was so enthusiastic and excited that I didn’t want to let him down. I figured I could use the cash he was offering. So I accepted – and of course, I regretted it almost immediately.

I worked with him on all the pre-production, but just before we started shooting, Jaacov took me aside and told me he was going to cut my fee in half. That was typical of him and Svetlana: they always over-promised and under-delivered. I was mad, so I told him, “If you’re gonna pay me for half the fee, then I’ll only direct half the film!”

Jaacov Jaacovi (below):

I had no problem with directing half of the film. It was a win-win for me: I’d get to make my own film, and I’d still get Bob Chinn’s name on the poster – which would make it easy to sell. It worked out well.

I also wanted Bob around because I hired John Holmes for the lead, and John was an asshole. John was the biggest star in the business, so I wanted him in the film, but, like I say, he was an asshole. Bob knew how to deal with John. They’d been making films together for almost a decade.

Bob Chinn:

Of course, Jaacov screwed me on the schedule and I ended up with the short end of the stick as I got all the difficult scenes. Which included a motorbike gang chase, a gang rape scene, a big orgy, most of John’s scenes… and of course, all the fisting scenes.

Jaacov Jaacovi:

The ‘Little Orphan Dusty’ shoot went well. No problems.

Bob Chinn:

It was a tiring shoot because Jaacov and Svetlana always tried to pack two days filming into one day, which made for long days and even longer nights. The reason was simple: they weren’t paying overtime. And though Jaacov was around all the tine, he wasn’t a whole lot of help.

Jaacov and Svetlana cut costs wherever they could. It wasn’t just my fee that they slashed. The shooting schedule, the crew, the costumes, everything was done for as little money as possible.

Svetlana was ever-present, circling everyone, keeping her eye on what was going on. It was as if her life savings had been invested on this film: who knows, maybe they were? She was also in charge of the catering – which consisted of a loaf of bread and some packs of lunch meat. Nothing fancy like mayonnaise or mustard.

The best thing about the film was that it was fun to work with the film’s female star, Rhonda Jo Petty.

Rhonda Jo Petty

Jaacov Jaacovi:

We discovered Rhonda Jo Petty. That was her first film. ‘Little Orphan Dusty’ made her a star.

Rhonda Jo Petty:

That was a rough film. (When you ask me about this) you’re walking into territory… that I’ve buried.

Svetlana… Oh God. She was blonde, she was powerful, and she had a mouth on her. Jaacov was all about business – for him, it was about getting the film done.

Bob Chinn:

One thing I noticed was that Jaacov and Svetlana seemed to confuse Rhonda Jo whenever they tried to explain something to her in their authoritarian style.

Rhonda Jo Petty:

I was being asked to do things that I was very uncomfortable with: for a start, I was nervous about working with John Holmes, but it was the motorcycle racing scene that was blowing my mind.

I’ve always had a hard time with my voice, and speaking up for myself. I’ve allowed people to take advantage of me, not knowing how to say no.

Bob Chinn:

I’d gotten a reputation for fisting scenes after I’d made Candy Stripers (1978), and Jake made it clear he wanted several in this film.

Rhonda Jo Petty:

I did things I didn’t really want to do. I was very young and naive  – and Jaacov took advantage of that. He knew what he was doing.

I had never done certain sexual things, and Jaacov didn’t discuss them with me until right before the scene. I didn’t feel I had any option but to go ahead with them.

Bob Chinn:

For the advertising campaign pressbooks and one-sheet poster, Jaacov proudly told me that he had come up with a wonderful and brilliant idea.

He was going to bill Rhonda Jo Petty as the Farrah Fawcett look-alike.

I looked him straight in the eye and told him, “Jaacov, the only thing about her that looks like Farrah Fawcett is her hair.”

Rhonda Jo Petty

Jaacov Jaacovi:

Did Rhonda Jo look like Farrah Fawcett? Sure, she did. Farrah Fawcett was the biggest TV star in the world: she was on Charlie’s Angels, which was the most watched TV show, and she was the most popular Angel.

So we used her name on the poster.

Bob Chinn:

To (Jake), she definitely looked like Farrah Fawcett. And so did the girl in the artwork for the one-sheet poster that Jaacov had printed for the film, as it turned out. And to add insult to injury, she was in the exact same pose as Farrah’s famous poster in her bathing suit.

Before Farrah Fawcett joined the cast of ‘Charlie’s Angels’, she’d posed for a photo shoot with photographer Bruce McBroom. The resulting image of Fawcett in a one-piece red bathing suit became the best-selling poster in history, selling a record-breaking 20 million copies. Jaacov used the same picture for the ‘Little Orphan Dusty’ poster.

Farrah Fawcett’s iconic poster, and the ‘Little Orphan Dusty’ poster

Jaacov Jaacovi:

We opened Dusty at the Pussycat (Theater), and we had the best poster you’ve ever seen: a picture of Rhonda Jo – and in prominent letters, I put the tagline, “Rhonda Jo Petty – the Farrah Fawcett look alike.” We had that poster in every newspaper, and if you just looked at the poster, you probably thought Farrah Fawcett was the star.

It worked. The film didn’t cost much to make, but it did well for us. Very well.

Rhonda Jo Petty:

I didn’t have any idea that was Jaacov’s whole plan for (marketing) the movie.

I didn’t even know that the film had come out, and I didn’t know about all the publicity in the newspapers around the film. There was no internet back then, of course.

And I used my real name. I guess a lot of the family saw it, and someone let my Dad know. So my Dad called me, and he says, “How could you use our name? How could you? I’m gonna break your arms and fucking legs.”

It really took me to the ground. I fell apart.

Bob Chinn:

Naturally, Farrah Fawcett’s lawyers sued, but by that time Jaacov had already raked in what amounted to a small fortune from the picture.

Jaacov Jaacovi:

Farrah Fawcett’s guys tried to sue me. They couldn’t make their mind up: they claimed I said Farrah was in our movie, they didn’t like that I used her name on our poster, they said that I used her photograph without authorization… I didn’t care. The publicity was good for the film, and we made more money.

I can’t remember what happened after that. Maybe I paid some attorneys, maybe I gave these guys some money to go away.

I made enough money from the movie to not care.

*

Taxi Girls (1979)

Jaacov Jaacovi:

Naturally I wanted to repeat the success of ‘Little Orphan Dusty’, except this time I wanted to make a better movie. So I used the same formula: I wrote the script for Taxi Girls with Svetlana and a friend of mine, we got John Holmes back to be the lead, and I got Bob Chinn involved again.

Bob Chinn:

(Jaacov) came to me with a thick screenplay that was obviously for a far more ambitious project than ‘Little Orphan Dusty’. He asked me if I was interested in co-directing this new opus with him like we did the last one. He said, “We make a winning team, Bob.”

I wasn’t going to be starting up my new projects for at least a couple more weeks and I knew that I would probably be bored in the meantime so I answered, “Well, why the hell not, Jake. If the money’s right that is.”

“How about the same deal?” he continued cannily. “I’ll pay you half your salary, you direct half of the film?”

To which I said, “You really think that I’m a soft touch, don’t you.”

I’d become so used to being exploited that it didn’t really bother me much anymore.

Jaacov Jaacovi:

Bob was always complaining about something or other. But I liked him – and there were few people who could direct movies as quickly and as cheaply as him so I was always happy to work with him.

Bob Chinn:

I agreed to direct Taxi Girls on the condition that he didn’t use my name. The reason was simple: he wanted to shoot it all in Los Angeles – where it was still illegal to make porn films. And I knew he wasn’t going to get permits for any of the exteriors – which included shooting hookers on Hollywood Boulevard. (That) was almost a certain invitation for a bust.

I was surprised because (Jaacov) was usually a pretty cautious guy. I’d never been busted in my entire career making these films, and I certainly didn’t want that to happen now.

He begrudgingly agreed to my terms. That’s why my name doesn’t appear in the movie.

Jaacov Jaacovi:

I had this girl under contract. Nancy Suiter. She’d been in magazines, but hadn’t ever been in a movie. Blonde, young, and sweet-looking. Amazing looking girl. Not the type you’d expect to see in a porno.

Nancy Suiter

Bob Chinn:

(Jaacov) enthusiastically told me he had a brand new starlet that was going to appear in the film. It was due to start shooting the following week. Obviously Jaacov was not one to waste any time, especially when there was the distinct possibility of someone grabbing his new discovery before he even had chance to use her, since he hadn’t actually signed her to any kind of contract. We all knew he was too cheap for something like that.

Jamie Gillis:

Serena and I were hanging out one day when we got a call from someone asking us if we wanted a day’s film work. Neither of us were interested, we were too busy doing nothing. But then I heard that Nancy Suiter was part of the deal.

So I changed my mind.

Nancy Suiter, as ‘Susan’

Bob Chinn:

Jaacov showed me some pictures of his new star, a blonde All-American type.

“Yeah, she’s kinda cute,” I said to him.

Jaacov (was) a sort of secretive type who likes to play his cards close to his chest. Getting him to reveal anything is akin to pulling teeth. “Guess what?” he said. “Doesn’t she remind you of anyone?”

I looked so hard my eyes were getting strained. “Should she remind me of anyone?”

“Cheryl Ladd,” he finally told me. He said that he was going to bill her as the Cheryl Ladd look-alike.

I said, “Jaacov, are you out of your fucking mind? She doesn’t look anything like Cheryl Ladd.”

He studied the picture very carefully.

“Sure she does,” he seriously assured me.

Nancy Suiter, as ‘Suzanne’

Jaacov Jaacovi:

Cheryl Ladd had replaced Farrah Fawcett on ‘Charlie’s Angels’ so she was an even bigger star.

And listen… if Rhonda looked like Farrah Fawcett, then Nancy Suiter could pass for Cheryl Ladd.

Did I discuss it with Nancy? No. It had nothing to do with her. Her job was to act, mine was to make money.

Nancy Suiter in ‘Taxi Girls’

*

A Troubled Aftermath

Jaacov Jaacovi:

I got divorced from Svetlana, that was rough – and at the same time, I was getting married to my second wife, Jourdan’s mother.

Jaaacov and his daughter

Jourdan Jaacovi (Jaacov Jaacovi’s son):

I remember we ran into Svetlana once in a movie theater. She started a crazy fight with my father in the dark as the movie was playing. That was a weird scene.

But my father was always very popular and sociable. He knew everyone – you couldn’t go anywhere without running into people he knew. Everyone loved him too – except for those who were really close to him, who knew him a little bit better and knew how selfish he could be.

Jaacov, and his family

Bob Chinn:

‘Taxi Girls’ was even more successful than ‘Little Orphan Dusty’ had been, and as a result Jake was once again making money hand over fist.

Jaacov Jaacovi:

‘Taxi Girls’ made a lot of money. A lot of money. It was one of the biggest grossing films of the decade. I bought a big house, expensive cars, and had lots of money to spare. I was rich.

But then along came the legal headaches, and they slowed me down.

Bob Chinn:

As I’d expected, Jaacov managed to get busted while shooting the street scene exteriors with the girls playing hookers on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

Still shot on Sunset Blvd from ‘Taxi Girls’

Jaacov Jaacovi:

We got picked up for shooting street scenes. The camera guy was doing it covertly with no fuss, but they still arrested us on that. It wasn’t so bad, I paid a fine, and moved on.

Bob Chinn:

When (‘Taxi Girls’) was being released, I saw the poster and the face on the girl in the poster was far more Cheryl Ladd than Nancy Suiter.

This Jaacovi really has balls, I thought. But this time, however, he wasn’t so lucky. This time Ladd’s agent sued.

James Selna (Cheryl Ladd’s attorney) speaking in 1979:

The Cheryl Ladd look-alike advertisements for ‘Taxi Girls’ were made without my client’s permission and they put her in a false light.

Cheryl Ladd has never appeared in the nude. Miss Ladd objects to the ads on a very personal level as a family woman and the mother of a 4-year old daughter.

The ‘Taxi Girls’ poster features a painting of Miss Ladd’s face rather than the face of Nancy Suiter.

Joseph Rhine (Jaacov Jaacovi’s attorney, and also husband of adult film director/actor Ann Perry) speaking in 1979:

There was no intent to deceive anyone. This is a common practice in the industry. My client merely referred to the likeness of his film’s star. This was done before when an actress resembled Farrah Fawcett, and no legal action was taken.

It’s nothing more than the intimidation of the big name over the smaller person.

Newspaper advert for the New York premiere of ‘Taxi Girls’ at the Circus Cinema

Richard Milner (New York adult filmmaker/journalist):

It was suddenly a big story everywhere. The film was getting lots of attention because its marketing campaign claimed that the star, Nancy Suiter, was the spitting image of Cheryl Ladd.

I read in the New York Post that ‘Taxi Girls’ had been busted at the Circus Cinema – which was owned by my friend, Howie Farber, who also co-owned Distribpix.

And his defense of the film in the media was hilarious…

‘Heavens Above! TV Angel to Sue Over Porn Look-Alike’, New York Post, May 4, 1979:

“It’s ridiculous,” snorts Circus Cinema owner Howard Farber. “People tell me I look like Woody Allen, and I’m not suing him.”

Richard Milner:

Howie happened to look like Woody Allen. I saw the opportunity to play a trick on Howie.

I drafted a letter – pretending it was from Woody Allen – in which I threatened to sue Howie for impersonating Woody Allen.

Richard Milner:

It was a strange legal case, but at least we had some fun with it.

Howie was always making me laugh when he made public statements about adult films.

Svetlana and Richard Milner

Howie Farber in the article ‘Heavens Above! TV Angel to Sue Over Porn Look-Alike’, New York Post, 4 May 1979:

‘Taxi Girls’ is the ‘Gone With The Wind’ of adult movies. It has a plot. It’s about a group of girls who decided they can have a very good business by driving taxi cabs, and using that as sort of a front for prostitution activities.

It’s definitely not anything like ‘The Sound of Music’.

Despite the humor inherent of the situation, it all turned sour for Jaacov when a judge ruled against him.

‘Judge Stops Film From Using Painting of Cheryl Ladd in ads’, Dayton Daily News, July 17, 1979:

Actress Cheryl Ladd has won a court order barring the star of an X-rated film from being billed as her look-alike.

Some felt that Cheryl Ladd’s lawsuit has played into Jaacov Jaacovi’s hands, giving him free publicity

Jaacov Jaacovi:

After the ruling, all references to Cheryl Ladd had to be dropped – which was painful, and expensive. All the promo materials had to be changed…

How much did it cost us? I don’t know. The film was already successful. Who knows how successful the movie woulda been without the Cheryl Ladd scandal? We kept capitalizing on the publicity though. We used the same picture – and just scrubbed out her face… and we referred to “the famous look-alike”…

The revised ‘Taxi Girls’ poster that appeared after the court ruling

Shortly afterwards, Jaacov was hit with a second ‘Taxi Girls’ lawsuit.

Jaacov Jaacovi:

This time I was set up by the cops for pandering.

The cops had sent a couple of girls to me to audition for the movie. I had no idea they were undercover, and when I offered them parts, they arrested me.

That case dragged on for ages, and cost me a fortune to defend: I was arrested in the summer of 1978 and the court case didn’t take place for two years after.

‘Porno Film Figure Enters Guilty Plea’, San Bernardino Sun, January 11, 1980:

A movie producer, who was successfully sued by Cheryl Ladd over the use of her name in ads for his adult film ‘Taxi Girls’, has pleaded guilty to offering an undercover policewoman money to perform sex acts in the same film.

The maximum prison term for felony pandering is four years.

Jaacov Jaacovi:

It was unprecedented and unconstitutional. It was the first time the XXX business had been attacked in this way. No adult filmmaker had ever been arrested for pandering before. And I took the heat for the whole industry.

The cops even admitted that they targeted me specifically. It was harassment, pure and simple.

‘Porno Film Figure Enters Guilty Plea’, San Bernardino Sun, 11 January 1980:

Deputy District Attorney Kirk Newkirk said prostitution is legally defined as performance of a sex act for money, and that Jaacovi was prosecuted on the theory that he engaged in pandering by inducing someone to engage in prostitution.

For a time, the movie industry expressed concern that the theory of prosecution used by the district attorney’s office in the Jaacovi case might subject directors in more mainstream films to prosecution.

However Newkirk said, “This is a tactic we would use against hardcore sex movie makers only.”

Two months later, Jaacov was found guilty and sentenced.

‘Filmmaker Gets Probation’, Associated Press, March 16, 1980:

LOS ANGELES. A pornographic movie maker was placed on three years’ probation Friday for allegedly trying to bribe two undercover policewomen to perform sex acts in a film. In addition, Jaacov Jaacovi, 34, of Los Angeles was fined $500 and sentenced to 180 days in jail by Superior Court Judge William Keene. But the jail sentence was stayed until Dec. 11, pending a probation report to the court.

During a plea bargain last month, he pleaded guilty to one count of pandering, but a second count was dropped. Prosecutors claimed Jaacovi twice offered $200 to undercover policewomen posing as actresses to entice them to perform in his film ‘Taxi Girls.’ The instances allegedly occurred in August and September 1978.

And surprisingly, Jaacov’s biggest legal problem over ‘Taxi Girls’ was still ahead: Cheryl Ladd announced that she was suing him for damages over the use of her likeness – and the case finally came to court for a jury trial in 1983.

From Cheryl Ladd lawsuit:

The plaintiff asserts the advertising for the motion picture ‘Taxi Girls’ unlawfully used her name and likeness.

The respondent used a publicity photograph of the plaintiff as the central motif of the marketing campaign for the motion picture.

The plaintiff seeks compensatory damages.

Jaacov defended himself at the trial, and his arguments were unconventional. He said that his star, Nancy Suiter, so closely resembled Miss Ladd that it would have constituted false advertising had he not mentioned Ladd’s name. He also argued that he had made a similar reference to Farah Fawcett in advertising for ‘Little Orphan Dusty’ and she did not sue him.

Cheryl Ladd’s attorney on the other hand argued that the word “look-alike” was printed in very small type on the posters, and that the intention was to defraud the customer.

The jury’s verdict was 10-2 in favor of Cheryl Ladd.

‘Cheryl Ladd Wins $1 Million Lawsuit’, The Napa Register, December 22, 1983:

Former ‘Charlie’s Angels’ star Cheryl Ladd was awarded $1 million because her name and likeness were used to promote a sex film, a decision called a “message that celebrities are not fair game for every huckster.”

Producer Jaacov Jaacovi, who has not made a film since the disputed ‘Taxi Girls’ in 1979, said he was unable to pay the $300,000 general damages and $750,000 punitive damages. The defendant, who acted as his own attorney, sad he might appeal the jury’s decision.

Jaacov and his co-defendant, Superfilms Ltd., did not contest the accusation that movie posters for the X-rated ‘Taxi Girls’ described the film’s star as “the Cheryl Ladd look-alike.” Miss Ladd was not in the film.

They disagreed, however, with the claim by Ms. Ladd’s lawyers that Jaacovi “desired to exploit” the actress and inappropriately used a pose resembling one sued by Miss Ladd in a popular poster that was sold nationwide.

Cheryl Ladd (speaking in 1983):

I am extremely pleased with the verdict. I think the jury sent a strong message about anyone attempting to do this sort of thing, using another person’s name and likeness without getting their permission. When that is taken away from you that is wrong.

The motive here was not money, but the principle.

Jaacov Jaacovi:

Well, how do you think I felt? It was a travesty. I lost everything.

I don’t know if I ever really recovered.

Jourdan Jaacovi (Jaacov Jaacovi’s son):

The lawsuit was his downfall. It ruined his career.

He’d been doing really well until then: we had a huge house in Woodland Hills. A beautiful property with seven bedrooms and a large swimming pool. He had two Rolls Royces.

But after he paid some, or all, of the damages awarded against him, he essentially went bankrupt.

We had to move in with his sister into her small house in North Hollywood.

Video box cover for ‘Taxi Girls’

Italian one sheet for ‘Taxi Girls’

Jourdan Jaacovi (Jaacov Jaacovi’s son):

I’m sure that the defeat had a big impact on him, but he remained optimistic that he was going to hit it big again.

Maybe that was part of his gambling mentality. He was a terrible gambler: if he wasn’t shooting movies, he was probably at a high stakes poker game in Los Angeles. That extended to his view of business: if only he could hit it again, and get it all back, then it would all be ok.

Unfortunately that never really happened.

*

Endgame

Jaacov Jaacovi made only three more films after ‘Taxi Girls’: the first was Little Orphan Dusty Part II (1982) in which Rhonda Jo Petty returned as the film’s star. Jaacov used the same poster for the sequel, but this time Rhonda Jo was billed as “The ? ? look alike.”

Jaacov also made another sequel, Taxi Girls Part II: In Search of Toni (1986). The rest of his output consisted of a prolific series of shot-on-video quickies, where he was billed as ‘Jourdan Alexander.’

Jourdan Jaacovi (Jaacov Jaacovi’s son):

He always had plenty of ideas for new feature-length movies, and when I was a kid he’d pitch them to me. None of them sounded any good at all.

I’ve actually tried watching a few of his videos, and many of them are bad: terrible production values, and you can hear stage directions throughout the movie.

By this time, he wasn’t plugged into the right people, and to be honest he was on his way out as a filmmaker.

The last of Jaacov’s videos was released in 1994.

Jaacov

Jourdan Jaacovi (Jaacov Jaacovi’s son):

My father’s life moved away from making movies to distributing his films on VHS to video stores. He owned the rights to his films, and he became a one-man distribution operation.

He did everything himself: he’d print the packaging, and he had boxes and boxes of tapes in the garage of wherever he was living at the time. I’d go with him on trips to video stores all across California, and he’d sell VHS tapes out of his trunk. He made a fairly good amount of money doing that, and lived in nicer houses for a while.

And then the internet came along, and that wiped him out again. He was also divorced from my mother by then, and was going through legal battles over unpaid child support. Anything he earned was taken away from him by the courts, so, as a result, he wasn’t doing a regular job.

The only money he had was from doing weird things like selling ties, and from money that his sister gave him.

It was a sad way for his life to end. When he died, he left absolutely nothing.

Jaacov Jaacovi died on September 24, 2008 at the age of 63. The official cause of death was a stroke.

Jourdan Jaacovi (Jaacov Jaacovi’s son):

My father was the most interesting person I have ever known. He was unique.

I actually have the poster for ‘Little Orphan Dusty’ hanging in my house now – the one with the reference to Farrah Fawcett. It reminds me not to do anything stupid in life…

Rhonda Jo Petty continued to make X-rated films for a decade after ‘Little Orphan Dusty’. She was also a stripper – and was frequently billed as ‘the Farrah Fawcett’ look-alike. She was interviewed for a Rialto Report podcast in 2017.

Nancy Suiter left the adult industry shortly after appearing in ‘Taxi Girls’, making only three other feature films and a small handful of loops. She was contacted for this piece, but declined to be interviewed.

Bob Chinn continued to be a prolific director until retiring in 2003. He was interviewed for a Rialto Report podcast in 2013, and published a two volume autobiography in 2016.

*

The post ‘Charlie’s Angels’, Jaacov Jaacovi, and the $1 Million Porn Lawsuit appeared first on The Rialto Report.

‘Erotic Film Guide’ (1982 – 2006) was one of the longest-running and most colorful magazines to cover the adult film industry.

It was the product of two men who could hardly have been more different: David Zentner was a pornographer who spent time in a Japanese refugee camp in the Second World War and who died under mysterious circumstances. Jim Dawson is an award-winning music journalist and a renowned ‘fartologist.’

On this Rialto Report we look back at the lives of both men, and re-publish all issues from the first two years of the magazine’s life.

The issues include interviews with Vanessa Del Rio, Veronica Hart and Harry Reems, features on films such as Glitter, Maneaters and Cafe Flesh, and pictorals with Kandi Barbour, Lesllie Bovee, Pia Snow, and much more.

Fully digitized copies of each 1982 and 1983 magazine can be found in the article below. You can find The Rialto Report’s collection of digitized resources by choosing Library in our site menu. 

Click on the covers below to access the full magazines. Due to the fact that the magazines are scanned in high definition, allow time for each page to load. If you are viewing on a phone, view in landscape orientation.

Magazines are fully searchable; use the icon displayed in each magazine to search by keyword.

Publications are being shared here purely for the purpose of research. They should not to be used or reproduced for any commercial gain.

With thanks to Jim Dawson.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

David Zentner, and the birth of girlie magazines

Throughout his life, David Zentner attracted trouble like a myopic moth drawn to a flame. And most of the time, he only had himself to blame.

To be fair, that wasn’t always the case. Sometimes life just dealt him a tough hand. Take his early years: he was a Polish Jew during the Second World War, who escaped Nazi persecution by fleeing to Russia with his family. When anti-Semitic pogroms pushed by the tsarist regime threatened to engulf them, they took an arduous train journey to China, where they settled in a Jewish enclave in Shanghai. A year later, they moved again, this time by boat to Kobe, Japan where they ended the war in a refugee camp. The only two silver linings to his lengthy flight? He was still alive, and he got hold of an immigrant visa to America.

In the U.S., David re-invented himself. The world owed him a break, so he embraced new-found freedoms with both arms. That meant earning money by producing sex magazines.

He settled in San Diego, and formed a publishing entity, D&L Company, with offices at 520 E St. that published racy productions such as ‘Bare’ and ‘Keyhole’. ‘Bare’ was a curious prototype: its first issue was released in April 1953, predating the launch of ‘Playboy’ by a full eight months. It was a distillation of David’s damaged world view: cheap black-and-white underwear pictorials accompanied by anti-communist exposés with outraged titles such as ‘Illegal Love Behind the Iron Curtain’ and ‘What Red G.I.s did to One Million European girls’. His magazines were new, brash, and illicit – and they raked in cash.

David’s new success was threatened in 1954 when he was arrested for “attacking” a 15-year-old girl in a Los Angeles hotel room – on two separate occasions. He insisted he’d merely hired the nubile newbie for a photo session, and accused the underage girl of “acting out of spite”. No matter: the case was abruptly and mysteriously settled out of court, leaving him to continue to build his publishing empire – which he did with alacrity.

He started a new company, Dee Publications, opened offices in Los Angeles at 8511 Sunset Blvd, hired a team of full-time employees, and launched a slew of new cheap girlie titles, including Escapade, Spree, Topper, Bare, and Playtime.

Business was good, but problems were never far away. The enemy of any smut peddler in the black-and-white era was the censor, and the only defense was a detailed understanding of which intimate parts of the human anatomy could be revealed in a published photo. But this was never a binary game: it was an ever-changing set of undefined guidelines in a variety of different markets. The key was the court decisions which established what was permissible, and David followed these legal outcomes as closely as a stock broker watches the market ticker.

Although David learned to walk the fine line that straddled hot titillation and illegal filth, he inevitably ran afoul of the law on occasion. He was arrested, fined, and vilified on numerous occasions, but the charges never hurt him, and by 1964, his magazine empire was successful enough for him to branch out into publishing erotic paperback books, via a new imprint, Bee-Line Books, Inc. The decision was hardly revolutionary: in 1960, Americans were buying more than one million paperbacks a day, and the number of bookstores had increased from 1,500 to 95,000.

David formed new companies by the dozen to mask his involvement, resulting in a corporate structure that resembled a spider’s web. His thinking was that if any of his individual companies was busted, he could cut it off – hydra-like – and grow another in its place.

By now, he had offices in New York and Los Angeles, and he collected a stable of hungry writers willing to turn in 40,000-word manuscripts (in order to fit his precise printing format) for up to $600 a pop. Most of the writers found him painfully demanding to work for. Hugh A. Jones, who wrote for David under the pseudonyms ‘Harvey T. Leathem M.D.’ and ‘Dr. Sadie Cousins PhD’ remembers how David “nursed me through my first four books – meaning he hollered, mostly about deadlines.”

For the first few years of their association, writer and publisher never even met; all dealings were done over the phone. Hugh pitched ideas to David: if David liked them, he gave Hugh the green light. Sometimes David published himself, but often he sold them off to other porn publishers at a profit.

After the California Supreme Court approved the sale of ‘Tropic of Cancer’, David sent out a circular to his writers outlining what he expected of them:

“We need tough, strong, hard-hitting sex-action filled books, geared to the demands of today’s and tomorrow’s market – rather than to the standards of even a few months ago.

“What we basically seek is offbeat sex, with emphasis on deviations. Some possible themes to write by: footwear, lined and rubber clothing, ultra-high heels, whipping, gagging, sex rituals, sadism, homosexuality, girls fighting, wife-swapping, group orgies, voyeurism, and aphrodisiacs.

“Plot is secondary. We do not want complicated plots, naïve sex adventures ‘spiced’ with sex – nor pages of rambling, pointless dialogue. I need more characters per book. Naturally I expect the description of these various things to be in good taste. The mere fact that some of these themes are used will sell our books.

The resulting books included titles such as ‘Lesbian Lust,’ ‘Oversexed,’ ‘Lash of Lust,’ ‘Lust in Leather,’ ‘Perversions Resort,’ and ‘Sexurbia.’

Occasionally David would publish non-porn magazines – ‘Special Collectors Issues’ – designed to cash in on events that captured the public imagination, such as the JFK assassination. These cash cows would recycle previously published material cheaply, and made big profits.

In 1969, David diversified again, this time away from pornography. He formed Pinnacle Books, with offices on East 26th St in New York, which published pulpy action and adventure paperbacks. It had immediate and dramatic success: the first book it published was ‘The Executioner: War Against the Mafia’, a fictional account of a returning Vietnam veteran who undertakes a personal vendetta against organized crime. The book spawned many sequels, and the series sold 20 million copies in 15 languages. Other similar book collections followed – many others – and at one point, Pinnacle was publishing 37 different adventure series.

David was making big money, but he was spending large too. He’d developed a taste for what friends describe as, “the easy life.” Others call it hookers and drugs. One prostitute that David saw regularly was adult film actress Andrea True, later famous for her disco smash hit, ‘More, More, More.’ They became friends, and Andrea introduced him to another porn star, Linda Lovelace. Linda, and her erstwhile partner Chuck Traynor, were cashing in on Linda’s Deep Throat notoriety, and were shopping around a book about Linda’s erotic life.

David like the idea, and paid Linda an advance of $40,000. The actual book, The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace, was ghost-written by Mel Mandel, a New York writer who’d worked on stage productions and musicals. The resulting book was published via Pinnacle Books, and become another best seller.

But David hadn’t finished with pornographic magazines. In 1977, his latest company incarnation, Eton Publishing, now based out of 8063 Beverley Blvd in Los Angeles, put out ‘Velvet’, a glossy Playboy imitation. It contained highbrow interviews with stars like Richard Pryor, a problem page by former porn star Tina Russell, features by Bill Rotsler, and true to David’s political leanings, a smattering of anti-Russia articles, such as “Soviet Porn: Dirty Lyrics from the USSR”. It was a far cry from ‘Bare’.

A sister publication, ‘Velvet Talks’ followed in 1979, with the gimmick of a 33rpm record stapled to the center. It was a recording of the issue’s centerfold model talking dirty, which you could presumably play back while admiring her physical charms. (“Wow! Now you can HEAR and JOIN me, Terri, your talking cover girl, in a three-way session with Brenda and friend!” announced one issue, boasting that it was the “First Three-Way Sex Disco Record”.)

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Jim Dawson, and the birth of ‘Velvet’s Erotic Film Guide’

If David Zentner was single-minded in his career as a publisher, the same cannot be said for the polymath Jim Dawson.

For a start, Jim is steeped in rhythm ‘n’ blues and classic rock n’ roll music: he’s written books (about Buddy Holly, the Twist, Bill Haley, and Big Jay McNeely to name a few), produced records, toured with musicians, and has had various radio shows dedicated to his passion for music. Jim has also written liner notes for roughly 150 albums and CDs. Not just that, but his story about the forgotten singer Ritchie Valens led to the 1987 biopic ‘La Bamba’, which used Jim’s research as the basis for the story.

Jim’s talents spread far wider than just music. He is widely recognized as the pre-eminent historian of flatulence. Or ‘fartology’, if you will. His books on the subject include the 1999 bestseller Who Cut the Cheese? A Cultural History of the Fart, as well as Blame It on the Dog: A Modern History of the Fart (2006), and Did Somebody Step on a Duck? A Natural History of the Fart (2010).

But as William Shakespeare (might have) said: “Man cannot live on music and flatulence alone.” So Jim had to earn his keep by working in the murky world of adult film magazines for the best part of 30 years: “The adult magazine industry paid me real money as opposed to writing about classic rock ‘n’ roll. In fact, it subsidized all my rock ‘n’ roll endeavors. The porn stuff paid the bills, everything else became a hobby.”

Jim began at Hustler in July 1978, and worked for other magazines in Larry Flynt’s portfolio such as ‘Chic’ and ‘Gentleman’s Companion.’ Then he moved across Los Angeles to work for David Zentner at the Eton Publishing offices at 6565 Sunset Blvd.

Jim started working on Velvet, and then headed up David’s new publication: “I took over a magazine that had already been started called ‘Velvet Talks’. That was the one that had a record attached to the middle, where you could hear one of the stars talk to you. We kept that up for a short time, and then finally discarded it because those plastic records were just horrible. After the novelty wore off, I don’t think anybody was interested.”

While Jim worked for Velvet, he hired Candy Samples as the magazine ‘spokesperson’. Jim remembers: “I worked closely with Candy in the early 1980s. She had a column in which she answered letters from readers. In actual fact, it was me who answered all of them. I also supervised some of her photo sessions. Candy was a bright, sweet woman, a divorcee with at least one adult child whom I never met, and she was much older than people thought. She was more like an aunt to me than anything else. She was well kept in a Marina Del Rey condo by one or two well-to-do gentlemen, who may or may not have had physical relationships with her. She also had a much younger boyfriend, who was like a big kid with a fetish for the Road Warrior movies, right down to wearing a leather outfit just like the one Mel Gibson wore.”

While editing ‘Velvet Talks’, Jim found himself inundated with photo stills sent from adult film companies looking to promote their movies. The penny dropped: Jim went to David and pitched the idea of doing a XXX film magazine: “That was my idea. It was the one original idea that I had in all those years! And it was all because of that free stuff.”

David liked the concept, and named it ‘Velvet Erotic Film Guide’. It proved to be a propitious time to launch an adult film magazine, as Jim remembers: “It was before the video revolution, and the companies were always talking about production values. They’d have screenings for the critics. One screen that was used a lot was in the old Technicolor building in Hollywood on Romaine St right near Cahuenga. It was a large place that had been a studio back in the thirties. The building is still there, a big, beautiful old deco building. We used to have a lot of fun there.

“The film companies would always take pictures on set. And they’d send them to us and encourage us to talk about their movies. The pictures were really great. So I start writing stories to go with this material. I think at that time only Adam Film World magazine was doing that. We were one of the first.

David had noticed the success of High Society in New York – which had employed porn star Gloria Leonard as a figurehead. He realized that his magazine would have more credibility – and be more exciting – if it blurred the line between its own staff and the XXX stars that were revered by fans, so porn stars, such as Becky Savage, Ron Jeremy, Candida Royalle, Marlene Willoughby were all hired in the first year as Contributing Editors.

Others such as Lisa DeLeeuw went one step further and were named Associate Publisher – though as Jim remembers, the title was largely honorary: “That decision was above my pay grade. David wanted to have certain people attached to the magazines, and essentially, we’d pay them. He’d bring her in for a photo session which would consist of her taking notes while her boobs were hanging out, and then somebody in-house would write all the copy. She lent her name to the enterprise, but there was nothing more to it than that.”

Masthead for ‘Erotic Film Guide’ with Lisa DeLeeuw as Associate Publisher

“Not that the porn stars we dealt with weren’t smart. Becky Savage, for example, was very smart. A bright, educated person. Some of them would probably qualify for Mensa. Sharon Kelly (aka Colleen Brennan) was clever too.”

One of the staff writers that worked for Jim writing the film reviews was the legendary Kalton Lahue, who had written an exhaustive collection of books starting back in the 1950s: “Weird guy. He wore Air Force jumpsuits, the ones with pockets everywhere. He was fairly old, but always had unnaturally dark hair and an unnaturally dark mustache. He was the first guy that told me that he had a penis implant.

“He wrote books on automotive parts and repair for this automotive magazine. One day, he handed me a book. It was something he’d written on silent film. It turned out he’d written many books on the subject.”

Jim juggled his work for David and ‘Erotic Film Guide’ with his interest in music but eventually left the ‘Velvet’ stable when other opportunities came up: “I was writing for a couple of magazines in London. One was Fiesta. I actually had a column. I’d just recycle stuff that I’d used on Velvet.”

‘Velvet’s Erotic Film Guide’ changed its name to “Erotic Film Guide” in 1983, and then again in 1984 to “Erotic X-Film Guide”. It continued until 2006 before disappearing completely.

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David and Jim: Aftermath

David Zentner died in 2002. According to Jim, his body remained unclaimed for the longest time, despite that fact that he had a girlfriend: “I don’t know why she didn’t claim it. I don’t even know whether he died in poverty, though he might have been near broke. He just died alone and friendless, I guess. We had a little memorial for him.

“He’d lost ‘Velvet’ to the New Jersey printer, Great Western, in 1991, probably because he was spending more money than the magazine’s dwindling sales could recoup. He was a mysterious guy.”

“I’d worked for ‘Velvet’ on and off over the years, and when Great Western took over, they called me and art director Jeff Riley back to carry on the magazine without him. Jeff and I more or less kept ‘Velvet’ going for 15 more years, until 2006.

Jim now works for the American Film Institute unearthing old movies and researching silent film.

His most recent book, Los Angeles’s Bunker Hill: Pulp Fiction’s Mean Streets and Film Noir’s Ground Zero, published in 2012, is a fascinating history of the locations used by postwar film noir directors in downtown Los Angeles.

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‘Erotic Film Guide’: The Complete 1982/83 Issues

April 1982 (No. 4)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Film Reviews: Flash, Centerfold Fever, Skintight, The Filthy Rich, Little French Maid –Annie Sprinkle: Bitch Goddess of Porn -Letters to the Stars -Becky’s Spice Box -Old Time Orgasms –Lesllie Bovee Profile -Young Seka -Porn Star Connie Peterson -Video Porn: Suze’s Centerfolds –Nancy Hoffman: America’s Porno Superstar

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June 1982 (Vol. 1 No. 1)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Film Reviews: Urban Cowgirls, Desire for Men, Between the Sheets, Centerspread Girls, Undercovers -Becky’s Spice Box -Profiles: Lee Carroll, Hillary Summers, Mike Ranger –Veronica Hart Interview -Old Time Orgasms -Letters to the Stars -Closeup: Tara Aire -Video Porn: Bizarre Video Productions

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August 1982
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Film Reviews: Never so Deep, Amanda by Night, The Blonde Next Door, Lips, Inspirations -Becky’s Spice Box -Profiles: Lee Carroll, Christy Welles, Kandi Barbour -Old Time Orgasms -Interview with Vanessa Del Rio -Photo feature: Serena & Lesllie Bovee -Letters to the Stars -Video Porn: Swedish Erotica Volumes 31-34

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October 1982 (Vol. 1 No. 2)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Film Reviews: Titillation, Beauty, Pandora’s Mirror, Moments of Love, A Thousand and One Erotic Nights, Wild Dallas Honey -Becky’s Spice Box -Profiles: Aunt Peg, Maria Tortuga -Porn Stars: Ron Jeremy & Terri, Little Oral Annie & Victoria Knoll, Liza Moore -Video Porn: Candy Girls -Letters to the Stars

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January 1983 (Vol 1, No. 4)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-A night at the 6th Erotica Film Awards -Letters to the Stars -Film Scoops from The Big Apple -Film reviews: One Way at a Time, Foreplay, The Seductress, Cafe Flesh, Intimate Lessons -Becky’s Spice Box -Profiles: Hillary Summers, Lisa De Leeuw, Pia Snow, Marie Sharp –Harry Reems Interview -Velvet asks the Stars -Video Porn: Suze’s Centerfolds Collection 6

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March 1983 (No. 3)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

–Tiffany Clark Interview -Letters to the Stars -Film Scoops from The Big Apple -Film reviews: Body Magic, Purely Physical, My Sister Seka, Olympic Fever, Ultra Flesh -Profiles: Seka, Lisa De Leeuw, Nancy Suiter -The Erotic Films of Damon Christian -Film Guide Asks the Stars -Video Porn: Darling Rangers

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May 1983 (Vol 1, No. 6)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

–Marlene Willoughby Interview -Letters to Lisa De Leeuw -Film Scoops from The Big Apple -Film reviews: Peaches and Cream, The Girl from S.E.X., Sexcalibur, I Like to Watch -Profiles: Nancy Hoffman, Maria Tortuga, Vanessa del Rio -On the Road with Lisa De Leeuw -Locker Room Lust: Bridgette Monet & Liza Moore –Harry Reems Sinks into Cement at the Pussycat Premiere -Deep History: X-Rated 3-D Video -Film Guide Asks the Stars -Top Ten Greatest Films

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July 1983 (Vol 1, No. 7)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

–Annie Sprinkle Interview –Candida Royalle Dishes X-Rated Dirt -Film reviews: Up n’ Coming, Satisfactions, Scoundrels, Mascara, Fantasy Follies -Profiles: Serena & Jamie, Marlene Willoughby, Kandi Barbour, Loni Sanders, Gina Martell, Hyapatia Lee -Stars Share what Makes a Good Cocksucker -Live from New York: Plato’s Party -Hollywood Confidential Exclusive –Sorority Sweethearts Preview -What’s Happening in X-Rated Video -Porn at the Consumer Electronics Show

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August 1983 (Vol 1, No. 8)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

–Paul Thomas Interview -Love on Stage with Tiffany Clark –Candida Royalle Dishes X-Rated Dirt -Scoundrels’ Party -Behind the Scenes: Nasty Girls, Virginia, Midnight Heat -Profiles: Angel, Sharon Mitchell, Brooke West, Marlene Willoughby, Shauna Grant, Mona Page & Gina Martell -Screenwriters: They Write the Schlongs -Previews: Puss n’ Boots, That’s Outrageous, Midnight Heat -X-Tra Film Mart

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September 1983 (Vol 1, No. 9)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

–Candida Royalle Dishes X-Rated Dirt -Screenwriter Rick Marx -The East Coast Film Critics Awards -Interviews: Kay Parker, Jerry Butler -Previews: Hot Dreams, All American Girls, In the Pink, Talk to Me Dirty Part 2, Consenting Adults, Glitter, In Love, Eat at the Blue Fox, Groupies Galore -Behind the Scenes: Nasty Girls, Virginia, Midnight Heat –Angel meets Angel Cash –Kelly Nichols Profile –In Love Party

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October 1983 (Vol 1, No. 10)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-Is there Sex After Sex Films -Interviews: Michelle Maren, Henri Pachard, Georgina Spelvin, Shana McKenzie -Previews: The Devil in Miss Jones Part 2, -Profiles: Candy Samples, Anna Ventura, Cara Lott -On the Set: Glitter -Behind the Scenes: Maneaters -The Girls of Bad Girls -Carnal Comix

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November 1983 (Vol 1, No. 11)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

-The Slut vs. Bimbo Dilemma –Candida Royalle Dishes X-Rated Dirt -Interviews: Joel Holzman, Samantha Fox -The Seventh Annual Erotica Film Awards -Pornstar of the Month: Marisa Monteil -Previews: Sexcapades, Naughty Girls Need Love Too, The Young Like it Hot, Flash Pants, Between Lovers, Valley Girls -Porn at the Consumer Electronics Show -Blue Confessions -Profiles: Rhonda Jo Petty, Sharon Mitchell, Misty Dawn, Blair Castle & Alan Royce

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December 1983 (Vol 1, No. 12)
(click on cover to view full magazine)

Contents:

–Candida Royalle Dishes X-Rated Dirt -Interviews: Gerard Damiano, Melanie Scott, Marilyn Chambers, Hyapatia Lee -Previews: Night Hunger, Let’s Get Physical, Body Girls, Sweet Young Foxes, Tuesday’s Lover, Silk, Satin & Sex –Annie Sprinkle & George Payne on Stage -Profiles: Angel, Sue Nero, Kimberly Carson -X-Rated’s Leading Make-Up Men

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The post The Story of the Birth of ‘Erotic Film Guide’ (1982/83): <br />An Issue by Issue Guide appeared first on The Rialto Report.

‘American Exxxstasy – My 30-Year Search for a Happy Ending’
by John Amero, with Ashley West and April Hall

The Rialto Report is proud to announce the publication of our first book – in conjunction with FAB Press.

Pre-order with a 20% discount and secure your autographed and numbered limited edition via FAB Press.

An Autobiographical Journey from Porn to Primetime

How does a young man from a small New England town become one of the most influential makers of exploitation films in the 1960s? How does the same filmmaker come to be a pioneer of hardcore sex movies in the 1970s and 1980s, including groundbreaking gay features? And how does that very same director move into mainstream productions for television networks like NBC in the 1990s?

In American Exxxtasy, John Amero charts his remarkable life and career at the forefront of the sexual revolution, while sharing what it was like to be a gay man living in the heart of New York City through the eras of Stonewall, LGBTQ rights and AIDS.

It’s a memoir that depicts his close bond with his brother Lem, with whom he formed a thirty-year filmmaking partnership. It details his friendship and collaboration with notorious exploitation director Michael Findlay and his wife Roberta. And it explores John’s relationships with notable names such as Andy Warhol, Montgomery Clift, Anthony Perkins, and Olympia Dukakis.

American Exxxtasy is an engaging personal story told with candour, emotion and humour, and a portrait of an industry and a city that were rapidly changing. And it’s the only first-person account that provides intimate insight into a singularly unique journey from porn to primetime.

About the Authors

John Amero is a pioneering filmmaker whose career has spanned many decades and film genres. He started out with close friend Michael Findlay – a fellow movie lover he met in the editing department of ABC television – and together they directed the notorious ‘roughie’ Body of a Female in 1965. John then formed a film partnership with his brother Lem that produced groundbreaking 1960s exploitation films such as Diary of a Swinger and The Corporate Queen, and 1970s hardcore classics like Blonde Ambition and Every Inch a Lady. During this time, John also made a notable series of gay sex films under the name Francis Ellie, and worked regularly with adult film stalwarts Chuck Vincent and Larry Revene throughout the 1980s. He continued to make his own films into the 1990s, including producing a mainstream television special starring Olympia Dukakis.

Ashley West and April Hall are co-founders of The Rialto Report. The Rialto Report offers oral history, audio, photo, and documentary archives from the golden age of adult film in New York, and beyond.

Pre-order with a 20% discount and secure your autographed and numbered limited edition via FAB Press.

Media inquiries should be directed to The Rialto Report.

Binding: Hardcover

Extent: 224 pages, including 16 pages of illustrations

ISBN: 978-1-913051-06-8

Expected to ship date August 2020

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The post Press Release: Legendary Filmmaker John Amero’s Autobiography ‘American Exxxtasy’ appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Amber Lynn is the perfect example of the adult film video vixen in all her glory. Back in the 1980s, together with fellow stars Traci Lords, Ginger Lynn, and Christy Canyon, she was the face of the new era in adult film. Actually, forget film: they personified the industry’s move onto videotapes. These stars were young, they were wild, and they were on your VHS TV screens when your parents went out. Come to think of it, they were probably on the same TV after you’d gone to bed too.

But Amber wasn’t a clone of anyone else. She stood apart from other performers of her era: she was no girl next door: somehow, she convinced you she was both pretty, sweet, and feminine, and she could kick the ass of the high school quarterback if he looked at her the wrong way.

You see, Amber was different. Her background was unconventional. Her childhood had more tragedy than you anything you’d wish on your worst enemy. She was a punk rock teen, who got into the adult film industry through a friendship with Althea Flynt, then wife of Hustler mogul, Larry Flynt. She saw the porn movies as a vehicle of personal expression, not to mention rebellion against the strict world around her. She dated Jamie Gillis, the industry’s king of kink, for years. And she was the first to use her adult film stardom to make a fortune feature dancing all over North America.

And did I mention that she had a brother, Buck Adams, who was also in the porn business at the same time? How did that work?

Amber had a long career, with many ups as well as a few downs. Let’s face it, she partied like it was 1999 when it was still only 1985.

But perhaps what’s most remarkable about Amber is that unlike almost every other person with whom she started out, she’s still going strong. She’s re-invented herself more times than time and again.

Nowadays her fame has led to the mainstream, she was in a cameo in a Michael Douglas TV show, she was mentioned in HBO’s The Deuce, she’s a philanthropist and an avid animal rights activist, and she has her own radio show.

What is it like being the last woman standing from the golden age?

This episode is 104 minutes long.

The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Amber, with Ginger Lynn

Amber, with Marky Ramone

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The post Amber Lynn: Rebel Yell! – Podcast 98 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Randy Paul entered the adult film industry in 1986 and racked up over 200 titles over the next 20 years. In many ways, Randy seemed tailor-made for the business: he had all-American good looks, prior experience as a model, and acting chops honed at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
 
But though he entered the business with relative ease, he hit a significant roadblock early on. You see, Randy had gotten his start performing in gay films before he began doing straight work. He was surprised: describing himself as “70% straight, 30% bi”, he thought the adult industry was the last place he’d find any kind of sexual prejudice. But he was wrong.
 
Nevertheless, he persevered, and managed to carve out a respectable adult career between California and New York, straight and gay, standard and fetish, and worked with many of the big names of the time, like Amber Lynn, Jeanne Fine, Siobhan Hunter and Nina Hartley.
 
This is Randy Paul’s story.

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Randy Paul: His Early Years

Where did you grow up and what was it like?

I grew up in Bayshore, Long Island. When I was very small, it was a big shopping town. There was a Grant department store right on Main Street. I remember walking down that street with my mother when I was young and it would always be packed with shoppers.

My extended family lived in Brooklyn and Queens. And I lived in Manhattan at times in the 1980s, all the 1990s, and then again on and off in the 2000s. So I knew New York City really well.

Did you grow up with just your mom?

My father and mother had separated when I was about eight. They were separated for four years and then he died. I wasn’t really close to him.

Randy as a baby

How about siblings?

I had an older brother, he was nine years older than me. And my father had a son from his first marriage but we haven’t stayed in touch. But my younger brother, who is three years younger than me, have always been thick as thieves. And we’re still very close. We used to surf together a lot – and still did up until I had a knee replacement a few years ago.

So were you active and sporty as a kid?

Oh yeah. I would play all sports – baseball, basketball, football, tennis, swimming, surfing. I was on the Little League baseball team until my mother wouldn’t let me do it anymore.

See, my father saw I was athletic and smart so he invested a lot of time in me and pushed me, even though he had his demons. Once he left… there was no one supervising me. I stopped doing my homework, but luckily I was pretty smart anyway and I loved to read.

I was picked to be in the honors program in middle school, but my mother complained and said I should just be in the regular class! She grew up during the Depression and had no respect for higher education. She wanted me to go the safe route, and just learn a trade.

I really loved my mom, but I still kind of resent her for that. She taught me to give up. I’d just give up if I didn’t feel like doing something. And by the time I got to high school, I was cutting class all the time. I went in for my European Studies midterm at one point and the teacher didn’t even know who I was because I was never there…

You said your Dad had his demons – what was he dealing with?

He’d get violent with my mom. He tried to shoot her right in front of me and my little brother. Because of that, he wasn’t around for a while, but four years later, my mother let him back in. Pretty soon they had another fight and my father stabbed my mother with an ice pick 18 times. I was hitting him over the head with my BB gun to try and get him to stop.

A couple of weeks later, he died. He had a heart condition and he just stopped taking his medication. I think he knew if he’d stayed alive, he’d have been put in jail.

That’s a lot of violence to grow up with. How did you cope with what was going on?

It wasn’t always like that. When my Dad wasn’t living in the house, he’d pick me and my younger brother up, and we’d go to Mets games and stuff like that.

But my younger brother and my mother, we were like pals. We rode our bikes together everywhere. She’d take us to Friendly’s for hot fudge sundaes and we’d go to the movies.

Even on the night my father stabbed my mother, he took me outside and asked me if I’d come live with him if he got another place. But I turned him down, and said, “No. We need our mother.”

What was your personality like as a kid?

I was introverted, but I was also quick witted. I used humor to get by, to make people laugh. But while I could be gregarious at times and had friends, I kept to myself a lot. I’ve always been my own drummer.

I also had a strong work ethic. My mother instilled that in me. I had a paper route, and a circular route, and a penny saver route. I sold Christmas cards in the summer. And I’d walk around with a lawn mower, knocking on peoples’ doors if their grass looked high.

Randy as a young boy

Do you remember when you first became sexually aware?

I think I was pretty late on that. I can still remember the first time I actually masturbated. I was about 15. The thing I masturbated to… the thing that got me… was a National Lampoon Magazine. The magazine had this feature called Photo Funnies and there was this girl that was applying for a job as a secretary and her prospective boss asked her to take her top off. That’s what got me! And they must’ve had really inadequate health and sex education in my school, because what happened when I masturbated shocked me. I was like, “What the hell just happened?”

Did you have any girlfriends when you were younger? When did you lose your virginity?

I think I was in seventh grade when I first kissed a girl. We called it French kissing. I didn’t have sex until I was 17. It was with my girlfriend. I woke up and we were just having sex. It was the middle of the night and I wasn’t even sure that it was real. All I knew was it felt good, so I didn’t stop until I…stopped.

When I woke up in the morning with her next to me, I thought, “Did that really happen?!” The thought of it got me aroused again. So we started having sex again, and I thought, “Oh yeah, I am doing this!”

Did you come across any pornography when you were a kid?

One day I threw something into the waste bin in the kitchen, and I saw this manila envelope in the trash with these colored pamphlets peeking out. I pick it up and there was all this porn stuff in there. My father must have ordered these things one time, and so they kept sending the pamphlets to him even after he’d left. The pictures all had a black bar over the sexual parts but still… they left little to the imagination. So I always kept my eye out for those envelopes.

Meanwhile there was a local movie theater called The Regent in Bayshore. And by the late seventies, it was showing two triple-X features each week. And those pamphlets had taught me about the stars: I already knew who Serena was, who John Holmes was… all those stars.

One night the cinema was showing a Russ Meyer movie. A bunch of us from high school – I forget how many of us there were – all tried to get in to see the film. The guy in the box office was a tall, gawky, glasses-wearing, nerdy looking guy, just a teenager himself probably. We made his life a living hell that night because we were desperate to get in. At one point, we all rushed in and sat down in the theater. But I was smart – I went right into the men’s restroom, and waited until I heard all the noise die down. All the other kids got tossed out but I got to see the film. It was just softcore, but it was exciting.

What did you think about these people that you were seeing in the pamphlets and on screen?

I was fascinated. Especially by the women. I thought it was just so hot and so sexy that a woman would do that. Knowing that it was being filmed and that other people were going to watch it… I just loved it.

Every week I’d look at the movie listings in the newspaper and after a while I got to know all the big players. I loved Serena, Samantha Fox, Veronica Hart. And when Loni Sanders came along, I really fell in love.

When you graduated high school, what did you do?

I decided to hitchhike out to California because I had some surfer friends out there.

On one of my first days in L.A. I was on Hollywood Boulevard and I walked past the Pussycat Theater: it said, “In its eighth smash year, Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones.” Pretty cool.

Anyway, I hung out west for a while, then hitchhiked back to Bayshore. A while later, I hitchhiked to Boulder, Colorado and back. I was just exploring – it was all an adventure.

Were you on your own?

By then I had a serious girlfriend, Meg, who was the love of my life. I used to see her in my school hallways for years. She was a year younger than me, a petite girl with eyes as blue as the sky. Every time I would see her, I would think, “Oh, that girl.” I felt she was a kindred spirit. And then I finally met her. It was June 6th, 1980. I still remember the date.

For four years we were on and off. We never had a fight. We never broke up. It was just that our lives took us apart. I’m not the most patient person in the world, but somehow I knew I had to be patient with her and our relationship. She wound up going away to college, so I joined the Navy at age 19.

Meg died of cancer in 2003. Her sisters told me she had my picture in a frame beside her bed when she passed away.

Randy joins the Navy

Why did you join the Navy?

I just felt I needed to do something; I thought I needed to aim my arrow towards adulthood.

I’m glad I joined the Navy. I got a lot of good habits from that. I’m someone who makes his bed first thing every morning. I pay attention to detail. I take care of my body. I learned to go slow because slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

When I first enlisted, I thought I’d do at least 20 years and then retire. But I had a dream of being a writer. And then ultimately, I decided I wanted to be an actor.

How did you decide on acting?

I met a guy when I was hitchhiking from San Diego – where I was stationed – to L.A. He was a local entertainment reporter and we became really good friends. We went to the movies together, he took me to my first stage show, that kind of stuff.

One day he had a copy of GQ magazine and he pointed to the guy on the cover and said I should do that. He thought I could be a model. So when I got out of the Navy, I enrolled with a modeling agency. This agency was always giving me crap about my hair, but to be honest, I was a terrible model.

At the same time I was modeling, I auditioned for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts – and I got in. So I packed up and moved back east to New York. I started waiting tables to pay for the Academy and moved into an apartment on 97th and Riverside. I did some maintenance work around the building so I got to live there cheaply.

It was then that I met Veronica Hart.

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Randy Paul: The Adult Years

How did you meet Veronica Hart?

I had seen her a couple of times pushing a baby stroller through Bryant Park. I recognized her immediately because she was one of my favorite adult actresses. I thought she was so beautiful and I could sense that she was smart. She was also a good actress – really a great actress.

So one day, around 1983 or 1984, I was walking along 44th St and she passed by and looked right at me and smiled. So I went up to her to let her know what a big fan I was. We got to talking and she told me they were shooting a softcore thing that evening and that they could use some extras. She said it wouldn’t pay but asked me if I wanted to do it, and I said yes.

The shoot took place at one of those places on Seventh Ave near the fifties where they used to have live sex shows. Cody Nicole was there – she was part of a couple having sex on stage, unrelated to the movie. I also met Veronica’s husband, Michael, and her friend Doug Kane – who went on to become a good friend of mine. And Tim Connelly – he was there that day too.

At one point, Veronica asked me if I would be willing to wear a pair of bikini underwear and let her pretend to give me a blow job. I immediately said yes and when she walked away, her friend Doug said, “so you’re really shy, huh?” It was just so spur of the moment. There I am with one of my favorite porn stars, Veronica Hart, naked right in front of me. And I’m just like, wow.

Did you think that was the start of something?

Not really. I was still serious about my acting. I was about to start my second year at the Academy – they only invite 75 people back after that first year and I was one of them. So I thought I was going to make it as a legitimate performer. I thought I would be a theater actor.

Also it was during this time I met a woman and started a relationship. Nancy was a waitress in the same restaurant where I was working. She had a young son. We became close, and I loved her kid so I moved in. Even though Nancy and I didn’t work out as a couple I stayed close with her son and am still close to him to this day. He’s like a son to me.

So what eventually leads you more fully into the adult business?

Being in that relationship and Having a responsibility to Nancy and her son, I felt I needed to make more money. So I began to think about using my acting talent to get into porn so I could make a bunch of money, and then do move on to something better suited to raising a young child. Nancy was on board with it at first, probably because she thought I’d get the porn out of my system.

It’s the 1980s calling

How did you get into the business?

I met this photographer. He lived in the city but was originally from Bayshore like me. He shot pictorials for gay men’s magazines and asked me if I wanted to model for him. At first I said no, but then I did it.

He told me I should go out to California to meet this agent called Terry who could help me get into films. He said that Terry booked bisexual and gay films.

What was your reaction to that?

The fact that it was bisexual and gay didn’t put me off because when everyone I talked to in the business pointed me towards gay movies. And even though I was mainly into women, I’d had some gay sex before and I enjoyed it. Back then, there were all these well-produced bisexual movies and I saw that guys like Peter North were doing them – and still doing straight films.

So I didn’t think it was a big thing. I thought that everyone would be open-minded and cool about it.

What happened when you got out to California?

In early 1986, I met up with this agent Terry at a Howard Johnsons, and he wound up taking me around to different producers. Almost immediately I was booked to work in two films, both gay movies. The first one was for a producer named Terry LeGrand and it was pretty cheap. The second one had higher production values. It was actually supposed to be a bi film but I didn’t see any women on the set.

Both shoots were very professional. And I enjoyed making the films. I felt like a rebel, like I was being a bad boy and I was going against societal norms.

But little did I know I was also going against porn society norms.

What do you mean?

I didn’t realize there was a stigma in the porn world about going back and forth between straight and gay films.

After the two gay films, I went back to New York to see my girlfriend. I told her a little bit about my experience out west, but I didn’t tell her that the films were gay. I thought that might be too much for her and that she’d judge me. I hadn’t used anything close to my real name on those films – I called myself Robert Harris.

Back home I got a call from a guy with a gay advertising business in Los Angeles. He’d seen my Polaroid from my agent, Terry, and wanted me for a 900-number phone sex ad. So I wound up going back out to L.A. and staying with him. He was also a gay film critic. We became friends, and we fooled around sometimes too. He asked me what I charged for a night but I told him I didn’t do that. If I had sex off-camera it was because I wanted to.

I wanted to find more film work and someone told me that if I wanted to do straight porn I should call Jim South. So I met with Jim and he introduced me to a bunch of still photographers – I think that was his test to see if a guy would be OK to perform in an actual movie.

I met with this couple, Rudy and Blanca – he was European and she was from South America. And, as we were getting to know each other, one of the first things they said to me, was that I was going to approached by gay film producers because of my looks – and that I definitely should NOT do that if I wanted to be in straight films. They had no idea that it was too late.

How did your first straight porn shoot go?

I was nervous. With the gay porn I really didn’t care what the guys thought of me – but it was different when it came to women. While I was waiting to shoot, Nikki Charm walked past me and said the girl I was going to work with wanted to have an orgasm and that I’d better give her one. So the pressure was on.

PT was producer of the film and Robert McCallum was the director. I was there to do a three-way with Brittany Stryker and Peter North. When one of the guys on set heard I was working with Peter, he said: “I hope you brought your goggles.” Peter was notorious for his prodigious cum shots.

During the scene I got so excited, I accidently came inside Brittney. She was really sweet about it, telling me not to worry and kissing me until I got aroused again, but ultimately Tom Byron had to stunt cock for me. He was really cool about it, saying he used to have that problem too.

From then on, I associated PT with not being able to perform. He loved my acting and would hire me all the time, but I just couldn’t perform sexually with him in the room.

Randy Paul with Honey Wilder

How did you get work after that?

I met Bill Margold at a party thrown by some guys from XRCO, and he told me I should sign with this agent called Reb Sawitz in addition to Jim South because it would increase my chances of getting work. When I went to meet Reb, he showed me his book of what he called ‘Jim’s Butt Boys’. That was his term for guys repped by Jim South who did gay as well as straight porn. He had people like Peter North and Marc Wallice in there. I thought to myself, “Oh shit, what if he finds out I’m a ‘butt boy’ too?” In the meantime, I left his office with three straight acting jobs.

One of the jobs was with Jerome Tanner from Western Visuals. At first, Tanner was worried I might be a snitch for the cops. That was because there was a rumor circulating that some members of the adult film industry were ratting out adult film sets. I don’t know if it was true, but the rumor was that it might be Tom Byron, because the IRS was on his ass for back taxes.

Anyway, the movie was called Twins and it starred Careena Collins. Careena worked a lot with Jerome and Western Visuals. When I got to the set, Careena jumped into my arms and started making out with me. She told me she had seen me at Jim South’s office and had wanted to work with me since then. Then she pulled out a copy of ‘Trial of Socrates’ by Plato and went to read it, and Bunny Bleu walked in. Bunny was drinking and smoking even though she was pregnant – but she told everyone she was getting an abortion so it didn’t matter.

I shook my head and thought to myself, “This is a wild business I’ve gotten into…”

This was the mid-to-late 1980s. Were you worried about AIDS?

You know, I wasn’t really. I didn’t know that much about it. It wasn’t being talked about a lot at that point in the circles I ran in, even the gay film circles.

When and how did people on the straight side of the business start learning that you were also doing gay films?

It took a little while. I was getting a ton of straight work, especially from Reb. But then my friend who got me the gay 900-number told me that Reb had found out I’d done gay work – and he wasn’t happy about it. He told my friend he’d continue using me if people asked for me but he wasn’t going to actively promote me any longer. And Jim had stopped booking me because he didn’t like that I was working through Reb as well.

So I stopped getting work in LA. It was homophobia. And there was so much hypocrisy in it all.

Randy Paul, top left

So what happened when the LA work dried up?

I got contacted by Sam Schad the production manager/director and sometime gay performer. Henri Pachard was about to shoot a movie called Sweet Revenge in New York and he wanted to hire me. For the most part Sam was very professional, but once in a while he’d offer me $50 to let him give me head. I didn’t do it – I just wasn’t a hustler.

I also auditioned for Chuck Vincent, who had Platinum Pictures. And he hired me to work with Sheri St. Claire which was great. There was very little locker room talk among the porn guys back in the day, but a few years ago I was talking with Rick Savage on the phone, and we were reminiscing about the great blow jobs Sheri gave.

Did you pick up regular work in New York after that?

Yes. For example the Zane brothers were doing a bisexual series and I worked with them. Cara Lott did a bunch of those Zane films too. I was really excited to work with her – she was already famous and for some reason that excited me.

Were you doing anything else in the late 1980s while you were making films in New York?

I was working as a waiter at Raoul’s, the famous bistro in SoHo because I was only making the occasional film then.

What did your family think about you being in the business?

At first, only my younger brother knew. Like I said, we were thick as thieves so he was the first I told about it. He didn’t really say much, but he didn’t judge me.

But back at my mother’s house, I kept a bunch of porn-related stuff in an old suitcase I didn’t think anyone ever used. Later I found out that my Mom had opened it, and found a video tape with the name ‘Randy Paul’ on it – Randy is my real first name, Paul is my real middle name. So she put the tape in the VCR and that’s how she learned I was in the business. She never said anything to me, but it was clear she was a little pissed off.

One day there was a family barbecue and people were making fun of the fact that I was in movies – and I was told my mom said, “Well, at least my son’s a star.”

Did having sex on film impact your personal sex life?

Yeah, it kind of did. Sometimes I found myself with a girl that I had a relationship with and the sex would be difficult. I felt like I was performing. So I would take a break from sex to get things back on a real level, where I could connect with someone. I would abstain from sex for long periods of time.

And you continued making the occasional film in New York?

Yes, and at some point I went back out to L.A. I figured I’d make some more gay movies to make some more money. So I went out west and met Matt Sterling.

Matt told me he wanted to hire me to work with Jeff Stryker. He said he’d pay me a lot of money to do it. Matt was an older guy at that point, and this was going to be the last movie he’d make with Jeff so he wanted it to be extravagant.

What did you think of Jeff Stryker?

He was friendly enough, but also odd. There’s something off with that guy. I’m not a psychiatrist but it seems like he has narcissistic personality disorder or something. But the day I had sex with him, it was fine. I’d been drinking and doing cocaine the night before, and for some reason whenever I did that, I’d be horny as hell the next day. And Jeff had the attributes I needed to get off.

The movie was Stryker Force. And even though it starred Jeff and this guy Steve Hammond, Steve couldn’t do the sex scenes. So I acted as both stunt cock and stunt butt for Steve. I didn’t get the star billing but I got a lot of money. With all the re-shoots and the stunt sex work, I made well over $50k in total. That was way more than I’d ever earned for any sex film, ever. Matt Sterling thought I was a genius negotiator. He’d come to me and say, “How much do you need to stunt cock for this guy?” and I’d answer whatever you think is fair. And he thought I was playing hardball… but really, I just didn’t know what to ask for.

When I was done with that film shoot, I knew the movie wouldn’t be out for a few months so I went back to Jim South to see if there was any straight work to be had. Jim was happy to have me back. I also got contacted by the guys at Falcon Films and they agreed to pay me $5,500 for a movie – which was $3,000 more than usual.

So all in all, I had another good run in L.A., but eventually I returned to New York.

What did you do back in New York?

That’s when I got into the fetish films. Sam Schad approached me about working with transsexuals, or chicks with dicks, or whatever the nomenclature was. He said it wouldn’t be sex – it would be spanking and stuff like that. The movies were filmed out in Brooklyn – the crew were all these guys I knew from Vince Benedetti and Adventure Studios where I’d shot many scenes over the years. Sharon Kane was making those fetish films too.

The guys from Adventure Studios told me to call Vince about fetish work, so I did. Vince asked me if I thought I could be dominant in a film and I said yes, even though I didn’t really know what the hell he was talking about. And that’s what lead to the ‘Toe Tales’ series. I showed up for the first ‘Toe Tales’ shoot and there were these two beautiful naked girls there. I’d been abstaining, so I was really excited and I just dove right in and started having sex with them. I was having a ball, but Vince started yelling at me from behind the monitor, “The feet Randy, get to the feet!”

I also worked a lot for Ron Jeremy too. Whenever he directed, there was no script and they were always just cheap productions. He’d feed us the lines right before he called, “Action.” But I was good at improvising so it was fine. And I could tell him I wanted to work with a certain girl, and he’d make it happen.

What were your impressions of Vince Benedetti?

Oh, he was the funniest guy. He had this sly sense of humor. I saw him at an awards dinner and he asked me if I could dance in a film.  I told him yeah and I started describing my skills. He finally said, “OK. That won’t work. I don’t want it to look professional.” I thought that was hysterical. I loved that guy.

During that time, I also was contacted by Joe Sarno to work on a movie for Video-X Pix. I was surprised to hear from Joe because we’d worked together once before and it didn’t go well. That time the female lead had been Alexis Firestone and I didn’t find her appealing in the slightest, so things didn’t go well.

But Joe said that this time Rachel Ashley had asked for me specifically. It was a Honeymooners parody and she said I’d be good for the role of Norton. Then Sam told me that Rachel told she was nervous about the idea of working with me. I couldn’t believe it: I thought, “How is that possible – everyone wants her!?”

Were there other performers you enjoyed working with or remember well?

I remember Amber Lynn. When I did gay films, there was often straight porn on set to get the straight guys hard. And more often than not, it was a film or magazine with Amber. She fueled many a gay film! And when I worked with her, she was even more than what I hoped for. She was just very, very sexy.

I remember Siobhan Hunter because she always had these medical textbooks with her on set. Between takes she’d actually study. She also had a bit of a heroin problem so she would nod out frequently. Many years later a girlfriend of mine was going to medical school in Guadalajara, Mexico. And she called me to say, “Hey, I have a friend here that knows you.” And it was Siobhan Hunter! Siobhan said that she got talking to my friend, and when she heard about this cool guy that was in adult films in New York, she wondered if it was me.

I loved Candida Royalle. I had worked with her on a Femme production and we got along great. At first she didn’t want to hire me because she thought I’d be too young for the part. But then she got me to read, and she hired me. And she was always out at Fire Island and I was working in Fire Island so we became friends. I always loved her… man I just loved her. I was so sad when she died.

And Randy West comes to mind. I worked with him a few times and he always struck me as sad. It seemed like he wished he’d done more with his life. He was a minor league baseball player and a great golfer but maybe didn’t take it as far as he hoped. And he always seemed like he was looking for real love but couldn’t find it. It’s tough to find love in this business.

And I’m friendly to this day with Veronica Vera. I remember going to an awards show with her in 1986 in New York. We walked in and there was Samantha Fox surrounded by photographers, looking gorgeous. I didn’t know Samantha but she saw me and pulled me in to take photos with her. She was writing a column for one of the adult magazines at the time, and asked me if she could write that we were having an affair together. Of course I said yes. She was gorgeous.

Outside of the films what else where you doing in the 1990s and early 2000s?

Well in the late 1980s I went down to Key West for a while to get away from everything. I waited tables and then started to cook in the restaurant’s kitchen. And in the 1990s I was cooking in New York at some pretty fancy places – a 5-star French restaurant in a French hotel, Sarabeth’s Kitchen.

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After Porn

When did you start thinking about transitioning out of adult film?

It wasn’t so much that I thought about transitioning out as the fetish people who I was doing most of my shooting with stopped working in New York. By 2005, no one was calling me anymore. If they’d kept calling. I would’ve kept working. I might even do it now if I got a call.

So what did you do instead?

I kept doing restaurant and catering work. And eventually I kind of retired. I still do small jobs here and there but that’s about it.

Right now, I’m back home in Bayshore living in a house for veterans while I wait for permanent housing. I’d really like to finish writing two books that I started and some other short stories. I write every day.

And I don’t discount the fact that I might do some acting. I practice different monologues all the time. Last year I had a traumatic brain injury. I got hit a few times in a row by cars when I was on my bike and I couldn’t speak for a while. I went into a rehabilitation center and eventually I got my speech back. I’ll never take the ability to speak for granted ever again. Plus, I’m a pretty good singer.

Randy with his nephew/godson

What makes you happy nowadays?

The young man I call my son – he’s the greatest thing I ever did in my life. You know, there’s people that have complimented me, saying most guys wouldn’t have stayed in touch once they broke up with his mother. But I love this kid. I’ve been in his life 38 years and there’s no way I’m letting him go.

I wouldn’t mind having someone in my life. And that someone is never going to be a male, I just don’t feel that way towards other males. I like girls. I just love them. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the gay sex I’ve had, but I just feel I could never be a soulmate with somebody that wasn’t a female.

I’m almost 60 now, albeit a good-looking 60, and I don’t know how many more years I have. I hope I have a lot of years left, but I’d like there to be someone special soon.

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The post Randy Paul: His Own Drummer appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Gloria Leonard was appointed High Society‘s ‘publisher’ in 1977 – and by the following year the magazine was in full swing. Her avowed vision for the magazine was to take the culture from Playboy, the counter-cultural, free speech ideals from Hustler, the sleaze from Screw, and create a smart, edgy, sexy offering.

But High Society wasn’t a one-woman operation. So who worked behind the scenes – editing, writing, reviewing films, and providing photographic features?

When The Rialto Report interviewed Gloria prior to her passing in 2014, she spoke proudly of the ever-changing rag-tag group of intellectuals, artists, writers, and political activists that made up her team. She described them as her “motley crew… a weird combination of talented wannabes and old, wise has-beens”. They all had one feature in common: a willingness to work towards Gloria’s vision “to shake-up the sex magazine world.”

In this Rialto Report, we look back at the people who worked on the early years of High Society, and we re-publish the issues from 1978.

These include articles and photo spreads with Nancy Suiter, Kelly Nichols and Suzanne Somers, and features on film such as Maraschino Cherry and Take Off, and much more.

You can read about the previous two years of High Society here – 1976 and 1977.

Fully digitized copies of each 1978 magazine can be found below the article below. You can find The Rialto Report’s growing collection of digitized resources by choosing Library in our site menu. 

Click on the covers below to access the full magazines. Due to the fact that the magazines are scanned in high definition, allow time for each page to load. If you are viewing on a phone, view in landscape orientation.

Magazines are fully searchable; use the icon displayed in each magazine to search by keyword.

Publications are being shared here purely for the purpose of research. They should not to be used or reproduced for any commercial gain.

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High Society in 1978 – The Motley Crew in Their Own Words

In 1977, Carl Ruderman, owner of High Society magazine, hired adult film actress Gloria Leonard to become the titular ‘Publisher’ of the publication.

Gloria Leonard (High Society publisher):

I did not take prisoners, and it has never really impeded my ability to accomplish anything. I think that’s why they chose to hire somebody a little older and smarter like me.

Gloria, on the cover of High Society

Gloria came to the world of adult entertainment later in life than most. She was 36 when she made her first appearance in an X-rated movie.

Gloria Leonard:

Deep Throat (1972) was the first X-rated film that I ever went to see. I loved it because…I loved the humor. The sex to me was almost secondary. But yes, it was definitely a pioneering moment in cinematic history and it made me realize that… wow, there’s going to be more of these.

I loved the sleazy side of the city. Times Square was always a dicey kind of a place. Even as a kid going down there with my mom and coming out of the subway into Times Square there was always a little element of danger and funkiness about the place.

The people who were in the XXX business at that given time in New York City did this as an adjunct to other creative pursuits that they were involved in. For example, R. Bolla was an actor with quite a few credits to his name, a real genuine actor, and he was smart and he was funny. Jamie Gillis had been a Shakespearean actor – and I found that almost without exception, everybody that I knew at that time in this business was either an actor or a dancer or an artist of one sort or another. It was a very intelligent group of people, especially given the stereotype that is perpetuated about people in this industry. We were a pretty damn smart bunch of guys and girls.

I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that we didn’t take ourselves very seriously.

Gloria was a different spokesperson for pornography: she was irreverent, crass, whip smart – and female.

Gloria Leonard:

People used to say, “In this industry, you don’t have to fuck to get hired because you’re hired to fuck”. I preferred to think of it differently: “There’s no casting couch because the budgets are so low we only have a casting chair.”

But the quote that sort of immortalized me is when I said, “The difference between erotica and pornography is the lighting”. I wasn’t being flippant: in my opinion, that’s really what it is.

If Carl Ruderman’s intention was to hire a nominal porn star as a marketing gimmick for High Society, that’s not what he got. Gloria had other ideas.

Gloria Leonard:

I followed up being a performer with being the ‘face of the industry’. High Society gave me the platform to be taken more seriously, and I was able to espouse my opinions on any number of topics, not just the adult business. And I always had a lot of opinions…

If Gloria was the figurehead for High Society, Richard Barraclough was initially the operational head. He was Gloria’s right-hand man, the editorial director, responsible for day-to-day magazine operations. And when it came to creative input, Carl Ruderman was hands-off, Gloria was often out of the office, so it was left to Richard to decide the content.

Gloria Leonard:

I took advantage of my title as Publisher to run around and make public appearances on behalf of the magazine. I was able to do that because Richard held things together in the office. He was a hard-working guy with a keen sense of what people would like.

While Richard was in charge, he hired many of the team that worked for us. For example, I wanted to have a section where adult films were reviewed. He hired a friend to do that.

Brandon Judell (film reviewer):

I was a freelance film reviewer for a variety of publications in the 1970s and 1980s. Then Richard asked me to contribute reviews to High Society. It was a bit strange because I’m gay and here I was reviewing these straight porn films. I was used to writing for gay publications like Blueboy, Gaysweek and The Advocate. Actually I also did a few columns for Screw too.

It was the 1970s – it was the hippie era and I was in my mid 20s. I wasn’t thinking about the future. I was living day-to-day, and writing these features for the various magazines was barely enough to eke out even the most basic living.

I didn’t know Gloria Leonard very well but she was always very sweet to me. I always thought she was a figurehead at the magazine but I didn’t know for sure. I remember at one point around 1978, I had to review All About Gloria Leonard: let’s just say I had to put aside my ethical standards and gave the film a high rating. I also acted as a judge for the Erotica awards one year – that was fun.

I eventually got fired from High Society. I went to a screening put on by Candida Royalle – she was promoting her Femme films. At some point during the movie, I was laughing so much. Candida was offended that I wasn’t taking her films seriously. She complained to Gloria – and Gloria had a quiet word in my ear. That was the end of that.

Since his time working for High Society, Brandon Judell has been a lecturer at City College in New York where he’s been awarded the ‘Outstanding Teacher Award’. He’s been a journalist for over 30 years, published in The Forward, The Village Voice, The New York Daily News, and indieWire.com. He’s also been a judge at the Berlin Film Festival.

Nancy Suiter, on the cover of High Society

Gloria Leonard:

It was important for High Society to look good, and so we hired good art directors. I was always proud of how the magazine looked on the news shelf.

Kurt Vargo was High Society’s associate art director in 1978. He’d graduated from The School of Visual Arts, New York City, NY, earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in painting, printmaking and communication arts.

Kurt Vargo (associate art director):

I was a struggling illustrator, I needed a job, and this was a freelance thing to do. I saw an ad that said, “Wanted: paste-ups and mechanicals for interested artist” and it was for Swank magazine. I didn’t even know what paste-ups and mechanicals were but I went in and said I did and I got the job.

On my first day, Lester Goodman – who was at Swank as the assistant art director working for Bruce Cohen, who was the art director – found out I didn’t know how to do any of the work. Lester said, “I thought you said you knew how to do this?” and I answered, “I lied.” He sort of chuckled and said he’d teach me.

I worked at Swank for about a year and at that point I’d had it with girlie magazines. I was in my mid-20s and I saw these 18 and 19 year old girls coming in looking for an opportunity and thinking this was one. I considered myself a feminist, and I thought that what we were doing was degrading to women. I’d talk to some of the girls, and they were so sweet, and I’d think to myself, “What are you doing…?

I wound up getting fired from Swank – I cried all night when that happened. But Lester went over to High Society and needed paste-up and mechanical help so I went over with him.

I liked Gloria a lot – she was friendly and funny. I pretty much liked everyone who worked there. Some of them were a bit strange or temperamental but we were all there for a reason – mostly to get some sort of career going. For me it was money coming in while I was building up my career as an illustrator. And it served me well. I went on to have a successful mainstream art career.

Today Kurt Vargo is an acclaimed artist, and since 2005, has been a Professor of the Applied Arts at The Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA, where he earned his Master of Fine Arts Degree. A partial client list and commissions include The Chicago Museum, Harvard University Press, The Korean Foundation, Time Inc., actor Ben Kingsley, musician Ravi Shankar, and conceptual artist Yoko Ono.

Another of High Society’s associate art directors was Ron Scarselli. Ron went on to become a popular and Grammy Award nominated album cover artist, having a long working relationship with R.E.M. as well as The Cramps (on their album ‘Bad Music For Bad People’), Fine Young Cannibals (‘Suspicious Minds’), Timbuk 3 (‘Easy’) and many more. Ron Scarselli died in 1990.

Gloria Leonard:

We had a revolving door of people providing content. Most would come in and work for us for only a few months, but some stood out as real eccentrics. Like Richard Merkin.

Richard Merkin was a legendary painter and illustrator in New York, whose fascination with the 1920s and 1930s defined his art and shaped his identity as a professional dandy. As an artist, Merkin created brightly colored, cartoonish portraits and narrative scenes of film stars, jazz musicians, sports heroes and writers. His illustrations appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Harper’s, but he was at least as well known for his outré fashion sense. He favored custom-made double-breasted suits of his own design, bowler hats and homburgs, and boutonnières. He described his sartorial aspirations as lying somewhere between the Duke of Windsor and the Duke of Ellington, and would stroll the boulevards of Manhattan sporting a cane.

Richard Merkin

Tom Wolfe (writer, not for High Society..)

Richard was the greatest of that breed, the Artist Dandy, since Sargent, Whistler and Dali. And like Dali, he had one of the few remaining Great Mustaches in the art world.

Among other offbeat claims to fame, Merkin appeared on the cover of the Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,’ in the top row between Fred Astaire and a Vargas girl.

Gloria Leonard

Richard was completely incongruous, but the reason he was in the world of High Society was that he loved pornography. He was obsessed by it – and very learned too.

Richard’s interest was shared in two books, ‘Velvet Eden’ (1979), written with Bruce McCall, which showcased his collection of early amateur pornography, and ‘Tijuana Bibles’ (1997), written with the photojournalist Bob Adelman, in which he paid tribute to the sexually explicit comics that Americans bought across the Mexican border from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Gloria Leonard

Richard wrote some articles for us about vintage pornography – and this was in a time when no one was doing that. He used his own collection of rare pictures to illustrate the pieces. What’s more, he was always around the offices looking for things that interested him.

Merkin went to write the column “Merkin on Style” for GQ from 1988 to 1991, holding forth on a subject he knew more about than practically anybody else. He died in 2009, and was given a fulsome obituary in the New York Times. No mention was made of his stint with High Society.

Gloria Leonard:

My editor Richard Barraclough left in 1978. High Society had been his training: after he moved on, he became an influential editor for many other magazines.

In the 1980s, Richard Barraclough edited a number of celebrity-focused magazines, including Super Teen, Superstar Special, and HipHop!

Richard died in 1990. He left a collection of papers from his journalistic career to the New York Public Library. His archive contains film, music, and television promotional materials.

Gloria Leonard:

When Richard Barraclough left, we got Pat Reshen in. She was a hard-drinking broad – loud, brassy, and bawdy.

Richard had been good for the magazine, but Pat was great. Full of energy, straight talk, and ideas. She was married to one of the legendary music figures from the time too.

Pat Reshen joined High Society from Gallery magazine. She was married to Neil Reshen, a legend of the 1970s music scene. He started as a business manager at the rock magazine Creem, and handled the careers of jazz legend Miles Davis and rock iconoclast Frank Zappa, before going on to manage country music icons Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.

Eve Ziegler (associate editor):

Pat had dyed blond hair, big boobs and great legs – she sort of looked like Loni Anderson. She was flamboyant and really a force of nature. Imagine a white Tina Turner.

Pat Reshen (editor):

Women can do this job better than men because we spend more time listening to males talk about themselves. We’ve been entertaining men since Adam and Eve. Men tell us what they like in food, fantasies, and sex, whereas with other men they talk business and play the buddy-buddy game.

Eve Zieglier:

High Society was my first porn job.

I was working a straight publishing job where I wrote flap copy. I was terrible at it but they really liked me and kept putting up with how bad I was at my job. Then I saw an ad somewhere buried in the back of the Village Voice that said, “Can you write erotic fiction?” and it listed a P.O. Box to send samples. I didn’t know what I was applying for – there was no publication title or anything. I wrote a story and mailed it in with my contact information. I took inspiration from the Penthouse and Playboy magazines my stepbrother had and I used to sneak looks at when I was a kid. And this was pre-computers and everything so I wrote it on a manual typewriter.

A few days later I got a phone call from a woman named Pat Reshen inviting me to come into her office at High Society, so I went in, somewhere on 3rd Ave in the 30s. I remember that there was silver wallpaper in the waiting room. It was like being inside a toaster oven.

I was led into Pat’s office that she shared with Gloria Leonard. There were posters from Gloria’s movies hanging on the wall, but aside from that it was like any other office.

Gloria was friendly from the get-go, but Pat barely said anything to me the first 15 minutes I was there. I just sat in the office and waited while Pat ignored me. Finally Pat talked to me. She said, “I’m going to buy your story and I’m going to pay you well for it” – which she did. She gave me $300 which was a lot of money. That was a week’s salary at my straight job.

Then she said she’d like to offer me a full-time job as associate editor. I asked what the job entailed. Pat said I’d have to write a fiction piece every month under a different name so it looks like a separate person. And I’d also have to write up the ideas that the stringers brought in. There were about six stringers and they would each bring in a pitch every month, and I’d have to sit with them and write up their ideas.

She asked when I could start. I said in a week.

She handed me a couple of back issues of High Society as homework – that was the first time I realized who had just hired me…

Eve Zieglier

Gloria Leonard:

The atmosphere in the office was very professional. If you dropped by, you wouldn’t know we were producing a pornographic men’s magazine.

Eve Ziegler:

Once I got settled there, it was a fun place to work. But it wasn’t what you’d think of as a ‘porn office.’ All the women who worked there wore skirts or dresses and the men wore suits and ties – something I later found out was required by Carl Ruderman. He was very keen on keeping up appearances in the office.

Working for Pat Rashen was good and bad. She worked all the time and really hard, and she often worked from home. From her bed to be specific. I’d have to run things over to her from the office and there she’d be in bed, like a queen.

High Society treated its people very differently according to their status: full-time employees were paid well, whereas casual workers often struggled to get paid at all.

Brandon Judell (freelance):

Every time I was supposed to get paid for work, I had to beg. That was pretty much the only time I was in the High Society offices – to beg for the payment I was owed or when I was dropping off a piece for publication.

Carl Ruderman was a real bastard, just an awful person. He had no feelings for the writers.

Eve Ziegler (full-time):

A big part of what Pat had me do was run interference with the freelancers. She wanted me to deflect and lie about why they weren’t getting their money which I was really uncomfortable with. Carl basically saw them all as dreck so if he could hold on to the money, he would.

One of the freelancers – a woman from PONY (Prostitutes of NY) would get so angry that she’d bring her ferret to the office cause she knew the CFO was terrified of it. She’d tell him she’d let the ferret lose in his office if he didn’t write her a check immediately.

The only freelancers who seemed to get paid without trouble were Bobby Astyr and Samantha Fox. I’d sit with them every month and coax a story out of them. I got to know them very well. They always complained that they weren’t getting paid enough and wanted to know how much I was getting paid.

There are some days I’d walk home from the office just to decompress from being bossed around by Pat.

Carl Ruderman was a constant presence – though not engaged in managing the magazine directly.

Eve Ziegler:

Carl and I had a semi-formal relationship. I call it semi-formal because we always addressed each other by our last names – he was Mr. Ruderman and I was Ms. Ziegler.

But Carl was dating like a madman – and part of my job was keeping a log of his dates for him. For example, I had to track what gift he gave each woman – because he always gave each one a small gift – or where they went to dinner so he didn’t take them to the same place twice… and what he wore so he didn’t repeat an outfit. That was it – nothing prurient, but I really resented having to do it.

He was really vain too. He had his hair blown out every morning.

Gloria Leonard:

Carl was a businessman. He took over an old venerable publishing company – Drake Publishers – which had focused on textbooks for decades. He turned it into a publishing empire with hundreds of titles.

High Society was a problem for him: he looked down his nose at it, but it was a cash cow.

Eve Ziegler:

Pat Reshen taught me a bunch of good things. Like how to do a quick but good interview, even when I was dealing with incomprehensible drug addicts.

She taught me how to interview porn people too. I was part of the decision with Pat and Gloria as to whether we were going to take a chance on this girl who called herself Seka. Seka had shown up with her creepy husband, and they demanded a cover and a centerfold. Ultimately we said yes.

I remember Seka’s skin was so thin it took us forever and cost a fortune to retouch her veins which showed through. Pat was an expert at dealing with the re-touchers. She was a production miracle.

Eventually Pat Reshen left High Society and went on to edit many adult magazines over the next two decades. She died in 2012.

Eve Ziegler left High Society after a year.

Eve Ziegler:

I quit not to take another porn job but because my boyfriend at the time started a produce business and needed my help. I remember the heads at High Society were kind of mean about me leaving. They were great while I was working there but mean when I left. But I’m very grateful to them. They paid me to write at High Society and I learned so much there. I learned skills that I used forever, like later on when I wrote all the copy for the first issue of Celebrity Skin.

When I went on to other magazines, I saw that High Society was run better than a lot of places. I remember once when I was reviewing boards with Chip Goodman over at Swank magazine – where I went by the name of E.Z. Virtue –  a small chunk of cocaine literally fell out of his nose. We both looked at it and paused until I said to him, “Don’t worry – do it if you want to.”

So he grabbed it and put it in his mouth.

So how much was Gloria involved in the day to day running of High Society? Opinions differ.

V.K. McCarty (associate editor):

She was our much-beloved office celebrity, but we never actually saw her.

Kurt Vargo (art director):

Carl Ruderman was really the brains behind the whole thing. But I used to see Gloria Leonard at the office all the time. In fact I walked into Gloria’s office one day and she was giving Carl Ruderman a blowjob.

Eve Ziegler (associate editor):

Gloria’s role was to land the advertisers and she did a good job of it. She wasn’t involved in any editorial decisions for the magazine but she brought in the ad money.

She was really glam and presented herself so well. She also projected a feminism that made it seem like we couldn’t possibly be exploiting women with her at the helm. She represented the uber-liberated woman and she was not kidding about free speech. She was political and active and just a fantastic figurehead for the magazine.

Gloria with Jill Monroe at the premiere of “All About Gloria Leonard” at East World Theatre in New York City on December 14, 1978

Gloria Leonard:

I was out on the road often doing media. I spent a lot of time defending a lot of thankless motherfuckers on various talk shows.

My philosophy was that no matter what you do in life, there’s pluses and minuses. No matter where you live, there’s pluses and minuses. And that’s how I perceive my experience in the porn industry: there were pluses and there were minuses.

The many, many, many, college appearances that I made often were framed in a debate format with the more strident kind of humorless sort of feminists. I always explained to the audience that my definition of a feminist is somebody who can do what she wants to do with the least amount of interference, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. I told them that frankly they should be cheering me on.

Their argument lost a lot of weight down the line when lesbians started producing their own magazines and their own films which were every bit as hardcore as what men were producing. So that argument could no longer be made by a lot of women. I will tell you that in all my experience of speaking on college and university campuses, it was invariably positive. I would inevitably have one or more women come up to me at the end of it and say, “You have so changed my perception of this business” and they would be thankful.

Verbally I was generally more masterful than my opponents were, and I would incorporate witticisms and jokes about the business, and people’s perception of it, and the audience enjoyed the fact that it was a more lighthearted approach. One feminist that I debated would show slides, such as the famous one of the Hustler cover of a women being fed into a meat grinder. That was Hustler making fun of itself, because everybody was accusing them of treating women like meat. And if you didn’t take it as a joke, there was definitely something wrong with you. I mean it would immodest of me to say that I invariably came out the winner in a debate situation – but I did.

Gloria remained on High Society’s mast head for several years, ably supported by her motley crew.

Gloria Leonard

High Society was a breeding ground for a group of people who would never have come together in any other circumstances. It was a fleeting moment in time: they learned skills, they provided us with articles or photographs or expertise… and then they went and did something else. Sometimes something completely different. And from time to time, I’d see their name in the news, and I remembered how they got their professional start in life.

For an example of someone’s life that took a different turn after High Society, look no further that Associate Editor V.K. McCarty: after a career in theater and then publishing, she became a hospital chaplain, and served as sub-deacon and master of ceremonies for St. Ignatius of Antioch Church, a preacher for several New Jersey parishes, and as Director of Christian Formation for St. Paul’s, Chatham.

A contrasting example is Carl Ruderman: after going on to own Playgirl magazine, Ruderman became the CEO of 1 Global Capital LLC. Early in 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission stated that he used company funds to pay for a personal chef, vacations in Greece, and a six-figure salary for his wife. Civil actions initiated by the SEC have required him to pay over $32 million of personal wealth as ill-gotten gains.

Carl Ruderman

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High Society: The Complete 1978 Issues

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January 1978 (Vol 2, No. 9)

Contents:

–Gloria Leonard answers readers letters and pictorial -High Society party pictures -Cathy Cuthbert pictorial -Profile of Times Square, New Years Eve 1978 -High heels pictorial -Survey of adult magazines -How to make your own fuck films -Voyeurism: the hottest spectator sport -Reader fantasy of the month: Fort Dick -Assorted nude model pictorials

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March 1978 (Vol 2, No. 10)

Contents:

-Gloria Leonard answers readers letters -Autofuck! pictorial -UFO: alien sex fiction -Looking for Mr. Sandbar pictorial -T&A contest -The presidents’ hooker: interview with Fannie Robinson -Reader fantasy of the month: Geisha Gash -Ah, Shit! the latest kink -Assorted nude model pictorials

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April 1978 (Vol 2, No. 11)

Contents:

-Gloria Leonard answers readers letters -An exclusive look at Maraschino Cherry -How to orchestrate an orgy -Housewives on the prowl -Marilyn Monroe and the lusty loop -An introduction to infantilism -Sinderella pictorial -Fetish fantasia -Reader fantasy of the month: Jailhouse Rock -Assorted nude model pictorials

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May 1978 (Vol 2, No. 12)

Contents:

-Gloria Leonard answers readers letters and pictorial -Chicken of the sea pictorial -Art porno: prudent or prurient -Dracula’s daughter pictorial -Scenario sex: doing it by the book -Arabian nights pictorial -Reader fantasy of the month: The Iceman Cummeth -Assorted nude model pictorials

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June 1978 (Vol 3, No. 1)

Contents:

-Gloria Leonard answers readers letters and pictorial -Dude ranch pictorial -Cocktail party turned ballathon -Every night fever pictorial -Reader fantasy of the month: All Strung Out -The farmer’s daughters -Women at war pictorial

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July 1978 (Vol 3, No. 2)

Contents:

-Gloria Leonard answers readers letters -Snow job pictorial -Start spangled snatch pictorial -The swinging fun house -Suzanne Somers profile -Sexual science fiction -Reader fantasy of the month: Route 69 -Lonely Loretta pictorial -Manfred the Magnificent -Assorted nude model pictorials

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August 1978 (Vol 3, No. 3)

Contents:

-Gloria Leonard answers readers letters -1950s cheesecake magazines -Nan au natural pictorial -Hot rod pictorial -The ins and outs of gang-banging -Elvis fever pictorial -Reader fantasy of the month: Humping Iron -Assorted nude model pictorials

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September 1978 (Vol 3, No. 4)

Contents:

-Gloria Leonard answers readers letters -T&A contest entries -Getting off with Take Off -Going down to give up smoking -Gambling for gash pictorial -An investigative look at the Ford Pinto –Kelly Nichols pictorial -Midget and muff madness pictorial -Enema eros -Assorted nude model pictorials

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October 1978 (Vol 3, No. 5)

Contents:

-Gloria Leonard answers readers letters –Brooke Shields profile –Vanessa Del Rio interview -T&A contest entries –Lesllie Bovee, Serena & Eric Edwards pictorial –Cheryl Tiegs topless -Female pimps & ballbusters -Reader fantasy of the month: Cock-ectomy -Halloween humping -Assorted nude model pictorials

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November 1978 (Vol 3, No. 6)

Contents:

-Gloria Leonard answers readers letters -On the go with Gloria Leonard from Vegas to Times Square -T&A contest entries –Nancy Suiter pictorial -Reader fantasy of the month: Cry Wolf -The lowdown on cloning -Assorted nude model pictorials

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December 1978 (Vol 3, No. 7)

Contents:

-Gloria Leonard answers readers letters –Mick Jagger interview about sex -T&A contest entries –Jacqueline Bisset profile & topless photos -Vintage pin ups -Sex at the United Nations -Reader fantasy of the month: Petal Pusher -Assorted nude model pictorials

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The post High Society in 1978: <br />Gloria Leonard’s Motley Crew – An Issue by Issue Guide appeared first on The Rialto Report.

By the mid 1980s, few stars in the adult industry shone as brightly as Ginger Lynn.

She was appearing in countless videos, adorned with glossy expensive box covers, and feted as one of the most exciting new performers that the business had seen in years.

But Ginger was more than just the star of adult films: she was a brand in her own right, marketed independently of her latest film.

What’s more, Ginger took it a step further: she was one the first adult film stars to incorporate herself, as Ginger Pix Inc., to fully exploit her name.

The Rialto Report asked Ginger about this watershed step in her career: where the idea come from, how she set the company up, and how she used Ginger Pix Inc.

You can listen to The Rialto Report’s podcast interview with Ginger Lynn here.

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The early 1980s were pivotal for the porn industry. Upscale adults were buying into the VCR craze, which for porn meant adult movies were no longer limited to “the raincoat crowd” found in adult bookstores and theaters.

Ginger Lynn grew up in Rockford, Ill., a blue-collar town 80 miles northwest of Chicago. Allen’s parents separated when she was 6, then divorced when she was 11. After graduating from Rockford West High in 1980, Allen followed her grandparents to San Bernardino to help care for her dying grandfather. She worked as a Musicland store manager, but money was tight. So in 1983, with a boyfriend’s encouragement, she answered an ad promising $150 for figure models. The ad was run by porn talent agent Jim South in Van Nuys. After that first meeting, things began happening very fast.

In September of that year, Ginger posed for nude photographs, and soon she was featured in various porn publications, including Penthouse. Next came videos – which meant sex on camera. As she would later explain in a magazine article: “The money keeps coming and you get pulled into it a little more. Things you thought were bad at the beginning seem a little less bad.” In November 1983, for $800 Ginger agreed to appear in four 8-millimeter loops–short subjects for peep-show booths in adult bookstores.

Her first adult feature, Surrender in Paradise, was filmed in Maui. She turned 21 on location, got paid $5,150, and began learning truths about being a porn star. “I was making more money in two weeks than I did in two years, and I was having great sex.”

Ginger became a sensation. In 1984, at the porn industry’s first X-Rated Critics Organization awards, she wore a yellow dress with black polka dots from Sears, and won the Triple Crown: ‘Best Female Performer,’ ‘Video Vixen’ and ‘Starlet of the Year.’

As an overnight porn sensation, Allen knew she could earn lots of cash for a few years before being replaced by the next wave of fresh faces. She dreamed of jumping to Hollywood before she was pushed out.

It was at that point that Ginger made the decision to incorporate. In Ginger’s words:

“It’s absolutely because of Suze Randall.

I’d told my parents I posed for Penthouse and they were not over the moon over about it, but they were fine with it. What I didn’t tell them was that I was making adult movies. My father was a regular guy, and one day he went down to an adult bookstore, put one of those coins in the slot and there I was on the screen: with Ron Jeremy of all people… So my father tried to buy all the copies of the video from the store owner – who refused. My father beat him up. The police came, and threw my father in jail. My father had to call my grandmother to bail him out.

Early the following morning when he told my grandmother what he’d seen, she didn’t believe it. He had to take her back to the store to prove it to her. He made her watch. And this was at six in the morning…

I got a phone call from my answering service saying, “You need to call, there’s a family emergency.”

I called my dad, and the first words out of his mouth were, “What the fuck are you doing?”

So I thought: Oh, now they know.

I was disowned by my family. I was told not to come home for Christmas. Don’t talk to your brothers and sisters.

It was too much. I had a meltdown, and I went on a cocaine binge and I wasn’t doing well. And then (adult film photographer) Suze Randall came to my house.

She heard that I wasn’t doing well. She brought me a joint, sat me down and told me, “Get your shit together or get out. You need to incorporate, you need to be a business. You need to stop thinking of yourself as just an actress, and be a business woman. If you’re going to keep going and blow all your money, you’re an idiot: just leave now because you’re not going to make it.”

Suze is goofy and off the wall and exuberant and full of life and energy. But Suze is also my role model: I watched her get married and have children and still shoot adult photos and be responsible. When I had cancer, she came to my house out of the blue and brought me a bag of homeopathic foods and things that I should eat and vitamins that I should take.

And if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have incorporated. I probably would have continued down a bad path.

Not that I followed her advice immediately: after Suze came over, I went out and bought more coke: I bought an 8 ball, and I sat down and I wrote my dad an eight page letter telling him that I was the same girl that I would be if I worked at McDonald’s. And I was the same girl if I was the President of the United States. I just made this choice. I told him that he’d always impressed on me the need to to believe in myself, that I should never do anything that I didn’t feel comfortable with, that I should be a good person. I told him I was doing all of these things.

My father called me crying. I cried. Then my father became the man that was my bodyguard for all intents and purposes: he would come to my shows and stand next to me.

Then in 1984 I hired an attorney, Stanley Handman. Stan was an entertainment lawyer who handled some of the Rat Pack. He was a big figure in Hollywood. He was part of Fleischer Studios, which owned brands like Betty Boop. Stan was my attorney up until about five years ago when he turned 90. I still go over to his place and we have lunch. 

Through Stan I became incorporated. I can’t think of anybody else who was incorporating themselves at that time.

When I incorporated, I produced a line of products. I had everything, like Ginger Linens where the sheets were my body and my face was on the pillow.

I had koozies and coffee mugs and lighters and pens and key chains. You name it, I made it. Hats and t-shirts and mugs… even license plates!

But it all started that day with Suze: she was the person who inspired me to make myself the commodity. To make myself the business. To make Ginger a name. I was lucky to have people around me that cared and loved me.

When I moved in recent years, I found the letter that I’d sent my father. He’s passed away and before he died he gave me all these bins of items. And I found the letter. I have it here in the house with me.”

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The post Ginger Lynn: The Incorporation of an Icon appeared first on The Rialto Report.

I’d always wanted to interview Angel Kelly. She was a big name in 1980s adult film, and one of the few black female superstars of the industry. She was a founding member of the Pink Ladies, the west-coast adult actress support group with Nina Hartley, Jeanne Fine, and Porsche Lynn. She acted with the big names of the day – people like Sharon Mitchell, Lois Ayres, Billy Dee and Mike Horner. And she was friends with Tupac Shakur, featuring in the video for his song “How Do You Want It?”

But I wasn’t so sure that Angel Kelly wanted to talk with me. I first contacted her years ago and – while she was kind and polite – she told me she wasn’t ready to speak. She said the last time she sat down for an interview was 1996, and she just wasn’t ready to delve deep into her adult industry life. But she said we could keep in touch, so we did, trading the occasional texts and holiday greetings.

But a few weeks ago, Angel Kelly contacted me and said it was time. I wondered what made her ready to do something we danced around for years. We set a date and I questioned if she would keep it.

She did. And thank goodness – because Angel Kelly has quite the story to tell.

So what has Angel Kelly been doing since her time in the business? And why is she finally speaking out now, almost 25 years after her last real interview? Here’s your chance to listen and find out.

This episode is 87 minutes long.

The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify.

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with Tom Byron

The Pink Ladies (from top left): Porsche Lynn, Angel Kelly, Nina Hartley, Jeanna Fine

with Nina Hartley

with Alicia Monet

with Jeanna Fine

with Jack Baker

with Tracey Adams

The cast of Sorority Pink: Angel Kelly, Porsche Lynn, Jeanna Fine, Barbara Dare, Nina Hartley

with Heather Hunter, Porsche Lynn and Robin Byrd

with Porsche Lynn (left) and Jeanna Fine (middle)

Angel today

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The post Angel Kelly: Giving You the Best That I Got – Podcast 99 appeared first on The Rialto Report.