The Rialto Report

The former adult film star Tiffany Clark passed away this week. Some might say this comes with the territory when you cover an industry that began almost 60 years ago. But while Tiffany started in the business in 1979, she was only 18 at the time and just 65 when she died of cancer. Others might ask why I would be sad about somebody I interviewed once almost 10 years ago. But I lucked out with Tiffany. I got to know her for quite a while before we ever did the interview, and we’ve stayed friends ever since. Over the years there have been many dinners out and time spent with her family, both birth and chosen. Her home was full of people and animals and love. And Tiffany was always at the heart of that home. She didn’t have it easy over the years. She grew up in an abusive household that she ran away from when she was young. She struggled with drugs and went to prison. Performing in adult films and briefly running Plato’s retreat with her then husband Fred Lincoln was about the least transgressive thing she did in her early years. Then she met Barry who would go on to become her beloved husband until this day. They moved to Florida with Tiffany’s child from another father and started a new life, going on to have children of their own. And something remarkable happened – Tiffany, whose life had been the definition of instability, became a pillar of reliability. She was an anchor of love for her family and friends. She was a steadfast employee for companies that relied upon her. When her kids faced difficulties, she took in their children and raised them as her own. Tiffany and Barry renewed their vows in 2015 – a joyful event I was fortunate enough to be part of. This is a reprise of my interview with Tiffany, in honor of my special friend who I loved dearly and will miss deeply.  For more pictures from Tiffany’s life, see here. This episode’s running time is 124 minutes. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Tiffany Clark     Tiffany Clark in Centerfold Fever       Tiffany Clark & April Hall * The post Tiffany Clark (1961-2026), R.I.P. appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Memory is a tricky thing. Small details can burn brighter than some of life’s defining events. The act of recall and the power of suggestion can fundamentally alter the content of our recollections. Experiences that seem like they should be tattooed onto our psyches can be lost to time.  And memory can be selective. Whether that’s by conscious choice, subconscious bias, or pure forgetfulness varies based on a lot of potential factors. But memory’s selective nature is undeniable. Take the adult film star Beth Anna. A striking beauty, she started out go-go dancing out on Long Island in the mid 1970s before being named one of the best strippers in New York. She wasn’t in the adult film industry long, making just a handful of films in the late 1970s. But in that short period Beth Anna made an impact. She was the lead in the first adult film she ever made, Chuck Vincent’s Dirty Lily (1978). She starred in Ann Perry’s Sweet Savage (1979) as Shy Dove, a Native American who falls in love with a cowboy. And she dated fellow adult actor Pepe Valentine, the pair briefly becoming the ‘it’ couple of porn. So what does Beth Anna remember about her time in the industry? Well…it’s selective. Some of it’s on the tip of her tongue, as if it’s been waiting to be asked. Other experiences are more elusive – and whether they’re hiding or just neglected isn’t obvious. In this episode of the Rialto Report, Beth Anna shares what she remembers about her time in the adult industry. And what she doesn’t is just as much a part of her story. When music critics laud Eric Clapton as one of the best rock guitarists of all time, he always says the same thing: listen for the space between the notes. This podcast episode is 60 minutes long.——————————————————————————————————————————— * The post Beth Anna – Sweet & Savage: Podcast 162 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Zebedy Colt is one of least likely characters we expected to feature in a podcast interview when The Rialto Report first began. For a start, Zebedy passed away in 2004 at the age of 74, after a wildly varied and peripatetic acting career that had started with small parts as a child actor in Hollywood in the 1930s and continued on to regional theater and summer stock across the country, including several Broadway productions. Along the way, he also had a parallel music career, recording an LP with the London Philharmonic Orchestra entitled, ‘I’ll Sing For You,’ which consisted of torch standards about men, originally intended to be sung by women but sung by Zebedy from a gay perspective. And then, in 1974, he lost his job when the theater he was working for folded due to financial problems, so he answered an ad in a New York newspaper that had been placed by Leonard Kirtman, perhaps the most prolific producer of low budget hardcore adult films in New York. Far from being put off by the nature of the films that Leonard was making, Zebedy did the unexpected: he entered an industry that was known for being sleazy and taboo, and made it a lot more transgressive. Over the following decade, he moved effortlessly between well-regarded mainstream theatrical productions and making his own unique brand of violent and twisted pornographic films, such as Sex Wish (1975) (where he plays a crazed serial killer terrorizing the city), The Devil Inside Her (1977) (in which a woman sells her soul to the devil to get to the man she loves), and Unwilling Lovers (1977) (in which Zebedy is a killer with the mind of a child who lives in the backwoods with his domineering mother and a penchant for playing with corpses) to name but a few. All very weird, and all very Zebedy. So who was this man who brought such a bizarre vision to the New York sex film scene? As part of the research for the oral history of The Freaky Gang, Leonard Kirtman’s gang of misfits who made films for his studio in the mid 1970s, we discovered a collection of audio interviews with Zebedy that give us the chance to listen to man himself instead of one of the crazy characters that he played on film. Sadly, many of these conversations have such poor sound quality that they’re unfit to be presented as a podcast, but due to their rarity, we wanted to present one here. It’s a conversation with Barbara Nitke, who worked as a still photographer on adult films sets. Unlike other Rialto Report podcasts, this isn’t a career retrospective – instead it’s a free-ranging, casual conversation that took place in a bar in 1986. It finds Zebedy in a world-weary state of mind. He’s at a crossroads, the mainstream acting roles are drying up, his music career hadn’t taken off, and the adult film business had recently turned to video thus taking away the opportunity to make more of his strange psychodramas on 16mm. This is Zebedy Colt. Shooting the Breeze. This podcast is 32 minutes long. Many thanks to Barbara Nitke for sharing the interview with us. You can find more details about her work at Barbara’s website and hear our podcast interview with her here. Copies of her book, ‘American Ecstasy’, can be purchased here. —————————————————————————————————————————- Zebedy Colt *   The post Zebedy Colt – Shooting the Breeze with the Eccentric Thespian of XXX: Podcast 161 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Back in the day, everybody seemed to have an opinion about Ron Jeremy – and maybe that was part of his appeal. He was probably the most ubiquitous of all male adult film stars, and certainly the most polarizing. In the early days of The Rialto Report, I was keen to interview him. My interest has always been in tracking down stories from the golden age of adult cinema that have never been revealed – but even though Ron’s story had been told many times before, I was still keen to ask him about his life and career. After all, Ron was ranked by Adult Video News at No. 1 in their “50 Top Porn Stars of All Time” list, who described him as the most recognizable porn ambassador to the world, ranking him ahead of people like Jenna Jameson, Marilyn Chambers, and John Holmes. In addition to his hundreds of adult films – both as an actor and director, he appeared in countless mainstream movies and music videos, there was a documentary and a best-selling biography, he was hired for personal appearances all over the country, and he was a brand spokesperson for products that included rum, cigars, beef jerky, and of course, male enhancement pills. I met up with him at his home in Los Angeles on several occasions, and we often spoke about doing an interview – or rather I listened to him talk in what seemed like one continuous sentence, unable to get a word in between all of his detailed anecdotes and memories. And then came 2017, and the multiple allegations of years of sexual misdemeanors. In truth, the stories had circulated for a long time before that. It’s just that now they were suddenly taken more seriously in the era of Me Too, splashed across newspapers, magazines, and social media. I’d heard the accusations for years too – just as I’d interviewed people who worked with him, who’d described him as respectful and considerate, I’d also met ex-colleagues who criticized him for being predatory. My interest was centered on his early career, which was why I was excited when I came across a previously unpublished interview with him from the late 1980s. It was a conversation between Ron and Barbara Nitke that took place in, where else, a New York diner, not far from Queens where Ron was born and raised. At the time, Barbara was carving out a career as a still photographer on adult film sets in New York, and she was putting together a book of her pictures that she intended to be accompanied by a series of interviews with the stars. The book, ‘American Ecstasy,’ was eventually published as a picture book with short clips from the interviews, many years later in 2012. It’s a fine testament to the mid-1980s industry in crisis, transitioning from high budget, scripted film productions to smaller and cheaper video shoots. When Barbara interviewed Ron, he was experiencing the same transition – and the same existential doubts that came with it. Barbara asks about this – and more, in this conversation, which is presented here for the first time. Remarkably, given this was almost 40 years ago, she also asks about the women who were refusing to work to him at the time. Many thanks to Barbara Nitke for sharing the interview with us. You can find more details about her work at Barbara’s website and hear our podcast interview with her here. Copies of ‘American Ecstasy’ can be purchased here. Thanks too to NSS for the audio restoration and mastering. This podcast episode is 50 minutes long. ———————————————————————————————————————————- * The post The Gospel According to Ron Jeremy in 1986, with Barbara Nitke – Podcast 160 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

In 1964, Lorey Kaye, a twenty-year-old from New Haven, CT, moved to Manhattan to start a new life in the big city. Lorey was a fresh-faced, dark-haired hippie, who attracted attention as much for her headstrong, determined, street smart attitude as for her striking good looks. She was hired as a waitress in a new nightclub that had just opened in Times Square – called Steve Paul’s ‘The Scene’. The club was an immediate hit with gigs by the likes of BB King, Jimi Hendrix, and Sammy Davis Jr., regular visitors like Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick – and Lorey was at the heart of the action. Another group, The Lovin’ Spoonful, also played there regularly, and their lead singer, John Sebastian, took a shine to her. John and Lorey started seeing each other, and Lorey became his muse, inspiring him to compose a number of the group’s hit singles about her, such as ‘She’s A Lady’ and ‘Rain on the Roof’, even mentioning her by name in some of the lyrics. Lorey and John Sebastian (1967) They got hitched in 1966 – by then Lorey had started work as an insider gossip columnist at Hit Parade magazine – and now known as Lorey Sebastian, she became a popular staple in the 1960s Greenwich Village folk-rock music scene. Lorey and John’s relationship was glamorous, high-profile, and short-lived. Lorey broke up with John in 1968 when they were in Ireland. The legend is that she fell in with a group of gypsies, and felt compelled to tune in, drop out, and join them instead. It was said that John never fully recovered from the breakup. Lorey (right), with John Sebastian and Mama Cass (1967) Fast forward to the mid 1970s. Lorey was back in New York, now in her mid 30s and looking for a purpose. She’d become a member of the television and film workers union, with the vague ambition of being a still photographer on movie sets. To make a little extra money, she also did work as a crew member on sex films. It was on a Gerry Damiano movie that she met Jamie Gillis. Jamie sidled up to her, pushing her in the back, and exclaiming, “What a place to bump into a girl like you!” It was corny but it worked, and Lorey invited him back to her place. The mutual attraction was instant and sexual – but, for Jamie, there was something more this time. For a confirmed promiscuous bachelor, Jamie confided to friends that, whisper it quietly, Lorey might actually be the one. He spent time with her, encouraged her photography ambitions, taking her to exhibitions and galleries, and was tickled that one of his favorite songs, The Lovin’ Spoonful’s ‘Daydream,’ had been written for her. Not to suggest that Jamie’s relationship with New York magazine’s Insatiable Critic, Gael Greene, was over. Far from it. Even if the novelty of Jamie and Gael’s physical and emotional relationship had subsided, they were still intent on documenting their lives, in and out of bed, for a proposed joint-autobiographical book. They continued to go the city’s restaurants, cultural events, and glamorous parties, while Jamie spent his in-between time wrestling with whether he wanted an acting career, playing poker, going to the occasional audition, and making semi-regular starring appearances in adult films. In short, Jamie wanted to pursue Lorey, but not give up the affair with Gael. This is Part 2 of the story of Jamie Gillis and Gael Greene in 1978. Jamie This podcast is 49 minutes long. Listen to Part 1 of The Porn Star and the Foodie: Jamie Gillis & Gael Greene in 1978 here. * The post The Porn Star and the Foodie: Jamie Gillis & Gael Greene in 1978 Part 2, Lorey Sebastian – Podcast 159 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

In ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976), Travis Bickle railed against social decay, moral corruption, and the depraved filth he perceived in the near-bankrupt New York City of the mid 1970s. An insomniac, alienated Vietnam War vet, his taxi trips revealed the city to him as a “sewer” filled with “scum” that needed to be “cleansed”. Around the same time, another taxi driver, a real one, Jamie Gillis, was also recording audio diaries in a similar way. Jamie worked in cabs on and off in the 70s while he acted in adult films and the occasional play. But his tapes were the opposite of Travis Bickle’s: Jamie reveled in the city’s seediness and the sexual possibilities it offered, and he documented his days with a detail that was as graphic as it was honest. And so, perhaps Jamie Gillis was what Travis Bickle feared: Jamie was the moral decay. He was the other Taxi Driver. Not to say that Jamie was untroubled. He was plagued by doubts, questions, and phobias – his “sickness”, he called it. He feared that the initial promise of the porn film business, that had made him a star of sorts after his leading turn in The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976), was about to come crashing down – that adult films would never live up to his high expectations, that he was turning into a sexual jester, and that he would never fulfill his potential. So what is the story behind his recordings? In 1976, Jamie met Gael Greene, a well-known character in the city. She belonged to the blue bloods of Manhattan society, having been New York magazine’s high-profile restaurant critic for the previous decade. She was a smart, sleek, feline blonde, ten years older than Jamie, well known and well-regarded in polite and cultured circles. And she was obsessed by Jamie’s sexually wanton lifestyle. They first met when she was promoting her erotic novel, ‘Blue Skies, No Candy’: “He knew my work. I knew his,” she later wrote. Jamie stopped, picked up the book, read a few lines, and laughed. “You’re the food writer from New York magazine,” he said to her. “And your hero has my name.” Gael replied: “And you’re that actor. From those movies.” She described him at the time as young, surprisingly shy, with shiny black curls and perfect posture. Even better-looking in person, she noted. “You were wonderful in Misty Beethoven,” she told him. “That was fun to make,” Jamie replied,” because I liked the woman in that one.” “What do you do when you don’t like the woman?” Gael asked. Jamie looked her straight in the eyes, and said, “I can always get myself in the mood.” They started a relationship that was tempestuous and torrid. They were an odd couple, but well-suited too: Jamie’s business was sex and his passion was food. And Gael’s interest and passion were, well, sex and food. She claimed that “the two greatest discoveries of the 20th century were the Cuisinart and the clitoris,” and she was quick to reach for sexual metaphors whenever describing the ecstasy of tasting food in the upper crust restaurants of the city. “Sex and food have been completely intertwined since the beginning of time,” she said. They saw each other often, dealing with the pleasures, jealousy, and complications that resulted. Gael couldn’t get enough of Jamie’s sexual explorations, and Jamie slipped into her world – overnight becoming her guest at places that had never been available to him. But Gael, the insatiable critic as she was called, wanted more from their union. She believed Jamie could, and should, be a big-name actor, and so she connected him with A-list players in the industry – auditions with directors like Mike Nichols, strategy meetings with super agents like Sue Mengers. She took him to Europe to try new restaurants, and stay with friends like Julia Childs. And came the book: it was Gael’s idea. She persuaded Jamie they should write their story by documenting their hedonistic life together. It would capture the era through the eyes of two disparate people with similar lusts and appetites. Jamie agreed: he figured that with Gael’s literary track record and contacts, it could be a hit, raising his profile, and enabling him to fulfill his vague dream of becoming a full-time theater actor. Gael suggested Jamie keep an audio diary for one year. He would tape his innermost thoughts, feelings, desires, and the crude, unexpurgated details of his everyday life in all its seamy detail. In return, she would add her own experiences – and they would turn it all into a biographical tale of two lovers crisscrossing 1970s New York, slipping between the city’s high society events and its grimy porn film scene. So Jamie started recording: but his tapes ended up being more than a diary. They document a spiral – a downward journey into a damaged soul as he dealt with questions that plagued him: ambition, sexuality, art, talent, lust, and love. The recordings that resulted – unfiltered after hours reflections, candid and honest, are presented here for the first time. Needless to say, turn off now if you are liable to be offended. This is Part 1 of the story of Jamie Gillis and Gael Greene in 1978. This podcast is 49 minutes long. * The post The Porn Star and the Foodie: Jamie Gillis & Gael Greene in 1978 Part 1, The Other Taxi Driver – Podcast 158 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

It all started over thirty years ago. I thought it would be interesting to track down people who’d been involved in the very first adult films because I was intrigued to learn what they remembered about the time – and find out how the experience had affected their lives afterwards. Bear in mind, this was over 30 years ago, before the era of social media, search tools, and online databases, so I had no idea how difficult this endeavor would be. But I also didn’t know how unwelcome my inquiries would prove – even if I did manage to find anyone to talk to. After all, most of the early pioneers used different names to conceal their identities, and therefore protect their future lives. A few of them – people like Annie Sprinkle, Jamie Gillis, or Ron Jeremy for example – were still around, quasi-public figures who’d been interviewed many times about their history. But I was more interested in finding the bit-part players, lesser-known figures, people whose involvement had been short, before disappearing, presumably blending back into more conventional 9-5 existences. What did they think about their involvement in such a salacious, unprecedented activity years earlier? One of these was the actor, Jeffrey Hurst. He’d been a handsome, friendly-looking, more-than-competent actor back in early films, always entertaining and engaging, and not just because of his standard-issue, best-in-class, 1970s porno mustache. Who was he, and what was his story? Well, his name wasn’t Jeffrey Hurst for a start: I met a director who’d known him and who reluctantly told me that his real name was Jeff Eagle. I misheard him – and so for the next five years, I searched high and low – and unsuccessfully – for an ex-sex film actor called ‘Jeff Feagle.’ Not my proudest moment, and a lot a wasted effort ensued. And then I met someone who was still in touch with Jeff, and who told me that Jeff was now a massage therapist living a quiet life in Tucson, Arizona. What’s more, apparently Jeff loved talking about his semi-scandalous past. I contacted him, and quickly became friends with one of the sweetest people I’ve ever come across. And so, when I started The Rialto Report, my interview with Jeff was one of the first that I put out as a podcast. Jeff died last November. He is much missed. This is our conversation. This episode running time is 61 minutes. ______________________________________________________________________________________ Jeffrey Hurst photographs: The post Jeffrey Hurst (1947-2025), R.I.P. appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Jeanna Fine passed away last month. If you’re a regular listener to The Rialto Report, you’ll know that we like to interview a person from a different angle. It’s a more intimate and personal exploration, rather than just revisiting someone’s fleeting moments on camera. And it can be a challenge to convince someone to open up in that way. Sometimes it’s quick and easy to persuade a person to talk, but many others are more difficult: some interviews have simply ended up being off the record, or subjects changed their minds after finishing the conversation. A few decided that their interview shouldn’t be released until after they pass, while others just weren’t very interesting. And then there was my interview with Jeanna Fine. We’d originally contacted her for all the usual Rialto Report reasons: Jeanna had been one of the adult industry’s biggest, and longest lasting, A-list stars, and I was keen to hear her personal story. She’d first appeared in X-rated films in the mid 1980s – getting her name supposedly when Barbara Dare told her that Jeanna looked so fine. It was the tail period of the so-called ‘golden age’, just as the business was changing into a more corporate, studio-driven, rinse-and-repeat video industry. But there was nothing standard about Jeanna. She stood out from pack, fiercely individual, different from many other identikit, girl-next door performers, with her short platinum-blond spiky punk hair, or later, long dark hair that turned her into a scowling femme fatale. She was androgenous, full of confrontational attitude – and her scenes bristled with a bad-ass aggression. And Jeanna’s rebellious streak didn’t seem confined to her appearance, and the word was that she would turn up to shoots when and where she felt like it, and sometimes not at all. Sometimes she made scores of films in a matter of weeks, and then disappeared for months, even years. She had a long-term, and volatile, relationship with fellow actress Savannah. Jeanna eventually walked away from it – just before Savannah killed herself. On one of her breaks from the world of X, she got married and had a son, only to return to making films a few years later. Her on/off career continued into the 2000s. But, and there’s always a but, I wanted to know more about the woman behind the strong, confident, and forthright exterior, this character so full of piss and vinegar. I sensed a vulnerability, that her glamorous life in front of the camera perhaps masked secrets that were a world away from adult films. In short, who was the woman that created Jeanna Fine? So I reached out to her, and over the next 10 years, we became friends and confidants through a series of conversations, phone calls, emails, and texts. When we first spoke, she’d been living a rural life in upstate New York for over a decade, and was experiencing something of an existential crisis. She was at a crossroads in her life: she’d experienced recent tragedies – the suicides of both her husband and brother, she was empty-nester, and she was trying to figure out what she should do next. Intriguingly, she decided to emerge from anonymity and return to the X-rated industry. She turned up at an adult fan convention, she’d set up a Twitter account (as it was back then), and had a friend show her how she could earn money with a web-cam. But the return to the sex industry was problematic, and I could see that she hadn’t expected the extent of the emotions, the old secrets and lies, that this new direction was bringing back to the surface. What was being stirred in her past, I wondered? Jeanna insisted that she was keen to do the interview – she announced it on Twitter – but I was worried that she was feeling fragile. This podcast is the result of that conversation. With big thanks to Patrick Kindlon and Self Defense Family – for the wonderful monologue, and to Steven Morowitz and Melusine – for the Video-X-Pix photographs. This podcast is 52 minutes long. —————————————————————————————————————————————————————————– Jeanna Fine – Video-X-Pix photos * Jeanna Fine portfolio * The post Jeanna Fine: The Lost Interview – Podcast 157 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Regular listeners will know that over the last few years, I’ve spoken to many female adult film actors who were active from the 1960s through to the late 1980s, and, as interesting as their experiences were, it also made me intrigued to find out what it was like to be a male in the business during the same time. So a few months ago, I contacted actor/director/agent and X-rated film producer, Bud Lee, to hear about his life – which I was curious to hear about, not only because of his career, but also due to his marriages to two of the biggest stars of the 1980s and 90s, Hyapatia Lee and Asia Carrera. In the first part of my conversation with Bud, he spoke about how he got into the industry with Hyapatia and the struggles they encountered being a couple in the business. This episode picks up in the late 1980s, when their relationship broke down just while Bud’s career making films for companies such as Vivid, Playboy, and Adam and Eve, was taking off. And Bud is still working today – filming scenes and being an agent – and he reflects on the significant changes that he’s seen in the industry, as well as the people involved. You can hear Part 1 of the podcast here. We have also included the transcript of an episode of the Donahue television show from 25 November 1986 which featured a conversation with Bud Lee, Hyapatia Lee, Jeanna Fine, Tony Rush, Nina Hartley, and David Hartley. The full episode can be viewed here. This podcast is 49 minutes long. ——————————————————————————————————————————————————– Bud Lee and Hyapatia Lee – on the Donahue show: full transcript * The post Bud Lee – From Hyapatia and Asia to Only Fans, Part 2 – Podcast 156 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

The adult film business is unique in that it has usually focused on women as the figureheads and main stars, and therefore often relegated men to the background. Over the last years, I’ve spoken to many female adult actors – from the 1960s through to the late 1980s, and it’s been interesting to see how their memories, experiences, and lives were affected as the sex film business changed.  But I also wanted to hear from someone on the other side of the equation – and find out what it was like to be a male in the business, perhaps a partner of a major sex film star, or someone who was a performer, director, or agent in the business. Bud Lee is unique in that he has been – and still is – all of these things and more. And what’s remarkable about his life is that it mirrors the history of the industry itself: consider this – after meeting and marrying Hyapatia Lee, one of the biggest stars of the 1980s, they appeared in adult films together, before Bud became a director for adult industry mogul, Harry Mohney, directing large and expensive productions like ‘The Ribald Tales of Canterbury’ before working for Vivid Video, one of the biggest production companies of the era. Then Bud married Asia Carrera, one of the biggest names of the 1990s adult film industry, making films for Playboy and Adam and Eve, before becoming a talent agent. Today he’s still filming, for performers wanting content for their OnlyFans accounts – a far cry from the golden age, and a stark reflection of just how much the business has changed. All this from someone who had no background in the sex film business before he met Hyapatia back in the 1970s – in fact he was a plumber who’d briefly considered divinity school and a theological life. This podcast is 65 minutes long. ——————————————————————————————————————————– Bud and Hyapatia Lee   Bud and Hyapatia Lee, 1984 AFAA red carpet * The post Bud Lee – From Hyapatia and Asia to Only Fans, Part 1 – Podcast 155 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

In 1979, Dennis Posa was on the verge of stardom. Against all odds, as Dennis Parker, he’d just released a disco record on a major recording label and was managed by the same team responsible for many of the biggest disco acts of the time. I say, against all odds, because less than 10 years earlier, he’d been a college dropout, the product of a difficult childhood on Long Island who struggled with his sexuality, who had moved to New York to unsuccessfully pursue a career as a theater actor. Dennis was always a collection of contradictions: he was a private loner – who could also be the popular and gregarious center of attention socially; he took a desk job on Madison Avenue like a latter day backroom character in ‘Mad Men’ but he dreamed of acting and singing; he seemed happiest when he was in his beloved apartment painting a landscape or doing his carpentry listening to his jazz records but he also enjoyed hitting the road on his motorbike and driving across the country, or hanging out in the city’s gay bars at night. And then in the mid 1970s came adult film stardom – in straight sex films no less. His face – and body – adorning movie posters and adult film screens across the country as one of the industry’s top stars. That level of fame would be eclipsed however when he met the superstar disco music producer, Jacques Morali. They became a couple, and Jacques wanted to cast him as one of the Village People, before deciding to make Dennis a solo star. They recorded an album for Casablanca Records. This is what happened next. This podcast is 38 minutes long. ————————————————————————————————————————————– When Dennis’ LP, ‘Like an Eagle,’ was released in 1979, the promotional rollercoaster started in earnest. Early that year, Dennis made an appearance on The Merv Griffin Show. This was a big deal. The Merv Griffin Show was an American television talk show institution. It had run from 1962, and by the late 1970s was one of the most prestigious shows for celebrities to appear on. It was nominated for Emmy awards most years, and more often than not, won them. Just take a look at the guest list on the day that Dennis first appeared on it: it featured Glenda Jackson, David Soul of Starsky and Hutch, and Brooke Shields. Needless to say, Dennis sung ‘Like an Eagle’. Sadly, recordings of the episode have never been released, so we have to rely on the memories of those who tuned in to see it – and they vary somewhat. Henri Belolo, Dennis’ record producer, was over the moon: “I was just so happy to see Dennis on television,” he remembered. “Dennis was broadcast from coast to coast singing his heart out, and that was when there were just three or four TV channels – so everyone in the country could see him.” For Skip St. James, Dennis’ ex-partner from the early 1970s, the memories have a bittersweet tinge: “I didn’t see much of Dennis after he moved in with Jacques,” he said. “Then one night, out of the blue, he invited me over for dinner, and he turned on the Merv Griffin show, and there he was singing ‘Like an Eagle’ on TV – all dressed up in shiny silver clothes. He’d invited me over because he wanted me there to share it. I was impressed, although it was strange seeing him sing that kind of music. He hated disco and he hated dancing! Dennis was a jeans-and-leather guy, and was clearly uncomfortable in that silver lame’ jumpsuit. I thought he looked ridiculous. And when he smiled… it was like neon on his teeth. They were way too bright. But he was very proud of it, and I was very proud of him for it. We stayed in touch, but I never saw him again after that evening.” As for Steven Gaines, the co-writer of the big two songs on Dennis’ album, ‘Like an Eagle’ and ‘New York By Night’, well, his memory was less favorable: “When Dennis premiered ‘Like an Eagle’ on the Merv Griffin Show,” he said, “I invited a whole bunch of people over to my house. We all watched and suddenly Dennis appeared – and he looked like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz! And he couldn’t really dance or move either. It was very artificial and clumsy. It was so bad that we started laughing. There were six or seven of us there just rolling around on the floor because it was so bad.” Whatever people thought, Dennis was a hit, and he was in demand: he went on to make more television show appearances, including further bookings on The Merv Griffin Show, including a disco-themed episode on May 3, 1979, where he appeared with The Village People, The Ritchie Family, Patrick Juvet, and his partner, Jacques Morali. Jacques felt that it was his responsibility to get Dennis maximum exposure for the new record, and so he set up a list of high-profile engagements that included The Mike Douglas Show, another high-rated chat show, and an appearance in a French feature film ‘Monique’ (1978), which featured ‘Like an Eagle’ as its theme song. A special mention should also be made of an appearance on a French television show called Exclusif, which is effectively a music video for ‘Like An Eagle.’ You can still see it on YouTube and it’s glorious. In it, Dennis stands underneath the marquee of the Broadway Theater on 53rd Street singing ‘Like an Eagle’, before striding through the streets delivering an extravagant rendition, and getting a perplexed reaction from the New York commuters around him. He looks great, and you have to admire his absolute commitment. It’s peak Dennis Parker, disco star. * All this attention meant that Dennis was suddenly a celebrity around town, and nowhere was that more evident than on the nightlife scene. He was a regular at Studio 54, where there were lines around the block to get in, but Dennis was welcomed with open arms and ushered behind the famous velvet rope into the VIP area. Dennis may have been an awkward disco star, sometimes uncomfortable with all the glitz and glamor and preferring the quieter jazz clubs, but he did love the night life – and the admiration that brought him. And that attention came in droves – from men and women, and Dennis didn’t turn many opportunities down. and he was still getting great reviews for his performances. One friend, James Dunn, remembered: “Dennis became a great sex symbol after his record hit. People – men and women – would go wild over him. It just seemed weird to me. But I can tell you one thing: I knew a guy who went to bed with him. I asked him, “What was it like?”, and he said, “Oh my God… I don’t know even what he did to me. It was incredible.” Dennis was living the high life, and the publicity firestorm surrounding him wasn’t confined to America either. As Henri Belolo remembered: “We took Dennis to Europe on a promotional tour because we had strong connections with our record companies there. First, he went to France, then around Europe, where he did many TV show appearances.” Dennis’ travel itinerary at the time was like a member of a royal family: over the first summer, he made four promotional trips to Europe, visiting France and Spain. Then he went to Italy, where he headlined a ‘Save Venice’ festival. Next was Medina in Morocco where a huge public party was held in his honor, Rio where he stayed with Ursula Andress, the ex-wife of John Derek, who’d directed him in ‘Love You’, and then to Majorca where Jacques commissioned a large – and expensive – portrait of Dennis from a renowned artist, which he wanted to place over the headboard of his bed back in New York. Jacques accompanied Dennis on every trip – they were still a couple, despite the temptations that both of them succumbed to regularly – but in the interests of selling records, they decided it would be better for Dennis to present himself in public as an unattached, straight male – so they would concoct elaborate stories for the media to build Dennis’ image as a heterosexual, playboy lady-killer, complete with accompanying pictures showing him embracing a selection of beauties. Here’s an extract from a breathless article from a magazine at the time: “(Dennis) first stop was Paris, where (he) met and promptly fell for a Parisian beauty named Michelle. She was the costume designer for a hot Paris nightspot, The Crazy Horse Saloon. Through Michelle, Dennis met the star of the Crazy Horse show, Lova Moor, and soon the trio packed up and took off for the south of France.” Dennis’ friend, James Dunn, remembered Dennis finding this subterfuge amusing: “When (Dennis) came back from his latest European trip, (he) would joke about the love affairs they’d invented for him. Jacques had so many contacts with women in show business it was easy for them to arrange.” Dennis, avec beards, in South of France * Back in New York, Jacques had his eye on the next stage of his plan for disco domination – and he figured it was time for them all to make a move into film. Jacques had been impressed with the musical films, ‘Saturday Night Fever’ (1977) and ‘Grease’ (1978). Even though he wasn’t a fan of the music featured in either, he wanted in, so he became friends with Allan Carr, who’d done the famous ad campaign for Saturday Night Fever, and had co-produced Grease, which, thanks in part to his promotional prowess, had become one of the highest-grossing films of all time. At first, Jacques and Allan hit it off. Allan was a powerful powerbroker with an interesting backstory: in the 1960s, he’d worked behind the scenes at Playboy with Hugh Hefner and was a co-creator of the Playboy Penthouse television series, which in turn launched the Playboy Clubs. His career really took off in 1966, when he founded a talent agency which managed actors, like Tony Curtis, Peter Sellers, and Ann-Margret, and then produced a string of television specials with stars such as Joan Rivers, Paul Anka, and Cass Elliot of The Mamas and the Papas. Side note: it was Allan Carr who was responsible for the invention of the story that Cass Elliot had died by choking on a ham sandwich. Apparently, he thought that the story – even though deeply humiliating to Mama Cass – was preferable to the reality that her death was actually drug-related. And then there was the fact that Allan was gay. It was no real secret, even though he never formally acknowledged it publicly. His personality was legendarily larger than life – just like Jacques, and together he and Jacques were drawn into a stormy creative relationship. Jacques’ idea was a to make a musical comedy feature film, based on a fictionalized biography of The Village People, and it would also include his other stars like the Ritchie Family. “It will be like ‘Grease’” he boasted, “except with better music.” With such stellar talent at his disposal, and with Allan’s track record, how could it fail to be a success? * So in 1979, Jacques and Henri Belolo teamed up with Allan Carr to make the film, ‘Can’t Stop the Music.’ Allan Carr insisted on writing it and he made sure he steered clear of addressing the band members’ presumed homosexuality in the script. In fact, it bore only a vague resemblance to the actual story of the group’s formation. All of this annoyed Jacques, who became disappointed with the direction it was taking – but he was even more angry when Allan insisted on having casting approval, and turned down Jacques’ request to make Dennis one of the stars. Henri Belolo remembered the conflict well: “Jacques pushed really hard to have Dennis have a big part in the movie. It was a good idea – Dennis was a good actor, but for some reason, Allan was always jealous about Dennis. Allan like to fool around young and good-looking boys, and maybe Dennis was just getting too much attention. Either way, he didn’t want Dennis in the movie. So Jacques and Allan had a huge ego fight. I had to fly to California to mediate in the middle of shooting.” In the end, Dennis didn’t get a part in the big budget movie. Steve Gutenberg was cast in the role of Jacques, and didn’t do a bad job. Certainly, better than Caitlyn Jenner, who as Bruce Jenner back then, is miscast as a lawyer. When the movie was ready for release, Allan orchestrated wall-to-wall media coverage, which included a lavish series of premieres and a television special that co-starred Hugh Hefner and Cher. And though Dennis wasn’t in the movie, he can be seen at all the promotional events and premiere parties. They say timing is everything, and sure enough, when ‘Can’t Stop the Music’ was released in 1980, the disco craze was declining and the film was a major flop at the box office, losing millions. In fact, Allan Carr won the first annual Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture in 1981. For Dennis, it was a case of conflicting emotions. He’d yearned to be in a major motion picture, but on this occasion, he was happy to have avoided being part of such a turkey. Jacques was less philosophical however. Disco’s waning popularity – as well as the stress of the film’s flop – was beginning to take its toll on him, and he became withdrawn and depressed. This had an effect on Dennis and Jacques’ relationship which started to cool. They remained friendly, but eventually Dennis moved back into his apartment on East 38th St where he started living with a new partner… who was his old partner, his former boyfriend, Joey Alan Phipps. James Dunn remembered, “Dennis always had a thing for Joey, even when he was with Jacques. I guess he never let Joey go. So they started being a couple all over again.” * When Dennis split up with Jacques, he decided to return to acting. Jacques was crestfallen: they remained friends, but now, not only had he lost Dennis as a romantic partner, but Dennis wasn’t interested in their music partnership either. In truth, Dennis had never been truly interested in cashing in on his disco celebrity or even recording a follow-up to ‘Like an Eagle’. Sure, he’d enjoyed the limelight, the glamor, and the money while it lasted, but he didn’t feel authentic in the disco scene – and he always had that nagging feeling that he was better suited to acting. But Dennis was proud too, and this time he wanted to do it his own way, on his own terms. He rejected Jacques’ offer to make some calls and set up meetings with TV and film studio execs. He wanted to start at the bottom, and liked the idea of establishing a career purely on his own merit – and so he set out all over again, just like he had done ten years previously, and started turning up at auditions, usually for small roles, some of them non-speaking parts. His friends were surprised: here was a guy who’d just been on primetime television, featured in magazines all over the world for his recording career, and here he was seemingly happy to be a struggling actor again. But the procession of auditions didn’t last long, and Dennis was soon offered a leading part on a TV series. As his brother Richard remembered: “Dennis told me went to a casting call for a role as an extra, but the producers really liked him, and so they offered him a full recurring role.” The show in question was ‘The Edge of Night.’ * ‘The Edge of Night’ was a popular daytime show: it was a long-running television mystery crime series and was produced by Procter & Gamble – the huge American multinational consumer goods corporation. If it seems strange that a company known for its household cleaning goods was producing TV shows, it actually wasn’t: Procter & Gamble had produced and sponsored the first radio serial dramas back in the 1930s – and soon after that, other similar companies, like Colgate-Palmolive and Lever Brothers, followed suit and did the same. This business model became established, and with the rise of television in the 1950s and 1960s, many of the new serials were sponsored, produced, and owned by these companies. And as Proctor and Gamble had been the first, and was known for Ivory Soap, these serials were referred to as ‘soap operas.’  In fact, it’s a model that still continues to the present day: this year, for example, Proctor and Gamble were co-producing a successful daytime drama about a wealthy Black family with CBS. Over the years, Proctor and Gamble have enjoyed their association with the entertainment industry, increasing the brand awareness of their products and making profits from the shows. The only major hiccup was in 1972 – and that was caused by an event that was beyond their control. What happened there was they selected a young actress to be the figurehead of a new advertising campaign for their flagship product, Ivory Snow soap. The actress was Marilyn Briggs, who was starting out in films and had just appeared in a Barbra Streisand film, ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ (1970). Proctor and Gamble liked her, and anointed her ‘the Ivory Snow Girl’, and soon her beaming innocent, clean-cut face appeared on the soap flake box, posing as a mother holding a baby under the tag line ‘99 & 44/100% pure.’ The campaign was a resounding success, both for the company and for Marilyn, who figured she’d hit the big time. She decided to capitalize so she moved to San Francisco, mistakenly thinking that the city was the entertainment capital of the world. After struggling to find work, she changed direction and appeared as Marilyn Chambers in a pornographic film, Behind the Green Door (1972). It proved to be an inspired casting choice by Jim and Artie Mitchell, the film’s producers, not just because Marilyn was a charismatic and attractive star for their film, but also because when they realized Marilyn had been the star of the Ivory Snow campaign, they saw a golden marketing opportunity. They billed Marilyn as being ‘99 and 44/100% impure’ and instantly created a nationwide scandal. Procter & Gamble tried to distance themselves by dropping her, but Marilyn’s image was already so well-known from the Ivory Snow campaign that the damage was done. The film’s ticket sales rocketed, television talk shows joked about it, and ‘Behind the Green Door’ became one of the most successful adult films of all time. Whether the whole affair hurt, or even helped, sales of Ivory Snow, Proctor and Gamble were left red-faced and determined to do whatever they needed to to never be associated with the adult film industry again. * When Dennis was offered a starring role in ‘The Edge of Night’, he didn’t tell Proctor and Gamble, or the production team, about his adult film past. It wasn’t that he was hiding it. According to his friends, he just didn’t think it was relevant. He’d had a whole other career in music since the last of his X-rated films, and no one had had a problem with the porn films then so why should they care now? Besides, he didn’t want to do anything that would jeopardize his big chance. Getting a role on ‘The Edge of Night’ was an important career step for him: the show had debuted on CBS in 1956, and ran as a live broadcast until 1975 when it moved to ABC. By the late 1970s, it was one of the most loved shows on the ABC network with a loyal following. The thing was, ‘The Edge of Night’ was no simple, romantic daytime soap. Rob Foy, a production assistant on the show, remembered: “‘It wasn’t really a soap opera at all. It was a hybrid of a crime drama with some of the elements of a melodrama. So you had the cops, forensics, and attorneys dealing with cases, at the same time you also had romantic, marital, and family issues.” Dennis was over the moon with his contract on the show. He had walked out of a promising career as an international disco heartthrob backed by one of the hottest record producers around into a leading role on a highly-rated national TV show. How did that happen? According to Rob Foy, it was down to one man. As he recalled, “It was Erwin Nicholson that hired Dennis. ‘Nick’ was the long-standing producer for the show, and under his guidance, ‘The Edge of Night’ got only the second Emmy ever given for a daytime drama. Well, Nick was smitten with Dennis, and loved him from the start. Nicholson was like a mentor to Dennis.” The show was filmed on the seventh floor of a nondescript brick building at E.U.E. Studios at 222 East 44th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, just a few blocks from his apartment. When Dennis joined the cast, he quickly became one of the most popular members of the team. Sharon Gabet, one of Dennis’ co-stars, remembered him fondly when I contacted her. She said, “The production was unique in that it was a half hour show. We shot it like it was live, meaning we would all shoot at the same time on the set as opposed to waiting in your dressing room until your scenes were up. So the regulars all became very close friends, and I worked with Dennis all the time. My character was engaged to his, and was using him terribly in the script. Poor Dennis! He was so good on that show.” When I asked Sharon about Dennis’ abilities as an actor, she was unequivocal: “Dennis was excellent. He really was. It wasn’t an easy part to play. There was a lot of acting, but he managed to be sensitive and manly at the same time. He was really, really good in that part.” Dennis big-time acting gig seemed to be going smoothly, but after the first few episodes were aired, the production company started receiving anonymous phone calls. Someone familiar with Dennis’ sex films had phoned in to complain: what was an ex-porn star doing in a family TV show? The production team for ‘The Edge of Night’ had a problem. This was the sort of scandal that could sink a family show. Dennis found out about the anonymous calls from a production assistant, and according to Larry Engler, a member of the production team, he decided to take matter into his own hands: “Dennis called a meeting with the bosses,” Larry remembered. “He told them about what he’d done. Nicholson, the top producer, replied that he was doing a great job and that it didn’t matter. He should just keep going and nothing was going to change that.” But Proctor and Gamble had to be informed. The memory of the Marilyn Chambers public relations disaster still lingered within the company, and Dennis’ past was going to be a problem. As Rob Foy, a production assistant on the show, remembered: “The way it was handled was secretive. Proctor & Gamble got involved and they were unhappy with the situation.” Nicholson, the show’s producer, had a fight on his hands, but he stood firm. He was a formidable character: he went to speak to Proctor and Gamble senior management, and made a determined case for why Dennis was completely indispensable to the show. On the face of it, the argument was a mismatch, with the international corporate giant on one side and a TV producer on the other, but remarkably, Nicholson won the day, and Dennis was allowed to stay. The production team was jubilant. They’d been nervous about the effect it could have on the show’s future, but they also saw the humor: Sharon Gabet remembered: “When we first found out about Dennis’ past, we all loved it. We thought it was hilarious. His films were frequently running nearby in Times Square at the time so we’d go there and just look at the marquees!” If anything, Dennis’ position was strengthened by the whole affair. As Sharon Gabet remembered: “Dennis got a lot of teasing on the set, but he was always a gentleman. He was such a nice guy. You could tell when you talked to him about his past that he was so proud of his adult film work. We got a kick out of that. He was not ashamed at all. He felt he did the best he could in every role that he had. He was very humble but very proud of his work. I mean, he was a star! He was a porn star! And the writers would play along too. They’d put the name ‘Wade Nichols’ into the scripts! That was their joke all the time. It was hysterical.” And it wasn’t just Dennis’ adult career that was made fun of – his disco music was also the subject of affectionate ribbing. According to Sharon: “The producers would play his song ‘Like an Eagle’ on the set between takes. We’d all just roar. Dennis played along. He was witty, intelligent, and really funny.” * And so, Dennis went on to make appear in 142 episodes of the daytime soap opera – one of the most frequently-appearing actors in the TV series’ long history – and recognition came from all quarters. Richard Posa, Dennis’ brother, remembered, “My mother was very proud of Dennis’ soap opera success. She kept scrapbooks of all the articles and pictures that she could find of him.” And Carter Stevens, who had directed Dennis in adult films, remembered: “My daughter hit puberty just when Dennis was becoming successful on ‘The Edge of Night’. She had an enormous crush on him. I’d stayed in touch with him so I mentioned this to him, and a few days later a four-page letter arrived with half a dozen signed publicity shots for her. He was that kind of guy.” Dennis used his TV celebrity to become active in fund-raising activities for a pet welfare organization called Bide-A-Wee Animal Shelter, which was just down the block from his apartment, and he also made personal appearances to raise money for autistic children. And Dennis was enjoying a happy home life as well with Joey, in their beloved apartment where they would host dinner parties for fellow ‘Edge of Night’ cast members. Joey was trying make a career for himself as an actor, and so Dennis persuaded the ‘The Edge of Night’ producers to hire Joey as an actor. In 1980, Joey was given the part of a character who was a puppeteer suspected of murder. He appeared in 23 episodes of the show but his involvement in the soap wasn’t as successful as Dennis’ and after a few weeks, he was replaced unexpectedly with little explanation. Joey didn’t have any significant acting parts after that, his only role of note coming as an understudy in Robert Altman’s Broadway revival of ‘Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean’, which featured Karen Black, Cher, and Kathy Bates. For Dennis though, his life had finally turned out exactly as he wanted. After years of struggling, or working in the shadows of the adult industry, or in a music career that made him uncomfortable, he was where he wanted to be. In an interview he gave in 1982, he said: “I couldn’t have been more pleased than when I landed the role on ‘The Edge of Night.’ I had a wonderful time traveling around the world in the fast lane but I wasn’t happy with the music I was doing. The kind of music that’s popular today, the kind the record company wanted me to do, just isn’t my kind of music. I’m still singing – but I’m singing blues and jazz, not disco.” In his spare time, he hung out with friends in jazz clubs, he entered a dance contest with Sharon Gabet – which they won, he made everyone laugh when he turned up each week to play in the ‘Edge of Night’ softball team in the tightest shorts, and his friends still remember the joints he rolled as being big as baby’s forearms. For the first time, he was happy being recognized in public as a celebrity. One friend, Andrew Rubinstein, remembered, “Dennis wasn’t crazy ambitious. I think he would have been happy being a daytime soap actor for the rest of his life, and he could have found work forever doing that. At the same time, he started to be curious about whether he could make it as a film actor. Once he made a name for himself on TV, he started to think about auditioning for bigger parts in movies. He looked at rugged actors like Harrison Ford, and thought… why not me?” After a career as a star of adult films, then disco music, and then TV, could there be another chapter in store in Dennis’ life? * This is a quote from my conversation with Richard Posa, Dennis’ brother: “In the spring of 1984, Dennis called me and said he wasn’t feeling well. He was having bad night sweats and felt weak. So he took some time off from ‘The Edge of Night’. When he returned to the show, they did their best to cover up his physical deterioration. They were careful to shoot around his frailty. They had him sitting at desks and things like that.” For Dennis, always concerned about his physical appearance, his first worry was that the illness meant he didn’t look as handsome as he wanted to be. This sent him into a tailspin of self-doubt. I asked Sharon Gabet what she remembered about how Dennis looked at this time. She said: “We all noticed something was wrong, of course, because he started losing a lot of weight. He looked sick. He was white as a sheet. Yes, he was vain, but what actor isn’t? Everyone would fight to get to the mirror. We teased him about it all the time. But we could see he was losing energy. The word on the set at the time was that he had mono. He never said anything. He was quiet about it.” Friends told me that eventually Dennis went to see a doctor, who diagnosed that he had AIDS. Henri Belolo, Dennis old record producer, still saw Dennis socially, and he was one of the first people who Dennis told about his illness. Henri told me: “Poor guy. AIDS. That was a horrible time. Except we didn’t call it AIDS, we called it Kaposi’s sarcoma. We didn’t know what was happening, and it was frightening.” Dennis’ partner Joey tended to him throughout his illness, but understandably, the diagnosis took a toll on Dennis. “He started getting grumpy,” Sharon Gabet remembered. “We all felt terrible later because we were mean to him. Nobody got away with anything on set, so we’d say things like, “Oh, come on, Dennis. Stop being so grumpy! It was very, very sad because no one knew he had AIDS. To be honest, no one really even knew what AIDS was then.” Eventually, Dennis was unable to continue working on ‘The Edge of Night’, and his character was written out of the show. His last episode aired on October 18, 1984, just 12 days shy of his fifth anniversary of his first air date on the show. You can see Dennis’ last appearances on YouTube. It’s a sad experience. This was less than seven years after he had played virile, athletic, sexually attractive lead characters in sex films, five years after people across the country had lusted over him seeing him singing on The Merv Griffin Show, a couple of years after he’d started running across the TV screen as a police captain. These final scenes show a thinner Dennis, looking tired and weary, and moving with difficulty. A few years ago, Sharon Gabet, went back and re-watched the final 18 months of the show. She hadn’t seen it in over 30 years: she found Dennis’ deterioration on camera shocking. “Looking back,” she remembered, “it’s pretty evident to me that Dennis was dying. He would just have enough energy to give his lines and then you would find him asleep in the chair or laying on one of the couches. He just couldn’t do it anymore. They kept cutting his part back.” Dennis left the show, and ‘The Edge of Night’ was cancelled a few months later. He was treated at the Cabrini Medical Center near where he lived in mid-town Manhattan, and his mother returned to New York to be with him. Painfully aware of his physical deterioration, he didn’t want to see anyone, and that included friends, present and past. His one-time partner, Skip St. James, remembered: “I wasn’t in close contact with Dennis but I didn’t visit him because I heard he didn’t want anyone to see the way he looked. I remember seeing ‘The Edge of Night’ before he had to leave. He looked so bad.” His brother Richard, remembered that on his 38th birthday, in October 1984, Dennis said that he was determined it would not be his last birthday. He said he would have other birthdays. He died three months later to the day on January 28th, 1985 in the same apartment in New York in which he’d been living since the late 1960s. * The aftermath of Dennis’ passing was characterized by rumors that he’d killed himself. Henri Belolo remembered: “There was a mystery about the way he died. I mean, we know that he caught AIDS. But some people say that he died because he shot himself with a gun. Perhaps it’s because they want to create more drama, who knows?” Skip St. James heard the same stories: “A friend called me up and said that Dennis had shot himself. That was the rumor for a time. There were so many conflicting stories.” Sharon Gabet heard that Dennis had died just after she gave birth: “When they gave me the news that Dennis had died, the words AIDS were never used. No one knew about it.” Even the obituary that appeared in Variety didn’t mention AIDS, just referring instead to “a brief illness.” The same obituary also omitted any mention of his adult film career. Dennis died young, at the age of 38. And what happened to those who shared their lives with him? Skip St James, the first partner Dennis lived with in New York, was alive and well when I researched this story, and generously shared his memories. Joey Phipps who cared for Dennis at the end, went to live in California after Dennis’ death. In the early 1990s, he too contracted AIDS. This was a different era than when Dennis had contracted the illness. By now, cocktails of drugs were available which could have saved Joey. Unfortunately, he had other health issues and his body rejected the new drugs. Joey tried a variety of alternative cures. The costs were high, and he declared bankruptcy in 1995. Joey passed away on December 6th, 1996. As for Jacques Morali, after the huge disco successes of the 1970s, his career had gone quiet for a few years. In 1990, several years after Dennis’ passing, Jacques gave a rare interview, and reflected on his career: “I think that the respect (for the work I’ve done) will come one day,” he said. “Perhaps after I die. I’ve had AIDS for five years, and most of my hits were back before I was ill.” When he was asked for his happiest memory out of all the hundreds of artists he’d recorded with and the thousands of songs he’d produced, Jacques paused and said: “Dennis Parker. I was completely in love with him. It was Dennis who sung ‘Like an Eagle’. When Dennis died, it completely shook me.” Jacques died of AIDS in 1991. He was buried in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, in France. * I’ve heard it say that when you write a biography of someone, you end up revealing more about yourself than you do about the subject. And I guess that might be true with this profile of Dennis Posa. Over the past three episodes, I recorded facts, memories, and opinions. They tell the outline of Dennis’ life and the road markings of his journey – but do they reveal who he really was? Do you feel like you’d know him now if he walked into your life? I’m not sure I do. But PERHAPS the mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve but rather a reality to experience. I’ll keep looking out for Dennis on Eighth Avenue, outside the theaters, inside the bars, and whenever I walk past his apartment on East 38th St. * * The post Wade Nichols: ‘Like an Eagle’ – His Untold Story Part 3: The Soap Opera King – Podcast 154 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

I’ve always loved movies, especially the films I grew up with in the 1970s. I was seduced by their gritty realism, social commentary, complex characters, and a more honest portrayal of the human condition. And I was fan of that generation of film stars too: always surprising, sometimes conflicted figures, artists more than the celebrities that we have today. Movie genres seemed less important to me, so when I first saw Wade Nichols in an adult film on the big screen, it had just as big effect on me as, say, seeing Brando in ‘The Godfather’, De Niro in ‘Taxi Driver,’ or that fish thing in ‘Jaws.’ Ever since then, it feels that Wade Nichols has always been a part of my life, never far away from my thoughts. I’ve sometimes found myself wondering what it would’ve been like if Wade Nichol’s career had continued into the mainstream. Wade Nichols is Indiana Jones in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ perhaps. Or how about John McLane in ‘Die Hard.’ Mr. Miyagi in ‘The Karate Kid.’ Ok, scrub that last one. The point is that he captured my imagination in a way that was just as powerful as many of the recognized greats, and so I wondered about the possible twists and turns of his life that were prevented by his death. Years ago, I turned my attention to finding who he really was, and perhaps also, why he’d remained important to me ever since my teenage years. That disproportionate impact of an early moment in your life that is instrumental in creating your adult sense of self. This is Wade Nichols: ‘Like An Eagle’ – His Untold Story. This is Part 2. Parental Advisory Warning for those not familiar with The Rialto Report: this podcast episode contains disco music. This may be disturbing for younger listeners who may wish to switch off. As for the rest of you, clear a space on the dance floor and let’s get down. This podcast is 42 minutes long. ————————————————————————————————————————————– In 1975, Donna Summer was a little-known American singer who’d been living in Germany for eight years where she’d appeared in stage musicals. One day, she was playing around with a single lyric, ‘Love to Love You Baby,’ which she sang to an Italian musician and record producer, Giorgio Moroder. He liked the hook, and came back a few days later, having turned it into a three-minute disco song. He suggested to Donna they record it together. She wasn’t sure about the idea, mainly because the whole thing that Giorgio had come up with just sounded so damn sexual. In the end, she agreed to sing it as a demo which they could give to someone else. So she did, but the trouble was that her erotic moans and groans so impressed everyone who heard it that, they decided to release it as a Donna Summer single anyway, and ‘Love to Love You’ went on to become a small-time hit in Europe. Fast forward a few weeks, and a tape of the song found its way to Neil Bogart, who was the president of Casablanca Records in the U.S. He listened, liked it, and decided to play it at a party at his home the same night. Next day, Bogart got Moroder on the phone. There was a problem with the song, he said: at the party, he’d started playing the song and approached a girl, but by the time he’d started speaking to her, the three-minute single had come to an end. So he had to run back to the tape deck, rewind it, and start playing it again before resuming his pick-up lines with the girl. Just as he got to the stage of propositioning her, the damn song ended again. Same drill: rewind the tape, and start it over again. A few minutes later, he was at the point of asking the girl to join him in the bedroom when, you guessed it, the song finished once more. So, as Bogart protested to Moroder, “How is this meant to work?” Giorgio threw the question back to him: “How long do you need to meet a girl, chat her up, seal the deal, take her to the boudoir, and do the deed?” he asked. Bogart paused, doing the sexual math in his head: “I reckon sixteen minutes should be enough,” he said. And so, sure enough, Moroder and Donna Summer made a recording of the song that lasted just over 16 minutes, and released that version in the U.S. In fact, it took up the entire first side of the album of the same name. But it worked, and the single hit number one on the Dance chart and became one of the great disco songs of all time. I once read that a group of scientists estimated than 1.5 million babies had been conceived to that 16-minute record. The time was right for music and explicit sex to be combined. And so who was better placed to take advantage than Dennis Parker? * 1976 Let’s go back to 1976. They say when a man makes plans, God laughs. Certainly, Dennis’ life was nothing like he’d planned, but he had few complaints. For a start, he was now a movie star, adored and lusted over by men and women, earning reasonable money for his screen appearances in X-rated movies, and regularly interviewed in magazines who fawned over his acting talent, not to mention his smooth 1970s good looks. Every couple of months, Dennis would get a call from someone on the adult film scene offering him another porn job. He’d always happily accept, turn up and do the business – which usually meant reciting lines with casual, effortless cool, having sex with the latest starlet, and then leaving with a few hundred dollars cash in hand. Most porn film jobs took a matter of hours, usually over a day or two, though sometimes there’d be an ambitious project where an aspiring sex-film Francis Ford Coppola wannabe had raised enough money to make a movie they were convinced would be the mythical mainstream cross-over success. Films like ‘Blonde Ambition,’ ‘Punk Rock,’ ‘Honeymoon Haven,’ and ‘Maraschino Cherry’ came and went with Dennis calmly enhancing them all and impressing fellow performers and fans alike. By now, he’d jacked in his office day job, which meant that he had more time to devote to his art, carpentry, motorbike, jazz record collection, and his partner, a young actor/model, Joey Phipps, who he adored and doted on. They lived a quiet life in Dennis’ tiny apartment, punctuated by wild nights out in Manhattan sex clubs. Ah the gay clubs of the 70s: Dennis came out when he was in college and spent the next decade in New York’s darkest, horniest and most outrageous corners. Their names are all you need to know. The Eagles Nest, the Anvil, the Ramrod, and the Toilet. It was the era of poppers, gloryholes, and anonymous hook-ups in sweaty backrooms. As if that wasn’t enough, Dennis also had a sideline as a male escort for wealthy clients who responded to his weekly ad for personal services. It was extra cash, and his friends told me about how he enjoyed meeting different people and making them happy. In short, Dennis’ was a normal life in which almost everything was abnormal. And then it all changed. He met a Frenchman, a music producer who’d recently moved to New York and was starting to enjoy huge international success writing and producing disco hits. He had an impish, youthful face with a chipmunk smile. His name was Jacques Morali. * The Birth of Disco Jacques Morali was born in 1947, the year before Dennis, in Casablanca, French Morocco, to a Moroccan Jewish family. According to legend, he had a fiercely protective upbringing, and there are stories that he was dressed as a girl by his mother when he was growing up. When he was 13, his family moved to France, where Jacques became a musical prodigy, gifted at playing different instruments, and writing songs in any style. He wasn’t afraid to be different: he was original, flamboyant, and gay. He was also outgoing, outrageous, and gregarious, and seemed to know everyone on the music scene in Paris. By the end of the 1960s, he was in demand, writing music for orchestras, for the Crazy Horse cabaret and strip club, and for himself in his bid to launch a career as a solo artist. And because of his knack for writing instant melodies, he was also writing and producing songs for others. An example Is an early single, a long-forgotten song called ‘Viva Zapata’ for a long-forgotten artist called ‘Clint Farwood’ which gives you an example of the hallmarks of his developing style. Upbeat, check. Cheesy, check. Annoyingly catchy, you bet. But Jacques, just like his music, was restless and always changing, and he was constantly looking for the next big idea. He was also impatient, demanding, and dissatisfied with the level of his success in France, so he started to look to America as being where he could really hit the big time. In the early 1970s, he discovered the music that was coming out of a studio in Philadelphia called Sigma Sound where the Philadelphia International Records label were recording a streak of hit singles. Songs like the O’Jays’ ‘Love Train,’ recorded at Sigma Sound, which hit number one in 1972. As strange as it sounds, Jacques Morali wasn’t the only prominent music producer and songwriter in Paris at the time who came from a Moroccan Jewish family in Casablanca, Morocco – and the other one was Henri Belolo. Given their similar backgrounds, it was natural they gravitated to each other. Henri was ten years older than Jacques: he was also a talented musician, but he differed in that he was also a highly successful entrepreneur: Henri had already set up his own record label and music publishing company, imported and promoted records into France, as well as organized concerts in Paris by the likes of James Brown and the Bee Gees. And, just like Jacques, Henri was eyeing the music scene in America. In 1973, Henri traveled to New York and set up a record company called Can’t Stop Productions to establish a presence in the U.S. music market. During his trip, he went down to Philadelphia to see friends, and that’s where he discovered the same music scene that Jacques had fallen in love with. I met and spoke to Henri Belolo several times over the years, and his excitement for that music still shone decades later. As he told me: “I started to listen to this ‘Philly Sound.’ I became friends with the owner of Sigma Sound, which was the famous recording studio where all of the Philly people were recording, and I got acquainted with musicians and arrangers and the music that came out of Philadelphia International Records.” In particular, Henri loved ‘TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)’ by The Three Degrees. The song was released in 1974 as the theme for the American musical television program ‘Soul Train,’ and it was the first television theme song to reach No. 1. Henri told me that the song and the visuals of the TV show changed his life: “I suddenly knew that the next generation of music stars would be more beautiful to look at,” he said, “and that these new artists would be more physical and sexual.” Henri was so impressed with the city that he set up a talent scout office in Philadelphia. As he told me, “I returned to France a different man. I promised myself that I would come back to America, and Philadelphia, when I found THE idea. I just needed to find something unique and big and hot.” So here you have two Moroccan Jews, one gay and one straight, both based in Paris, both ambitious, and talented musically, both enamored by the music coming out of Sigma Studio in Philadelphia, and both looking for ways to break into the American music scene. Back in France, Henri says Jacques started turning up at his office to offer his services: “He was so enthusiastic,” Henri remembered, “Jacques dreamt of going to America, so he was pitching new ideas to me every week.” In the end, Henri told Jacques that if he came up with one really good idea, then he’d take him to America – but it had to be a really special idea, because nothing that Jacques had suggested so far had convinced him. Then in 1975, a breakthrough. Jacques went to see Henri and told him his latest idea: he’d found an old Carmen Miranda song, ‘Brazil’, that he wanted a group of larger-than-life females to sing, and record it with production values that would turn it into an epic record for the clubs. It was a crazy idea, but Henri liked the concept: “You have to remember the word ‘disco’ didn’t really exist at that stage,” he remembered. “But I loved the idea of making a big club record: it captured my imagination, so I agreed to work on it with Jacques.” Not only did he like the idea, Henri agreed to finance a residency for Jacques at Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia, the very home of the music they both loved. The two of them flew out to Philadelphia and within two weeks they’d found three beautiful black women who they named The Ritchie Family, even though the singers were entirely unrelated to each other, and then Jacques hired the best strings and horns from the elite pool of Philly Sound musicians. The single ‘Brazil’ was released in July 1975, and it was the U.S. hit that Jacques and Henri wanted: it peaked at No. 11 on the Hot 100, became a worldwide success, and Billboard were so impressed they created a separate Disco chart for the first time: Brazil hit No. 1 on that chart too. The record convinced Jacques and Henri they should continue to work together, and so they both moved over to the U.S., and became long-term musical partners and a virtual disco-hit factory. Belolo would write the lyrics and handle the business side, and Jacques provided the hook-driven, dance music. More success came quickly with No. 1 disco hits, such as ‘The Best Disco In Town’ (1976) Jacques’ music was characterized by simple arrangements, a unique sense of camp, and simple catchy melodies that could be remembered easily. It wasn’t rocket science, but it didn’t need to be – few others could do it as well as him. In the next eight years between 1974 and 1982, he recorded over 65 albums, for artists as diverse as Cher, Dalida, and Pia Zadora. Henri and Jacques were on top of the world, splitting their time between New York and Philadelphia. Henri remembered that if they weren’t producing music, they were partying: “We were going every night of the week to every club in town,” he told me. “That included the straight and gay clubs – Jacques was gay, I was not – but we had a lot of gay friends, and I was always keen to know what they listened to. I would dance until the early hours, and then go home and get some sleep. But Jacques would party all night – and it was on one of those nights when he met Dennis.” * Dennis meets Jacques There is some mystery surrounding how Dennis first met Jacques. Some friends, including Dennis’ brother Richard, thought that it must have been at a bar or a disco. Could be, though it seems less likely to me as Dennis didn’t spend a lot of his time in discos, and the bars he frequented tended to be ones that were more interested in sex than music. According to others, they met through the ad that Dennis ran in the weekly newspapers. “That was what Dennis told me,” said a friend called Chip that I spoke to. “He told me that Jacques was lonely, or horny, one weekend, and came across Dennis’s ad offering company.” What is known is that when they met in 1977, Jacques instantly fell head over heels in love with Dennis. As Henri Belolo remembered: “Jacques told me straight away that he’d met this sexy and handsome guy that he was madly attracted to. He always said he loved a good-looking mustache! So obviously, Dennis fit that description.” Chip concurred: “Jacques was completely besotted by Dennis, it was obvious for everyone to see. His world suddenly revolved around Dennis.” And so, while Jacques’ music career in America was taking off and he was becoming a household name in the music world, he and Dennis started a romantic and physical relationship. It was a fascinating union: on the one side, a flamboyant, big-time disco music producer, and on the other, a quiet jazz-loving porn star with a sideline doing escort work. There are many aspects that intrigue me here: firstly, there was the fact that Dennis was still starring in adult films when he met Jacques – and continued doing so after they met. But far from being a problem for their relationship, Jacques was intrigued by the emerging and sexual world of XXX, and he enjoyed Dennis’ stature as a sex star. As Henri told me, “Jacques was excited by the fact that Dennis was a porn star… not only in gay movies but in straight movies too. It just increased the allure that Dennis had in Jacques eyes. It was a challenge for him to have an affair with a porn star like Dennis.” And in the free love, anything-goes, no-judgement world of the New York club scene in the mid 1970s, Dennis’ porn films posed no risk to Jacques’ career – if anything, Dennis’ sexual standing was an asset to Jacques. But if Dennis was perfect for Jacques, was the reverse true? What did Dennis find attractive in Jacques? Tip Sanderson, a friend of Dennis at the time, reckoned that it was the showbiz allure that was the appeal for Dennis. “What Jacques had in his favor was the music business,” Tip says. “The glitz, the scene, the money… and he exploited it to the max. He told Dennis he would make him a star, a big music star. Dennis was seduced by that. I mean, who wouldn’t be?” But was it love between Jacques and Dennis? Friends are still skeptical. Tip Sanderson said this: “Jacques was clearly infatuated with Dennis. Totally in love with him. It was sheer physical attraction. But Jacques wasn’t Dennis’ physical type at all, so perhaps the attraction wasn’t as… mutual.” Henri Belolo agreed saying, “Jacques was in love with Dennis, but I don’t know about Dennis. It’s hard to know, but I doubt it. Was Dennis really attracted to Jacques? I don’t think it was mutual. But the fact that Jacques was a successful music producer definitely helped their relationship.” Which brings me to another question. What happened to Joey Phipps in all this, Dennis’ partner who he’d been close to and living with for a while? That was a problem, everyone admitted to me. Most said that Dennis was still in love with Joey. As Tip Sanderson told me: “It was sad because they were tight. In the end, Dennis chose Jacques over Joey. Maybe the allure of fame was more powerful than his feelings for Joey. Either way, Dennis moved in with Jacques.” So Jacques and Dennis became a couple, with Dennis leaving Joey behind in his tiny, beloved apartment, and he moved in with Jacques, a few blocks away, in his luxury, extensive suite at The Bristol, a prestigious uptown New York address in the Sutton Place neighborhood. For some reason, I’m reminded of the Terrence Malick period drama film, ‘Days of Heaven’. It came out around the same time that all this was going on. The comparison is imperfect, sure, but if you haven’t seen the movie, the plot involves an impoverished couple, played by Richard Gere and Brooke Adams. Their life is a struggle though they are essentially happy – but then Gere’s character encourages his girlfriend to marry a wealthy grain farmer, played by Sam Shepherd. The reason is the financial security that this will bring. So she leaves Gere, and he’s left living in their small sharecropper property looking up the hill at the mansion into which she’s moved. There’s a heartbreaking element of poignancy and sadness to their separation, and a reminder that not all stories of true love have a happy ending. Did Dennis get what he wanted but lost what he had? Did his new lifestyle come at the cost of love? It certainly was a step up in terms of lifestyle: being an adult film star had given Dennis’ life an occasional glamor, but this paled in comparison to what he experienced with Jacques. Richard Posa, Dennis’ brother, remembers Dennis telling him that Jacques was making around $8 million a year – and this was back in the 1970s. Jacques was generous with his money, and Dennis’ lifestyle changed overnight. For Dennis, the days of the dark and moody gay leather clubs were over. It was now fancy discos like Studio 54, The Loft, and the Paradise Garage. Steven Gaines, a friend of them both, told me about visiting their apartment: “Jacques gave me a tour. He took me to the bedroom which was really over the top, and everything in it was super-expensive. There was this beautiful suede headboard – and Jacques said in a thick French accent, “Zees ees where I fist fuck my boyfriend.” I don’t know what I was thinking, but I said, “But what about that suede headboard… aren’t you afraid of ruining it?” Jacques looked horrified, and said, “Whaaat? Do you think we’re peeegs?!’” Which reminded Steven of a joke that he told me: “How do you make a gay man scream during sex? You wipe your hands on the drapes.” Henri Belolo, Jacques’s music business partner, was living around the corner from Jacques and Dennis, and they would all hang out regularly. As Henri remembered: “I was great friends with Dennis, and I liked him a lot. We had dinner regularly. And my wife liked him because he was a good guy, very soft-spoken, well mannered, and elegant. In many respects, Dennis was the opposite to Jacques. Jacques was loud and extravagant, and Dennis was quiet and reserved. I’m sure that Jacques drove Dennis crazy a lot of the time.”  * The Village People There are two stories about the how the idea for the Village People first came about. Jacques’ version was that he went to a costume ball at Les Mouches, a gay disco in Greenwich Village, way over on 11th Street on the west side. He was so impressed by all the costumes and the macho male characters portrayed by the party guests, that the idea came to him to put together a group of singers and dancers, each one playing a different gay fantasy figure. Henri Belolo remembers it differently, saying that he and Jacques were walking through the Village one day, when they saw a man in a native American Indian outfit walking down the street, complete with bells attached to his feet. They followed him into a bar where he danced on the tables – watched by a cowboy and construction worker. According to Henri, “Jacques and I looked at each other and suddenly had the same idea. We said “My God, these characters. They represent the different types of the American man. We need to start a music group like this!” Whichever story you believe, they took the concept and started work on a single, and signed a licensing deal with Casablanca Records, one of the most famous disco labels – and founded by Neil Bogart, the same Bogart who had requested the 16-minute version of ‘Love to Love You, Baby.’ The label was already prestigious because of acts like Kiss and Donna Summer, but according to Henri, he and Jacques were most excited just because of the name, given that they’d both been born in Casablanca. They decided to name the new group ‘The Village People’ because the idea came from the characters they’d seen in the Village, and the first single was ‘San Francisco (You’ve Got Me).’ The irony was that when the single came out, the group just consisted of one singer, a Broadway star called Victor Willis, who was appearing in the Broadway production of ‘The Wiz’ at the time, and they dressed him up as a cop. Sales of the single soared, and so, as Henri told me, “We said to each other, ‘We’d better put together a real group now’ because we’d signed up to an album with Casablanca Records.” They set about assembling a group of five males, each one having his own distinctive character. To do this they took out an ad in a theatre trade paper which read: “Macho Types Wanted: Must Dance And Have A Moustache.” And who fit that bill better than Dennis? Henri told me that Jacques had been looking for an opportunity to give Dennis a starring music opportunity ever since they had first met: he told me, “To be honest, every time Jacques met someone, he’d say, “I will make of you a star, my dear” with his big French accent. And Dennis was no exception. Except of course, Jacques was in love with him. So this time, Jacques was really serious about it.” Dennis’ brother Richard remembered the same: “When Jacques was putting the Village People together, he offered Dennis a role in the group.” It’s intriguing to imagine Dennis as a member of the Village People. Would he have assumed one of the character identities that ended up in the group, or would he have developed a different identity of his own? Somewhere along the line however, the idea was dropped in favor of making Dennis a star in his own right. As Dennis’ friend Tip Sanderson said to me: “Dennis said that he and Jacques decided that they would not make him part of the Village People – where he would be only one of five members of a group, but rather they’d hold him back and launch him as a solo star instead. And so, the two of them carefully mapped out a plan to create a music career for Dennis.” Meanwhile the rest of the members of the Village People were hired – representing stereotypes such as a leather man, cowboy, construction worker, and native American. They were largely recruited for their look rather musical abilities, with Victor Willis, taking all the main vocal duties. Together they became one of the most successful acts of the disco era with hits such as ‘YMCA’ (1978), ‘Macho Man’ (1978), ‘In the Navy’ (1979), and ‘Go West’ (1980). Their success only increased Jacques Morali’s reputation as a top disco producer and star maker. * Dennis Parker – Disco Star I was intrigued by the decision to give Dennis a solo singing career. I wondered what Dennis thought of the idea. Was he just as excited by it, or did he go along with it because of Jacques’ ambition and exhilaration? On the one hand, Dennis’ ex-boyfriend Skip had told me that Dennis always wanted to be a torch singer, and so this was an opportunity to be produced by one of the hottest disco producers in the land. Dennis did love performing and though this wasn’t acting on a theater stage, it was still about embodying a character. But then there was another side to it: Dennis was a private person, happiest when doing carpentry, driving on his motorbike, and listening to his jazz records. How did he feel about making himself a more public figure? And then there was the type of music Dennis would be singing. Tip Sanderson saw this contradiction too: “Dennis wasn’t a big pop or disco music fan,” Tip said. “So he had a few reservations about the idea of a solo dance music career. But Jacques was so enthusiastic that I guess Dennis was caught up in the excitement.” Whatever doubts existed however, Dennis signed up and went along with Jacques’ vision of making him a disco star – and the first step was a significant one. These are the words of Skip St. James, Dennis’ former partner from the early 1970s: “I saw Dennis on and off after our relationship ended. I knew he’d been dating Jacques Morali. Then at one point, Dennis disappeared completely for a short while. When he re-appeared, he said he’d been in Philadelphia. I was struck by the change in his appearance. He had new teeth and a new nose! His old nose was a handsome Roman one, and when he came back he had a turned-up nose that he said was modeled after mine. I didn’t like his nose because I adored his old one. To be honest, I think he was better looking before the nose and teeth work.” It was true, when Dennis started to be groomed by Jacques for disco stardom, his appearance changed noticeably: his cheekbones, nose, and chin were now leaner, sharper, and more pronounced than the way he looked in the films and the photo features. He looked great, just rather different than the adult film star, and completely different from the nerdy school kid in the pictures that his brother Richard had sent me. The second change that Dennis made was that he stopped making X-rated films. Unlike many ex-adult film stars who leave the business and immediately disavow their sex film past, Dennis never did. The sex films were not something he ever regretted or denied. But his retirement from the adult business was the only sensible course of action if he was going to make a serious bid for stardom in mainstream America. It wasn’t a difficult choice: he was in his thirties, he’d already appeared in over 30 sex films, he didn’t need the money, and according to his friends he felt it was time for a change anyway. One of the last events of his sex movie career was that Screw magazine voted him ‘Man of the Year’ in 1978. Dennis got a kick out of that, and bought copies for all his friends. So now Dennis looked the part, and had a superstar producer in Jacques in his corner, but what about the singing part of this career change. After all, his singing activity hadn’t consisted of much more than humming along to his jazz records, so recording a whole album was going to be a completely new experience for him. One of the skeptics was Henri Belolo. Henri told me about the day he first learned of the idea: “Jacques said to me, ‘We’re going to make an album with Dennis.’ I told him, ‘But Jacques, we can’t. He’s not a singer!’ Jacques said, ‘I know. He’s an actor, but he’s good looking and believe me, we can make him a star. Trust me.’” Jacques’ argument was that they’d already turned several non-singers into the Village People – so why not Dennis? So together they agreed to produce an album for Dennis. Not that Jacques went easy on Dennis: Henri told me that Jacques made Dennis work hard. He got Dennis to take singing lessons, practice night and day, and prepare intensively. And then in 1978, Jacques secured a record deal for Dennis with Casablanca Records, and so the record idea suddenly became real. Henri and Jacques snapped into action and started to assemble a selection of songs. Henri described how they split the work: “Jacques and I had different roles,” he told me. “Jacques was the melodist. He was a magician with all the hooks and the melodies. I was the one that came up with the ideas for the lyrics. But my English was not too good at that time, so I started to write the song in French or in bad English and then I got help.” One of the people he turned to for lyrics for Dennis’ record was Steven Gaines, a journalist who’d just written an article about how the Village People had been formed. Gaines told me, “I wrote about how Jacques was selling the Village People like a sports team with different characters and personalities. And now, he was going on to ‘invent’ somebody else – and that was Dennis.” Jacques loved the write-up, so he called Gaines up and suggested that he write the lyrics for Dennis’ album. Gaines recalled that a few days later, Jacques sent him click tracks to work with. The click tracks were just audio clicks to show the rhythm of the song… nothing else. But he gave it a shot, and came up with the lyrics for ‘Like an Eagle’.” Gaines recalled Jacques’ reaction to that song: “When Jacques heard it, he said that the words were too complicated for people to listen to on a dance floor. I’d done a lot of work on them, and believe me, they weren’t that complicated! Jacques said he would work on them. He did – and in the end, the lyrics were as follows…: ‘Like an Eagle, Like an Eagle, Like an Eagle, Like an Eagle, Like an Eagle, always searching, always wanting, Like an Eagle.’ So, he certainly made them much less complicated…” When the songs were ready, Jacques and Henri assembled many of the musicians that had played on their favorite records that came out of Philly, including the same rhythm section that featured on the Village People records. Also notable is that they decided to use synthesizers instead of strings, which was new for the time. When everything was ready they booked, where else?, the Sigma Sound studios – but not the original location in Philadelphia. In 1977, a second Sigma Sound studio had opened in New York City. It was located in the Ed Sullivan Theater building – that’s the same building where David Letterman’s and Stephen Colbert’s Late Show is filmed each night. This studio was used by the Village People for their records, and would later be used by singers and groups like Madonna, the Talking Heads, Rick James, Aretha Franklin, the Ramones, Whitney Houston, Paul Simon and others. The whole endeavor was now a big deal, and Dennis was at the heart of it all. How did he cope with the pressure, in that environment, in that recording studio? He was surrounded by professional musicians of the highest quality, used to recording with many of the great vocalists of the time. Was he overawed, out of his depth, and did he struggle? I contacted many of the musicians who recorded with Dennis to find out their memories of making the record. Alfonso Carey was the first I spoke to. He was the bass player that played on all the Village People hits… from ‘YMCA’ to ‘Macho Man’ and the rest, as well as records by The Ritchie Family and Patti Labelle. In fact, he also wrote the song ‘Why Don’t You Boogie’ for Dennis which was included on the record. Carey’s first memory was that he found Jacques flamboyant: “Jacques was very ‘out there,’ “Carey told me. “He would let you know in a minute that he was wonderful and gay. He brought Dennis into the studio, and Dennis was completely different. We thought he was cool, and much more chill than Jacques.” I asked Carey about Dennis’ vocal ability. He said that Dennis had talent, not like Victor Willis of the Village People with a voice that could really move you, but he was somebody who could hold a note and that he did all right. Henri Belolo also remembered being impressed with Dennis: “Dennis voice was actually pretty good!” he told me. “We had to work around it at times, for example, Jacques sang certain passages at the same time as Dennis to augment Dennis’ vocals. So on ‘Like an Eagle’ when you hear the high voice sing just after the chorus, that’s mainly Jacques singing. We also used background singers to cover up some parts as well. But I have to say, honestly, Dennis did his part, and did a great singing job for someone who had no experience.” Phil Hurtt was Dennis vocal coach and he also wrote two songs for Dennis’ album: ‘I’m A Dancer’ and ‘I Need Your Love’. Hurtt told me that when Dennis recorded the album, the musicians were actually not there most of the time. That was normal. They’d already recorded the basic tracks by then. So when Dennis was in the studio, he was just there with Jacques and Henri, the engineers, and Phil himself. “I was the only one actually in the recording booth with Dennis because I was teaching him the vocals. I stood alongside him until he got it. That was what I always did.” Phil Hurtt was keen to point out that Dennis had a better voice than you hear on the record. “I think he was misused,” Phil said. “I think if he had been working with a producer who knew how to produce different types of music then he would have done even better. He was a nice guy though. Quiet and polite.” The other song that Gaines wrote for Dennis was ‘New York By Night.’ This is how Gaines remembers writing it: “I wanted to write something that was contemporary about New York, and so I included details like the hustlers on 53rd St. Henri told me: “The lyrics of ‘New York By Night’ are fantastic. One of my favorite lines goes – ‘At Studio 54, they’re waiting at the door, Can’t get in, just can’t win.’ It captures the moment when we went to Studio 54 every night. We were in the middle of the disco revolution. It was crazy, my God, but so much life, so much happiness, so much enjoyment. We weren’t fighting a war, the economy wasn’t too bad, and people wanted to go out after Vietnam. They wanted to have a good time. Sex was starting to get liberated, the gays were starting to come out. Everything was exploding, it was a new generation, and of course they did not want to be the old generation that was pop or rock – they wanted to be disco. That’s what it was.” Once again, Jacques said it was too complicated. He wanted me to dumb it down because he said that Dennis couldn’t sing so many words that quickly.” But this time, Jacques was overruled, both by Dennis, who insisted that he could handle the words, and Henri Belolo – who loved the lyrics. Whoever I spoke to, everyone always seemed to come back to Dennis’ personal qualities. He was gentle, kind, and considerate. Carla Bandini-Lory, the record’s Assistant Producer told me: “Dennis was a sweetheart, and he impressed everyone. He was a gentleman, he held open doors, never acted above the support staff – which many other people at that time did. He was a total pro. He listened, he took direction from Jacques, and he understood what was going on. Even so, he was always in Jacques’ shadow. Everyone was in Jacques’ shadow. Jacques was always the biggest personality in every room.” Steven Gaines, the writer of ‘Like an Eagle’ and ‘New York By Night’, went to the studio and to watched them record his songs, and his memory was similar: “Dennis was very cool, and very low key. I don’t remember a big ego or personality thing about him at all. Jacques was a French queen, quite the opposite… a big flamboyant character. When Jacques was good, he was very, very good, but when he got mean, he was really horrid.” Henri Belolo agreed, and admitted that sometimes Jacques would blow up. Henri said: “During the recording sessions, Jacques got upset and frustrated with Dennis. Jacques could be rude with him. I kept telling Jacques, ‘Relax. Dennis is not a professional singer. You must be patient with him, he’s doing his best. It was your idea to do this album with Dennis, so now you have to learn to work with him. The final result will be good.’ But what amazed me was that Dennis was very calm even when Jacques was angry. Dennis was always calm. I never saw him excited or shouting or mad. He was a pleasure.” Henri was the Executive Producer for the record, so had overall creative control of the record, and he told me he was happy how it turned out. Neil Bogart, the head of Casablanca Records, liked it as well and was excited to release it. Dennis adopted the name ‘Dennis Parker’ to distance himself from Wade Nichols and his previous career as a sex film star. The last step was a photo session of Dennis in New York at night for the record sleeve. Let’s spend a moment on that LP cover, as it’s magnificent. If you haven’t seen, try googling it. It features Dennis at his zenith, all cheekbones, moustache, a hint of a dimple in his sculpted chin, and casually tousled yet carefully curated shoulder-length hair, dressed in a denim shirt and a gray sports jacket. Somehow looking coy, mistrustful and confident at the same time. He knows a secret that he might just share with you… if you’re good to him, that is. I’d pick this picture for my mantelpiece over the Mona Lisa any day of the week. So everything was in place, but how would the disco crowd react? After all, no one had even heard the record yet. Steven Gaines remembers that, just before ‘Like an Eagle’ came out as a single, Jacques got a disc jockey to play it at a gay club called the Flamingo one night. The Flamingo was a calculated choice: the club had opened in 1974, and was New York’s first exclusively gay disco. It was located in an upstairs loft space on the second floor of a building at the corner of Houston and Broadway. The club was actually secret and had an unlisted telephone number because there was a constant fear of police raids. And it was exclusive too: members paid up to six hundred dollars a year for a membership. It was known for its wild parties, there were stories of a Crucifixion night with models dressed as Roman legionaries and a Jesus Christ who would, from time to time, turn his eyes heavenward and ascend a cross. This was the crowd that would be the first in the world to hear Dennis Parker. Gaines, understandably, decided he wanted to see his song unveiled publicly for the first time – especially to this audience, so he went along with his lawyer. As he told me, “It was a big dance place, and an important place to launch a record. There were 1,500 gay guys with their shirts off, completely stoned on ethyl chloride. Then the song came on for the first time, and it was really, really thrilling. “People didn’t know it obviously, and it starts with that whooshing sound before building up. “I’ll never forget how exciting that moment was… it just really, really worked well… at least until my not-so-brilliant lyrics started. It got a great reaction, the crowd really loved it.” When the song came to an end, the Flamingo club members demanded that it was played again. And then again, even chanting the title lyrics over and over. For the second time in his life, quiet, unassuming Dennis had become a star again. * The post Wade Nichols: ‘Like an Eagle’ – His Untold Story Part 2: Disco! – Podcast 153 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

This past week I phoned Paul Thomas, former adult performer and film director, also known as PT. I’m heading out to LA shortly and was calling to set up a date with him and his wife. Seeing the two of them when I’m out west is one of my favorite things. It starts sitting together in their backyard under the Los Angeles sun, catching up on what’s been happening since my last visit. Then strolling slowly through the Venice canals as PT pontificates on one thing or another and his wife and I roll our eyes at him, before we end up at a local restaurant lingering over a meal and drinks. PT’s wife picked up his phone. I said I was calling to make a date with them. She told me she’d found PT dead in their home a few hours earlier. She spoke with disbelief. PT had endured a few health challenges in recent years and apparently had been feeling ill over the past few days, but nobody saw this coming. On the contrary, he’d recently suggested to me that we all take a biking holiday together in the south of France. PT’s wife said she couldn’t believe she’d never get to speak with him again. I feel the same way. PT and I had a playful relationship from the very start. While some found PT’s arrogance to be a flaw in his character, I always found it endearing – a feature, not a bug. And not because I enjoy egotism – humility is one of my favorite traits. But because with PT, you could put a pin in his balloon of self-importance and it would fast deflate, leaving us both laughing. I last texted PT a few weeks ago to ask him what he remembered about a director of one of the old adult films he’d acted in. PT wrote back that the director was short and fat and could be overly prescriptive in choreographing the sex scenes. Then he countered saying actually the man was tall and skinny and that he left the performers to direct the scene themselves. Either way, he said, it was too early in the day to be sure, and that he was too sober to think properly about these questions. He wrote, “You know me well enough to know that I’d like to make up all sorts of shit right now because it would make good copy, but I know you don’t want me to stray too far from facts.” He closed the text saying “We have much to talk about. I’ll leave the light on for you when you next come to California.” He was one of the true originals: a talented performer, adult film director, husband, father, and my friend. I’m April Hall, and this is a reprise of my interview with PT.  Please leave the light on for when we meet again. This podcast is 169 minutes long. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Paul Thomas Paul Thomas, or PT as he’s typically known, is one of the iconic names of the adult film industry. He was born Philip Toubus, and started out as a porn performer for the Mitchell Brothers in mid-1970s San Francisco. Until the last few years, was still in the business as a director. During the past four decades, PT won every kind of adult award – from Best Actor to Best Director, and was inducted into every Hall of Fame the sex film industry has ever invented. But there are two aspects to PT’s background that make his presence and success in adult film even more interesting. First he came from a wealthy family – one that owned household-name businesses like Sara Lee and Jim Beam – and he was brought up in relative luxury. And secondly, by the time PT started his career in sex films in his mid 20s, he’d already achieved considerable success and fame on stage in musical theater. He’d starred on Broadway in Hair and played the role of Peter in the 1973 film version of Jesus Christ Superstar. In fact, he was being groomed by the William Morris Agency in Hollywood for a big career in mainstream television and movies. So with all the money and success, what motivated PT to move into the newly formed adult industry – a business frowned upon by much of mainstream society, not to mention full of legal and reputational risks for its participants? It all comes down to a series of questions: Why? Why did he do it, when he had so many alternatives? Why did he stay in the business for so long? And what effect has it had on him? These questions have stayed with PT to this day. I’ve known PT for years, and we’ve talked about doing an interview for almost as long as I’ve known him. We actually started once, but after over five hours of conversation, we realized that we hadn’t even reached the time he’d started school, so we scrapped the idea. Recently though we decided to try again, and this time I got PT to agree to a strict format. I would pick ten areas of his life that have shaped him. Ten provocations – in keeping with the biblical theme of his most famous role in Jesus Christ Superstar. I would ask him whatever I liked about these subjects – and nothing would be off the table. We’d cover adult films, both as an actor and as a director, his troubled relationships, his experiences with drugs, his multiple times in jail, and much, much more. And we’d finally see if we could get closer to answering the question that has plagued PT for so long: why the hell did he go into, and stay in, the adult film industry? This is the first time PT has told his story. These are the ten provocations of PT. * Paul Thomas in Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)   Paul Thomas in Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)           PT and April Hall *   The post R.I.P. Paul Thomas (1949 – 2025) – Podcast Reprise appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Years ago, I first saw the 1970s adult film Barbara Broadcast (1977) on the big screen, and it made a big impression. In the film, there’s a scene which shows a man standing behind an industrial kitchen worktable, a shirtless, mustached piece of beefcake that was Wade Nichols. Rugged yet pretty. Lean, toned, and handsome. He looked like the Marlboro man from the distant plains, if that cowboy had inexplicably turned up in New York and started moonlighting as a Manhattan sous-chef. He had the appearance of a man in love, or a rather a man in lust, most likely with himself. He was the perfect embodiment of the era, that made you wonder if you were to look up ‘1970s America’ in the dictionary, there could well be a picture of Wade Nichols there. I immediately wanted to know more. It turned out he’d been a prolific actor in many adult films over a four-year period in the late 1970s, much loved and much missed. Slowly over the years, I found other details, but often they were in the form of conflicting rumors. Though he’d been the leading man in many straight sex films, he was supposedly gay, or maybe bisexual? Some remembered him better as the lead actor of a popular TV soap opera, while others said he was a big disco recording star who’d come close to being one of the original Village People. And then there was the question of how he’d died: it had been reported that he shot himself in 1985, but others insisted he was a victim of AIDS. I was hooked on finding more. But because it was before the internet age, I had no way of finding out much about him. So, years ago, I started to track down anyone who had known him, from his family, to acquaintances from the New York club, bar, and disco scene, adult film actors and directors, music and television industry friends, and many more, to try and find who he really was. I ended up writing an article for The Rialto Report with the information I learned. But my interest didn’t end then, and I continued to track down, reach out, and contact anyone with memories of him. This is Wade Nichols’ story –  in podcast form. This podcast is 50 minutes long. ———————————————————————————————————– Why is that so many of the movies we first saw as teenagers remain important and enduring to us for the rest of our lives? Same thing for the music and books that we discovered back then. And, why does it become rarer that we have that same deep connection to films we discover as we grow older? Psychologists have suggested it’s because our teen years coincide with the period referred to as “the emergence of the stable and enduring self.” Basically, the thinking is that this period, occurring between the ages of 12 and 22, is the time when you become you. As a result, the experiences that contribute to this process become uncommonly, and disproportionately, important to you throughout the rest of your life. This is because they didn’t just contribute to the development of your self-image; they are part of your self-image. In other words, these experiences and memories become an integral part of your sense of self. Ok, ok, so much for the theory, but what does that have to do with the life of an adult film actor who died 40 years ago? The answer is that today’s story is personal. Well, all the stories that I cover are personal in some way, but this one is perhaps even more so than the rest. When I first saw the 1977 adult film ‘Barbara Broadcast’ as a teenager, I knew nothing about the male lead, Wade Nichols, but he made an impression on my teenage self. I know, I shouldn’t have been in the porn theater in the first place. Wholly inappropriate, too young, etc. and so on. I get it. But I was there, and I watched it. And I liked the film. And yes, just like some of the other films I discovered then, it stayed with me in a strangely meaningful way. It’s part of the reason I wanted to find and tell the stories that I share on The Rialto Report, I think. It became part of understanding that moment as a teen when I sat wide-eyed in a theater. Perhaps part of the memory that had created that sense of self all those years ago. * 1. Freeport, NY (1950s): The first information to know is that ‘Wade Nichols’ was really a fictional character, existing only for the sex film screen. Wade’s real name was Dennis Posa. He was of Italian heritage – a fact that he was proud of. I found out that Dennis’ father originally came from Casamassima, a small town in southern Italy. That was the first surprise to me in this story, because the summer before I saw ‘Barbara Broadcast’ all those years ago, I’d actually visited Casamassima as a young boy. I remember it being a tiny, picturesque place, notable mainly because it was called ‘The Blue Town’. That name dated back to the 1600s when a ship arrived in the nearby port of Bari bringing sailors who’d all been infected with the plague. They came ashore, and all hell broke loose. In a short time over 20,000 locals had died in the epidemic. In response, the most powerful Duke in the town ordered all of the buildings, monuments, and churches to be painted with quicklime mixed with sulphate copper. These chemicals slowed the spread of the plague from infected corpses by accelerating the decomposition of the bodies and thereby reducing the bacteria – and these chemicals were bright blue in color, meaning that the town literally turned blue overnight. It was a story that Dennis would tell over the years – joking that it was ironic that one of the biggest stars of blue movies had, in effect, come from the Blue Town. After moving to America, Dennis’ father grew up in an Italian neighborhood of the Bronx. He was a popular kid and a small-time rogue, and he ran around with a bunch of minor league hoodlums and gamblers, getting in and out of trouble all the time. He hung out in jazz clubs where his friend, the noted jazz musician Johnny Guarnieri, headlined on piano with his band. Dennis’ mother was dating Johnny’s bass player, but when she met Dennis’ father, it was love at first sight – or something like that. They hooked up and got hitched the following year. Dennis’ father was 26, his mother was 20. Once he was married, Dennis’ father felt he had to go straight, so the newlywed couple did the sensible thing and moved out to the commuter town of Freeport, NY, thirty miles east of Manhattan, on the south shore of Long Island. They rented an apartment, and his father got a job as a florist, while his mother worked in the children’s section of the local library.  And there they started a family – two boys, Richard and then Dennis, who was born in 1946. A quick word about Freeport: it was a great place be in the summer, a popular and vibrant spot where people from Manhattan flocked to vacation, but the rest of the year, it was a little different – an anonymous, depressed, forgotten, and empty place – which made it pretty grim for residents. I tracked down Dennis’ brother, Richard. Richard is a quiet-spoken friendly man, with a bemused but huge affection for his younger brother, and he was happy to share memories of their childhood. He fondly remembered their first years which he described as happy and good. Their father was a good-looking man and he was initially caring towards the boys. After a while though, something snapped: overnight, he seemed to lose interest in the family, and started to disappear for weeks at a time. When he returned, he’d fight with his wife – and sometimes get verbally abusive to the boys too. It transpired that a big part of his problem was his gambling, and he regularly squandered the money that was meant for the family’s food. Richard remembered that Friday was the weekly food shop day, but often his father would just take the money and not return home. When this happened, it was usually because he’d fallen behind with bookies, and needed the cash to settle his debts. On one occasion, the family found out that the bookies were threatening to break his legs if he didn’t pay up… so they helped him out and covered the debt for him. But he never paid them back, so the family joked that next time, they were going to be the ones breaking his legs. Richard remembers that it all seems amusing now, but at the time, it had a destabilizing effect on them. It wasn’t a happy childhood any more, he said, and at times, home life became pretty uncomfortable. Dennis was the more daring of the two, and one time he decided he was going to go through their father’s affairs – where he found $8,000 worth of racing stubs. Bear in mind, in those days their father’s annual salary was only $5,000 a year, so this was a huge amount to be betting. Dennis wanted to confront him, and the brothers discussed it but, in the end, decided against the idea. The boys weren’t the only ones suffering: the family problems took a toll on the boys’ mother as well. Just when the boys needed her the most, she became agoraphobic and withdrawn, afraid of leaving the apartment. As a result of all this, neither boy were close to either parent, and initially, they weren’t particularly close to each other either. For a start, the two brothers were very different. Richard was studious, into reading, mathematics, and school work. Dennis liked artistic pursuits, preferring to draw, paint pictures, and make things, developing an interest in carpentry. But physically, there was no getting away from each other. The family apartment was small, and they shared a tiny room throughout their childhood years. What they did have in common was a passion for their pets, and as kids they always had dogs and cats. Both boys were also keen members of the rifle team in High School – though their love for animals meant they had no interest in hunting. While I was getting a sense of Dennis, I wanted to understand what he was like as a boy. What was his character like, I asked Richard? Did he have friends, and was he popular? Richard remembered that Dennis was initially quiet socially, but went through a sudden change when he was 13 or 14 – coincidentally when he had his tonsils taken out. Overnight, Dennis came out of his shell, becoming more energetic and outgoing, even something of an extrovert sometimes. One aspect of Dennis didn’t change however – and that was his taste in music which stayed with him throughout his life. For a kid who came of age during the 1960s, at the tail end of rock n’ roll and amid the onset of Beatlemania, Dennis’s interest was unusual. He inherited his parent’s musical passion – which meant jazz, from traditional forms like Louis Armstrong to newer artists like Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck. “He would spend hours with his head next to the gramophone listening to jazz records,” one school friend remembered. I asked Richard if he still had any pictures of Dennis from his teen years, and Richard sent me a selection. I was taken aback by what I saw. I was used to seeing Dennis from his adult films, looking sexual and virile, or from his music career where he embodied confident disco chic, or from his time in soap operas where he projected control and confidence. But these teenage black and white pictures were from a different period entirely, and showed someone I didn’t recognize. A geeky teenager with a crew cut, cross-eyed with unfashionable eye glasses, half-smiling self-consciously. Later, I came across an interview that Dennis gave where he admitted as much: “I wasn’t very attractive as a young kid,” he said. “I was a loner so it was tough.” I asked Richard about whether Dennis dated. Richard replied: “He didn’t date in High School, but I didn’t think much about it either. It just wasn’t something that we talked about. I do remember he used to look at the pictures of women in Playboy magazines – but that seemed normal… all of the boys did that. I certainly didn’t get a sense that Dennis’ sexuality was different from the rest of the boys.” And so a geeky jazz-loving, animal-adoring, and gun-collecting Dennis graduated high school in 1964, an initially quiet then outgoing kid, who’d had a difficult home life. His last year book entry read, “Clever, quiet, and profound, Dennis will spread much goodwill abroad as a member of the Peace Corps.” * 2. Philadelphia (Late 1960s) Dennis didn’t seem to have a rebellious streak, but he did have a good number of reasons to leave home and start his own life with his own identity. Whatever plans he may have had to join the Peace Corps were abandoned in favor of heading a couple of hours south to Philadelphia to the city’s College of Art where he enrolled in a degree course studying pottery and design. I tracked down several college friends, and they told me that he was a happy and popular member of their circle. Some remembered he dated a couple of girls, taking one of them back to Freeport to meet the family. I was intrigued, and so pressed them on this, but none of them remember much more about his sexuality. It was while he was a student in Philadelphia, that Dennis became interested in acting. In a later interview, Dennis said it started with a friend who had worked on the Beatles’ films. This person was making an avant-garde, short film called ‘For One Only’, and he wanted Dennis for the lead role. The film was made though apparently never released, but it was a turning point, and Dennis became hooked on acting after that. He started auditioning, one early success being for a 1966 traveling production of Euripides’ ‘The Trojan Women’. After a couple of years in college in Philly, Dennis dropped out. Friends of his still disagree as to why: some say that it was money issues, others say that he wanted to pursue acting in a more concerted manner. Whatever the reason, over the next couple of years, Dennis appeared in a number of low budget theatrical productions in the area, while sustaining himself by picking up carpentry or construction work. It was the start of the typical life of a struggling actor. But what of his future adult film career which was still almost ten years away? Were there any signs, any clues as to what was in his future? A few friends recall that when he was short of money, Dennis did nude modeling nude for still-life art classes at the college. I also found an interview where he later claimed that he appeared in a few ‘nudie-cutie loops’ while in Philadelphia. In this interview, Dennis said: “Some guy named Edwards got me into them – for money – good money in those days. I got $60. It was fine. Art students are notoriously poor. They were the old morality stag films… black socks, boxer shorts… but that was not really porno then. A lot of time we just stood and bounced around. There was very little story, no sound, and they were sold under the counter.” It’s a possible story, I suppose, but it seems unlikely given there is little other evidence and we’re talking about 1966 in Philadelphia. Certainly none have ever come to light. But it was during this period that Dennis told the first of his friends that he thought he was gay. The female friends I spoke to weren’t surprised – though a few of them expressed disappointment: “He was such a gentle, sweet man,” one them, called Sylvia, said. “A lot of us had a secret crush on him, but deep down we always wondered.” Dennis came out to his mother and father on one of his trips home to Freeport. This is how his brother Richard remembers the occasion: “In 1968, Dennis told our parents about his sexuality. He didn’t tell me at the time – I learned about it from a cousin. I don’t know much about these things, but my impression was that Dennis was bi-sexual.” I asked Richard how his parents took the news. “Not that well,” he said. “My mother was squeamish about sex anyway, so she didn’t talk about it with anyone. As for my father, he told other people that he was heartbroken. That was difficult for Dennis. So I guess it was difficult for all of them.” Not long after this, Dennis’ father was diagnosed with lung cancer. He’d been a heavy smoker all his life, and by the time he was in his 40s, he had emphysema and was in bad physical shape. When he became sick, it hit Dennis hard, and he started going back to Freeport every week to see him. His father died shortly afterwards in his mid-50s. * 3. Move to New York In 1968, Dennis moved to New York. He took an apartment at 25 East 38th St, which he’d keep for the rest of his life. It was a fifth-floor walk-up, a small rent-controlled place, and he paid $75 a month. It was basically a studio with a skylight and a tiny kitchen. There was a bedroom but Dennis used that as his art studio, and he slept on a pull-out sofa in the main room. It was an old building – when he took up the floorboards to lay down new flooring, he found newspapers that dated back to World War One. It was cramped, but Dennis loved it and was proud of his new space. Most of all Dennis loved New York – and was in awe of the opportunities it provided. He got into motorcycles, got one of his own, and went everywhere on it… no distance was too short or too long. But his main priority was to see if he could make it as an actor so he set about auditioning for theater parts. Some of his friends commented that he had talent, but all were in agreement that his temperament was not suited to constant auditions. He hated learning a scene, schlepping across town, delivering it to a group of supercilious theater execs, and then never hearing from them again. One friend commented that he thought Dennis lacked the resilient temperament needed to be a successful actor: “He was a gentle soul, a little vulnerable, and he was easily bruised by setbacks,” he said. Nevertheless, Dennis persisted, and in 1969, Dennis replied to an ad in the Village Voice for an off-off Broadway play called ‘The Sound of a Different Drummer’ that was looking for actors to take part in ‘a counter-culture experience’. The heading read: “Do you Dig Being Naked in the World? Love Boys Love Girls? Participate in the Ultimate EMBRACE! Get Bread for Doing Your Thing in Our HIT SHOW”. Dennis auditioned and got the part. He claimed later that at first, he had no idea what it was all about and was attracted simply because it was a regular, paid acting gig. This was the era of sexually frank musicals like ‘Hair’ and ‘Oh Calcutta,’ and Dennis embraced the new environment enthusiastically. He appeared in it for several months, but then disaster struck: one night he collapsed onstage and was rushed to hospital with acute appendicitis. This health incident, though not life-threatening, would have a lasting impact on Dennis’ acting career. I spoke to Jon Bletz, a friend of Dennis, who remembered: “It took Dennis some time to recover physically from that, but when he returned to the theater, his part in the play had been given to someone else. Dennis was really upset and discouraged, and so he decided to jack in the whole acting thing. He was already pissed by how much you had to struggle for acting jobs… with little guarantee you were going to get anywhere.” So Dennis gave up on his thespian dream, and decided it was time to get a full-time 9-5 job. He was hired by Jiffy Simplicity, a company that made dress-making patterns for women. But the change in his employment wasn’t the only change in Dennis’ life. According to Dennis’ friend, Jon Bletz, after the disappointment of trying to be an actor, for a time, Dennis seemed to become more jaded and cynical. He responded by hitting the New York gay bar scene hard. As Jon expressed it, “It was like “nothing is gonna get in my way now.”” His first favorite bar was The Eagle’s Nest on 22nd St down by the West Side Highway, and Dennis would head over there every night on his motorcycle. The Eagle’s Nest was one of the legendary gay clubs in New York. It had been a longshoreman’s tavern that opened in 1931, but, prompted by the Stonewall riots in 1969 and the sudden growth of the city’s gay culture, the tavern’s owners painted the walls black and converted it into a gay bar in 1970. Not just any gay bar either: The Eagle’s Nest became the most popular gathering point for the leather-clad S&M crowd and biker groups, eventually spawning copycat clubs across the country. Dennis’ friend, Mark Martinez, remembered the scene well: “The Eagle’s Nest was the best leather bar,” he recalled. “It was isolated in a quiet, dark area by the water, and it reeked of menace and thrill. The place itself was hot and sweaty and exciting. Dennis was there all the time, and I hung with him. He was a beautiful man, and sexually voracious. It was difficult not to love him.” Another friend, Errol Jones, also remembers Dennis in this period. “For years, I ran into Dennis all over town. He seemed to be at every gay club,” he laughed. “You couldn’t miss him. For a start, he was good looking. And secondly, he was… well… willing and enthusiastic.” During this time, Dennis also had his first steady male partner. In early 1969, he’d met Skip St James. Dennis was 26 at the time, Skip was in his early 20s. Skip remembers first seeing Dennis in different bars, and he’d just stand there and stare, finding Dennis absolutely beautiful. Skip says that Dennis chased him around for a year or so, but Skip was always with somebody else. And then one day, they finally hooked up, became a couple, and were together for the next four years. Skip moved into Dennis’ tiny studio apartment on East 38th St – and Skip remembered they weren’t the only people who enjoyed the space… “I remember every Wednesday afternoon, he’d give his apartment to this woman who was married,” he said. “I think she was someone he worked with at Simplicity. Anyway, every week, she’d go there and have sex with her boyfriend. Obviously, we’d have to make ourselves scarce for a couple of hours. But that just seemed very New York back then.” For the first time, Dennis was in a steady relationship and living with his partner. But that didn’t stop him from enjoying the New York night life – as Skip remembers: “Dennis was very sexual. All the time. Sex was number one for him, and always on his mind.” Not just that, but friends remember that Dennis was always focused on his physical appearance. Skip recalls: “I remember wearing tackaberry buckles. Dennis insisted on wearing them, and he bought me one. He showed me how you’d hang your keys from left to right. I was new to all this. He was a showman more than anything else.” Needless to say, their relationship was not exclusive. As Skip remembers, “Dennis insisted it wasn’t exclusive. We had space for other relationships – either individually or together.  He was very into three-ways, orgies, and cruising, and he loved leather bars. He liked to watch too. As far as sex would go, he was not a top. He was a bottom. In fact, his big thing was being on the receiving end – and getting fist-fucked.” This being the early 1970s, safe sex, well… it wasn’t really a thing. As Mark Martinez says: “Needless to say, Dennis didn’t use condoms. None of us did. Why would you? We expected to live forever.” Skip confirms this: “Dennis was never safe with sex at all. Once we went to Puerto Rico, and we went to the old part of town where there were all these shacks. I forget what the place is called. It’s supposed to be dangerous. We walked down there. I remember him screwing this Puerto Rican kid in broad daylight.” Another of Dennis favorite hang-outs was ‘The Barn’, a popular gay bar in the Village at 216 Waverly Place. The Barn was a hub that attracted a large crowd – and it had the added attraction of having back rooms. Skip still remembers ‘The Barn’ scene well: “We’d often go back there, always looking for a three-way.” Errol Jones again: “I remember seeing him come out from the restrooms in one place that was renowned for glory holes. So I approached him, and he was friendly. I suggested we go back to my place, but he gestured for me to join him in the back of this club. It was an area I rarely went because it was so dark. But he led me back there, and… well, it’s a happy memory.” For Dennis, it seemed that the only way to get rid of temptation was to yield to it. * What I found interesting about Dennis’ early life was the transformation from a quiet, reserved kid on Long Island, happy in his own company and interested in painting and carpentry, to the outgoing, sexually-liberated party guy in Manhattan. But the real paradox with Dennis was that by day, his New York life was still straight and unassuming. Though most of his friends were people from the bar and club scene, everyone else I spoke to was keen to emphasize his gentleness and kindness, and his love of animals. He still worked as an artist at Simplicity Pattern Company on Madison Avenue, just around the corner from the apartment: it seemed ironic to me that this regular in S&M gay bars spent his days drawing dress patterns for the American housewife. Skip remembers that Dennis was taking his carpentry seriously too, building wall to wall bookshelves and cabinets for their apartment, and spent time drawing with charcoals and painting with oils. And when he wasn’t trawling the bars – without or without Skip – Dennis could be found at any of New York’s jazz clubs. The 1970s was a vibrant period for jazz in the city, with several legendary venues like Village Vanguard, Birdland, and Blue Note hosting many of the greats in their autumn years as well as new emerging artists. Dennis was a jazz fan boy, always hanging around the stage doors after the shows so that he could meet his idols. His large collection of vintage 78s was growing – his preference was 1920s jazz – and he idolized Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, and Sarah Vaughan. He told Skip that he his secret dream was to be a torch singer. He started collecting antique firearms – particularly black powder guns, which had been the primary type of firearm for centuries before the development of smokeless powder and cartridge-based guns, and flintlock firearms. He became a registered gun owner and kept his collection in a cabinet in his apartment that he built. Dennis life seemed to be hedonistic and happy, but in the back of his mind, he had unfinished business. He still had the acting bug, and hadn’t completely given up on the idea of performing one day. Sure, he got the occasional part in no-budget off-off Broadway plays, but friends remember that it was generally unsatisfying to him. From time to time picked up the occasional modeling job, and one such gig was for a popular local gay magazine called ‘Michael’s Thing’ which was a pocket guide to entertainment around town. Ads for bath houses, porn theaters, escorts, and lots of sex… that sort of thing. Dennis appeared in a pictorial on his motorcycle on a bridge over the pool at the Ice Palace at Cherry Grove on Fire Island. His circle of friends loved the mock serious-looking poses, and Dennis took their affectionate ribbing in good humor. The modeling may seem to be a small part of his life, but according to his friends, it was a little more important to Dennis. And that was because Dennis took his looks very seriously. One friend compared him to Oscar Wilde’s character, Dorian Gray, saying, “We all care what we look like, but Dennis took it to another level. He was obsessed with his appearance and freaked out about getting old.” As Oscar Wilde wrote: “Youth is the only thing worth having.” Skip agreed, saying, “Dennis’ looks meant everything to him. He had a good body. He was just naturally trim, not muscular by any means. He was Italian so he was hairy. I never even knew until late in our relationship that he used to meticulously trim all his chest hair down. In short, he was insecure, and he could be self-absorbed. I don’t mean that he was shallow. He wasn’t by any means, but he took great care of his appearance, and he could be vain.” Another friend from the early days, Jon Bletz, remembered, “Dennis never met a mirror that he didn’t like. He was always stopping to look at himself, and ask whether his cheekbones were sharp or if his nose was elegant enough. It was as if he feared that he’d be loved less, or worse still, ignored, if he were to let himself go – so he became obsessive about his looks.” In 1973, Dennis and Skip split. “We had a good time, but most things come to an end, right?” is how Skip remembers it. “In some ways, I consider him the love of my life, even now.” Part of the reason for the break up was that Dennis had started a relationship with Joey Alan Phipps. Joey was an aspiring actor and sometime model for gay photo layouts, and was 11 years younger than Dennis. I found pictures of Joey and was struck by his youthful appearance. Even when he was older, he looked like a perennial teenager, the sort of cheeky, smiling kid you’d see on the Partridge Family TV show. According to Skip, Joey was a roommate of one their best friends: “Joey was a cute kid, and Dennis’ preference was blond Twinkies,” Skip said. “He did date a young black guy once for a short time, but mainly it was blonde Twinkies. I was a blonde Twinkie. Joey was a blonde Twink.” Dennis’ friend Mark Martinez remembers the time well: “Dennis was head over heels about Joey,” he recalls. “At first, we all figured it was just a physical thing, but pretty soon, Skip moved out and Joey moved in, and he and Dennis became inseparable.” * 4. Adult Films In 1974, Dennis decided to quit his day job in the Simplicity office. He was intent on making his living through his carpentry. Friends remember how he was proud of the idea of making a living simply by using his hands. There was something primordial about it, he said. He placed ads in local newspapers and picked up a series of freelance jobs making cabinets, beds, or tables for people furnishing their Manhattan apartments. It wasn’t a huge amount of income, but he was doing what he loved and everyone I spoke to remembers that he seemed genuinely happy. In reality though, Dennis had two other sources of income – and these were two activities that he kept quiet about. The first of these was that he’d started posing for photo sets for gay-oriented companies like Target Studio. A few years ago, I tracked down Jim French, an artist, photographer, and publisher, who’s best known for his alter ego, Rip Colt, and his association with Colt Studio that he founded in 1967 which he turned into one of the most successful gay porn companies in the country. Jim also had a sideline painting portraits that were used as album art for Columbia Records, for singers like Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, and Johnny Mathis – and over the years, Dennis had seen Jim at jazz clubs around town, but it wasn’t until he turned up at Jim’s offices to try out for some modeling work that he realized who Jim was. The audition was a success: Jim was taken by Dennis and offered him work immediately. Jim was older than Dennis – there was a 14 year age difference between them – but their similar interests – jazz, art, design – meant they quickly became friends. Jim told me that they also bonded because he too had worked as an illustrator and artist on Madison Avenue, just like Dennis, except that it’d been a few years earlier and Jim had designed textiles not dress patterns. Jim remembered: “Dennis was one of my favorite models from the time. Always willing, professional, and easy to work with… and he had a great look. It was easy to take great pictures of him.” Jim also remembered that Dennis had another way of earning money too: “It was an open secret that Dennis ran a personal ad in the Village Voice,” he said. “I’m not sure of exactly what the ad was for – but it was for services that were sexual in nature.” The story that Dennis was a sex worker – or more specifically, an escort or prostitute – is something that various people I spoke to remembered. Carter Stevens, an adult film director, who later became close to Dennis, said that he’d described himself as a ‘call-boy’ before he got into films. Jamie Gillis, the adult film actor went further: “He was fag hooker,” laughed Jamie. “He told me plenty of stories about fucking aging queens on the Upper East Side.” And Dennis’ old friend, Mark Martinez, remembers running into Dennis coming out of a restaurant one day with a distinguished older man on his arm – and studiously avoiding eye contact with anyone who might know him. Dennis later told him that the man was a “client” who was “very generous” to him. Then again, several other friends I spoke to insist that Dennis also had clients that were female. Dennis would just joke that it was no big deal, just regular ‘Midnight Cowboy’ kinda work, he said. In 1975, Dennis appeared in his first adult film, a gay porn movie by the director David Durston called ‘Boy ‘Napped’. For this movie, Dennis adopted the name Wade Nichols, created from his middle name and his father’s first name. Durston was one of the first people I spoke to about Dennis, and he still remembered him fondly, describing him as a gift to porn films, being great looking and having an incredible body that looked like he worked out every day – even though Dennis’ brother Richard insists that Dennis never really did any sports. Dennis’ co-star on the film was Jamie Gillis, who was a veteran in the business even back then. Jamie remembered his own beginnings as a period when he’d had performance difficulties, so he was surprised when this newcomer was seemingly so at home on a sex film set: “Dennis told me it was his first experience,” Jamie said. “And it’s not a natural environment. But he was very relaxed. I remember thinking how natural he looked around the other guys in sexual situations. I thought, Here’s a guy who’s not a stranger to having sex in front of an audience… Dennis could perform sexually, and act well.” It seems that at first Dennis just considered Boy-napped to be just a quick way to make some extra cash, but it was a success and he enjoyed it. He figured this could be an opportunity to make some more money with other films, and perhaps establish his own carpentry studio where he could make custom furniture. He found the first adult film parts through an agent called Dorothy Palmer, a tough old broad, straight out of central casting, who operated out of a small, cluttered office near the theater district. Dorothy was notorious for not telling her actors that a role being offered was in a pornographic film, instead leaving it for them to find out for themselves when they turned up on set and find they were expected to do a little more than just recite lines. This left a lot of actors with red faces and indignant reactions. That clearly wasn’t a problem for Dennis, and his acting ability, good looks, and sexual reliability quickly made him a hot commodity – and he was soon appearing in films such as Jailbait and Virgin Dreams. One early admirer was aspiring actor/director David Davidson, who fell for Dennis – much to the annoyance of David’s beard girlfriend, Erica Eaton. Davidson cast Dennis in two of his films, Summer of Laura and Call Me Angel, Sir, in the hope that it would win him favors with the newcomer. The problem was that Erica was also the producer of both films and she wasn’t impressed, which made the shoot of both movies rather problematic. Dennis, calm and unruffled as always, was amused by the love triangle, and enjoyed David’s favors on the side when Erica was away. Looking at Dennis in these early films is like looking at early silent films, in that directors hadn’t accounted for the fact that he could really act and so typically used him as a physical stereotype. But even so, Dennis shines – smoldering intensity, an immaculate porno ‘stache, and pronounced Fire Island tan-lines. The men’s magazines sat up and took notice, eager to profile the new star, and wrote breathlessly about visiting him in his beloved midtown apartment. This from Rustler: “Wade Nichols is special. The handsomest and most talented of this breed of super-men. Perhaps he is the last of the true matinee idols. Right now, he is content, building furniture, traveling and making erotic films. The Clark Gable of Porn was hanging a chandelier when we visited his hand-built (decorated, at least) Manhattan apartment.” Or how about this from Skin Biz: “Young, energetic, good-looking and bold. He comes to the door wearing a tight work shirt and faded blue jeans with a navy-blue handkerchief flapping from his back left pocket. His Manhattan apartment in a 5-storied brownstone is eclectically hip. The flavor is rustic, offset by a burning wood fireplace, beautifully shuttered windows and cabinets which he made himself. A motorcycle helmet, sitting on the floor, accompanies his Honda 550 garaged down the street. His telephone rings nonstop until he finally hooks it to his answering machine. His name is Wade Nichols, one of today’s swinging 32-year-old bachelors, but with one exception. While most men only dream about their sexual fantasies, this man indulges in them… on screen.” Dennis was fast becoming a star in straight porn films, which raises the question that is perhaps discussed more than any other when it comes to Dennis – and that is his sexual orientation. Everything that I had heard about him from friends and contacts – at least since his school days – was that he was exclusively interested in men, and had an active, varied, not to mention voracious sex life on the New York gay scene. Yet when it came to sex work – and this goes for the adult films and his escorting – people who knew him remember that he didn’t seem to have a preference between men or women. Many described him as simply being a gay man who was so sexual that he could perform with anyone. But occasionally, I did speak to someone who disagreed – and one of those was Jim French, the photographer at Colt and Target. “Dennis was this rare phenomenon,” Jim said, “in that he appealed to women just as much as he appealed to men. I always thought he was bi-sexual.” Fellow actor Jamie Gillis was impressed: “I knew he could act, but I was still surprised to see that he started turning up in straight films after Boy-napped. I figured that he was a guy who wasn’t interested in having sex with women… but he was just as natural in the straight films too.” Perhaps the most surprised person was Skip, Dennis’ previous partner from the early 1970s: “When I found out that he was making adult films, I was surprised,” Skip remembered. “Not surprised that he was doing porn, but that he was making straight porn… he never had relationships with women. He wasn’t bisexual in any way.” And then the sex magazines started to come across his gay films and his photo spreads for Target Studio, and they asked him about his orientation. Dennis was smart enough to know that future work as a hetero porn star probably depended on him taking a firm position, so he went out of his way in interviews to deny that there was anything to it: “I’m NOT by nature a guy who fucks guys,” he insisted. “I’m embarrassed by it. I only did it because I got five hundred bucks for two days work.” By 1977, Dennis adult film career was in full swing, and he was appearing in movies by the more notable New York directors such as Gerard Damiano, Radley Metzger, Carter Stevens, and the Amero brothers. As his star rose, something else was happening: Dennis’ mainstream acting aspirations seemed to be receding. Perhaps it was because his acting itch was being scratched, but it was unusual: the mythical cross-over from X-rated to regular films was the holy grail to most of the actors in porn. Even today, when I speak to the pioneers from the early years, they still talk about the forlorn hopes they once had that their sex film success might pave the way into a successful TV or feature film career. Dennis appeared to be different. In interviews, he insisted that he was content making porn, and had no desire to do anything else: “I have no pretensions of becoming a star,” he said. “I already tried legitimate acting and wasn’t making any money. Acting is a tough business. You can spend your whole life going to every casting call and only wind up with small character parts or walk-ons when you’re 80 years old. As an actor in these adult films, I do my best making them good. I’m serious about my work, but not about myself where I believe I’m going to be a star.” I asked his friends about whether this was true and most agreed, saying that one of the reasons for this was that Dennis was always a person who valued his privacy. He liked that that he was able to be a genuine star in the X-rated world, yet remain unknown outside of it at the same time. The adult film industry at the time was a strange beast: on the one hand, it had its own star system, awards, and media, and you could be idolized and admired in that world. Yet outside of that, it was also relatively anonymous – which was exactly what Dennis wanted. From speaking to the various people that Dennis knew in the 1970s, it was clear that Dennis liked to compartmentalize the different parts of his life. He had his family, then there were the adult filmmakers and actors, the gay bar and club scene, his music friends in jazz clubs, the antique gun club members, his clients – both for his carpentry work and his escorting, and there was his partner, Joey. He liked having different personas for different people – often contradictory ones: Here was a loner who enjoyed collecting guns by himself, but was the popular center of attention in social gatherings. He was devoted to his partner Joey, but make sex films and did sex work on the side. He was gay, but was a big star in straight sex movies. He was the epitome of cool, but was also an old-fashioned nerd, his favorite films being ‘Casablanca’ or ‘Captain Blood’, and the only music he listened to were 1920s jazz records. And everyone loved him and said he was thoughtful, kind, and gentle, but they also found him enigmatic and wished they could know him better. Dennis was also afraid of the two worlds colliding, and possibly facing public shame as result. He admitted this in an interview saying, “I have a fear of doing modelling jobs and having them find out a month or two later who I am and what I am doing in this business.” And then there was his family – his mother and brother who had moved down to live in Richmond, Virginia. Dennis visited them regularly. Richard remembers one visit: “Dennis came down, and asked me whether I’d ever been to the Lee Art Theater, which was the local adult film cinema there. I thought it was a strange question and I wondered why he asked it. Later, he told me he appeared in adult films, and I realized that his films had been playing in that theater and that he’d been on all the posters. My mother found out about it at the same time. I know she wasn’t too happy about it but she just didn’t say anything. That’s what she was like.” Richard had been curious when Dennis told him about the X-rated films, and he asked Dennis how he could have sex in front of other people. Dennis said that the nude modeling that he’d done at art school had got him used to it. In the meantime, the movies kept getting bigger. In 1978, Dennis starred in the lead role of Armand Weston’s ‘Take Off’. If any sex film can be described as almost autobiographical of its star, perhaps ‘Take Off’ was it. More intricately plotted that most porn features, it is loosely based on Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ telling the story of Darrin Blue (played by Dennis), a handsome but vain man who is obsessed with remaining eternally young – in his case, by keeping a stag film hidden in his attic. It was a high budget movie involving much of the business’ best talent – both in front of and behind the camera. Dennis received $2,000 for his role, declaring it the biggest, most beautiful porn film ever. And then there was ‘Barbara Broadcast’ – and the scene that introduced me to Dennis. If you’ve seen the film, you’ll already know what I’m talking about. It’s the restaurant kitchen scene. Two actors – Wade Nichols and the incredible C.J. Laing. No dialogue. No music. And no sex either – at least not for the first, and best, part of the scene. Just the industrial kitchen metal clanging in the stifling heat of a New York restaurant kitchen in summer. A restless and curious woman descends a staircase into the sweaty bowels of the building. She happens upon the kitchen. She wanders among the anonymous cooking staff but is invisible to all of them. And then she sees Him, shirtless and sweaty. She circles him smiling. He spots her, and returns her glance with an incredulous, amused gaze. The only noise is the sound of cooking pots banging against each other. These two are at the center of the universe, oblivious to the irrelevant world that circles them. She spies a large metal mixing bowl on the floor. An idea flashes across her mind. She laughs, and kicks the bowl, positioning it beneath her parted legs. She looks back at him, giggling manically. He smiles, his eyes narrowing quizzically like the hero of a low-rent spaghetti western. She starts to crouch over the bowl. The realization of what she might be about to do slowly dawns on him. Years later I spoke to the film’s director, Radley Metzger. He told me he felt dizzy when directing this scene. In 1978, Dennis traveled to California and Hawaii to appear in one of his last X-rated films, ‘Love You.’ The film was directed by former Hollywood actor and now director, John Derek, perhaps more famous for his marriages to Ursula Andress, Linda Evans, and, Bo Derek. ​The film featured a small cast, comprising of just Annette Haven, Leslie Bovee, Eric Edwards, and Dennis. John’s wife at the time, 22-year-old Bo Derek, was closely involved in the production – and became its biggest cheerleader when it was made: “‘Love You’ is sexy and erotic,” she told newspaper reporters. “The picture has very explicit sex scenes. It shows everything. It’s the first beautiful erotic, hard core film ever made. I showed it to 600 women libbers in a NOW meeting and they liked it. They said it was not degrading to women. The picture is about love, and you don’t play around with that.” Years later, Eric Edwards’s main memory of the movie was a nude wrestling match between him and Dennis – which he remembers because John Derek insisted they film it again and again. Eric said, “Dennis was a nice guy. Very respectful. We all liked him. But shooting that wrestling scene seemed to last forever, and John Derek seemed fascinated by it. I wondered if he was gay – which seemed unlikely because Bo was there at his side, watching all the time.” Within a couple of years, Dennis had become one of the biggest stars in the adult industry. He’d earned enough money to make himself self-sufficient, which allowed him to pursue his passions independently. For most people in the adult film industry, this represented success. What Dennis didn’t know was that it was just the beginning. * Tune in next time for the concluding part of ‘Wade Nichols: Like an Eagle.’ * The post Wade Nichols: ‘Like an Eagle’ – His Untold Story Part 1: The Early Years – Podcast 152 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Who was the original actor cast in the lead role of the golden age blockbuster, The Devil in Miss Jones (1973)? Not Georgina Spelvin, the talented doyenne of adult films who starred in many pre-video era features, first in New York then in California, and who was the eventual star of the film as ‘Miss Jones.’ No, Gerard Damiano first chose another actress, Sue Flaken, to fill the role, only to change his mind at the last minute. The movie went on to become one of the biggest hits of the era, making Spelvin one of the most famous of the first generation of porn stars. The sliding doors moment changed Georgina Spelvin’s life forever. But what of Sue Flaken, who was instead relegated to a minor, non-speaking part in the film? Who was she, why did she miss out on the life-changing role, and what happened to her afterwards? The answer includes supporting involvement for Allen Ginsberg, Tommy Lee Jones, Georgina Spelvin, Harry Everett Smith, Al Gore, the Chelsea Hotel, Joe Sarno, Terry Southern, industrial quantities of hallucinogenic drugs, and much more. This is the untold story of ‘Sue Flaken.’ This podcast is 35 minutes long. ——————————————————————————————————————————- sliding doors /ˈslīdiNG dôrs/ plural noun definition: a seemingly insignificant moment that has a profound and lasting impact on a person’s life or the trajectory of a relationship. These moments, while often unnoticed, can dramatically alter the course of events and significantly affect future outcomes. * What if Franz Ferdinand hadn’t been shot, and the event that triggered World War I hadn’t happened? What if young Adolf Hitler hadn’t been rejected twice from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and instead had gone on to became an artist instead of pursuing politics? Butterfly-effect inflection points which, if they had turned out differently, might have caused a different world. Or another example, only less consequential perhaps: what if Gerard Damiano hadn’t decided at the last moment to promote Georgina Spelvin from her role as the cook for the cast and crew on The Devil in Miss Jones (1973) and instead given her the starring role? The story is oft-told: Damiano was shooting the follow-up to Deep Throat (1972) in a converted apple-packing plant in Milanville, Pennsylvania, and needed someone to provide craft services for the long-weekend location shoot. He offered the job to Chele Graham, an ex-Broadway chorus girl who’d featured in stage productions such as ‘Cabaret’, ‘Guys and Dolls’, and ‘Sweet Charity’ before being timed-out by her age – she was a near-ancient 36 by the time of ‘Miss Jones’. Chele accepted the catering job, needing the money for a film collective that she and her lover were setting up in lower Manhattan. Damiano had already hired someone for the all-important lead role of Miss Jones – a newcomer named Ronnie, an actress he was raving about – but by the time production started, Chele had become Georgina Spelvin and assumed the role of Miss Jones, instantly creating one of the more memorable characters in adult film history – as was borne out by the contemporary critics. Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, “‘The Devil in Miss Jones’ is good primarily because of the performance of Georgina Spelvin in the title role. Miss Spelvin, who has become the Linda Lovelace of the literate, is something of a legend. There burns in her soul the spark of an artist, and she is not only the best, but possibly the only actress in the hardcore field.” Addison Verrill writing in Variety wondered, “If Marlon Brando can be praised for giving his almost-all in ‘Last Tango in Paris,’ one wonders what the reaction will be to ‘Miss Jones’ lead Georgina Spelvin? Though she lacks the specific sexpertise of Linda Lovelace and she’s no conventional beauty, her performance is so naked it seems a massive invasion of privacy.” So the sliding doors of history closed shut, Georgina was unexpectedly immortalized as an improbable sex star, and Damiano had another sex film hit. History is often written by the protagonists, but truth is most often found in silence and the quiet places. Everyone else has told their story about the film, so what about Ronnie, the original Miss Jones? When Georgina was catapulted into A-lister sex-film stardom for the next decade, Ronnie disappeared without a trace. She became a parenthesis in a footnote to the appendix of adult film history. Who was she, and what happened to the original Miss Jones? * Gerry Damiano had rated Ronnie highly: “She’s really a dynamo,” he said to Harry Reems, the movie’s male lead, who wrote about her in his autobiography, ‘Here Comes Harry Reems’ (1975). Gerry continued, “She’s voluptuous, she’s got a wild afro-cut, and an ass that just won’t quit. Ronnie was enthusiastic about being given the Miss Jones role too: “I can fuck and suck better than any woman doing this shit,” Harry said that she told everybody. But the reason that Georgina took her place has been a mystery for decades. In fact, there are three versions on record. Firstly, in her autobiography, Georgina claimed that her getting the part was all a happy accident: she’d been meeting with Damiano to discuss the food: “We discuss how to feed 17 people for three days on $500. An actor arrives to read for the part of Abaca. Gerry asks if I would mind reading the part of Miss Jones with him since I’m just sitting there.” She remembered that Damiano was so impressed with her read-through, that he offered her the part. Harry Reems’ recollection was different, claiming Georgina was only given the lead role when Ronnie was diagnosed with a dental issue two days before the production started: ‘“How’s Ronnie going to do blow jobs with an impacted wisdom tooth?” I asked Gerry. Good question. Gerry threw in the dental floss. Ronnie was out and Georgina Spelvin was in.” The last version comes from fellow ‘Miss Jones’ actor, Marc Stevens – aka Mr. 10½ on account of the supposed length of his furious fescue. Marc remembers the last-minute change the most prosaically in his memoir: “(The film’s production had) the usual whining, ego-tripping, and petulance endemic to film. Ronnie decided, all of a sudden, she didn’t want the starring role. (Instead) she wound up blowing me in another scene.” It’s true. Whatever issues Ronnie had with motivation – or her teeth – she did in fact appear in ‘Miss Jones’, in a smaller, sex-only role, partnering with Georgina Spelvin to give head to Marc Stevens. She appeared in the credits as ‘Sue Flaken.’ It remains among the only feature film footage of Ronnie, and she’s an electric presence. (She appears as ‘Terri Easterni‘ in The Birds and the Beads (1973), and supposedly made brief appearances in two other X-rated films: Lloyd Kaufman’s The New Comers (1973) (tagline: “The First X-rated Musical!”) and the one-day wonder, Sweet and Sour (1974), but both are virtually unfindable today.) In ‘Miss Jones’, she’s filmed in a single spaghetti-western-style close-up. Her face is framed by a thicket of coal-black curls, and punctuated by roundly incredulous eyes to which an immaculately-applied smokey-eye contrasts with Georgina’s 1970s porno-blue eye shadow. Ronnie smiles a lot, showing off detergent-white teeth like a suburban neighborhood picket fence. Sexually, Ronnie steals the scene, performing enthusiastically, selfishly even. Her sequence exists within the film to show Miss Jones making up for having been a virgin for too long – but, just like Ronnie’s unknown life, the scene exists in its own microcosm, unconnected to anything that precedes or follows it. And then Ronnie disappears behind the sliding doors, and is never seen again. Sue Flaken (left), and Georgina Spelvin, in ‘The Devil in Miss Jones’ (1973) * Whenever I met people who’d been present on set with Ronnie for those few short days – people like Gerry Damiano, Georgina Spelvin, Harry Reems, Levi Richards, and others – I always made a point of asking about her. Remarkably, given that they’d all known her for such a short period several decades earlier, everyone still had a memory or two concerning her. And many of their memories were the same: Ronnie was beautiful, exciting, but unpredictable, wild, feral even. She wasn’t part of their usual repertory group of performers, but rather teetered around the edge, maverick and unpredictable. No one had any idea what her second name was. Then I met Jason Russell, former husband of New York’s first porno star, Tina Russell, and sometime adult film actor himself. I interviewed him in his Florida home towards the end of his life, when his world-weary, tobacco-stained cynicism betrayed his every statement. “Ever hear about ‘Rabid Ronnie’?” he non-sequitured with a jaded sigh at the end of the day. I perked up. You mean the Ronnie who was in ‘The Devil in Miss Jones’? Jason mumbled back, “Yep, that one. She was a trip. Whacko. Insane. I wrote about her in Tina’s book. Only worked with her once. It was on the set of Joe Sarno’s Sleepyhead (1973). Crazy chick. Fierce. Almost killed the whole film.” I pulled out a copy of ‘Porno Star’ (1973), Tina Russell’s autobiography that Jason had ghost-written, and found the description of events. “Halfway through the first day, one female member (Ronnie) of the cast announced, “I’m tripping my brains out!” She proceeded to flip out to the point where she caused herself and many others a lot of pain, and cost the budget at least $2,500 to $3,000. We had to find a replacement for her role overnight, and re-shoot with the new girl all that we had managed to shoot the first day. This was only the second time that such a situation had occurred in the three years that we have been working in the business. We all went home with grueling tension headaches.” What happened exactly, I asked? “Acid, I’m guessing. She dropped a tab, and she was gone. She lost her mind. She was like a wild horse. Flared nostrils and violent eyes.” Did you ever come across her after that? “Nooo. She vanished. She’ll be long dead now, I’m sure. She was an acid casualty, you know? People were experimenting with drugs a lot back then. They’ve always done that. But we didn’t knew the limits, so we were guinea pigs for some of the newer drugs. And some people paid the price. I guess Ronnie was one. I still think about her some times, and wonder about how she ended her days.” * The film that Jason mentioned, ‘Sleepyhead’, was Joe Sarno’s first as an explicit sex film director after a prolific decade making films that managed to insert tense erotica into humdrum black and white existential kitchen-sink dramas. When I heard Jason’s story, Joe was still alive and we were friendly. I called him, and he remembered Ronnie and the ‘Sleepyhead’ incident well. Joe recalled he’d been wary of the newly-formed X-rated acting fraternity, and decided he needed to hear them all read before casting any of them. So he held an old-fashioned open-call audition in his apartment, and Ronnie turned up. Good actors in porn in the early 1970s were as scarce as a polyester suit without a wide collar, and Ronnie immediately stood out to him as a talent. She was attractive too, firecracker small, with an impish grin. Joe was impressed and took Ronnie aside. They hit it off, and she distractedly told him she’d attended all the prestigious acting schools in the city, and was now fielding a number of promising theater offers. Joe was skeptical of her claims but offered her a principal role in his plot-driven narrative, and Ronnie accepted gratefully. Two weeks later, the Ronnie who turned up for the first day on set was a different character: “She seemed drunk, stumbling around and acting unsteady. Her make-up was a mess and she clearly wasn’t prepared for the day’s shoot. So I sat her down and waited to see if she got any better – but it just got worst. I’ve never understood drug-taking so I was bewildered when she started hallucinating and arguing angrily with invisible people who weren’t there. I was worried about her sanity. We tried shooting a few scenes with her and made some progress, but then she got out of control and I had to let her go. We started again next day – this time without her.” A few months after I spoke to Joe, he was clearing out cabinets in his apartment and came across a collection of old paperwork and ephemera relating to his career: scripts, actor resumes, and stills. In amongst the ancient history was a familiar face. It was Ronnie’s headshot – with her full name and performing experience. Her address, albeit several decades old, was also shown: The Chelsea Hotel, New York City. Sue Flaken’s headshot * My first call to Ronnie wasn’t a positive one. At first, I couldn’t even figure out why I should call her. There were plenty of other people whose film experiences were more significant and meaningful, so why Ronnie? Then one day, her headshot fell out of a file in front of me and so I decided to act on impulse. Another sliding door moment perhaps. I found a phone number for her online. She was no longer living at the Chelsea, having seemingly married and moved down to Florida many years before. I called and introduced myself, and gave a reason for my interest. You know: the usual waffle we’ve all approached complete strangers with – you start by asking about acting in a famous pornographic film decades earlier, you throw in a reference to a potentially mind-altering mushroom-mind-trip that people still remember, and close by telling them about a recently-discovered headshot lying long-forgotten in a drawer. In other words, a pretty standard opener. I heard a sigh at the other end of the line before a tired voice: “And so… the call I’ve always expected but forever feared is happening right now,” she said with resignation. Silence, followed by more waffle from the caller, this time the predominant theme being backtracking, reversal, and retraction. Ronnie sighed again. “I like your English accent,” she offered eventually. I explained I was intrigued with knowing more about her early life and her brief involvement in adult film. “And what is going to happen to the information?” she asked. It didn’t have to go anywhere, I said. This was a just curious inquiry about a small part of her life. “I don’t want it told,” Ronnie said. “It’s not something I share with people. Even with those who are close to me.” I left my email address in case she changed her mind – and the conversation ended. A few months later, I received an email from her: “I’ve wrestled with the idea of sharing details from my life. I felt that they were too private to share with you. Hence, the hesitation and late response. But I have come to realize that your heart and spirit are in the right place, and therefore I wish to help you. “But know this: the only reason I’m telling you is that you are anonymous and therefore I don’t feel it will have any effect on my life. You’ll be like a canyon that I whisper into. The sounds will disappear with the wind and leave no trace.” So we started talking. “What is it you want to know?” she asked. The Chelsea Hotel, New York City * Ronnie’s life started in 1947 – born in a Manhattan hospital, raised in East Rockaway on Long Island, and by her teen years becoming a self-described Jewish American Princess. Her father was heavily involved in community theatre, and occasionally ventured into film, once appearing in a movie with Kim Novak. Ronnie caught the performing bug from an early age and joined every stage production she could find. For as long as she could remember, she wanted to be a famous movie star. Dad took note and enrolled her in elocution lessons followed by acting schools in the city throughout her high school years. Ronnie showed talent, and was granted a place at the Stella Adler Studio where she studied for several years. Opportunities started to spring up that were as exciting as they were varied: she modeled for Spiegel’s Catalogue, she was hired as a singer in a Harry Belafonte show that premiered at a Brooklyn night club, she did skits on stage with Bette Midler, took acrobatic dance lessons with Joe Price, the legendary director of the Dance Master Association, she did voiceover work with Chuck McCann, and found time to briefly date both preeminent teen idols of the time, Paul Anka and Frankie Avalon. As some of the work was in Hollywood, she got a local manager in California, attorney Jimmy Talbort, who also managed Redd Foxx, but Ronnie’s main interest was in live theatre, preferring drama plus the occasional comedy. In 1966, she embarked on a Theater Studies degree at Queen’s College, at the same time she was attending the Herbert Berghof Acting Studio. She started dating her high school boyfriend, a smart Long Island kid named Jimmy who got accepted into Harvard. Ronnie visited him often and hung out with his two roommates, Al and Tommy Lee. They’d later become future politico, Al Gore, and ‘Fugitive’ actor, Tommy Lee Jones. The four of them formed an inseparable group for a short while. Ronnie spoke proudly about her young life, still amazed that the people she mixed with would become such successful professionals in various roles. “We had the world at our feet,” she smiled. * And then the craziness began. To quote Ronnie quoting Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. It started in 1969, after graduating Queens College, when she moved to Manhattan to pursue an acting career. I asked how serious she’d been about acting? It was always my intention and interest to act. In retrospect, I realized later that it was more of an interest than an intention. I’d been fortunate. Up until then, everything had been handed to me on a plate. I had a lot of acting offers and I thought life was easy. But I started to let people down. What does that mean? I wasn’t a serious person. I was a wild child. Your teen years don’t strike me as having been crazy. So… was there a turning point? Yeah. I met Harry Smith. Harry Everett Smith, the artist and poet? (laughs) Yes, though he was more than just an artist-poet. He was crazy, an eccentric, larger-than-life persona who’d been one of the most prominent figures of the Beat Generation scene in New York. He made underground films, was an early hippie and a spiritual guru, he put out records, collected esoteric objects… and he collected people too. Harry Everett Smith Drugs were important for him as well, weren’t they? He was heavily into anything mind-expanding, and he loved the creative possibilities of hallucinations. And you knew him well? Very. At first, I was a member of Harry’s ‘tribe’. Then we became close and we spent a lot of time together. He lived in the Chelsea Hotel, and after a while I moved in with him. We lived together in the legendary Room 731. I got caught up in all the craziness that surrounded him. And that included the drugs and the mind-trips. What was the Chelsea like at the time? People romanticize it now because so many famous artists, singers, and writers lived there. And it’s true, people like Patti Smith, Mapplethorpe, Hendrix, and Bob Dylan were there when I was there, so that was exciting. But in reality, it was also an insane asylum for incorrigible drug addicts. Sadly, I fit right in. I became a big druggie. A major drug user… How so? I spent all my time experimenting with drugs. Hallucinogenics: LSD, mushrooms, acid, peyote. I did it all. All the time, too. I think I must have dropped about 500 tabs of LSD that first year. As I say, I never make the same mistake twice: I make it six or seven times, just to be sure. How were you supporting yourself? I survived off very little. Harry didn’t have much money, but he was so well-known that even when he couldn’t pay his rent, the Chelsea management couldn’t touch him or throw him out. His notoriety also meant that the best drugs came our way too. Did you mix with the other Beats? Oh sure, it was a close group. Harry’s best friend was Allen Ginsberg, so we spent a lot of time with him. Through them both, I got to know Gregory Corso, the poet. Gregory lived in the Chelsea too, so I’d sometimes take refuge in his place when it got too much with Harry. The problem was that Greg struggled with alcohol and drugs as well – because he was so lonely and damaged. It was a loving, talented, but strange and dysfunctional gang. Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso What was it like being on the inside of their group? On the one hand, I was excited. These were men whose works I had read and whose philosophy and thought I had admired. And all of sudden, I was there, listening to them, learning, and being part of their lives. But then there was a melancholic desperation to them as well. Why so? They were older than people I’d hang out with – Harry was about 25 years older than me, Gregory was, maybe, 15 years older. By the late 1960s, they were men without a time. They’d preceded the whole hippie thing: in fact, their philosophy had, in part, led to the hippies, and they were revered by the young counter-culture – but now they also felt old and marginalized. So they doubled down, and became more into drugs and drink. Were you doing much theater during these years? As much as my drugged-out state would allow…. I did plays all over town, many of them small, experimental productions for no money, and I continued my acting training at the La Mama Plexus workshop. That was a notoriously difficult, taxing, emotional process… even if you were in control of your faculties. And I was spiraling… How long did you live at the Chelsea? I got my own room there after a while. I became involved with another writer, Terry Southern. He’d written a racy book, Candy (1958), and then became a screenwriter of a bunch of counter-culture films…   Dr Strangelove (1964), Barbarella (1968), Easy Rider (1969), and others. What was he like when you knew him? He was basically an alcoholic and an amphetamine user, and was becoming less reliable as a result… which meant he was less in-demand with filmmakers and so he had money problems. We partied hard. In 1970, Southern wrote a novel, Blue Movie, about the production of a high-budget pornographic film which starred major movie actors. Yeah, he was fascinated with sex films. Obsessed. He talked about them all the time. When the first sex films started appearing in theaters – I mean real sex – he took me off to a Times Square cinema, and we went to see one. He watched them all the time. I dunno, perhaps he normalized the whole idea for me. ‘Blue Movie’ was the result of his interest, but it was a flop and didn’t sell well. It was a shame, because he was an incredible talent. Stanley Kubrick loved his work. Terry Southern (left), with Rip Torn * If Ronnie spoke about being a casualty of the 1960s drug culture, the 1970s were the brutal hangover where life really went downhill for her. I asked her about whether ‘The Devil in Miss Jones’ was her first direct experience of working in the adult film industry. At first, she brushed off the questions blaming drugs and a poor memory. I have a very scant recollection of my days in the porn industry. At that time, I was still using LSD heavily, and that creates these large black… blank periods in my memory. Do you remember if it was your first sex film experience? I have a feeling that it was not. Whether I had made a feature, or two, or whether I just some of those individual scenes that were shot on a hand-held portable camera, I’m not sure. I think I did something before ‘Miss Jones.’ Ronnie in ‘The Birds and the Beads’ (1973) – where the same head shot is shown on the table. Ronnie is credited as ‘Terri Easterni’ – a reference to boyfriend, Terry Southern What do you remember about the ‘Miss Jones’ shoot? I recall Gerard Damiano, the director. He was kindly and paternal – and serious too. I think that I was supposed to play the lead, but something changed at the last minute. I don’t recall what it was. One story was that a problem with a wisdom tooth? I have no recollection of that. Do you remember the scene that you did with Georgina Spelvin? Hardly. I do know that on set we improvised a lot, and I remember helping Gerry set up a scene or two by sketching out detailed improv scenarios. I was used to doing that at the Stella Adler Studio so that was straight forward. Do you remember anyone else from the production? I recall Georgina as being an older, matter-of-fact, no-nonsense broad. I remember Harry, the lead in the film. I think I worked with him in a few films. It’s a blur. I also recall a beautiful petite French girl that I acted with. Who would that be? Did you remember being aware of the commercial success of ‘Miss Jones’? Only much later. A few years later in fact. I had no idea what the name of the movie was when I made it, but it dawned on me much later.  I was horrified when I realized. I’ve still never seen it. Did anyone ever recognize you from your appearance in it? Not that I’m aware of… Do remember appearing in any other adult films? I vividly recall a director named Joe Sarno who I worked for. He lured me in by insisting that his films were soft porn, not hard porn. He liked me, so he gave me a prominent acting role. I liked him too. On the first day, we were shooting a scene and I was wearing a white fur coat with black spots. I was tripping on LSD. A really heavy trip. Long story short, I cost Joe at least a full day’s shoot because of something I did. What was that? It’s painful to remember. I did the sex scene, and I had fur all over my face. Then I took some of the white substance… use your imagination… and I smeared it all over the camera lens. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was hysterical. That didn’t go down well… Do you remember Joe’s reaction? Joe was the nicest, most down-to-earth person. I had great fondness for him. He took me aside and told me that I did not belong on a porno set. He said that I was a nice Jewish girl, and had too much class to be in this environment. He told me to go home and think seriously about what he said. And what was your reaction? I did what he told me to. And I don’t believe that I ever graced a porn set again. * The most painful part of Ronnie’s life came after the X-rated films. As she tells it, she was still living at the Chelsea Hotel, struggling to find work, and dealing with increasingly severe addictions. With dwindling options, she was kicked out of the residence, and resorted to couch-surfing at the apartments of people she barely knew. Eventually she turned to escorting and dealing drugs. It was a dangerous combination. If she wasn’t risking her life being beaten up by johns or drug gangs, she was getting into trouble with the law. She suffered physically, was arrested on a semi-regular basis, and was banged up for weeks in prison, but somehow managed to avoid lengthy jail sentences. Ronnie’s discomfort talking about it was plain: “Short story, I turned to sugar daddies and more dealing. I still have a hard time sharing many of the shady experiences from my past. They’re both shameful and immoral. I was raising holy hell. Those were the bad old days for sure.” Remarkably she still acted on occasion, mainly in theatrical productions but sometimes in bit parts in movies such as ‘Lords of Flatbush,’ (1974) notable for early starring roles for Sylvester Stallone and Henry Winkler. The film earned her SAG membership, but it was too late: “Much to my regret, I had to accept it just wasn’t in the cards for me. The promise I had shown had evaporated – and together with it, all the opportunities, hope, and dreams. I was lost.” It came to a head when Ronnie experienced a complete breakdown, both physical and emotional, followed by period of mental illness. Recognizing that she needed a complete change to save her life, she moved to Florida and trained as a teacher, gaining a doctorate from the Union Institute & University, an organization was based out of Cincinnati, Ohio. She married, and resumed a limited acting career finding work in commercials and training videos for bodies like the Miami Police Force. Her resume’ at the time described her as being available for look-a-like work too – for anyone wanting a Sophia Loren, Marlo Thomas, Isabel Allende, Judge Judy, Bobby Gentry, Barbra Streisand, and Marsha Clark. She became a Certified Drama Teacher, school counselor, and motivational speaker who spoke about her first-hand experience with drug addiction, mental illness, and recovery: “I truly have gone through a complete transformation in my life. It was a time that I was not proud of,” she repeated to me. * I kept in touch with Ronnie ever since our first calls. We’d exchange emails, holiday cards, and invitations to visit each other.  Mostly we’d talk about what was going on in the world or in our lives. Sometimes she asked random questions about people in the adult film industry: “How is Harry Reems? How does he feel about the films he made?” She’d ask about Joe Sarno. “Where does Joe live now? Is he happy? Please give him my love if you speak with him again. And, most of all, thank him for getting me out of the porn business.” Occasionally, we returned to talking about the details of her early life, and we pondered the vagaries of existence. The various sliding door moments that could have completely changed the way her life turned out. And she still couldn’t fathom just how her life would’ve been different if she had been ‘Miss Jones.’ Once she called me and asked me about the plot of ‘The Devil in Miss Jones’: “It’s about a woman who lived her life as an innocent virgin, but she wants to have a second go-round before she goes to hell – is that right?” Yes, I replied. The tagline of the film was ‘If you have to go to hell, go for a reason.’ Ronnie replied: “I’m the opposite of her then. I’d like a do-over where I don’t do all the crazy things.” * Every so often, I asked her if she’d be interested in talking more publicly about her life experience in adult film? Could I write an article about her life, for example? The answer was always the same: “I am so ashamed of it all. It’s embarrassing. And no one would be interested anyway.” I assured her she had nothing to feel guilty about, and that she’d lived more interesting lives than a room full of other people. “Wait until I die,” she’d laugh. “Then I really don’t care what you do.” Are you serious, I asked? “Yes,” she said. “Wait until then. After that… well… my life has to have counted for something, it has to have had some meaning. It wasn’t just a serious of sliding door moments, right?” And then she’d sign off her emails in the same way she always did: “Life is good. You must take care. Ronnie.” * Ronnie passed away in February 2025. * The post Sue Flaken’s Sliding Doors – The Mystery of the Original Miss Jones – Podcast 151 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

In the first part of our interview with Susan Hart, we heard about Sue’s early years in 1970s Los Angeles, growing up in a strict Catholic family, running away from home when she was 15, and becoming involved in a bad relationship. She escaped – into the army of all places, before finding a different kind of home, of sorts, as a prolific performer in the early adult video industry. But what is unusual and remarkable about her story is that Susan is willing to tell it at all. As you will hear in this concluding episode, Susan left Los Angeles in the late 1980s and pursued a professional career, living in constant fear of being confronted by her past. When we contacted her, we had no idea that it would bring out many of her worst fears. This is Sue’s story. You can hear the first part of our interview with Susan Hart here. This podcast is 60 minutes long. —————————————————————————————————————————————- Susan Hart: Adult Industry Photos                             * The post Susan Hart – Confidences and Confidence, Part 2: Podcast 150 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Perhaps one of the less obvious aspects of The Rialto Report is that it may lead to the impression that people involved in the adult industry forty or fifty years ago are all pretty comfortable talking about their pasts and have led serene lives, free of incident, since they stopped making sex films. After all, our podcasts and interviews are filled with people talking pretty openly about their experiences. In fact, quite the opposite is normally the case. You see, the truth is that the majority of people we approach – actors, directors, producers – are usually rather keen to not go public with their memories. And that’s understandable: despite the length of time that’s passed since their images and names were splashed across posters and theater screens, the reality is there is still a very real stigma in current day America for something they did all those years ago. The result is that, sadly, these voices are largely absent from the selection of oral histories that we present in The Rialto Report. So all that begs the question: why on earth did Susan Hart agree to an interview? You see, Susan was a prolific actress in the California video explosion of the mid 1980s. She appeared in a hundred or so movies and countless spreads in men’s magazines. She had an interesting backstory too: a Latina from Los Angeles, the product of a Catholic upbringing, she joined the Army to break free. Then, she became an adult film performer and later was approached to take part in a sting operation against the sex film business. She was pretty, happy-looking, popular, and we always wondered about her. So we sent her a letter. Little did we realize that she’d spent the last 40 years terrified that her past would catch up with her, and that her biggest nightmare was someone like us contacting her and asking her to reveal who she was, and is. But we spoke, and Sue agreed to tell all – including exploring how she feels about it today. She still can’t quite understand why she did adult films, but we hope she’s happy about this interview. This podcast is 60 minutes long. —————————————————————————————————————————————- Susan Hart: Personal Photos                                 * The post Susan Hart – Confidences and Confidence, Part 1: Podcast 149 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Previously on Chasing Butterflies – Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida: After Dolores Carlos’ retirement from acting in South Florida nudie films in the late 1960s, she still remained close to her circle of Cuban filmmaker friends, and none more so than José Prieto, Greg Sandor, and Rafael Remy. They would still meet regularly, and all three took an active interest in her daughter Marcy’s well-being. From time to time, they would joke about the fortune teller that the three men had consulted when they escaped from Cuba. Greg Sandor had moved out the California and had indeed found the money and respect that had been predicted for him. Similarly, José Prieto had found a degree of fame and notoriety following the success and outcry that followed the release of films he made, such as Shanty Tramp (1967) and Savages from Hell (1968). The only exception to the mystic’s forecast was Rafael Remy: he’d fared well and was not seeing the trouble and strife that had been foreseen in his future. Rafael had lived a lower profile existence but with more regular work than his two friends: due in part to his jack-of-all-trades skill-set and willingness to get involved in anything, he was always in demand. He was a cameraman, editor, lighting, gaffer, soundman, and production manager who was cheap and could always be relied on to deliver a decent job. But as the 1960s turned into the 70s, the film business was changing: the innocent exploitation films that had greeted them when they arrived from Cuba were giving way to more explicit sex movies whose legality was questionable, and Rafael was suddenly being offered an altogether different kind of job. Over the last twenty years, I’ve tracked down and spoken to many people involved in the Florida film business of the 1960s and 1970s. Their overlapping personal histories reveal an untold chapter of adult film history – and the hidden role that Cubans played in shaping it. These are some of their stories. This is the concluding episode of Chasing Butterflies, Part 4: Rafael Remy’s story. You can listen to the Prologue: Dolores Carlos’ story here, Part 1: Manuel Conde’s story, Part 2: José Prieto’s story, Part 3: Marcy Bichette’s story. With thanks to John Minson, Tom Flynn, Ronald Ziegler, Leroy Griffith, Veronica Acosta, Marcy Bichette, Mikey Bichette, Lousie ‘Bunny’ Downe, Mitch Poulos, Sheldon Schermer, Ray Aranha, Manny Samaniego, Barry Bennett, Randy Grinter, Herb Jeffries, Tempest Storm, Chester Phebus, Michael Bowen, Norman Senfeld, Richard Falcone, Lynne O’Neill, Something Weird Video, and many anonymous families and friends who have offered recollections, large and small, over the years. This podcast is 45 minutes long. * 1.    Rafael Remy, the fortune-teller’s prediction – and Emile Harvard In the late 1960s, Rafael received a called from someone called Emile Allan Harvard. In a strong Eastern European accent, Harvard explained that he was new to Florida and was looking for a film man: someone who knew how to put a movie together, someone who knew where to find actors, crew, locations, and equipment. Harvard had heard that Rafael could be the man to assist him, and that Rafael was a man with expertise who’d built an extensive network of contacts in the years since he’d arrived penniless from Cuba. But Rafael was wary: he asked around about this new arrival in the state, but could find no one who knew anything about Harvard. Rafael was right to be cautious: Harvard was a mysterious hustler with an unusual history. Emile Harvard was a Romanian Jew, who’d started his adult life in 1930s Bucharest training to be a cameraman. And then in the build-up to World War 2, Harvard became a spy for the British. It was a volatile period in Romania as the country’s fascist dictatorship was aligned to Nazi Germany and the government was suppressing any opposition by force. Despite the dangers, Harvard loved the subterfuge. He was given a cover profession to conceal his espionage activity which was to be a newsreel cameraman for British Movietone News. He used these media credentials to gain access to key government sites and report on them to his British paymasters. It was a perilous assignment, but one he performed with alacrity. Romania was a key supplier of the oil for the Nazi war effort and so he also gathered information on the refineries and transport routes. Then he captured footage of Romanian military operations, like airfields and supply depots. But Harvard never seemed happy doing the same activity for long, and soon he was suggesting ways that he could sabotage Nazi efforts. His motivation was less born out of deeply-held ideological convictions, but rather out of a love of excitement and intrigue. A later acquaintance described Harvard as “an enigma, rather than a real person, a shady, shape-shifting person with many identities, a man who you felt you could never truly know.” The useful life of a spy is a limited one – and in 1943, his cover was blown when Harvard apparently blabbed to someone he shouldn’t have and was reported to the authorities. Life In Romania was suddenly impossible for him so his British employers moved him to Tel Aviv, a city then in British-administered Mandatory Palestine, where he got married and had a daughter, Esther. When the war ended, Harvard obtained Israeli citizenship before moving to Canada, first Montreal, then Toronto, where he started a career as a TV producer and director. He formed several small-time companies, including Harvard Productions, ostensibly to make television series for the American market. His wartime activity may have been over, but in truth Harvard still enjoyed living a partly fictional life, and with each career move, he inflated the achievements on his resumé which he generously shared with the press. He frequently spoke about working for MGM for twelve years, producing content for NBC, CBS, and Pathé, and having a successful career in Hollywood – none of which was true. A few years later, without any major credits to his name, Harvard decided on a radical change of direction: after a vacation to see his brother in Miami, Florida in 1960, he was inspired to announce that Harvard Productions was planning a Florida-themed club in Toronto to be called ‘Oceans 11’, after the Rat Pack movie that had hit the cinemas that year. It was to be an exclusive, high-end, rich-members-only place, which he described as a “health and entertainment” club. The Florida theme meant palm trees, a glass sun-roof, a 500-seat restaurant, nightly entertainment, and a swimming pool with a state-of-the-art wave machine – all to be housed on the top three floors of a Toronto office building. “It will be just like Miami Beach,” Harvard told the newspapers, who lapped up the project with excitement filling pages of breathless newsprint. It was ambition on a grand scale, the kind that comes from someone with a big imagination, not to mention someone whose own money is not at stake. Sure enough, the project failed when it was the funding failed to materialize, and so for Emile Harvard and Harvard Productions, it was back to square one. Just like the wartime spy Harvard had been, the next years were spent donning various different identities and promoting different business schemes. Some seemed serious, others were harebrained. They included hawking time-share properties, selling Jacuzzis, and offering dubious healthcare products (“at last a cure from embarrassing itching!” read the copy for one innovative cream.) Perhaps part of his success came from his appearance: Harvard was a tall, distinguished, and earnest-looking man who projected intelligent seriousness. But in 1967, Harvard was in the news again, this time posing as a doctor, prescribing Belltone hearing aids, and persuading pensioners to sign up for exorbitantly-priced payment plans. He was arrested and charged for his involvement in the fraudulent scheme. Each time he was embroiled in a scandal, Emile Harvard somehow managed to wriggle out, and re-emerge a year or two later involved in another dodgy deal. The irony was that he was never afraid of the media. Quite the opposite: he was first in line to give newspapers interviews and quotes, just as long as they spelt his name correctly. * 2.    Emile Harvard and ‘Fear of Love’ (1970) And so, in the late 1960s, on the lam from his latest scam, Harvard turned up in Miami, in his early 50s, with his wife and two teenage children. This time he decided to return to his first love – filmmaking. A cursory glance at the local theater scene in South Florida convinced him that he needed to speak with the most powerful and influential player in town – and that was Leroy Griffith. Griffith’s theater business had come a long way since he moved to Miami in the early 1960s and bought the Paris Theater staging burlesque shows with Tempest Storm before meeting Dolores and moving into the sexploitation movie business with men like Manuel Conde. By the early 1970s, Griffith’s empire had grown to 12 adult theaters, including the Paris, Roxy, and Gayety theaters, and 15 adult book stores in the area, and he claimed to have produced 30 softcore adult films too. By now, Griffith was a well-known figure in Miami, though he was at pains to point out, in an interview in 1969, that he made films that specialized in ‘nudity’ and not ‘exploitation.’ ‘Exploitation’, he explained carefully, referred to “torture, fetishes, and lesbianism”, subjects that he just wouldn’t touch. Griffith was intrigued by Emile Harvard: here was an older, seemingly sophisticated European, who boasted of a successful Hollywood career and wanted to make films for him to exhibit. Griffith told Harvard to speak to José Prieto and Rafael Remy, two men who would give him a crash course download in Florida low-budget filmmaking. So Harvard did, and came away impressed with both the Cubans’ experience. But Harvard explained he wanted to make a different kind of flick. He didn’t want to join the crowded field of slasher films, biker movies, or nudie-cuties: he wanted his films to go further and push the envelope. In short, he wanted to put sex up onscreen. Real sex, sex that happened before your very eyes. Harvard formed a company, set up a small office, and offered José and Rafael in-house jobs working on his upcoming sex film projects. José was unsure. He didn’t seek film work as much as Rafael, happy to pick up temp jobs outside of the movie business when he needed money and wait for movies that interested him. He also wasn’t sure about making more explicit sex films. They were still illegal, right? He’d had enough of hiding and fleeing from government interest, and now he preferred to keep his head down and enjoy a quiet life. But Rafael felt differently. This could be a new income stream: the films would be cheap, so there would be more of them. That would mean more regular and reliable paychecks. He was in, and he persuaded José to give it a try as well. In early 1970, Harvard – using the nom de porn of ‘Emilio Portici’ – made their first feature, Fear of Love (1970). Harvard directed, José shot it, and Rafael, the production manager, corralled the available Cuban film crew from Calle Ocho to help out. It was a cash-in imitation of a recent sex documentary called Man and Wife (1969) which had been hugely successful. ‘Fear of Love’ was a similarly pseudo-instructional tale of marital problems caused by sexual woes that are resolved by a marriage counselor – and it too played well in Leroy Griffith’s adult theaters. * 3.    ‘Fear of Love’ – the Live Show Leroy Griffith took note of the film’s success, and had an idea: he had a string of former burlesque theaters, so he suggested that Harvard convert the movie into a risqué live performance piece. Griffith even promised he’d finance a theatrical run on the stage at the Roxy, one of his Miami theaters. Harvard liked the idea, and the stage show opened in September 1970, advertised as “an educational drama in two acts.” The cast included one Barry Bennett, a fresh-faced 25-year-old New Yorker, in the central lead role of the sex counselor. Barry had studied acting at college, and Harvard had taken a shine to the kid, offering him the chance to star in movies soon to be made by his newly-formed company. Barry had just proposed to his girlfriend, and wasn’t sure that sex movies were for him, but he jumped at the chance to have a starring role in this high-profile stage production. One of the first people in line to see ‘Fear of Love’ onstage at the Roxy was the Miami Beach mayor. He wasn’t impressed. He reacted by writing a letter to the Dade County Grand Jury declaring that the play showed “live complete nudity, simulated sexual intercourse, and homosexuality among females.” As if that wasn’t bad enough, it also had an “extremely thin plot.” At first, it seemed that the play’s run would be allowed to continue as a Miami Beach Municipal Judge ruled that it was not obscene. But then the performance was busted, and Leroy Griffith and six cast members were arrested when they left the stage. They were ordered to get dressed, and taken to Miami Beach police station where bonds were set at $2,500 each. Griffith was booked for operating a building of lewdness, and the actors for lewd and lascivious conduct. Barry Bennett was arrested, even though he was the only actor who didn’t take off his clothes, and he was charged with participating in an obscene performance. The performance resumed two days later, whereupon the vice squad burst in – and arrested everyone all over again. Griffith protested loudly as he was led away, “People are being robbed out on the street, and yet you guys are in here?!” To which the arresting officer replied: “I think that people are getting robbed every time they watch this performance.” The result of the legal kerfuffle were two 30-day jail sentences and a $600 fine for Griffith, $300 fines for the naked cast members, and a $150 fine for Barry Bennett. When I spoke with Barry years later, he remembered that it was a serious moment for the cast. They were facing jail sentences for simply acting on stage. In October 1970, Leroy Griffith reluctantly took the play off the schedule, and his theater returned to playing adult films. As a sidenote: Griffith was getting beaten up from all sides. In 1971, he stopped showing adult films in some of his theaters so that he could exhibit the feature film ‘Che!’ (1969) starring Omar Sharif. It was an intentionally noncommittal version of the Cuban revolution that recounted Che Guevara’s transformation from doctor to political revolutionary in Fidel Castro’s coup. The movie greatly displeased many of the Cubans in Miami, especially those in the filmmaking community who’d worked on Griffith productions – and they retaliated in force. There were bomb threats, physical violence, and even an incident when a Cuban turned up at Griffith’s office brandishing a gun. It was all too much for the theater owner, and so Griffith decided to go back to the safer activity of exhibiting sex films. * 4.    ‘Fear of Love’ – On Tour! Meanwhile, Emile Harvard wasn’t entirely disappointed at the controversy caused by the ‘Fear of Love’ production: he’d arrived in Miami with a splash, made some money, and was now ready for the next step. Griffith and Harvard felt there was more mileage to be obtained from the stage play so they convinced Jack Cione, owner of the Forbidden City Theater in Honolulu to put on ‘Fear of Love’ in a two-week run starting January 7th, 1971. Harvard flew over to Hawaii, and took some of the same actors from the Florida production, including Barry Bennett. Harvard was smart enough to know he had to play up the play’s socially redeeming features, so he gave interviews in Hawaii claiming that “a group of eight psychiatrists came to see the show and they said they were sorry it couldn’t have been seen on-stage 30 years ago – as it would have saved a lot of marriages.” But Harvard wanted to have his cake and eat it: when ‘Fear of Love’ opened, billed as “direct from Miami Beach”, it was also described as “a graphically nude work” and “the most shocking we’ve seen.” The campaign worked: ‘Fear of Love’ was a sell-out twice a day for its engagement. It was reviewed in the local newspapers as “a two-act play, seven actors, serio-comic dialogue, and a lot of simulated sex,” and the TV news ran several features on it. From Hawaii, Harvard took the play to San Francisco when it had a run at the Basin Street West Theater. Harvard heard that the local cops had been tipped off about the play’s run in Hawaii, and they were primed to bust it – so he tweaked the title, calling it ‘For the Love of Love’ in an attempt to throw them off the scent. It was a good idea, but the police were wise to his tricks and the play was busted on opening night, and three of the cast were cited for obscenity. The theater manager panicked and canceled the rest of engagement. Harvard was undeterred and just moved it down the road to the Encore Theater, where it opened in April 1971. Harvard downplayed the hiccup, maintaining that the Basin Street Theater shows had just been rehearsals intended for a private audience. Once again, Harvard granted interviews to the local newspapers, such as the San Francisco Chronicle, and once again he exaggerated the success of the play, saying that it had played for two months in Miami, seven weeks in Honolulu, and would transfer to Washington DC next. Now he boasted his own experience included “33 years of Hollywood and 122 major feature-length productions, eight television series, awards from the Vatican and the Edinburgh Festival, and a track record that included working with Universal, Paramount, and 20th Century Fox.” He claimed the reason he used a fake name ‘Emilio Portici’ was not because his stage play was pornographic, but rather because he was in the middle of “negotiating a major deal with MGM” and didn’t want to jeopardize it. All the bluster and boasting worked: the stage show was a hit again, and additional midnight performances were added to the twice-an-evening offering. At the end of the San Francisco run, Harvard decided to retire the play: it had had a good run, but it was expensive to produce, flying and accommodating his actors and crew, and paying for potential legal fees to defend lawsuits. He decided to focus his efforts and money on his fledgling film studio. In mid-1971, he returned to Miami, and dedicated himself to his new activity: making sex films. * 5.    Rafael Remy and Emile Harvard – The Miami XXX Factory So you may be wondering what this all has to do with Rafael Remy. After all, this is meant to be his story. When Harvard got back to South Florida, he called Rafael, now his go-to film man, and explained the plan – and he wanted Rafael to be his right-hand man. His business model was simple: with the help of Leroy Griffith, Harvard would finance and produce sex features and shorts that he would send to labs up in New York for processing where they would then be distributed to theaters across the country. Harvard set up a studio at 1238 North Miami Avenue, and formed an inner circle of trusted associates that would deliver an inexpensive, rinse-and-repeat formula that would maximize profits. This small group consisted of Rafael, who would also be production manager, main cameraman, and editor; Jack Birch, a pockmark-faced wannabe actor who had aspirations to be a Jack Palance-style on-screen heavy, and Jack’s girlfriend Carol Kyzer, a quiet, blonde, part-time model who’d done topless layouts for Bunny Yeager; Brad Grinter, a veteran of the horror film scene in Florida who had just made Flesh Feast (1970), a terrible movie whose one claim to fame was its star, 1940s bombshell Veronica Lake; Brad’s son Randy, a 22-year-old who would be Rafael’s assistant; Harvard’s daughter, Esther, who was given the job of office manager; and finally there was Barry Bennett, the young actor who would take the lead performing role in the films. Carol Kyzer, photographed by Bunny Yeager Barry had an additional role – and a critically important one: he was the one who’d take the films to the labs in New York to get the film stock processed and the prints cut. It was a risky assignment: the U.S. Supreme Court still hadn’t come up with an agreed-upon definition of obscenity and so interstate transportation of pornography was a dicey proposition with offenders facing years of imprisonment. But Barry wanted the extra cash that Harvard promised him – so he figured he could deal with the dangers. Due to the potential illegality of what they were all doing, most of the group took different names to mask their involvement: Harvard reverted to his ‘Emilio Portici’ identity, Rafael Remy became ‘Roberto Raphael’ – if he had a credit at all, Brad and Randy Grinter used any name – just as long as it wasn’t theirs, and most of the time it wasn’t, Jack Birch had a variety of Western-macho names like ‘Jack Colt’ or ‘Michael Powers’, Carol Kyzer became ‘Carol Connors’, a name that she would use for the next decade, and Barry Bennett took the name ‘Marc Brock.’ Harvard would be the nominal director of the films, but in practice, he would share the responsibility with Rafael. For the next three years, Harvard’s studio churned out sex films on a regular basis: titles like Penny Wise (1970), The Good Fairy (1970), The Eighteen Carat Virgin (1971), Mary Jane (1972), Your Neighborhood Doc (1972), School Teachers Weekend Vacation (1972), and Female Stud Service (1972). Most of them were made according to a template loosely agreed with Leroy Griffith: each feature film would be roughly 65 minutes long, and would cost less than $15,000. Most were shot in Harvard’s small studio at 1238 North Miami Avenue, though they would occasionally venture out into fancy houses like a Coconut Grove mansion belonging to a friend of Harvard, Sepy Dobronyi. Nearly all of them starred Barry Bennett, who, as ‘Marc Brock’, quickly became Florida’s leading male porno star. He wasn’t the most charismatic performer you’d ever seen but he could be relied upon to use his improv and comedy skills to fill the holes in the scripts. Many of the movies also featured Jack and Carol, who soon became a married couple. All the films did ok but none were spectacular. Rafael worked hard behind the scenes, and nearly all of the crews consisted of his old Cuban friends, including José Prieto who came onboard for an occasional job. Randy Grinter remembers Rafael telling him that the softcore sex film business In Florida had been built by Cubans, and now it was Cubans who were responsible for the hard-core films too. And then in 1972, Deep Throat became a national smash-hit: it had cost $25,000 and had made several millions for the New York mob that distributed it. It was essentially a New York film: the financing came from the Brooklyn-based Peraino family, and the director, stars, and crew were mostly New York-based. But Emile Harvard didn’t view it that way: ‘Deep Throat’ was shot in Miami, making ample use of the exteriors and locations that he normally used like Sepy Dobronyi’s pad, and two of his featured players, Jack and Carol, both had roles in it. For someone who had labored for the previous two years to make money in the business, Deep Throat’s wild success felt a kick in the teeth to Harvard. He was mad and resolved to get even. Crew members who worked with him remember him shouting, in his thick eastern European accent, about the fact that the success should have been his. Harvard reacted swiftly, increasing production, widening his distribution, and expanding his business: the least he could do was to cash in on the new bigger market that ‘Deep Throat’ had created. * 6.    XXX, after ‘Deep Throat’ (1973) Emile Harvard and Leroy Griffith were strange bed-fellows, but their relationship was symbiotic and so they had regular contact about the sex film market – and how to exploit it. For example, Griffith suggested ripping off ‘Deep Throat’ by making a movie called Dear Throat (1973) saying that people would see the ads in the newspapers but not realize that they were two different films with similar names. Harvard obliged, making a cheap knockoff starring, who else?, Marc Brock and Carol Connors. It was blatant plagiarism, and so Harvard used a different name for the film – P. Arthur Murphy – fearing reprisals from the mob owners of ‘Deep Throat.’ It was one of an increasing number of different identities he started to use, as the legal heat increased around adult films. Thirty years after the war in which he’d hidden his identity to work undercover, Harvard still seemed incapable of living a simple life as himself. Not that he’d grown afraid of publicity: Harvard gave a number of interviews to newspapers and magazines. In one of them, he used the name ‘Bruno’ – much to the amusement of the Cuban crews. One interview quoted ‘Bruno’ (“in a guttural European accent”) as someone who “used to be big in Hollywood” and that he was “only turning out this stuff between engagements.” The reporter was even invited to Harvard’s studio where he reported that all the technicians were Cuban, and that “Bruno’s studio contains, as scenery, an office desk, a couch, and a bed: the three essentials for a porno movie.” While he was there, Bruno warned him not to speak loudly as he was making a “quality movie” and the actors “are very sensitive about what they have to do.” Harvard may have been unhappy about missing out on the ‘Deep Throat’ deep cash, but he was still doing pretty well – a fact that was evident to many of the Cuban crew, as one of them remembered: “Emile was a very different guy to us Cubans, but he liked us and always had work for us. He paid by the hour in cash at the end of each day, but we never hung out with him or anything like that. And we could all see that he was making big money.” It was true: Harvard made no attempt to hide a pretty luxurious lifestyle – he lived on Palm Island, a man-made development, situated between the city of Miami and its glamorous suburb of Miami Beach. The area was famous for its celebrity residents, and neighbors had included gangsters Al Capone and Meyer Lansky, and the non-gangster, TV presenter Barbara Walters. Harvard drove to work every day from his large house in a new cherry-red Buick Centurion, and often talked about eating at Miami’s finest restaurants. It may have irritated some of the Cubans who worked for Harvard, but Rafael Remy was happy. As Harvard’s number two, he was faithful to a fault, despite the difference in the money they were earning. Rafael had become the glue who held everything together and he kept people happy. He ran a tight ship, making sure they had a right-sized team for every shoot, choosing actors and crew carefully, and making sure everyone was paid. In 1973, Harvard confided in Rafael that he felt fatigued. Worse he’d started feeling pain in his joints and bones. He figured he was just getting old – he’d recently turned 60 – and said he wanted to take a step back and delegate more of the filmmaking to the others, like Rafael himself, Marc Brock, and Jack Birch. When I spoke to Brock many years later, he remembered the change in how Harvard operated: “Emile was a control freak, and then all of a sudden, he handed the reins over to the rest of us, and so we started to alternate the directing duties.” * 7.    ‘Daddy’s Rich’ (1973) – and the (next) Cuban Rebellion In October 1973, Harvard got Marc Brock to shoot his latest film, Daddy’s Rich. Marc was a reliable sex performer, having appeared in most of Harvard’s features and loops, but the Cubans on the crew knew he was a sloppy operator, being regularly picked up by the cops for petty misdemeanors like shoplifting, a small stash of weed, and minor DUIs. Marc put together a rough budget for the movie, but it was higher than normal. The film wasn’t materially different from the rest of Harvard’s efforts, but somehow Marc convinced a distracted Harvard that he needed more money this time. For a start, there were ten crew members – more than double the normal number – and there was an inflated cast of nine. Then there was the location: Marc arranged with Sepy Dobronyi that they would shoot most it in the same Coconut Grove house where ‘Deep Throat’ had been shot the previous year. Rafael argued with Marc that there was no need for the exterior location, but Marc was adamant. And then Marc withheld payment from the Cuban crew after the first day. Harvard had always treated everyone fairly and so the crew were suspicious Marc promised that everyone would be paid the following day, but the Cubans were unconvinced, a clash erupted, and they nearly came to blows. Sepy Dobronyi’s house, venue for the filming of ‘Deep Throat’ (1972)… and ‘Daddy’s Rich’ (1973) One of the crew that I spoke to years later remembered what happened next: “One of the guys, a grip on the shoot, took exception at Marc Brock after that – big time,” he said. “This grip was a new guy, and he was a hothead who liked to overreact. Next day, when the grip didn’t show, I called him up, and he just said, ‘Fuck Brock’. When I told him to do the right thing and come to the set, he threatened to call the cops and tell them about the shoot. We didn’t really believe him but we kept an eye out for the police that day.” Sure enough, halfway through filming, Rafael noticed a cop car slowly coming up the road towards the house. He shouted in Spanish “Get the hell out of here now!”, and the crew scrambled their equipment together, much to the confusion of the semi-clad actors. Remarkably all eight crew on set that day made it out over the rear hedge, and down the lane, where they jumped into cars and fled the scene. They left Marc with Stan, his assistant director, as well as six actors, in the house – who were all arrested. Marc and Stan were charged with manufacturing obscene material, while the actors were charged with lewd and lascivious behavior, and indecent exposure. Sepy Dobronyi, the owner of the house, wasn’t helpful, making a statement to the newspapers that he was playing tennis at a nearby park at the time – and that the actors had broken into his home at which point his house guests had called the police. Harvard, fearful of negative publicity for his business, called Leroy Griffith for help. Griffith snapped into action dispatching his main attorney, Alan Weinstein, to the precinct. Weinstein had been getting Griffith out of scrapes for years, including helping out when ‘Fear of Love’ had been shut down. Weinstein got everyone out of jail – and threw in an indignant statement to the press: “The police had no right to be on the premises,” he said. “There were more cops involved in arresting people taking pictures than there are on a murder case. Someone’s priorities are out of whack.” The arrests caused a mini-media storm in the Miami newspapers, and for a few months, Harvard had to curb back his movie production schedule. Harvard blamed Marc Brock: he’d once viewed Brock as a protégé and an investment for the future, and so he’d ignored Marc’s legal indiscretions because he was essential in transporting the films up to the labs in New York, as well as being a reliable performer in front of the camera, but Harvard had had his fingers burned by this. When Harvard looked into the finances of the film and saw that Marc had been using the inflated budget to line his own pockets, pilfering money for himself, he called Marc and told him he was fired. * 8.    Trouble in Wonderland By 1974, it seemed that the immediate hardcore boom after ‘Deep Throat’ was starting to subside, and some of the players who’d been involved were looking to go legit – or at least, go more legit than being underground producers of hardcore smut. Leroy Griffith still played Harvard’s XXX films in his theaters as a cash cow source of income, but he was branching out in other directions. For one thing, he decided to revive the burlesque variety shows that he’d pioneered in Miami in the 1960s, this time opening a big production, ‘Hello Burlesque’ in Miami Beach with strippers, comedians, and music acts. Harvard was looking to diversify too. He’d acquired theaters of his own, including the Cameo at 1445 Washington Ave, and when he and Rafael Remy had to put their sex films on hiatus, they decided to make a different kind of film. Or as Harvard bellowed one day, “Let’s make a serious movie!” Harvard’s daughter, Esther, had written a sensitive script called ‘Of Gentle Heart’ about an escaped convict who befriends a young boy. It was originally intended as a touching character study, but when Harvard got his hands on it, he couldn’t help himself. His exploitation instincts returned, and he renamed it Fugitive Killer (aka Fugitive Women) (1974). Rafael was on hand as always to oversee the production. When the film was released, after a gentle opening on a wholesome and bucolic farm, it turned into a rape and murder exploitation film. Marketed with the catchphrase, “Once he started, he couldn’t stop! If he didn’t rape you, he killed you,” the film was a bizarre mess, and despite being distributed by Harry Novak’s Boxoffice International Pictures, Inc., it failed to raise much interest. It turned out that the film’s lack of success was the least of Harvard’s concerns. They say that bad news comes in threes, and it was certainly true for Harvard in 1974. He’d already scaled back his sex film production as a result of the bust of ‘Daddy’s Rich’, when he lost his son, Roy, who died after a short illness. Then, Harvard received an explanation for the fatigue and pain he’d been experiencing: he was diagnosed with bone cancer. He began treatment immediately, and told Rafael they had to put all filmmaking on hold. Another surprise awaited him though. In April 1975, the FBI turned up at his front door to arrest him: they’d been tipped off by a source that Harvard had been transporting pornographic films between Miami and New York. Two films were specified in the indictment: ‘Valley of the Nymphs’ and ‘Ball and Chain’, which were described by the FBI spokesperson as “really raunchy stuff.” Harvard faced five felony charges relating to “substantive conspiracy counts of interstate transportation of obscene matter,” two of which carried penalties of five years in prison. Arrest warrants were issued for three other people: two of them were Harvard’s New York associates, Charles Abrams and Sidney Levine, who had taken delivery of the films over the years when Marc Brock smuggled them into the city. Both Abrams and Levine were taken into custody. But the final arrest warrant was for Rafael Remy – except that Rafael got away. Somehow, after Harvard was arrested, he got word to Remy and told the Cuban of his arrest. Remy drove straight to Miami airport and left the country, flying to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, to avoid the Feds catching up with him. What nobody realized – not Harvard nor Rafael – was that the FBI source, the person who had alerted the authorities to Harvard’s pornography operation, was actually Marc Brock. After Brock had been arrested on the set of ‘Daddy’s Rich’ – and then fired by Harvard, he’d panicked. He already had a string of minor arrests to his name, and now feared that this time the judge would throw the book at him. So Brock decided to get his revenge on Harvard, and bought some protection for himself, by spilling the beans on how Harvard’s sex film business worked. Brock laid out how he personally shipped films to the New York labs, where prints were struck and shipped to theaters across the country. In return for singing, Brock was granted immunity from prosecution. Three months later, Remy tried to slip back into Miami. He didn’t want to involve family, so he needed someone to stay with. Of all the people he could have contacted, he called Marc Brock, unaware that Brock was working with the FBI. And so, when Remy landed at Miami airport, they were waiting for him. An additional charge of fleeing arrest was added to Rafael’s woes. As for Harvard, he was understandably nervous: he was the ringleader and owner of the business, the man controlling all the moving parts, and the mastermind behind the operation. So he did what he always did when he was in a bind: he hustled. Harvard told the Judge that his bone cancer was terminal, and that jail time would be dangerous to his health. He said that the real criminals were actually the two aging New Yorkers, Abrams and Levine. They were the ones who distributed the films far and wide, whereas he was just a cog in the machinery. In short, Harvard pleaded guilty and offered to testify for the government. The Judge consented, and Harvard was set free. After a life of bluffs, double bluffs, and downright lies, this time Emile Harvard was telling the truth about his health. His bone cancer quickly got worse, and in 1976, his health deteriorated. He died that August. Rafael Remy was eventually let off when the charges against him were dropped. Marcy Bichette, the daughter of his old friend Dolores Carlos, had put on a rock show to raise some money for his legal costs which made the ordeal easier. Marcy Bichette But he was now in his early 50s, and he’d had enough. Within the previous two decades, he’d gone from having a promising career in films in Cuba, working on global productions like ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ (1958) and ‘Our Man in Havana’ (1959) to fleeing Cuba to escape Castro’s revolution, and ultimately making a home in Florida sex films – all the way from the softcore tease days to now being arrested for hardcore films. He often joked that he couldn’t escape the fortune teller’s prediction that had foretold trouble and strife for him, but he consoled himself that he’d lived a full life. Now he wanted the easy life. * 9.    Aftermath And so, the late 1970s marked more or less the end of the roads for the band of Cuban filmmakers who had revolutionized sex filmmaking in Florida. Dolores Carlos was living a quiet life still working in the bank, married, and with a new family. Her daughter Marcy toured with her band Bitter Sweet, until, by 1981, when the travel and late nights became too much. She’d been on the road for years, hadn’t had a break, and the lounge scene was dying. Marcy was 30, and figured it was time to accept that the acting and music dreams were over. She found a place in Miami not far from Dolores, and they remained close seeing each other often. Later on, they would go see Marcy’s step-brother, Dante Bichette, play baseball when his team came to Florida. Dante was an outfielder for various teams, and was a four-time All-Star and contender for the Most Valuable Player Award in Major League Baseball. Marcy and Dolores, early 1990s Marcy got work as a bartender, giving much of her spare time – and money – to local animal rescue centers. In 1983 she got married. The guy developed a drug problem, and though she stuck around for three years, his habit effectively ended the marriage. They divorced, and she never saw him again. Dolores and Marcy, mid 1990s From time to time, Dolores hosted reunions for the old Cuban gang, and they’d get together and swap stories. Gradually the reunions became fewer and less well-attended as one-by-one the various friends died. K. Gordon Murray, the exploitation film man, known for re-dubbing and re-releasing foreign fairy tale films for U.S. audiences, and who’d been the first person who had trusted Dolores as a potential filmmaker, ended up getting into trouble with the Internal Revenue Service. They seized his films and took them out of circulation. Murray protested his innocence, but the case dragged and, in 1979, before it could come to a conclusion, he died of a heart attack. As for Manuel Conde, after leaving Florida in the 1960s, he settled in California where he embarked on another stage of his sex film career by producing and directing hits such as The Danish Connection (1974), Deep Jaws (1976), and The All-American Woman (1976). By the early 1990s he’d developed dementia and he died in 1992. José Prieto and Raphael Remy, the two inseparable Cuban friends who’d escaped their homeland after Castro’s takeover, both passed – Raphael, relatively young at 60 years of age, in 1984, while Prieto died an old man, two decades later. In 1996, Dolores became sick and was diagnosed with cancer. The first person she told was Marcy. Marcy was heartbroken, but she immediately called each family member to tell them the news. At first the signs were good, and doctors hoped they had caught everything in time, but it was a false hope. It was a painful, drawn-out process, and Marcy did everything she could to make it easy for her mother. The family rallied – one family member admitted they all pulled together for Marcy’s sake as much as anyone else – but it was to no avail. Dolores died in January 1997. She was 66. Marcy and Dolores, mid 1990s * 10.    Endgame In 1999, Marcy married her boyfriend, Tom Flynn. They’d met a few years before, and their first date was going to midnight mass with Tom’s mom. They become inseparable: Marcy had found the relationship she’d always wanted. She stopped bartending so she wasn’t out at night and could spend more time with Tom. She took up a new career – perhaps the one to which she was best suited of all: she became a pet stylist and groomer. Marcy, dog groomer Tom had proposed to her at the Hollywood Beach Hotel in Miami. The venue was significant: Tom’s parents had met there when they’d both been employed by the hotel years before. Not only that but it was also where Tom had been conceived when his folks had taken refuge in one of the rooms during Hurricane Diana, a fierce tropical storm back in 1960. The hurricane happened to hit Miami the night of Marcy’s tenth birthday. So it made sense that their wedding took place there as well. Marcy and Tom, wedding day Marcy and Tom spent the next two decades happily married in South Florida. Tom knew a little about Marcy’s films, and sometimes asked about her past but she didn’t talk about it much. The present and the future were more important to her. Marcy did appear in another film, ‘Marley and Me’ (2007) with Owen Wilson, where she had a fleeting, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it walk on part. And then three years ago, Marcy was diagnosed with colon cancer, the same that Dolores had. Marcy passed away in May 2021 at the age of 70. She was cremated and her ashes scattered at, where else, Hollywood Beach Hotel, where she and Tom had got engaged and married. I took Tom out for dinner recently and told him some of the stories I’d learned about Marcy, her mother Dolores, and the people they’d known and worked with. He was surprised to find out about it all, and shook his head in sad happiness hearing stories about her. Most of all though, he just missed Marcy. “I always wonder what I did in a previous life to deserve her,” he said. “I must’ve done something right somewhere along the way. She was a good person, and she was chasing butterflies to the very end.” Marcy and Tom * Postscript The United States has always been a nation of immigrants – some of whom, like the Cubans in this series arrived in the country fleeing from adversity. The vast majority have helped drive business creation, fuel innovation, and fill essential workforce needs, all core principles of American values. Their stories are often overlooked, but worse, all too often they’ve been maligned and mistreated. I’m an immigrant, and at the naturalization ceremony, the presiding officer will tell you that now you have become an American, the most important thing you can do is to hold onto where you’ve come from: the culture, the customs, the food, and the way of life. If you can do that, you’re told, you’ll be preserving what truly makes America great. You’ll be keeping this a nation that is welcoming of differences, diversity, and inclusion. People like Dolores Carlos, Manuel Conde, José Prieto, and Rafael Remy who came to this country, and chased butterflies of their own. * Marcy * The post Chasing Butterflies: Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida – Part 4, Rafael Remy’s Story – Podcast 148 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Previously on Chasing Butterflies – Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida: You may remember Marcy Bichette’s start in life from our earlier episodes: she was born Marcelle Denise Bichette in St Petersburg, Florida in August 1950 to a young married couple who had distinctly different ambitions in life. Her father, Maurice Bichette, had married looking for a settled, quiet existence, but her mother, Dolores, wanted to live her life moving in the opposite direction. Dolores had come from a protected, patriarchal, patriotic Cuban household, and she longed for the excitement and glamor that she saw onscreen in her favorite Hollywood movies. Maurice and Dolores’ marriage couldn’t, and didn’t, last. They divorced, and Marcy lived with her father and his new wife Mary, while Dolores, moved to Miami to pursue a modeling career. Dolores did well, changing her name to Dolores Carlos, her photos featuring in magazines and newspapers, winning beauty contests, and then, starring (and being arrested) for a hit nudie film, Hideout in the Sun. The success of that film led to her appearing in other films such as Pagan Island (1961), Diary of a Nudist (1961), and Blaze Starr Goes Nudist (1962) in quick succession, and thereby becoming the unofficial pin-up queen for nudists. But perhaps Dolores’ biggest impact came in the way that she became a tireless advocate, promoter, and organizer of the Cuban immigrant film talent that had arrived in Miami, a group of people keen to make a new life in the U.S. after escaping the Castro revolution. Her friendships with local film producers and theater owners like K. Gordon Murray and Leroy Griffith kick-started the American careers of many of these Cubans in Florida, including men such as Manuel Conde, José Prieto, and Rafael Remy. The only downside in Dolores’ new life in the early 1960s was that she was separated from her adored daughter Marcy, a problem that she longed to fix. Over the last twenty years, I’ve tracked down and spoken to many people involved in the Florida film business of the 1960s and 1970s. Their overlapping personal histories reveal an untold chapter of adult film history – and the hidden role that Cubans played in shaping it. These are some of their stories. This is Chasing Butterflies, Part 3: Marcy Bichette’s story. You can listen to the Prologue: Dolores Carlos’ story here, Part 1: Manuel Conde’s story , and Part 2: José Prieto’s story. With thanks to John Minson, Tom Flynn, Ronald Ziegler, Leroy Griffith, Veronica Acosta, Marcy Bichette, Mikey Bichette, Lousie ‘Bunny’ Downe, Mitch Poulos, Sheldon Schermer, Ray Aranha, Manny Samaniego, Barry Bennett, Randy Grinter, Herb Jeffries, Tempest Storm, Chester Phebus, Michael Bowen, Norman Senfeld, Richard Falcone, Lynne O’Neill, Something Weird Video, and many anonymous families and friends who have offered recollections, large and small, over the years. This podcast is 39 minutes long. Marcy Bichette * 1.    Marcy Bichette, beginnings After the divorce, Maurice had quickly remarried. This new wife was his third and final: his new bride, Mary, had already been married four times before, and together they would enjoy, or rather endure, a decades-long relationship. Mary was a difficult character and Marcy, her step-daughter who lived with them, would suffer as a result. Marcy, age 7 Maurice and Mary quickly started another family, which would grow to include three children of their own, Maurice Jr, known as Mikey, Valerie, and Dante. Mikey, the oldest of the three, remembers growing up with his step-sister Marcy as being one of the best parts of his childhood. Marcy was eight years older and took over maternal tasks from Mary, such as playing and dressing him. The kids also remember Dolores coming to see Marcy whenever she had breaks from modeling and filming in Miami: they loved Aunt Dolores’ visits and all her glamorous, exciting stories. Needless to say, Maurice’s feelings were less enthusiastic – he still didn’t approve of Dolores’ lifestyle – but his problems with his ex-wife didn’t stop them both from being close to Marcy. Everyone recalls Marcy was his favorite out of all the kids – in truth, Marcy was everybody’s favorite – and, despite their separation, Maurice and Dolores doted on her. Marcy and Dolores For someone who’d had an unconventional home life, Marcy seemed the most normal girl in the world. Family members today describe her as an unusually gentle and thoughtful person. They talk about her kindness and the way she saw the good in everything and everyone. She was unfailingly happy and positive. She never had a cross word or thought, never had an argument, and made everyone feel special. One person however wasn’t a fan, and that was her step-mother, Mary. Mikey, Mary’s eldest son, pulls no punches in a description of his mother: “My mother could be a bad person, a monster at times. She resented the attention and love that Marcy had – especially from her father – and so she made Marcy suffer, and treated her terribly. But how did Marcy respond? Marcy respected my mom no matter what: she never reacted, never said anything bad against her. She just bore the brunt of all the evil and turned the other cheek.” Mary’s neglect of Marcy continued when Marcy developed an infection in her heart in 1959, and spent four months recovering in hospital. Marcy returned home with a permanent heart murmur and more ill treatment from her step-mother. It got so bad that her father Maurice eventually called Dolores, and they agreed that Marcy had to move out, go down to Miami, and start a new life living with Dolores. It was heart-breaking for Maurice and his other children who never forgave Mary for her behavior. Dolores and Marcy, hospital in 1959 Dolores however was over the moon. Sure, it could’ve been a difficult situation for her: Dolores’ career was taking off – and hers was hardly a kid-friendly lifestyle. She was appearing in racy, not to mention scandalous, nudie films, arranging meetings for her coterie of Cuban filmmaker friends, and hustling her own sex film projects around town to potential financial partners. Dolores, photographed by Bunny Yeager It made their everyday life complicated, but Dolores and Marcy both loved the new arrangement and Dolores relished living with her daughter in her small apartment on NW 1st St. And despite her physical distance from her father, Marcy called Maurice every Sunday without fail, something she continued to do for decades. However busy she was, Marcy made regular trips to visit him and his family, where she loved taking care of her step-brothers and sister. Despite her parents’ acrimonious separation, Marcy harbored no favoritism, loving them both equally as if they were still together. In Miami, Marcy started attending the city’s Senior High School where she fit in immediately. She was popular there, acting in the lead roles in high school productions and playing the piano and guitar in music groups. She had a sweet singing voice, and teenage friends still remember her carrying a guitar everywhere. She loved singer-songwriters and sung in music groups, transforming Dolores’ apartment into a rehearsal space for her latest musical project. She was Dolores’ daughter in every way, loving performing and dreaming of a career in show business. But her biggest passion was animals, especially dogs, and she spent hours training them and playing with them. She signed up for animal welfare organizations in her neighborhood, always taking in strays. One of her friends said of her: “Marcy had such a passion for life and animals, and everyone loved her. I almost hate to say it because I’d love to give you some gossip or salacious stories, but that’s the truth. She was a sweetheart. I still picture her running around the back yard as a teen chasing butterflies.” Dolores and Marcy * 2.    Dolores Carlos – The Nudie Queen Single Mother In the mid 1960s, Dolores told friends she’d never felt happier and yet somehow, she still felt strangely unfulfilled. Deep down, she knew she couldn’t live this life forever. Time moves slowly but passes quickly, and she wanted to remain relevant and use her accumulated knowledge and connections to create a more lasting career. She argued that she’d made as many films as anyone else, she had well-connected and powerful friends, and she could mobilize a Cuban film crew at the drop of a hat, so why was it so difficult to get someone, anyone, to take the chance and invest in her? She wondered out loud about whether it was because she was a woman, or a Latina, or that she was in a business that prized youth and beauty – and there she was, a single mother now in her mid 30s. Or perhaps it was because everyone still thought of her as being just a sex film actress? She knew that success was a double-edged sword – on the one hand, she was still offered plenty of nude film and modeling work which helped pay the extra bills after Marcy moved in, but it also perpetuated the stereotype of her as being just a sex object. Dolores, photographed by Bunny Yeager She did much more than that, she said, and the variety of her work did have a striking range: she was called upon by film production honchos like K. Gordon Murray to assist and advise in their film productions; she advised theater chain managers like Leroy Griffith on new film ideas; she found work for scores of Cubans; and she’d started writing film scripts and movie pitches. She knew she was appreciated, admired, cherished even, but whatever she did, she never seemed to be able to parlay her success into a more profitable, respectable, and permanent career: “I could be a powerful rocket, but at the moment, I’m a failure to launch,” she told a friend. And Dolores worked more regularly than most. In the 1960s, she appeared in a lengthy sequence of sex films that reads like a history of South Florida sexploitation: there was Bunny Yeager’s Nude Camera (1963) – a Barry Mahon effort which featured many models shot by Bunny Yeager including Dolores’ friend Bunny Downes; she work again with Doris Wishman in Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls (1963), shot at Sunny Palms Lodge nudist reserve; there were two more Barry Mahon films – both nudist roles – in Crazy Wild and Crazy (1964) and International Smorgas-Broad (1964); a rare though brief role in a mainstream film, How to Succeed with Girls (1964) – perhaps interesting mainly for the presence of future Golden Girl, Rue McClanahan; then a part in Eve and the Merman (1965) where she was typecast as a pin-up; and then the lead role of sorts in The Beast That Killed Women (1965), a breathtakingly strange film by returning champion Barry Mahon, about a rampaging gorilla who disrupts the calm of a Miami nudist resort – this time Spartan’s Tropical Gardens Nudist Camp – by kidnapping and murdering nude women. She wasn’t short of male attention either: when she and Bunny Downe appeared as two of the nudists in Herschell Gordon Lewis and Dave Friedman’s Goldilocks and the Three Bares (1963) – Dolores had a brief, behind-the-scenes fling with the film’s star, Joey Maxim, the recently-retired but still handsome heavyweight boxing champion from the 1950s. All the experiences were fun, all kept her in the public eye, and all paid a little spending cash, which was increasingly important as Dolores’ savings had started to dwindle – but she wanted, and needed, more. While Dolores was toiling in Southern Florida’s exploitation film business, her teenage daughter was an interested and empathetic observer. Marcy may have made life more costly, but she had become her mother’s best friend. Marcy could see the pleasure her mother derived from performing and putting films together, and friends still talk about how the two would talk together about all aspects of the production, distribution, and exhibition of Dolores’ films. Marcy And then Dolores did make a film of her own. It was produced with a close friend, Richard Falcone, with whom she’d acted on the set of her first movie, ‘Hideout in the Sun’ (1960). Falcone was a polymath – if a polymath means an Italian who combined being a property developer, interior designer, bodybuilder, butterfly collector, the founder of Sunshine Beach Naturist Club in Tampa, and a keen photographer who snapped primarily nudist pictures to sell to naturist magazines. There was a reason for them making the film. Falcone had gone through a tough time after appearing in ‘Hideout in the Sun’: in 1961, he’d been arrested as the supposed mastermind of a prostitution and pornography ring when police broke down his door and confiscated all his nudist photos. Falcone insisted he was entirely innocent and said that this was a simple case of harassing an honest man who just happened to have an alternative lifestyle. But this was the early 1960s and Falcone was fighting a losing battle to make his case. The media coverage treated him as a pervert which in turn caused him to lose his real estate business, his photography job, and then his apartment lease. No matter that the charges were eventually thrown out when the initial police search was deemed unlawful. Dolores, ever the supportive friend, was one of the few who remained by his side helping him rebuild his life. One of her ideas to get him out of the hole he was in was for them to make a film together, and they hatched a plan to produce a nudist movie based on a script that Dolores had written, Naked Complex (1963). The story was admittedly contrived: Johnny is a playboy and an expert at sports – from water skiing, golf, and racing cars, but he’s hopeless around women. Somehow, after being humiliated by the newspapers who reveal his inadequacy, he crash-lands his personal airplane on a remote island where nude women cure him of his problem. It wasn’t ‘Gone With The Wind’ but it was exciting for the pair to be putting their own movie together for the first time. Dolores assembled an entirely Cuban production team to shoot the movie, and gave acting roles to some of her Cuban friends from Little Havana, including a female snake dancer who’d just arrived from Cuba smuggling her three exotic serpents into the country. They shot the story at – where else? – the Sunshine Beach Naturist Club, the nudist resort which Falcone had founded. Oh, and Dolores starred in the movie as well, of course. Their film wasn’t hit – or even that great, but the budget was minimal, Dolores had shown she could both produce and star in a movie, and it made a little money. Unfortunately, the experience still failed to open any new doors. Chastened by the experience, Dolores sat down with Marcy to figure out next steps. The truth was that she didn’t have a lot of money left in the bank, and she was getting aged out of the nudie films that had been such a cash cow for her. She needed a new plan. It wasn’t a decision she wanted to take, but Dolores decided she had to get a more regular paycheck. And so the Queen of the Nudies took a position as a teller in a local Miami bank. Marcy * 3.    ‘The Nazi film’ When Marcy was fifteen, she asked Dolores if she could get some semi-professional acting work. Dolores had seen Marcy’s talent in school plays and so took her for an audition at Miami’s Merry Go Round Playhouse Theater on Miracle Mile in the Coral Gables neighborhood. The Merry Go Round was a staple of Miami’s theater scene, part of a broad trend at the time to present plays ‘in the round’ – a more immersive experience by placing the stage at the center with seating surrounding it. Marcy was transfixed by the theater from the first moment she saw it – and the Merry Go Round management liked her too, offering her a contract to appear in their children’s productions. Marcy snatched the opportunity and started appearing in bit parts straight away. She was mentored in the theater by a black actor, Ray Aranha, a local probation officer who did acting in his spare time. Ray was a decade older that Marcy but he saw that her talent and enthusiasm made her a natural, as he remembered years later: “Marcy was a ray of sunshine. I couldn’t help feeling happy whenever she walked into the room. She was a rare person. And she was a talented actress… I used to coach her and read lines with her: she took direction well, and we were all convinced that she was going to end up in Hollywood starring in movies someday.” Marcy, at the Merry Go Round Playhouse Marcy loved the theater, and it wasn’t long before she started to pester Dolores for film roles too. Her father, Maurice, was horrified at the thought of his daughter appearing in sex movies, and made Dolores promise that she would keep their daughter far away from the sex film business. In 1966, Dolores became friends with Norman Senfeld, a virulently anti-Castro Nicaraguan, who she met in a bar in Little Havana. Senfeld was an ardent activist who was intent on raising awareness of the evils of the Cuban regime, as well as raising money to overthrow it. The Cuban expats liked him, even though there were rumors that he was involved in some illicit money-laundering activity to fund his efforts to subvert and destabilize Castro’s government. Senfeld told Dolores he wanted to move into films and maybe she could help him. He said he was impressed with her extensive connections. Together they formed a company, called Stage Four, with another wannabe filmmaker, Bobby O’Donald. The new company was set up quickly, suspiciously quickly in fact, and from the start it seemed to be awash with cash. The mystery was where the money had come from. Friends of Dolores from this time still speak about their surprise – and suspicion – at the large sums of money that Senfeld and O’Donald, two inexperienced and unknown newcomers on the film scene, had available to make their films. In April 1966, they made a film called Full House (later renamed ‘Mafia Girls’). Dolores got Manuel Conde onboard to shoot it, which was his final film before he left for California. The movie was about a crime syndicate in Miami Beach that extorts politicians by filming them at sex parties, and Dolores had a starring role taking time off from her bank job. Despite its supposedly large budget – and extensive press coverage, the resulting film seemed to disappear without a trace, with a number of its crew claiming, years later, that it was never actually released theatrically. For their next movie, Dolores volunteered a script that she’d been developing for years. It was supposedly an action-packed exploitation thriller that was far from the nudist camp flicks for which she was known. She’d already pitched different drafts to her usual trusted benefactors, men like K. Gordon Murray and Leroy Griffith, but they showed little interest in financing it. The script was called ‘Revenge of the Swastika’: it told the story of the Miami branch of the American Nazis headed up by a Colonel von Stissen who was supported by his right-hand gal, Major Olga. (Bear with me here.) Their fascist group is about to launch ‘Operation 11’, a plan that will destabilize society and bring them to power. First, they have to take over the William Penn hotel in Miami and hold the vacationers and staff hostage. The twist was that the FBI had already infiltrated the group of Nazis and was aware of their plan, but they decided to wait and see how the insurrection would play out. Got that? Quite how much of this plot was Dolores’ work or how much was embellished by Norman Senfeld after he got hold of it is unknown. Senfeld himself described the story as a metaphor about authoritarianism, and by implication, the Castro regime that he despised. He agreed it should be the next Stage Four production. Dolores was amused by Senfeld’s political interpretation but pleased that her script would finally be made into a feature. If you wanted to be generous, you could say the story was ahead of its time, as nazi-sploitation films like Love Camp 7 (1969), Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975), and countless others would follow in the years ahead. But in truth, this was a bizarre story that was every bit as strange as it sounds. The film was shot in the second half of 1966 – but with a different title, Storm Troopers U.S.A. By the time of the shoot, Dolores was no longer a producer, but involved instead, behind the scenes, as a production manager though she received no on-screen credit. The shoot received a large amount of press coverage in the local newspapers, with Miami residents complaining about the unannounced extras wearing Nazi regalia who suddenly appeared on their streets. The producers proudly stated that the film would be released within 90 days – though they admitted it probably wouldn’t be seen in Miami theaters. Dolores had an acting part in the film, and they found a role for Marcy too, her first appearance in front of the camera. In fact, both can be seen in stills from the movie wearing Nazi armbands – though neither of them featured in the credits. Dolores, on set of Storm Troopers U.S.A. in 1966 The finished film was heavily padded with stock footage from World War II and was nothing like the serious action thriller that Dolores had originally intended it to be. Worse, it did exactly what she vowed not to do and it succumbed to amateurish sex film tropes. What happened next is another mystery. What is known is that, just like ‘Mafia Girls’, the movie disappeared and doesn’t seem to have been released theatrically. And there’s a strange postscript twist to the story: for years to come, Dolores claimed she made a large sum of money from the film. In fact, she claimed the money was so substantial that she used it to buy her first home, which enabled Marcy and her to move from their small apartment to a comfortably sized house at 3790 SW 121st Ave, Miami in 1967. This story became part of family lore, and for years, they would all talk about how “the Nazi film” that no one ever saw had made Dolores a small fortune. This made some friends skeptical, suspicious even, and there were rumors that the film had been made as a front for money-laundering activity. Others wondered if Dolores’ windfall was actually a hush-money payment she received when she discovered that the company was involved in illegal activity. So what is truth behind what happened to the film, and the source of the money that Dolores said that she received? A few years ago, I tracked down and interviewed the director, Norman Senfeld. He spoke at length about how he got to know the Miami Cuban filmmaking collective through Dolores and his anti-Castro activism. He spoke fondly of her, and the few films they made together. He said that both ‘Mafia Girls’ and ‘Storm Troopers U.S.A.’ had indeed been released in theaters at the time, and he claimed that he had bought Dolores out of Stage Four, the film company they created, so that he could exert greater control. But when I asked about where the company’s funding had come from, and about the rumors of money-laundering, Senfeld claimed it all happened a long time ago and that he couldn’t remember much anymore. I pressed further suggesting it was strange to have made two films – that received much so publicity – but that didn’t seem to have been released. And what about the large payoff that Dolores received that enabled her to buy a house. Senfeld claimed ignorance, and then quickly and quietly made his excuses and hung up. I’d like to claim to have found the answers but, for now at least, the story remains a mystery. Senfeld died in 2016. As for the Stage Four production company, it came to a sudden end in 1968, when Bobby O’Donald, Senfeld’s partner, was arrested for owning what the feds described as an obscene pamphlet. It turned out the booklet in question was nothing more than the pressbook for their next film, Night Hustlers (1968). Whatever the merits of the case, the accompanying scandal signified the end of the film company. As for Dolores, she went back to her job working as a teller in the bank. * 4.    Marcy Bichette: The Film Actress While Dolores was busy juggling her 9-5 job with occasional film work, she was unfailing in her support of Marcy’s regular acting roles in children’s plays at the Merry Go Round Playhouse. Marcy was now 16, and had progressed from walk-on parts to lead roles, garnering good reviews in the local newspapers. And when she wasn’t acting, she was singing in a band that covered 1950s and 1960s rock n’ roll standards and volunteering at animal rescue centers. She’d also started modeling. Just like Dolores had done fifteen years previously, Marcy’s modeling work led her to enter beauty contests – with some success. Dolores saw a chance to help advance Marcy’s ambitions, so she called up Bunny Yeager who’d photographed her for various pin-up magazines at the start of her career. Bunny suggested something different – her first mother/daughter pictorial. The shoot took place on the sidewalk by Miami Beach in December 1966. The resulting bikini photos are as unglamorous as they are touching: Dolores looks very much the older, wiser mother, and Marcy the self-conscious, awkward, but pretty and happy-go-lucky teen. Dolores and Marcy, photographer by Bunny Yeager in 1966   Marcy, photographed by Bunny Yeager in 1966   Dolores also found another film role for Marcy, through her long-time friend, Louise ‘Bunny’ Downe. In the years since they started in sex films together, Downe had started working exclusively for Herschel Gordon Lewis, the Florida-based director, who was making a name for himself as the ‘Godfather of Gore’ through a series of gory and grisly, low-budget, splatter films. Downe had worked on the script for their next film, The Gruesome Twosome (1967), about a demented elderly woman who has her mentally challenged son kill and scalp various young women to use their hair for her wig shop. Downe told Dolores she had a role for Marcy – and Marcy jumped at the chance to be in the movie. She loved it too: no matter that the production was a pantomime of incompetence at times, with supposedly dead bodies blinking and breathing after their bloody demise. The film set was exciting – and Marcy wanted more of this in her life. Back at the Merry Go Round Playhouse, Marcy was now impatient. She’d been in a movie, and was growing tired of the children’s matinée parts. She wanted to be involved in the more senior productions of the theater. Marcy spoke to her friend Ray Aranha, the probation officer/actor who she trusted and who helped guide her developing acting career. Ray’s presence was always calming and he reassured her: there was no need to hurry. She was talented, she’d been identified as an actor the theater wanted to develop, and more serious roles would come her way. He would personally make sure of that. Marcy, at the Merry Go Round Playhouse And then Ray’s theatrical career blew up in his face: newspapers ran stories about his appearance in Shanty Tramp (1967), a sexual film of miscegenation that was shocking Florida. The scandal led to him being fired from his day job and hounded out of the south Miami theater scene. Dolores and Marcy were particularly shocked by the events: it had been Dolores who had recommended him for the role, and she felt personally responsible, and Marcy had lost someone she viewed as an older brother. Both of them were devastated. When I spoke to Ray years later, Ray still spoke warmly, though sadly, of his friendship with Marcy, wondering what had happened to her in the years after the scandal. But if the fall-out from ‘Shanty Tramp’ had been a firestorm causing the lives of some of the protagonists to be affected forever, others were quietly pleased with how the film had been received. The three people behind it, producer K. Gordon Murray, director José Prieto, and writer Reuben Guberman, saw their film break out of the usual ghetto of B-movies and into the mainstream, and that meant mucho boffo at the box-office – as they probably don’t say in Cuba. For the writer, Reuben Guberman, the question was slightly more complicated. Guberman, you may recall from the last episode, was the New Yorker, the ex-hamburger cook, drive-in restaurant manager, radio announcer, newspaper editor, and one-time political candidate, and as pleased as he was with the outraged reaction his script had elicited, deep down he had loftier aspirations to be a serious writer. Sure, he was happy to write another potboiler, but he wanted some critical admiration too. So he decided to seek redemption by writing a play, ‘Social Trip’, which would be a morality piece warning kids against the dangers of drugs. As usual, Dolores was on hand to help, and she arranged for the Merry-Go-Round Playhouse to put it on in January 1968 – with Marcy in the lead role, of course. It may have been a cynical ploy for Guberman to rehabilitate himself – but it worked. Dolores pulled strings to get the newspapers to run positive stories about how instructional and moving the play was, and many who had attacked ‘Shanty Tramp’ now came out to endorse and praise the new play. Meanwhile, K. Gordon Murray was waiting in the wings. After ‘Shanty Tramp’, the only question he had was how could he follow it up – and produce another profitable smash hit? Murray asked, nay demanded, a new script, and so Guberman offered him something he’d written called Savages from Hell (1968). It was a biker movie about a vicious gang who pick a violent fight with a farmworker and his family. Murray liked it enough and offered it to José Prieto, by now his go-to director. José assembled a crew consisting almost exclusively of Cubanos to film it, including his best friend Rafael Remy, who did the cinematography and editing. Of course, Dolores insisted that there was a prominent role for Marcy in the cast too, alongside Cyril Poitier, brother of Sydney. ‘Savages from Hell’ was released in a blaze of publicity, with lurid posters blaring that the film “Makes the Hell’s Angels look like Boy Scouts!”. In truth, Guberman’s script was an under-cooked effort lacking the elements that had made ‘Shanty Tramp’ so enjoyably bad, and it would be his last involvement in film. The movie failed to attain the success of their previous effort, the only semi-scandal being a lawsuit from American International who sued K. Gordon Murray for imitating its biker films. The movie was notable for one reason, however. It was Dolores’ last appearance in front of a film camera. It was a small role as a redhead at the Roadhouse bar. She was in her late 30s now, with a steady job at the bank, and happily living in her new house financed by ‘Storm Troopers U.S.A.’. She’d also just got married, and she figured it was finally time to settle down. * 5.    Marcy in the 1970s Marcy had made just two films – three if you count ‘Storm Troopers U.S.A.’ – but after she turned eighteen, she started getting more offers. The problem was they were nearly all for sex movies and Marcy was more interested in stretching her acting abilities. She had no judgement against the increasingly explicit trend in movies – after all, she knew her mother had made a career out of the early nudie-cutie films – but as Dolores kept repeating to her: “I made those films so that you don’t have to.” Also, Marcy had seen how Ray Aranha had been hounded out of theater work after the sexual shenanigans of ‘Shanty Tramp’ – and she didn’t want the same to happen to her. After she graduated high school, many of her friends on the theater scene encouraged her to go west and try her luck in Hollywood. The Miami theater world was small, they said, and she had the attributes that could make her a star. One was a fellow Merry-Go-Round Playhouse actor, Mitch Poulos, still a character actor today having appeared in shows like ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’, ‘Arrested Development’, and ‘The Office.’ Mitch was a few years younger than Marcy – and was part of the children’s theater group. He remembers Marcy as a combination of a caring older sister who’d protect him when drugs were being passed around backstage, a talented actor who he still believes could have been a star, and a beauty who looked like a young Elizabeth Taylor: “She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen,” he said, “voluptuous, talented, elegant, and with a sweet, kind heart.” Despite all the encouragement to leave for California, get an agent, and try her luck in the film industry, Marcy was happy in Miami and so decided to stay. Besides, the Merry-Go-Round theater director had started casting her as the lead in nearly all the company’s adult plays. Mitch Poulos remembers: “The theater played into her beauty, and they started choosing plays and roles that specifically accentuated her good looks.” Marcy, at the Merry Go Round Playhouse Looking through the theater records today, it’s clear that Marcy was the undoubted star of the repertory company, acting and appearing in an eclectic selection of works – often receiving glowing reviews in the newspapers. And there were lots of plays: starting in 1968, she starred in the political work – ‘Mac Bird’; plays that were transfers from Broadway like the comedy ‘Thurber Carnival’; melodramas like ‘The Man’; ‘Madness of Lady Bright’ – where a review described her as “effective, and tightly disciplined”; ‘Oh Dad, Poor Dad’ – where the review described “beautiful Marcy Bichette, a talented character actress”; Neil Simon’s ‘Star-Spangled Girl’; the Barbra Streisand role in ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’; Spider Lady in ‘Superman’; lead roles in ‘Rashomon’; Maleficent in ‘Sleeping Beauty’; Cleopatra in George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Caesar and Cleopatra’; Mary Poppins; and Desdemona in ‘Othello’ to name but a few. Sometimes she appeared in other Miami theaters’ productions too, such as the Jane Fonda leading role in ‘Barefoot in the Park’. Marcy, at the Merry Go Round Playhouse For each play, Dolores was in the front row, always Marcy’s biggest cheerleader – but she was perhaps proudest when Marcy was approached by Las Mascaras, the largest Spanish-language theater group in Florida. The troupe had been started by two Cubans, Salvador Ugarte and Alfonso Cremata in 1968, specifically to keep alive the culture and traditions of Cubans who had fled to the United States. Dolores loved the troupe’s vision, and offered them her services, which included raising money for the company. Marcy starred in their production of ‘Gaslight’ at the Merry Go Round Playhouse. Marcy was a hit in the play, and she and Dolores became close friends with Ugarte and Cremata, and supporters of their work. Dolores and Marcy, c. 1971 Marcy wasn’t overly ambitious, but she liked staying busy, and when not acting in theater productions, she continued to pursue music and modeling. She was desperate to go to Woodstock in 1969, but her father vetoed the idea, saying he was worried about the drug scene. For Marcy, it was a blow: she’d been saving up her money from the Merry Go Round and doing modeling jobs for the newspapers in which she would appear as a daily temperature girl showing the expected weather on the beach – just as Dolores had done years before. * 6.    Miss Leslie’s Dolls (1973), and beyond By the early 1970s, the three Cuban friends, José Prieto, Gregor Sandor, and Rafael Remy, who’d escaped the island ten years earlier, were still close. Sandor had spent most of his time in California, building a successful career in film that would lead to jobs such as shooting Monte Hellman’s cult hit ‘Two-Lane Blacktop’ (1971) and Brian De Palma’s ‘Sisters’ (1972). The three amigos would get together periodically, often having reunions at Dolores and Marcy’s Miami place. Dolores would sometimes invite the rest of the Cuban contingency of filmmakers as well for a day of food and drink. She was an expansive host, serving large portions of lechon asado, ropa vieja, and arroz con pollo, with guests drinking Cuba libre, Havana Loco, and El Presidente’s late into the night. Rafael Remy was a frequent visitor, and had become close to Marcy. He’d known her since he arrived from Cuba, and was a passionate supporter of her acting, often accompanying Dolores to watch her at the Merry Go Round Playhouse. He also encouraged her music aspirations, suggesting she write her own songs, and he found places for her to gig too. Ironically one of the venues he found for her to play regularly was Tom’s Bar, a country and western roadhouse in Davie. It was where ‘Shanty Tramp’ had been filmed – the same bar that had not allowed Ray Aranha to enter on account of his race. It was at one of Dolores’ open house gatherings in early 1971, that Rafael suggested they all make one last film together. Rafael said he would produce and write it, José could direct it, Gregor could shoot it, all their other Cuban compadres would join the crew, and he would write a role for Marcy. Rafael said that it would be their collective swansong to the Florida scene, and it would be the strangest film anyone had ever seen. Everyone had been drinking too much that night, but they all agreed it was a great idea. A few weeks later, when everyone had forgotten about it, Rafael shared his script for Miss Leslie’s Dolls (1973) with José, and José was shocked. Rafael had been true to his word: his vision was indeed bat-shit crazy. It told the story of a young professor and three of her students who are forced to seek refuge at an isolated farmhouse one night due to bad weather. There they encounter a transvestite who collects the bodies of biological women, with the aim of transferring her spirit into them. Or something like that. The plot read like a mash-up of ‘Psycho’ (1959), ‘Glen or Glenda’ (1953), ‘Thundercrack!’ (1975), and ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ (1975), with some ‘Scooby Doo’ thrown in for good measure. Yes, José found it weird, but he was amused by it too. Dolores read it, and thought it was a hoot. She said she had the perfect actor for the strange drag-queen lead role of Miss Leslie: her friend Salvador Ugarte, the founder of Las Mascaras, the Spanish-language theater group with whom Marcy had worked. Rafael loved the idea and snapped Ugarte up. As always, the crew consisted mostly of Cuban expatriates. The film shoot took place in the summer of 1971 and lasted six weeks – longer than the regular schedules for run-of-the-mill exploitation films. Marcy loved making it, and often spoke about the pleasure of working with her mother’s Cuban friends who she had grown up around. Marcy in ‘Miss Leslie’s Dolls’ (1972) The resulting film, that hit theaters in late 1972, is like few others. Sure, it’s clearly a low-budget production with cheap sets and stilted dialogue (Rafael Remy’s halting English still wasn’t fluent – and it shows in the script), but ‘Miss Leslie’s Dolls’ is consistently bizarre, well-shot, campy, entertaining, and unique. There are certainly highlights, one of which is Salvador Ugarte’s performance. Here was a serious theater actor dedicating his life to promoting Cuban culture, dressed as a woman in a cheap blue dress and sporting a pronounced five o’clock shadow. To matters each more incongruous, he had a dubbed female voice in the film – an unusual touch enabled by the experience that Rafael and José had had working with K. Gordon Murray’s dubbing team when they first arrived from Cuba. Marcy’s fresh-faced performance shines as always. Marcy (in green) and Salvador Ugarte in ‘Miss Leslie’s Dolls’ (1972) ‘Miss Leslie’s Dolls’ was perhaps too unusual for its time, perhaps too unusual for any time. It received a limited release in the U.S. before being the supporting feature in a bizarre double bill with The Erotic Adventures of Zorro (1972) in the U.K. in 1973. For all Marcy’s acting talent, the sad truth was that she was missing the boat. She was simply in the wrong part of the country. Few films were being made in South Florida and Marcy didn’t have an agent to follow up even if there were. But if ‘Miss Leslie’s Dolls’ was strange, Marcy’s next and final film was even more off-the-wall. Coming off stage at the Merry Go Round one night, she was approached by two men who introduced themselves as film producers. They said they were making a South American horror film called The Swamp of the Ravens (1974) (aka ‘El pantano de los cuervos’) and wanted to fly Marcy down to Guayaquil in Ecuador, to be the female lead in their Spanish-U.S. co-production. Marcy had just gone through a relationship break-up and thought the break from Miami would do her good. Marcy in ‘Swamp of the Ravens’ The resulting film is a disturbing tale of zombies, necrophilia, and autopsy footage. The film died a death, receiving a limited release in outposts that included Mississippi and Texas, and failed to advance Marcy’s film career. Years later, Marcy remembered little about the experience, except for the fact that she was dubbed throughout the film apart from one blood-curdling scream when she wakes on a mortuary slab. Somehow, it was a fitting but sad end to a once-promising career. Marcy in ‘Swamp of the Ravens’ * 7.    Marcy Bichette and Bitter Sweet The Ecuador experience left Marcy feeling jaded about acting. She still loved being on a theater stage, but it had all started to feel restrictive and limiting compared to the freedom of playing music. Rafael Remy, always her trusted advisor, suggested she form her own band, so in 1973, she formed Bitter Sweet, a four-piece group, with Marcy playing acoustic guitar and keyboards, and she had her new boyfriend Chester, on bass. For the next seven years, she became a full-time touring musician, traveling up and down the state, playing gigs from Key West to Tallahassee. The band hit the road hard: it was a relentless and thankless slog which included playing the Holiday Inn scene, performing from 8pm-2am every night. Mitch Poulos, her old acting friend from the Merry Go Round Playhouse remembers going to see her and coming away impressed with the show – and Marcy’s talent. The group would mainly play covers, with Marcy’s vocal style coming off like Linda Ronstadt. The band became popular, and developed its own following – so they recorded some demos.   This is Marcy singing Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams recorded around 1978. She sent the tracks off to a hot shot producer in Nashville. He replied straight away: he loved Marcy as a singer, he said, and wanted to fly her in to try out some new songs. Only snag, he wasn’t interested in the rest of the band, so Marcy turned the offer down. They were a unit, she said, and she wasn’t interested in success if it was without the guys she’d spent so much touring with. Another time, Criteria Studios in Miami got in touch: they’d seen Marcy at one of her shows and wanted to explore working with her. That was a big deal: the Eagles had recorded half of their ‘Hotel California’ album in the studio, and bands like Black Sabbath and the Bee Gees also made hit records there. The band went over and played for the in-house producers, but it was the same story. Criteria just wanted Marcy – and she wanted her band. Whenever the band were close enough, Dolores would come out and see them play – as would José Prieto and Rafael Remy, always supporting their quasi-adopted daughter. One show in particular was unusual – and important to Marcy: it was a show that she did especially for Rafael. It wasn’t a regular gig: the purpose of this one was to raise funds for an attorney to try and keep him out of jail. Rafael had been arrested for distributing hardcore films that he’d also been involved in making. It seemed like the Cuban fortune teller from all those years before had been right: Rafael Remy’s film work had indeed led him into trouble and strife. * Tune in next time for the final episode of Chasing Butterflies: Rafael Remy’s story – and the birth of Florida hardcore. * The post Chasing Butterflies: Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida – Part 3, Marcy Bichette’s story – Podcast 147 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Previously on Chasing Butterflies – Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida: Manuel Conde had lived several lives even before he moved to Miami, Florida. He’d been born José Conde Samaniego in 1917 in Galicia, in northern Spain, though his family fled to Cuba after General Franco’s fascist coup d’état in the 1930s. And then, in 1959, Castro overthrew the government and enforced Communist rule over Cuba. Manuel, having already fled one dictatorship in Spain a few years earlier, took his family and fled to Miami, Florida, smuggling out a sexploitation film that he’d just made, called Girls on the Rocks. In Miami, Manuel met Dolores Carlos. Dolores was a newly semi-famous actress and model on the local scene, having starred in (and been arrested for) a successful nudism film, Hideout in the Sun (1960) made by Doris Wishman, which she followed by appearing in a handful of other nudie cutie films. Dolores introduced Manuel to the growing community of ex-pat Cuban filmmakers that had settled in south Florida after Castro’s coup, and together they shot a nudie short in 1961, Playgirl Models. Dolores and Manuel arranged a meeting with Leroy Griffith, an energetic, entrepreneurial force of nature, who’d recently moved to Miami and made a name for himself by acquiring a string of theaters where he exhibited burlesque shows and then adult sex films. The three of them made a full-length feature was called Lullaby of Bareland (1964). In 1966, Manuel and Dolores teamed up with Leroy Griffith to make a film with a decent budget – Mundo Depravados – starring Tempest Storm, one of the country’s best-known burlesque performers, and the movie was ostensibly directed by her husband Herb Jeffries, a suave and seductive film and television actor and popular jazz singer who had a large following in the African American market. ‘Mundo Depravados’ was released with eye-catching promo material – “A Sinerama of Sex and Fear!” – and is one of the most bizarrely entertaining film experiences you can have. Over the last twenty years, I’ve tracked down and spoken to many of these people. Their overlapping personal histories reveal an untold chapter of adult film history and the hidden role that Cubans played in shaping it. These are some of their stories. This is Chasing Butterflies, Part 2: José Prieto’s story. You can listen to the Prologue: Dolores Carlos’ story here, and Part 1: Manuel Conde’s story here. With thanks to John Minson, Tom Flynn, Ronald Ziegler, Leroy Griffith, Veronica Acosta, Marcy Bichette, Mikey Bichette, Lousie ‘Bunny’ Downe, Mitch Poulos, Sheldon Schermer, Ray Aranha, Manny Samaniego, Barry Bennett, Randy Grinter, Herb Jeffries, Tempest Storm, Chester Phebus, Michael Bowen, Norman Senfeld, Richard Falcone, Lynne O’Neill, Something Weird Video, and many anonymous families and friends who have offered recollections, large and small, over the years. This podcast is 40 minutes long. José Prieto * 1.   José Prieto – Timing They say timing is everything. Sometimes it’s a well-oiled, precision-calibrated clock, but other times it just kicks you in the balls. Take José Prieto, for example. It was the late 1950s, and here was a man who’d spent his entire life waiting for that big break that would give his life meaning, that would fulfill his dreams, but fate always seemed to be a case of wrong place, wrong time, and that elusive, life-changing moment of success remained forever out of reach somewhere off on the horizon. José was a small, wiry man, consumed by nervousness, and his world-weariness hung on him a cheap, oversized suit. His head seemed constantly lowered as if trying to figure out the answer to life’s latest conundrum. Some dismissed him as dour and uncommunicative, but José had close friends who knew the truth. Guys like Greg Sandor or Rafael Remy. They’d worked with him in the Cuban movie business over the years, stuck around to get to know the real José, and found him a quiet, thoughtful, smart, and diligent man. Funny and mischievous even, especially when he’d had a few El Presidentes in him. José Prieto was Cuban-born and Cuban-raised. He’d lived in the country’s capital, Havana, all his life: it was a city of well over one million inhabitants, but it felt like a village to him. He mixed unobtrusively with everyone, from high-level government officials to pimps, petty criminals, and low-level gangsters. It wasn’t that he was particularly affable, but more because he wasn’t considered a threat to anyone. He knew his country wasn’t perfect: it was overseen by Fulgencio Batista, an un-elected right-wing military dictator who’d taken power by force in 1952. Batista’s regime was corrupt and becoming increasingly repressive, but José was smart enough to know the secret to living a comfortable life in Cuba was to fly below the radar and avoid the attentions of the men in power. If you kept your nose clean and your wits sharp, you could navigate this world comfortably. And so, José had become a proficient jack of all trades in the Cuban TV and film business. The 1950s was a ‘Golden Age’ for Cuban cinema: it started when many American films were screened in theaters across the country, partly due to Batista’s close ties with the U.S. government and business interests – and then continued when several American films were shot in Cuba during this time, taking advantage of the island’s proximity and exotic appeal. Suddenly local studios were established in Havana which increased local TV production. Cuba became one of the first Latin American countries to introduce television in the 1950s, which quickly became popular, producing a variety of hit shows, including comedies, soap operas, and live music programs. In a career that had been going over 20 years, José had produced, lit, shot, even acted in tens of these productions. Most of all though, he saw himself as a director, and occasionally he got the chance to be in charge. Some of his productions had been hits, others came and went virtually unnoticed, but he ploughed on, waiting for that one opportunity that would establish himself as a major player. But the Cuban film industry, for all of its strengths, was still small compared to Hollywood or Mexico, and the big breaks never came his way. * 2. ‘Our Man in Havana’ (1959) And then, José’s timing changed, and he was suddenly in the right place at the right time. It started when he read that Columbia Pictures were going to shoot a major motion picture right there in Havana. Not only that, but it involved three of his favorite people: it was to be directed by Sir Carol Reed, it would star Sir Alec Guinness, and it was based on a new book by Graham Greene named Our Man in Havana. The story was a satire that mocked the intelligence services, especially the British MI6, and their willingness to believe reports from their local informants. Alfred Hitchcock had been the early favorite to make the film, but he backed out when he couldn’t afford the film rights to the novel. José had read and admired the novels of Graham Greene, especially ‘The Power and the Glory’ and ‘The Heart of the Matter’, and his interest in the upcoming movie production only increased when it was announced that the film’s cast would include English acting royalty, Ralph Richardson and Noël Coward, as well as American stars like Burl Ives, Maureen O’Hara, and Ernie Kovacs, to help sell the film to an American audience. José’s opportunity came in the last weeks of 1958, when Graham Greene and Carol Reed visited Cuba. They were there to do two things – view locations and hire the local crew. When they arrived, Reed was shocked and concerned by what he saw on the streets of Havana: signs that Batista’s regime had become more vicious were everywhere, and Reed was concerned about how filming could take place against the backdrop of such violence and intimidation, after all, Greene’s book was hardly reverential to the Cuban dictator. Columbia Pictures suggested a local production manager as a solution: a real life ‘man in Havana’ who could navigate the political and logistical roadblocks. José saw his big chance and wrote to the studio asking to be considered. He was granted an interview, and made an impassioned case: he was more than just a fixer, he said. Havana was his backyard. He knew almost everyone, and if he didn’t know someone personally, well… he knew someone who did. He was experienced in putting together a movie production, he could arrange a complex shooting schedule, and he could do everything else that you couldn’t put a price on. Where would they find film equipment? José assured them that whatever they needed would be delivered immediately. Where would the best production accommodation be? José would get the choice rooms in the top hotel in Havana – the famous pink and white Capri Hotel, in reality, a casino cum whorehouse, owned by the Florida mobster Santo Trafficante, Jr., which was fronted by the entertainer, George Raft. Capri Hotel, Havana How would they find actors, or extras for the street scenes? José would produce any number of eager locals, excited to be in a big film production. What about the nightclub scenes… where could those be filmed? No problem, said José. He had a cousin who worked at the Tropicana, Havana’s most notorious nightclub, another location owned by the mob. What’s more, he could arrange for strippers, bartenders, and local business men to be extras in the scene as well. The production team was impressed. José had the experience, technical knowledge, and the network of contacts that they needed. He was hired on the spot, and in the records of the production, he was given the credit of ‘Assistant Director (Cuba location scenes)’. He even found jobs on the shoot for friends like Greg Sandor and Rafael Remy. Both had good credentials, having worked in local and international productions, Remy having already been an uncredited assistant director on John Sturges ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ (1958) starring Spencer Tracy, which had shot in Havana in the summer of 1956. And then on January 2nd 1959, the revolution happened: Fidel Castro overthrew Batista’s regime and the situation in Cuba changed overnight: military thugs carrying sub-machine guns were everywhere and wagons laden with peasants in chicken-wire cages were drawn through the streets. Castro takes power, 1959 It was a strange time to be starting filming a satire about spying, but the news wasn’t all bad for the film production: Graham Greene had been friends with Castro since an earlier visit, and he wasn’t fazed by any new problems the coup would cause. After all, their film mocked the previous regime of Batista in an unflattering light and also condemned American and British meddling: surely Castro would welcome this prestigious film production – and appreciate the celebrities from England and the United States. The first signs were good: the new revolutionary government of Cuba gave the green light for ‘Our Man in Havana’ to be filmed in the Cuban capital, and so the production moved forwards. But the same treatment was not applied to José. He was now treated with suspicion by the new leaders: Batista’s government had always let him do what he wanted but, bizarrely, he was now considered part of the former regime by Castro’s new government departments – and that made his new job rather more difficult. His first task, before the film started, was to apply for work permits for everyone. This entailed taking the script to the new Ministry of Labor and justifying each cast and crew position to them. Castro’s men listened and then complained that the novel didn’t accurately portray the true brutality of the Batista regime. Early Castro press conference, 1959 Then José received an unexpected offer. The casting director told him they needed a local to play the part of Lopez, Alec Guinness’ assistant in the movie. When José found them a selection of actors, the production team was unsatisfied. The casting director replied that the ideal person for the acting role was José himself. It was a significant part, with plenty of lines and screen time. José wasn’t keen. He was a background kind of guy, he said. Sure he’d acted before, but he was someone who preferred to stay in the shadows. His concerns were dismissed, and Alec Guinness was rolled out to try and convince him. Guinness took him aside and told him that both of their characters were anonymous personalities, mere cogs in the bigger story, men being manipulated by the machinery of government and men in power. Guinness said that it was important that neither of them acted: they just had to “be”. In that way, José’s personality was perfect for the role. In fact, his protestations were proof that he was the right choice. José was cornered: he’d idolized Guinness since the days of ‘The Third Man’ so how could he pass up the occasion to act with the great man? He reluctantly took the role – which he did in addition to keeping the job of local assistant director. (l-r) Alec Guinness, José Prieto Filming started on location in Havana in March 1959 just two months after the overthrow of the Batista regime. On the second day of filming, José was approached by an official from the Minister of the Interior demanding a copy of the screenplay. José explained he’d already provided this to Ministry of Labor. That was irrelevant, he was told. Furthermore, they wanted a full translation – and, a censor would be sent to the set each day, in addition to a government observer, both of whom would shadow José and check that he was not doing anything that was “compromising the revolution.” It made José’s life more painful, especially considering that the Ministry of the Interior quickly insisted that 39 changes be made to make it appear that life during the Batista regime had been even more unfavorable. At other times, José’s work on the movie was more comical but no less serious. Take beards for example: since Castro took over, a beard had come to represent a hero of the revolution. But one of the characters in the film – who played the role of Batista’s chief of police – had a beard. José was called in by the Castro officials and told that all beards in the cast and crew had to disappear. Unwanted pressure didn’t just come from the new government, it came from locals too: when extras dressed up in the blue uniforms of the Batista police turned up for filming, they were attacked by angry spectators. Once again, José had to intervene to find a solution. (l-r) José Prieto, Alec Guinness And then José got a message from Castro himself: the leader wanted to meet the people responsible for the production: Carol Reed, Graham Greene, Noel Coward and Alec Guinness. They were invited to Castro’s bungalow for the day. This would mean losing a whole day of shooting, so José went back and, in a diplomatic fashion, told Castro’s office that it would be difficult to accommodate. It was the wrong answer: José had greatly displeased the leader. He was dispatched back to the film set with a new instruction: the request had now become a demand, and the team were told to meet with Castro the following day. So the next day, Reed, Greene, and Coward turned up for the appointment with an uncomfortable José lurking in the background. They waited for Castro in a palace room surrounded by bearded revolutionaries who informed them that Castro would be turning up shortly. Minutes turned into hours, and José’s unease turned into terrified concern. In the end, the film team left without a meeting. Castro had made his point. Days later, on 13 May 1959, Castro did meet the film crew when he visited the set while they shot scenes at Havana’s Cathedral Square. After he posed for pictures, Castro spoke to the press saying, “Any film company can make any picture they want in Cuba. There will be no censorship in my country. You can make the film exactly as you please. Those are my orders.” (l-r) Maureen O’Hara, Fidel Castro, Alec Guinness on the set of ‘Our Man in Havana’ Not strictly true, however. The on-set censor continued to make frequent demands to José that changes be made – in one of the nightclub scenes, for example, he felt that too much leg and breast was visible. Another time, he demanded that the whole day’s shooting footage be handed over to him for cuts to be made. But José had grown in confidence, and now he refused, standing up increasingly to the authorities, and invariably winning more battles along the way. José did his job well in a way that few others in the world would’ve been able to do, and the film company was pleased with him. He’d done the hard, silent, behind-the-scenes tasks, delivering anything that was requested without fuss, in his usual intense, quiet, and serious manner. He earned the nickname ‘José Practical’ as a result of the calm, pragmatic way he worked. (l-r) José Prieto, Jo Morrow, Alec Guinness But privately, José was far from feeling calm, and his fears were growing stronger by the day. He knew he’d be protected from Castro and his generals for the duration of the filming, but what would happen after the crew packed up and went home? He’d stood up to the government heavies on countless occasions during the film shoot, but how would they treat him in the future? At the end of seven-week shoot, José started noticing things. Friends told him they’d been approached and quizzed about him. They’d also been asked questions about his local associates on the movie, like Greg Sandor and Rafael Remy. He noticed his mail was going missing, and he wasn’t paranoid by nature, but was he imagining it or was he being followed every day when he set out to go to work? It was too much for the veteran film man. He called his contact at Columbia Pictures and asked to have his name removed from the credits of the final version of ‘Our Man in Havana.’ He got a mixed message. They told him they could drop the ‘Assistant Director’ credit, but that the acting credit was unavoidable. After all, his face was up there on the screen for all to see. José tried putting his foot down, but he was told that the best they could do was for him to use another name. José was relieved, but, somewhere along the way, the instruction was lost, and when the film came out, the name ‘José Prieto’ was prominently displayed in the credits – just after the big-name English and American actors. José didn’t want to hang around. In the aftermath of the film, he wanted out before he got picked up and found himself in trouble. He packed his bags, and fled the country, heading over the sea to a new life in Miami. * 3. Life in Miami José didn’t move to Florida by himself. He was accompanied by his two main compadres in the Havana film business, Rafael Remy and Gregory Sandor. The grass looked greener on the other side of the water for all three, and so in 1961 they embarked on new lives in America. The U.S. was the center for capitalism and the center for filmmaking, right, so why not become part of the gravy train? They figured they could seek work quietly at first and earn a steady living in Florida. In fact, it was Sandor that facilitated their move as he was an American, hailing from Burbank, California. Each of the three men wanted to continue working in the film business, but each had a different plan. The one thing they all had in common was that they wanted low profiles, to work under the radar, at least at first, with José especially fearing possible reprisals from the Cuban government. Greg Sandor had it easiest: being an American who’d lived and worked in Cuba for years, he was the least worried. He was essentially a cameraman, who saw that his best opportunity would be in the world of commercials and industrial films. For José and Rafael, it was more difficult. As new immigrants in the country, they headed to the Freedom Tower in Miami – the central location used by the government to process and document refugees from the Cuban Revolution that administered the Cuban Refugee Program. Rafael Jesus Remy was always the more cavalier one. His plan for anonymity was to find film work, any film work he could, but use a variety of mildly different names to mask his participation. Sure enough, over the next years, he would be known as Jesus Remy, Gerry Remy, Ralph Remy, and many others – sometimes even his actual name Rafael Remy. As for José, he was the fearful one. Film work was all he knew, but he’d had direct – and often confrontational – contact with Castro and his men, and so was reluctant to do anything that might draw attention to himself. He was the first of the three to find work – a lowly bellboy position in The Everglades Hotel, a popular mid-range option for business travelers in downtown Miami. It was a steep and strange decline in status for a man who was coming off being an actor and assistant director on one of the biggest motion pictures of the decade. Everglades Hotel, Miami – late 1950s One night the three amigos found themselves outside a tiny shopfront in Little Havana in Miami with a sign outside advertising a fortune teller. They’d had a few drinks and laughed their way into the cramped room, where each sat on an upturned fruit basket and in turn had their future explained to them by a mysterious woman adorned in scarfs and jewelry. The mystic explained she used a combination of sacred instruments, including palm nuts, pieces of coconut, and Spanish tarot cards, to see into the future. She told them solemnly that Greg Sandor would find money and respect. José would find fame and notoriety. Then she paused, as if alarmed by the reading: Rafael Remy would find trouble and strife. Inevitably perhaps, all three of the filmmakers came into contact with Dolores Xiques, now more commonly known by her film and modeling name, Dolores Carlos. She introduced them to the Cuban expat community, a group growing larger by the day but one that was still tight-knit. At the heart of it was Dolores, the caring mother hen looking after men from a country that she’d never visited but that she felt passionately about. She’d become the connective tissue binding the community together. Dolores became particularly close with José. It was an unlikely friendship: she was an American single mother in her early 30s, living with her teenage daughter Marcy, and was the star of scores of nudie films and men’s magazines, who had the trust of film producers, theater owners, movie directors. and crew members. He was a dour, taciturn Cuban filmmaker in his late 40s, often paranoid and fearful, struggling with having left his country so hurriedly. Dolores took José to see her friend K. Gordon Murray, the film producer whose company Trans-International Films bought children’s movies from Mexico and dubbed them for the domestic market. She was still trying to persuade Murray to finance nudie pictures, but apart from re-releasing a perfunctory effort called Eve or the Apple (1962), featuring nudie inserts of Dolores, she hadn’t had much luck in convincing him. He was making too much money with colorful, surreal fairytale films, like ‘Santa Claus’ (1959). But Dolores was persistent, convinced that Murray would eventually come good and move into film production, and she took many Cubans she met at the Freedom Tower to his offices at 530 Biscayne Blvd in Miami. Murray was impressed with José, especially when he recognized him from his appearance in ‘Our Man in Havana’. He found work for José on a variety of film projects, which José accepted if he could them fit in around his Everglades Hotel doorman duties. Dolores also connected José with other filmmakers, many engaged in making South Florida nudie pictures. José became popular, willing to do a variety of jobs, invariably uncredited, often underpaid, but always skilled, professional, and useful. Just one job credited his involvement: an assistant director job for the Cuban man-of-many-hats, Frank Malagon. Malagon had set up a film studio to make films as a way of funding his anti-Castro activities, and his first feature was a nudist movie, Six She’s and a He (1963). Malagon’s partner, Richard Flink, was credited with directing the film but as neither Malagon nor Flink had much experience, it was largely directed by José himself. Many of the crew roles on the film, as with many other similar efforts at the time in Florida, were taken by expat Cubans – which made José feel at home. In the early 1960s, in his first years in America, José worked on tens of films in an uncredited capacity. The Everglades Hotel provided him a one-room lodging in the basement of the building and he worked shifts there, so if was given enough notice, he could usually arrange to be free to work on a film set. * 4. ‘Dios te salve, psiquiatra’ (1966) In 1966, José received a call from his old friend, Greg Sandor. Sandor had done well since they’d arrived from Cuba. He’d found cinematography work on commercials in California, as well as camera work on a few exploitation films. His recent credits included a couple of Ted V. Mikels films, ‘Dr. Sex’ (1964) and ‘One Shocking Moment’ (1965), as well as two Roger Corman produced, Monte Hellman-directed films that starred Jack Nicholson ‘The Shooting’ (1966) and ‘Ride in the Whirlwind’ (1966). Despite his growing success, Sandor had kept ties with his Cuban countrymen in Florida, and he had an idea for José. Sandor was helping another Cuban immigrant, Guillermo Álvarez Guedes, put together a Spanish language production, Dios te salve, psiquiatra (‘God Bless You, Psychiatrist’). Sandor said to José that the time had come for them all to come back and work together again just like in the old days in Cuba. Times were changing, he said, and José should be less fearful and more ambitious, and seek better quality film jobs. Sandor also enlisted Rafael Remy for the new film, as well as other members of the Cuban community in Miami. José took some persuading: being a bellboy for the past years had been demoralizing at first, but it had given him an easy and quiet existence. Giving that up was a risk. José sought advice from Dolores and K. Gordon Murray and both encouraged him to strike out for himself, and return to more regular film work. Murray even promised him film projects that would be funded by his company. So José accepted the job of assistant director, on condition that his on-screen credit would only refer to him as ‘Pepe Prieto.’ He took a temporary leave of absence from the Everglades Hotel for a few months to be the assistant director on the film. The management at the Everglades liked José and were understanding, but also a little skeptical: they told him they’d keep his position open for a while – just in case this film malarkey didn’t work out. (l-r) José Prieto, Guillermo Alvarez Guedes, Gina Romand ‘Dios te salve, psiquiatra’ was a broad comedy of roaming love and Latin muchachos, and starred Gina Romand, a Cuban-born, big name in Mexican films of the time. It was a solid and bankable project, but most of all, it was a reunion of old friends: everyone returned to work for lower salaries simply because they wanted to re-connect with each other again. Talent that had been dormant for years suddenly returned to life. Dolores put together the promotional push that resulted in extensive media coverage and a big premiere. The film turned out to be a modest success in Spanish-speaking areas of the country. Gina Romand José’s first job after ‘Dios te salve, psiquiatra’ was a quickie, Sting of Death (1966), about a deformed man working for a marine biologist who takes revenge on the people that mock him by experimenting with a deadly jellyfish. The film was another for the studio established by Frank Malagon, for whom he’d directed the nudist movie, Six She’s and a He (1963) a few years earlier, and José still just wanted his on-screen credit to just refer to him as ‘Pepe Prieto.’ And then Dolores called. Her long-term strategy with K. Gordon Murray was finally starting to pay off: after years of trying to persuade him, she’d convinced him to fund an exploitation film. Murray insisted that the craze for nudie movies had long passed: instead, he was looking at a more topical feature, albeit something that would still appeal to the sex-and-violence drive-in audiences, and he told Dolores that he’d found the right vehicle and wanted her help. Murray was looking to make a film that would hit the jackpot – and he wanted to know if José would be interested in directing? * 5. ‘Shanty Tramp’ (1967) Shanty Tramp (1967) is one of the most notorious, shocking and scandalous films of the 1960s. It tells the story of a sleazy evangelist who makes a play for a small town’s local tramp, but he’s shocked when he finds that she prefers a local black man over him. Furious, he stirs up the town against the couple causing fights, murders, lynch mobs, ruined reputations, and broken homes. So who came up with the whole concept? The incendiary script, with plenty of nudity, sex scenes, and violence thrown in, was largely written by one of K. Gordon Murray’s staff members, Reuben Guberman. Guberman was a flamboyant New Yorker – or a “fat, Jewish maverick” by his own description. He’d left New York many years before as a teenager to seek his fortune in sunny Miami, Florida, and embarked on a ridiculously varied career that included being a hamburger cook, a drive-in restaurant manager, radio announcer and producer, editor of the weekly Dade County Times-Union newspaper, and political candidate. Perhaps his most surprising career move was discovering that he had a natural gift for lip-synchronization – an essential component part for dubbing foreign films and cartoons for Murray. When Guberman met K. Gordon Murray it was a match made in heaven. Together they invented the looping process of dubbing: this consisted of splicing short segments of dialogue from a movie into a loop, and then playing them back to the voice actor allowing them to watch the film-loop over and over and record an English language track matching the on-screen actors’ mouths as much as possible. Working for Murray in his tiny office in nearby Coral Gables which he called Soundlab Inc., Guberman’s job was to translate the original language scripts into English dialog for the voice-talent, and in many cases, he also provided some of the voices himself as well. But by the end of mid 1960s, the market for dubbed films was waning, and both Murray and Guberman were looking for a new market: they decided that ‘Shanty Tramp’ should be their next project. Murray and Guberman had already started to put the film together and hire a number of the actors when they offered the directing gig to José. José accepted even though he was still working at the hotel: he was hungry and ready to return to the party. Being the head-strong, stubborn guy he was, his first step was to fire most of the actors who’d been offered parts, and he assembled a crew almost completely composed of Cuban expats from his Little Havana hangouts. At the heart of the new film project was his old friend Rafael Remy who ended up doing both the cinematography and editing. ‘Shanty Tramp’ credits showing the Cuban crew If the subject matter was akin to lighting a touchpaper of controversy, the casting of the movie proved to be a forest fire. José wanted proper actors for the lead roles, not the usual untrained and inexperienced sexploitation regulars, so he turned to Dolores and asked her to find suitable principals for the film. Dolores knew all the Cuban crew workers in Miami, but her knowledge of actors – especially serious thespians – was less thorough. She had an idea though: her teenage daughter, Marcy, had recently started acting semi-professionally with the Miami Merry-Go-Round Playhouse, and Dolores – ever supportive of Marcy’s endeavors – was a regular in the audience. She’d become friends with some of actors there, and successfully approached a number of them for the main roles in ‘Shanty Tramp.’ The lead role of Daniel, the black man at the center of the film, was credited to ‘Lewis Galen’: in reality, this was Raymond Aranha, an experienced and highly-rated probation officer for the Dade Juvenile Court. In his spare time, Ray was a keen thespian, and a regular member of local theatrical troupes such as the Coconut Grove Playhouse. Ray changed his name for the purpose of the film, realizing that the movie was bound to elicit strong feelings, and he wanted to protect his promising local government career. He later commented, “I wasn’t worried about the nude scenes. That’s life. It was the interracial part that would be an issue, and I knew I was in the Deep South.” Ray Aranha (aka ‘Lewis Galen’) Then there was the role of Emily, the Shanty Tramp herself, the sexual temptress whose lustful feelings for Daniel cause the race riots. This role was played by ‘Lee Holland’: in reality, she was an attractive, quiet, and reserved Dade high school teacher called Eleanor Vaill. There was even a role for Vaill’s real-life husband, Otto Schlessinger, who played the part of her father. Eleanor Vaill high school portrait   Eleanor Vaill (aka ‘Lee Holland’) in ‘Shanty Tramp’ For the role of the head of the motorcycle gang, Dolores suggested Lawrence Tobin, who had directed her daughter Marcy’s latest play at the Merry-Go-Round. Then there were roles for extras and even they ended up being problematic: such as the vicious motorcycle gang. parts Somehow Dolores managed to convince four actual Broward County police officers to act in the film. She even got them to agree to use their police car – completely unauthorized, of course. Lawrence Tobin (aka ‘Biker Savage’) and four Miami police officers (aka bikers) Ironically one of the only principal people who kept their real name was José himself, who finally came out of the shadows, anglicized his name, and became ‘Joseph Prieto.’ Most of the film was shot in the tiny Empire Studios in Dania, a neighborhood twenty miles north of Miami – even though the publicity would boast, “Filmed in the heart of Georgia’s emotional-infested swamps.” Some of the exteriors were shot on location at a local bar, and just to indicate the extent of the racial climate at the time, Lawrence Tobin, who played role of the amoral head of the motorcycle gang, later recalled that the lead actor, Ray Aranha, wasn’t even allowed in the bar to shoot the scene on account of his race. Ray Aranha and Eleanor Vaill Over the years, I’ve tracked down and spoken to many of the people who appeared in front of camera in ‘Shanty Tramp’ or who worked behind it. I’ve been fascinated by the film, and keen to ask them for their memories. One common theme from these conversations is how clearly each of them remember the shoot – but more than that, how vividly they remember what happened next. ‘Shanty Tramp’ exploded onto the screens in June 1967. K. Gordon Murray had already told local newspapers that this was not an ordinary film event, and that he was entering it into the Cannes Film Festival. Radio and TV stations were bombarded with publicity for the film, and newspapers featured theater ads showing the poster for the film which featured artists impressions of scenes together with an explanation: “Sorry! Because of the abnormal nature of this film, we cannot use any photos in advertisements.” The ads also advised that uniformed police would be present to protect ticket buyers, and that viewers should “come early as thousands may be turned away.” The blanket coverage in the newspapers was so extensive that the pages reserved for letters from readers was taken over by morally upright citizens writing in to complain… which of course only served to increase the film’s exposure. Sure enough, it played everywhere with playdates all over the country. The film itself was certainly provocative. José and his Cuban crew filmed this Southern Gothic melodrama, poking every boundary and taboo and mining the material for every sleazy angle. The ‘n’ word was clearly used on several occasions in the movie, but according to several crew members, the producer Murray, writer Guberman, and director José changed their minds about leaving it in at the last minute. Using their dubbing expertise, the word was removed from the soundtrack before film prints were struck. Attempts to tone the racial elements down though had no effect, and the outraged reaction continued. By September, the State Attorney warned any theater owners showing the movie were liable to be arrested under the state’s new obscenity law. The new statute centered around protecting juveniles from smut and violence, saying: “It is a felony to exhibit a film which exploits illicit sex or perversion or is obscene. By this we mean, lewd, filthy, lascivious, indecent, immoral, sadistic which intends to arouse lust or passion or to corrupt the morals of the youth.” As a promotional gimmick, Murray added a tear-off clip at the bottom of the newspaper ads, which read, “Teenagers! Have the Form Below Signed by Your Parent or Guardian! Sorry! You Will Not Be Admitted Without It!” The Tropicaire Theater was one of the venues that was targeted by the state, and its manager was happy to oblige: “I’m pulling it,” he said to The Miami News. “This movie is too far out for me. Usually, these pictures don’t live up to the advance billing. But this one is for real.” The State Attorney sent an investigator to view the picture, and his report confirmed their worst fears. It was swiftly reported in the newspapers. He wrote, “Various scenes depict prostitution, rape, incest, and even a sex orgy by a motorcycle gang. In the climax, a girl nude except for her panties is shown stabbing her father to death with repeated slashes of a butcher knife.” The investigator also noted that “the drive-in audiences were loaded with under-age viewers.” The loud controversy was music to Murray’s ears. He declared the film was “a smashing success” at more than 1,000 theaters in the three months since its release. Up to now, the story had been one of a scandalous movie that may or may not be obscene that was raking in dollars at the box office. But the newspapers wanted more. They wanted a scapegoat. They discovered the background of some of the main participants: they found that the African American lead male was actually a probation officer, the nude hussy anti-heroine was a school teacher, and some of the biker gangs were cops. Bingo. The news coverage for the next months was taken up by the various arguments that followed. Dolores took the breaking news badly. After all, she’d been the movie’s casting director, and had persuaded all these people to be in the movie. For the last years, she’d taken personal pride in helping people find film jobs, but now she felt personally responsible for the scandals that were about to engulf their lives. The police were the first to be attacked. They started by arguing that it was a lie. Then they said that any footage of the four officers cast in the film had not made the final cut and so no transgression had occurred. Finally they conceded that the policemen in question had all been fired. Meanwhile, Eleanor Vaill, the school teacher who’d used the name Lee Holland, was nowhere to be found. It was reported that, after being fired from her school job, she’d fled to Chicago – where she disappeared and was never heard of again. Actually none of that was true: Dolores had planted that story with the newspapers as a damage limitation measure to shield the ‘Shanty Tramp’ leading lady. In reality, Vaill had voluntarily left her teaching job and she was still living in Miami. In fact, she’d become a full-time actress, and continued to appear in local theater productions, including several with Dolores’ daughter, Marcy. Vaill and her husband did eventually move back to their home town of Chicago, where they became staples of the dinner theater circuit for years to come. As for Ray Aranha, the African American who’d used the name ‘Lewis Galen’ for the lead role of Daniel, despite being commended for his work as excellent probation officer, he was nevertheless fired for being “guilty of conduct unbecoming of an employee of the county.” The case went to an industrial tribunal with ‘Shanty Tramp’ being shown to the panel of the Personnel Board, but Ray never got his job back. I contacted Ray years later, and he laughed remembering the events of 1967. It turned out that getting fired was the best thing that happened to him, he said: “After that, I decided to focus on the theater – acting and writing. And that changed my life for the better.” Ray went on to significant success, winning the Drama Desk Award in 1974 for Outstanding New Playwright, and then acting on Broadway, in films, and on television many times in the years that followed. While all the hoopla was playing out in the press and in the courts, and changing people’s lives forever, what was José’s reaction? After all, this was the man who had feared his name ever appearing in the news again. José had laid low, and somehow it worked. The cover stories and features and scandal had focused on nearly every aspect and every person in the film, except for him. Miraculously, he had remained anonymous. When the dust settled, Murray sent him a bonus from the large profits he’d earned from the film: a check for $1,000. José, normally quiet and reserved, was in the mood to celebrate, and so he called up Rafael Remy and the rest of the Cuban expats who’d made the film, and they headed to the finest restaurant in Little Havana in Miami where José paid for everyone’s food and drinks. The previous decade had been a strange whirlwind journey for him: José had gone from being a minor player in kick-starting the Cuban film business, to a major production director and acting gig in ‘Our Man in Havana’, before escaping Communist Cuba, and now directing a controversial race-baiting sex film. It was a lot for a quiet man to bear. But those who knew him all agreed: he’d never been happier. He was back doing what he enjoyed best. So he went to see the management at the Everglades Hotel, his home and employer for the previous five years, and told them they needed to find a new bellboy. He was a filmmaker again. * Tune in next time for another story in ‘Chasing Butterflies’. The post Chasing Butterflies: Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida – Part 2, José Prieto’s story – Podcast 146 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Previously on Chasing Butterflies – Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida: Dolores Carlos was from a fiercely Cuban family, even though she was born in Tampa, Florida in October 1930, and never visited her country of origin. Her Cuban heritage and good looks, not to mention her patriotism, came from her father, Gus, and grandfather, Carlos, who had run the family’s cigar making business. Growing up was complex for Dolores: she was close to her family, but she dreamed of breaking free and having a glamorous life as an actress, seduced by the silver screen and the movies of 1940s that she cut school to watch. At 17, she broke away, but found herself swapping her strict family home for married life – and being a stay-at-home mother after she gave birth to her daughter, Marcy. The marriage ended in divorce, and Dolores needed to support herself – which she did by modeling: she modeled for Webb’s department store, newspapers, pin-up photographers and local businesses. Her career quickly took off, aided by winning beauty contests and making personal appearances at fairs, carnivals, and balls. Within no time, her pictures were appearing all over the land – even in other countries. She became close friends with a Miami model, Louise Downe, also known as Bunny, and they often worked together. Most of all though, Dolores wanted to work in films: she introduced herself to every producer she could find and turned up at every audition, but when she turned 30 without any offers, she figured that her dream was probably not going to happen. Then in 1958, Doris Wishman contacted her. Doris had had a career in film distribution, but following the death of her husband, had decided to make a nudist camp film, ‘Hideout in the Sun’, and wanted Dolores for the lead role. Dolores accepted with a degree of nervousness given the subject matter – and her fears were realized when Doris and Dolores were both arrested filming a nude scene on the beach in Miami, and Dolores was found guilty of indecent exposure. It was a scandal that was splashed across the newspapers and shocked her family. For Dolores however, the arrest, and the subsequent success of the film, proved to be a watershed moment: she finally felt independent and decided to double down and move to Miami where she could pursue the new film and modeling opportunities that were now coming her way. She appeared in several more nudist camp films, countless newspaper photo spreads, and became a local celebrity, appearing on stage to introduce visiting Hollywood stars, like Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis when they brought their shows to town. Her life was made even happier when she was joined by her teenage daughter Marcy, who moved to Florida to live with her. Dolores was often accompanied on her film and modeling jobs by her friend, Bunny Downe, and together they decided to produce their own nudist movie, and so they arranged meetings with various impresarios in Miami. One of these was with K. Gordon Murray, a legendary carny entrepreneur, who was a hugely successful importer of Mexican children’s films which he would skillfully dub for the American market. But Dolores had another outlet for her talents: on January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro’s communist rebels had seized control of Havana, Cuba’s capital. Many Cubans, fearing the consequences of the new revolutionary government, fled to Miami looking for work and a new life. Among the influx were many who’d worked in Cuba’s film and television industry. Dolores’ passion for helping Cubans and her newly acquired network of film contacts was ideally suited to helping these immigrants find work in the new sex film industry in Florida. Over the last twenty years, I’ve tracked down and spoken to many of these people. Their overlapping personal histories reveal an untold chapter of adult film history and the hidden role that Cubans played in shaping it. These are some of their stories. This episode is Part 1: Manuel Conde’s story. You can listen to the Prologue: Dolores Carlos’ story here. With thanks to John Minson, Tom Flynn, Ronald Ziegler, Leroy Griffith, Veronica Acosta, Mikey Bichette, Bunny Downe, Mitch Poulos, Sheldon Schermer, Ray Aranha, Manny Samaniego, Barry Bennett, Randy Grinter, Herb Jeffries, Tempest Storm, Chester Phebus, Michael Bowen, Norman Senfeld, Richard Falcone, Lynne O’Neill, Something Weird Video, and many anonymous families and friends who have offered recollections, large and small, over the years. This podcast is 40 minutes long. * 1.    Manuel Conde – Cuban Beginnings Manuel Conde was an improbable playboy: at 5’6” and bald as a polished billiard ball, he wasn’t often mistaken for Tony Curtis. What made Manuel a ladies’ man was a combination of circumstantial factors: for a start, he lived in New York in the 1940s and 50s, where he ran a successful – and glamorous – photographic business, specializing in portraits of wealthy dowagers and Cuban movie stars. You could always spot his pictures: each one was embossed in the corner with his impossibly elegant and unique imprimatur, ‘Conde of New York.’ He got his start in the business after befriending another photographer, a Jewish man Maurice Seymour, who became a mentor to him. Manuel’s business took off, and before long, his photos were ubiquitous. ‘Conde of New York’ photographic portrait Then there was Manuel’s jet-setting lifestyle, splitting his time between Cuba and the Big Apple – in an era when both locations were the playgrounds of the rich and famous. And finally, there was his enigmatic and mysterious background. Manuel had actually been born José Conde Samaniego in 1917 in Galicia, a fiercely independent kingdom in the north of Spain. For centuries, Galicia had pressed for self-government and for the recognition of its own unique culture, and in 1936, it finally won the right to self-determination by establishing a Statute of Autonomy. The people had got what they had wanted for generations – but this new beginning was frustrated by General Franco. His fascist coup d’état in the same year kick-started a long dictatorship throughout Spain, and so Manuel, barely twenty at the time, fled with his family to Cuba. But by the mid 1950s, Manuel was bored of the photography business. He loved working with cameras but had grown tired of the high-maintenance prima donnas who posed for his studio portraits. He wanted to start a new career – and he wanted to make films. New York was a closed shop due to the strict unions, so he turned to the nascent film industry in Cuba where he found work as a cameraman on a variety of projects. In 1956, he teamed up with an aspiring director, Mario Barral, and they made Cuban Confidential (aka ‘Backs Turned’). It was a drab, black and white, pseudo neo-realist drama notable only for the depiction of the pre-Castro Havana streets (“People are real…” – the disclaimer read at the beginning – “any resemblance is a happy or bitter reality.”) Manuel took a producing credit in return for taking the film back to New York with him and seeking U.S. distribution, but it was slog and he would struggle to make any progress in selling the movie in the years ahead. Nevertheless, encouraged by the experience, Manuel established a small film studio in Havana and shot newsreels of the Cuban political situation for Movietone, the New York newsreel company. He also made an upbeat musical comedy ‘Around Cuba in 80 Minutes’ (1957), featuring entertainers who appeared at show spots on the island, such as the Tropicana in Havana. The movie premiered in 1958 in Cuba, and would later achieve a second life in the U.S. as a nostalgic view of Cuba for homesick compatriots. Then two major events happened that turned Manuel’s life upside down: first he met Maria Maury, a woman almost twenty years his junior, who became his wife. And then, in 1959, Castro overthrew the Batista government and enforced Communist rule over Cuba. Manuel, having already fled one dictatorship in Spain a few years earlier, wasn’t in the mood to stick around and try life under the new boss. The only things keeping him in Cuba were family, which he could take with him, and his new studio film business which, under the newly-enforced trade embargos, could not be transferred to the U.S. So, to get around the restrictions and to have something to bring as a calling card, Manuel decided to make one last movie – an exciting, commercially attractive feature that he would take with him as he left Cuba behind, and that could he could sell in the U.S. In early 1961, Conde shot a sexploitation film, Girls on the Rocks (originally titled ‘Drums of Cupid’), in a week-long shoot on the outskirts of Havana. It could have been a risky venture given the repressive nature of the new regime, but with his usual combination of charm and obstinacy, he made the film, even getting support and help from some of the communist revolutionaries. ‘Girls on the Rocks’ (1961) But making the film was only half of the problem: the more dangerous part was getting it out of the country. In late 1961, Manuel arrived at the Havana airport to leave the island for good, with the film reels for ‘Girls on the Rocks’ as well as his comedy ‘Around Cuba in Eighty Minutes’ ready to smuggle both into the U.S. Conde’s wife, Maria, later explained: “Manuel was flying in and out of Cuba all the time with the newsreels he shot. He had a permit to go to New York to develop color film because there were no color labs in Cuba at the time. So one day he gathered up the family and everything we could carry, and said it was time to leave.” Not so fast, said the customs officers when they saw the film reels in Manuel’s luggage. Manuel explained that it was just newsreel footage of Castro, but the officials didn’t buy it. They insisted that he needed to leave the footage behind. Manuel called their bluff: he told them to phone Castro’s personal office and experience the dictator’s reaction when he found out that they were trying to restrict news of Castro’s achievements from reaching an international audience. The customs officers balked at the idea, reconsidered, and let Manuel leave with all his film reels. Manuel had won the battle against the dictator he despised, and when ‘Girls on the Rocks’ was eventually released in the U.S., the ads gleefully proclaimed, “Smuggled Out of Havana Right Under Castro’s Nose!” As for the film itself, in truth, Manuel had missed the boat: the nudie cutie that he’d made wasn’t nudie or cutie enough by American standards of the early 1960s, just showing shapely girls in skimpy bikinis. The nudist films in America had already become more daring. The ads admitted as much: “The Cleanest Dirty Movie Ever Made!” they boasted. * 2.    Manuel Conde moves to Miami Manuel Conde first met Dolores Carlos in late 1961, just after he’d arrived in Miami, accompanied by his wife Maria and son, Manuel Jr., who’d been born just weeks before they left Cuba. Dolores quickly became friends with Manuel and his family. It was a symbiotic relationship: Dolores showed them around Miami, taking them to Cuban restaurants in Little Havana and burlesque shows in Miami Beach, and introduced them to other Cubans looking for work in the local film business. Manuel, six years older than Dolores, was like an older brother to her, and was more worldly, advising her and encouraging her career aspirations. Dolores Carlos, photographed by Bunny Yeager Like many of his exiled compatriots who’d worked in television or movies, Manuel considered himself a serious filmmaker. He was intent on finding work shooting documentaries or industrials and showcasing his abilities as a cinematographer, but without a readily-accessible filmography to show off, it was a tough sell to the small pool of Florida producers. Dolores saw Manuel’s sexploitation film ‘Girls on the Rocks’ and told him about the nudist film craze in Florida. She suggested that perhaps, after documentaries, sex films were the next most authentic form of movie-making. She argued that Manuel should make another movie, an American film this time, that would act as a more up-to-date calling card, as well as a way of making some money – and that Dolores could help him put it together and could star in it as well. It was a tongue-in-cheek suggestion and Manuel was skeptical, but he relented when no other news or documentary work materialized. The resulting nineteen-minute nudie short, Playgirl Models, shot in December 1961, was a strange hybrid. Two disparate motivational forces were at play: on the one hand, the film was supposedly titillating, featuring five nude (or semi-clad) Florida models (including Dolores and Bunny Downe, of course) shown working on cheesecake photo shoots. But rather than being intent on filming arousing footage, Manuel was more interested in demonstrating the role of the cinematographer to the viewer, showing different types of lighting equipment and explaining how various black & white effects are achieved. The film’s tagline was as accurate as it was unsexy: “A Factual Study of Glamour Lighting and Photography” Despite Conde’s technical pretensions, ‘Playgirl Models’ was released into grindhouses in April 1962 – specifically the 79th St Art Theater, as the supporting feature for Eve or the Apple, the Dolores feature that she’d made with K. Gordon Murray. Friends recalled her pride in having two films playing in the same theaters, and she made regular appearances in the lobbies to promote the ‘Eve’/’Playgirl Models’ double bill at playdates all over Florida. Dolores Carlos * 3.    Leroy Griffith In the wake of ‘Playgirl Models’, Manuel set up a production company, M.S. Conde Productions, with offices at 236 W Flagler St in Miami. One of the people that Dolores had been keen to arrange an introduction with was Leroy Griffith. Griffith was a relative newcomer to Miami, who’d been living and working there for less than a year, but he’d already become a theater mogul in the city. Griffith was an energetic, entrepreneurial force of nature. Barely over five feet tall but, as film producer Dave Friedman recalled, “most everyone in the business may call (Leroy) ‘midget’ but he had the balls of a burglar.” In a recent interview, Griffith recalled the two pillars on which he built his business empire: “Firstly, I found theaters that were going bust. Regular, legit family theaters that were about to go under. This was because, in the 1960s, everyone was moving out of town into the suburbs… so they left behind a lot of theaters in trouble. I bought them and turned them all into burlesque places.” “And secondly, I saw the value of concessions: popcorn, candy, drinks, t-shirts, anything you could sell in the lobby. I learned this from the very first job I had when I was a kid when I worked concessions at the Grand Burlesque Theater in St. Louis. I sold candy and trinkets to audiences before and during the intermission. At the end of the night, I noticed something strange: I’d earned more than anyone else. More than the dancers, comics, and comedians! “I realized then that concert venues were not in the business of putting on shows. Not really: they were in the business of selling alcohol. Just like theaters were really not in the business of exhibiting films: they were in the business of selling refreshments. When you realized the value of concessions, you could really start making money.” In 1961, Griffith visited Miami Beach and noticed the Paris Theater was for sale. He leased it, then bought it, staging burlesque shows, including many with his favorite dancer, Tempest Storm: “She was a firecracker with a dynamite stage act. We made a big profit with her every time.” Griffith’s success was controversial, and he fought off multiple legal challenges from city authorities who tried to shut the sex trade down, before deciding that South Florida would be the base for his theater business empire. Over the next years, he continued to open new venues throughout South Florida, from Broward County, north of Miami, right down to Key West in the south. Leroy Griffith, with Britt Ekland As his portfolio of theaters grew so did his overheads – and he was hit by the expensive staging cost of the burlesque shows. Even worse was the fact that he was getting busted all the time: “Every week they came up with a new reason,” Griffith grumbled. “They said I didn’t have the right license, or the right permits, or I hadn’t paid my taxes, or the shows were too permissive… Once I paid thousands for a license for a burlesque show, and then they told me that they’d decided burlesque was prohibited: it was constant harassment.” So Griffith hit upon a new, more profitable business model: as he explained, “Burlesque started dying in the 1960s, so I started to switch the theaters into adult movie houses. They were cheaper to run, and the audiences couldn’t get enough of the new sex films. And then, you know, pretty soon after that… I decided to make my own movies.” Leroy Griffith Griffith already knew of Manuel and Dolores because he exhibited ‘Eve or the Apple’ and ‘Playgirl Models’ in his theaters across the state, so he was happy to take a meeting with them. Griffith had just produced his first effort, a nudist camp film called Bell, Bare and Beautiful (1963), directed in four days by future gore specialist, Herschell Gordon Lewis. It starred burlesque queen Virginia Bell, a frequent headliner at Griffith’s theaters. It was a crude and inept cash-in on an earlier Doris Wishman nudism-meets-burlesque vehicle, Blaze Starr Goes Nudist (1962), but it played well in Griffith’s theaters and so he was ready to make more along the same lines. When I spoke to him, Griffith said he was skeptical when he first met Manuel and Dolores: “A nudist broad and a Cuban without a history walk into my office pitching a sex movie? Sounds like a bad joke, right?! Damn right, I didn’t trust them! But we got to talking, and they weren’t asking for much, so we put something together.” The deal they put together consisted of a couple of episodic short films – both to be directed by Manuel and both to feature Dolores. Griffith threw in a couple of extra sweeteners: he would make Virginia Bell available to co-star, and he also offered them the use of his Miami Beach burlesque theater as a filming location, with other interiors to be shot at Flamingo Studios just down the road. Virginia Bell Manuel turned over the two short films but their running time only added up to 57 minutes – barely adequate for a feature release. Dolores came to the rescue with another recent Cuban immigrant friend that she’d met at (where else?) the Freedom Tower: this one was an aspiring filmmaker called Frank Malagon. Malagon was a colorful Cuban character, a chameleon with various identities: he was a ceaseless grifter, a benevolent con-man, and a snake oil salesman man who could sell you anything. His only problem was that couldn’t stay focused on any one venture for long: he juggled a dozen hats, but every time he caught one, another was flying off his head. Malagon had started out in public relations in pre-Castro Cuba, parlaying his large network of contacts into handling the publicity for Carol Reed’s Our Man in Havana (1959) starring Alec Guinness, which had been shot in the capital. Avowedly anti-communist, Malagon fled Cuba after the revolution and settled in South Carolina, where he established himself as an outspoken critic of Castro, and the architect behind the effort to set up a symbolic alternative government, La Nacion en el Exilio (‘the Cuban Nation in Exile’). He quickly developed a high profile making several appearances on U.S. television – including the Mike Wallace Show in 1960 – to talk about what he described as the Cuban outrage. His stated plan was to connect exiled Cubans and carry out the overthrow of the Castro government. Malagon even set up a film studio to make films as a way of funding his anti-Castro activities, before moving to North Miami in 1963, where he leased the former Channel 10 studio at 21st St and Biscayne Blvd, with a local builder, Dick Flink. At that point, Malagon’s passionate political intentions were somehow sidetracked in favor of low budget sex filmmaking. Malagon and Flick announced a slate of sex and horror films. Dolores encouraged Malagon to shoot a short, ‘The Super Dreams’, as their first film – and it was ‘The Super Dreams’ that Leroy Griffith added to Manuel’s other two short to create a full-length feature. It was called Lullaby of Bareland (1964), and billed as ‘3 Units of Fun!’ Malagon went on to make a couple more films using crews largely composed of Cuban talent provided by Dolores. And that was the extent of Malagon’s film career. A postscript about his colorful life however is worth adding: after the movies, Malagon set up a show-biz talent agency called ‘Shooting Stars’. Then he sold his film equipment so that he could build an anti-poverty city in South Dade County that he wanted to call ‘Youth City’. When he failed to obtain adequate funding, he moved onto a new career in hypnosis and became a mind-control doctor, eventually forming his own church in 1977 – called the Chapel of the Transformer (COTT) – which supposedly helped people find their perfect mate. In the 1980s, he switched gears again, and ran the Miss Miami Beauty pageant, before changing lanes once more to run the National AIDS Awareness Foundation. By the mid 1990s, he was working quietly as a realtor in Palm Beach. Malagon died, presumably exhausted by all his creative endeavors, aged 72, in 1999. * 4.    Home Life Despite the upheaval of previous years, Manuel settled well in Florida. His son Manuel Jr., born in Havana just before their departure, had been joined by a daughter born in 1963. Dolores’ daughter, Marcy, would often babysit for them. The family lived in the affluent Miami neighborhood of Coral Cables, and Manuel Jr. remembers they lived in the best house in the area, despite the fact it had barely any furniture: “Our life always seemed to be like that! I could never work out why we had the most beautiful homes… without anything in them. But he was a good father, even if he was strict: if he liked you, you were fine. if not, then you were the dog’s dick.” Not that life had become uneventful: Manuel loved boats and invested in a motorboat with fellow Cuban friends which they used to make illicit nighttime trips back to Cuba. The principal purpose of the sorties was to rescue family and friends who were still stranded in the country – as well as bring back contraband. It was a venture that was fraught with risk – both in terms of making the crossing, and being apprehended by U.S. coastguard, or worse, the Cuban authorities. They souped up the craft so that it could outrun anyone pursuing them – but it didn’t always work. On one occasion, on the eve of another secret trip to Cuba, Manuel slept through his nighttime alarm and missed the boat’s scheduled departure time so they left without him. That night the boat disappeared, his three friends never making it back – their fate still unknown. A reminder of the potential dangers of trying to gain access to the island. On the work front, Manuel still wanted to find work in the world of newsreel and industrials as he viewed it to be a steadier and more reliable source of income than features. He was reasonably successful – cameramen with their own equipment were always in demand – and he found work for several auto companies, such as American Motors. One notable short in particular, Shelby Goes Racing (1965), saw Manuel shooting Carroll Shelby, one of the finest sports car drivers of his generation. * 5.    Nudie Cuties In his spare time, Manuel could often be found at the Gayety Theater on Miami Beach, courtesy of new friend and sometime producer of his films, Leroy Griffith. Griffith admits his theaters were always at the heart of it all: “One time Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, and Belle Barth came into the Gayety. We had a Chinese dinner together, and then started watching the coming attractions for an X-rated film that was going to be running. For fun, we shut the sound off and the three of them – Frank, Sammy, and Belle – improvised the sexual sounds to go along with the scenes. They were all moaning and groaning and making funny noises. It was hysterical.” Dolores even managed to convince Griffith to convert one of his sex film theaters, the Dixie at 222 NE First Ave, into a Spanish language revue and film venue. In 1963, Manuel saw burlesque star Lynne O’Neill at the Gayety Theater – and he was smitten. Not smitten in the leave-your-wife kinda way, but rather smitten in the inspired-to-make-a-film way. Lynne O’Neill was a pneumatically-endowed blonde powerhouse, known as ‘The Original Garter Girl’ because her signature routine consisted of bestowing garters to audience members at the end of her shows – a gimmick suggested by, of all people, her mother, who accompanied her on the road. By the time Manuel first saw her, Lynne was already a veteran performer in her mid 40s, but she was still a big draw. Everyone had heard of her at that time because of a highly-publicized arrest in March 1960, when Lynne had been accused of distributing nude photographs of herself through the mail. She was convicted and served four days of a ten-day jail sentence in a case that received national media coverage. Lynne O’Neil Manuel figured he could capitalize on the publicity and so he approached Lynne, suggesting a nudist film, Secrets of an Uncover Model (1965). Lynne was enthusiastic. When I spoke to her years later, Lynne remembered: “Manuel was a persuasive and seductive man. He came up to me after my show, and told me that he wanted me to be the star in his new film… But, more than that, he wanted me to contribute artistically as well. I liked that. I was tired of men promising me the world and then disappearing. So, we drove around a selection of South Florida nudist camps, and he let me choose the one I was most comfortable with. You see, I was a dancer, and I had a sexy routine, but I still didn’t know anything about this nudist lifestyle. I found the nudist people to be sweet and friendly, and they invited me to play volleyball with them. I liked it and we had fun.” Chester Phebus, frequent collaborator of Manuel in the 1960s, remembered that Manuel suggested someone different should be the director of the movie: “He offered the directing gig for ‘Secrets of an Uncover Model’ to his former mentor in the portrait photography business back in the old New York days, Maurice Seymour. Actually, there were two Maurice Seymours. Two brothers, Maurice Zeldman and Seymour Zeldman, had left Russia in 1920 and settled in Chicago, launching their own studio in 1929 atop the St. Clair Hotel. As the brothers remembered years later, “We were in business together but combining our first names into ‘Maurice Seymour’ sounded better than Zeldman, so that’s how we named the business.” Then, after years of photographing ballet dancers, musicians, and entertainers, Seymour Zeldman legally changed his name to ‘Maurice Seymour’ and moved to New York to establish the company’s New York City studio, where years later he met Manuel Conde. According to Chester Phebus: “Maurice was a great photographer but he had no experience in directing a feature film. Manny stepped in and made it happen.” In truth, even Manuel couldn’t save the film: the resulting effort was a mundane account that is part travelogue set on the streets of Miami and part Lynne O’Neill stripping by the Coral Lakes Health Resort nudism camp swimming pool. It was largely unremarkable, but it did make money with playdates across the state. By 1966, Manuel was determined to put himself on the map. He had his eye on directing two films that he hoped would make his name: The Case of the Stripping Wives (1966) and Calendar Pin-Up Girls (1966). ‘The Case of the Stripping Wives’ featured local Miami strippers – including a part for Dolores and jobs for some of her Cuban coterie. It became the focus of a high-profile obscenity case in Memphis but Manuel was untroubled, figuring that all publicity was good publicity. He was proved correct and the film was still playing dates into the 1970s. ‘Calendar Pin-Up Girls’ was a return to the didactic documentary-style nudie film more typical of Conde, depicting the behind-the-scenes process of making a girlie calendar. It took the viewer inside the Miami studio of Conde Productions – including an encounter with “M.S. Conde, nationally known photographer and technical director.” Sadly, it wasn’t the man himself as Manuel remained behind the camera, having an actor portray him, but once again Manuel found a part for his friend Dolores (as Miss September with arms bound by jewelry), as well as other models from the Florida skin-flick business. The films were virtually one-man affairs with Manuel doing most things himself: he raised the money (invariably from Leroy Griffith), found the talent, wrote the script, shot the footage, edited it all together, and took an active role in their distribution. No matter that his wife was credited as co-director or scriptwriter (using her maiden name ‘Maria D. Maury’) or the editor was listed as ‘Sam Aniego’ (a bastardized version of Manuel’s actual second name), he took full responsibility. Manuel Jr. today says that his mother handled the admin and paperwork. In truth, both films were tame and pedestrian by 1966 standards, with limited nudity, and they didn’t set the world on fire. Remembers Chester Phebus: “It took Manny some time to figure out how to make a sex film. It was like he was playing catch-up. That was probably because he started off with a Cuban mindset – which was years behind the U.S. in terms of sexual permissiveness. By the time he worked it out each time… the sex film business had moved on and changed again. That frustrated him. He just wanted the chance to make a film with a decent budget – and that eventually came along with Mundo Depravados.” * 6.    Mundo Depravados Manuel Conde’s next film, ‘Mundo Depravados’ (1966), was to prove his last in Florida. It was another for Miami theater kingpin, Leroy Griffith. According to Chester Phebus, the story behind the film was more interesting than the film itself: “The idea was hatched one night at a burlesque show at one of Leroy Griffith’s theaters. We were at the Gayety, I think. It was a big night because Tempest Storm was headlining again, and that was always a big night.” Tempest Storm was one of the country’s best-known burlesque performers of the 1950s and 1960s, a fire-haired dame with impossible curves and an improbable past. She’d been born Annie Blanche Banks in Georgia 38 years earlier on February 29, 1928. She dropped out of school in seventh grade and at 14 was working as a waitress. Her home life was troubled so, to emancipate herself from her parents, she married a U.S. Marine. To call it a short-lived marriage would be an understatement: she had it annulled after just 24 hours. She married again the following year – at the age of 15. This time the bridegroom was a shoe salesman from Columbus. The marriage lasted six months: “I just left one day. I just had it in my mind to go to Hollywood so I walked out.” And so, by 1945, at the age of 17, with two marriages already behind her, Annie Blanche Banks was working In Los Angeles as an underage carhop waitress at Simon’s Drive-In. A patron suggested she find work as a chorus dancer at the Follies Theater and, so she did. Three weeks after being hired, she was promoted to the lofty position of stripper. This meant she needed a stage name. The theater manager suggested ‘Tempest Storm.’ As Annie recalled years later: “I asked her if she had any other suggestions. She said, what about ‘Sunny Day’? Ok, I said, I guess I’ll be Tempest Storm then.” Tempest Storm In the twenty years that followed, Tempest Storm became a genuine sensation, a regular performer at the El Rey, a burlesque theater in Oakland, California, but also at clubs across the country. She was splashed across men’s magazines and appeared in burlesque movies, such as Striptease Girl (1952) and Teaserama (1955). She married again – this time to a suitor who bought her a burlesque theater, the Capital Theater in Portland, Oregon – and then she got divorced again. Tempest Storm In 1959, she married Herb Jeffries, a suave and seductive film and television actor and popular jazz singer-songwriter. Herb’s life was just as startling as his new wife’s. Herb had been born Umberto Alexander Valentino in Detroit back in 1913 – which made him 15 years older than Tempest Storm. His mother was a white Irish woman and his father, whom he never knew, was a mix of French Canadian, Italian and perhaps northern African roots. All of which meant that Jeffries was fair-skinned, a feature that attracted racism from both white and black people when he was growing up. To avoid trouble, Herb chose to be white most of the time. In 1929, he dropped out of high school to earn a living as a singer. He had a smooth, rich voice, and he began performing in a local speakeasy where he caught the attention of Louis Armstrong. Armstrong recommended him to Erskine Tate’s orchestra at the Savoy Ballroom in Chicago. The problem was that Tate fronted an all-black band, so at the audition, Herb pretended to be a black Creole from Louisiana. It worked, and he was offered a position as the featured singer three nights a week playing to black-only movie theatres. Jeffries was a big hit, and he went on to record albums for major labels aimed solidly at the black market. Herb Jeffries, lounge singer Herb had film ambitions too, and his first love were the western movies he’d grown up with. He resolved to create a cowboy hero geared specifically for a black audience. Though the silent era had seen a number of films starring only black actors, they had all but disappeared with the arrival of the talkies, so Herb decided to produce sound cinema’s “first all-Negro musical western.” The problem was that many didn’t find Herb black enough. His dilemma at the time was unique: unlike many actors of color at the time who attempted ‘to pass’ as being white in an effort to broaden their commercial appeal, Jeffries had to go in the opposite direction and darken his skin with make-up in order to be a credible star in a black western. The ploy was successful, and he starred in a string of successful low-budget, so-called ‘race’ Western feature films, aimed exclusively at black audiences, such as ‘Harlem on the Prairie’ (1937) and ‘Rhythm Rodeo’ (1938). They earned him the nicknames ‘The Bronze Buckaroo’ and ‘The Sepia Singing Cowboy.’ Herb Jeffries, cowboy Jeffries’ career in film and music flourished. And then in the late 1950s, he met and fell for Tempest Storm. It was always going to be controversial relationship: one of the nation’s biggest female sex symbols, a lascivious stripper from the deep south, engaged to a successful singer/actor from the north, who’d been marketed exclusively to an African American audience. According to the New York Times, the marriage “broke midcentury racial taboos, costing Tempest Storm work” and dimmed both their stars. This time, Jeffries faced the opposite variation of his racial problem: now, he chose to identify as white, stating that his ‘real’ name was in fact ‘Herbert Jeffrey Ball’ on an application to marry Tempest Storm in 1959. Jeffries spoke to Jet magazine, saying: “I’m not passing, I never have, I never will. For all these years I’ve been wavering about the color question on the blanks. Suddenly I decided to fill in the blank the way I look and feel. Look at my blue eyes, look at my brown hair, look at my color. What color do you see?” In 1966, an unlikely meeting took place in Miami: Tempest Storm – the scandalous veteran stripper, Herb Jeffries – her husband and controversial mixed-race star of black films and music, Leroy Griffith – the millionaire owner of numerous burlesque theaters, adult cinemas, not to mention sex film producer, Dolores Carlos – so-called Queen of the Nudie Cuties, and Manuel Conde – the Cuban emigre’ turned adult film director. Chester Phebus, Manuel’s friend and frequent collaborator, was there as well, and remembered the evening well: “Tempest (Storm) was getting older: she wasn’t the big star that she had once been – and part of the reason for that was that she’d married a guy, Herb Jeffries, that most people considered black. Anyway, Tempest was still a big draw, and the place was packed that night. “Leroy suggested a film to Tempest and Herb. Leroy said he’d fund it but he wanted it to be a big film, not another nudist camp thing: a thriller with a plot and lots of characters. He wanted Tempest and Dolores to star, and he wanted Manny to direct. Herb looked pissed: he said he’d made hundreds of films and he should be the director. That annoyed Manny because he longed to make a bigger film. In the end, it was Dolores who acted as a mediator. It was always Dolores…” Tempest Storm and Herb Jeffries sign contracts for ‘Mundo Depravados’ with Leroy Griffith (seated) The compromise reached was that Herb would write and direct the film, and Manuel would shoot it and act as assistant director. The script that Herb Jeffries wrote, originally titled ‘Meet Me Under The Bed’, was a flimsy story of two police detectives assigned to investigate the murders of several young women at a health club. Leroy Griffith secured the presence of other people to appear in it, like Decker and Reed – a double act who’d appeared on The Dean Martin Show – as well as various of Miami’s strippers and nudie-cutie stars, including one Bunny Ware, a favorite of Griffith. Bunny’s main claim to fame was having been arrested eighteen times on consecutive nights in St Louis a few years earlier. Bunny had taken the cops to court, and won a claim of harassment on the basis that her act wasn’t obscene – just “not very good.” Mundo Depravados was released with eye-catching promo material: “A Sexperiment in Murder – Murderously Funny – A Sinerama of Sex and Fear!” The resulting film, well photographed by Manuel in black and white, is one of the most bizarrely entertaining film experiences you can have. Tempest Storm stars as the stripper whose coworkers are being murdered: she’s a sight to behold, her high beehive hairdo being even more difficult to believe than her acting. The collected Miami strippers offer much bumping and grinding, there are several sex scenes, and Dolores makes a touching appearance as a stripper who meets her end being stabbed by the killer in an alleyway. Dolores Carlos, in ‘Mundo Depravados’ (1967) When I contacted Herb Jeffries a few years ago to ask him what he remembered about ‘Mundo Depravados,’ he was full of enthusiasm for the experience though he admitted the resulting film didn’t set the world on fire: “We had a lot of fun making it,” he said. “But I wished it had done better at the box office. But if life is about having fun, then this was a crazy highlight.” I sent Chester Phebus a copy of the film, and he watched it for the first time in fifty years. It made him nostalgic for the old days too, and he remembered they were all disappointed the film wasn’t a bigger hit. Chester believed that perhaps part of the problem was that Tempest Storm and Herb Jeffries’ marriage was coming to an end, and their relationship on set was frosty: “Herb had his mind on other things – mostly the strippers and so Manny ended up directing most of the movie himself, but never got any of the credit.”   I also contacted Tempest Storm before she passed to ask about her memories of the movie, but she recalled little: “Herb and I were finishing our thing, so it wasn’t the happiest time. When we first got married, he adored and idolized me. Of course, I warned him that being married to a burlesque star like me would be difficult. I had a lot of attention from men who came to see my show, and I saw that many of my boyfriends found that difficult to deal with. Herb said he could handle it. But then we got married, and all of a sudden, he wanted me to wear conservative dresses covering every part of my body. Same old story, I guess.” As for Manuel, Mundo Depravados proved to be the end of his Florida adventure. After a life that had started in Spain before moving onto adventures in New York and then Cuba, Manuel was ready for a new start. He’d had a good time in Florida amongst the Cubans, and the lessons he’d learned in Miami would be useful to him in the next stage of his career. But now, just as he’d done in Cuba, he packed his bags and told his family they were moving west again. Their next stop was Hollywood. As for Dolores and Leroy Griffith, they were ready for the next Cuban chapter of their lives. * Tune in next time for the story of another of the Cuban Immigrants. The post Chasing Butterflies: Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida – Part 1, Manuel Conde’s story – Podcast 145 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Cuba may only be 90 miles from the southern tip of the United States – a leisurely boat trip on a calm day – but since the 1950s, the island has seemed part of a distant world, too many communist miles away. It wasn’t always the case. For years, Cuba was almost an extension of America, almost another star on its star-spangled banner. Links between the two countries dated back to when the Cuban cigar industry first arrived in Florida in the 1830s, and Hispanic communities developed in Miami as impoverished Cubans emigrated, dissatisfied with Cuba’s poor economy, a high poverty rate, and the various military dictatorships. Cuban tourists followed and soon the city became home to a variety of Spanish language amenities. And then on January 1, 1959, everything changed: Fidel Castro’s communist rebels seized control of Havana, Cuba’s capital. The new dictatorship reduced American influence on the island and, by the early 1960s, had seized all American-owned property in Cuba. The United States responded with an embargo restricting commerce between the two countries, which is still in place today. Many Cubans, fearing the consequences of Castro’s new revolutionary government, fled to the nearest part of America, the state of Florida, and that influx of people changed Miami: before the revolution, just 10,000 Cubans lived there, but three years later, in October 1962, nearly 250,000 more Cubans had arrived, and that number would grow to over 1,000,000 by the 1990s. Many of the new arrivals had been professionals and tradesmen back in Cuba, and they arrived in Florida looking to continue to work in their chosen fields as doctors, lawyers, auto-workers, and manual laborers. And then there were those who’d worked in Cuba’s film and television industry. Over the last twenty years, I’ve tracked down and spoken to many Cubans who worked in the Florida film business in the 1960s and 1970s, people who made their home and careers there after escaping their home country. Their accounts uncover a Rashomon collection of overlapping personal histories that reveal an untold chapter of adult film and the hidden role that Cubans played in shaping it. These are some of their stories. This is Chasing Butterflies: Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida. This is Dolores Carlos‘ story. With thanks to John Minson, Tom Flynn, Ronald Ziegler, Veronica Acosta, Mikey Bichette, Bunny Downe, Mitch Poulos, Sheldon Schermer, Ray Aranha, Barry Bennett, Randy Grinter, Michael Bowen, Norman Senfeld, Richard Falcone, Something Weird Video (nearly all films mentioned in this series have been found with them), and many anonymous families and friends who have offered recollections, large and small, over the years. This podcast is 41 minutes long. —————————————————————————————– 1.    Dolores at the Opa Locka Community Center Every time Dolores Rose went to the weekly women’s group at the Opa Locka Community Center near Miami, she made sure she dressed well. She’d have her hair piled high, a string of fake pearls around her neck, high-heeled espadrilles, and she could still fit into her powder blue cigarette pants. Sure, she was the wrong side of 60, and she knew that being old was mandatory, but looking old was optional. This was no God’s waiting room for her, this was her time to shine. This week’s gathering was more special than usual for Dolores. Each meeting was turned over to a different woman who’d make a presentation to the rest of the group about something of general interest. Pie-baking, bird-watching, bee-keeping, flower-arranging, that sort of thing. Sometimes the only really interesting part was when the discussion was derailed by the profane, never-ending questions that came from an elderly Jewish woman named Freida. This week was Dolores’ turn to present. She steadied herself at the front of the noisy group, and took a breath. “I wanted to tell you about a long time ago,” she said, “when I was a big star in sex films.” A silence descended on the room like a thick wet blanket. Frieda whispered loudly, “Holy shit. Did I come to the right meeting?” * 2.    Dolores Xiques Dolores Xiques was Cuban through and through. No matter that she was born in Tampa, Florida in October 1930, and never even visited her country of origin. Her Cuban heritage and looks, not to mention her patriotism, all came from her father, Gus Xiques, a fervently passionate Cuban, though ironically, he too was a Floridian, born in Monroe County in 1899. Gus was a cigar maker who’d inherited the family business from his father Carlos. He raised a family of four in northern Florida by himself after his Cuban wife passed, and Dolores was his youngest child. He was a strict, hard-working man, and top of his belief hierarchy was loyalty to their country of origin and to their fellow Cubans. Not just any Cubans, but American-Cubans. Gus taught each of his children that all Cuban immigrants had endured a common journey, a mutual struggle, and they could collectively survive in America only if they helped each other out. Supporting fellow Cubans should always be a priority in their lives. Dolores’ family was a tight-knit one (papi Gus re-married after Dolores’ mother died – to another Cuban woman, of course), and Dolores grew particularly close to her grandfather, Carlos, a one-time cigar-maker from Camaguey, Cuba, who’d emigrated to Key West, Florida back in September 1886. Gus and his family lived at 3405 Green St, Tampa, and Dolores attended nearby Jefferson High School where most of the students were Hispanic or black, drawn from the adjacent Latino communities of Ybor City and West Tampa. Records suggest that Dolores did well in school – her grades were better than most, and she was pretty and popular. But family members say that, as she grew into her teens, she longed to step outside of the strict confines of her Latina family. Against her father’s wishes, she’d sneak out of school, often ending up in movie theaters, where she’d gaze at her idols, Jean Harlow and Rita Hayworth, and craved a more independent and glamorous life. In school, she joined theater, music, and dance groups but somehow it didn’t feel enough. She wanted more. Her ticket out came in 1947 when she was 17, in the form of Maurice Bichette, a dashing and handsome New Yorker from Orangeburg, ten years her senior. Dolores Carlos – aged 18 Maurice had a mildly checkered past: he had three kids from a previous marriage, was in the middle of a divorce, and had picked up a couple of arrests for reckless driving that would eventually lead to losing his license. Seeking a fresh start, he’d moved down to St Petersburg where he found work with the Clear-View Venetian Blind Company. He had a few goals: he was looking to stay straight, get a job, settle down – and part of that whole equation entailed finding a wife. It was a whirlwind romance: Dolores and Maurice announced their engagement just months after meeting, and tied the knot on May 9th, 1948, settling in St Petersburg at 4465 Crestwood Drive North. The engagement announcement in the newspaper featured a close-up portrait of Dolores with a flower in her hair – looking like her idol, Margarita Cansino, the actress of Spanish descent who became a huge star after changing her name to Rita Hayworth. Dolores and Maurice were both good kids: their problem was that they just weren’t good for each other, and cracks in their relationship appeared quickly. Part of the issue was age-related: Dolores graduated high school the same month as their wedding, Maurice was her first boyfriend, and she was just looking to leaving her strict family home and enjoying greater freedoms. She wanted to experience racy, swashbuckling adventures like those described by her grandfather Carlos. Maurice on other hand, trying to correct the errors of youth, was looking for a quieter, more settled life. For a time, they made it work: they fixed up their new home, took vacations down in Miami, and in August 1950, Dolores gave birth to their daughter, Marcelle Denise Bichette, who quickly became known as Marcy. It was a life-changing moment for both of them and baby Marcy became the center of their worlds. Over the next decades, no matter what else was going on in each of their lives, Marcy would always be their first priority. Dolores, Maurice, and Marcy, 1954   Dolores and Marcy, 1955 Dolores loved being a mother and doted on Marcy, but the realization was already dawning on her: had she had just swapped one set of restrictions for another? She was barely 20 years old, without a job, and now she was stuck at home with a new-born and daily chores. Housework can’t kill you, sure, but why take the chance? Had her dreams of being someone been crushed before she’d even begun? Arguments sparked between the couple: love may be blind but marriage was a real eye-opener for her. Dolores’ loneliness was made worse when she lost her beloved grandfather Carlos and then her stepmother within a year of Marcy’s birth. Dolores, headstrong and determined as her father had taught her, decided she needed a career. Dolores and Marcy, 1957 * 3.    Dolores – The Model In early 1953, Dolores sent off her resumé to Webb’s City in St Petersburg. Webb’s was a one-stop department store covering ten city blocks. It was a precursor to Walmart, with 77 departments, 1,700 employees, and the slogan, “There’ll be no more hoppin’ around the town a-shoppin’. But instead of applying for one of Webb’s many sales assistant roles, Dolores had her eye on something more exciting: she wanted to be a model for them. Webb’s had historically been associated with elderly citizens keen to spend their pension money, but top management had recently decided they needed to change and appeal to a younger crowd, and so they started a model training program for girls between 15 to 20 years of age. Dolores faced resistance from all sides: for a start she was already 23, her father, Gus, didn’t deem modeling to be a respectable occupation, and husband Maurice said it was a distraction from her duties as a mother. Furthermore, Webb’s model program was already over-subscribed. And then there was the fact that, well… Dolores wasn’t white, and Webb’s had always had a little racism problem. Sure, it was true that Webb’s would hire non-whites at a time when other businesses in St. Petersburg would not, but it was also the case that the non-white hires were used in positions that were less visible, and they weren’t permitted to eat at the lunch counter, and they weren’t eligible for promotion. This racial glass ceiling and discrimination at Webb’s would later become the focus of Civil Rights sit-ins and controversies during the 1960s. But Dolores was determined and resourceful: she colored her black Cuban hair red, knocked four years off her age, stuck her thumb in the air, and hitched a ride to the store for an interview. She told no one what she was doing. Her application was a success, and much to the regret of husband and father, she was selected for Webb’s training program for teenage models. She figured she could keep her real age a secret, but then the local newspaper took her picture and published it under the heading ‘Teen Takes Fashion Spotlight’. Her father Gus and husband Maurice saw it and gave her hell. But Dolores loved the opportunity, and when the training finished, she took a job in the store modeling clothes and swimwear. No one knew she was overage still, so she did modeling catwalks for teenage models, such as the annual Swim Party on the roof garden of Webb’s. Then at one of the events, she was spotted by a beauty contest organizer who learned that she was married, and invited her to represent St Petersburg in the Mrs. Florida contest – strictly for married housewives – that was run by the Palmetto Junior Chamber of Commerce. The event took place in August 1953 with 48 entrants from across the state – and Dolores was billed simply as ‘Mrs. Maurice Bichette.’ And if you ever thought that simple beauty contests were perhaps a little sexist, this one was rather more so: sure, it consisted of parading in the usual swimwear and evening clothes, but models also had to demonstrate housewifely skills such as sewing, cleaning, cooking, and child-raising, which accounted for 50% of the total score. In fact, Dolores was pictured in the newspapers showing her bed-making ability. She didn’t win the contest – which was a desperate shame as one of the prizes was a vacuum cleaner – but it wasn’t all in vain: her skeptical husband Maurice won the side competition to find the best-looking husband. But happy moments like this between Dolores and Maurice were becoming less frequent, their arguments were becoming more heated, and in 1954, they decided on a trial separation. For the first time in her life, Dolores was on her own. Dolores and Marcy, 1957 * 4.    Dolores goes to Miami After the separation, both Dolores and Maurice both wanted custody of Marcy, so they agreed to share time with her. Dolores still had her job at Webb’s and she took care of Marcy on weekends. But money was short, so she took on new work as a dance instructor and did freelance modeling jobs across the St Petersburg and Tampa areas. She was attractive, and her eclectic portfolio of work started appearing in newspapers across Florida in different contexts: she was the daily ‘sunshine girl’ (typically posing with a giant thermometer to indicate that day’s temperature), she was elected as ‘Queen of Photography’ by the Central Florida Camera Club, posed for Bow Tie Week (nude with a couple of giant bow ties ensuring her modesty), she entered (and won) beauty pageants, and was selected by Coca-Cola to be on their float at the huge King Gasparilla Pirate Parade. She was surprised by her own success: her pictures were being published all over the country – even making it into the Daily Mirror newspaper in England, which, at the time, claimed it had the largest daily circulation in the world. All were tongue-in-cheek, slightly suggestive pictures, while still remaining innocent – and Dolores’ age was typically given as three or four years younger than she actually was. She’d figured out that the secret of staying young was to live honestly, eat slowly, and but most of all, lie about your age. Dolores’ modeling career was taking off at the same time that any remnants of her relationship with Maurice were fizzling out. Attempts to reconcile had failed, and tension between the two grew as Dolores’ life became more glamorous and Maurice became increasingly disapproving. In early 1956, they filed for divorce, and the following year, Maurice re-married. For Dolores, the final breakdown of her marriage was her cue to shoot for the big time. As much as she enjoyed the modeling though, she dreamed of making it in the film industry, and for that to happen, she knew she’d have to move to Miami, the only significant center for film production in the state. The problem was that moving to Miami – 280 miles and at least a four-hour drive away from St Petersburg – meant giving up day-to-day custody of six-year-old Marcy. It was a heart-breaking prospect and one she didn’t take lightly. After agonizing for weeks, she decided to give it a try. In 1956, Dolores drove down to Miami. It was a new start which was exciting, but she had the support of precisely no-one. She decided she needed a new name to re-launch her modeling career, after all ‘Dolores Xiques’ was as unpronounceable as ‘Dolores Bichette’ was inaccurate. Despite her father’s disapproval, she opted for ‘Dolores Carlos’ thus honoring her Cuban grandfather, Carlos, whose struggles had inspired her independence. In Miami, her successful modeling resumé from St Petersburg and Tampa opened doors and she found regular work with newspapers and companies like the Roosevelt Theater on Miami Beach. Her modeling career thrived, and she won several more beauty contests, including being chosen as the Miami Beach Police Benevolent Association Queen (even though she picked up a parking ticket from a motorcycle patrolman during the crowning ceremony) and was elected Queen of the Police and Firemen’s Ball held at the Miami Beach Kennel Club. Finding film work however, which was what she really wanted, was more difficult. Dolores pounded the streets, turning up at every filmmaker’s studio in the southern Florida area. The results? Nada. Tens of auditions came and went without success. Her father suggested she connect with the small community of Cuban filmmakers in Miami – but that yielded nothing either. Another type of work was on offer though: pin-up photography for men’s magazines. Typically topless photo shoots, sometime nude, taken on the beaches, by the pools, and in the boudoirs of Miami mansions. Dolores accepted a few of the jobs, but turned most down, fearing salacious photos might kill her film prospects. Besides, she found some of the photographers to be sleazy and predatory. And then she met Louise ‘Bunny’ Downe, a Miami-based model, whose aspirations mirrored her own. Downe was seven years younger than Dolores but was a woman in a hurry: she’d graduated from the local Coral Gables High School in 1955 and enrolled in the University of Miami where, in her sophomore year, she’d had immediate success on the beauty pageant scene, winning the Miss West Miami Beauty Contest, runner up in the Miss Firecracker contest, and competing for the Miss Miami title. By 1957, Downe was working as a model and had set up her own modeling agency. And like Dolores, Downe had married young and unhappily: in Downe’s case, a short-lived relationship with a fellow student that would end in 1959. Dolores and Bunny Downe formed a close friendship that would last for years. Downe was well-connected and found more modeling work for Bunny, but Dolores had her heart set on movies. In late 1957, with film-work non-existent, Dolores decided to give up and return to St Petersburg. At least there she could see more of Marcy, and she had the promise of weekend modeling work at the St Petersburg Art Studio. She was approaching 30, and her dream of finding success as a film star was looking less likely by the day. * 5.    Dolores, Doris Wishman, and Hideout/Stakeout in the Sun In 1957, the same year Dolores was leaving Miami and returning to St Petersburg, another woman in Florida was at a crossroads in her life and she too was considering her options. Doris Wishman was a tiny, energetic, feisty dame in her early 40s, dealing with the premature death of her second husband from a heart attack. She’d been in the film business in New York since the early 1940s when she began working for her cousin, an independent film distributor who handled foreign and independently-produced movies made outside the Hollywood system. Over the next decade, Doris had developed good experience in the distribution business and built an extensive network of contacts with exhibitors. After her husband’s passing, Doris moved down to Florida to be with relatives, and was looking for an activity that would help her deal with her grief, not to mention an opportunity to make some bucks. For the first time in her life, Doris decided she wanted to make a film: she had no experience but she’d seen so many low budget films, she figured how hard could it be? Specifically, she was inspired by the success of one film in particular: Garden of Eden (1954), the first film about nudism that had been shot in color. The film was racy and daring in that it showed partial nudity, but it managed to get away with it because the courts had ruled that representations of nudity within the context of nudism could not be considered obscene. Why? Well, because nudism was a lifestyle choice associated with health and fitness, which meant that, by definition, nudists had no prurient interest in nudity. Besides, nudism was considered a serious business at this time: several Florida counties had brought in regulations that required nudists to obtain a permit – and a permit required two character statements from a pastor, priest, or a respectable member of the community. So nudism was wholesome, and the film ‘Garden of Eden’ had been made to capitalize on this – and it worked. Though many court cases were brought against the movie, the producer won most of them and the film benefited from the ensuing publicity and made a big profit. Doris had had a small role in the distribution of ‘Garden of Eden’ so had witnessed the film’s success first-hand. She decided that it provided her with an ideal template. First, to make her own nudist film, she needed money, and she estimated the total budget to be in the region of $10,000. So she raised funds from family members, specifically her sister, and started shooting Hideout in the Sun, in Tampa and Dania in 1957. So far, so good. But then the problems started. Predictably the first issue Doris encountered was her own inexperience as a filmmaker. The initial footage she shot was too explicit, showing genitals in too much detail for a 1950s film, and so it had to be scrapped. Doris had to start again, so she went back to the same family members and raised another $10,000 for a re-shoot. Doris Wishman * 6.    Hideout/Stakeout in the Sun Summer 1958. Dolores was working at the St Petersburg Art Studio when she got a call from Doris. Doris had heard about Dolores from her friend Bunny Downe’s modeling agency in Miami. Doris and Dolores met up, and Doris offered her the lead role in her nudist film. A friend of Dolores still remembers her initial conflicted reaction: she was excited to be finally offered a role in a feature film, but a little concerned about the nudity – not because of the nudity per se but because of the possible impact that it could have on her daughter Marcy as well as any potential future film work. Dolores eventually accepted – largely because Doris appeared to be less sleazy than some of the other characters that had offered her nude work previously. In October 1958, Dolores went down to Miami to shoot footage for ‘Hideout in the Sun.’ One sequence was shot in the sea on a portion of North Miami Beach by Charleston St. There were four people filming that day: there was Doris, Dolores, the cameraman Lazarus (Larry) Wolk (who ended up being credited as the director of the film), and the male lead Marvin Bauer. By day, Bauer was a realtor who had a sneaky sideline renting out his client’s empty houses to pin-up photographers. Bauer, fearful that these clients would hear about his film appearance, would use the name ‘Earl Bauer’ in the film’s credits. But there was a fifth person there as well that day: William Callahan, a patrolman in the Miami Police Department, who, unbeknownst to the other four, was hiding in the nearby bushes watching the action unfold. In his subsequent report, he described observing the filmmakers for eight minutes. Eight minutes of voyeurism, presumably because he had to make sure he knew exactly what was taking place. Callahan’s report stated that he saw Dolores “in her birthday suit.” Not just that, but she was “cavorting in her birthday suit.” Callahan’s report elaborated that Dolores was first filmed walking down the beach before writhing in the surf while Bauer looked down on her. After witnessing that, Callahan jumped out of his hiding place and arrested all four of them: Dolores was booked for indecent exposure, the other three for being disorderly. They were all ordered to appear in court the following day. Each of them gave Miami addresses except for Dolores who provided her Tampa home location, and each posted $50 bonds and were released after vigorous protests. Needless to say, the footage Doris shot was confiscated as evidence. Doris fought back: she insisted that it was a legitimate production on behalf of WICA Productions, who intended to sell the film to “the biggest companies.” She explained that none of it was pornographic, and that the plot was actually about two gangsters who hold up a bank and kidnap a female nudist. The nudist then takes them to her cabin, falls in love with one of them, who reforms, and turns his buddy in. What could be more normal than that, she said? But whatever public statements Doris was issuing to minimize the event, the newspapers were interested in another part of the story, and they jumped on it like a dog on a dropped steak. What titillated them was evident by their headlines: “Nude Beauty Queen is Arrested Making Movie Scene on Beach” and “’Movie Queen’ Caught Frolicking on Beach” and “Police Eclipse a Rising Star.” One article described how Dolores was picked up “as she lay in the surf, allowing waves to wash over her shapely, unclothed form.” Dolores had finally achieved her dream of being on the cover of newspapers for being a movie star – it just wasn’t the way she’d always dreamed that it would be. She told the newspapers that it was her first film experience after a long and successful career as a model. She was surprised by the arrest, she said. She told them that the first thing she’d done after the arrest was to show the cops the Miami Beach Police card that she’d been given the previous year when they’d made her the Queen of the local Benevolent Association, but it cut her no slack. The extensive newspaper coverage soon reached her ex-husband and family, and her friends still remembered the ensuing uproar and scandal. Of course, the cops rushed to develop the footage, and then took a look for themselves. In the end, the accused were found guilty, fined $50 each, and released. It proved a sobering experience for Marvin Bauer, the leading man, who vowed never to do anything connected to nudie films or pin-ups again. Dolores, however, was surprised by her own reaction: on the one hand, she was a single mother with a successful career as a model who dreamed of being a movie star – but now she’d been arrested for indecent exposure, risked everything she had worked for, and caused a whole mess of embarrassment to her family. And yet, there was something that excited her too. Not so much the sexual side of the story, but more that it provided evidence that she was in some strange way finally independent. She felt seen. And she was going to be in a real movie. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, or something like that. So Dolores doubled down, stepped on the gas, and ignored the rear view mirror. Most of the rest of the shooting for ‘Hideout’ took place in 1959 in a private residence on one of the islands on the causeway to Miami Beach that doubled as a nudist camp for the film. (The film’s credits claimed it was a genuine nudist camp in order to give the film legitimacy.) In the years since the film was made, it has been claimed that no genuine nudists actually featured in the film, but in fact, several people cast in ‘Hideout’ were in fact paid-up members of naturist clubs. One was a photographer friend of Dolores, Richard Falcone. Falcone was an Italian property developer, bodybuilder, and part-owner of a nudist colony in Pasco County in Tampa, who’d founded the Sunshine Beach Naturist Club. Falcone had become friends with her when he’d taken modeling pictures of Dolores for her portfolio. He appeared as ‘Dick Falcon’ in ‘Hideout’, and he recruited several of his nudist friends to appear in the film.   The first public showing of ‘Hideout in the Sun’ took place at the Variety Theater in Miami in January 1960 – advertised as ‘Filmed in Eastman Color and Nuderama.’ The newspaper ads boasted praise from the New York Times (“the best of the newest nude films”) and the invitation that “If you never see another nudist film in your life… you must see ‘Hideout in the Sun.’” Dolores loved the attention which made her feel like a genuine movie star at last, and she made personal appearances to promote it in Miami and then Tampa when the film was released more extensively later in the year. * 7.    Queen of the Nudies With Dolores spending more time in Miami, she decided – once again – to move south in order to pursue film opportunities arising from ‘Hideout in the Sun.’ She took a small apartment at 1860 NW 1st St in Miami. It was in a rough, undesirable area, but Dolores made friends with the small Cuban ex-pat community and spent most of her spare time down on Calle Ocho or Domino Park in Little Havana, the Miami neighborhood home to many Cuban exiles. Her father was impressed with her new circle of friends and visited her more frequently insisting that they meet and hang out with the Cubanos. Dolores was pleased to finally be where the action was – and exhilarated with the increased interest coming her way. But soon after, there was another person living with Dolores: Dolores had continued sharing custody of Marcy with Maurice whenever she could, but when Marcy was ten, it became clear that life with her father was not working out as planned so Marcy moved down to Miami and moved in with Dolores. Dolores was over the moon: sure, it made her everyday life more complicated, but she relished the chance to live with her daughter in her small apartment. They both loved the new arrangement. Dolores scheduled her modeling and photo shoots around taking care of her daughter, and Marcy enjoyed living with her glamorous mother. Family members recall Marcy spending hours happily chasing butterflies in the backyard and playing with worms in the ground. Dolores and Marcy, 1962 For the first time, money wasn’t a problem for Dolores: magazine work was booming for her, with offers pouring in as she became an unofficial pin-up queen for nudists. She was assisted by her friend, Bunny Downe, who was also cashing in on the up-tick in pin-up work. Starting in June 1960, and then again in August and September 1960, Dolores posed for Bunny Yeager, the Miami-based pin-up photographer who’d worked with Bettie Page in the 1950s. Bunny Yeager’s folder for Dolores   Dolores’ release for Bunny Yeager work In addition to modeling, Dolores was featuring more regularly in the local newspapers. One report pictured her “atop a snazzy convertible representing one Miami VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) outfit in a skin-tight leopard-skin. She is a movie-star in adults-only nudist camp films.” She made a much-anticipated appearance at the Artists and Models Ball where she wore a gown reported as having “only sides – no front or back” and won a trophy for being the “Girl Most Likely to Enslave an Artist.” As a result of her growing celebrity, Dolores was often invited to be a featured guest around town to introduce celebrities on stage when they brought their acts to Miami. These included stars like Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Dinah Shore, Eddie Fisher, and Jane Russell. And Dolores was offered more film work – in particular, in nudist films that were suddenly plentiful, cashing in on the success of ‘Hideout in the Sun’. One of the first was in 1961, Pagan Island, when Bunny Yeager assembled a group of models that included Dolores and her friend, Bunny Downe. The film’s director, Barry Mahon, later remembered how Yeager opened doors for him: “A lot of girls wouldn’t do it for a male photographer. (Yeager) was a good photographer alright, but she was getting the best girls simply because the other photographers were all lechers! So I got her to call up all these girls, and that meant I had a real stable of good looking girls out of Playboy magazine.” After ‘Pagan Island’, there were a couple of Doris Wishman nudie-cutie follow-ups, Diary of a Nudist (1961) and Blaze Starr Goes Nudist (1962), both featuring Dolores and Bunny again – in fact, the two of them would go on to appear in twelve movies together. Ronald Ziegler, a friend of Dolores from her Tampa modeling days, remembered the scene: “Dolores and Bunny were at the center of this new movie-making movement that produced all these topless, nudist camp films. The movies may seem tame by today’s standards, but back then, everyone was getting excited by them – and they made a lot of money. Both girls were pretty, and always had film or modeling work lined up, but their real talent was in connecting people and making things happen. They both had an energy and a desire that didn’t stop – and people gravitated to them.” Dolores got Ronald Ziegler a role in Doris Wishman’s ‘Diary of a Nudist’ (1961). They had fun so she encouraged him to write a script of his own. As Ziegler remembered, “It was a comedy called ‘Not a Stitch,’ and Dolores and Bunny wanted to produce it. They just needed funding but didn’t know where to turn to. Back in 1961, there was a guy called Silver Dollar Jake who was on the scene. He was a larger-than-life character in Miami, so someone put them in touch with him.” ‘Silver Dollar Jake’, less prosaically born as Jacob Schreiber, was a wealthy, retired Detroit theater owner who lived on Palm Island in Miami Beach. Jake didn’t have much to do when he stopped working so he spent his time driving his outlandishly decorated Cadillac around South Florida, with an eight-inch cigar in his mouth and a pet macaw on his shoulder, promoting causes such as blood drives or the sale of War Bonds. Above all, he liked to flaunt his wealth so he’d throw out silver dollars to passersby. Silver Dollar Jake Ronald Ziegler remembered him well: “Dolores went to see him one day. Jake liked the idea of funding this nudie movie, almost as much as he loved Dolores. He chased her all over town for weeks, and she chased him to get funding. We had meetings and meetings, and it seemed as if Silver Dollar Jake was going to give us all the funding, but when Dolores turned down his romantic advances, his promises came to nothing.” So Ziegler remembers that Dolores and Bunny started again, and pitched their idea to other producers. One of them was K. Gordon Murray. * 8.    K. Gordon Murray – and the Freedom Tower Kenneth Gordon Murray was born in Bloomington, Illinois, in 1922. Son of a funeral director, he spent much of his childhood with performers from visiting circus productions who settled in Bloomington for the winter. Much of Murray’s background is colorful to the point of defying belief: by the age of 20, he’d earned a small fortune by driving the family hearse for local funerals, worked as a casting assistant for MGM where he hired munchkins for ‘The Wizard of Oz’, purchased a decrepit carnival which he renamed ‘United Liberty Shows’ billing himself as ‘The Youngest Show Owner in all of Show Business’, and started a movie theatre construction firm with his father. In his mid 20s, Murray decided to try his luck in Hollywood working for Cecil B. DeMille on the movie ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ (1952), but he didn’t adapt well to being a small fish in a big pond so he moved to Miami, Florida, where he formed K. Gordon Murray Productions. After a couple of years of dabbling in low-grade exploitation films (including the re-release of a forgotten 1949 religious epic, ‘The Prince of Peace’), he hit paydirt: in 1959, Murray released an Italian melodrama called Il Momento Più Bello, starring Italian acting legend Marcello Mastroianni. So far, so unremarkable, except that Murray then inserted footage of a doctor hawking sex manuals – and several minutes of grisly, cheaply shot footage showing the birth of twins. (Unsurprisingly, when Mastroianni found out, he sued to have his name removed from the credits.) It was a jarring, exploitative move, but also a highly successful one, aided by an aggressive, salacious promotional campaign. I spoke to a Murray collaborator, Sheldon Schermer, who remembered, “Murray will best be remembered for other films, but make no mistake, this was the one that made him rich. Very rich, in fact. And it wasn’t just the film’s box office: Murray knew the value of merchandise long before other people. He had sex booklets for sale at the refreshment stand in the lobby which people queued up to buy. Whichever direction you looked, he was making money hand over fist.” By the early 1960s, Murray’s Trans-International Films Inc operated out of impressive offices at 530 Biscayne Blvd, Miami, where Murray had flip-flopped into a new business model: buying children’s movies from Mexico and dubbing them for the domestic market. Gone were the graphic, bloody, baby inserts, now replaced by a string of colorful, surreal fairytale films, like Santa (1960), which became huge money makers. When Dolores turned up at his office on Biscayne Blvd in 1961 looking for a producer for her nudist movie, Murray was all ears. As his secretary, Veronica Acosta, remembered: “Mr. Murray was always looking for opportunities to distribute movies that weren’t on the radar of the big film companies – and he was well aware of the success of the nudist pictures. Everyone was. And he knew Dolores too as she was on posters and in the newspapers. Despite his big success, Mr. Murray loved that a beautiful woman, like Dolores, had come to him to propose an idea. He liked Dolores, and the feeling was mutual.” Murray listened to Dolores but explained that he wasn’t ready to finance new movies, rather he preferred to buy existing ones cheaply from other countries. Acosta remembers: “Dolores was persistent and adamant: she told him that the market for nudist films was hot, and that he should take advantage – now!” In the end, Murray and Dolores struck a compromise of sorts: Murray would re-release a tame five-year-old burlesque film called Naughty New York (1957), which he would rename Eve or the Apple (1962). And to differentiate it from the earlier film, he would shoot an additional nudie insert featuring Dolores and Bunny Downe. The movie premiered in April 1962 at the 79th St Art Theater, where it was billed as “An Intimate, and Slightly Shocking Fun Fest.” The poster claimed, “Bring your seat belts… This one takes off – and we really mean ‘takes off’!” Dolores and Bunny agreed to tag-team to help promote the film, and the theater arranged for ‘Camera Parties’ to take place in the lobby, where fans could take their own pictures of her (“At 2.30pm and 7.30pm: She appears twice daily in her swimsuit! Take your own pin-ups or have your own picture taken with lovely ‘Eve.’”). Similar events took place when the film played in Tampa and in St Petersburg – this time with Bunny Downe appearing in person. Reviews of Dolores were glowing – “Miss Carlos wears mostly just nail polish,” read one – but despite the salacious publicity, the release was a rare misfire for Murray and made little money. It was an unsatisfactory outcome for Dolores in the short term, but she was undeterred, convinced that K. Gordon Murray would eventually come good and move into film production, so she stayed friends with him and they continued to meet up regularly. As secretary Veronica Acosta remembered: “Mr. Murray and Dolores were a good match, and there were brief rumors of a romance. He was a friendly extrovert, and she was vivacious and passionate. She was a regular visitor to the offices.” Acosta also remembered another important detail: “I liked Dolores because, from the beginning, she was the one who started bringing in the Cubans.” The Cubans that Acosta referred to came from the Freedom Tower, an imposing building which, at 600 Biscayne Boulevard, was next door to the offices of K. Gordon Murray Productions. The building was the epicenter for new Cuban immigrants in the United States as it was the central location used by the government to process and document refugees from the Cuban Revolution and to provide medical and dental services for them under President John F. Kennedy’s enactment of the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962. At first, Dolores first went to the Freedom Tower in the early 1960s because the building was a convenient stop-off on her way to visit K. Gordon Murray’s offices, but soon it became a regular place for her to go. Dolores had two reasons for going to the Freedom Tower: firstly, she wanted to offer solidarity to her fellow Cuban workers in line with her father’s patriotic wishes, but equally important was that she was looking for film talent freshly arrived in the country. And it worked: she soon befriended a variety of Cuban filmmakers and took many of them to meet Murray where she sung their praises and encouraged him to hire them. As Sheldon Schermer remembered, “These Cuban immigrants would arrive in the U.S., go to the Tower, get registered, and then emerge looking for work. Half of them ended up in Murray’s offices because of Dolores!” Murray liked what he saw: a substantial number of cheap, experienced, eager-to-work, non-union personnel who could be used on new film projects. Schermer added, “These folks were industrious, creative people: actors, directors, technicians, designers, etc. They were talented, and just wanted to be able to continue their craft outside of their home country where everyday life had become problematic.” Suddenly Dolores’ small community of friends from the Cuban film industry multiplied as more of them arrived in Miami escaping from Castro’s regime, and Dolores emerged as the center of the group, the person best able to connect them to film productions in the area. It was a far cry from her days as a film-struck teen in a restrictive, old-fashioned Cuban family, and then being a married stay-at-home housewife with a young daughter. She was now in a rare position: a woman who had a career in front of the camera and was well-respected behind the scenes as well. But Dolores wanted more: acting in films was now her day job, while setting Cubans up with potential employers like K. Gordon Murray was her mission. Men like Manuel Conde, Jose Prieto, and Rafael Remy. For Dolores her life was finally beginning. She remembered her grandfather repeating a Cuban saying to her: The sun rises for everyone. Dolores, by Bunny Yeager * Next time: the story of one of those Cuban Immigrants. * The post Chasing Butterflies: Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida – Prologue, Dolores Carlos’ story – Podcast 144 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

A few years ago, I was researching an article for The Rialto Report when I came across a 1980 radio program from WBAI, a popular New York City station that specialized in progressive and alternative voices at the time. This particular show featured a prostitute named Iris De La Cruz. Iris wasn’t directly connected to the adult film scene in New York at the time – though she was friends with several of the adult performers – but I knew of her because she wrote for men’s magazines like Cheri, Partner, and Eros. Her monthly columns were an eye-opening account of her life working as a street prostitute, and this edition of the WBAI show was more of the same, with Iris talking about her experiences and then taking questions from callers to the station. But the reason that I found this show compelling wasn’t just Iris’ connection to the sex business in New York in the 1970s. No, what was startling, jaw-dropping even, was that Iris had brought a guest onto the show, her ten-year-old daughter, Melissa, and was interviewing her in a completely unfiltered way about what she thought of Iris’s street-walking job. Even for a program from 40 years ago on a counter-cultural station like WBAI, it still makes for a surprising, engrossing, but sometimes jarring, listening experience. In the current age of debate around parental controls, book bans, and school curricula, this frank, public discussion of sex work between a mother and young daughter is an exchange that probably wouldn’t, and couldn’t, happen today. I listened back to the show several times – and each time, the same questions came into my head.  Who was Iris De La Cruz, and why did she expose her daughter to a potentially traumatic experience at such a young age Who was Melissa, her daughter, and what did she make of this – would she even remember it today, or did it actually have any lasting effects? And then, what happened to this mother and daughter in the years after this show was recorded – after all, Iris would likely be in her 70s today, and Melissa in her 50s. I wanted to find what happened to both of them. This is April Hall. And this is Iris and Melissa’s story. This episode’s running time is 61 minutes. Many thanks to Melissa De La Cruz for her participation and kindness. Thank you to Veronica Vera for Scarlet Harlot and Aphrodite Awards photos. Visit Veronica’s site for more on New York’s world of sex work, art, and activism. We never ask you for money or accept any advertisements for what we do, but if this story means something to you, we’d love it if you went to the Iris House website and considered making a donation, however small. We’re not associated with them in any way, but they do such good work and well… we know that Iris would be grateful to you. Thanks so much. ______________________________________________________________________ Iris De La Cruz Jean Powell, P.O.N.Y. spokesperson before Iris de la Cruz Iris defending surge pricing Prostitutes of New York (P.O.N.Y.) newsletter Sex worker rights activity Scarlet Harlot protesting down by Wall Street in downtown NYC Aphrodite Awards hosted by Annie Sprinkle (middle) with Iris de la Cruz to her right * Excerpts from Iris’ publication Kool AIDS On Ice * Melissa De La Cruz The opening of Iris House by Melissa de la Cruz and her grandmother in honor of her mother Iris Early photo of Melissa and her grandmother, Iris’ mother Beverly Rotter Iris House carrying Iris’ legacy today * The post Iris De La Cruz – And Her Daughter Melissa: Street Walking Blues – Podcast 143 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Howard Ziehm, the pioneering adult film director, theater owner, author, polymath, and friend of The Rialto Report died last week in California. Over the years, I visited Howard on several occasions at his beautiful hill-top house in Malibu in California – “It’s the home that porn built”, he would joke. And he was right: Howard had enjoyed a long career making and exhibiting adult films, and in his last years, he enjoyed a happy, comfortable, and well-deserved retirement. Ten years ago, he even wrote a lengthy autobiography, ‘Take Your Shame and Shove It: My Wild Journey Through the Mysterious Sexual Cosmos’ in which he told the eventful and entertaining story of his life. The irony was that when I met up with him, we ended up talking about everything except his adult film past: he always wanted to show me his collection of classic cartoons depicting golf scenes – he’d published a book of favorites which featured a foreword by Bob Hope, and I wanted to talk about his experience playing music and managing folk clubs in heyday of the 1960s. Not that Howard was stuck in the past – quite the opposite: he was keen to talk about politics, culture, and technology innovations. On one of the last times that I saw him, I asked him what he thought about the state of the adult film industry today, and the new developments in AI,   streaming porn, webcams, cam girls, and live interactive sites like Chaturbate. He was enthusiastic: “These instant, intimate interactions are like going back to the beginning of the sex film business,” he said. “Except that now you can enjoy it all in your own home.” I asked him if he ever logged on to any of these sites. “Of course, I do!” he laughed. “Every day! Except I don’t like to pay. After everything I’ve done to help create this adult film industry over many decades, after all the risks I took and the court cases I had to fight, I figure… I should get some things for free, right?” This episode’s running time is 102 minutes. ______________________________________________________________________ Original introduction to the Howard Ziehm podcast Make no mistakes about it, Howard Ziehm is one of the people who invented the adult film industry. He was there taking still photos for adult bookstores in the 1960s – when the most you could reveal was a girl in her underwear. He made some of the first color loops – when all you could show was the subject writhing on a mattress by herself. And then in 1970, as the market finally demanded hardcore, he made the groundbreaking ‘Mona: The Virgin Nymph’. Time magazine called it the ‘The Jazz Singer’ (1927) of fuck films. Variety called it “the long-awaited link between the stag loops and conventional theatrical fare” and it was listed it their annual Top 50 grossing films – the first pornographic film to feature. And it was the first nationally released 35mm adult feature film to play in actual movie theaters. In short, it was the blueprint for the 1970s porno chic hits that followed. Howard went onto make many more adult films over the next decade, including ‘Flesh Gordon’ (1974), a science fiction adventure comedy erotic spoof of the Flash Gordon serials from the 1930s. So who was the mysterious Howard Ziehm behind these films? Fortunately he’s finally completed his autobiography which The Rialto Report is assisting Howard to publish shortly. And it’s a hell of read. It’s a huge, entertaining, and riveting book that names names, settles scores, and tells truths. It’s also one of the best biographies you’ll read about anyone in the film industry. And it turns out here was someone who was going to be a theoretical physicist, owned one of the most successful clubs of the 1960s folk scene, worked as a nude model, had a drug running scheme importing marijuana across the border into the US, played guitar in a Los Angeles band called Father Plotsky and the Umbilical Cord – and all that before he ever even thought of making a porn film. Today we’re joined by Howard Ziehm to talk about his surprising life leading up to the film ‘Flesh Gordon’. It’s quite a ride. _______________________________________________________________________ ‘The Virgin Runaway’ (1970) (directed by Howard Ziehm) ‘Hollywood Blue’ (1970) Japanese one sheet for ‘Hollywood Blue’ (1970)    ‘Mona’ (1970)  ‘Harlot’ (1971) Newspaper ad for ‘Harlot’ (1971) (using an alternative name)   Newspaper ad for ‘Harlot’ (1971) (using an alternative name)  Beverley Cinema     The post R.I.P. Howard Ziehm: Mona… (and marijuana, music, and M.I.T.) – Podcast Reprise appeared first on The Rialto Report.

By the mid 1990s, Dian Hanson could’ve been forgiven for thinking that she’d finally made it – and that nothing was going to derail her career in magazine publishing that had started two decades earlier. She’d had an improbable and volatile journey, from a troubled upbringing and difficult marriage, to working as a nurse in rural Pennsylvania, before somehow launching an explicit men’s magazine called Puritan for the mob in New York. There followed a succession of writing, publishing, and editing jobs on men’s magazines whose titles eloquently reveal their sexual content: Hooker, Expose’, Partner, Adult Cinema Review, and Juggs, to name a few. Her greatest triumph was Leg Show magazine – which Dian turned into a high-selling juggernaut. It was a match made in heaven: Dian, long fascinated and deeply compassionate about sexual quirks and fetish, an audience that was crying out for a more intimate connection with their magazine, and a publisher, George Mavety, who gave Dian near-complete creative control. But then just as everything seemed to be working out perfectly, the internet happened – crippling the sex magazine business. To make matters worse, her employer, George Mavety, died. The good times were suddenly retreating in the rear-view mirror. In this final episode of the series, Dian talks about what happened next, and how she re-invented herself with Taschen books. It’s a story that includes characters as diverse as Linda Lovelace, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert Crumb, transvestite model Kim Christy and transsexual porn star Sulka, Vanessa Del Rio, and many more. You can listen to the Episode 1 here, Episode 2 here, and Episode 3 here. This podcast is 52 minutes long. ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————- Dian in ‘Crumb‘ documentary, 1991 ‘ Photo for Crumb portrait   R. Crumb portrait   Dian standing on Leg Show reader, 1995   New York, 2000   Dian and Larry Flynt event, 2008   With Liz Earls of ‘Days of the Cougar’ book, 2011   Explaining porn at Los Angeles Public Library, c. 2012   With ‘The Art of Pin Up’, 2015   In Dian’s Taschen office in Hollywood, 2018   Dian with boyfriend Daniel, Christmas 2019   Naomi Campbell party, 2020   Onstage with Arnold Schwarzenegger, David Geffen Theater, Los Angeles, 2023 * The post Dian Hanson – Chronicles, Part 4: The Taschen Years – Podcast 142 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

In the first part of ‘Dian Hanson, Chronicles,’ Dian spoke of her upbringing in the northwest United States, an often shocking family life with a difficult and frightening father – who just happened to be the supreme grand master of a sex-magic cult. It was  a difficult childhood that included bullying, sexual assault, and running away from home, culminating in an unhappy marriage to a transvestite which ended after her troubled and abusive husband forced them to put their daughter up for adoption. One of the few highlights and true interests from her teen years was Dian’s discovery of sexuality and pornography – thanks in part to the work of the psychologist Krafft-Ebbing and the growing permissiveness in the country, as exemplified by the publication of the strangely titillating Illustrated Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. In the second episode of our series, we heard how Dian got divorced and moved on with her life by finding work as a nurse in Pennsylvania – despite lacking any formal training – before starting a hardcore magazine, Puritan, with a boyfriend – despite not having had any experience in publishing. Dian liked the sex magazine work much more than she liked her boyfriend, so she ditched him and went on to partner with Peter Wolff, an eccentric veteran of the New York sex publication scene. Together they helmed popular titles such as Partner, Adult Cinema Review, and Oui, and though the pair were alternately and repeatedly feted and then fired, they developed a template for a new type of publication: a men’s magazine that would be guided by the desires of the readers. Episode 3 is about the 1980s and 1990s – and how Dian’s career continued in the ever-expanding and competitive world of sex publications. You can listen to the Episode 1 here and Episode 2 here. This podcast is 51 minutes long. —————————————————————————————————————————————————————————– Standing on Fakir Musafar, Partner magazine, 1982   Dian Hanson, 1982   Dian with George Mavety, c. 1988   Dian, with Rick Savage, c.1992   Leg Show column photo, c. 1994   With Juggs managing editor Matthew Licht, 1995   Leg Show column photo, c. 1997   In Yoxford, England, c. 1997   With Rose Bailey, Leg Show   Leg Show, 1999 * The post Dian Hanson – Chronicles, Part 3: Going Solo – Podcast 141 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Dian Hanson is a unique figure from the world of men’s magazines in New York in the 1970s and 1980s, a world that overlapped strongly with the adult film business. Last time, in the first episode of this podcast series, we heard about her surprising, and often shocking, upbringing: a hippie and high school dropout from Seattle, her father was supreme grand master in a sex-magic cult, and a childhood that included being bullied, sexually assaulted, running away from home, even being considered by her parents as a possible partner for a much older friend-of-the family who just happened to be a pedophile. By 20, Dian had developed a passionate and life-long interest in pornography – thanks to three unlikely sources: the work of psychologist Richard von Krafft-Ebbing, the publication of the bizarre Illustrated Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, and the appearance of the first sex films that had started to be shown in theaters. But paradoxically, by her late teens, Dian found herself a world away from all these stimuli – as an unhappily married wife, pregnant, and living in rural Mississippi. In this episode, we hear how Dian recovered from that difficult, not to mention tragic, marriage and found her way into the burgeoning men’s magazine business in New York – albeit through an abusive boyfriend. Quick note: Dian asked that we don’t refer to this ex by his given name, but rather call him “he who shall not be named”. Obviously, I respected that choice. Dian talks about the first magazine she worked on – the mob-financed Puritan – a trailblazing, still legendary publication, that was the first hardcore magazine aimed at the newsstands in America. After that came Dian’s partnership with Peter Wolff – a similarly important character in magazine history. For years, the pair of them tore through a host of New York adult titles leaving a trail of both success and bewildered confusion behind them, as they pioneered the trend for reader-contributed magazines. Along the way, she crossed paths with people like adult film actors Vanessa del Rio, Ron Jeremy, and Marc Stevens, highbrow art-world darlings like Robert Mapplethorpe and Gay Talese, and low level mob bosses like Robert DiBernardo. You can listen to the previous episode here. This podcast is 75 minutes long. ——————————————————————————————————————————————- Dian Hanson – In Pictures Dian with a model, 1979   Dian, on her wedding day, 1980   Dian with Vanessa del Rio, 1980   On a Partner shoot, 1981   Dian, 1981   With Long Jeanne Silver, Toni Rose, and another in 1981   With Lisa DeLeeuw and a mobster, backstage at Show World, 1982 * The post Dian Hanson – Chronicles, Part 2: The Peter Wolff Years – Podcast 140 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

If the name Dian Hanson rings a bell for you nowadays, it may be because she’s a senior editor and writer for Taschen, the gold-standard, high-end book publishing company, where she has over 50 books to her credit. In fact, she’s also the so-called head of the company’s Sexy Book division where she’s overseen impressive and weighty tomes that include The Art of Pin-Up, The Book of Butts, Breasts, Legs, and Pussy, The History of Men’s Magazines, lavishly illustrated books by Roy Stuart, Robert Crumb, Tom of Finland, and many, many more, including a Vanessa Del Rio book that remains the greatest-ever volume dedicated to an adult film star. Perfect for your coffee table, if your coffee table needs some hardcore pornography. But as much as I wanted to hear about Dian’s life in book publishing, it is her life before Taschen that really intrigued me. You see, Dian was at the heart of the wild and crazy men’s magazine scene in the New York of the 1970s and 80s, a world that overlapped heavily with adult films in that period. At the heart of her professional career lay a partnership with another larger-than-life character inhabiting that world – a writer, bon vivant, political activist, visionary, and rake called Peter Wolff. For ten years, Peter and Dian blazed across almost every New York adult film magazine you can think off, leaving a trail of new ideas, busted budgets, and creative visions that broke the mold of what a men’s magazine could, and should, be. From Partner to Oui, Adult Cinema Review, Harvey, Hooker, and Exposé, Peter and Dian were the Bonnie and Clyde of sex magazines, tearing their way through an antiquated and outdated business, reinventing it by involving readers and breaking down the barriers between those who appeared in the magazines and those who read them. If Neil Armstrong hadn’t been the first on the moon, someone else would’ve taken his place, but if Dian and Peter hadn’t done their thing, well… the magazine landscape would have been very different. Together they worked for mob-related figures, promoted golden age porn films – and porn stars, and were fired by every title and every publisher in town – somehow managing to enhance their reputations as creative and innovative trailblazers and yet destroy their own job prospects at the same time. Along the way, Dian worked on Puritan, Juggs, and Leg Show too, as well as founding other magazines, like Outlaw Biker, Hawgs, Big Butt, Bust Out, and Tight. In this first episode of my interview with Dian, I discovered that her formative years, including her upbringing with a father who was a supreme grand master in a sex-magic cult, was every bit as dramatic, exciting, frightening as what came next. This podcast is 73 minutes long. ——————————————————————————————————————————————- Dian Hanson – In Pictures All captions by Dian. Dian’s father, USO magician, aged 16   Dian’s father, aged 18   Dian, with mom, Seattle 1952   Dian, 1952, with mom providing the censorship   Dian, aged 2   Family reunion, with crying Dian and her father, aged 5   Dian, the tallest child in the class (middle back)   Dian, the uncooperative interview subject, with brother and a dog she found   Dian, aged 5   With one of the many kittens, age 6   Dian, aged 8, with a bird she rescued   Christmas, Dian far right, aged 10   Dian miserable at 11   Dian, aged 12   Family Christmas, Dian aged 13, second from right   With Vidal Sassoon haircut, aged 14   At sister’s wedding, aged 17   * The post Dian Hanson – Chronicles, Part 1: The Early Years – Podcast 139 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Geri Miller may not be the most famous name from 1960s sex films, but she may well be the most interesting. With a story that includes Andy Warhol, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Joe Sarno, the Peppermint Lounge, Ringo Starr, Joe Dalessandro, Mick Jagger, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, the Young Rascals, and stripping in front of the Queen Mother’s house, Geri lived a technicolor life in a psychedelic era. The Rialto Report went to visit her. This episode running time is 43 minutes. ————————————————— Manhattan, 2024. It’s three o’clock on a damp afternoon on the Upper West Side, and, from down the block, I see Geri Miller holding court for anyone who will listen. She’s in an electric wheelchair, the result of a fall a year ago, but otherwise looks well for her 81 years, even if at times her mental state is prone to wander precariously toward the outer limits of rationality. I sidle quietly into her small group, which today consists of an African street seller of knock-off earphones, two sullen college kids collecting money for autism, and a barely-dressed homeless woman from Lithuania. Today Geri is warning her audience of the dangers posed by transsexuals. It’s based on personal experience, stemming from memories of the late Candy Darling, actress and one-time muse of both Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground: “I knew Candy and his name was James, not Candy. Bet you didn’t know that, huh? I warned everyone back then. But did they listen? And now look what’s happening across the country.” Her audience react to her triumphalism with a skepticism bordering on apathy, clearly ruing having selected to occupy that portion of sidewalk that day. Geri interrupts her flow when she sees me approach. “Here’s someone who knows all about me,” she shouts triumphantly, pointing at me. “He knows the truth, and he’s here today to tell you all about it.” * It’s true. I’ve been fascinated with the life and times of Geri Miller for years. My interest started with her involvement in softcore sex films of the 1960s, though in truth, she wasn’t their biggest star: in fact, in sex movie history, she’s a minor footnote to other footnotes in a long-forgotten world. Yet paradoxically, it’s also true that Geri was possibly the most famous – and interesting – person who ever starred in sexploitation films. She was a New York ‘It girl’ of her day, a B-level Edie Sedgwick, a precursor to Paris Hilton, a prototype Anna Nicole Smith, and a Gina Gershon-lookalike sexpot. She was glamorous, promiscuous, and ubiquitous, but above all, she was famous for being famous. Which usually means: famous for doing nothing in particular. Except that Geri actually did stuff. She was part of Andy Warhol’s Factory crowd, immortalized in his Polaroid art and appearing in his only play, the taboo-bending Pork (1971). Geri and Andy Warhol She was a self-described ‘Super Groupie’ – linked with members of the Beatles, and stars like Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie and James Brown. Her name was a staple in the syndicated newspaper gossip columns of the 1960s, which eagerly reported on who she was bedding that week. She was frequently recognized on the streets, in diners, museums, and hotels, and hers was one of the first names added to any exclusive New York party list. (“Is Geri Miller coming to my birthday bash?” Mick Jagger once rhetorically queried, before rhetorically answering, “Would it really be a party without her?”) She was a movie star of sorts: from small-time roles in big time movies (Stanley Lumet’s Fail Safe (1965) alongside Walter Matthau and Henry Fonda) to bit parts in highly-regarded but highly invisible films (The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart (1970) – Don Johnson’s gender-bending counter-cultural debut). She had starring turns in fleshy, trashy Warhol-conceived films, like Flesh (1968) and Trash (1970). And she was in fourteen sex films by the likes of luminaries (Joe Sarno) and ordinaries (Joel M. Reed and assorted anonymous one-film blunders.) From the first time I saw her, furiously dancing the twist in a Maysles brothers’ documentary about the Beatles, I was hooked. I wanted to know more. Geri and Joe Dallessandro in ‘Flesh’ (1968) * I pry Geri away from her congregation suggesting we go grocery shopping. She eventually agrees, expertly operating the controls of her motorized wheelchair like a fighter pilot in an F-15 cockpit. She speeds down the block, starting conversation fragments with passersby and completely ignoring red traffic lights when she crosses the busy avenues (“don’t worry, the cars always stop when they see a wheelchair.”) Today she seems melancholic but grateful for the company: “I’m a star,” she says, “but no one believes it. I need you to prove it to people.” I ask a question about the Peppermint Lounge, the legendary discotheque and celebrity hangout at 128 West 45th St where Geri was a regular house dancer. Is that where the Geri Miller story began – go-go dancing at the Peppermint in the 1960s? It wasn’t a good opener. “It was not a go-go dancer!” she shrieks, bringing her chariot to an abrupt stop, glaring at me. “I was in the chorus line. I was a dancer. Trained in modern jazz dance because my parents were worried that I had knock knees! At the Peppermint, there were just four of us. There was Marlene, Misty, Janet, and me. And I was the only one who had formal dance training. We had two gay choreographers. Wake and Tom.” (A note for the curious: ‘Wake’ was Wakefield Poole. Yes – choreographer, dancer, and theatre director, but more notably, future director of Boys in the Sand (1971) and other groundbreaking gay porn films of the next decade.) The dancers developed a cult following in the club, formed a girl group, The Peppermints, for a hot moment, and cut a single, ‘We All Warned You’ for RSVP Recording Co. Geri sets off again, grumbling – without any evidence – that she can’t talk and drive at the same time. I ask her about the night of February 9, 1964, the occasion of the Beatles’ first Ed Sullivan appearance. The immediate aftermath of the Fab Four’s seismic performance was captured by Albert and David Maysles for a cinema verité documentary, ‘The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit,’ that covered the arrival of Beatlemania in the U.S. After the band dined at the Playboy Club, they made a pilgrimage to the Peppermint Lounge. The visit had mixed success: George left early with a sore throat, John and Paul looked cool relaxing at a table watching the house band, but for once, Ringo looked cooler, diving enthusiastically onto the dance floor, where he was joined by an equally energetic Geri. Geri and Ringo, at the Peppermint Lounge I ask Geri what she remembers about Ringo? “Ugly and not very smart. That’s ok, I’m not smart either, but that’s why I like someone with a brain. All the girls wanted Paul, but I liked George. Too bad George left early is what I say. But I danced with Ringo, and then he asked me to join him at their table for the rest of the night. We had fun. Next day, I was all over the newspapers and magazines. I got calls, did interviews, the works.” Cynthia & John Lennon, Ringo Starr, and Geri I read Geri an article published in Photoplay Magazine in 1964 entitled ‘7 Days & 7 Nights With the Beatles’: “(The Beatles) especially enjoyed the Lounge. ‘We got a chance to talk to the chaps in the band and the dancers in the show,’ said John. Paul added, ‘It was good to be out with real people for a change.’ It was Ringo, however, who made out the best. He met pretty twister Geri Miller. He managed to keep her a secret, but it was Geri whom Ringo took home.” I ask Geri if that was true? That she took Ringo back to her apartment that night? I quickly regretted the indiscreet question, given that, by now, we were being served at the salad bar of the local deli. “Of course I took him back to my place. He may have been ugly and dumb, but he was still a Beatle! I didn’t have sex with him though. I just sucked his dick. I learned to do that with men I didn’t like much. A mob guy taught me. If it’d been George, I’d have gone all the way. Or maybe Paul. But not Ringo.” Geri, I say. Keep your voice down, we’re in public. She cackles hysterically. “What do I care? I sucked off a Beatle. Dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick!” * Geraldine Miller was born in April 1942. Her birth certificate records her parents as Mr. and Mrs. Morris Miller of Clifton, New Jersey, though Geri isn’t so sure. She says she doesn’t remember much about them, expressing indifference bordering on angry contempt when I ask for details. She spins vague yarns about Morris having been connected to the British royal family and emigrating to the States from England where he’d been a Charlie Chaplin impersonator. She points to her dark complexion as evidence that she is perhaps of mixed race. To listen to her theories about her parentage is bewildering, but it’s clear that the identity of her father is an anguished, recurring question that still exercises her. Geri attended Clifton High School, graduating in 1960 (“I wasn’t  popular: the girls were jealous of me because the boys wanted me, and the boys were intimidated by me”), and then she started a business and secretarial course at the local campus of a private school, Berkeley College. An only child, she was stifled and bored in Jersey. Worse, she felt unseen and ignored, and longed to perform under the bright lights of the big city. She frequently hopped the train and turned up in Manhattan where she put together a portfolio and auditioned for anything where she could be seen. Modeling, dance, theater, film work. Sometimes her efforts paid off: she got work as a ‘Seventeen’ model, and was chosen as ‘Miss Star of Tomorrow’ at Palisades Amusement Park from a group of over 500 girls. In 1961, management at the Peppermint Lounge offered her a job as a dancer – correction, as a chorus line girl. She accepted on the spot, and kissed goodbye forever to New Jersey, Berkeley College, not to mention her disputed parents. The timing of Geri’s arrival at the Peppermint was serendipitous: when she started work there, it was an unexceptional gay club, tucked away in a non-descript corner of Times Square. Relatively small (when full, the room catered to a capacity of 178 people), its primary purpose was to launder mob profits under the watchful eye of Genovese capo, Matty ‘The Horse’ Ianiello. (Sidenote: according to Geri’s personal experience, Matty’s nom-de-mob could not have been the result of his male endowment.) And then, in a quirk of showbiz fate, The Peppermint exploded: the nationwide Twist craze hit, and the club’s house band, Joey Dee and the Starliters, released ‘Peppermint Twist.’ It spent three weeks at No. 1 in January 1962 which brought the club wide recognition, reinforced later in the year when Sam Cooke referred to it in his hit ‘Twistin’ the Night Away’ (“a place, somewhere up New York way, where the people are so gay”.) Overnight, celebrities swarmed into the club – real A-list celebrities too: Jackie O, Audrey Hepburn, Truman Capote, Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Liberace, Noël Coward, Frank Sinatra, Norman Mailer, even the elusive Greta Garbo – all turning up to dance to Joey Dee’s hot twistin’ band. In the blink of any eye, Geri was at the epicenter of New York night life, and she was as happy as a tornado in a trailer park. She was featured in gossip columns (“a 5’2”, 110-pound firecracker”) and offered modeling work. When film director Sidney Lumet went to the club, he approached her and offered her a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it part in his claustrophobic brink-of-doom, cold war drama, ‘Fail Safe.’ The Peppermint wasn’t just a magnet for glitterati: music bands were keen to play on its intimate stage, and soon the Beach Boys, the Four Seasons, the Isley Brothers, the Ronettes, the Crystals, even Liza Minnelli all played there. Geri’s first screen appearance, dancing in Sidney Lumet’s ‘Fail Safe’ (1964) One night in late 1962, James Brown stopped by and took a shine to Geri. He invited her to his show at the Apollo the following week where he was appearing with his band, the Famous Flames. It proved to be a landmark event: the show was recorded, and the resulting live album, ‘James Brown: Live at the Apollo’ (1963) became one of the biggest commercial and critical hits in recording history. Geri remembers the night well: “It was wild and loud in the theater. I’d never seen anything like it. And I was the only white girl there. I didn’t care. James showed me around, and I danced all night.” James Brown and Geri started an on/off relationship which continued for years whenever he was in town: “I heard stories that he beat women, which was probably because his mother left him when he was small, but I never saw any of that. He was always good to me.” It was, however, a contentious liaison on both sides. Brown, who Geri remembers having a predilection for large-breasted girls, was often critical of his fellow black musicians when they consorted with white women, so he kept Geri hidden in hotel rooms. For her part, Geri knew that that the management at the Peppermint Lounge also frowned on interracial relationships because the goombahs feared negative publicity and… well, because they were just racist too. Geri remembers enduring low-level harassment at the club as a result. When James Brown wasn’t around, she started dating Dino Danelli, drummer in a struggling rock group, The Young Rascals: “He had the blackest hair and the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen. Like if Paul McCartney came from Jersey.” Dino liked big-breasted girls too, but he said he’d make an exception for Geri. He moved into her apartment at 310 West 47th St – her Peppermint Lounge tips were more than his gig money after all. But then his band started having success, with number one hits like “Good Lovin'” (1966), “Groovin'” (1967), and “People Got to Be Free” (1968), and the Young Rascals became young rascals. Groupies started showing up, and Dino found it difficult to resist them: “He was the first guy to break my heart. I was so sad. We split, and he moved out and into his own place.” Today Geri still recites his 1964 phone number, still fresh in her mind. The Young Rascals, with Dino Danelli, front right Then James Brown asked her to marry him. Geri turned him down: “I said no, even though I loved him. The reason was that I was ashamed of my drug habit – which he knew nothing about. I was taking uppers all the time because I needed to keep up with… life. I was sad to turn him down, but I didn’t want him to find out.” Brown sent her a telegram, care of the Peppermint. It was intercepted by one of the managers who’d warned her against seeing Brown. Geri was dismissed the same day. As for the Peppermint Lounge, it didn’t last much longer, closing down when it lost its liquor license on December 28, 1965. * Geri’s electric wheelchair sets off on the ten-block trip back to her apartment. She’s warming to the conversation, though she’s easily distracted by the street vendors. She crashes into a hat seller, and suggests I buy a fedora: “You need a hip new look,” is her sales pitch to me. I deflect, and ask about what she learned from her time at the Peppermint. It turns out the Peppermint Lounge was formative in defining who Geri would be: She’d seen big stars first hand at the club – and slept with her fair share – and envied the money, adulation, and glamor. Now she wanted in. She wanted to be famous. For Geri, celebrity meant visibility, just as visibility meant celebrity. And visibility was what she craved after a life of anonymity. What she would be famous for was irrelevant: there was no need to create a brand in order to become a celebrity. Celebrity itself would be her brand. So perhaps it was no surprise that Geri’s path would cross with that of Andy Warhol, crown prince of modern celebrity culture. He’d stopped by the Peppermint Lounge a few times to see what all the fuss was about, and whispered a question in her ear that resonated: how can something truly exist if no one is looking at it? Geri wanted to be seen, and so she and Andy formed a mutual appreciation group. Andy suggested she come to The Factory, his studio salon at 231 East 47th Street, creative home to various artists, musicians, and assorted eccentrics. Geri fit in perfectly and became part of the scene: she was a minor Warhol superstar perhaps, but a key component of the clique of idiosyncratic personalities promoted by Andy nonetheless. Geri and Andy   Polaroids of Geri by Andy Warhol In the meantime, Geri found work at the Metropole, the once-respected bebop jazz club which added strippers to its menu in the mid-1960s when patrons tired of its progressive music. This time, Geri admits, she wasn’t a chorus girl: she became a stripper. “I didn’t like it at first. I hated being topless, and so I took more uppers just to give me courage. It was difficult for me. I became promiscuous too. Oh boy, was I promiscuous. Especially when I did uppers. Everyone was just so glamorous.” The Metropole (and three underwhelmed customers) Conscious of James Brown’s and Dino Daneli’s preference for large breasted women, Geri paid for silicone injections: “I didn’t get implants. That’s when they put something in your chest. I just had injections. It wasn’t a big deal.” It didn’t stop the New York Daily News later describing her as “the lady with five pounds of silicone in each breast.” For publicity, she targeted Earl Wilson, celebrity gossip journalist, respected and widely read. His column titled ‘It Happened Last Night’ ran in 175 newspapers nationwide. Wilson wrote about Geri for the first time in September 1966: she was a contestant for the prestigious ‘Miss Night Beat’ title and she’d heard that Wilson was one of the judges. So Geri dressed up in a daring outfit and turned up uninvited at his office, handing him pictures of herself in the buff. Wilson was tickled and charmed by her flirtatious chutzpah: whoever was awarded the ‘Miss Night Beat’ title is lost to irrelevant history, but Geri was the moral winner when Wilson described her racy visit to his estimated eighty million readers. Andy Warhol approved of the risque’ publicity, and in 1968, he offered Geri a part in Flesh (aka ‘Andy Warhol’s Flesh’), the first of a trilogy of movies that would include Trash (1970) and Heat (1972). Directed by Paul Morrissey, it starred Joe Dallesandro as a bisexual street hustler who does tricks so that he can pay for his wife’s lover’s abortion. Geri played the part of… a topless dancer, appearing in a scene with fellow Warhol superstars Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis. She is strangely charismatic and compelling, giving Dallesandro head (shot from behind Dallesandro’s fully clothed standing body) and then delivering a lengthy story about being raped. Her monologue feels natural and improvised, even if the script reveals that she was closely following the dialogue written by Morrisey. In a memorable moment, Geri’s character admits she isn’t the smartest but is fine with that: “If I learn too much, I won’t always be happy. The more you learn, the more depressed you’ll be.” Today Geri insists: “That was my line! Andy overheard me say that, and so they added it to the script.” ‘Flesh’ falls somewhere between Factory home movie and early pornography. Predictably, it proved controversial, and was confiscated by New York police during early screenings at Warhol’s Garrick Theater. All publicity gravy to Andy and Geri. Geri and Joe Dallessandro, in ‘Trash’ (1968) Today, Geri’s memories of the film are less rosy. In fact, they’re overshadowed by the money she received. Or rather, the money she didn’t receive: “Andy only gave me $250 for that movie. Can you believe it? He ripped me off. He robbed me blind. And do you know how much money that film made? Millions probably. I was one of the stars. I get nothing today, and that film is still making money.” It’s a Hollywood grievance as old as the hills, but that doesn’t make it any easier for someone who’s fallen on hard times. Geri claims she pursued Warhol in later years, demanding an additional cut of the profits, but he wouldn’t even meet her. “At least, I had sex with Joe D,” she says ruefully. “We took it home after the shoot. We had chemistry. Big time. You can see it in ‘Flesh’. Look at us kissing. That was art, and that was real.” Geri throws back her head and laughs again. * And then came the sex films. Admittedly they were softcore – black and white, pretty women/old men, bras cast off/panties kept on, giant Y-fronts and socks pulled up the knees – but still scandalous for the day. I ask Geri if she had any reservations making the racy films. The question feels naïvely ill-judged the moment I ask it. As if I hadn’t been paying attention. “Why would I care?” she replies. “I was a star, it was money, and it was easy work. I was a celebrity and I was good on screen.” Geri’s right. There’s no such thing as bad publicity, and she’s always irresistibly watchable. She started in 1968 with a handful of bit parts: a pair of Joe Sarno moody melodramas, one of them called The Wall of Flesh in which she’s a hesitant participant in a group therapy orgy. Then there was Sex by Advertisement where she is raped and blackmailed in a lengthy scene (while trying, and failing, to keep a straight face.) Geri in Wall of Flesh’ (1968), with (l-r) Janet Banzet, Irene DeBari, Cherie Winters   Geri in ‘Sex by Advertisement’ (1968) In 1969, there were three more films: Meeting on 69th Street where, dressed in a mini-skirt and white go-go boots, she seduces her girlfriend’s man – at the same time that her girlfriend is schtupping him, no less. In Monique, My Love, she performs her Metropole stripping routine before playing with a coke bottle. And in Fly Now, Pay Later she’s a Moroccan courtesan seducing 1960s skin flick regular, Alex Mann. Geri in ‘Meeting on 69th Street’ (1969)   Geri in ‘Monique, My Love’ (1969)   Geri in ‘Fly Now, Pay Later’ (1969) I ask Geri about each one in turn but the memories have long departed. She never saw any of them she says, and has no recollections to share. She expresses surprise and delight at the movie scenarios that I describe for her but shrugs. Filming each one took less than an afternoon, she insists, and they were shot almost sixty years ago: “How in the fuck should I fucking remember them?” she reasons in an unreasonable way. “To be honest I doubt it is actually me on the screen. They do that, you know? They put your face on someone else’s body. That happens a lot. I never made all those films. That’s a lot of movies. No way I was in them all.” There is one film that angers her, however. A while back, she saw her IMDb filmography and one item stood out: Daughters of Lesbos (1968), a movie in which she had starred as a dominatrix, ‘Dominique.’ “Impossible!” she shouts. “I never made that film!” How do you know, I ask? After all, you don’t remember any of the others, so why is this one different? “Because I’m not a lesbian!” she bellows in frustration. “I never did sex acts with another woman! So I was never in that film. It’s slanderous!” She asks me to write to IMDb and have the film removed from their site. I try to reason with her: the films’ salacious names were often not matched by their content. Just because this particular title refers to ‘Lesbos’ doesn’t mean that Geri is engaged in sapphic fumbling. Geri is unconvinced. I tell her I have copies of all her films on my laptop in case she has an interest in seeing any of them. She appears concerned to be confronted by the idea of seeing the evidence, before dismissing the idea: “Why would I want to see them anyway? Looking back at when I was young and beautiful isn’t going to do me any good.” We’re standing outside a Chinese restaurant that has caught her eye. “This serves some of the best Chinese food in the city,” she says. “Why don’t we have some food?” Geri on the one-sheet for ‘Daughters of Lesbos’ (1968) * If the late 1960s had been a dress-rehearsal for Geri, the early 1970s were her coming-out party. First she appeared in Trash (1970), the second in the Warhol/Morrissey trilogy. Once again, Dallesandro stars, portraying a day in the life of a heroin addict, this time overdosing in front of an upper-class couple, attempting to fool welfare by having his girlfriend fake a pregnancy, and frustrating women with his drug-induced impotence. And once again, Geri is a highlight: she’s in a lengthy scene, unsuccessfully trying to arouse the movie’s anti-hero by dancing and singing ‘Mama, Look At Me Now,’ a song that would become a trademark theme for her. Geri claims her pay was the same as the first Warhol/Morrissey film: a meager $250. Geri and Joe Dallessandro in ‘Trash’ (1970)   Andy and Geri She did get better pay for appearing in other critically acclaimed films, such as The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart (1970) about a New York gender-bending college dropout seeking his identity during the sexual revolution. It starred Don Johnson in his movie debut, and Warhol was so impressed with it, that he declared it represented “the quintessential, most truthful studio-made film about the ’60s counterculture”. Then Geri showed up in Pound (1970), Robert Downey Sr’s surreal, experimental film about eighteen dogs waiting to be adopted. And you can see her in a wild dance sequence in The Telephone Book (1971), where a victim of an obscene caller becomes obsessed with her fantasy of him. All small roles, but they generated enough stories to keep her name in the gossip columns for months. (In one newspaper article, she complained that she was profoundly ashamed of new naked photographs she’d had done – not because of the nudity but because she had an ugly hairdo.) Geri was appearing all over town: she joined a cabaret show featuring fellow Warhol superstar, Eric Emerson, and his band the Magic Tramps, where she reprised ‘Mama, Look At Me Now’ from ‘Trash.’ She appeared on David Susskind’s investigative chat show where she was interviewed about life as a groupie. She upstaged the premiere of the Monty Python film, ‘And Now For Something Completely Different’ (1971), in a publicity stunt with a man in a gorilla costume. Tennessee Williams took her fishing. (Where does a playwright take a dancer fishing, I ask? “Fucking Brighton Beach, obviously!” is the answer.) And seriously, do you know anyone else who went on dates with David Cassidy and Jimi Hendrix? She was still part of Andy Warhol’s Factory crowd too. Warhol gave her a walk-on in the latest Paul Morrissey effort Women in Revolt (1971) that starred fellow superstars Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, and Holly Woodlawn. More importantly, Geri scored a role in Pork, the first and only Warhol theater play. ‘Pork’ opened on May 5, 1971, at La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York City for a two-week run. As usual, a Warhol-sponsored event caused a furore, and the New York Times’ review commented on the excess “fornication, masturbation, defecation and prevarication.” Geri in ‘Pork’ (1971) Geri was asked to reprise her role when ‘Pork’ transferred to London, playing at the Roundhouse for a six-week run in August 1971. The Brits largely panned the play, though some critics insisted that its over the top obscenity wasn’t the problem but rather the point of the whole farrago. As one journalist wrote, “Pork’s redeeming essence is that it finds itself so ridiculous, that from start to finish, it demands not to be taken seriously. It’s Warhol people debunking themselves.” Geri, in a publicity still for ‘Pork’ The U.K. production had some notable admirers: David Bowie went to see it several times and was impressed enough to hire several of the ‘Pork’ cast members to join his management firm, MainMan. Bowie even invited Geri to be his personal guest at his first New York show. (Sure enough, in October 1972, when Bowie made his New York debut at Carnegie Hall, Geri stormed the stage armed with gladioli to welcome him.) But probably the most press ink related to the play was spilled over a publicity stunt that Geri orchestrated: during a photo session in front of Clarence House, the Queen Mother’s residence, she exposed her breasts. Nudity in front of royalty? The local tabloids were outraged and joyfully lapped it up. Geri was arrested and threatened with deportation. Mission accomplished. Geri in London, 1971 Back in New York, Geri was on a roll. In 1972, she jumped out of a cake at Mick Jagger’s birthday party at the St Regis (“the cake had three tiers, Geri was nude,” it was reported) before a guest list that included Count Basie, Muddy Waters, and Stevie Wonder.”Mick was good looking, but very average in bed,” is her volunteered report card. Then she taunted Iggy Pop. Iggy and Geri had history: the previous year, Iggy had performed at Ungano’s in New York and grabbed Geri’s face, pulling her and her metal folding chair across the floor in a bizarre piece bit of stage theatre. The next time their paths crossed was at the Electric Circus where Iggy told the crowd they made him feel sick. “Let’s watch you puke then,” Geri shouted at him from the front row. Mr. Pop obliged – and threw up all over Geri. Geri’s credits kept on coming: she was a featured attraction in The Flasher, a one-night Broadway show based on a porn film. She sang with glam-rock, satin-suited rock band Angel. Eric Burdon, formerly lead singer with the Animals, shipped her to Los Angeles to appear on his album. Each one of these events is a separate story of its own, but they’re just another day in Geri’s world. Not that Geri ever stopped stripping. Her agent, the exotically-named Brooklyn Jew, Mambo Hi, made sure of that. Her list of ecdysiast employers reads like a history of 1970s burlesque in New York: she was still dancing topless at the Metropole on Seventh Ave., and in the afternoons, she found a gig at the M&M Lounge at 51 Little West 12th St (“a moribund area” said one newspaper.) It was a tiny club, with a 4×4 stage, catering to meat-packing workers. When she needed extra money, she danced at the Carnival at 146 West 45th St, former site of the Great Wall, a Chinese restaurant. From time to time, you could find her at Club 45, the Wagon Wheel, the Mardi Gras, the Rolling Stone, and the Coventry, on top of her occasional bar work at CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City. Geri also gave birth to a daughter who she put up for adoption. In the years ahead, regretting her decision, she would try to track her daughter down, but without success. It remains a source of sadness and frustration. * Somewhere along the road, the threads of Geri’s life started to unravel like a cheap sweater. Warhol’s generation of superstars were being ravaged by overdoses, suicide, or indifference. Party invitations slowed to a trickle before disappearing completely. Chat shows and gossip columns looked away, seeking new provocateurs. Rock stars found a new generation of groupies to have sex with. And strip clubs turned to younger women, asking them to do more than just strip. So Geri took a radical and subversive step: she found a full-time nine-to-five job with crisp white collar legal firm, Shearman & Sterling. It may have been less fun, but the paycheck was regular and healthcare was an added bonus. Geri claims she was put to work on interesting cases, including the last will and testament of Winthrop Rockefeller, son of John D. Rockefeller. The job didn’t last: you can take the girl out of the limelight, but you can’t take the limelight out of the girl. One day, she revealed her back story to a paralegal at the firm. All of it, from Warhol, Jagger, and James Brown, to stripping, sex movies, and Super Groupie sex. Next day she found herself without employment. A complementary letter of recommendation from one of the legal partners who’d taken a shine to her wasn’t much of a consolation. Then Geri got a job as assistant to Alice F. Mason, the legendary New York real estate broker and socialite. Mason was a powerbroker in the world of luxurious Manhattan apartments, advising the rich and wealthy on how to navigate the exclusive world of the city’s co-ops, particularly the upscale buildings lining Park and Fifth Avenues. Marilyn Monroe, Henry Kissinger, and Gloria Vanderbilt were among of her closest friends and dedicated clients. Alice F. Mason Today, Geri has a way with a conspiracy theory like a prisoner has a way with a file, so when she told me that Alice Mason had been hiding a secret life, I was skeptical: “Alice was the queen of white society. But I bet you didn’t know she was a black woman from a black family in a black neighborhood. She came from Philly. She started out as a dancer like me in the 1950s. And she only called herself ‘Mason’ because she liked the actor, James Mason. The ‘F’ in her name stood for ‘Fluffy’. Bet you didn’t know that.” After Geri started work for Alice Mason, Alice confided to Geri that she’d been “passing” as white for decades so she could live her life in exclusive white New York social circles without facing the era’s prejudices toward people of color. It was a big secret, and one that Alice never shared with even her closest friends. It was a tall tale, but when I looked Alice F. Mason up I found that Geri’s story was correct – though the secret hadn’t been revealed until recently. It’s a pattern that reveals itself time and again with Geri: she tells a tall story usually involving a famous person and an unlikely situation. Like being James Brown’s secret lover or jumping out of a cake for Mick Jagger or appearing on stage with David Bowie or fishing with Tennessee Williams. And then I find a newspaper article substantiating it, or I speak to someone who was there and saw it happen. Geri’s certainly prone to flights of imagination, but she’s also had a surprising life. Back in the 1970s, Geri liked Alice Mason, and the feeling was mutual. Alice encouraged Geri to get a real estate license and pursue a business career. “Time is of the essence,” Alice told her. Geri signed up, but their relationship ended one night when Alice told her to come over to her Upper East Side apartment and pick up some papers. When Geri arrived, Alice was waiting for her in bed. Geri spurned her advances and found herself unemployed again. * I ask Geri what happened next. She’s not one for self-reflection or self-pity, but admits that sometime in the following years, life became difficult. For whatever reason, she found it hard to hold onto a regular job and started living in homeless shelters. She remembers some of them (a battered women’s home in Park Slope in Brooklyn, a refuge on Park Avenue and another in the Village) but has forgotten most. The intervening years have been a blur, more about survival that being a celebrity. She’s struggled with money and health, and in that respect is no different than many Americans. But occasionally, Geri returns to being an It girl again, albeit fleetingly, still attracting unexpected publicity. In 2021, Dave Davies, lead guitarist for the Kinks, tweeted his memory of a waitress “who had huge tits and she used to wiggle them around – an Andy Warhol actress – who moved her tits with muscles like a bodybuilder at Max’s Kansas City.” It went viral in a small-time way becoming Davies’ most popular tweet. A couple of years later, he followed up with a brief, sheepish video of himself imitating this waitress’ striptease routine, and this time, he revealed her identity: “Her name was Geri Miller, and she was good fun and a nice person.” I tell Geri about it. She shrugs and smiles: “Does he want to send me some money?” she sighs. Today she lives in a sparsely decorated one-room apartment in an housing building for low income seniors with disabilities. As I prepare to leave, Geri returns to the subject of her father. I ask if she has any idea as to who he actually was? “I have some ideas,” she offers. “Maybe Sammy Davis Jr. Or perhaps Frank Sinatra or Jerry Lewis. It could have been Charlie Chaplin, I suppose. I don’t know, but he’s out there somewhere.” We pause as an ambulance passes, siren blazing loudly. Geri stares at it intently: “What if that’s my father coming to look for me? Can you can help me? We could look for him together.” She sighs: “Or perhaps it’s true after all: the more you learn, the more depressed you’ll be.” * The post NYC Starlets – Part 3: An Afternoon with Geri Miller, Warhol Super-Groupie and Sexploitation Actress – Podcast 138 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

The Rialto Report recently acquired a collection of behind-the-scenes photographs and stills from the Stephen C. Apostolof/Edward D. Wood Jr. film Orgy of the Dead (1965) which we are sharing below.  Many of them feature Pat Barrington, which gives us the chance to revisit our podcast about her remarkable life If you’ve never heard of her, Pat was big in the 1960s, when she was a popular actress, model and stripper. She was a stunning and statuesque woman, a mess of high cheekbones, flashing dark eyes, and long limbs. And somehow she managed to look different every time you saw her. She could be dark haired, a redhead, or a bleach blonde. She could look seductive or matronly, playfully sexual, or innocent. Actually not so much innocent. Pat Barrington looked like sin on fire. And she had a great screen presence too without even being a great actor. So who was Pat Barrington? About the only thing anyone knew for certain was that Pat had a short film career in the 1960s. Over a five-year period, she made memorable appearances in films by cult filmmakers like Russ Meyer, Ed Wood, Bill Rotsler, Harry Novak and others. She also appeared on television in the series The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and got a part in a big budget film Marlowe (1969) starring James Garner. And then in 1969, after her last appearance in front of a movie camera, she disappeared from public view, and became this mysterious and elusive figure. I tried tracking her down for over 20 years but had no success. No one seemed to even know much about her. Old movie friends remembered her beauty and professionalism, but they all drew a blank when I asked them the big, burning questions: where did Pat Barrington come from, and where did she go? Sure, I found a few details about her, but much of it seemed contradictory. For example, I stopped counting the number of different names she used, not to mention the conflicting birth dates she claimed. And that was about it. I could never find out much more than that. And then, in 2013, I made a breakthrough, and I was able to write a profile of her entire life for The Rialto Report website. It was a wild tale of sexploitation films, a serial killer, go-go dancing, sexual assault, Hollywood, nude modeling, Sam Fuller, Lenny Bruce, Robert Mitchum, and much more. But a few weeks after I posted the story online, I withdrew it – amidst threats of violence, involving an aging mobster and a boyfriend who were both unhappy that Pat’s story had finally been told. This podcast tells the fascinating life of Pat Barrington, but also the story behind the search for her. This podcast is 71 miniutes. The music playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. ———————————————————————————————————————————————————— Pat Barrington in Orgy of the Dead                                                   * Other Orgy of the Dead pictures                                                                 * * The post Pat Barrington in ‘Orgy of the Dead’ (1965) – Unpublished Photographs and Podcast (reprise) appeared first on The Rialto Report.

On the previous episode of Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story: On the heels of a very public divorce, Chuck Traynor and Linda Lovelace were finally separated and began to forge their own paths. Chuck wasted no time partnering with up-and-coming adult star Marilyn Chambers, becoming both her manager and her husband. Linda combined a professional and romantic relationship with producer and choreographer David Winters, combing the U.S. and U.K. for financial opportunities. But while Linda’s relationship with Winters fizzled after a couple of years, Chuck and Marilyn continued strongly. Together they booked everything from Vegas stage shows and mainstream plays to spreads in men’s magazines and adult film roles. Then, in the early 1980s, Linda dropped a bombshell. She released a new autobiography titled ‘Ordeal’ that went into graphic detail about her abuse at Chuck Traynor’s hands. It was a bestseller, and its success brought Linda into contact with Women Against Pornography, a feminist group determined to take down the adult industry. The book’s popularity also led to yet another autobiography, ‘Out of Bondage’, which went even further in criticizing both Chuck and the porn industry. How did this negative publicity affect Chuck – and his new partner Marilyn Chambers? Apparently, not one bit. In fact, the general public reacted by criticizing Linda Lovelace, and the couple seemed tighter than ever. But were they as happy as they made out to be – or was it just a matter of time before Marilyn, like Linda, would change her tune and turn on Chuck? On this final, wild episode of ‘Svengali’… we hear about David Cronenberg’s ‘Rabid’, Linda Lovelace providing testimony for the U.S. government, the infamous Survival Gun Store in Las Vegas – the largest seller of machine guns on the west coast, Chuck leaving Marilyn for an underage stripper, how Chuck became involved with the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, drug and alcohol addiction, Marilyn’s arrest and comeback at the age of 50, and much more… Welcome to the final episode in our series ‘Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story’. This episode running time is 61 minutes. —————————————————————————————————————————————————– 1. Chuck and Marilyn In the mid-to-late 1970s, Chuck and Marilyn were splitting their time between their ranch just outside Las Vegas and Los Angeles, as well as traveling the country so that Marilyn could work the club circuit and do promotional spots. Then, in 1976, Chuck and Marilyn got offered a taste of what they’d been looking for. They were contacted by film director David Cronenberg who was casting the lead role in his new horror film, Rabid (1977). Producer Ivan Reitman suggested Marilyn, as Cronenberg was a relatively new director and Marilyn’s fame could be helpful to the project. To be fair, Cronenberg’s first choice to play the role was Sissy Spacek, but Reitman convinced Cronenberg to choose Marilyn arguing they needed someone with more sex appeal. Here’s how Cronenberg remembered Marilyn: “When I met her, she was a lot harder than I’d hoped. She had plucked eyebrows and her hair was very pre-Farrah Fawcett. She’d been doing shows in Las Vegas. Chuck Traynor, her husband/manager, was not my favorite kind of guy. Very tough. They were both into trading gold-plated revolvers with Sammy Davis Jr., that kind of thing. It’s a world totally foreign to me; not one I’ll ever get to know too well. “But Chuck was very protective of Marilyn, and very supportive of the movie as well. As for Marilyn herself, she was very shrewd and sharp, and worked really hard. She’d obviously had some rough times since that first little movie that I saw of hers, Behind the Green Door (1972). But she was a real trouper, and invented her own version of method acting. When she had to cry, for example, it wasn’t a problem, because Chuck would say, “Remember when Fluffy died” – Fluffy was her cat – and then she’d cry. I thought she had real talent.” When ‘Rabid’ came out, it met with mixed reviews, Variety saying that it was “an extremely violent, sometimes nauseating, picture”. Commercially however, it was a big hit. It grossed $100,000 in the first ten days after opening in Montreal, and became one of the highest-grossing Canadian films of all time, making $1 million in Canada alone. Cronenberg was pleased with Marilyn’s contribution. He said, “I expected her to go on and do other straight movies, but after ‘Rabid’ I think she went back to adult films. I don’t know if it was Chuck, or that the mainstream industry still wouldn’t accept her, but that’s what happened. And it was a shame.” Cronenberg was right: Marilyn’s profile increased dramatically after ‘Rabid’ was in cinemas, but before long she was back on the adult circuit. The good thing was that it was a steady stream of easy income for not doing much. The problem with it was that it wasn’t helpful for Chuck’s long-term vision. Nevertheless, Marilyn liked meeting her fans and soaking up their adoration. Here’s Marilyn’s close friend Peggy describing Marilyn’s mindset when she doubled back down and re-emerged in the adult industry: “Everybody loved you. Crowds lined up around the block to see you, talk to you, be near you. She loved it. Chuck loved it because he was like, “Look what I made. I made this.”” Marilyn and Chuck Chuck and Marilyn’s relationship seemed to work for them, but it wasn’t a typical husband-wife partnership, so let’s take a moment to dig deeper. To start with, Chuck was controlling with Marilyn just as he had been with Linda. Marilyn herself described the dynamic, saying: “I had a dominant-submissive relationship with Chuck. He was definitely the stronger one. I relied on him for everything.” But there was a key difference between Marilyn and Linda, in that Marilyn seemed to willingly submit to Chuck’s control, even actively seeking it out. And that didn’t necessarily mean that there was an imbalance of power. In fact, as Marilyn’s friend Peggy describes, Marilyn was always the one keen to set the boundaries: “You say he dictated and made her suck dick and made her do this and this and this. Untrue. Marilyn never did anything she didn’t want to. I don’t think anyone ever was responsible for Marilyn other than Marilyn.” Adult film director and performer Jane Hamilton, another friend of Marilyn’s, echoed Peggy’s point of view: “Marilyn was never a victim. She was nobody’s victim for anything. He was good for her. And like I said, I think she attributed a lot of her success to Chuck. She was smart. And he must have done a lot of great things for her or she still wouldn’t have him as a friend. Marilyn wouldn’t do that.” Marilyn herself agreed: “A man that I really can fall in love with is somebody who is very sure of himself, has a good sense of humor, definitely has to, but is also the more dominant one. I like to be the woman, and I like to be, you know… I like a guy to take care of me. And he has to feel secure with himself and in his career. “Well, I mean, I’ve been with Chuck for what, 10, 11, whatever is years, and he’s a… I hate to ruin his reputation, but he was one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. [chuckle] And he’s a very good manager because it’s… You know, in any business, I mean, as any realm of show business, you have to be able to take criticism as an entertainer, and that’s not always easy, it’s not always pleasant, but it’s a fact. And in order to become a better person, not just as an entertainer…I felt he’s made me become a better person in general. “You know, we set goals for me to become a better person… When I met him, I was an ex-hippie from San Francisco. [chuckle] And I think that he kind of made me a little bit more polished and certainly taught me a lot as far as dealing with people. “I never felt exploited by Chuck or anybody else. I exploited me.” Chuck and Marilyn So why would a strong, capable woman like Marilyn sign up for what she herself described as “an Eliza Doolittle thing”? Her friend Peggy thinks there was a moral dimension to it for Marilyn: “Marilyn needed somebody to check her. She always was looking for a moral compass. I mean Marilyn was self-doubting a lot. But she was such an astute businesswoman. I mean financially she really was so good. She was the good girl. Persona or not, she was that person.” Jane Hamilton confirms Peggy’s point of view: “She liked to be dominated. She needed to be made to do it, because she always wanted to be the good girl. God she was as dirty as they come. But she never wanted to have the responsibility of being the bad girl. “This is not my fantasy but it’s a common fantasy of women: to be taken, to be had, to be made to. They’re good girls and they were made to do it. Cause it relieves the responsibility of choosing sex. So how do you portray that in a positive light that doesn’t send out a message that women want to get raped? “That’s the relationship that worked for Marilyn – but didn’t work for Linda.” It did work for Marilyn – and for Chuck – for quite a while. For years, the two were inseparable. But they lived in a world that could be difficult for a regular couple, and by the late 1970s, cracks were beginning to form in their relationship. Marilyn was sharp and extremely capable, but she also demanded a lot of attention. Her friends believe this was fueled by insecurities that bubbled just below the surface. No matter how famous and adored Marilyn was, there was part of her that made her never feel good enough. And Marilyn’s needs continued to grow just as Chuck was beginning to explore entirely new avenues of his own. In the mid 1970s, the survivalist movement emerged with force. It was driven by a fundamental fear of Communism, fueled by the Cold War, and amplified by the prospect of nuclear annihilation. Publications like Soldier of Fortune magazine glorified the military, guns, and survival gear. And as a self-described Florida hick with a love of firearms and country, Chuck wanted in. He loved the macho, alpha male, kick-ass bravado of the new right. And he felt Vegas was the perfect place to build his long-term dream of opening a gun store. But first, Chuck was looking for another business opportunity. Another sex-oriented starlet opportunity. With Marilyn’s blessing, Chuck was on the lookout for a new, young, aspiring performer who he could mold into another sex symbol using his well-honed managerial skills. Sure enough, in 1980, he hit paydirt when he met 17-year-old Bo Bozlee. Just like Linda and Marilyn before her, Bo was pretty and pliable, and she had the figure of a 1950s pin-up model too. Or in Bo’s words: “When I was 15, I wanted to be a ballet dancer, so I starved myself so I wouldn’t get breasts. When I didn’t want to be a ballet dancer anymore, I forced my breasts to grow, and they did.” Bo On one of their first dates, Chuck took Bo to the gun range, one of his favorite hangouts. It turned out Bo’s father was also a gun lover who’d started teaching his daughter to shoot when she was just five years old. Of that first day at the range with Chuck, Bo remembered: “Chuck showed me the Uzi, and two days later, I went to a machine-gun competition and placed. Beat all these guys.” Bo, and friend At this point, we need to address the fact there was an age gap between the two of them. A big one. Chuck was approaching 45 while Bo was 17, but that didn’t stop the two from getting involved in a sexual relationship soon after they met. If Chuck was starting to move away from Marilyn, Marilyn too was beginning to feel stymied in their romantic relationship. She told Chuck she was thinking about going back to school part-time for nursing, but his response was a hard no. He argued that Marilyn was still sexy, still in demand, and could still make good money on the sex circuit. He said they should milk it for as long as it lasted. He argued that, while the two of them still loved each other, their marriage had morphed into more of a friendship. This would make things easier, he said: their partnership would now be platonic, professional, and free of sexual jealousy. So when Marilyn met a guy named Bobby D’Apice on a trip back east to see her family and do some performing, she had no reservations going home with him. Bobby was a professional bodyguard, a strapping Italian American, and the type of man’s man that Marilyn was attracted to. Bobby also happened to be the son of Andre D’Apice, a notorious soldier for the Colombo crime family who was third in command at Star Distributors, the east coast’s largest porn dealer. Star controlled a bunch of adult bookstores, movie theaters, and publishing houses. For decades, Star’s biggest customer was Reuben Sturman, aka the ‘Walt Disney of Porn’. But Star Distributors deserves its own Rialto Report story, so let’s get back to Marilyn and Bobby. Here’s how Bobby remembers getting together with Marilyn: “I met Marilyn in the late 1970s when she came to New York for a week to do some commercials for a company called Private Screenings. Chuck arranged for me to pick Marilyn up in Connecticut where she was visiting her family and bring her into the city. “She told me she and Chuck were getting a divorce. When I came into the picture it was like Chuck was glad to have someone else take the burden – let’s put it that way. I think I was his knight in shining armor at that point. And Chuck had already taken up with Bo. And Bo was a baby – she was so young. “About a month after I first met Marilyn, she got back in touch with me to say she and Chuck wanted to hire me to be her road manager. Chuck had decided to stop going on the road with Marilyn, in part because he’d already started grooming Bo for the business.” And so started a new phase in Chuck and Marilyn’s relationship. Still close, still business partners, still married – but now both of them living with other people. Here’s how Bobby describes things when Marilyn called him with a job offer from Chambers Traynor Enterprises: “First, I moved with Marilyn to California so she could do TV spots. I remember one in Sacramento where representatives from Women Against Pornography showed up and asked Marilyn how she could have sex for money. Marilyn calmly said, “If your husband comes home on a Friday night and refuses to give his paycheck over, I bet you wouldn’t sleep with him.” Marilyn put them in their place. Marilyn was sharp. She had a very high IQ and was very intelligent. It was funny.” While out in California, Marilyn got an acting part in a TV series titled ‘Love Ya Florence Nightingale’ in which she played a sex therapist, helping couples through their troubles. Pitched for the cable TV market, ‘Love Ya Florence Nightingale’ was a vehicle intended to showcase Marilyn’s legitimate acting chops while at the same time also leveraging her adult notoriety. Marilyn, Chuck and Bobby had high hopes for it, but as with other projects over the years, the show never delivered the cross-over success that Marilyn and Chuck craved. So Marilyn and Bobby packed up and headed back to Vegas. Based in Nevada, the two couples lived together in an unusual arrangement. Chuck continued coaching Bo, booking her into local strip clubs to build up her performing skills. Bo was a willing student, describing the focus of Chuck’s curriculum: “It was like etiquette, and how to be perky so people will like me, and how to be the cutest and glamour-est I can, so I can turn on an audience.” While Chuck tutored Bo, he also continued to arrange all of Marilyn’s gigs. And, as Bobby recalled, Chuck was good at it: “I worked for Chambers Traynor Enterprises for about ten years, and all that time Marilyn and Chuck were doing business together. Chuck would arrange everything for Marilyn, and Marilyn and I would travel. Chuck was one of the best managers in the industry. He got Marilyn top dollar for all her appearances and points on every video of her that sold.” The adult business wasn’t the only thing Chuck and Marilyn were involved in. In 1982, they finally decided to invest in Chuck’s dream, a Las Vegas gun shop and shooting range, called The Survival Store. He’d approached a life-long gun enthusiast, named Bob Irwin, with the proposal, offering to not only financially back the venture but to leverage Marilyn’s popularity to promote it. The combination worked – it didn’t take long for The Survival Store to boast that it had sold the most machine guns west of the Mississippi. Chuck & Marilyn Bob Irwin and Chuck were two very different people. Bob, for example, was more of a law-and-order traditionalist, conservative to his core, and with a strong idea of right versus wrong. Of the partnership, Bob jokingly said: “Christmas parties were interesting. Chuck’s friends were bikers, porn queens, and mob people. Mine were mostly cops.” But Bob and Chuck became friends as well as business associates. And for years until his passing in 2021, Bob had nothing but good things to say about Chuck and Marilyn. Bob confirmed that long after Chuck and Marilyn separated romantically, they continued to stay close friends, often meeting in the store. Marilyn’s boyfriend Bobby worked at the store too when he wasn’t on the road with Marilyn. And, like Marilyn, Bo promoted the business too – and took it farther than perhaps even Chuck could ever have anticipated. Bo’s marketing activities began as might be expected. She was photographed seductively clutching automatic weapons for local advertising. She became a regular at Soldier of Fortune magazine’s annual conventions, where attendees wore t-shirts with slogans like ‘Nuke Jane Fonda’, ‘Eat Lead, You Lousy Red’, and ‘Kill a Commie for Mommy’. But then, somehow, Bo found that she had become the official pinup girl for the Contras, the right-wing rebel group that fought against the government in Nicaragua. Bo – and The Survival Store Let’s take a step back to explain. Since 1979, the Nicaraguan government had been run by a Marxist group that emerged from a guerrilla organization, the Sandinista National Liberation Front. When Ronald Reagan became U.S. president in 1981, he perceived the Sandinistas to be a threat to American values, so he started financial and military backing of the Contras, who were anti-Sandinista guerillas. In 1983, some of the Contras showed up at the Soldier of Fortune convention in Vegas, and they introduced themselves to Bo, asking for autographs on her pin-up posters that they could share with their commandantes back home, Chuck was pleased with the attention from these righteous freedom fighters. Fiercely anti-communist and pro-capitalist, he also sensed an opportunity – which he positioned as patriotic self-sufficiency of course: “Bo really believes in the anti-communist movement. She’s not just a pretty girl on a poster. She’s been trained as a parachutist, a scuba diver. She’s certified by the NRA as a weapons instructor, and is quite competent with a wide range of sophisticated automatic weapons. Bo leaned into the opportunity, proudly stating: “I was thinking while I was making the last poster, what if this poster could brighten the day of the men fighting this crucial war? Let me make this a great one – for the Contras.” And so it came to pass that Bo’s face, and her gun-toting posters, spread like wildfire across the south American country, and she became the face of freedom all over Nicaragua for the rest of the decade. As Chuck stated proudly: “If the contras ever take power in Nicaragua, Bo will be their first lady.” Bo – and The Survival Store   While Chuck and Bo were reaching for new heights, Marilyn was experiencing some lows. She was aging out of the sex industry that had made her a star, and that didn’t feel good. Then there was her ex-husband Chuck clearly more interested in his new underage obsession. Marilyn had always had a weakness for drugs and alcohol, but while she and Chuck were living together, Chuck had kept Marilyn on the straight and narrow – or at least the pretty straight and the pretty narrow. But once Marilyn and Chuck split romantically, she began to party in earnest. As boyfriend Bobby remembered: “When Marilyn and I became a couple, alcohol, and drugs went together with everything we did. It was make love, not war… mixed in with sex, drugs, and rock and roll.” During this period, cocaine became Marilyn’s most reliable and constant companion, and a number of those around her felt it darkened her normally playful personality. One of those was adult film actress Juliet Anderson, also known as Aunt Peg. By the end of 1983, Aunt Peg was ready to make her last adult film and so she signed on to co-star with Marilyn Chambers. The film was Insatiable 2 (1984) and Marilyn was set to reprise her role from the first installment, playing an heiress seeking sexual fulfillment. It was meant to be Aunt Peg’s swan song, a heartfelt goodbye to an industry that she loved. But that wasn’t quite how it turned out. Here’s how she remembered the episode: “That last movie, ‘Insatiable 2’, with Marilyn Chambers, was one of the most disappointing experiences I ever had. I thought it would be a nice final film experience to be able to finally make a film with Marilyn Chambers. “So I’m really looking forward to it, and I was sitting alone getting my hair and make-up done, and she comes in with an entourage which consisted of her lover, her make-up artist, and her gopher assistant. She walks in like a queen, with this holier-than-thou look on her face. I said, “Oh, Marilyn, hi, I’m Juliet. I’m in the movie with you.” She barely hesitated and walked out the room. That was it! “I was just stunned, and the make-up artist, David, said to me: ‘Don’t pay any attention, she gets in these moods sometimes. That’s just the way she is, she can be a real prima donna. She brings all her entourage with her because they make her feel like she’s really important. “I was devastated. And then to make matters worse, she had insisted that her current lover be the leading man. He’d never been in a film before – which was completely against the way things were done. But she wouldn’t make the movie unless this man could star with her. However, and I give her credit for this, she was still a fine actress.” Marilyn’s current lover whom Aunt Peg refers to was, of course, Bobby D’Apice, credited in the film as Bobby Dee. By this point, not only was Marilyn’s relationship with Bobby infused with drugs and alcohol, it was also steeped in emotional and physical abuse. It felt as if Marilyn was fighting everyone around her, and sure enough, in 1985, Marilyn asked Chuck for a divorce. There are lots of stories that say Marilyn and Chuck’s split was contentious and acrimonious. But her close friends say Marilyn never saw it that way. Like the kids say nowadays, it’s complicated. Close friend Peggy remembers: “The love of her life was never Chuck. It was never Chuck. She left Chuck – it wasn’t the other way around. She was glad to move on. “Marilyn and Chuck had a history. They had a history. And it was so good. It was the highest of highs. The best time of her life was with that man. The way they were treated. The boundaries they stomped on. Boy wasn’t that the funniest time. You just want to hold on to it. It’s like the baseball player that hits a grand slam in the World Series. “People will rarely remember what you said but they will definitely remember how you made them feel. And 90% of the time Chuck made her feel like she was a queen. “Did he knock some doors down? Sure. Was he her Svengali? Probably. Chuck and her were on the same wavelength. We’re doing this for the outcome of this. You know what I mean? That’s why their divorce wasn’t nasty.” In May 1985, Chuck and Marilyn’s divorce became official. But their business partnership continued, as evidenced by one of the biggest events in Marilyn’s professional life, her return to the Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theater where she’d started her adult career over a decade earlier. It was a gig Chuck orchestrated, and Marilyn remembered it like this: “I felt I still had to fulfill my reputation when I came back to the O’Farrell. I wanted to be the best. Chuck always told me, “You’ve got to give the audience what they don’t expect.” He said, “Tina Turner starts wild and ends wilder. That’s what you’ve got to do.” That was some of the best advice I ever got. I always wanted people to go out of a show saying, “My God! Did you see what she did? I can’t believe it!”” Marilyn’s performance was no longer just a simple burlesque strip show. Now she prided herself with how far she could push herself. As she remembered: “It was a question of showing them how much I could take. I showed them that I could take a fist up my butt and have hot candle wax dripped all over me. People would go, “Oh my God! That’s amazing! How could you do that?” I loved people telling me that I was amazing.” Onstage, being ‘the best’ meant putting on a show that had been choreographed by Chuck Traynor. Billed as ‘Feel the Magic,’ the O’Farrell program touted Marilyn as “a touchable fantasy.” Chuck ensured the Mitchell Brothers fully promoted her run to draw the biggest audience possible – and it did. The trouble was that alerted the authorities as well: Dianne Feinstein, today thought of as an avid supporter of liberal causes like abortion rights and gun control, was then San Francisco’s mayor and well known for campaigns against adult entertainment. Mayor Feinstein had police officers arrest Marilyn right in the middle of her performance, and Marilyn was taken naked from the theater, and booked on charges of soliciting sex for money. Marilyn responded with the following statement to a local television news reporter: “I’ve never been arrested in my life for anything, ever, so this is kind of a big shock for me, not only as a performer but as a human being.” Marilyn ended her statement by turning to the camera and addressing her mother, saying, “Mom, I’m not a prostitute.” She then turned back to the TV reporter to qualify her statement, explaining: “My mom has only just got over the X-rated films.” Marilyn makes a statement after her arrest The city prosecutor ultimately dropped the charges against Marilyn, citing lack of evidence of any crime. In vindication, the Mitchell brothers posted Mayor Feinstein’s unlisted phone number on the O’Farrell’s marquee along with the invitation “For a good time, call Dianne.” The arrest. The drug-induced lows. The explosive fights with Bobby. Marilyn was approaching her mid 30s and running on empty. Realizing her lifestyle wasn’t sustainable, Marilyn decided to cut things off from Bobby and checked herself into rehab. She needed to clear her head – and her veins – and get her life in order. She canceled all appearances and started to take care of herself. Chuck was reasonably supportive: it may have been money leaving the bank account but he could see that Marilyn was in a bad way, and she was only headed for worse if she didn’t do something about it. While in rehab, Marilyn met Bill Taylor, a freight-trucking salesman trying to kick a heroin habit. The two hit it off and fell for each other. Not that it was plain-sailing: Bill was wary. He was well down the road to recovery while Marilyn was still in the early stages, and he worried that she might jeopardize his sobriety – so he took a step back. But Marilyn stuck it out, continuing with Narcotics Anonymous meetings after she got out of rehab, and eventually the two became a couple. After that, events moved fast: within months, they were talking marriage – and about Marilyn retiring from the adult business so they could start a family. While Marilyn was considering stepping away from the adult stage, Chuck’s other ex – Linda Lovelace, now Linda Marchiano – was getting ready to give her final grand performance. Feminist Catharine MacKinnon had arranged for Linda to present testimony at the 1986 Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography. Established by President Ronald Reagan, the Commission’s stated objective was to “determine the nature, extent, and impact on society of pornography in the United States, and to make specific recommendations to the Attorney General concerning more effective ways in which the spread of pornography could be contained, consistent with constitutional guarantees.” In truth, the commission was a partisan, rigged, set-up job. It was far from an impartial study – anyone could see that by noticing that Meese had appointed many well-known anti-pornography crusaders to the panel. As for Linda, she used her appearance at the hearings less to campaign against pornography and more to reinforce her story of Chuck Traynor, her abuser. She testified: “My name today is Linda Marciano. Linda Lovelace was the name I bore during a two-and-a-half-year period of imprisonment. For those of you who don’t know the name, Linda Lovelace was the victim of this so-called victimless crime. Used and abused by Mr. Chuck Traynor, her captor, she was forced through physical, mental, and sexual abuse, often at gunpoint and with threats on her life, to be involved with pornography. “I literally became a prisoner. I was not allowed out of his sight, not even to use the bathroom. At night, what he would do is put his body over my body so that if I did try to get up, he would wake up. And he was a very light sleeper. If I did attempt to move or roll over in my sleep, he would awaken. “I have no rights as a victim. The only right I have is to be able to tell my story and hope that someone listens.” Away from the public spotlight, Linda’s health was suffering. She had an acute case of hepatitis – the result of a drug transfusion after the car crash back in the 1960s that led her to meet Chuck. She was awaiting a liver transplant and still struggling financially – two facts that kept her looking to capitalize monetarily on any notoriety she retained. She was also suffering from depression which led her to alcohol addiction. It was a dependency feminist Andrea Dworkin diagnosed as a response to the post-traumatic stress disorder that Linda carried from her time with Chuck. To make matters worse, Linda’s husband Larry was also an alcoholic by this point. Larry began attending AA meetings and was able to quit, but though Linda gave AA a try as well, she was less successful at fighting the battle against addiction. While both Linda and Marilyn were struggling, Chuck was thriving. The Survival Store gun and gear sales remained strong, boosted by regular appearances from a group of scantily clad women known as the “Traynettes” in tribute to their manager. As for Bo, Chuck’s latest protege and romantic partner, she continued to gain popularity on the stripping circuit, thanks in part to a manipulative promotional tactic Chuck came up with. Chuck realized that Marilyn wanted to step back from the limelight, so he came up with the concept of an adult changing of the guard. He asked Marilyn to perform in a series of strip shows with Bo to help position Bo as the next Marilyn Chambers. Recently married and newly sober, Marilyn was rather hesitant. She said: “I used to love the order of going on the road, of doing each show at a certain time. But now, that’s an intrusion into my order as a housewife. Cooking and vacuuming are a joy to me for the first time. I love taking care of my husband. It’s more fun to make real love to one man than the fantasy of making love to 500. That’s all I want from Chuck, his blessing. I want to show him I can make the transition from pleasing all those men to just pleasing one man. Maybe that’s why I always need a man to take care of me. To be Daddy’s girl. That’s the way it was for me with Chuck, and that’s why I need his blessing now with my new husband. But Chuck wasn’t put off by Marilyn’s lack of enthusiasm. He knew Marilyn, and he knew three things were still true: Marilyn loved the adulation, she appreciated the money, and she never wanted to let Chuck down. He was right of course, and eventually Marilyn relented, so she hit the road with Chuck and Bo, who was billed as “the next Marilyn Chambers.” The tour was popular, but there was no doubt who the men were coming out to see. They liked Bo alright, but they absolutely adored Marilyn. Sure, she was older and a bit heavier than the early days, but she still put on a great show for audiences nostalgic for one of the legendary adult film performers of the golden era. In truth however, it was a pretty cruel gimmick for Marilyn. She was effectively being marketed as a ‘has-been’ in order to promote the career of her ex’s new lover. It wasn’t a great way to bow out. Chuck and Marilyn While Bo may not have been Marilyn, she was devoted to Chuck, and in 1986 she became his wife – Chuck’s sixth, in case you lost count. Why did the two marry? Well, Bo admitted she liked having a father figure. But what was the appeal in another marriage for Chuck? Here’s what Marilyn thought: “Chuck has lived out most of his fantasies, but he still doesn’t know what’ll make him happy. Bo seems to have helped him there. He’s lost that angry edge he always had. I just hope she doesn’t hurt him. He says she’s his slave, but he dotes on her. It’s cute the way he fixes the bow in her hair. He sews all her costumes himself, by hand. “I think he’s more interested in holding on to her than making her a star now. That’s why he’s on the road again. To keep her happy. She’s not inclined to be barefoot and pregnant. He needs to keep her needing him without her becoming famous. I just hope he hasn’t lost his perspective after all these years.” Chuck continued to manage Bo’s career just as he still managed Marilyn’s. Eventually, Chuck and Marilyn sold their stake in the Survival Store to partner Bill Irwin and, in its place, Chuck and Bo tried their hand at horse breeding, starting the Mountain “T” Ranch Quarterhorse Club in 1992. For Chuck, the 1990s were perhaps as close to settled as he could get. He bred the horses, did some firearm training, and Bo performed on the local stripping circuit. There was still some money trickling in from Marilyn’s career, mostly residuals from her movie sales. Marilyn had backed away from the adult industry, and finally had the baby she’d always wanted. Her relationship with Bill ended in 1994, but she was clean, sober, and she relished being a new mom. And then in 1999, Marilyn dropped a bombshell. As she approached her 50th birthday, she announced she was returning to perform at the Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theatre. What’s more, she signed a contract with the adult film company, VCA Pictures, to make three X-rated films. These were Still Insatiable (1999), Dark Chambers (2000), and Edge Play (2000), each of them to be directed by Veronica Hart, aka Jane Hamilton. Times had changed however – in some ways for the good, in others less so. On the positive side, when Marilyn returned to San Francisco with a new strip show, she was greeted like a hometown hero. Mayor Willie Brown proclaimed a ‘Marilyn Chambers Day’ for her unique place in San Francisco history, and he praised her for her “artistic presence”, her “vision”, and her “energy”. It was all a far cry from the days of ‘Behind the Green Door’ when she’d been the notorious of queen of California counter culture. The films however were less well-received. They were big sellers, but critics savaged her older, heavier appearance, and advised her to retire – this time for good. When the final film was released, Marilyn retreated into adult entertainment retirement. Not that she disappeared from the limelight however. Marilyn found a career in independent films, one that she enjoyed, claiming that the more laid-back pace of these roles suited her as there was a lot less pressure on her to perform, and she didn’t have to be young and skinny either. She embarked on a political career as well, running for vice president on the Personal Choice Party ticket, a libertarian political party, in the 2004 and 2008 U.S. presidential elections. If Marilyn was staying busy and reasonably relevant, Chuck was slowing down. He was approaching 60 years old and his love of southern cooking was catching up with his arteries. The climate and culture of Las Vegas worked for him, so he figured he’d stick around there to see out his days. But in January 1999, Chuck got a call from his brother Bernard in Florida. Their mother, Elaine, was seriously ill. Bernard said he didn’t know how long Elaine had left, and that Chuck might want to get down to Florida sooner rather than later. The prospect of Elaine dying was a wake-up call for Chuck. Whether by force or by choice, Elaine had abandoned Chuck as a child and only came back into his life when he was an adult. But once she was back, she doted on Chuck. In her eyes, he was a military vet, a successful businessman, and a loving son who could do no wrong. And while he tried not to show it, Chuck always craved his mother’s validation. Linda had witnessed it back in the early 1970s, and Marilyn saw it whenever they visited Elaine. So when the call came letting Chuck know that Elaine was failing, it hit him hard. Sure, he had some things going in Vegas, but he reasoned that perhaps he could get things going in Florida, just like he had decades earlier. And if it all went to shit in Florida, well, Vegas wasn’t going anywhere. So Chuck told Bo they were moving to Florida. Bo wasn’t thrilled with the idea, in part because she liked the west coast, but also because there was a new man in her life. Chuck had introduced Bo to a guy named Grant Stapleton and she’d taken a real shine to him. Like Chuck, Grant was a vet, a gun-loving survivalist, and he was older than her – though still ten years younger than Chuck. And while Chuck was pretty reserved, Grant was an extrovert with a magnetism that Bo found attractive. Bo felt conflicted, but she’d vowed to honor and obey Chuck, so, as the dutiful wife that she was, she followed Chuck to Florida. Chuck’s reunion with his mother Elaine was short-lived. In March 1999, Elaine died at the age of 79. She left her house to Chuck’s brother Bernard, but Chuck asked his brother if he and Bo could stay there while they found their footing. It’d been years since Chuck had lived in Florida, so he set off to go around the old strip joints and see if he could find work for Bo. He became an active member of the local rifle club. He even began checking out local horse farms to get a sense of commercial opportunities. It was a far cry from when he lived there back in the 1960s when he’d smuggled drugs into the country, and ran a live sex joint. Bo – publicity still For Chuck, it felt good to be home. His mother was no longer around but Bernard and Elaine’s brother John were family and they lived locally. Chuck began hanging out with a few of his old pals and re-establishing his roots. It was familiar territory, and he still knew how to play it. But Bo struggled. She felt isolated in the small town of Williston, population 2,500. She didn’t know anyone, and took a back seat to Chuck as he tried to get things going. She spent more and more time on the phone to Grant and came to rely on those calls like a lifeline. She felt a distance growing between her and Chuck while at the same time feeling more dependent on him than ever. Then on April 22nd 2002, Chuck opened the morning newspaper and saw the day’s headline: Linda Boreman – formerly Linda Marciano, Linda Lovelace, and Linda Traynor – was dead. She’d been in a car accident and died of the injuries that she sustained. The last years of Linda’s life had been difficult and complicated. In 1996, suffering from alcoholism and depression, she’d divorced Larry Marciano after 22 years of marriage. She’d taken on a number of secretarial jobs after that, but none stuck. Her hepatitis worsened, and her kidneys were failing. What’s more, she’d soured on the anti-pornography feminists whom she’d once seen as her allies. She’s started to feel used by them, especially as they reached out to her less and less. Linda changed her tune once more, saying again that she was against censorship of any kind. She conceded that there were willing female participants in the sex industry and that not everyone was coerced into the business. To make some money, she even posed for the men’s magazine Leg Show, albeit fully clothed, and began signing Deep Throat memorabilia. This latest chapter in Linda’s changing attitude towards the sex industry caused more people to turn against her. They called her a hypocrite and discredited her statements. But to be fair to Linda, there was one topic where she stayed absolutely consistent throughout her life, and that was her assertion that Chuck had abused her. On that, she never wavered. So how did Chuck react when he read the news that the woman he once claimed to love, even when she came out against him, was dead? Asked for his feelings by a reporter, his answer was short: “She didn’t have much luck with cars.” When Linda died in 2002, it had been over 30 years since she’d met and married Chuck and over 28 since the couple had divorced. But while decades had passed, their lives had remained inextricably entwined. Up until her death, Linda had been publicly defined by her short-lived relationship with Chuck and the abuse that occurred. And the same applied to Chuck. Every obituary of Linda cited him as an abuser, a misogynist, and a sadist. With Linda’s death, Chuck was suddenly back in the news again. But just three months later, home after a training session with Bo to keep her fit for performing, Chuck suffered a massive heart attack. Bo rushed him to the local hospital, but it was too late. Chuck died on July 22, 2002. So what happens when the man who helped create two of the biggest female stars in the history of the adult film business passes? Actually, very little, at least as far as media coverage is concerned. None of the major papers noted his death. In fact, the only obituary that appeared was placed by his family in the local Florida Gainesville Sun. It read simply: “WILLISTON – Charles Everett Traynor died Monday at Nature Coast Regional Hospital. He was 64. “Mr. Traynor was born in Mount Vernon, N.Y., and moved to Williston from Las Vegas three years ago. He was a rancher and a pilot. He was an expert rifleman and a member of the Williston Shooters Club. He was a member of Holy Family Catholic Church. “Survivors include his wife, Bo Bozlee Traynor of Williston; and brothers Bernard Metcalf of Homestead and John M. Traynor of Bronson.” So Chuck’s wife Bo became a widow at the age of 39, stuck in a town where she knew few people and still felt like an outsider. She turned to Grant, leaving Florida for Pennsylvania to get married to him – with the wedding taking place just five months after Chuck’s death. Bo’s marriage to Grant turned out to be a volatile one. Friends said that when it came to violence and threats, Grant was Chuck on steroids. Seven years after Bo married him, Grant committed suicide, leaving Bo a widow once again. Since then, Bo has stayed away from the adult industry and, when I contacted her for this series, she told me she had no interest in revisiting the time she spent with Chuck. Unlike Bo, who rebounded quickly from Chuck’s death, Marilyn was devastated by his passing for a long time. While she’d stopped being Chuck’s wife many years before, she remained his business partner and a friend who valued and loved him. Marilyn slid back into drug and alcohol use, and Chuck’s death intensified her relapse. Eventually, Marilyn got clean again and rebuilt her life. She set up in a mobile home outside Los Angeles and began selling cars at a local dealership. To supplement her income, she’d go to the occasional convention and sign photographs. It was a quiet life for a former porn star, but it suited Marilyn just fine. Then, in 2009, Marilyn’s daughter found her mother dead at home. Marilyn had died of heart disease, and was just 56. Up to her death, Marilyn remained loyal to Chuck, defending him to anyone who questioned his character. As her friend Peggy remembered: “She liked people that she trusted, and what they did for her. ‘You would do that for me? That must mean you really love me, you really care for me.’ He made that all happen. She never forgot people that helped her. She never said anything other than she loved him. Never.” In the years since his passing, popular culture hasn’t been kind to Chuck. And there have been a slew of productions that feature him. In September 2002, there was a UK television special ‘The Real… Linda Lovelace’, made quickly in the wake of Linda’s death, that featured an interview with Chuck making the case for the important mark he left on the adult industry. Then there was a short-lived 2003 rock opera, named ‘Lovelace, The Musical’, created by Charlotte Caffey and Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Gos and starring former ‘Family Ties’ actress Tina Yothers. The 2005 hit documentary ‘Inside Deep Throat’ told the story in colorful details. There was a play, ‘The Deep Throat Sex Scandal’, in which Marilyn Chambers was initially cast but never performed in due to her death. And then there was the 2013 biopic ‘Lovelace’, starring Amanda Seyfried as Linda and Peter Sarsgaard as Chuck. In all these productions, Chuck is either a derided side note as in ‘Inside Deep Throat’ or the central bad guy, as in ‘Lovelace’. At the ‘Lovelace’ premiere, actor Peter Sarsgaard who played Chuck, felt he had to give a lengthy justification about why he had accepted the role. He said: “[I]…just profoundly did not want to do the role. I kept dragging my feet. It took weeks to decide. And then it was tough the entire way. It was like every day I was going on the set, looking on the call sheet and I was doing something awful. I would try to be in the head of this person and it wasn’t nice. I also knew the film was not interested in fully understanding what made him tick because it’s Linda’s story.” But Svengali has been Chuck’s story. It may seem strange for a woman to investigate this story – and to tell it through the eyes of its most maligned, male figure. But I made the series because I was interested in understanding what made him tick and how he helped create two of the biggest names in golden age pornography. I also made this podcast series in response to the times we’re living in. The world feels more polarized than ever. Fueled by mainstream and social media, tribalism overshadows empathy, and people are always either good or bad rather than the mix of both that we all are. So, in the end, what do we make of Chuck Traynor? It’s clear he abused Linda Lovelace – that was confirmed by Chuck himself. Linda claimed he did it out of sadism, actually taking pleasure in harming her. Psychologists might say he did it as a result of childhood injury – the fact that he felt rejected and abandoned by his parents and so he never developed a healthy ego. Here’s Chuck saying why he did it: “I’m sort of a redneck, you know. Raised down south. I believe broads have to be submissive. I don’t believe in equal rights, but I’m probably not as abusive or as abrasive as Lovelace would make me out to be. I believe women have a place. I think beautiful women should be adorned and adored as long as they stay in their place and stay beautiful. “I don’t consider it beating if you slap your old lady for something. To me that’s almost a sign of feelings, of closeness. When your old lady does something wrong or when she’s giving you too much lip or something – I don’t really consider that beating up. “At the time, Linda seemed like she liked it. She seemed like a lot more together person when she was with me than the person she wrote about in her book. But she was emotionally fucked up a long time before I met her. She was no kept prisoner, nailed to the wall. I would tell her not to leave, probably forbid her to leave, just as I would imagine most boyfriends or husbands or managers or pimps from the South would. If she actually left and stayed away, I would be very pissed off about it, but it would have died. “I just don’t believe that the time that we spent together and the time she was involved, she hated every minute of it.” Then there’s Chuck and Marilyn Chambers. According to both Marilyn and Chuck, violence did not play a role in their relationship. There was what Marilyn referred to as “rough play”, but she says she was more often the one to initiate it. And until the day Marilyn died, she said she loved Chuck and valued their friendship: “You know, Chuck is pictured as this creepy guy. But he’s not. He’s one of the nicest men I’ve ever met in my life. I rely on Chuck for everything, absolutely everything at all. I know that I need it. I know that I am not really good on my own. I need Chuck. I need guidance. “People say he exploited me, but I exploited myself because I wanted to.” With both Linda and Marilyn, Chuck played a huge role in their adult careers. Chuck made Linda Lovelace a household name, though she never wanted to become one. And he helped propel Marilyn’s fame and fortune, which was exactly what she longed for. Was Chuck just in the right place at the right time? Maybe – but he was also a guy who was a hustler that actively saw opportunity in the sex industry. In the 1960s, this insight drew him to Bunny Yeager and Joe Sarno. And in the early 1970s, it brought him to Times Square, New York with his new wife Linda, a path that led them to ‘Deep Throat’ –  the defining event in both their lives. I’ve spent hundreds of hours researching Chuck’s story, and I’m glad I did. It led me to sixties sexploitation, prostitution, and international drug running in Miami, the early loop days in New York, Sammy Davis Jr’s Hollywood and Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion. It’s taken me to the notorious O’Farrell Theater in San Francisco, the theaters of London, famous Las Vegas casinos, and strip clubs all across America. In the end, with Chuck, what you see is what you get. A boy abandoned by his parents and growing up in the macho South of the 1940s and 50s. A young adult with a chip on his shoulder determined to get what he was brought up to believe a man deserves. An opportunist who prioritized himself first, especially when it came to women. And he was always – as welcomed by Marilyn Chambers but most definitely not by Linda Lovelace – a Svengali. * Svengali /svenˈɡälē,sfenˈɡälē/ noun: a person who exercises a controlling or mesmeric influence on another, especially for a sinister purpose. * The post Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story: Part 7, Endgame, Podcast 137 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

On the previous episode of Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story: To everyone’s surprise, the sex film Deep Throat (1972) had become a financial hit and a cultural phenomenon. And everybody involved was determined to capitalize on the film’s success – and that included Chuck Traynor, husband and manager of Linda Lovelace, the movie’s leading lady. When the film blew up, Chuck put Linda through his self-styled media training, positioning her as a small-town, sex-fueled hippie who’d hit the jackpot in the Big Apple. And he got busy putting together deals: he negotiated a lucrative contract for her in the sequel Deep Throat II (1974). He secured a healthy advance for Inside Linda Lovelace, a pseudo-autobiography. He convinced Linda to move to California with him where they ingratiated themselves with high profile figures like Sammy Davis Jr. and Hugh Hefner. And keen to expand Linda’s profile beyond the adult world, Chuck landed her a stage show at Miami’s Paramount Theater. But as Linda’s star rose, so did her self-confidence. She began to realize that she was drawing the attention and money, not Chuck. And as Linda’s esteem grew, Chuck’s attempts to control her weren’t quite as powerful as they had been. Finally, in September 1973, after almost three years under Chuck’s thumb, Linda decided to stand up for herself. She filed for divorce, citing abuse and irreconcilable differences. She had a new man at her side too: she was dating David Winters, an English-born dancer and choreographer. She was free from Chuck and could start a new life. Chuck was ancient history, and would now disappear into the rear-view mirror, right? Wrong. Welcome to Episode Six in our series ‘Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story’. You can hear the last episode of the Svengali series here. This episode running time is 66 minutes. —————————————————————————————————————————————————– 1. An(other) Autobiography In early 1974, a second autobiography of Linda Lovelace hit the shelves. It was called ‘The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace’. This is how it begins: “I am taking my life in my hands by writing this. That may sound like a dramatic way to start a book, or just a joke, but it is true. If my arms are broken or I end up in a ditch somewhere, if acid is thrown in my face or I am shot, I want it in black and white. Once and for all, I have got to be free. Maybe if I tell the whole story, the true story, I will finally get if off my chest and out of my system, and I will be able to forget it forever. “I have been threatened by a man who is very sick. He is full of violence. He has threatened the lives of my brilliant attorney, my business manager, the man in my life, David Winters; my secretary Dolores and her daughter; and, of course, myself. “Sometimes I think I will go live in a different country and just never be heard from again. But that would be giving up my life in another way and I am not going to do that either. I am a star now. Here I am, the sex symbol of the seventies, the woman who really believes in giving love and enjoying it, and who is “really free.” The truth is that there was a time when I wasn’t allowed to go for a hamburger by myself. Now I am working to become really free. Free in every way. “If you noticed the black and blue marks on my body in the movie ‘Deep Throat’, you might have wondered where they came from. I’ll tell you. My husband. Little souvenirs, reminders that he was the colonel and I was the private. From the time I met him, I never did anything, said anything, or went anywhere that was not his idea. That might have been okay if I had been willing. But I was doing terrible things that I didn’t want to do. Not ‘Deep Throat’. I enjoyed doing what I did in ‘Deep Throat’ – it’s what happened sexually with Chuck that I hated. “The reason I married Chuck wasn’t because of moonlight and violins and love; I married him because he swore to beat the shit out of me if I didn’t. When I refused, he threw me to the ground and kicked me. Somehow, I was persuaded. “You might wonder how I finally put it all together to get away from Chuck. When I became a big name, everybody wanted to meet me. I began to be myself again. I was around people who were sensitive and kind and treated me like a person. Before I met Chuck, I had been carefree and happy. “Let me say one final word to my ex-husband. I don’t have any hard feelings anymore. As a matter of fact, I wish you only what you wish yourself: Shit.” Linda Lovelace * 2. Chuck Responds ‘The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace’ was written in three days by a ghost writer, Mel Mandel. Mel had got to know Linda and her new boyfriend, David Winters, and spent hours with her listening to her account of years of abuse suffered at Chuck’s hands. The resulting book was part manifesto, part financial gambit. When the book was published, Chuck was predictably livid that Linda had gone public with her story. When contacted by reporters, he alleged that the book was paid for with money that was actually his. As Chuck said to one reporter: “All I know is that I gave David Winters $10,000 to teach her to dance for Linda’s big show. Next thing I know, all of a sudden, Linda, David, and my $10,000 disappear. “Anybody in his right mind is not going to take that sitting down. Suddenly my creation walks out with some schmuck because she thinks he’s the biggest hustler in Hollywood. “But none of them realized that I was Linda Lovelace. That body, that throat, and those silicone tits walking around were bullshit, you know? Linda was nothing. But David thought she was a gold mine. “And Linda bought it, you know? She just listened to everybody telling her what a big star she was and how I was handling her all wrong. That was her mistake.” When asked about Linda’s claims that he’d started harassing her after she left, Chuck pretty much admitted it: “I heard from her attorneys that she was filing for divorce and that she wouldn’t honor any of the contracts – she said she considered them illegal because she’d been forced to sign them. “So I was left in a real bad position by Linda because we were doing pretty good. We’d made about $100,000 in a little less than a year. So, yeah, I was flabbergasted because not only had somebody stolen my old lady, but because I was president of our corporation too. “So of course, I reacted. I wanted her back. In fact, we have a commitment in Miami that a friend of mine has put up a $10,000 bond on. As you know, somebody is going to suffer if these contracts are broken.” Linda and David Winters * 3. D-I-V-O-R-C-E And so Chuck kept on pursuing Linda, using every trick in the book. Linda wrote about Chuck’s pleas in her autobiography: “Look, I love you and you are my wife,” he said. “I do not think you have sufficient reason to stay separated from me. I was kind enough – and am kind enough – to put up with it for a little bit. I have not given you grounds to stop loving me. And you better not fucking act like I fucking have. I have done nothing wrong. If you go to court with me, you’re going to look like a complete asshole. I haven’t fucking run out on you. I don’t drink. I supported you well. And I’ve taken care of you.” Linda was adamant however, and when she made clear that there was no way she would remain Chuck’s wife, he changed tactics, trying to appeal to her business sense. Now he’d say: “If you don’t want nothing else, just fake it, babe. If you hate my guts, fine, sleep in the next room. But don’t fucking blow the whole business. That’s all I ask.” Whatever Chuck said, Linda wasn’t listening any more. In fact, she wanted nothing to do with him. But Chuck retained an ability to surprise. And just as she was bracing herself for a long, drawn-out divorce battle, all of a sudden, Chuck seemed to have a change of heart. He stopped fighting the divorce and said he was willing to let her go. There was one catch: he just wanted what he was entitled to. He filed papers stating that he alone had made ‘Linda Lovelace’ and thus was about to lose out on substantial contractual agreements like their upcoming Paramount theater show in Miami. He argued that he deserved most everything they had as a couple. Yearning to be free of Chuck, Linda relented and gave it all to him. So Chuck and Linda met at the lawyer’s office and played out the dynamics of their relationship one last time. Chuck recalled: “Linda kept coming on like I was the enemy. I was going to give her a check and started to make it out to Linda Traynor, and she said, “My name’s Linda Lovelace.” I said, “Hey, you’re still my wife, and your name’s Linda Traynor.” But she insisted the check be made out to Linda Lovelace. So I said, ‘Fuck you. It’s going to be Linda Traynor or no check.’” After finalizing the divorce, Linda recalled Chuck turning to her, and for one brief moment, Linda thought she saw a flash of vulnerability: “He said, ‘Just remember that I love you. And if you ever change your mind, I’ll always be there.’ For Linda, it was too little, too late. All that mattered to her was that she was finally going to be free of Chuck Traynor. To celebrate the divorce, Linda went down to the Los Angeles Superior Court, and legally changed her name to Linda Lovelace, finally claiming the only part of her that Chuck wanted to hold on to. Linda, photographed by Milton Greene * 4. Moving On The Traynor divorce may have been final but the legal battles were far from over. Linda’s scheduled show at the Paramount Theater in Miami was under threat – largely because Linda was spending all her time with David Winters. When it was obvious that the rehearsals were going to be delayed, the show’s producer agreed to push back the opening date by a month. But even with the added time, Linda wasn’t ready – or perhaps willing – to go ahead with the performance. So in the end, she decided to break the contract. David suggested that they use illness as the reason, but the organizers weren’t buying it, and they sued Linda Lovelace Enterprises for breach of contract. Rumor was that it was Chuck behind the scenes who was pushing for Linda to be sued. That was only the start of her legal problems. Remember Phil Mandina from the first part of our Svengali series? He was the lawyer who represented Chuck in his 1971 drug smuggling case. The same lawyer Linda said was actually Chuck’s partner in the drug smuggling operation. Well, he’d stuck around. In fact, he’d helped Chuck and Linda set up Linda Lovelace Enterprises and acted as their representative for almost all legal matters. When Linda and Chuck divorced, Chuck encouraged Mandina to sue Linda for nonpayment of legal fees for services rendered in 1973. Linda tried to fight back by revealing sleazy details she knew about Mandina’s past – which didn’t just include being a possible accomplice to drug smuggling. She declared: “The story of Philip J. Mandina is particularly juicy, as intricate as any espionage novel. In fact, his background is an open cesspool. It involves grand larceny, tax dodges, a wealthy heiress, a call girl, and a cast of sleazy secondary characters that would make any TV writer drool.” Linda’s lawyers tried to use the information to discredit Mandina’s legal case against Linda but to no avail. Linda ultimately was ordered to pay $32,000 to settle the case. Linda needed new income streams to pay her bills. She no longer had Chuck making deals for her, so she turned to her boyfriend David Winters. In December 1973, Winters signed a contract for Linda to appear in a touring production of a bedroom farce called ‘Pajama Tops.’ Linda was nervous about signing a long theatrical commitment as she had little acting experience, but she needn’t have been worried: the play closed after just a week due to dismal ticket sales. Next Winters signed Linda up for a tour of college campuses. Linda spoke at 25 schools in the first six months of 1974 for a fee of around $4,000 a pop. In reality, while Linda did the talking, it was actually Winter’s words she was speaking. He’d written a script for her which was essentially a defense of sex films, and included statements like: “We show action and dying in movies, so why can’t we show love? And sex is a part of love, so why can’t we show sex and why can’t we show love? Why is that banned?” While Linda worked the university circuit, Winters was also keen to maintain a profile in Hollywood that they could exploit – and sure enough, Linda was invited to attend the Academy Awards. Linda wanted to make a splashy entrance, so they hired a coach drawn by white horses and accompanied by footmen to take her there. When Linda stepped out onto the red carpet, she was wearing a leopard-skin bikini walking a great Dane. Later that evening they partied at the Playboy mansion – a place they visited regularly, often staying for several nights. But while Winters was working hard to exploit Linda’s name, things weren’t moving fast enough for his liking. So in early 1974, he decided they should make an extended visit to his home country of England. Linda would be a huge hit across the pond, Winters reckoned. Sex comedy films had grown in popularity there, and Brits were hungry for more. ‘Deep Throat’ had been banned from theaters in England, but bootleg copies of the film were still circulating and stories of the film’s popularity in the U.S. were legendary. Linda in London Winters started the trip by contacting the English tabloid, the News of the World, and made a deal for front page coverage of Linda. He invested in a campaign that featured photos of Linda on the back of a London double-decker bus. He even rented two Rolls Royce cars for them to drive around and be seen in – one with a license plate that read ‘penis’, the other emblazoned with ‘womb.’ Tasteful, no? Unfortunately, the PR blitz didn’t make much of an impression, and before long they returned to the States, tails between their legs. Back in California, David tried to secure funding for a production of a comedy about a young inn keeper in the Midwest who murdered her guests and buried them in the backyard. It was a bust – and the play went nowhere. So he came up with another idea: a film called Linda Lovelace for President (1975). The movie’s plot would be simple and fun. Linda would run for president on a platform of free love, touring the country along a route shaped like an erect penis. Er, and that was it. Remarkably, Winters raised $800,000 for the movie and assembled a respectable cast and crew: the screenplay was by a regular writer for ‘Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In.’ The director was well known for his work on ‘I Dream of Jeanie.’ And the supporting cast included comic Chuck McCann, actor and musician Scatman Crothers, and Micky Dolenz of the Monkees. Winters arranged for Linda to get a salary of $125,000 and 15% of the film’s profits. And after convincing Hugh Hefner to devote ten pages in Playboy magazine to the movie, Winters was confident those profits would be sizable. But then the film was released. Reviews appeared quickly and they weren’t kind. Here’s an example from The Boston Globe in early 1975: “’Linda Lovelace for President’ is rated X, presumably for Xcrutiating. This is, without question, the most witless piece of trash ever made, so bad, in word and deed, that its blistering ineptitude outranks any movie I’ve ever seen. And, Miss Lovelace is best when she keeps her mouth shut.” The film didn’t fare better at the box office either, and was a complete financial failure. Winters quickly turned his attention to the next vehicle for Linda. He’d recently met a highly prolific Italian film producer named Ovidio Assonitis who was making a name for himself in B-movies. Ovidio thought Linda would make an ideal leading lady for his next picture, an unofficial sequel to the box-office smash, Emmanuelle (1974). The new softcore film was to be called Forever Emmanuelle (1976) (aka Laure), and Linda Lovelace was cast in the lead role earning a salary of $120,000 while Winters would get a healthy sum as co-executive producer. When the film was released in 1976 however, Linda didn’t feature. Ovidio was contacted in recent years to find out what happened, and he claimed he’d had to fire Linda because of her drug use and for refusing to do any nudity. By now Linda’s relationship with Winters was starting to fall apart. Cracks had started to show as early as January 1974 when Linda and Winters were arrested for cocaine possession in Las Vegas and Linda strongly suspected Winters had set it up for publicity. Linda noticed how easily David spent their money, lavishly rewarding himself for every project he helped put together – whether it was a success or not. She was surprised one day when Winters came home having bought two Bentleys without even consulting her. And then she learned that while his car was purchased, hers was just leased. What made it even worse was that Winters had started to exhibit the same type of controlling behavior that she’d endured so painfully in her previous relationship. Winters started demanding that she do exactly what he wanted. This was obviously a sensitive area for Linda, and so she accused Winters of acting just like Chuck. Winters flatly denied this, but at times his words did sound suspiciously like Chuck. See what you think. This is what Winters said to a friend: “Chuck controlled her in a nasty and terrible way. I controlled her because we had a joint vision – which was to create this incredible movie star and be happy together. She was the product, and I molded her as I wanted her to be.” But in truth, Linda wasn’t the only one growing weary of the relationship. Winters was tired of what he felt was Linda’s childish and petty behavior. He said she never stopped complaining about Chuck, or lamenting that her fame was still tied to ‘Deep Throat’, a cheap pornographic film. Even Sammy Davis, Jr., Linda’s ex-lover, pulled Winters aside one day and put it bluntly: “You’re killing your career, kid. What are you doing? Don’t base your life around her.” The writing was on the wall: Linda’s and Winters’ relationship was on its last legs. Linda, Keith Moon – drummer from The Who, Micky Dolenz from the The Monkees * 5. Trying Again: Chuck Meets Marilyn Chambers So, while Linda was trying to make her own way in life and figure out her relationship with David Winters, where was Chuck? Was he waiting in the wings, pining for Linda, and hoping she’d have a change of heart and come running back to him? Not so much. As soon as Linda grew close to David Winters, Chuck realized that his grip over his former ingénue was slipping. So what was a guy, who’d dedicated years of his life shaping the persona and professional path of his protégé, supposed to do? Publisher and provocateur Al Goldstein interviewed Chuck at this time. and asked this very question. Chuck laid out his views: “I was Linda’s, of course, manager and agent, and sort of over-looker. So I had to keep an eye out on the horizon for who was coming up in the business. And the only person that I could see, that looked like they were gonna come on pretty strong, was Marilyn.” Marilyn Chambers The ‘Marilyn’ Chuck is referring to is Marilyn Chambers. She’d become a break-out adult star thanks to the film Behind the Green Door (1972), produced by Jim and Artie Mitchell. The Mitchell Brothers had jumped into the porn business head-first in the late 1960s, opening the infamous O’Farrell Theatre in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. Marilyn became the personification of their success and a nationally famous figure. Artie and Jim Mitchell Back to Chuck: “This was about the time Linda met David Winters and decided she was gonna be a big legitimate actress, dancer, and whatnot. And I could see things happening, so I was talking to Marilyn on the phone, Marilyn knew who I was by reputation. And Linda walked out one day about noon time and I called Marilyn about 1 o’clock and she arrived in Los Angeles… 24 hours later. And I just said, “This is the situation. This is the way I operate.” she said, ‘Fine.’” Marilyn Chambers had started life as Marilyn Briggs, a 19-year-old aspiring actress originally from a middle-class family. As Marilyn later shared in an interview with journalist Geraldo Rivera, she’d always wanted to perform: Marilyn: “Well I first started in this business when I was about 15 years old. I started communicating into New York from Westport Connecticut.” Geraldo: “A very staid, respectable community in Connecticut – a suburb of New York really.” Marilyn: “Right. And I was with about four modeling agencies. And I did a lot of print work – the Ivory Snow box – when I was about 18 I did that. I did a Clairol commercial, Pepsi generation, that kind of thing. I did a lot of television…television work. And I was in a film called ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ (1970).” Geraldo: “With Barbara Streisand…” Marilyn: “Yeah. And at that time I was going to acting school in New York for about a year and a half. And uh Columbia Pictures sent me out to California to do a publicity tour for ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’. And I really fell in love with California. And I decided to move out there – San Francisco. But to my dismay, San Francisco was kind of a… It was a very hip place but it certainly wasn’t the place for an entertainer to be looking for work. So I read an ad in the newspaper one day, hoping I could find a movie part… Geraldo: “What did the ad say? This I have to hear.” Marilyn: “’Now casting for a major motion picture.’ Oh, this is my… this is my spot. So I went down and met the Mitchell Brothers. They explained the whole story to me. And I really like the story. About that time in my life, I really decided that instead of being another starlet around Hollywood, you know, who gets lost in the stampede, I thought this is going to be the ‘in thing’ – you know I really had that feeling that this is the way that films were turning.” Marilyn Chambers ‘Behind the Green Door’ became one of the highest grossing adult movies of the era and Marilyn, motivated and ambitious, was keen to capitalize on the film’s success. Together with Linda Lovelace, Marilyn Chambers was the most famous adult film star of the era. But whether Chuck approached Marilyn or Marilyn approached Chuck is unclear. Author John Hubner, who profiled the Mitchell Brothers, claimed it was Chuck who pursued Marilyn, reinforcing Chuck’s alpha-male persona. Hubner wrote: “Chuck had approached Marilyn Chambers while he and Linda were still married. After he and Linda split up, Chuck began pursuing Marilyn in earnest. Marilyn finally agreed to meet Chuck while on a trip to New York, and Chuck had a limo waiting for her at the airport. Basically, Chuck convinced Marilyn Chambers that he, better than anyone else in the business, knew how to appeal to the eternal twenty-one-year-old lurking within all men.” But Marilyn later declared it was actually the other way around, and that it was she who was the one who set her sights on Chuck: “It was my mission to find Chuck Traynor. I had to find him, had to get this guy. And I wanted him to become my manager because I wanted him to do for me what he did for Linda. My whole life I wanted to be Ann-Margaret, that’s all. I love Ann-Margaret. And that’s who I wanted to be. And I figured Linda was going to get there first. I thought, I’ll be darned if I’m going to let that happen. So I said to Chuck, ‘I really want to meet you.’” Whomever initiated contact, at this point, as we know, Linda had already started publicly sharing troubling details of her life with Chuck, painting him as cruel and sadistic, a master manipulator. That didn’t deter Marilyn however – she still wanted to meet him, driven by a youthful naiveté that was a combination of ambition and curiosity. During her first meeting with Chuck though, she did look for signs of the abuser that Linda described. This is how she remembered their first encounter: “Chuck and I got along really well. And I’m thinking, ‘Why are these people saying these horrible things about him? He’s a really nice guy. He’s one of the most intelligent, soft people I’ve ever met in my life. He’s really on the ball. We stayed up all night talking. And he didn’t try to put the move on me at all, which was like “Thank you, Jesus!” He was very much a gentleman.” So Chuck and Marilyn hit it off from the start, and it didn’t take long for them to agree to form a partnership. Chuck asked his long-time lawyer Phil Mandina to draw up paperwork formalizing the collaboration, and brought it to Marilyn with the expectation that she’d sign then and there. But while Marilyn may have been young, she was no easy mark. She looked it over, made a bunch of red-line edits, and renegotiated her stake in the partnership. Chuck – equal parts irritated and impressed – wasn’t used to this independence from his days with Linda. Nevertheless he signed, and Chambers-Traynor Enterprises was launched. Just as quickly as Marilyn and Chuck formed a working relationship, they started a romantic one as well. In truth they were both seeing other people at the time: Marilyn was still married to a bag-pipe playing street musician back in San Francisco, and Chuck had started dating Jayne Mansfield’s daughter, Jayne Marie. No matter, from the night they signed their agreement, Marilyn went back to Chuck’s place and moved in. Now that they had both a business partnership and a romantic relationship, Marilyn made her goals explicit: “I told Chuck I didn’t want to do erotic films my whole life. I wanted to do a couple of them – and then get out of it. Like I said, I wanted to be Ann-Margaret. I want to be able to make my own decisions, to know exactly where the money’s going, where to put it, how not to get ripped off in taxes by the government. In short, I didn’t want to be a star – I wanted to be a superstar.” By this time, Marilyn already had another adult feature film under her belt – Resurrection of Eve (1973), another Mitchell Brother’s production. Chuck agreed with Marilyn: if they wanted her to break into the mainstream, they needed to start diversifying away from the adult industry. And because of his experience with Linda, Chuck had the perfect vehicle in mind: Marilyn should star in her own variety stage show. To set this up, Chuck needed to secure financing, and for that, he turned to one of his old contacts, Lou Perry aka Lou Peraino – the producer of ‘Deep Throat’ and son of Colombo crime family member Anthony Peraino. Lou was skeptical at first: he wondered if Chuck had another Linda Lovelace on his hands – a woman with a sexual gimmick, sure, but light on talent. But then Marilyn auditioned for Lou by performing a song and dance routine, and he was genuinely impressed, exclaiming “Would you believe that the girl has never had formal training in her life?! This girl has talent!” Chuck also introduced Marilyn to Sammy Davis Jr., eager to show off Marilyn’s abilities, and see how Sammy could help. Marilyn was understandably nervous about performing in front of such a legendary talent as Sammy, but she needn’t have worried. As she remembered when they went to see him after a performance: “Sammy came down from a show by cooking and having sex. He was kinky. Sexually, he was into everything. He’d call and say, ‘Come up to the suite after the show, I’m cooking chili.’” The night would inevitably end in an orgy. Sammy was rumored to have put Marilyn’s latest show together, but when Chuck was later asked by a reporter how much Sammy had been involved, he predictably took credit for it himself. Chuck said: “My dear friend Sammy Davis Jr. gave me a few pointers, but I was the guy who put this act together.” Marilyn, with Rip Torn (left) Just as he’d done with Linda, Chuck told Marilyn exactly what projects she should take on to increase her marketability. In fact, Chuck went further and told her how she should behave. She remembered his instructions in the following way: “Chuck wanted to create a fantasy where I was untouchable to the people that I was around, but on screen, he wanted me to be very touchable. He said that any star should be a mystery and a fantasy. That’s why guys want her – because they don’t know that she farts and that she is a regular person. Chuck told me, ‘Always give people what they don’t expect.’” One example of this was that Chuck insisted that any time Marilyn ordered room service at a hotel, she answer the door naked and offer the attendant oral sex in place of a tip. Chuck said he wanted to “create an image of a totally uninhibited sexual creature who would be happy being anything you wanted her to be.” By December 1973, Marilyn’s stage show – which Chuck titled ‘Skin ‘n’ Grin’ – was ready for a trial run. With Lou Perry’s help, Chuck landed a three-week engagement at the Capital Theater in Passaic, New Jersey. The show opened with Marilyn, clad in a rhinestone-studded costume, singing covers, including “Satisfaction,” “Let the Good Times Roll,” “Green Door,” “Light My Fire,” and “Johnny B. Goode.” The show also included appearances by adult stars Harry Reems and Marc Stevens. Marilyn on stage Unlike Linda’s shows with David Winters, the reviews for Marilyn’s were pretty good. One reviewer wrote: “Marilyn did not disappoint in her valiant job of singing and dancing. Stepping out of a huge mock-up of an Ivory Snow carton dressed in purity white, she gradually stripped down to bra and tights for the finale, when singing and swinging like an old man’s vision of teenage lust, before she disappeared through a green door.” The theatrical run ran its course and did well, but as with most productions that Chuck had a hand in, this one wasn’t without its problems. In this case, he ended up suing the theater owners claiming Marilyn wasn’t properly paid for her performances. The owners counter-sued, stating Chambers failed to live up to the publicity terms of her contract. The matter was ultimately settled out of court. In early 1974, they put on the show again, this time at the Riverboat Restaurant in New York, located at the base of the Empire State Building. The New York reviews weren’t as stellar, with one critic writing, “if she wants to go on working in clubs as a star attraction, I suggest she get herself a trapeze again” – referring to the famous sex scene which was at the center of ‘Behind the Green Door’. Marilyn backstage But not everyone was underwhelmed by Marilyn’s talent. When the Riverboat engagement closed, Chuck was contacted by Maynard Sloate, the entertainment director at the Union Plaza hotel in Las Vegas. Sloate was staging a comedy called ‘Mind with the Dirty Man’ that featured a porn-star character, and he was interested in casting Marilyn. In truth, Sloate had contacted Linda Lovelace first, but after being turned down, he opted for the only other porn star he’d heard of. After some negotiation, Chuck and Marilyn agreed to the play and decided to settle in Las Vegas. They bought a ranch just outside of the city and Marilyn began rehearsing the comedy which would premiere in October 1974. Everyone involved was optimistic though unsure of how the production would be received. After all, this was Vegas – home of the big glitzy shows and it would be difficult to compete with many of them. Maynard Sloate himself was cautious, and only set up a three-month run. Much to everyone’s relief, and thanks in large part to heavy promotion featuring Marilyn, the show was popular from the first night. Suddenly everything was golden in Chuck and Marilyn’s world. Offers flowed in and lucrative opportunities presented themselves each day. Chuck decided they should publish a tell-all ‘autobiography’ of Marilyn, just as he had done with Linda. And, as with ‘Inside Linda Lovelace’, Chuck had a heavy hand in writing it. In truth, the resulting book, titled Marilyn Chambers, My Story, was a quick and dirty effort just like Linda’s autobiography had been. Predictably Marilyn’s dedication on the first page paid tribute to the eternal Svengali in the shadows: “To Chuck, my Traynor and constant companion,” it read. “Thanks for making my life so beautiful!” Meanwhile Chuck was about to sign another contract with Marilyn. In December 1974, Chuck and Marilyn got married in Las Vegas, with Sammy Davis Jr. as best man. Their decision to get married is interesting in light of how Marilyn – or Chuck – ends the book: “People ask if Chuck and I are going to get married. Sure. Of course not. Definitely. Never. The truth is, we don’t know. Marriage isn’t a big thing for us, and if we do it, it will be for very private reasons and it will be done in a very private way. Right now, we like the way we’re living and have no desire to change it, but who knows how we’ll feel next week? I love Chuck, I love making him happy, love pleasing him… And he loves me. And does it really matter if I’m married? Mrs. Chuck Traynor or not, I’ll always be your girl next door.” Chuck’s public take on their nuptials was a little less romantic. Asked by ‘Time’ magazine why he’d gone from being married to Linda to marrying Marilyn so quickly, Chuck said: “You gotta trade in your old car when it can’t make the hills.” To which Marilyn responded: “I just hope I’m never your old car.” Marilyn and Chuck Instead of a honeymoon, Chuck and Marilyn went on a national book tour to promote the book ‘Marilyn Chambers, My Story’. They did make a pit-stop in Canada before they kicked off the tour. They were there to negotiate a deal to co-publish a book with Xaviera Hollander, the sixth in the Happy Hooker’s pulpy paperback series. This range, breath, and pace of their activities would come to define Chuck and Marilyn’s partnership. There were TV talk-show appearances. More plays like ‘The Last of the Red Hot Lovers’. Stage shows at venues like Caesars Palace. Parts in mainstream films like David Cronenberg’s ‘Rabid’ (more on that later). And a return to adult films, including the ‘Insatiable’ series about an orphaned heiress with a voracious sexual appetite. She sold shares of her body to fans. She posed for men’s magazines including Genesis, Playboy, and Club. She sang with a country band called “Haywire”. She even released a disco song titled ‘Benihana’ to capitalize on the popularity of adult film star Andrea True’s chart topper ‘More, More, More’. In short Chuck and Marilyn worked hard to maximize their commercial opportunities. And Chuck was doing what he’d always wanted to do with Linda – exploiting his wife’s talents for her benefit – and for his. But as much as they made hay while the sun shone, the specter of ‘Deep Throat’ still continued to linger – and sometimes it was downright scary. * 6. The Return of ‘Deep Throat’ On July 7, 1974, ‘Deep Throat’ star Harry Reems was awakened by a knock at the door of his Chelsea apartment in New York. Reems remembered: “I looked through the peephole and there were three guys holding guns and FBI badges.” Harry Reems and a collection of mobsters involved in the production or distribution of ‘Deep Throat’ were being indicted in a Memphis federal court for conspiracy to transport obscene material across state lines. The prosecution’s choice of Memphis as a venue was both cynical and creative. Logically since the film was being distributed from New York, and since most of the defendants lived there, New York would have been the natural location for a trial. But to win the case, the government had to show that ‘Deep Throat’ was offensive – and have you ever tried to offend a New Yorker? Chuck was called as a witness, but Linda, ‘Deep Throat’s star, was not. Along with Gerard Damiano, the film’s director, she was granted immunity in exchange for her testimony behind closed doors. As for the prosecutor, that was an up-and-coming assistant U.S. attorney named Larry Parrish. He was clear about his position in the interviews he granted before the case went to trial: “My own personal inclinations are much more strict than the law. From the time I was a little child, I went to church. I rarely missed a Sunday, even in college. I never lost my devotion to Christ or my sincere belief in the Bible and in Scripture. I teach Bible class, mostly to adults. I’m an elder of my church, the First Evangelical Church. If you want to know why I am a prosecutor, you can read Romans 13.” For those unfamiliar with scripture, that particular Bible verse is a warning to sinners that God has appointed ministers on earth to carry out His wrath against them. On April 30, 1976, the Memphis jury found all the Deep Throat defendants guilty. A number of the distributors went to jail, including Chuck’s friend and associate, Lou Peraino. Harry Reems immediately appealed, retaining lawyer Alan Dershowitz. To raise money for his defense, Harry was the beneficiary of fundraisers thrown by the likes of Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson. These famed celebrities claimed Harry’s conviction would have a chilling effect on their profession – and on the First Amendment protection of freedom of speech. Harry’s conviction was finally overturned a year later, though not before Harry had become an alcoholic largely as a result of the stress. Consuming as much as half a gallon of vodka a day and blacking out for months at a time, he contemplated suicide. Harry ultimately was able to free himself of his depression and addiction, but it took years. Chuck, on the other hand, escaped from the trials unscathed. But he was about to be tried in the court of public opinion. Harry Reems, with Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty * 7. Ordeal While Chuck was successfully developing Marilyn Chambers’ career, Linda Lovelace was having difficulty moving on with her life. Her relationship with David Winters had finally ended and she was now broke. She was however owed large sums of money from activities that Winters had contracted for her, and so she was in need of help to collect the money due to her. On a trip back to Florida to see her parents, Linda spent time with her sister Jean and Jean’s ex-boyfriend, a guy named Larry Marchiano. Linda had met Larry years previously in New York when he was dating Jean. Linda liked and trusted Larry, so when she found out that Larry was between jobs, Linda asked him to return with her to California to help her recover the money she was owed. Larry liked the idea, and he liked it even more when Linda took him to see Sammy Davis Jr. perform in Miami, and Sammy handed Larry a $5k gift to help Linda out. So Linda and Larry returned together to L.A. and Larry spent most of 1975 trying to help Linda turn her finances around – with limited success. At the end of the year, Larry accompanied Linda on a national tour to promote ‘Linda Lovelace for President’, and it was on this tour that Linda and Larry’s relationship turned from friendly to romantic. By 1976, the two were married and pregnant. Despite Larry’s efforts however, they were still struggling financially as Linda’s career had stalled, so the couple decided to return to New York and settle on Long Island where Larry could find a regular 9-5 job. In 1977, Linda gave birth to a son. Her domestic life was happy, and though Larry was able to pick up occasional construction work, for the most part, income was still limited so the family went on public assistance. Linda and Larry Money became such a problem, they hatched an idea: they reached out to a lawyer named Victor Yannacone who had helped them collect some of the money that Linda was owed. They asked Victor if there was an opportunity to sue Chuck and claw back some of the money he’d made off Linda’s back at the expense of her pain and suffering. Yannacone was straight with them: he didn’t think that was likely. He told them he couldn’t see a path to pursue criminal or civil charges, but he had another idea: he suggested that Linda write another autobiography. This time it should be a serious memoir, he said. He argued that Linda could make her case against Chuck to the public. It was a compelling story, and they could earn some money while doing so. Linda and Larry liked the idea, so Yannacone introduced them to a journalist and author named Mike McGrady. McGrady remembers first hearing the pitch: “When I heard about the idea, it was the result of her lawyer speaking to my lawyer and saying, “Gee, I know this woman who’s living in great poverty, they’re eating dog food. They don’t have two nickels to rub together. And her name is Linda Lovelace.” McGrady was no stranger to writing about sex: he’d gained notoriety several years earlier when he orchestrated the writing and publication of a book titled Naked Came The Stranger. The idea for that book was simple: McGrady wanted to exploit and point a finger at America’s obsession with vulgarity, so he pulled together 24 of his Newsday colleagues to each write a sexual vignette that he then collectively published under the alluring author name, Penelope Ashe. Rather than being considered ridiculous however, the book became a huge success, and spent thirteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Radley Metzger’s film adaptation of ‘Naked Came The Stranger’ When Yannacone first floated the idea of writing a book with Linda Lovelace, McGrady wasn’t convinced. But like many others, once McGrady met Linda he was taken by her warm and authentic personality. So the two decided to jointly write Linda’s third autobiography and split any income that the book produced. McGrady said the book was fairly straightforward to write – even if Larry Marchiano was a disruptive presence: Larry insisted on being there all the time, and McGrady had no choice. If anyone was in any doubt as to the tone the story would have, the book’s title made the book’s content very clear: it was called Ordeal, and the majority of the book’s vitriol was predictably aimed at Chuck. It ended with the following cautionary note: “How can you identify a Chuck Traynor? The answer: You can’t. It could happen to me and it could happen to you. I knew that God would one day show me the way to get away from Chuck and that’s what kept me going and accepting all the things that had happened. I put my faith in God and got through it.” In painful detail, Linda described her abusive relationship with Chuck and how he coerced her into making ‘Deep Throat’ – but she expressed anger against other men in her life too. David Winters was described as someone primarily interested in her bank account, and Linda also apportioned some blame to Sammy Davis Jr., saying he used her and didn’t truly help her when she needed it most. With the book complete, McGrady needed to find a publisher. He was turned down by over thirty who clearly didn’t have the stomach for a story of sexual violence against a porn star. He finally got some interest from a company called Citadel Press. The Citadel guys liked the story, but didn’t want to commit to publication unless Linda passed a polygraph test first. So a test was hurriedly arranged, and it was administered by a former FBI agent who had extensive experience in the field. Linda passed with flying colors. Citadel were relieved and declared themselves to be fully onboard. They clearly felt that they had a potential sensation on their hands if they marketed it correctly, and so to prepare for the book’s release, the publisher leaked the contents to gossip columnist Liz Smith in November 1979, who started to whip up salacious stories in the newspapers. When news of the book’s pending publication reached Chuck, he did two things. Firstly, he got his lawyer Phil Mandina to kick off a libel suit against Linda. It was an unsuccessful tactic: Linda’s attorney, Victor Yannacone countersued on Linda’s behalf seeking significant damages for kidnapping and bondage, so Chuck dropped the idea. Then Chuck decided if he couldn’t beat them, he could join them, so he contacted Mike McGrady to propose that Mike write Chuck’s side of the story. Chuck even had a title for it: ‘Training Women.’ McGrady couldn’t believe Chuck’s brazen attempt, and declined the invitation. * 8. Chuck (and Marilyn Chambers and the General Public) vs. Linda (and the Feminists) And so, in January 1980, ‘Ordeal’ was finally published. To help sell the book, Linda went on several TV talk shows to promote it. Question: “Why would Chuck Traynor always have to involve you with people that he would want to be involved with. Have you ever thought about that – why he couldn’t simply leave you at home?” Linda: “No. I was an object to him. I was what he considered the most perfect woman. A superfreak, always wanting to do some kind of perverted sex.” Linda didn’t expect that she’d be met with universal sympathy, but she still had a rude awakening. As she shared stories of her abuse at Chuck’s hands and its role in her porn participation, she was met by victim-blaming masked as skepticism. Question: “I had always heard that to be hypnotized you had to be willing?” Question: “Is there something about the way you were raised that made you vulnerable to this?” Questions: “I still find it very hard to believe that you have become a changed person?” Question: “I can’t understand how you were forced into it through lust. How the hell did you manage to smile?” Linda: “I wasn’t forced into it through lust. I was forced into it through daily beatings, physical beatings, physical abuse. It became a choice – smile or die. And I decided to live.” One particularly dated example of the way Linda was treated occurred on Phil Donahue’s interview show which aired on Valentine’s Day in 1980. Donahue set the tone by calling ‘Ordeal’ “the grimmest book I’ve ever read in my life.” After Donahue interviewed Linda, his audience began aggressively questioning her claims. Donahue summed up their doubts, saying: “The audience is having a hard time understanding how you could be so helpless. You’re blaming other people and not taking responsibility on your own.” Linda was disappointed but unsurprised at the audience’s response. She told a journalist: “I expect people not to believe me. Catholic girl, policeman’s daughter, living in a house where the pin money came from Tupperware parties. The easiest thing for people to do in society when faced with something unpleasant is to say, ‘I just don’t believe it.’” Some people saw what was happening and weren’t as willing to accept this type of reaction. They sided with Linda, and one of them was renowned feminist and publisher Gloria Steinem who reached out directly to Linda. Interviewer: How do Linda Lovelace and Gloria Steinem join forces? How do the two of you get together? Gloria Steinem: I saw Linda on the Phil Donahue show and she was being questioned by Phil – who I think usually is a more sensitive questioner than he was this time – and by the audience with enormous disbelief. And yet she was still being asked what in her background had led her to become essentially a hostage. Interviewer: What did lead you to become a hostage if we can now ask the question – does it go back to your childhood that you were a susceptible person? Gloria Steinem: But see now what you’re doing…you’re doing what made me so angry. We don’t say to the hostages in Iran what in your background led you to be in that embassy… Interviewer: But the situations aren’t nearly comparable, Gloria. Gloria Steinem: They are. It’s force. Linda with Gloria Steinem Steinem introduced Linda to fellow feminist Andrea Dworkin who in turn introduced her to Catharine MacKinnon. Dworkin and MacKinnon were founding members of an influential organization called Women Against Pornography. The group believed all pornography exploited and oppressed women, and so they worked to educate the public and lobby politicians about its dangers. The irony was that when Dworkin and MacKinnon first met Linda, they too questioned her in detail about her version of the story. But their reason was different from the interviews that Linda had gone through: they were keen to see if there was an opportunity to take some kind of legal redress for Linda. Dworkin later recalled it was a difficult first encounter: “I want to tell you, you don’t want the two of us questioning you. It was another ordeal for Linda.” The two feminists spent a good amount of time with Linda over the next couple of years before deciding to help Linda bring a legal claim against Chuck alleging that he’d violated Linda’s civil rights. They wanted to start by enlisting Linda in an anti-pornography campaign, believing nothing could add more legitimacy to their cause than the world’s best known porn star denouncing the industry. The problem with this tactic was that Linda hadn’t exactly been an eloquent or staunch anti-pornography crusader so far. Don’t forget, this was Linda in an earlier interview at the height of her fame: “I don’t think anybody should regulate anything. I don’t believe in censorship…That’s taking away your freedom. That’s taking away your individual right to make up your own mind for things. And the last person that started censorship was Adolph Hitler, and look what happened there.” Now however Linda had to change her tune, but what’s interesting is that at first she didn’t so much blame pornography but rather, she said her issues were Chuck’s fault. Here’s Linda being interviewed by chat show host, Tom Snyder: Tom Snyder: “What about some of the people in the pornographic industry? I’ve had them on this program, Gerry Damiano has been on this program, Al Goldstein has been on this program, Hugh Hefner has been on this program, Larry Flint has been here. And they all talk in lofty terms of the First Amendment, the public’s right to see, representing the kind of entertainment that a certain segment of the population wants. And when you sit here and talk about it, it’s very sterile, it’s antiseptic, and it sounds good. Speaking generally, what kind of people are there in the pornographic industry, what kind of values do they have, and what kind of men and women are they? Linda: “Well, I can only really relate to Chuck Traynor. If he’s an example of the typical pornographic people, I don’t think they really have the right or the mentality to make the decisions of what’s healthy for the public to view.” Eventually MacKinnon and Dworkin convinced Linda that they needed her support if anti-pornography legislation was going to help other women avoid the abuse Linda had endured. So Linda changed her position again, and this time, expressed a new more anti-pornography stance: “Most people in the States or probably even here don’t really know what goes on in pornography. And I felt it very important to take a stand and let people know that pornography was not a victimless crime, and to speak up and set the record straight as to what happened to me.” The feminists declared themselves happy with Linda’s support. Andrea Dworkin: Well initially her role was to be an apologist for pornography and to make people believe that women liked it and had a good time in it. And her repudiation of that really tore open a window into the world of pornography that most people had never had before. Susan Brownmiller: It was amazing to us because you know we had our feminist theory, our feminist analysis, and it’s one thing you know to hear from a feminist who’s saying these women aren’t enjoying this at all – they can’t possibly be, you know? And it’s quite another thing to see such a famous figure of the pornography world come forward and say, “I did not enjoy it. The whole thing was a lie.” Ultimately however the case that the Women Against Pornography group had hoped to bring against Chuck was shelved when they felt it would be too difficult to win. Meanwhile, in the face of Linda’s public appearances, a number of women who worked in adult film came forward to defend the industry. Some, like adult star Gloria Leonard, called Linda an “Aaron Burr” who did a “traitorous turn to the adult industry.” Others, like porn film performer and producer Candida Royalle, aimed their anger at Women Against Pornography: “It infuriated me that Women against Pornography would take this deeply troubled, traumatized woman and just basically use her for their movement.” Everyone will have a different opinion on the views expressed, but at the end of the day, there was no doubt that the controversy was great for Linda’s book sales. ‘Ordeal’ made it to the New York Times bestseller list and provided Linda with some much-needed income. And predictably, the book’s success spurred her and McGrady to write a follow-up autobiography a few years later, this time titled Out of Bondage. McGrady was honest about the reason he got involved again – and it was all related to money: “Because the first book had done so well, it was like when someone does a movie and it makes a hundred million dollars, they want to do a part II. That’s pretty much what happened here.” If anything, ‘Out of Bondage’ went further than ‘Ordeal’: instead of just focusing on Linda’s abuse at Chuck’s hands, this time she also strongly denounced her participation in the adult industry, a theme reinforced by the fact that Gloria Steinem wrote the new book’s Foreword. But even Steinem’s name couldn’t do much to drive book sales this time. The reading audience recognized it was largely a rehash of her first effort with McGrady, and ‘Out of Bondage’ was only a modest success at best. It seemed like the public had finally tired of Linda’s story. And what about Chuck? What did he make of the fact that Linda was raking him over the coals in a bestselling book years after they had split up? Chuck viewed most situations in terms of whether he could make money from it, so his first reaction was to book himself and Marilyn into multiple interviews across television and print. When asked about the fact that Linda was now repudiating the adult film business, Chuck brought up Linda’s pliable nature: “I have no idea what she said or how she campaigned against porn. I think it was totally ridiculous that she did it. I don’t know who she was trying to please. She was traveling in a different circle, different people. Meeting different people, “oh, now could you do that.” And, you know, particularly when she got in with the women’s libbers – which I think they should all be bent over the London Bridge. But um, I think that’s what the problem was.” Regarding Linda’s continued allegations that he abused her, Chuck stuck to his usual defense in a pretty vicious interview with Al Goldstein: “Well I was the dominant figure, she was a submissive figure. So if it reached a point where dominance had to take over then dominance took over. She was pretty dumb. So everything she did she had to be told how to do it and when to do it and why she was doing it. It just kind of rolled along like that. “If you threaten somebody and you pick up a phone there’s a thing called aggravated assault. Conspiracy to commit aggravated assault. She knew that. Like I said, I never got arrested for anything.” Al Goldstein: “Chuck, you are famous in so many ways. The real word is infamous. And every time I debate this Page Mellish who’s a feminist, every time I go against say Susan Brownmiller, Andrea Dworkin, Gloria Steinem, all these feminists who salivate at the sight and the thought of a cock or of people fucking and liking it. Your name is used. You are Freddy. You are the boogeyman. You are everything vile and conner to those feminists. Now, I know you think they’re right as I do. The real point is that in Linda Lovelace’s book “Ordeal”, you are held out as a book and wild, as a Nazi, as the bitch of book and wild, as everything vile because you made Linda Lovelace enter the world of pornography. You beat her. You kidnapped her. Would you give us your response to all these charges I’ve heard leveled against you for years now?” Chuck: “Well, I’m probably guilty, I guess. I don’t know. Her and I got along good until she met a fellow named David Winters, and then David and Linda got along good until she met somebody else, and it just kinda moved from one to the other…” “Linda of course I guess decided to capitalize. She tried to stay in the business for a long time after her and I broke up, trying to make herself a big porno star. When that didn’t work, I think she just decided to join the other team. And so you know she says what people want to hear and the people that want to believe it believe it. And the ones that don’t want to believe it don’t believe it. And there’s a middle group of people that call me up and say ‘I’m gonna send you my old lady for six months, get her trained.” Al Goldstein: This is Al Goldstein for Midnight Blue. Chuck Traynor is one of the stand-up guys in the business. Linda Lovelace and her book Ordeal who slams him is full of shit. Linda did what she did ’cause she wanted to, Linda will blame everybody for everything and never take responsibility ’cause she’s a little girl and a dumb cunt. And Chuck Traynor is a real man.” While Marilyn Chambers never went after Linda as personally as Al Goldstein did, she was on hand to vigorously defend Chuck. After all, she was asked, if Chuck had been so abusive to Linda, surely he must have been abusive to her too? “For me, it’s been terrific, I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for Chuck. And he’s about the nicest guy, sorry, Chuck to ruin your reputation, [chuckle] that I’ve ever met. And what Linda wrote, horrible things in her book about him. Personally, I’ve never met Linda, so I can’t say too much against her, ’cause that wouldn’t be fair. But from what I know and the people that knew them when they were together, none of it is true.” So was Marilyn standing by her man because she was being coerced, the same way Linda had been when Deep Throat was released? Or would she too live to regret knowing Chuck? * Find out next time on the seventh and final episode of Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story. * The post Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story: Part 6, The Marilyn Chambers Years, Podcast 136 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

F.M Bradley died last month just a few weeks shy of his 70th birthday. I can’t say I was surprised – Bradley had been in a nursing home ever since I found him in 2021 after years of looking. He was bedridden, and we had a few false starts before we finally settled down for our interview due to his ill health. But even though he was unable to walk, whenever we’d video chat it was easy to see the handsome, strapping man who’d made hundreds of films and loops back in the 80s. After our interview, we kept in touch. I’d occasionally send him the Chips Ahoy chunky chocolate chip cookies he loved. He wore an expression on his face more like that of a young man at the beginning of life versus a patient on the precipice of his end. Bradley talked about making an adult film come back when he got out of the care facility, convinced he would in fact get out and get back. He had someone he called his lady friend who visited him regularly even as his Russian roommate blared his TV 24/7. Bradley had his down days, but mostly he was a man of hope – just as he’d been all his life. I often start a Rialto Report excited to hear how someone felt and what they thought when they got into the adult business, but soon become even more interested in their life now – how they’ve carried their choices and experiences and make sense of them today. It was no different with F.M. Bradley. We titled his interview ‘Hiding in Plain Sight’ because while nobody seemed to know where he was, Bradley certainly wasn’t trying to hide. In fact he occasionally attended adult events, trying to launch his comeback.  We may not be able to see Bradley now, but we can always remember him. So let’s do that. -April Hall The episode running time is 90 minutes. _________________________________________________________________________________ F.M Bradley Let’s admit something: as much as the so-called golden age of adult film was a glamorous era, where sex movies competed with Hollywood blockbusters in theaters across the country, it wasn’t the most racially diverse workplace for a male performer. There was Johnnie Keyes, the African American star of Behind the Green Door in the early 1970s. There was Billy Dee, an accomplished mixed-race actor, who became a well-known face in the late 1970s. And then… that’s about it. Which is striking for a new industry that employed hundreds of people and made millions of dollars. In the 1980s, this trend continued. Which made someone like Field Marshal Bradley stand out. The Field Marshal, who went by the name F.M., was a towering presence. He looked like a black superman. A striking figure of strength. He displayed a muscular, cut body that always seemed shiny. He was the number one star of color, when that should have meant a lot more. Over the years, I’d heard stories about F.M. Bradley. He was the eternal bad boy, living out a wild life. He’d occasionally turned up at conventions saying he was about to make a comeback in the business. He didn’t seem to have a permanent address, and no one had his contact details. Many doubted he was still alive. And then I heard he’d been spotted – in a convalescent home in Vegas. Struggling with ill-health. He wasn’t even well enough do an interview. But we kept talking over several years, and eventually recorded an interview. Now this particular convalescent home wasn’t well-equipped for interviews with stars of the X-rated film industry, and so our conversation took place with the TV in the background, and people coming and going. We’d get interrupted constantly – such as when it was time to for F.M. to give his dinner order. I wanted to know what it had been like to be one of the few male performers of color in the 1980s. Where had he come from, and what was he doing now? And why was this one-time Superman now in a home? This is April Hall – and this is The Rialto Report. It’s not every day I get to interview a Field Marshal.                         The post F.M. Bradley: Hiding in Plain Sight – Podcast 113 – Reprise appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Michael Findlay was a young New Yorker, fascinated with film and the mechanics behind it. Julian Marsh was his alter ego, a movie director possessed with a singular twisted vision. Richard Jennings was a sadistic, deranged movie character, one-eyed, confined to a wheelchair, and hell bent on revenge. The films Michael Findlay made seemed to be so single-minded, unique, and personal, that they begged the question, how much were these three characters actually the same person? And what role did Roberta, Michael’s wife and partner, play in making the movies? In the last episode, I spoke to Roberta to find out how her early life shaped her. Was there anything in her background that explained the Flesh trilogy, the black and white 1960s sex and sadism films that they made? I learned of her insular Jewish upbringing, a violent father, pressure to become a concert pianist, and an abusive relationship with a psychologist. Roberta minimized her actual involvement in the films, insisting that any role she had was somewhere between coincidental and non-existent, but questions remained. So who was Michael Findlay? What shaped him, what was the damage in his past that Roberta referred to, what caused it, and how much of it resulted in the films that he made? This podcast is 36 minutes long. ————————————————————————— Someone once said that if you want to reveal the truth, you write fiction. But if you want to tell a lie, you write a biography. So how do you start to tell someone’s story who you’ve never met and has been dead for almost fifty years? How do you get to know them, understand them, and get inside their aches, drives, and desires? Start with the basic facts. Establish an overview of a life like a chalk outline of a dead body at a crime scene. A silhouette profile that establishes what is already known. Michael Findlay was born in 1937 in New York. He made a number of notorious 1960s low-budget movies that combined sex and violence in imaginative and sadistic ways. And he died in 1977 when he was decapitated by a helicopter on the roof of the Pan Am Building in Manhattan – a grotesque end that could have come straight out of one of his films. After the basic facts, dig deeper into echoes of the past. Chase memories, the architecture of our identity. After all, the life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living. So seek the survivors, anyone who guards recollections that may reveal deeper truths. In Michael’s case, few people remain who knew him in his formative years, and some of those who still live choose to preserve their silence: many years have passed after all, and for them, the past is a silent setting, a place of reference not a place of residence. But keep looking, ask enough people, and a story emerges. * Michael Findlay was born in Manhattan on August 27, 1937, just a short distance from Roberta, his future wife’s childhood home in the Bronx. In truth, it was a million miles away from her airless, bookish, piano-playing, indoor Jewish upbringing. Michael was the product of a Celtic union: his father, James Findlay, was a Scot, a tall, good-looking bear of a man, born in Aberdeen in 1900, and product of the local, hard-scrabble shipbuilding yards on the cold, eastern coast of the land. Findlay senior, charming, outgoing, and popular, had little schooling but was keenly intelligent, a reader, and a collector of intellectual ephemera. Later in life, Roberta remembered him polishing off the daily New York Times crossword in under ten minutes, a source of amazement to her as she needed at least thirteen. James spent his youth traveling the old country in his tartan, avoiding conscription to the Great War, taking hard labor temporary jobs, and dreaming of a better life. In his late teens he ventured over to Ireland, and, in the town of Kilkenny, he met and fell for Ellen Delahanty. Ellen was a strict Catholic girl from a strict Catholic family. The message to James was clear: any form of relationship with her was strictly off the table unless his intentions were serious, honorable, and permanent. James’ love for Ellen left him with no alternative, so in 1922, they were married. Job opportunities for the newlyweds were scarce, both in Ireland and over the sea in England where “No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs” would become less a racist preference and more of point-blank threat. In the late 1920s, the young couple were tempted across the ocean to New York lured by the promise of a new life in the Empire City: their timing was dramatically imperfect – they were greeted by the 1929 stock market crash followed by the Great Depression – and James ended up a lowly janitor for a succession of Upper East Side apartment buildings for the rest of his life. The Findlays settled in an uncomfortable co-op townhouse at the unfashionable end of East 65th St in Manhattan. It was rent-free because James was the building’s super, but the downside were the cramped rooms, barely bigger than closets. Compounding the chronic lack of space, Ellen then gave birth to three tall, strapping sons. Just like Roberta’s family, the first two came in quick succession: the elder, James (who went the name ‘Bob’ to differentiate him from his father) and Gordon. Let’s cheat and fast forward a lifetime: they came from the same family as Michael, so what happened to them? Bob, the eldest, is described as “the strangest, craziest member of the family, of any family” by one friend I spoke to. Bob would train as a priest, drop out and marry a quadriplegic, paralyzed in her arms and legs and confined to a wheelchair for life, and he then become the head of a notorious mental institution in Westbury, Long Island. Asked about the place he ran, he would crack, “The only thing that makes me different from the nuts in this place is that I sit behind a desk.” Today, as he approaches his 100th year, he lives in a nursing home. He is unsparingly friendly until asked to discuss Michael or re-visit his family’s early years. Fast forward through another lifetime: Gordon, the middle brother, would become a brilliant chemist with an accomplished career ahead of him, but he died mysteriously while still in his forties. No one talked about Gordon after that, airbrushed from existence, and long forgotten in today’s world. Which leaves Michael, born a few years after his brothers, a solitary, virtually only-child: “6’ 2” and still the smallest of the three,” says Roberta. “The runt of the Findlay family. Not my words,” she adds, “that’s what his own family called him. “And he was damaged too. But whatever that damage was, it happened before we met.” * In truth, Roberta knows little about Michael’s early years. She never probed, he never volunteered, and their relationship was based on navigating the dangers of each day. After several months of chasing dead ends, I find someone who did know Michael. Roy is an aging ex-schoolfriend of his, and what’s more he says he remembers Michael well. So I call him, and we meet up. Roy is a thoughtful, sober, and dignified man, a retired college lecturer in American history. It’s been decades since he stood in front of a class, and he’s frustrated that he’s lost the easy fluency of speech that once informed his classes. Today he speaks carefully and slowly but it’s clear that Roy still remembers Michael well. I complement him on his powers of recollection: “Memories remain crystal clear if you spend a lot of time dwelling on them,” he says. But Michael died in 1977, I suggest. Why is he still on your mind? Roy sighs. “I think of the past because most of my life is there. And Michael… he weighs heavily on my heart.” Roy has brought a faded picture of Michael to show me. Michael as a teenager, looking twelve or thirteen going on 48. He’s wearing an old-man flannel suit that hangs redundantly off his apologetically tall frame. He has kind, self-conscious eyes and is smiling broadly, which surprises me. I realize I haven’t seen many pictures of Michael smiling. I ask Roy if that is how he remembers him? “Mike was good company, sweet and gentle,” Roy says. “He was a happy-go-lucky kid and sunny, a big heart and a big laugh. He didn’t have a care in the world. “For years, we were inseparable: we sat next to each other in school, walked home together, and played in the street. It was a typical New York upbringing: we opened fire hydrants on the street in the summer, climbed trees in the park in the fall, and made snowmen on street corners in the winter. Cliches, I know, but true. Sure, we got into trouble, but we were kids having fun. Roy smiles: “In fact, we were arrested once: we lived near a pharmacy owned by an angry Ukrainian called Bohdan who had a prosthetic plastic arm. He’d lean on his countertop and this false arm would bend like a bow. That fascinated us, and we stared at it for ages. That’s what passed for our TikTok entertainment back in the day, I guess. “Bohdan was also blind in one eye, and it was covered by a large, black pirate patch. Michael noticed that if you did something on his left side, Bohdan wouldn’t notice it on account of his partial blindness. So we took advantage and swapped around all the product in the store: we’d move the men’s hair pomade to the women’s perfume shelf and so on. One day, a cop saw us and hauled our asses down to the precinct. Michael took it all in his stride, enjoying the experience as if we were on a day trip to the beach. Afterwards, he said, “When you’re thrown in jail, a good friend will try to bail you out. But a best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, ‘Boy, that was fun!'” I think he stole that from the Marx brothers, but it made us laugh. Michael was funny like that. And all his eccentricities and quirks made him amusing and popular in our group of friends.” I’m intrigued by the mention of eccentricities. I ask Roy if he knew much about what shaped Michael: “The church and his mother shaped him, I know that. We all saw the effect that they had on him.” I press him: “His parents were sweet and kind. Everyone liked Michael’s father. His mother was fine too but she was religious. Man, was she religious. She was a fierce Irish Catholic. The family had a big portrait of the Pope in their apartment. It hung over their dinner table. She told the boys that the Pope was watching them all the time. Mike believed it too. It freaked him out. I remember him once or twice saying that he’d let the Pope down because of something he’d done.” How did the religion affect his everyday life? “Ellen wanted all her sons to become priests. Michael’s brother, Gordon, wasn’t interested because he had his eye on being a scientist. But she persuaded the other two, Bob and Michael, that devoting their lives to God was their duty. An absolute duty. She talked about nothing else.” How did Michael react to that? “He accepted that the church would be his future. He wanted to please his mom and he did everything with a shaggy dog enthusiasm, happy and clumsy.” So church was his life? “Yes. It felt like the only time we were apart was when Michael was in church. My parents weren’t strict like his, so I went to church but not as often as Michael. He spent Sundays in church, Wednesday and Friday evenings in church, and then on other days, he had Bible class, catechism, choir, you name it. There was always something. What was the family household like? “They lived in a claustrophobic, cramped, and dark apartment. On top of that, his mother had a couple of sisters who came over from Ireland. They were nuns. And lesbians. Heavy drinkers too. One of them worked in an all-girls private school in Maryland. She always seemed to be drunk. They often stayed in the Findlay’s tiny apartment. “We thought it was hilarious because they’d both chase Michael around and they’d terrorize him. They’d tell him he was bad and that the Pope was going to get him. He was scared of them, but he was also fascinated. It was the combination of their physical threat and their mysterious sexuality, I guess. He obsessed over them, not understanding how such holy people could act like that. Sometimes it got too much for him, and he was wary of going back to the family apartment.” What did he do to escape? “We hid out in the movie theaters. We got to know them all – as well as all the ticket sellers and ushers. They’d see us coming and smile. Even let us in free sometimes. “That changed his life. He became obsessed with movies. Some days we’d skip school and see four or five different films in a single day. That wasn’t uncommon. The movie theater was our living room, our bedroom, our sanctuary.” What kind of films did he like best? “Anything. High-brow, low-brow, Michael treated every film the same. He always chose which films we’d see. He’d go to the big theaters and see the Hollywood new releases, and the smaller theaters with the imported subtitled European films. He even went to the downtown movie houses in Chinatown where the films were in Mandarin. “He had a memory like a database for those films. He read all the movie magazines. Every detail was stored away. I remember once going to see a movie with him that he’d already seen, and I noticed he was already repeating the dialogue back under his breath. He was almost autistic like that. Movies made him happy. “So I’m thinking back to your original question: Yes, I remember Michael smiling a lot. That was Michael when he was a kid.” * It seemed to me that Michael’s childhood up to this point was reasonably typical of a kid growing up in Manhattan in the 1940s and 50s. Sure, there was the pressure to become a priest, an obsessive-compulsive interest in films, and a chaotic, crowded home to deal with, but his parents were caring and kind, he had close friends, and so was it really any more dysfunctional than many other kids in the city at the time? And then I remember Roy’s comment when I first spoke to him: “Michael still weighs heavily on my heart.” I email Roy again and ask him what he meant by that. He replies a few days later, and this time his words have a different tone. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” he writes, “but I wasn’t entirely truthful the other day. That is, all of what I said was true. Our friendship. His family. The Catholic Church. The movies.” Roy continues haltingly: “I’m going to write you a letter. I’ll explain there. I’d rather not discuss it on the phone. To be honest, I don’t much want to revisit it all. It’s not my story to tell. But your interest in Mike seems serious, and so I feel like you should know. You can disregard what I tell you or use it in any way you want. But after that, I don’t mean to cause offense, but we don’t need to speak again.” I write back to Roy. I’m not sure I understand. His response: “It’ll be in the letter. I’ll give you a couple of other names. You can speak to them. But that’s all I can do. I’m sorry. It’s been more painful remembering than I expected.” His words trail into silence. * After waiting for weeks, I begin to give up hope that I’ll hear from Roy again. Then his letter arrives. He writes a polite opening. And then: “Like I told you, I knew Michael from an early age. He was a happy kid and we were tight. That much is true. At least at the beginning. “Then one day, Michael seemed subdued and sad. He seemed to have changed overnight. It was unlike him, and his dark mood continued for weeks. It was difficult to ignore, and, if anything, it got worse. It was like I’d lost my old friend. We were young, so I didn’t have the skills to talk to anyone about the transformation that I noticed in him. Eventually one night, I can’t remember where we were, I told him he was no fun anymore. I said he’d become silent and grumpy. I might have said he was boring too. I didn’t mean any harm, but he started to cry. I’d never seen that before. I immediately felt bad for raising it. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything at all. “Nothing changed. A while later, we’d made a date to go to the movies. I watched him walk down the street. I could see him arriving long before he got to me. He was tall for his age. And wiry thin. He wore ill-fitting clothes, probably hand-me-downs from his older brothers, and he appeared completely ill at ease with his lumbering teenage frame. He emanated a profound melancholy. It was like a spell had been cast on him. “That night, we were sat in the park. He turned away from me so I couldn’t see his face. He started talking. He said that a few months before, he’d been away in upstate New York on a camp arranged by the church. He told me about a priest called T, who was one of the camp counselors. I knew T. He worked at the church we attended in New York. Michael said T started to be kind to him when he was at the camp. Extra kind. He took Michael aside and asked him about school, movies, everyday things like that, anything Michael was interested in. Michael said the priest found ways to be alone with him. “After a few moments of being quiet, Michael just said he couldn’t understand how a priest, a man of God, someone who had taken sacred vows, would do that. He seemed lost in the moment. “Michael didn’t say much else after that. He didn’t need to. Even though I was young, way too young to understand, I somehow knew what he was trying to tell me. I just knew. It made me feel uncomfortable. But I never did anything about it. Never told anyone. Never mentioned it to anyone. Never anything. I regret that. I still carry that regret with me all the time. “After I became more distant from him. Not through my choice. Michael just pulled away. It seemed to me that now that I knew his secret, perhaps he saw me as part of the problem. He started to hang out with other boys. Boys that were older and did different things. “We still went to see films though not as often as before – but now, the theaters were more than just a refuge from everyday life for him: they replaced his real life. The films we watched had gone from being his escape to become his reality. “Michael still chose the films we watched, but they were different now. I still remember the movies he obsessed over like it was yesterday: ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice,’ where Michael lusted over Cora Smith’s bare midriff. ‘Red Dust’ where Cary Grant has a sexual affair with a prostitute, Jean Harlow. ‘Ball of Fire’ where Barbara Stanwyck plays a racy burlesque dancer. ‘Safe in Hell’ about a New Orleans hooker who kills the man who forced her into sex work and then fights off a group of lecherous escaped convicts. And instead of talking about the films afterwards, now he seemed embarrassed when they were over. It wasn’t difficult to see what these films had in common. Michael had become obsessive about sex, and guilty about it too. It seemed to create a conflict inside him that he found hard to manage. It went beyond just a teenage compulsion. He seemed to be consumed with the fact that beautiful, promiscuous, and sexual women – prostitutes and strippers – were in front of him, yet out of his reach. Maybe it something to do with his commitment to the church, I don’t know. “One moment sticks in my mind: I remember sitting with Michael and some friends in a soda shop. He was swaying in his seat, describing in forensic detail the contours and shape and texture and beauty of Lana Turner’s breasts as they pressed provocatively through her sweater. It was a tender though desperate description. He went on for ages, off in his own world, oblivious to anyone else, caught up the reverie of his lustful description. Everyone found it funny, but looking back, I feel uneasy. “I only ever had one more conversation with him about what had happened at the camp: I asked him if he ever told his parents. He looked at me with horror. He said, No – he could never become a priest if they found out. “I asked him if they ever suspected something was wrong? Michael said they’d started sending him to a therapist and prescribed him Valium. “Why they do that if they didn’t know anything had happened? I wondered. He told me they’d found some of his notebooks in which he’d drawn and written about revenge fantasies. Sketches of guns, arrows, knives, poison, he said. After seeing the sketches, they decided he needed help. “I told him I was sorry that this incident with the priest had caused such suffering in his life. “Michael just looked at the ground, and said, “Who said it was just one incident? Who said it was just him?”” * In 1952, when Michael turned 14, he succumbed to his mother’s wishes and applied to Cathedral College, a seminary at 557-559 West End Avenue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It was, as its president, the Very Reverend John Hartigan described, “a very adequate” place for “any boy of good character and intelligence who feels he has a vocation to the diocesan priesthood.” To be accepted to the college, Michael had to take an examination and present a letter of recommendation from his local church pastor. Neither proved to be a problem, and he was admitted quickly. The Cathedral College program was based around four years of high school education followed by two years of collegiate studies. Michael wasn’t the first of the Findlay boys to start training to be a priest: by this time, his brother Bob was already attending St. Joseph’s Seminary and College in Yonkers, sometimes referred to as Dunwoodie, and considered the Harvard of American seminaries. And so, Michael took the first steps of his journey to be a man of the cloth. Each day, he walked across Central Park with a bag of books extolling the virtues of faith, dogma, and most of all, celibacy, the sacred vow of abstinence from all sexual activity. * Sal was one of the names that Roy had sent me, so I called him. Turns out he was an older kid that Michael hung out with after Roy faded from his life. If Roy was serious and sober, every inch the former academic, Sal is all-action and bravado. He’s a livewire: a conversation with him is like a two-dollar trip on the Cyclone, the accident-waiting-to-happen, ancient Coney Island rollercoaster that still stands just down the road from where Sal lives today. For a start, Sal is louder than a Brooklyn subway car. And hard of hearing too, shouting answers in upper case decibels. At times I wondered if it would be easier for me to open my window and listen to his voice across the city rooftops. He insists his memory is failing: “I’m so old, three things have happened. The first is my memory is shot, and… I can’t remember the other two.” His daughter had warned me that he was a talker and nostalgic for a time that interested no one anymore. Sal agrees: “If I want to talk with my friends,” he shouts, “I head for the graveyard. I don’t drink to forget… after the life I’ve had, I don’t have the luxury of forgetting. But I do drink.” “Anyway, you’re calling because of that Flesh movie, right?” Sal says. “I was the guy who drove into Michael with my car in that movie. The accident that caused his character to be paralyzed. That was me! I drove the car in the chase scene!” I tell him that I had no idea he was involved in any of Michael’s movies – and that I’d love to hear about it. First though, I wonder if he could describe what Michael was like. “Sure,” bellows Sal. “I was about 17 when we first met. I’m a couple of years older than him – a big deal at that age – but I called him ‘Old Man.’ He quickly became part of our group of guys. What was he like? Lovable, a sweetheart, sometimes a little intense and complicated. All at the same time. Despite his issues, everyone liked him. When I first knew him, he’d just started attending this Catholic seminary on the west side, so it was strange for us to have a wannabe priest in our group. “Most of all, he was shy. Awkward socially and physically too. He had anxiety attacks. They paralyzed him. What would trigger them? “He was afraid of walking on the wrong side of the street, afraid of roaches, afraid of mirrors, afraid of a lot of things. He was more nervous than a long tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs.” It turns out Sal loves a metaphor. How did he deal with his fears, I ask? “I know his parents made him go to therapy, he told me that once – but I don’t know if it helped. But he didn’t drink, and took no drugs – unless you count the Valium which he popped all the time.” I ask Sal if he had any theories as to what caused Michael to have these issues? “It had to be the Catholics. They got inside his head, and he felt guilty for every bad thought he had. And we all had a lot of bad thoughts at that age! “But he was funny too: Michael once told me his dad reached over and covered his eyes whenever there was a racy scene on TV… because his dad didn’t want Michael watching him masturbate. That was his humor: dry and full of self-defecation.” Self-defecation? I suggest to Sal that he means ‘self-deprecation’? “Yeah, that too,” Sal agrees, perhaps oblivious to the difference. I ask Sal about Michael’s interests. Sal barks back immediately: “Michael loved strippers, especially ones with big tits. Blaze Starr, Tempest Storm, all the burlesque queens. Michael adored those girls. He venerated them. He’d make us go anywhere to catch Blaze Starr. Atlantic City, Philly, DC. All over. And then he insisted on hanging around the stage door afterwards, even though he was usually too shy to speak to the girls. He once got Blaze Starr’s autograph and you should have seen his face: he was happier than a midget at a mini skirt convention.” Where did you all hang out together? “We liked Times Square because there was always some hustle going on. Michael loved films and so did we, so we were often at the theaters. But we liked to go downtown too. The East Village especially. It was seedy and raw down there. We hung out at places like Rapoport’s or Ratner’s Bake Shop. “For his eighteenth birthday, we thought it would be funny to take Michael to Club 82. It was a basement nightclub on East Fourth Street, just off the Bowery, back when the Bowery was spikier than a badger’s butt. It was tiny place that was nothing from the outside, but inside… it was wild. It had three shows a night, and the performers were all transvestites, men dressed as women. On top of that, all the wait staff were women dressed as men in tuxes. Not that it was a gay place. The opposite, in fact: it catered solely to straight people. Celebrities loved it: Liz Taylor, Judy Garland, people like that. We only got in because we knew the owner’s daughter. The owner was Anna Genovese, who was married to Vito Genovese – one of the original mob bosses in New York.” I ask if Mike knew about the place before he first went in? “No! That was the point. “It was a smart joint, so we borrowed a jacket and tie for him to wear. We got him inside and the show starts. One of the performers, a big, knockout flamboyant character, came over and sat on Michael’s lap. Michael looked both terrified and happier than a dog with two dicks. Then the performer raised Michael’s hand to her chest, and he obviously felt something there that wasn’t quite right. Suddenly it clicked. He was terrified, mortified, horrified. We thought it was funny, but I don’t think we spoke about the experience after that.” I asked Sal if Michael had a girlfriend in his teenage years. “No. I don’t think so. I would’ve known. He was never interested in the girls in his neighborhood. He spent his waking hours dreaming of Lana Turner, dancers, strippers, and hookers. They were his dreams.” The line went quiet, and then Sal offered a final memory. “You know, we all went to a whorehouse one evening. I don’t remember whose idea it was, but there we were, and suddenly we found ourselves going in. It was summertime, one of those sweltering New York nights. This place was down on the Lower East Side. A building with lots of rooms, each with bed and a little sink in the corner. I remember, you had to pay for the room and the soap in addition to paying for the woman. Well, we all paired off with the girls and went to different rooms. I finished pretty quickly, and so went outside to sit on the sidewalk. Michael was already there. He looked sad. I said “Old Man… are you ok?” He just shrugged. He said that nothing had happened. He’d given it his best shot, but it didn’t work. Something was broken with him, he said. * I thought of the teenage Michael, of the contradictions and confused life he was leading. By day, taking classes in theology, divinity, and spirituality, he prayed, preached, and praised, and took vows of abstinence and purity. By night, he enjoyed a different type of experience. He craved sexual images on the big screen, adored strippers and dancers, and went to a cross-dresser club and a whorehouse. If life can only be lived forwards, it can only be understood backwards. I’d wanted to understand Michael through the memories of others. But old memories are masters of deceit. Stories fade, adjust, and conform to what we think we remember. What to make about what I had heard? Is that part of Richard Jennings, his fictional serial killer anti-hero, in Bohdan, the angry one-eyed store owner, or in his quadriplegic sister-in-law confined to a wheelchair? What about the nights inhabited with voluptuous strippers, lesbian aunts, and beautiful cross-dressers, or how about the guilty conflict wrought by religion and sexual frustration? And what to make of the abuse, damage, and violent thoughts of revenge? Did these seeds grow into the themes of his films? The troubled lives of Michael Findlay and Roberta Hershkowitz were about to collide. Their joint story is about to begin. They had endured difficult childhoods as misfits, abused and confused. Their future films would, in part, expiate their troubles and obsessions. Their work would be different from anything seen before. What effect did they have on each other? Go to heaven for the climate if you must, but go to hell for the company. * * The post Flesh! The Untold Origin of the Findlays and the ‘Flesh Trilogy’, Part 2 – Michael’s story appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Sex and violence have been part of movies since the very beginning. Ever since Thomas Edison made and exhibited ‘The Kiss’ in 1896, an 18 second clip of a couple embracing, moviegoers have been shocked by onscreen depictions of lust. The outrage over ‘The Kiss’ was understandable: it was one of the first films ever shown commercially to the public, and kissing in public was prosecuted at the time. The Catholic Church knee-jerked instinctively, and said it was a “serious threat to morality and humanity”, and the film was met with the first demand for movie censorship. Fast forward seventy years, and heaven knows what they would have made of Michael and Roberta Findlay. The Findlays made a series of low budget films in the 1960s that combined sex with violence in a way that had rarely been seen. Sure, filmmakers like Russ Meyer or Herschel Gordon Lewis had already achieved success with exploitation flicks that mixed fornication with ferocity. But their visions gleefully and comically satirized the genre. Michael and Roberta were different: theirs was a more shocking, sadistic vision that left an altogether different impression. More than with any of their peers, you find yourself looking beyond their work, instead wondering more about the filmmakers than the films. In short, you start to ask, “What kind of people made these movies?” Over the last few years, I’ve tracked down and spoken to friends, family members, collaborators… in fact, anyone who knew Michael and Roberta back in the 1960s – including Roberta herself – to dig deeper into who the Findlays really were and where they came from. The new information I found was surprising, unnerving, and sometimes disturbing – and it changed the way I view the films themselves. This is Part 1 of ‘Flesh: The Untold Origin of the Findlays and the ‘Flesh Trilogy’’ – Roberta’s story. This podcast is 36 minutes long. ———————————————————————————————- Roberta Findlay walks into a midtown Manhattan bar. Unruly dark mop, giant black sunglasses, scowling bad attitude. She looks like Bob Dylan in ‘Don’t Look Back.’ Or a microwaved Anna Wintour. “I don’t like people,” is her opening gambit. “Especially not those who watch my sex movies. These people are creepy. With deep psychological problems.” I’m lucky, I guess. I’ve known Roberta for years, and she insists I am one of her two favorite living people. I’m flattered until I learn that Dick Cheney is the other: “I like arrogant men who mistreat me” is her explanation. Dick Cheney mistreated you? I ask. “I can dream,” she grunts. Today Roberta has decided to cement our friendship. She gifts me the copy of ‘Hollywood Babylon’ that sat at the bedside of her long-deceased husband, Michael. I’m strangely moved. This 1959 collection of crime-soaked, sleaze-boiled gossip from Hollywood’s golden age underbelly had been an inspiration to him when he first became a filmmaker in the 1960s. Their film titles bore the evidence: Satan’s Bed (1965), Take Me Naked (1966), The Ultimate Degenerate (1969), and the infamous Flesh trilogy (The Touch of Her Flesh (1967), The Curse of Her Flesh (1968), The Kiss of Her Flesh (1968)). Tormented black-and-white nightmares trading in imaginative, misogynistic violence. Kenneth Anger’s aesthetic updated to a low-rent 1960s New York tenement world. Their movies found an audience, then as now. For a time, Michael and Roberta reigned supreme in grindhouse theaters as kingpin auteurs of low-budget east coast sex and violence. Their fingerprints were evident in every frame: they produced, directed, wrote, and acted in all their films. Michael even starred – as one-eyed, paraplegic serial killer, Richard Jennings, in the ‘Flesh’ movies. Except that Roberta now disputes her involvement in these early operas of sadism. I point out that her name, or pseudonym, appears in all the credits. Furthermore, crew lackeys remember her shooting the films, and cast members recall her active involvement. Roberta waves away my persistence. “I was adrift in that maelstrom. I was underage. I didn’t know what I was doing. I never knew what I was doing. I have no recollection of any involvement. Just leave me alone. I was young. Too young. Underage, in fact. You hear me? Underage.” Not that Roberta is prudish. She admits to making a string of later hardcore sex films – without Michael – though she is quick to dismiss them: “I deplore anything violent, but sex… I didn’t care. I made the movies for money, and because I liked to shoot as a cameraman. That’s what I liked doing best: being behind the camera, shooting and lighting. That’s where I was happiest in life. I still miss it today.” But I return to the question at the heart of their 1960s movies. The conundrum of her cinematic union with Michael. What kind of couple would make films that so single-mindedly focused on a such a twisted disturbance of revenge, murder, and sex? Was it merely a cynical commercial tactic? Or did it come from a deeper chamber of the soul? Roberta is unimpressed by the query. Open-book self-analysis is anathema to her. Questions that probe motivation irritate. Her silent response smacks of annoyance, then defiance. I ask again. And finally, without warning, she opens up. “What can I tell you? Michael was a troubled and deranged man. A cracked, overgrown man-boy. And I was damaged goods. Product of an isolated, difficult childhood. For a time, we only had one another. So we clung to each other. There was no calm, sensible person in our relationship, and therefore all our problems were amplified: all our scars, fears, obsessions, phobias, and neuroses. And we had a lot of them. We weren’t normal people.” Let’s talk some more about that, I suggest. * When were you born? I start. “That’s an indiscrete and ungentlemanly question,” comes the reply. I apologize. How old were you in 1962 then? “That’s the same question – with a tricky calculation. I can’t do math. And I can never remember my age.” All the interviews with you, going back to the early 1970s, say you were born in 1948. On December 30th. But I’m not sure that’s correct. “December 30th? Yes, that’s right.” But what year? “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve forgotten over time. Why is this important anyway?” Because you said that you were underage when Michael and you made your first films. So I want to figure out the timeline. “Let’s say I was born in 1948 then. And move on.” Here’s the problem I have with that. I have production records from the first film that you appeared in. Body of a Female. That film was shot in the summer of 1962. You had several nude scenes in it. But that would mean you were only thirteen or fourteen at the time of the shoot. <Silence> “I don’t know anything about that. I was underage when the ‘Flesh’ movies were made. That’s all I know. That’s why I know nothing about them. I was underage. Now leave me alone.” * Rubeena Hershkowitz (no middle name was necessary as it was already a mouthful, she says) would have been known to her goy friends as Roberta, except that she had no friends. More on that later. She was born in the Bronx to Hungarian Jewish parents. In an undetermined year. Moses Aaron Hershkowitz was her father, and a mean villain. “An evil man. He didn’t like anybody,” Roberta says. “And in return, nobody liked him.” What Moses lacked in charm and warmth, he also lacked in humility and generosity. Born into a family in rural Hungary with nine brothers and sisters, he stood out from the wolf pack by his street-smart intelligence and angry belligerence, a combination that did him little good. At Yeshiva, the rabbis beat him regularly for his back-chat and bad attitude. “He was obstreperous and rebellious,” says Roberta, “as well as a violent agoraphobic who suffered panic attacks in crowds. I saw his first passport photo once: he was very good-looking as a young man, devilishly handsome, with a large mustache. But boy, he was bad.” Moses dealt with his frustrations by becoming a small-town bruiser, part-time rat-catcher, and quick-fire brawler. When he was twelve, he ran away from home. Roberta remembers family lore about his vanishing act: “Apparently, he did some stuff and had to flee. I don’t know what it was. I have no idea. But that’s the story.” Moses returned home several years later at seventeen, only to be greeted by his mother’s withering contempt: “Oh, look, he’s back. And this time, he’s brought a little suitcase.” He was also cursed with a spectacular lack of respect for authority. When conscripted into the Hungarian army, Moses shot himself in the foot, literally, to avoid serving. Instead, he shacked up with a local woman, Matilda, and they had two sons, Maximilian and Alexander. But familial responsibilities failed to hold his interest, and at 19, with a feral reputation and one functional foot, he limped away. In the late 1910s, he slipped into neighboring Romania, somehow acquired a passport, and headed north until he reached the German port of Hamburg. There he boarded an ocean liner, The Leviathan, which set sail for New York. He never saw his parents again, disappeared or liquidated by the Nazis in the years that followed. * “This isn’t working,” Roberta flatlines. What do you mean? I reply. “It’s boring hearing about anyone else’s life. And hearing about their childhood is the worst. When I read a biography, I skip the first 100 pages every time. I’m just not interested.” I disagree. I’ve read several recent articles about your life. Film magazines, liner essays for film releases. Nearly all are terrible. “In what way?” In the most unforgivable way: they’re boring. And your life story deserves better. “You’re weird.” Do you want to add anything to that? “You’re a voyeur. You have a strange interest in things no one else is interested in. I think that you’ve led a perverted life, and your childhood would provide some context for the arrogant person you’ve become.” Maybe. But I didn’t make films in which strippers are killed by a rose with thorns dipped in poison, by a toxic dart shot into     the stomach, or by daggers, buzzsaws, and crossbows. You’re the interesting one. “I told you I don’t know anything about those movies. I was underage.” That reminds me: you still haven’t told me how old you are. * Newly arrived in New York, Moses, now Americanized to ‘Morris’, kick-started a new life living in a three-to-a-room, crowded tenement on the Lower East Side, where he continued his mercurial, rowdy ways. He took work as a ratcatcher again, but within months of his arrival, was arrested for grand larceny, and after the first three years had assembled a rap sheet as long as a midtown skyscraper. Roberta describes him in begrudging Tommy-gun prose: “An outsider. A wild man. A Communist. And dangerous. He was as hard as nails and tough as leather. Always a fighter, forever beating people up. If he’d had a gun, he’d have been a serial killer.” Morris didn’t always find trouble: sometimes it found him. Roberta remembers one time when he was attacked on the street. Morris always went to work at dawn when the subway was empty because of his acute agoraphobia. He was attacked by two muggers. He self-defended, retaliated, and beat the aggressors to a pulp, leaving their unconscious, bloody bodies at the side of the street. He called the cops to report the mugging, but he’d inflicted so much damage on them that the police tried to arrest him instead. Morris spoke Yiddish, Hungarian, and Romanian, but no English. Somewhere along the line, he ran into a first cousin named Rachel who went by Lillian/Lily. Lily was several years his junior. She’d been born in the same region of Hungary as Morris, but brought over to New York as a baby by her seven brothers and sisters. And, unlike Morris, she spoke English fluently. Morris saw an opportunity: he proposed marriage to her so she could teach him the language. “Good deal for him, I guess” says Roberta with a shrug. The couple had three children: Janice and Ira in quick succession, followed years later by an afterthought, Roberta: “I was born when my mother was in her forties,” Roberta says, “which was not recommended at the time. Plus my parents were immediate cousins. All very unhealthy. I could’ve been a cretin, an idiot! Maybe I was.” From an early age, Roberta was horrified by her father and his ways: “He filled me with fear and terror. He used to beat me up regularly starting from when I was very small. And my brother Ira as well. I remember him breaking a chair across my brother’s back, almost splitting him in two. I was scared witless by his hands. Huge hands. He seemed to me to be the strongest man in the world. He had a quick temper and could break anything just by hitting it. The beatings would continue for years.” Morris’ violent impulses weren’t restricted to his New York family either. When Roberta was six years old, the family were present at a bar mitzvah attended by relatives, and Morris was confronted by the partner he had left behind in Hungary, Matilda, who’d turned up with their two sons, Maximilian and Alexander. Unbeknownst to Morris, they’d all emigrated to the United States and were now living in a studio apartment down by the docks on Maiden Lane. Roberta remembers: “His sons were grown men by then, and they looked exactly like him. They approached my father and challenged him, saying he’d abandoned all of them in Hungary. They wanted answers. My father just laid them out and continued with the festivities.” Was Morris ever formally divorced from Matilda? “I have no idea. I don’t know whether he was married in Hungary and then divorced. Or if he was married to them both at the same time. I don’t even know if he was legally married to my mother. We still don’t know who was married to whom. Like I said, he was a bad man.” * So when you were born, I ask again? “My sister was the oldest, 1930, I think. My brother came next, around 1938. And I’m not going to tell you my year.” Is that because you can’t remember, or because you don’t want to tell me? “I thought you said this would be fun? Who’s going to read this? Why does it matter?” It’s important because we’re trying to set the record straight. Because the year normally quoted doesn’t seem accurate. And because I’m trying to work out how old you were when you met Michael, and how old you were when you made films in the 1960s. “Let’s say I can’t remember. Or better still, let’s say 1948.” Let’s say you let me call your brother so I can ask him?” “No. You’re not going to speak to Ira about this.” Ok, so what about slipping me some ID with your birthdate on? “You’re a pervert. Stop torturing me.” * The Hershkowitzs lived at 2104 Vyse Avenue, a 26-unit apartment building in a southeast neighborhood of the Bronx called West Farms Square, near 180th St, a popular shopping area. It was also next to the Bronx Zoo: “we could hear the lions roar at night,” remembers Roberta. It was a six-floor walk-up, and the Hershkowitz family had an apartment on the fourth floor: “It was definitely not a tenement. It was a step-up from that, and it was on a corner and that was considered high class. You’d made it if you had a corner place.” Roberta was raised in a Jewish cocoon: an exclusively Jewish neighborhood in a home in which her parents spoke Yiddish to each other: “My parents were essentially Jewish peasants. Truly from a shtetl in Hungary. I never met a non-Jew until I was in junior high school. There were a few black kids, but they were children of the janitors of the buildings we lived in. Apart from them, it was all Jews.” Not that being religiously Jewish was a feature for Roberta: “My mother tried to be a good Jew, but she had no concept of what any of it meant. She thought it had something to do with cooking: on Rosh Hashanah, you bake rugelach, and at Passover, you change the dishes and eat matzo instead of bread. She didn’t have a clue. “As for me, I never had any interest in religion. I’ve never even been to temple. My mother used to go to synagogue once a year on Yom Kippur but she didn’t know why she was there. My father would take me along so we could stand outside and he could ridicule the whole affair. That made him laugh. He thought the whole thing was ridiculous.” By then Morris had become a dry cleaner by trade. For years, he made a daily ninety-minute commute to Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, reading The Daily Worker, the firebrand newspaper for the communist party to which he belonged. And his troubles with the law continued. One time he was arrested for not paying his debts. Or rather for half-killing an unpaid debtor who complained. If her father was colorful, his wife Lily lived her life in black and white: “My mother was a gray individual. A non-entity. She didn’t do or say much. A regular, normal-grade anonymity. Not attractive either. She just wasn’t pretty. “They said she was good at numbers, whatever that meant, so she found work as a bookkeeper. She had her columns and such, and worked for Maidenform, the retail chain selling underwear and pajamas. I was close to neither of my parents, and they rarely talked to me.” With siblings much older than her, Roberta felt like an only child. Ignored by her working parents, she was actively resented by her sister who was forced into the caretaker role for the infant: “Janice didn’t like me. She said I’d gotten all the privileges that she hadn’t had because she was born during the depression.” Like what, I asked? “Like lamb chops. She said that made me the chosen one, the lucky child. I didn’t see it that way. For a start, I didn’t eat so I didn’t care about lamb chops. My mother had to force me to eat. I was never hungry. I weighed nothing. I just drank.” Ah yes, alcohol. Roberta and I have been meeting up for years, and every evening follows a similar pattern: in short: I eat, and Roberta drinks. Double Jack Daniels on the rocks. Several of them. Her comments start before the first drink ends. “Eating is cheating.” “Call yourself a man?” “You are nothing but a lily-livered limey.” “When are you going to have a proper drink?” If this is how Roberta treats one of her favorite living people, I’m grateful not to be on her shitlist. I ask her if she remembers her first ever drink. “Yes. My father started giving me gin when I was eight years old. He was a drunk – which at that time was unusual for a Jew.” You’ve continued since then? “Oh yes. I liked it from the start. And I introduced alcohol to the men in my life too. Like Michael. And later Allan Shackleton. And the rest. They all took to drinking in a big way after me.” I’m sure they did, I whisper. And when did you start smoking? “When I was twelve. Somebody took me to the roof of my building. I don’t remember who it was. And said, “Here, you want to smoke?” I said, “Okay.”” Wasn’t that a young age to start in those days? “Of course it was. In fact, I got lung cancer a few years ago. I always assure my doctor that I don’t smoke. But I still do.” I tried to picture a young Roberta. What happy childhood memories did she have? “I can’t think of any. I read a lot. I read before I started kindergarten. Everything came from the library. There were only three bought books in the house. I was in my own frightened world, hungry for knowledge, and keen to escape by getting my hands on books. Give me an example of a book that left an impression: “I read ‘The Well of Loneliness’ when I was eight. It was one of the three books my parents had. God knows why. It was about lesbianism. It was written in the 1920s and a British court judged it obscene and banned it because it defended “unnatural practices between women.” I read it under the covers at night with a flashlight. I didn’t understand how or why two women would want to be together like that. I didn’t understand it then. I still don’t understand it now.” But what did a drinking, smoking, pre-pubescent girl do for kicks with her friends, I wondered? “Oh, I had no friends. None. I suffered from agoraphobia just like my father so I was full of anxiety that shut me down. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to make friends. I just didn’t know how to do it. So I didn’t have any friends. I had a girlfriend in junior high school for a week. But that was it. I had no other friends at all. Zero. Zip. What about boys? “No. I wasn’t interested in any of them. And the girls? I detested them.” So sex didn’t become a factor? “No. I had no interest.” * When she was five, Roberta discovered an all-encompassing activity: playing the piano. A beat-up Sohmer was winched through the Vyse Avenue fourth-floor window, and Roberta was made to start a rigorous schedule of lessons with a ninety-year-old disciplinarian tutor. At first it was a foreign world: no classical music had ever been played in the family apartment. Her only exposure to music had been a small selection of 78s by popular singers like Bing Crosby. But she was a fast learner. She quickly dispensed with the inane, nursery rhyme tunes put in front of her and moved onto the serious composers. Mozart, Schubert, Rachmaninov. Especially Rachmaninov. For the first time in her life, her parents took notice of her, amazed at her talent: perhaps they had a gifted, talented prodigy in the family, what a mitzvah. With the right teaching, maybe she could achieve fame and, more importantly, fortune. Morris had high hopes: “She was an accident, but perhaps not a mistake,” he said hopefully, even though he barely spoke to her for twenty years. They bought records to encourage her, and then ordered her to practice more. So she did: “I practiced every day. Hours and hours of practice. I still wasn’t aware of classical music. I just had music put in front of me, so I played whatever it was. I was disciplined and I seemed to do nothing else.” For Roberta, the activity was as successful as it was joyless: “I was an excellent sight reader and I advanced through the repertoire quickly. I got better and better. But I didn’t realize that you were supposed to enjoy it. It was a chore. I just did what I was told. I played the piano into the night, and never thought of it any other way.” * Were you in therapy at all as a child, I ask? “No. Why? Do you think I’m nuts?” A question answering a question. You went through a lot in your first ten to fifteen years: a physically violent father, an emotionally absent mother, siblings that were distant, cold, and resentful, debilitating panic attacks caused by agoraphobia, high pressure expectations to become a successful pianist which caused you to practice obsessively for hours each day which you didn’t enjoy, no friends, and you started drinking and smoking from an early age… that’s a heavy burden. <Silence> “Well, I did see a therapist when I was a teen. But not in the way that you mean.” Roberta looks out of the window. Can you tell me about it, I ask? * “I was in high school, thirteen years old. The head of the music department decided I should eventually go to City College like he had. As preparation, he got me to participate in a group called The Friends of Music. It was a nationwide organization, and their purpose was to hold musicals every month. Everyone in the group was musical in one way or another, except for one man who couldn’t play anything. He was just a devotee. His name was B. “B was in his mid-30s, and he was a child psychologist. He was studying for a PhD. He lived in the Bronx. West. Everybody seemed to live west. Not too far from where I was. He told me later that he joined the group because he was looking for young Jewish girls. “B wasn’t such a good-looking chap. Totally bald with glasses. Big guy, it seemed to me, but I was even smaller back then. Tiny. He just seemed gigantic. He was married, or rather he had been, but he didn’t talk much to me about his wife. “He invited me out. We had a brief encounter that day. His bedroom was adorned with blue lights, and he played the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto. I’m a sucker for that. I’ll lie down for anybody who likes Rachmaninoff. “That was my first sexual experience. I didn’t know how it worked. It was rape technically. “After that, I had a relationship with him that lasted for two years. Until I was fifteen. Usually in his apartment. He would put on the Rachmaninoff record, and then it would happen. Over a period of many months. “For two years he was like a boyfriend. He took me out sometimes. He had a car. Music recitals. Museums. Restaurants, like a hamburger joint on Fordham Road in the Bronx. I’d never been to a place like that because my parents never ate out. Once he took me to Jones Beach. I remember I played in the sand while he sat in a chair and watched me. And during this time, he also asked me to take tests for his psychology papers. “But mostly it was about sex. I was never interested or curious about sex. Or even excited about it. I liked it at times, but I just did what I was told. It wasn’t important to me. I guess I knew the whole thing wasn’t right. “And he took pictures of all our encounters too – I think they were Polaroids. He showed me the pictures. I have no idea what happened to them after that. “He once asked me to screw his friend. I didn’t do that… but only because I didn’t show up. I never said no to anyone. I didn’t think I had the right to. I would’ve done whatever he wanted me to. “B never came to my apartment. But eventually, my parents got news of what was happening. I never found out how they discovered. They tried to confront him. They went to his place and started banging on his door. I was inside, scared to death. They shouted, “We know you’re in there.” but he never opened the door. They did that a couple of times. And when I returned home each time, we never talked about it. “And then one day, when I was fifteen, he decided I was too old for him. We sat in his Hillman Minx car, and he said, “We have to stop seeing each other.” I cried and cried and cried and cried. I was devastated. I didn’t know else to do. “I never saw him again after that night. “Many years later, decades had passed, I was seeing another therapist because of my panic attacks. He told me he knew B, and that B lived close by. Apparently, B had since come out as gay and was now dying of AIDS. That was the last I heard of him.” * Roberta’s social dislocation wasn’t helped by an overly-accelerated path through school. In the fourth grade the school authorities decided that her reading level was that of a sixth grader – so they recommended skipping fifth grade. Then in junior high school, her academic aptitude led to a special program called Rapid Advancement – which meant she skipped the eighth grade, going straight from seventh to ninth. Being born on December 30th, she was already the youngest in her year. Long story short: Roberta graduated high school when she was barely fifteen. Equally swift was her ascent to becoming a concert pianist. She was twelve when she performed her first solo concert – at Carnegie Recital Hall in a competition for the American Music Teacher’s Guild. Other contests followed, including a recital at Town Hall, and then at sixteen, a breakout concert with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. From a distance, it seems like parts of Roberta’s life lurched fast-forward into adulthood long before she stopped being a young girl. * Roberta and I meet again. This time I’ve made a break-through. I tell her that I dug through official New York birth records and finally found a record of her birth. Roberta Hershkowitz. Born in the Bronx. December 30th. 1943. That’s five years older than the widely quoted birth year of 1948. It means she met Michael, in 1959, aged 16, just after she graduated high school. She was 19 when she appeared in ‘Body of a Female.’ And 23 when she and Michael started making the ‘Flesh’ trilogy. A naïve, damaged, young woman, rather than the underage girl she claims. But now, confronted with the truth of her age, I wonder if that distinction is arbitrary, irrelevant. Was it mere vanity that has made Roberta hide her real age? Or does she claim to be younger because, in some way, it would absolve her from involvement in the controversial, violent films that she dislikes so much, like the ‘Flesh’ trilogy? Either way, it seems a detail now, and I feel guilty for having pressed her. Roberta is unimpressed with the news: “That can’t be right,” she insists. “No, no, no. That just won’t do. I don’t know where you get that idea. And I don’t agree.” I change subject and ask her if her success as a teenage pianist made playing the piano more enjoyable for her: “No.” Was there at least a piece that you liked playing? “Yeah. There’s a Mozart piano concerto. Number 20 in D-minor. It’s his darkest, most cruel piece. That seems appropriate. And I like that.” We’re quiet for a while. Roberta breaks the silence: “I haven’t played the piano in years,” she adds with a shrug. I say I’d like to hear that Mozart concerto. That evening, in her apartment, she plays it. And the dark, cruel music of Roberta Hershkowitz’ piano fills the New York night sky one more time. * The post Flesh! The Untold Origin of the Findlays and the ‘Flesh Trilogy’, Part 1 – Roberta’s story appeared first on The Rialto Report.

In the first part of The Rialto Report‘s conversation with Lisa Cintrice, we heard about her colorful upbringing, from a mobster father, to becoming pregnant as a teen, and then a shotgun wedding to the brother of a notorious New York strip club manager. All of a sudden, she found herself at the heart of the New York adult film business, and what’s more, starring in a movie, The Starmaker (1982), while fielding offers to appear in many others. There was only one problem: Lisa had already signed up to join the army and was about to be conscripted, and the army wasn’t interested in letting her go easily. A desperate situation called for a desperate measure. Lisa’s time in porn had highs and lows, living with Fred Lincoln and Tiffany Clark, partying with Jamie Gillis at the Hellfire club, and bumping into Richard Dreyfuss at Plato’s Retreat. But it also brought with it a drug habit that risked her life. As a result, Lisa did the only thing she could to survive: she fled New York and hid for over 30 years, terrified of having her past exposed. Trouble was, during that time, she got a recurring part in the TV series, ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ – a franchise well-known for its obsessive and curious fans. To make matters worse, the internet happened – and suddenly her adult films were available to a whole new generation. And then in 2015, The Rialto Report tracked Lisa down and contacted her for an article about her life – not realizing how she’d done everything to hide her porn past from prying eyes for several decades. Lisa panicked: this was her worst fear, and it risked collapsing her personal, family, and professional life. Fast forward to the present day, and Lisa is now ready to talk about it all in this candid and personal interview. She’s even decided to write a book. The second part of her life is even wilder than the first. This is concluding part of Lisa’s story.  This episode running time is 56 minutes. ———————————————————————————————————— Lisa Cintrice – Her XXX life         Lisa, with Richard Milner       Lisa, with Sparky Vasc         Lisa, with Ken Yontz and Larry Levenson   Lisa, with Rob Jeremy, Lisa B, Marc Stevens and others   Lisa, with Marc Valentine, Colette Connor, Richard Milher, Roy Stuart and Ron Feilen   Lisa with Samantha Fox and Bobby Astyr   Lisa with Tiffany Clark   Lisa and Annette Heinz     Lisa, Harry Reems and others     Lisa and Ken Yontz, Mascara (1983)   * Lisa Cintrice – After XXX             Lisa in pink in ‘Dharma and Greg’ * The post Lisa Cintrice: Not Being Afraid, Part 2 – Podcast 133 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Lisa Cintrice had a colorful life: for a start, her father was a New York mobster who was related to the most famous Italian priest of all time, Padre Pio, a man so terrified of God that he manifested stigmata, the same wounds in his hands and feet that Jesus suffered when he was nailed to the cross. And for much of her adult life, Lisa was afraid too – largely because of her career in adult film. In actual fact, she appeared in only a handful of movies in 1981 and 82. But what made her career particularly notable was that when she started, she’d already signed up to serve in the armed forces and was about to be deployed. She changed her mind at the last minute, choosing instead to make sex films, but getting out of the army contract wasn’t easy. And the way that she dealt with the problem was novel and controversial, and received a splash of publicity in the New York tabloids of the early 80s, when she turned up at the army recruitment center in – where else, Times Square – and promptly stripped off for the many newspaper photographers in attendance.  Lisa’s time in porn had highs and lows, living with Fred Lincoln and Tiffany Clark, partying with Jamie Gillis at the Hellfire club, and bumping into Richard Dreyfuss at Plato’s Retreat. But it also brought with it a drug habit that risked her life. As a result, Lisa did the only thing she could to survive: she fled New York and hid for over 30 years, terrified of having her past exposed. Trouble was, during that time, she got a recurring part in the TV series, Star Trek: Voyager – a franchise well-known for its obsessive and curious fans. To make matters worse, the internet happened – and suddenly her adult films were available to a whole new generation. And then in 2015, The Rialto Report tracked Lisa down and contacted her for an article about her life – not realizing how she’d done everything to hide her porn past from prying eyes for several decades. Lisa panicked: this was her worst fear, and it risked collapsing her personal, family, and professional life. Fast forward to the present day, and Lisa is now ready to talk about it all in this candid and personal interview. She’s even decided to write a book. This is part 1 of Lisa’s story.  This episode running time is 62 minutes. ———————————————————————————————————— Lisa Cintrice Little Lisa celebrating Christmas   Lisa with her mom and brother   Lisa’s wedding day   Lisa’s father walks her down the aisle   Lisa and her husband   Lisa in her first photo layout     Ken Yontz and Larry Levenson, with Lisa   Lisa in The Starmaker         * The post Lisa Cintrice: Not Being Afraid, Part 1 – Podcast 132 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Seventy is no age to die. Especially not for a man as decent and good as Harvey Cohen. But last week, Harvey, who used to be the adult film star known as Herschel Savage, passed away in his home in Los Angeles. Despite his performing pseudonym, Harvey was a gentle, sweet man, who’d chosen his nom de porn in an attempt to combine the nerdy New York Jewish self that he was with that of the sexual stud he pretended to be. Over the years, I saw him frequently – we’d eat out at Musso and Frank’s on Hollywood Boulevard. Often, he was by himself, sometimes with his best friend and fellow porn veteran, Paul Thomas. Outwardly he looked great, in fact I always thought he looked better than he did back in the 1970s and 80s. But in other respects, time hadn’t been kind to him. He’d developed a series of health complaints, and last year suffered a serious heart attack – something he was keen to keep hidden from all but his closest friends. He was always entertaining, repeating George Carlin’s routine on the language of aging: you become 21, turn 30, push 40, but you reach 50, make it to 60, if you’re lucky you hit 70. In fact, Herschel was 70 when he died. He’d struggled financially as well, and always berated himself for not being motivated to do something with his life. The heart attack had been a wake-up call. “I need to get creative with how I earn some money,” he said. “Life is difficult when you’re poor. Not to mention boring.” He talked about a new one-man show that he was working on titled “Rich Man, Porn Man,” but in truth, he was struggling to make things happen anymore. I interviewed Herschel for this Rialto Report podcast almost exactly 10 years ago to the day. Neither of us really knew what we were doing. I was still new to the podcast game, and Herschel wasn’t used to being asked personal questions about his life. And, as it turned out, it got us both into a little trouble. Herschel more trouble than me. You see, Herschel had been interviewed by a Harvard University student a few months before for a project that a student been doing for her degree course. Turns out, Herschel and she had become friendly and had started a relationship. She’d found Herschel to be far from the coarse, crude, misogynistic porn star she’d expected to encounter, but rather an intelligent, cultured, and sensitive man – who’d practiced Buddhism for the previous forty years. And then we did the Rialto Report interview that you’re about to hear: in it, Herschel is frank, unfiltered, and brutally honest about his life and thoughts on the adult film business. When his new girlfriend listened to it, she was shocked. She called him as soon as she heard it and expressed how upset and disappointed she was. This wasn’t the Herschel she knew, she said. I didn’t want Herschel to suffer as a result of having done an interview with me, so I bought him an air ticket to visit his girlfriend so he could have the chance to explain and repair the relationship. It was to no avail: Herschel took the flight, but no amount of sweet talking could fix the situation, and they split shortly afterwards. Not one of The Rialto Report’s proudest moments. Over the last few years, I would hear from Herschel on a daily basis. He would send news articles to me on WhatsApp, declaring he was my news and literary concierge. He would often add a comment about why he wanted me to read the article. Ten days ago, Herschel unexpectedly sent me photos. Tens of them. From all stages of his life from when he was a boy through to recent pictures. “You can use these on The Rialto Report soon,” he said. The last article I received from him was on the day before he passed: “I want you to read every word of this,” he wrote next to a link. The article was entitled: “How to life a long and happy life.” Rest in Peace, Harvey. ——————————————————————— Photos sent by Herschel Savage to The Rialto Report last week: * The post R.I.P. Herschel Savage (1952 – 2023) appeared first on The Rialto Report.

In the 1970s, New York was a city on the edge: it was on verge of bankruptcy, beset by a crime wave, and overrun by the rampant sex industry that was taking over Times Square. Different people reacted to the city’s critical state in different ways. Some, like Phil Russo, an idealistic cop in the Public Morals Squad, were hellbent on reversing the trend, doing everything they could to identify and prosecute the criminal perpetrators, and restore law and order. Others like Varla Romano, one of the only female detectives in the NYPD vice squad, worked hard and diligently, but faced uphill battles of her own just to be accepted in what was a traditionally alpha male world. And then there was Michelle Lake, the daughter of distant immigrants, who desperately sought a role in life for herself that would give her validation, purpose, and a way of supporting herself – and found some hope in stripping at the Melody Burlesk. Three very different people. Each trying to find their way on their own terms. Their paths would cross in the summer of 1977, and their lives would be changed forever – and, when the dust settled, in some ways, part of New York would be changed too. This is Part 2 of Cop Porn: When the NYPD made a Porn Film. (Listen to Part 1 here.) This episode running time is 50 minutes. ———————————————————————————————————— April 1977, Public Morals Squad If the first half of the 1970s had been a difficult period for New York, things got a whole lot worse in 1977. One evening that year, two lightning strikes just north of the city led to a massive blackout. Instantly the light-filled city became a black pit of lawlessness that symbolized the city’s problems. For the next 25 hours everything stopped. Elevators stalled and subways ground to a halt. Looting and arson broke out, over a thousand fires were reported burning down much of the Bronx, and almost 2,000 stores were damaged or ransacked. Added to that, you had the city’s financial downturn, rising poverty and inequality levels, not to mention paranoia about the Son of Sam serial killer, and you were left with a city in a critical state. Inside the Public Morals Squad, detectives continued their impossible fight against pornography. Bob Cantwell – captain to thirty-two of the Vice Squad’s finest, including detectives Phil Russo and Varla Romano – had been at the heart of that battle since he joined the squad. He remembers: “We managed to indict a few of the porn wholesalers, some of whom we believed were at the lower echelon of organized crime. But I’m sorry to say we hadn’t laid a finger on what we considered to be higher level mob figures. Sometimes we got them into court, but they had heavily priced legal talent – and they rang rings around us. All in all, it was a very difficult area for New York City law enforcement.” Cantwell regularly aired his frustration, so Phil felt sure he’d have a willing audience for his pitch on how they could develop an undercover operation. Over the course of a week, Phil and Varla mapped out what they’d need to make their unorthodox concept work. First, they figured the operation would take four cops. The two of them, plus two fellow detectives they already had in mind: the first was a veteran tough guy on the force called Irwin Cardona, who everyone called ‘Lefty’. The second was Patty Kehoe, one of the only other women in the division, a detective who was an undercover specialist with good instincts. Next, they worked out logistics: they’d need to incorporate their operation like a legit company. Phil thought the name ‘Triple-X Enterprises’ had a ring to it. Then, they’d need to rent actual office space where they could meet potential backers and wannabe production partners. And it went without saying that they’d all need to assume undercover roles: Phil would play the part of the company head of Triple-X Enterprises. His back story was that he was a guy recently released from prison with some cash to burn. Varla would be his girl Friday, a savvy right-hand operator who’d put the female talent at ease. Patty would be their secretary, fielding calls and fetching coffee. And Lefty would serve as the heavy, there to keep things in line. Phil put it all together and outlined a budget. It covered everything from the office rental to the cash needed to run ads for talent – as well as expenses to wine and dine potential backers and targets. At the end of the week, it was time to present the plan to Cantwell. With Varla at his side, Phil took the details to their captain and made an impassioned pitch. He mentioned there was a precedent: the undercover Times Square bookstore operation that he’d heard about. He explained how they would convincingly pose as porn producers and lure people into their network. Cantwell was surprised at the audacity of the idea – and he had questions. How would they start the operation, he asked? Phil said they’d need to hit the ground running and establish themselves in the adult film production world to make themselves known to the mob without raising any red flags. He laid out how they’d spread word on the street about how they were new to the business, and how they would share their plans to make a number of adult features. Then they’d actively source people for both the cast and crew to pretend to put together a fictional film. Cantwell pushed them: How close would they come to actually making any porn films, he asked? Phil said that he’d been over departmental regulations with a fine tooth-comb, and was confident they could easily abide by all the rules without doing anything illegal. To Varla’s surprise, the captain was open to the idea but he said they needed to run it by the New York District Attorney’s office. Cantwell said if the D.A. gave the OK, then the department would be on board too. At that time Manhattan’s District Attorney was Robert Morgenthau, a fierce prosecutor of crime. Morgenthau was aggressive but he was political too. If there was any operation that might bend any rules then he wanted some distance between himself and the NYPD – and this undercover idea fell into that category. So he ordered his deputy to speak to the detectives. The deputy listened to the plan intently and gave them thumbs up – with one caveat. If anything went wrong with the operation, there was to be no traceable link back to the D.A.’s office: the high jinks had to be kept on the down low. Sure, the D.A. would be happy to take any success from the operation, but until then, the cops were completely on their own. Manhattan’s District Attorney at that time was Robert Morgenthau. He’d taken office in 1975 after earning a fierce reputation as lead prosecutor for the Southern District of New York in the 1960s. Just like the NYPD, the DA’s office was in disarray when Morgenthau took over. It was understaffed, underfunded and under water when it came to fighting the torrent of crime running rampant in the city. Like Phil, Morgenthau blamed organized crime for many of the city’s woes and felt old fashioned prosecutorial methods weren’t going to cut it. But while Phil wanted the insider evidence that would help shut porn operations down, Morgenthau was more interested in just getting a high profile mob head on a silver platter that he could serve up at a press conference for his political gain. Phil, Varla and Cantwell met with Silvio Mollo, Morgenthau’s chief assistant, and laid out their request. Mollo listened intently, occasionally interrupting with a clarifying question. When Phil was done, Mollo slowly sat back, glanced over the supporting documents in front of him, and raised one final question. “How much will it cost?” Phil shared the figure; Mollo said fine. Not only was the operation approved, but the DA’s office was good to foot half the bill, on one condition – the high jinks would have to be kept on the down low. While unconventional tactics might be needed, publicity around them most certainly was not. Mollo would be their point person going forward while Morgenthau maintained his distance, interested only in results. ‘Triple-X Enterprises’ was a go, and ready for action. * Michelle Lake, Times Square. April 1977. After just a couple of months stripping at the Melody Burlesk, Michelle Lake found herself with a small but devoted following of regulars – a motley group of mostly middle-aged men hungry for a token of kindness in the form of a wayward glance or a signed Polaroid for $10. Michelle also found herself with an expanding group of girlfriends, collected from the ranks of the other dancers. The women who worked at the Melody tended to fall into two camps. There were the local girls happy to earn cash from the adult business but unwilling to cross the line into anything more risqué. And then there were the starlets, porn film performers, looking to capitalize on their small-time celluloid fame by headlining at popular strip joints. Michelle’s friendships cut across all factions, but she was especially intrigued by the adult film stars. To start with, they made a lot more money than the local girls. Their advertised presence led to lines around the block, which ensured they were fawned over not only by customers but by the club management because of the extra cash they brought in. These porn stars were the A-listers of a B-movie game. They carried themselves differently too. They had an aura about them that made them seem a little bit more special – like they knew things that Michelle didn’t… even though she wanted to. So Michelle would hang around between sets and listen in on their dressing room gossip about their life played out for the movie cameras. It wasn’t like these women sugarcoated their experiences though – there was talk of waiting on guys who couldn’t perform, bending into back-breaking contortions so that cameramen could get their shots, and shivering in stone-cold bathtubs while pretending to be hot and bothered. But somehow, as bizarre as it sounded, these conversations took Michelle right back to when she was a young girl shooting a TV ad for the local dairy company; back to those brief moments in front of the camera when she felt electric, alive, and most of all, seen. Michelle’s interest was so keen that eventually one of the actresses told her that she was shooting a feature in town the next day – and that the director was looking for extras for an orgy scene. At first Michelle brushed the idea off with a nervous laugh, but she thought about it and slowly began to warm to it. “I thought… this might actually be good for me,” she remembers. “Seeing how well things were going so far with my dancing, I thought maybe I should keep pushing my boundaries, testing myself. I figured, it was only going to be an orgy scene – I’d just be one of many anonymous shapes, hiding under the rest of the bodies as I try to find myself. So, I actually agreed to it. I laugh nowadays: I still can’t believe I said yes.” Before Michelle had the chance to over-think the prospect of having sex on camera, the next day, and the shoot, arrived. Walking onto the set for the first time was jarring – but for different reasons than she expected. She remembers: “The first thing that struck me was how clean it all was. That may be a strange way of describing it – but that was my spontaneous reaction. It was clean, and everyone had a calm, matter-of-fact attitude. No one was unsavory. Nothing was unpleasant. That was instantly reassuring.” The orgy scene turned out to be relatively straightforward – the people were normal, the crew respectful, and surprisingly, the sex didn’t feel strange. It all went well and Michelle was approached and instantly offered more work. Would she prefer fluffing, magazine layouts, loops, or feature films, she was politely asked? And what about girl/girl, gang-bang, or interracial scenes? Without knowing what all of the terms meant, Michelle mumbled a yes. And so, within a few months, she’d appeared in ‘French-Teen’ (as Orgy Girl in White), ‘Sweet Wet Lips’ (as Girl Outdoors), and ‘Venture into the Bizzare’ (sic) (as Velocity Hornbeck). And she felt fine. In fact, Michelle was happy with her decision to make movies. The money was good, the work was easy, and she’d met interesting people on set – like a chatty Jew-turned-Buddhist who’d adopted the schizophrenic nom-de-porn ‘Herschel Savage’. There was another benefit too: working in the films put Michelle in touch with Peter Wolff, a maverick editor of popular men’s magazines. Peter’s gruff and disheveled appearance masked a keen talent for publishing successful top shelf titles. And apart from her dream of working with dolphins, Michelle had always wanted to write. So she offered Peter her services as a gonzo journalist reporting from the front lines of the sex business. Peter snapped Michelle up on the spot, and her pieces started appearing in Cheri magazine the following month. It wasn’t long before Michelle recommended the sex film business to her friend Erica. Erica said she’d think about it. Then one day Michelle turned around on a set and was suddenly confronted with a nude Erica in front of her. She still remembers the shock: “Oh, my God! It just dawned on us that we were meant to be in a lesbian scene with each other. We were girlfriends, sisters almost, but never had any interest in each other sexually. The director asked me to strap on a dildo, and told us to act as if we were hugely turned on to each other. We exchanged glances and fell to the floor, laughing hysterically. I guess they managed to film us at some point, but it was the most ridiculous sex scene you ever saw.” After a while, it occurred to Michelle and Erica that they’d never seen the result of their cinematic labors. In fact, they’d never even seen the inside of any porn theater. So they decided to go and watch one of their films on the big screen. When they saw themselves in close-up – 15 feet high, in grainy washed-out colors – it was in a heavy S&M scene where they were tied up and being whipped. The cinema was filled with their agonized screen-screams of forced ecstasy. Michelle remembers: “On the face of it, I admit it, the film was misogynistic – not to mention the bad acting, terrible lighting, and a plot that made no sense… it was just all-round awful. But to us that day, it was the funniest thing we’d ever seen. Once again, we collapsed in fits of laughter.” Many of the patrons in the theater were dismayed by their reaction, zipped up and skulked out. They didn’t know that they were being graced by the presence of the film’s stars. With several adult films under her belt, Michelle began to get offered the occasional audition for mainstream parts. She was excited by the idea so she went along and turned up to try out and read lines. The experience was very different from the sex films she was making. Michelle remembers, “It was an unpleasant experience. Just so nasty. No question – the mainstream casting guys were way sleazier than anything I’d experienced in adult films. The casting agents or directors would say, ‘There’s no nudity in this film, but just lift up your shirt so I can see your tits. Drop your pants so I can see what you’ve got’ And they’d expected to get away with it. It happened all the time – but I never had that experience for an adult film. “On an X-rated set, everything was pretty respectful. Nobody ogled me, or acted in an unpleasant way. There was no harassment. If anything, most of the time the crew was bored.” So Michelle continued to accept parts in sex films. The formerly chubby child of leftist intellectuals, previously plagued with bulimia and self-doubt, was now a voluptuous, in-demand porn star – and enjoying her life for the first time. * Phil, Needle Park. July 1977. With the DA’s approval secured, Phil jumped into action. The first order of business was renting office space as a front for the production company. There was only one place for it – the heart of New York’s adult industry, Times Square. Thanks to the city’s floundering finances, commercial real estate was going for a song so Phil had no problems finding something cheap and spacious. They choose a building on 42nd Street at the west end of Bryant Park. In the 1970s, like many parks in the city, Bryant was referred to as Needle Park thanks to the drug dealers, junkies, and prostitutes that dominated it. The location fit the bill perfectly. The office itself was two rooms a couple of floors above street-level. They set up the first room with a desk and phone for Patty Kehoe, aka the company secretary. Several chairs and an old coffee maker later and the entryway looked like a legit reception area. The second room housed Phil and Varla behind a couple of desks, next to a few file cabinets and a variety of seats. They rigged the new office with hidden video and audio surveillance, securing the equipment behind drywall and insulation so that any of the noise from their listening equipment would sound like nothing more than the hum of old building mechanics. Lastly, they hung up a gold-colored door plate in the hallway: ‘Triple-X Enterprises. Please ring bell.’ With the office established, the next step was to place ads for talent. They picked adult publications like Screw magazine as well as mainstream outlets like Variety, and copied the other similar ads they’d seen: “Actors, actresses, and crew wanted for upcoming film production. Experience and nudity required.” As sales pitches went, the approach may not have had the greatest finesse but it began yielding results immediately. The office phone started ringing and didn’t stop – and the variety of people calling surprised even Phil and the team who were no strangers to the world of adult entertainment. First there were the performers. Some were older, serious actresses with mainstream experience who did adult work on the side just to make ends meet. Others were people who waited tables or were in school, moonlighting in sex loops waiting to get noticed by a talent scout. Then there were some porn regulars – including several who came with their own acts. One went by the name Honeysuckle Divine and kept Patty on the phone for ages as she described an act which included propelling ping pong balls and talcum powder from her vagina. Another introduced himself as Dr. Infinity, who was proud of his unique talent for auto-fellatio. And nobody could forget Veri Knotty, a sweet-hearted actress who could tie knots in her unusually long and pliable labia. Souvenirs from Honeysuckle Divine’s unique act Then there were the crew – a wide range of characters from all walks. There were seasoned workers from the mainstream industry, looking to pick up some cash between Hollywood shoots taking place in New York. There were adult film regulars who always had an ear open for their next paychecks. And there were porn aficionados, exclusively men, who were regular adult movie consumers that felt their fluency with the genre made up for a lack of technical skills. Among the mix they came across a guy named Paul Morini. Paul presented himself as a jack-of-all-porn. He rattled off a bunch of XXX movies he’d acted in and several where he’d served as production manager. He also revealed that he’d had experience dealing with the labs that printed the films and even with some of the money men on occasion. Varla’s shorthand notes from their first meeting with Paul said it all. She wrote, “Biiiig talker. Strange guy. But possibly the one who can pull things together for us while we keep noses clean. He says he can make it all happen for 10k – rental, people, locations.’ So Phil and Varla signed him up as their production manager, sealing the deal with a handshake and an advance of $200 to find someone to write a script. After a couple of weeks of pre-production, the operation was going well. They’d started to establish themselves in the business, made many contacts, and were being taken seriously. But there was one stumbling block in Phil’s mind. One insurmountable challenge, and it was staring him in the face: they could plan to make a porn film all day long, they could hire and talk to people, but this operation was only going to move forward if they actually shot something. Phil, Varla, Patty and Lefty sat in the office one night and pulled out a bottle of bourbon. They’d done a lot in just a short period of time, but deep down they knew they needed to go further. No one said it out loud, but they all knew what they were thinking about. So they asked themselves: “Are we really going to do this? Can we even do this?” They knew if they didn’t, the operation – the only real chance of making any progress – would be dead in its tracks. It was time to report back to the captain at the precinct. * Phil and Varla, Midtown Manhattan Precinct. July 1977. A few days later, Phil and Varla were sitting down opposite Captain Bob Cantwell. Without beating around the bush, Phil laid out the problem and set out what he wanted to do next. He remembers his pitch: “I told the captain straight up, we needed to shoot a film in order to keep this thing going. I detailed exactly how we’d pull things off and what we’d do with the finished product. Basically, I thought of all the questions he could possibly ask. I knew making a movie was the only way forward and I wanted it to happen.” Like before, Cantwell said he’d need to speak to the D.A. again. To everyone’s satisfaction, the D.A.’s right-hand man once again gave the green light. This time though he was much more reluctant, and he emphasized the same warning as before in more blunt terms: “Just keep it goddamn quiet”. Back at the Triple-X offices, Phil and Varla called Paul Morini and told him to pull the trigger. Paul snapped into action: within hours, he picked the director, the crew, and most of the performers. He knew where he’d rent the equipment, and had a couple of locations locked in. It was looking good. But the next day, Paul got a call from his leading actor saying he could no longer make the shoot due to a family emergency. Soon after, Paul got a call from the director, saying he too was no longer available. And one by one, other people dropped out, excuses as flimsy as they came. Paul pressed them all for details, but people stayed tight-lipped, hurrying off the phone. Paul couldn’t understand it. He knew these people, and they were normally trustworthy and reliable. What was going on? Paul put a call into a director-friend named Carter Stevens. Carter was one of adult film’s true originals. On the surface, he fit all expectations for a sleazy pornographer: he was overweight, wore a signature terry-cloth headband, and lived in an apartment-slash-film studio with a revolving cast of runaway girls. He’d started his career in the early 1970s and for a time he was everywhere, directing a series of increasingly popular films with names like Lickity-Split, Teenage Twins, and Honeymoon Haven. Carter Stevens Carter knew everything about the business, and everyone knew about him. He could be relied on to find out what was going on. Carter told Paul that word was going around that something wasn’t quite right about the people he was working for. This new company, Triple-X Enterprises, had appeared overnight and out of the blue, and it had raised suspicions. The porn business was tight, like a close-knit family. Everyone knew everyone, and they looked out for each other. Someone was warning people away from Triple X. Carter told Paul to speak to Sandi Foxx. Sandi was a sometime actress and occasional talent agent. She’d heard about Triple X and at first was intrigued, so she’d stopped by the offices during their casting calls to get an understanding of what they were doing. She didn’t like what she saw but she couldn’t put her finger on it. There was something not quite right about the operation. Viewing herself as a mother hen to the ‘kids’ in the business, she began working the phones. She called everyone she knew, and recommended that nobody should take part in the production that Paul was pulling together. As Sandi was the gateway to a lot of work, people listened to her. So Paul called Sandi. He remembers: “I was pretty pissed that she was messing with something that I thought was a big opportunity for me. So I laid into her, asking where she got off. She told me that something just didn’t smell right to her. She said the big guy in the office – she meant Lefty – looked like a cop she’d seen somewhere. I told her she was crazy – that I’d been with these guys for a couple of weeks and they were nothing more than newbies trying to make a buck like the rest of us. But by that point it was too late: Sandi had blown it with the people I’d lined up and now I had to scramble.” Paul didn’t want his benefactors to know that things had fallen apart so he spun things his way. He told Phil and Varla that he had a better idea than making a feature length film. He said, they could do better if they made a series of simple loops – short films they could sell individually to bookstores, or maybe combine into a feature to hawk to the cinemas. The real reason for the change in strategy was that loops would require way fewer people and simpler logistics. In fact, all Paul needed was a cameraman, a lighting guy, a single location, and a couple of performers. Paul said he could do all that for less than $3k. Phil and Varla considered the suggestion, and gave Paul the thumbs up. They figured that the loops could get to market faster and put them in touch with buyers sooner. So Paul switched gears and pulled together a skeleton crew. For the location, Paul decided to rent a motel room out by JFK airport where he’d shot once before. And as for talent, there was a relatively new actress that Paul recently worked with – a fresh face on the stripping circuit that Sandi hadn’t gotten her claws into yet. Paul picked up the phone and called Michelle Lake. * JFK Airport, New York – Hotel Room 1632. August 1977. Michelle was on the fence when she considered the offer from Paul. He’d laid out the offer – a few loops for a new production company looking to break into the business. An easy day of work – no crazy hours, and some fast cash. But Michelle wasn’t in the business for a quick buck. She was in it for the camaraderie and the self-acceptance, and the adult film community was starting to feel like family to her now. Even though Michelle hadn’t been on the scene long, she felt she knew everyone and everyone knew her. They may have been an unlikely group of misfits, oddballs, and kooks, but they were her group of misfits, and they’d been good to her. This work was outta left field, with some people she’d never even heard of. But Paul pressed on. He offered her $150 for the day’s work – and as Michelle was doing nothing on the day they were looking to film, she ultimately said yes. On the day of the shoot, Phil picked Varla up and the two made their way to the airport motel. They hadn’t expected to be present for the filming, but Paul insisted, saying it was an important part of their education as new producers. When Phil and Varla walked into the motel room, it was just Paul, a guy he introduced as both gaffer and assistant cameraman, and a handsome guy named Keith who was the male performer for the day. After some hasty handshakes and small talk over lukewarm deli coffee, Michelle arrived. Phil was immediately struck by how much Michelle looked like an older version of his youngest daughter: same wavy brown hair, same green eyes, same wide smile. Michelle was immediately struck by the vibe in the room – and this time, not in a great way: “Usually when you walked onto a shoot,” she remembers, “it was like a bunch of friends getting together. But here, the only face I recognized was Paul’s. Also it was in a motel room, which was weird in itself because we always shot in someone’s apartment or in a little studio. I remember the only set decoration was a vase of cheap carnations.” Phil and Varla also stood out to Michelle. She found them odd, and not just because producers were rarely on set – certainly not for something like loops: “They didn’t seem comfortable with the process and they had no knowledge of what was unfolding in front of them,” she says. “They had a nervous formality to them, which contrasted with the relaxed energy that normally came from adult filmmakers who’d done it all, and seen it all, before.” Michelle was right to notice Phil’s unease. He remembers, “Making the films was a strange, strange experience. I was comfortable dealing with hustlers and criminals and mobsters, but not overseeing the action of a sex film in front of me. I didn’t know where to look. It was embarrassing.” Paul quickly got down to shooting three scenarios, one of which was the old porn-chestnut of a contractor inspecting a housewife’s plumbing. As Michelle and Keith peeled off their clothes, Phil and Varla nervously pretended to be engulfed in quiet conversation. As the performing couple pulled back the thin sheets to get to work, Phil stared out the window while Varla kept her nose down in a yellow legal pad pretending to take production notes. Between calling out directions for the performers to leave open better angles, and barking orders at the gaffer to move in with the ‘c-light’ – a term Phil later learned stood for crotch-light – Paul would pick up a still camera to take some shots. And every once in a while, Paul glanced over to Phil and Varla, proud his production was finally happening. The shoot finally finished early in the evening; Phil and Varla were surprised at how long it took to make three short films. When they finally called it a wrap, Michelle and Keith quickly showered off and pulled on their clothes as Paul and the gaffer broke down the lights and put the camera away. Paul kept saying how well the day had gone and promised to have the finished films back within a week. As they prepared to leave, Paul paid both the performers in cash, and Michelle walked up to Phil and Varla to thank them. In response, Phil nervously picked up the vase of red carnations and handed it to Michelle – an act she found awkward, but sweet. Tucking the vase into the crook of her arm, Michelle left for the subway. Outside of the flowers, the day was already fading from her memory – just another unremarkable loop shoot. * The following week, Paul proudly returned to the Triple X Enterprise offices with the edited loops, along with a projector so he could showcase the shorts. Patty and Lefty arranged a few chairs to view the movies projected against the far wall. All four officers had seen loops many times before. Whenever a peepshow was busted, the films had to be viewed by a judge to determine if they met the definition of obscenity. The justice would host the cops, prosecutors and defenders in chambers for a surreal restricted porn viewing that was often met with off-color remarks and laughs. But for Phil and Varla, this experience felt different. Having witnessed the shoot first-hand, the loops felt more like home movies than porn films. The loops may not have met the highest standards of cinematic art, but they would do the commercial trick. As the projector cooled down, Paul laid a selection of the still photos out on the desk. He said that photos on loop box covers were key to sales and suggested several he considered effective. One particular shot showed Michelle on all fours, facing the camera while her hair was pulled from behind. Phil glanced away. He knew he was doing the right thing, but he couldn’t help feeling guilty that he was responsible for this. With the show-and-tell over, Paul set off to the lab to order the prints. That night, leaving Triple X Enterprise to head home, Phil felt confident for the first time in years. “I felt we finally had what we needed to get into the business,” he says. “I knew in my bones we were onto something that would be a game-changer. I could see the whole thing playing out in my head, including the headlines I imagined when these little films would lead to the big busts.” Phil got home, kissed his girls and wife goodnight, and slept without nightmares for the first time in years. * Phil and Varla. Midtown Manhattan. August 1977. It was a couple of days later, when Phil and Varla were at the precinct filing paperwork, that the shit hit the fan. Varla began over-hearing bits of conversation and turned sheet-white. It was a bunch of uniformed cops from another division laughing their heads off. At first it was just a phrase here and there: ‘porno film’, ‘NYPD-produced’. Then it all came out. A newspaper article that day had claimed the NYPD had made some adult films, and so journalists had asked the Office of the Commissioner for comment. Commissioner Codd’s spokesman vehemently denied the claim, dismissing it as nonsense and reprimanding the newsman for giving voice to such a ludicrous idea. Varla and Phil couldn’t believe what they were hearing. They’d kept the operation so close and so quiet, it was impossible to imagine who could have leaked the story. They switched into damage control mode. Varla knew exposure of the sting could jeopardize all their careers, so she wanted to get to Captain Cantwell fast. Phil feared the revelation would kill the best chance he’d ever have to clean up Times Square. But before either of them had a chance to do anything, they were both called into Codd’s office. It was the first time either of them had been granted an audience with the Chief Commissioner, and that was bad news. That afternoon turned into grueling hours of debrief. Phil and Varla were made to share every detail of the operation from start to finish. To say ‘Chief Straight Arrow’ Codd was unhappy would be an understatement. He was caught red-faced in the glare of publicity. He’d forcefully denied the newspaper claims; now he was going to have to change his story and come clean. The next morning a press briefing was called to address the previous day’s claims. The same spokesman that had berated the reporter for his suggestion the previous day issued an apology. Yes, he said, it turned out there was a covert campaign to expose the mob’s control of pornographic distribution. Yes, it seemed the cops had actually been involved in the shooting of a sex film. No, the Commissioner had no prior knowledge of the operation. Yes, they would be launching a full internal investigation into the matter to identify and punish those responsible. In short, Phil and Varla were being hung out to dry. * After that briefing, it didn’t take long for a media frenzy to explode. Headlines across the city had a field day with the salacious story of a NYPD scandal. From ‘No Popcorn in Cop Porn,’ New York News, August 31, 1977: A spokesman confirmed for the first time that the films had been made by the department. He said that the spicy cinematography was never distributed because First Deputy Commissioner, James Taylor, ruled that the scheme would violate unwritten police rules that police should not initiate crimes. It was reported that the film had been confiscated and impounded – and that no one outside of the NYPD had seen it. Not true. Someone slipped a copy to the press, who passed it around and publicly shared smutty plot details. This is from New York magazine, September 5, 1977: The first portrays a damsel in distress who enlists the aid of a bellboy to fix a leaking faucet. As is typical of such loops, the couple becomes involved in explicit sexual activity in short order. The second loop, also fairly standard, involves a burglar who breaks into the damsel’s room and, again in short order, forgets about any stealing. The third loop, which includes some shower scenes, centers on a honeymoon couple. Not surprisingly, Police Commissioner Codd condemned the whole operation. But his reasoning was not what many people expected. Codd said he was “morally outraged”: Why? Because a female member of the force had assisted in the actual production. That didn’t go down well with Varla: “Seriously?” she says. “You’re saying you’re mad just because a woman was involved? That’s your biggest problem? These guys were from a different century. It was the same sexism that I’d fought for years. Now I felt they were saying the operation was my fault – just because I was a woman.” If Varla was angry, the newspapers were over the moon: the story had everything – sex, crime, incompetent cops, and the constant issue of sleaze in Times Square – and every day there seemed to be a new person telling their version. Everybody that is, except for Phil and Varla, who’d been slapped with an internal gag order by top city officials. The tone of the press coverage soon turned to mockery. From ‘Nudie Blues,’ New York magazine, September 12, 1977: Police Commissioner Michael Codd really should be taking bows. New Yorkers are in debt to him for blowing the whistle on his own undercover unit and preventing peep-show devotees from seeing the cops’ cinematic effort. For, take it from us folks, it ranks as the worst porno film ever made. Take the setting: a hot-sheet motel in Queens. You wouldn’t take your spouse there. Holiday Inn-provincial décor. No mirrors. Not even a water bed. And the casting. Three twelve-minute loops, and there are only two characters. The operation came crashing down fast. Just a couple of days after the story broke, Phil, the team, and the supervising investigators were back at the Triple X Enterprise offices boxing everything up for review. As they were closing out the space, Paul showed up, clutching a pile of newspapers. Varla remembers him wearing his indignance like a badge of honor: “He was yelling at us like we were the bad guys and he was the innocent victim. He ranted about how he’d risked his reputation for us and how we still owed him money. As he stomped off, he said he’d be seeking legal advice for breach of contract and defamation of character. Needless to say, we never heard from him again.” With the media storm going on, Paul was the least of their worries. * Michelle. September 1977. Michelle was as blindsided by the sudden publicity as were the cops. She first heard the breaking news from an adult film actor friend who asked if she’d seen the newspaper stories about a sex flick shot at JFK by the NYPD. The penny dropped immediately – and Michelle realized she was the star in question. When she confessed to her friend, he warned her that the story was spreading nationwide, and she should brace herself to be exposed… even more than usual, he joked. It wasn’t long before calls started rolling into Michelle’s phone service. One of the earliest messages was from a local television station saying they wanted her for the six o’clock news. Michelle panicked. Her first thought was for her parents: “I had to tell them before they saw me on TV,” she remembers. “They knew nothing about the adult films I’d been making. I’d become a different person in the few years since leaving home. This secret life I’d been leading would be completely new to them. “I called them up and said, “Sit down, I’ve got some news for you.” “I told them I was going to be on the news that night. And then I told them why. “I still can’t believe they didn’t have heart attacks. Or hang up on me saying, “We’re disowning you.” In fact, they were calm and, true to their socialist principles, treated me fairly and didn’t judge. “With that, I went on CBS or ABC, and was interviewed by a reporter for the evening news.” While Phil and Varla had to keep quiet, their lead actress was under no such restrictions. Michelle wound up on several TV shows sharing her version of events. And she began to enjoy it. “It was an adventure,” she says. “I was seduced by the process, the television, the media… everything. And by now I was comfortable in front of cameras.” From ‘No Popcorn in Cop Porn,’ New York News, August 31, 1977: Michelle Lake, the female lead in the blue movie, said that she was not aware she was performing for the police until she heard about it from an editor. “I had no idea what was happening,” said the pert porno actress, who said she had received $150 for seven hours of sexual activity before the cameras in a motel near Kennedy Airport. As Michelle shared her side of the story, she made clear to everyone that she never thought the cops had taken advantage of her. Even though it turned out that the job wasn’t for a regular adult film production, Michelle said she didn’t feel used or betrayed in any way. She’d been paid the money she was promised, and the cops had been nice – heck, they’d even given her flowers. She wanted everyone to know she wasn’t a victim. The cops were just people like her, she said. People trying to do what felt right to them. A week later, Michelle was invited to appear on one of the late-night New York TV chat shows to talk about her experience. When she was in makeup before the taping, Michelle mentioned to one of the producers that her parents would be watching. The producer asked if he could call them, so Michelle gave him their phone number. Once the interview was underway, the host unexpectedly announced that he had Michelle’s parents on the line. Michelle was shocked at her two worlds colliding in such a public way, but her mother was loving every moment: “My mom was the classic pushy Jewish mother,” says Michelle, “and she quickly had the host in stitches. She was bright, witty, unafraid, and she could make anybody laugh. “The host asked my mom what she thought about her daughter making X-rated films. She answered, ‘I don’t like it, but she’s still my daughter.’ The audience lapped it up. “Then the host asked her about my talents, and my mom said that I was really a poet and I should recite something. I was mortified because the only thing I could remember in the moment was the first poem I ever wrote when I was eight years old called ‘Loneliness’. So I performed that. It must’ve been incongruous having an X-rated actress recite a poem from her childhood.” Loneliness is like the stars without the sky, a bird without a nest, hello without goodbye. The worst thing in life is to be all alone, to have no one near to help when you moan. How would you like to deal with no one at your side? It’s such a horrid feeling, you’ll wish that you had died. But when you have someone, you’ll be in such a happy tone, I hope you or I will never have to be alone. * Epilogue: Phil and Varla. New York City, 1978. While Michelle basked in the publicity, Phil and Varla were bathed in criticism. The exposure of Triple X Enterprise’s took a toll on their careers and made them the butt of jokes for a long time. Varla strove to put the operation behind her as quickly as possible. She’d worked too hard to establish herself as a female detective to allow the exposed undercover operation to completely derail her career. She threw herself at the mercy of the Force and over the next years allowed them to assign her to some of the worst precincts in the city without complaint. For the most part it was thankless work, but Varla continued to take small satisfactions out of the occasional win on behalf of a domestic violence victim or neglected child. She fought her way back. It was slow, but she made a career that she was proud of. As for Phil, for a time he became obsessed with figuring out who leaked the story. His first suspicions rested on Paul or someone from the adult industry who learned their secret and saw an opportunity to make a splash – and a buck. Then Phil learned that the mob had found out about the operation even before the newspapers had. The mob had followed them for a couple of weeks and had hung around the hotel when they’d shot the short sex films. But how did the mob find out? For Phil, there was only one realistic answer. Someone in the NYPD had ratted them out, and that meant putting their lives at risk. Phil never found out for sure who it was but he had his suspicions. There were plenty of disgruntled cops who resented Phil’s idealism and work ethic. And how does he feel about it now? When asked if he regrets the operation that he and Varla conducted, especially knowing how it all ended up, Phil shakes his head. “Even now I wonder what we could’ve done if we’d been allowed to pursue things to the next step. It wasn’t like we were having any luck on other fronts. We were finally making some headway; who knows what it coulda gotten us.” Phil eventually found his footing again in the NYPD, the boy’s club was more forgiving to him than it was to Varla. Michael Codd was eventually forced out of his position as Commissioner at the end of 1977 when Mayor Abe Beame was defeated by Ed Koch, and with memories short, the department placed Phil on a child sex trafficking task force. Phil says he can’t talk much about the work he did with the child safety unit, but he’s proud of what he was finally able to accomplish. He says those achievements finally helped him feel like he was doing something useful. They helped end his nightmares about mole people too. And one day, he realized that he was sleeping through to daybreak, and hadn’t thought about them for years. * Epilogue: Michelle. New York City, 1978. In the months that followed the cop porn expose, Michelle was often stopped on the street, recognized from newspaper photos, news interviews, and late-night chat shows. The truth was that she hadn’t had a lot of time to process what had happened. One moment she was an unknown adult film performer, the next she was on TV and in the newspapers. She remembers: “I never considered the consequences. I’d been making X-rated films, which was a subversive subculture frowned upon by society, and nobody sat me down and said, ‘Think this through. This is going to be recorded for posterity. Do you really want to be associated with this industry?’ “The experience had been fun, but the NYPD scandal was a watershed in my life. I realized I didn’t want this to be my big moment. I didn’t want to be defined as an X-rated actress. I didn’t regret it, but it wasn’t who I really was. I’d started making sex films almost by accident, but my real aspiration now was to be a writer. “And so, overnight, I decided I was done. I thought, ‘I’m out. I’m not doing this any longer.’ I stopped contacting people from the industry, I broke up with my boyfriend, and I moved to another part of New York. I basically started again.” Michelle’s life underwent one more immediate change. She met a successful literary agent at a social gathering, and shared some of her writing with him. He liked what he read, took her under his wing, and secured a contract for her to write a romance novel. She was 22, and the opportunity changed her life. The book sold well, and Michelle was on her way. Its plot? The book was about a New York woman who falls in love with a dolphin trainer, and they live happily ever after on a tropical island. What’s more, ten years after the book was published, Michelle fell in love with a dolphin trainer, got married, and moved to Hawaii to live happily ever after. Since then, she has continued to write, and her books have been translated and published in numerous countries. Michelle doesn’t dream of dolphins any more, but when she swims in the azure, clear oceans today, she sometimes sees them in the distance. And when she does, she still feels weightless. * Somewhere hidden in a police vault in New York lie three short pornographic films. Few people have seen them. Even fewer ever will. They are a missing, strange fragment from an almost forgotten moment in time. * The post Cop Porn: When the NYPD made a Porn Film – Part 2 – Podcast 131 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

In 1970s New York, hardcore sex films and adult bookstores raged across Times Square like a forest fire. It was great for the sex business, but it also depressed tourism and commerce, and emboldened organized crime in an already deeply beleaguered city. The cops fought back, busting theaters and sex shops on a regular basis. It had little effect: most of the sex operators just paid the fixed fine and re-opened the next day with no further consequences. For a police force already laid low by the city’s financial crisis, it was a demoralizing and losing battle. And so, in 1977, the Public Morals Squad, a division of the New York Police Department, came up with a novel idea: what if they set up an undercover porn production company and pretend to make their own adult movies so that they could infiltrate the shadowy alliances that connected the pornographic movie theaters to the mob-controlled film distributors? What resulted was a law enforcement operation that was as unprecedented as it was brash and secret. Secret that is, until the story leaked to the press, and a nationwide scandal erupted. Over the last ten years, The Rialto Report wanted to know more about this unusual police operation. I tracked down many of those involved – from all sides of the story – to establish what actually happened. We’re going to focus on three characters: Phil Russo, the cop who set up the undercover company to tackle the sex industry. Michelle Lake, the inexperienced adult film performer at the heart of the story. And Varla Romano, an NYPD detective who worked on the case. As for the rest, most names have been changed to protect the innocent – and the guilty. This is the inside, untold story of Cop Porn. This episode running time is 51 minutes. ————————————————————————————– When Michelle Lake slept, she dreamed of being weightless. She floated in clear, azure oceans, the warm water embracing her, washing away her anxiety and fear. She was surrounded by dolphins – kind-eyed, smooth-skinned, and accepting. They circled her silently, and she felt safe in their presence. She smiled back at them. But when Michelle woke, the dolphins disappeared, and her heart sank back down into her chest with blunt dread. She faced reality with unease. When Phil Russo slept, he too was haunted by mysterious creatures that lived beneath the surface. But these were different beasts. Phil’s dreams were of mole people: society’s rejects that inhabited the dark, labyrinthine passages in the subway beneath the streets of New York City. They scavenged and stole to survive, rarely venturing above ground, their faces caked in grime. In sleep, as in life, Phil was a cop, patrolling the tunnels looking for lawbreakers. Sometimes he found them. Sometimes they found him. Phil usually saw the whites of their eyes first, a split second before they attacked, pummeling him to the ground beneath a blur of blows. He woke in a cold sweat, before relief slowly washed over him. He faced reality with foreboding. Dolphins and subterranean dwellers. The complexities of life often reside beneath the surface. * August 1977. A hotel room at JFK Airport, New York. Apart from their recurring dreams, Michelle and Phil had little in common. They were from different backgrounds and generations. But at this moment, they were standing face-to-face in a beige airport hotel room. Michelle was in her early 20s, attractive, and fresh-faced. She was nude, dripping with pheromonal sweat. She smiled with a glow that betrayed the energetic sex she’s just performed with a faceless young buck still stretched out on the bed behind her, casually lighting a cigarette. Phil was a long decade older. He was perspiring too, but his glow was caused by stress. He vainly tried to mask his discomfort at what he’d just witnessed by pretending to focus on a distant object far out the window. His heart beat urgently against the NYPD badge hidden inside his jacket pocket. His standard-issue Smith & Wesson remained nestled at the bottom of a duffle bag at the foot of the bed. There is a quiet feeling in the hotel room but Phil’s psyche had been rudely disrupted. He was accustomed to seeing drug dealers with their brains splashed across Eighth Avenue, or teenage hookers manipulated by fur-clad pimps – but this scene is a whole different kind of strange. Phil grabbed a towel and handed it clumsily to Michelle. She thanked him, but he still couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact with her, let alone talk. At least not just yet. When she’d finished toweling her body, he reached into his pocket and handed her $150. Michelle took the money, though in the moment, nude and perspiring, she didn’t have a clue where she was going to put it. There weren’t many other people in the room. Two of them were concealing their disquiet by keeping busy. They put away the camera, lights, and film stock on which the day’s activity has been recorded. It’s the calm after the porn, and any hint of normalcy in the bedroom was forced. Outside the room, the rest of the world got on with its own business. The rest of the world that is, except for right outside the hotel room door. Unbeknownst to anyone in the room, stood two muscular men. Greased jet-black dyed hair, wearing large rings, and blood-red satin sports jackets. They stood in anonymous silence. Hearing that the carnal activity inside the room had stopped, they nodded, and smiled. They pulled back, and disappeared down the corridor. It’s a quiet summer afternoon in New York City, and everyone seems to have got what they came for. * Phil Russo. New York City. Seven years earlier, in 1970. After kissing his wife and two sleeping daughters each morning before dawn, Phil Russo took the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan to get to the police precinct where he checked in each day. No matter the season, it was always dark when he boarded the poorly-lit train. It was a jarring way for a transit cop to start his daily shift, but it was appropriate: everything around him was a reminder of his chosen career. If you traveled the New York subway system in the 1970s, you’d never erase it from your memory: the graffiti-strewn train cars were home to aggressive panhandlers, drug-addled hustlers, and threatening gang members who resembled central-casting hopefuls for the movie ‘The Warriors.’ And if you never traveled on it, count your blessings. It was the most dangerous transit system in the world, and you felt relieved each time if you got out without being manhandled, molested, or mugged. New York crime rates skyrocketed in the 1970s, and the subway was a jacked-up magnet for lawlessness. Each month saw hundreds of assaults, rapes, and murders on the trains and in their interconnected, dark maintenance passageways. Everyone knew about the problem, most everyone was ashamed by it, but no one seemed able to do a damn thing about it. At one point, visitors arriving at New York City’s airports received pamphlets welcoming them to “Fear City.” The skull-emblazoned documents advised them “not to take the subways under any circumstances.” Robbery was so pervasive on the Lexington Avenue line that it was nicknamed the “Mugger’s Express.” As for Phil, he’d been plunged into patrolling the transit system frying pan as a fresh-faced rookie transit cop in 1970. Phil was a proud and sturdy Italian-American, a no-nonsense believer in family, law enforcement, and the city of New York – not necessarily in that order. From the start, he was fiercely proud to wear the badge for his hometown. The New York Police Department (NYPD) was a different beast from other law enforcement agencies: tougher, more merciless, ruthless even. Unlike police departments in Chicago or Los Angeles that vowed to ‘serve’ or ‘protect’, the NYPD’s motto was unequivocal: ‘Fidelis ad mortem,’ it warned. Faithful unto death. Today, Phil still shakes his head at the enormity of the civic problem faced by the force when he first started. He remembers: “The Transit Police force covered a huge footprint. The Times Square subway station alone was immense. And we weren’t working smart: take our patrol patterns, for example – they were the same every day and therefore completely predictable. That meant criminals knew exactly where we were gonna be at any time. They could set their watches by us, and avoid us each day by staying one step ahead. Or one step behind.” As subway violence increased, new tactics were introduced. The rearmost train cars were shut down at night, and a ‘war on graffiti’ was declared. The result? Not much. Arrests went up marginally, sure, but violent crime rates remained unaffected. “Nothing we did seemed to work,” Phil remembers. “And the system was losing commuters every week – which in turn meant less money to fix the aging infrastructure. Train malfunctions were common, carriages were filthy, windows were frequently smashed. There was never a light at the end of the metaphorical tunnel.” And then there were the mole people. They were called ‘mole people’ because they rarely ventured above ground. The thousands of tunnels descended to a depth of 60 feet beneath street level. Hundreds of homeless people made it their home. It was a city beneath the city, and its inhabitants hid from anyone who tried to get them out of there. During Phil’s trips down into the inky bowels of these mazy passages, he was sometimes assaulted – hit on the head with a broken-bottle, or struck across the back by a sharp-edged shovel. Once he only avoided being skewered by a pick-axe when a colleague pushed him out of the way at the last second. Each time, Phil picked himself up, brushed himself off, and went back to work. And hard as he tried, Phil couldn’t shake the mole people from his head. They faced him down during the day, and they came back to him in the darkness of his dreams. He didn’t share his recurring night terrors with his wife or friends, and he definitely didn’t mention them to his colleagues. After all, Fidelis ad Mortem has gotta mean something, right? After years on the beat, Phil wanted a new role in the NYPD. He made his feelings known to his superiors: he’d appreciate a change, a different challenge. Ok, said the senior brass. They liked him and they didn’t want to lose him. And so, a few months later, he was transferred onto the streets of midtown, a neighborhood that included the notorious area around Eighth Avenue and Times Square. It was a change, alright. But Phil had climbed out of the frying pan and walked into the fire. * Michelle Lake. Queens NY. 1972. Michelle Lake didn’t just dream of swimming with dolphins, she thought about them every waking day – unusual for a Jewish girl growing up in an immigrant Brooklyn neighborhood in the 1960s and 70s. While Phil Russo was patrolling the subway, Michelle was daydreaming her way through high school classes, wishing she was working in a sky-blue aquarium. Her parents had come to the country from Poland and, like many of their generation and background, they were political and left-wing. The source of Michelle’s father’s ideology was white-hot anger and resentment, pure and simple. And he had good reason to be furious. He’d been a happy-go-lucky kid, but after fighting in the Second World War in Europe, he’d returned from the conflict a different man. He’d been one of the soldiers responsible for cleaning out the gas chamber ovens. And what he saw there changed him forever. For years after, he suffered from PTSD, waking up screaming in the middle of the night unable to shake the images from his mind. Now he was a staunch communist living at the heart of a capitalist empire, and if you pushed his buttons he’d explode. Heated discussions dominated his household: he believed that the working man was being exploited, and that the inequities of the free market were inherently evil. Michelle’s introduction to politics started early – she was taken to marches in Washington to protest the Vietnam War, and met radicals like Angela Davis. But she didn’t see much of her father – he slept during the day and drove a New York taxi at night, a job he hated. He was a distant figure to her. As Michelle remembers: “I lived in a house with an angry, wounded man that loved me, but his psychological injuries affected us all. My parents did their best, but they were emotionally absent and I felt it.” The intergenerational pendulum swing meant that Michelle grew up with different aspirations. She remembers: “Rather than become political like my parents, I was driven to become spiritual instead. I turned to art and music, and looked for deeper answers to life.” Michelle obsessively listened to hippies like Carole King and Peter, Paul and Mary, and taught herself to play the guitar. She wrote poetry and dozens of songs. She even got the chance to star in a TV commercial for a local milk company when she was a child. It was a turning point. Shooting the advert lit a spark in her: “I decided I wanted to act,” she remembers. “I asked my parents if I could go to stage school. My mom dismissed the idea. Perhaps it was a money thing, but it also wasn’t the sort of activity families in our neighborhood did. The idea got dropped, but it lingered inside my head.” At school, Michelle did well and had friends, but as a teenager she became shy and insecure. And as she grew older, her troubled home-life and low self-esteem led to bulimia. When it got bad, she’d cut class and hide the absences from her parents. On one occasion, her mother caught Michelle purging in the bathroom. She dragged Michelle to a psychiatrist. The expert’s conclusion was that the act of sticking her finger down her throat was probably a sexual issue. Nothing to worry about, he said. She’ll grow out of it eventually. As her bulimia wasn’t diagnosed, it wasn’t treated. And so it got worse. Michelle’s search for self-knowledge may have lacked self-awareness, but it was defiantly earnest. By the time she hit 18, she’d already tried all the era’s self-discovery fads. EST, Mind Dynamics, Primal Scream Therapy. You name it, she’d chanted it, confessed it, or shouted it. They didn’t all work, but that didn’t stop her searching. Her best friends came from that scene too, including Erica, a girl of her age who became her best friend. Eventually she felt confident and empowered enough to move out of her parent’s home, and start a life on her own. * Phil. Times Square. 1973. The first thing that hit Phil in his new job was the smell. It was obvious from the first day he started patrolling the midtown streets: “The whole Times Square area had its own unique odor,” Phil recalls. “It was a damp, foul funk that came from the discarded garbage. The trash would lay in the sun for days. Nobody seemed interested in cleaning it up, so the stench lingered, and I smelled it everywhere. After a while, I equated that smell with the sale of sex.” Phil’s new beat was a world away from the subterranean realm of the subway. As he walked the dirty, unforgiving streets, his life was now populated with a different kind of nemesis: peep shows and adult movie theaters. Every day, Phil strolled past the grand old theaters from a bygone era, now grinding out pornographic films round the clock. He kept a close eye on the peep show machine operators that collected heaps of quarters in exchange for exhibiting the most explicit sex you could see in the city. And he was on a first-name basis with the bookstore owners, theater managers, hookers, and pimps that were denizens of the Deuce. Criminal activity was so brazen that commuters often had to step around prostitutes soliciting johns and climb over junkies just to get to work. He saw beatings, stabbings, shootings, prostitution, and drug deals – all conducted out in the open. But it was the tourists that Phil found most amusing. He says: “I’d see these green out-of-towners walking down the street paralyzed with fear. They’d be huddled together, clutching their bags, afraid they were gonna get robbed. “I’d look at them and say, “What the heck are you doing here?” “They’d mumble, “We came to see Times Square.” “I’d reply, “Well, you’ve seen it. Now get outta here before you see some real trouble!” Phil worked hard. He had to. The police department lacked sufficient manpower, so officers like him were on call around the clock. And if he wasn’t walking his beat, Phil was back at the precinct or in the courts, processing the arrests he’d made. It was a never-ending cycle of arrest-to-paperwork-to-court. Before long, the hours created a problem for Phil with his old lady. She’d been pleased when he’d got out of the trauma of the transit patrol, but now he was coming home even less, complaining about his workload, and often sleeping at the precinct. It seemed like she and the kids rarely saw him anymore. And when he did sleep in his own bed, his cold-sweat nightmares often woke her up. Phil was getting it from all sides: “It was a brutal time to be a cop,” he says. “When we busted bookstores and theaters, a crowd would form outside, and they’d boo and jeer us as we loaded offenders into the paddy wagons. That shows you the level of support we got from the people we served. “One day, a front-page article in the Daily News pictured two cops breaking into their own police car. Each of them thought the other had the keys, so they got locked out. Some journalist figured that was a funny headline for the city. We were being turned into a laughing stock.” Sometimes Phil suffered even more than just being the butt of jokes. Because of the city’s budget woes, he usually patrolled the streets alone. If he got into trouble, his only recourse was to radio for help and hope that backup arrived before it was too late. As he describes it, “I got into scrapes, I picked up injuries, and I still have the scars. There was little respect for the uniform.” But when Phil sat down at the bar at the end of a day, his biggest complaint wasn’t the long hours, or the budget cuts. It wasn’t the lack of respect, humiliation, or threat of physical violence either. It wasn’t even not seeing his family as often as he wanted, or his wife bitching that he was an absent father. The biggest problem for Phil was that he didn’t think he was doing anything useful. Policing Times Square wasn’t just an uphill battle – it was a losing one: when the cops arrested a hooker, she’d be back on the same corner the following day. When they shut down a bookstore selling 8mm sex loops, the owner would pay the fine and re-open immediately. And when they busted and closed a theater exhibiting an obscene adult film, the managers would just appeal to the courts and re-open the next morning. The sex business in New York was a Hydra, regenerating its lost heads instantly, and policing it was a Sisyphean task. And even if Phil was successful, even if he did manage to secure the conviction of a porn theater manager or a bookstore assistant, these lowly people were just pawns of the sex business – and Phil wasn’t interested in busting the balls of the little guys. As he describes it: “We arrested these schmucks all the time, and ended up with thousands of reels of film, some petty cash, a few sad-ass clerks, and nothing more. I felt sorry for them. They were mostly Latino, and the owners took away their green cards to make sure they returned to work each day. It wasn’t their fault they worked in these places. What I was doing was just tackling the symptoms of the problem. We needed to do something different. We needed to attack the root cause.” Phil was right. Everyone knew the mob controlled the theaters, massage parlors, bathhouses, prostitution rings, and gambling dens, and that they were prime suppliers of sex films and magazines. But the mafia dons managed their business interests from afar, and the police were rarely able to touch them. Phil wanted to make a difference. He wanted the chance to take on the real offenders. The guys who were making the big money. He just didn’t know how. * Michelle. Queens. 1975. After graduating from high school and leaving home, Michelle went to City College in New York. She was a serious and dedicated student, but bulimia still cast a heavy shadow over her life. She says: “My roommates caught me throwing up a few times. They dragged me out of the bathroom to help, but they didn’t know what to do. They meant well, and tried to make me feel good about myself, but the problem wasn’t just that I thought I was fat – it was about deeper issues and insecurities. “It was about the family environment I was raised in. It was about my parents, and how they had difficulty expressing their love for me. It was about how I never felt accepted.” After a year in college, Michelle wasn’t happy – so she quit, with one destination in mind. She’d scraped together enough money for a one-way bus ticket to Miami. She remembers: “I was determined; I just wanted to work with dolphins. I’d fallen in love with the idea at 15 when I wrote a biology report on animal communications. When I graduated high school, I wrote letters to marine biologists all over the country begging for a job – but heard nothing back.” Michelle wasn’t necessarily interested in being a biologist or a veterinarian – she just wanted to just be around dolphins. She hoped that if she showed up in person, she could get some kind of marine work in Miami. For a brief moment, her hopes were raised when she met a guy who worked at a local aquarium. He offered to sneak her in after-hours so she could swim with newly captive dolphins. It was her dream come true. That night, Michelle slid into the water and into a new state of mind. She knew dolphins were unable to make facial expressions, but their eyes told a different story. She felt their curiosity and interest as they circled her in the pool. She floated weightless as they gazed at her in the semi-darkness. But it proved to be a one-off moment of hope. The aquarium worker disappeared. Michelle found a job waitressing but struggled to make ends meet. When she conducted an audit of her worldly wealth by slipping her hand into her pocket, she realized it was time to return to New York. Michelle was back where she’d started. * Varla Romano. 1975. Midtown New York. As divisions of the NYPD go, Public Morals was known as an abrasive place to work. On top of that, equal treatment for female police officers in New York was still in a theoretical phase. So when Varla Romano transferred to the Public Morals Squad for Manhattan South – a force that covered the southern tip of the island right up to 59th Street and encompassed the entire Times Square area – she braced herself for impact. A second-generation Italian-American, Varla was an intense, pugnacious, and determined character. She had to be to break with generations of cultural tradition that frowned on women taking jobs meant for men. She’d already achieved the impossible by making her family proud of her career in law enforcement, even if they found it difficult to accept at times. “Numu fai shcumbari” was the frequent admonition from her brothers and uncles: “Don’t embarrass us.” Varla developed the experience and credentials to back up her determined self-belief. She carried a playground sense of justice to work, not to mention a substantial chip on her shoulder. But if Varla thought she was prepared for the job, she was still surprised by what she found when she turned up at 137 Center Street for her first day’s work. The office was a wide-open room full of egocentric mavericks – a gaggle of wise-cracking, street-wise, plain-clothes and plain-speaking alpha-male cops. And there were three types of new recruits these guys didn’t like: those who knew nothing, those who knew everything, and women. As hard as she looked, Varla couldn’t see another woman working there. Public Morals had been set up years earlier to enforce all laws related to vice: principally the moral trifecta of prostitution, liquor and narcotics violations, and illegal gambling in the city. Or, sex, drugs and rotten ho’s, as cops referred to it. In recent years, a fourth component had been added: obscenity. This newly critical concept included the proliferation of all things considered pornographic, such as bookstores and adult films. So perhaps it was no coincidence that very few women turned up at Public Morals: they just didn’t fit into a scene that traded in sin, right? Plus there was the belief that a woman cop would just attract unwanted attention in a criminal world inhabited by male sleazebags. The difference between uniformed cops on the streets and plainclothes members of the Public Morals squad was like night and day. Street cops arrested petty criminals doing dumb stuff. You know the deal: ‘Suspicious looking activity.’ ‘Loitering with intent.’ ‘Disorderly conduct.’ The Public Morals squad was different. They went undercover – behind the scenes, into massage parlors, strip clubs, and gambling dens. They looked for the real instigators, the suffering victims, and the powerful ringleaders. It was a complex world, both legally and morally. For example, how do you make a bust for prostitution in one of the Deuce’s flourishing massage parlors? The quickest way was to get a working girl to offer you sex for money. But what if the girl asked you to strip before she’d discuss any details? The hookers were smart enough to know that separated out the johns from the cops, because Police Department regulations forbade officers from taking off their clothes to gather evidence. The bottom line was it was hard for Varla to break into this male-dominated world. It got farcical at times. One of her first jobs in Public Morals was part of a push to get rid of prostitution in midtown. The authorities decided to use a dormant law requiring all arrested hookers to be examined for VD, which would allow the city to temporarily keep the prostitutes in custody pending test results. The guys at the top felt that keeping the girls off the streets even for a few days would have an impact on the problem. Trouble was that none of the guys in Public Morals wanted to touch this idea. So they nominated Varla to make sure the girls got their cooches swabbed before being thrown into a cell. Were Varla’s colleagues grateful that she did this? Were they hell. They just laughed, and gave her a new nickname: ‘VD Varla.’ The name stuck, and Varla had another battle to fight. After a while, her pugnacious attitude started to win some of them over. Varla started to be included in the raids. She remembered the first time. It was when they busted a burlesque house on 42nd Street. The cops went in and grabbed the manager and two performers – and charged them with public lewdness, obscenity, simulated sex acts, and sodomy. Varla still laughs about it: “To this day, I don’t know how we managed to make a bust for simulated sex acts AND sodomy. I think most of the guys I worked with thought sodomy was a blow job. I gave up trying to explain it to them because they just said I was a pervert.” The work was often thankless: like when they raided the Zoo, a mafia-owned late-night discotheque where teenage kids were being offered amphetamines with their orange juice. Varla herded up the horny, paranoid, red-faced kids, and took them back to the station for some pointless interviews – that were entertainingly surreal. Or another time, when they turned up to bust a massage parlor for not having a license, and found that overnight the location had turned into a ‘Rap Club’ – a place where you could pay for a conversation. Nothing wrong with that, right? For a modest fee, ‘beautiful conversationalists’ were now available to have private deliberations on any subject with you in clandestine cubicles. Nothing more. It was the same sex business, sure, but they couldn’t be busted for offering chat. One brothel even changed its identity within a single afternoon, becoming a body-painting establishment. The new businesses were all legal and above board. Move on – nothing to see here. There was nothing the cops could do. And as soon as they moved on, the businesses went back to sex. But sometimes, Varla did something she felt good about. Like busting into a hotel room where a teenage girl had been kept against her will. The underage waif had arrived at the Port Authority the previous week, and had been offered enough candy-kindness by a macaroni pimp on the Minnesota Strip to get her head turned. He’d lured her into a seedy hotel where he forced her to have sex with a dozen men a day for money. Varla received a tip-off from a friendly hotel clerk, and so she broke into the room to rescue the girl. It may have been just a rare moment of success, but she’d take it. Varla worked hard, fought her corner, had minor successes, and gradually started to be accepted. The most she could hope for was to be one of the boys. * Phil. Times Square. 1975. After a few years of experience earned on the pornography-infested midtown streets, Phil Russo transferred into the Public Morals Squad. He was a valuable addition. After his time underground patrolling the subway as a transit cop, and then his time on the streets of midtown, he was finally where he wanted to be. He’d come into Public Morals with a mission of his own. He was less interested in busting illegal poker games, gender-bending queer bars, or happy-ending rub-and-tug emporiums: Phil wanted to break open the rapidly expanding XXX film business. He’d seen the never-ending stream of new pornographic movie titles that premiered each week in the midtown grindhouses. He knew that any racket that operated in these gray areas of legality, and that was making outlandish profits, had to be fertile turf for the mob, so he’d decided he’d make the porno trade his target. Phil learned the ropes fast: He learned there were two magic phrases that you’d hear from the top all the time. First: A ‘new police crackdown’ was always being announced – part of ‘ongoing efforts to clean up midtown Manhattan.’ Second: As part of said crackdown, the police would be ‘investigating links with organized crime.’ Phil knew the first was bullshit. Every week brought a ‘new crackdown.’ There was always talk that the city was going to clean up Times Square for good. Whenever a new congressman or senator came to power, promises were made that everything was going to change. But it never happened. When Abe Beame was elected mayor in 1974, he pledged a significant midtown cleanup. In fact, Beame promised to promote legitimate business activity in Times Square and the neighboring areas, but as soon as the election was over, no new funds were allocated. In fact, funds were cut. And Beame turned his attention elsewhere. Which made the second magic phrase all the more important – and more futile: if the crackdowns were worthless, then how could Public Morals establish indictable links with organized crime?  Phil called the problem ‘cracking the code’. Shorthand for establishing the identity of who ultimately owned the most lucrative parts of the sex businesses, such as the distribution centers for pornographic materials. Expose who was raking in the profits. And there was a boatload of profits, because New Yorkers were clearly eager to buy what was on offer. According to police estimates in 1976, the larger Times Square book and peep stores, like Show World and Jolar, were easily grossing tens of thousands a day. Someone was getting very rich, but the NYPD didn’t have the tools to identify them, let alone go after them. Sure, fines were levied when convictions were obtained, but they were a drop in the bucket compared to the cash being made. In fact, the mob were rumored to welcome the busts because they were splashed across the newspapers – which meant free publicity for their businesses. Hell, the fines were cheaper than ads in the Daily News. Inside the Public Morals offices, diagrams of organized crime networks were plastered on the walls. Phil remembers, “The mob was smart in hiding their involvement. They rarely sold sex films and magazines directly to stores in New York. Instead, they had their product shipped outside of the city to smaller wholesalers, who then ran the goods to the porno shops in Times Square.” The problem for Phil was that insider information was poor. Undercover officers weren’t coming back with anything useful. And to make matters worse, many of the cops were crooked. For a modest fee, they would let porno theater managers know the police were on their way before they could bust them. Public Morals was so desperate for hard information they even started to read local sex magazines to try and find out where the action was taking place. On one occasion, they gleaned useful information about an illegal massage parlor from an article in Cheri magazine. A successful raid followed. Which was good. But it was pretty embarrassing when your best informant was a jizz mag. * Michelle Lake. Times Square. November, 1976. After Michelle’s money and luck ran out in Miami, where she’d gone to try and find work with dolphins, she returned to New York. She worked in a series of waitressing jobs, and sweated long hours behind bars to pay her bills as she tried to figure out what to do next. She was now 22, a college dropout, damaged family relationships, and had a failing romantic life too. Michelle’s latest boyfriend was only the third guy she’d slept with. She explains: “Emotionally, I was repressed and shut down. I was still bulimic, and couldn’t understand why anyone would want to look at me. Whenever I was physically intimate with someone, I was guarded and I would hold back.” But Michelle was always a searcher, and a door in her mind had been left ajar by group therapy. She knew she wanted to be more liberated – she just didn’t know how she was going to do it. One night, a regular came in for a drink. Sue was an exotic dancer at a club down the street called the Melody Burlesk. She’d often stop by the bar at the end of her shift, carrying her damp stage costumes and a purse full of singles carefully smoothed of the wrinkles inflicted by sweaty eager hands. Michelle was intrigued. She drilled Sue on what it was like to dance naked in front of men. Finally, to free herself from the interrogation, Sue suggested that Michelle stop by the Melody and see for herself. The mere thought was intimidating to Michelle, so she enlisted her friend Erica for courage, and together they headed to the Melody the following night to catch Sue in action. The format at the Melody was simple – each dancer did a 20-minute set several times a day, and the audience would leave tips on the tiny stage for the performers. Michelle and Erica took seats and watched, amazed by what they observed. Sue seemed like a goddess under the spotlight: strong, beautiful, and in total control. The dollars quickly piled up, crumpled balls of appreciation. More than anything, the men in the audience left their mark on Michelle. She remembers: “They seemed like vulnerable, lonely children looking up at Sue. It was poignant. It stayed with me for ages after.” After her dancing shift, Sue introduced Michelle and Erica to the Melody’s manager. It was only years later that Michelle learned the Melody was started by a mild-mannered Jewish accountant named Albert R. Kronish with support from investors. It had been intended to be a last bastion of old school burlesque dancing, but it had quickly succumbed to the linked forces of libido and commercialism. The Melody introduced the concept of the ‘Mardi Gras’, allowing dancers to sit naked on customers’ laps for a $1 tip. This was followed by the ‘Box Lunch’, where a patron’s dollar could buy him a few seconds performing oral sex on his favorite dancer. But that night, the manager could see that Erica and Michelle were intrigued so he offered them try-outs. Erica jumped at the opportunity to give it a go and urged Michelle to do the same. Michelle was apprehensive, but accepted with trepidation. With guidance from Sue on how to move, what to wear, and how to remove it, the night of their trial audition arrived. Rather than being nervous, Michelle found herself strangely excited, remembering the looks of adoration from enthralled customers. She stepped onto the stage. From the start, the shy, body-conscious Michelle started to shine. Whatever inhibitions she had were shed with each article of clothing, melted by the appreciative gaze of the audience. Men’s attention, which had once seemed unlikely and mildly threatening, ignited Michelle’s confidence, and did more than all of the self-help workshops she had attended. She was hooked, and agreed to do it again. Soon, dancing on stage took the place of tending behind the bar. Both Michelle and Erica became Melody regulars, pleased with the work and relieved of the financial stress they’d regularly borne. After a couple of months of solo routines, Michelle and Erica convinced the manager to let them combine their sets and act out a scene together. Their sexy versions of Little Red Riding Hood and other fairy tales soon became hits with the afternoon raincoat crowd. Michelle basked in her new success – with little thought for the sleazy Times Square environment it contributed to. Michelle Lake * Michael Codd. November 1976. Michael Codd was the new big cheese, the most important man in the New York Police Department, and he looked every inch the Chief Commissioner. Six feet tall and 200 pounds with silver hair, steel-blue eyes, and a granite jaw, Codd commanded near total respect of the 30,000 strong police force. He was an old-school, old-fashioned policeman’s policeman, known throughout the city’s station houses as ‘Chief Straight Arrow.’ No one had better credentials to take over the position: he’d joined the state police back in 1939, and had risen seamlessly through the ranks to become Commissioner. And when Codd was appointed top dog, the reaction was unanimously positive from all levels of the force. Codd viewed the police force as a large extended family. He made a point of frequently visiting different precincts to speak with the men and women of the department. He was always greeted as a hometown hero, met by warm applause, alpha male handshakes, and requests for photos. New York Police Commissioner Michael Codd But however positive the reaction, it couldn’t mask one significant stumbling block: it was the worst possible time for anyone to be appointed Police Commissioner. If success in life is a matter of luck and timing, Codd was flat out of both. By the time Codd took the helm, New York City’s financial crisis had gone from bad to critical, and the fall-out was severe. The city’s economy had been rocked by the decline of manufacturing and flight of the white middle class to the suburbs, resulting in falling tax receipts that risked the city defaulting on massive loans. City officials scrambled to patch together one plan after another, each cutting back on social and municipal services to save the city from declaring bankruptcy. No matter the plan, the Police Department was always a prime target for cuts. From 1976 to 1980, there was a hiring freeze on all city departments, including the NYPD. Worse still for Cobb was the forced lay-off of 6,000 officers, not to mention a complete freeze on all salaries and promotions. The warmth that initially greeted Commissioner Codd’s appointment quickly turned to antagonism. Cops complained that Codd should have publicly resisted the cutbacks. The rot set in. Thousands of officers began street demonstrations during off-duty hours and there were talks of strikes. When the normally understated leader described the reduction of manpower as “without parallel in the history of the department,” it was clear that his impeccably calm, gentlemanly demeanor was being sorely tested. And of all the police departments to suffer, Public Morals was one of the hardest hit. Several hundred officers lost their jobs, decimating the ranks of the vice squad. But on paper, the clean-up of Times Square remained a priority. So the big question was how to pick up the pieces of this financial devastation, and find more creative ways to crack the code? * Phil & Varla, Times Square. February 1977. Phil and Varla were among the survivors at Public Morals. They were good at what they did, and maybe they were just lucky too. They kept their jobs, and lived to fight another day. Against the unpleasant backdrop of job cuts and daily work challenges, the two of them forged a solid working relationship. Phil’s marriage was on the rocks, and he appreciated someone with an unsentimental attitude. If he ever wallowed, Varla just hit him round the head. After working long hours, they often sat around with fellow officers, spit-balling ideas about how they could make any progress with so few resources. It always came back to the same question: how were they supposed to tackle pornography in the center of one of America’s biggest cities if old-fashioned police methods weren’t working? One night at their regular bar down the street from the precinct, an officer shared a tidbit that caught Phil’s attention. The cop said that a few years back when the force was starting to turn its attention to obscenity, there had been a small but novel operation, which was kept largely under wraps. An officer had pitched the idea that the cops buy one of the existing adult bookstores in Times Square and install undercover detectives to run the place. The thinking was they’d use that access to identify porn’s real power brokers – the guys pulling the strings, flooding the Deuce with filth, and raking in ill-gotten gains. Miraculously, management had given them the green light. Phil pulled Varla in and pushed for details – who’d run that operation, what did they learn, what happened to the sting? But their fellow cop was short on specifics – he said the effort was shut down not long after it started, supposedly due to a lack of results, but nobody knew for sure because it was kept on the down-low. The idea struck Varla as ridiculous, but she saw something in Phil’s eyes she’d come to know in their time together. It was a look that combined curiosity, scheming, and determination – and once it infected Phil, it was almost impossible to cure him of it. “He was stubborn like that,” says Varla. Back at the precinct, Phil did some digging. Most everyone was tight-lipped about the former operation but he was able to eke out a few details. The budget had been a paltry $2,000, which came from a group called the Citizens Committee on the Control of Crime in New York. The force took over an adult bookstore at Eighth Avenue and 50th Street, and it got as far as installing hidden tape recorders and cameras. They were told to only sell soft‐core books and magazines – an approach that would keep them on the right side of the law even though it lost them a lot of customers and limited their success at breaking into the mob. And then the operation had been terminated abruptly. And no one spoke of it again. As the weeks went by, Phil couldn’t let the idea drop. He was sure it was just the type of innovative thinking they needed to adopt. Phil felt he knew exactly what Public Morals needed to do. Ever since the high-profile success of ‘Deep Throat’ in 1972 and the slew of X-rated films that followed, it was clear the big money was in the distribution of porno movies. If the vice squad could break into that world, they’d have a better chance of getting at the money men pulling the strings. Phil’s idea was simple: he would lead a team who would form a fake porn production company and they would pretend they had films to sell. They’d get to know who else was creating the movies and, more importantly, they’d get in with the connected crowd who was funding and selling them. When Phil shared his scheme with Varla, she thought he was joking. But then she saw the signature look in his eyes and realized he was dead serious. “I nearly fell off my chair,” she says today. “I mean, the NYPD making porn movies? Really?! Phil said we wouldn’t actually shoot ‘em, we’d just do everything short of filming so we could make the connections. It seemed like a crazy idea to me, but he was determined.” Varla suggested they get feedback from the rest of the squad. And like Varla did, at first they laughed. Then they got curious. Varla figured taking the idea to the boss would put an end to it. She just hoped they wouldn’t come out as department laughing stocks in the process. * Three different characters trying to find their way in 1970s New York: Phil Russo, the idealistic cop desperate to defeat the sex netherworld of Times Square. Michelle Lake, the hippy, bulimic teenager who just wanted to work with dolphins and ended up finding her true self by stripping in front of adoring men. And Varla Romano, the combative detective trying to fight the sex businesses in the city, while fighting for her own recognition in the Public Morals Squad. Their paths would cross briefly in a hotel room at JFK airport in the summer of 1977, and their lives would be changed forever. * Tune in next week for Part 2 of ‘Cop Porn: When the NYPD Made an Adult Film.’ * The post Cop Porn: When the NYPD made a Porn Film – Part 1 – Podcast 130 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

As we were preparing this weekend’s post, we received news of the passing of Neville Chesters, legendary figure of the 1960s UK music scene, adult film producer (using the name Neville Chambers), and friend of The Rialto Report. As a tribute we are reprising our 2018 interview with him, in which he talks about his remarkable life. R.I.P. Nev. (25 June 1945 – 27 April 2023) * This story begins with a single photograph, taken in 1967. It’s a photo of Jimi Hendrix, and it shows him sat on a table in his familiar hat and rock star jacket. Jimi is smoking, and he looks relaxed and happy. He seems to be sharing a joke with a man sat on a chair in front of him. I first saw this picture in the early days of the internet, and became fascinated by it. And what struck me about it was this: The photograph shows Jimi Hendrix, one of the great guitarists of all time, and someone everyone wanted to hear play. But it’s the man in front of him who’s playing the guitar, not Jimi. And I didn’t recognize this person as any other guitarist I’d ever seen. Who in earth would be in a picture with Jimi, where Jimi wasn’t the one playing a guitar? I did some digging around, and found that the person Jimi was with in the picture was actually one of the legendary roadies of the 1960s London music scene. It turned out he’d started in Liverpool in the era of The Beatles, and had worked with The Who, the Bee Gees, The Merseybeats, Cream, Lemmy, Mick Jagger, Apple Records, Robert Stigwood, Emerson Lake and Palmer, and many others, not to mention The Jimi Hendrix Experience. I found out that the roadie’s name was Neville Chesters. I wondered what happened to him, but apparently, he’d left the music industry abruptly in the early 1970s and disappeared from London. I spent years wondering about his life on the road with many of the greatest legends of music history. Years later, I was talking to a friend about the adult film industry in New York. We were talking about the 1990s. This was a few years after the so-called golden age, and it was the last gasp of the New York pornography business. At this stage, scenes were being shot cheaply on video largely for compilations that were sold for bargain basement prices. My friend told me that one of the centers of the business at that point was called the ‘New York Fuck Factory’. This was a notorious loft on 38th Street where multiple shoots would take place. I found that the owner of the Fuck Factory was an Englishman. He produced films using the name Neville Chambers… but his real name was Neville Chesters. Apparently, there were rumors he’d once been involved in the music business in London. Was this possible? And if so, how did a 1960s roadie with the Who and Jimi Hendrix in London become a porn producer in the 1990s in New York? On this episode of The Rialto Report, we track Neville Chesters down to hear about life in the swinging 60s, when he had a front row seat to witness some of the most momentous music ever made. And we also hear about how he re-emerged in New York years later as an adult film producer, of series such as Streets of New York, New York Taxi Tales, and indeed, Strap-on Sally 12: Squirting Dildo Soiree. We also hear about how The Who’s Pete Townsend may recently have actually helped save Neville’s life. Seriously, is there any other podcast in the world featuring Pete Townsend and a Squirting Dildo Soiree? This podcast is 109 minutes long. The musical playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify. _________________________________________________________________________________ Neville Chesters – In Music Neville with Jimi Hendrix   Neville (right) boards the bus with The Jimi Hendrix Experience   Neville (left) with Jimi Hendrix   Neville Chesters – His Employers in Photos The Merseybeats:       The Who:         Robert Stigwood:     Bee Gees:       Robert Stigwood with the Bee Gees:   Cream:       Mick Jagger (still waiting for his driver…):   Jimi Hendrix:         Emerson, Lake and Palmer:       Streets of New York:     New York Taxi Tales:   * Neville Chesters himself: * The post Neville Chesters R.I.P: How Jimi Hendrix’s Roadie became a Porn Producer – Podcast 77 (reprise) appeared first on The Rialto Report.

On the previous episode of Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story: When budding film director Gerard Damiano saw Linda Traynor/Boreman giving head, he stopped shooting the short sex loop he was planning then and there, choosing instead to make a feature-length movie around her unique talent. Linda had her doubts, but her husband Chuck was all in on the idea, loving the $1,200 payment that came with the role, and its potential to further inject him and Linda into the heart of the sex industry. But when the movie production started, Chuck was less pleased with the generous attention Linda received on set, and with what he perceived was the disrespectful way he was treated by the movie’s crew. While Linda never wanted to be in the film, she did find a measure of relief making the movie. The kindness she was shown by cast and crew was reassuring, even if it was accompanied by Chuck’s anger. As filming wrapped, the crew returned to NY for post-production work on Deep Throat (1972). And Chuck and Linda began thinking about their next steps – as both manager and performer as well as husband and wife. You can read or listen to the previous episodes here. This episode running time is 63 minutes. ——————————————————————————————————- 1. ‘Deep Throat’: From Production to Premiere When production of ‘Deep Throat’ wrapped in January 1972, Chuck was primed to return to New York and resume working in the adult film business – with the help of his wife, of course. But on the way back, Chuck told Linda he wanted to make a stop in North Carolina to visit his mother. Chuck and Elaine By this time, Linda knew Chuck’s backstory – or at least what he’d allowed her to know. He had shared how his mother, Elaine, had been young and unwed when she got pregnant with him, and that he was raised by his grandparents. How as a kid, contact with his mother had been almost nonexistent. It wasn’t her fault, Chuck said, she’d wanted to raise her son herself but her parents wouldn’t let her. His grandparents meant well, and Chuck loved them, but he had lost a lot of time – time that Elaine and Chuck were now determined to make up. Linda felt a glimmer of hope at the prospect of visiting Elaine. Maybe she’d be able to understand Chuck a little more after meeting his mother, and maybe that would help her manage the relationship. Maybe she could even forge a bond with Elaine that would encourage Chuck to treat her better. But as Linda later shared, the trip did little to help improve the couple’s dynamic: “It didn’t take me long to realize that Elaine wouldn’t be my ally. Chuck was the apple of her eye; he could do no wrong. When he was with his mother, Chuck became the perfect gentleman. As long as we were under her roof, he was even polite to me. His mother was obviously crazy about her son. She was proud of his having been a Marine, a pilot, and a man in business for himself. “Chuck’s mother was fifty-ish, black-haired, and heavily made up: she favored pale blue eye shadow and black drawn-on eyebrows. She told us stories going back to the time when Chuck was a little boy and she had left his father. She said that at that time she’d been friends with some of that era’s most notorious mobsters. She explained that she worked at a florist shop that was used as a front. Although she had been the special friend of one man in particular, she had escorted others as well. Elaine Traynor “I wondered whether this explained Chuck’s attitude towards women. I’m no shrink, but it was obvious that he hated women. Did it all begin as a deep resentment toward his mother and the way she was living her life? Maybe the brutality he directed toward me was something he would rather have directed toward his mother.” After the North Carolina visit, Chuck and Linda returned to New York. Looking to gain back some control after the filming of ‘Deep Throat’, Chuck decided he was going to make his own movies. As Linda remembered: “Life continued as it had before my debut in a movie, but with a difference: all that exposure to moviemaking had given Chuck a new ambition. Never again would he be someone else’s gofer; now he wanted to make his own movies. And so, on our first day back in the New York area, Chuck borrowed an eight-millimeter camera from Lou Peraino.” Linda Lovelace Chuck also picked up something else for his films – a hitchhiker named Ginger whom he thought would pair nicely on screen with Linda. As Linda remembered: “Chuck was always picking up female hitchhikers. In fact, that’s how he did most of his recruiting. I was amazed by the way Chuck would pick up a hitchhiker and ask right off, ‘Would you like to be a hooker?’ I was even more amazed by the number of young girls who didn’t say no.” Chuck figured he would start by directing a couple of loops. As usual he wanted to push boundaries, mainly because he knew that more uncommon fare would earn him more money, and so Chuck came up with two separate loop concepts. He called the first one ‘Open Pussy, Insert Foot’ – aka ‘The Foot’. The name of the film says it all. A few years later in 1975, Chuck would tell Hustler magazine about making this short: “I wanted to work doing loops – 8mm balling films – so I went to the guy who owned a sex shop joint. He said, ‘Do one, and if it’s any good, we’ll take it.’ So I did one called ‘The Foot.’ And they freaked over it.” This loop starts with Linda in bed masturbating, when Ginger knocks at the door – the only time we actually see Ginger’s face. Ginger hands Linda some money, and Linda slips it under her pillow. We then see a foot being removed from a boot, and Linda engaging in energetic toe sucking. Linda then proceeds to mount the foot and treat it like a long-lost lover, before the action culminates in an unconventional cum shot. Chuck remembered the loop with breathless, boastful fondness: “It was a dynamite film. It was about a chick that balls a foot. Now, my foot had a character. It had a smiling face, an ankle bracelet, and painted toenails. There were two girls involved, but you never saw one of the girls. All that you saw was the foot, and that was the whole deal. All the way through the film you kept thinking that when the foot arrives at the other girl’s house, the camera would pan up and you’d see these two chicks balling. But it never did. The camera stayed on the one girl’s foot and the other girl’s pussy. And this chick with the pussy was large enough for this foot to get into her… that was Linda. “For the come shot I took a piece of neoprene tubing and ran it down the back of the girl’s leg, under her foot, and up her big toe. Then I took a rubber syringe and filled it with Carnation milk and egg white. The foot was balling away and then pulled out of the pussy and came out of the big toe.” Chuck called his second loop ‘The Fist’. Once again, the title doesn’t leave much to the imagination. It starts with Ginger reading a book titled ‘I, Pervert’ before, this time, she’s interrupted by Linda at the door. Linda comes bearing gifts – three large dildos and a jar of Vaseline. The two women begin having sex using a double-headed dildo but Ginger soon replaces the instrument with her fist, fully penetrating Linda until she appears to orgasm. Both ‘The Foot’ and ‘The Fist’ were soup-to-nuts Chuck Traynor productions. Chuck was producer, director, cameraman, and special effects coordinator all in one. And he was pleased with his work, confident the loops were a cut above the rest. But Chuck lamented what came next: “The company I sold it to said it was too freaky for the dirty old man with the raincoat that buys 8mm films.” So in the end Chuck was only able to hock a handful of copies to a few random Times Square bookstores – nothing close to the money and recognition he felt his work deserved. ‘Deep Throat’ still hadn’t been released, so Chuck continued to try and sell his and Linda’s services to the New York sex business. But the city wasn’t buying. So Chuck told Linda it was time to head back down to Miami, where Linda’s old hooking clients could keep the cash rolling in while they figured out what their next move should be. Linda Lovelace And so, back down south, Linda serviced a steady stream of johns. With Chuck acting as her pimp, no request was deemed too extreme. One night, Chuck arranged for Linda to perform a show with a local dominatrix who was known for doling out severe punishment on demand. After being aggressively sodomized, Linda suffered rectal bleeding that required immediate medical attention. Ever short of cash, Chuck arranged a barter for that doctor visit, trading Linda’s fellatio services. Chuck liked this business model, and went on to do the same with a local optometrist and a dermatologist as well. Recalling the arrangement, Linda remarked: “I just found myself praying Chuck and I stayed in good health.” In fact, when Chuck and Linda went to the dermatologist just for routine care, the doctor shared news of a new service he’d just started to offer – silicone injections to augment a woman’s breast size. The practice had started during World War II when prostitutes in Japan wanted a more western appearance to attract American servicemen. Eventually the procedure made its way to the States where it gained popularity in the 1950s. But by the 1960s people began questioning the safety of directly injecting silicone into the body. A significant number of women who’d undergone the procedure began complaining of hardening and painful breasts. This led to the introduction of implants in 1961, and a rejection of direct injection by most medical professionals. But in 1972, there were still doctors happy to inject silicone directly into a woman’s chest – especially apparently if they got a blow job in return. Linda was hesitant about the procedure, but claimed Chuck gave her no choice in the matter. By the time they left the surgeon’s office that day, Linda’s breast size had increased from 34B to 36C. Meanwhile back in New York, Gerard Damiano had finished his first edit of ‘Deep Throat’. While he’d exhausted his budget, he still felt the work was incomplete. So Gerard went back to his financial backer, Butchie Peraino and asked for an additional seven thousand dollars. Gerard told Butchie he knew exactly what would propel the film from a modest success to a bigger hit: it just needed an original soundtrack. Gerard explained he could deliver the recording for such a low cost because he’d compose and write the music himself – he just needed musicians, vocalists, and some studio time. Gerard’s powers of persuasion prevailed, resulting in 12 new songs with bizarre lyrics like: “‘Deep Throat’, deeper than your throat, ‘Deep Throat’, go row the boat, go get your coat, that’s all she wrote, ‘Deep Throat’.” The most popular of the compositions was titled “I’d Like to Teach the World to Screw,” a bald-faced parody of the famous Coca-Cola jingle. With the soundtrack recorded, Gerard was able to complete post production. The final film came in at a running time of 62 minutes, packed with 12 original songs and 15 salacious sex scenes. As a last step, Gerard had to finalize the credits of his cast and crew. The name Linda Lovelace was already set. Cinematographer João Fernandes, looking to protect the potential of a mainstream career, adopted the pseudonym Harry Flecks after the Arriflex camera he used. And another Harry was born with ‘Deep Throat’ – Harry Reems, who had been referred to in previous films by names like Dick Hurt and Peter Long. Now ‘Deep Throat’ was ready for the world. But was the world ready for ‘Deep Throat’…? * 2. ‘Deep Throat’ Premieres ‘Deep Throat’ opened at the New Mature World Theater, colloquially referred to as ‘the World’, on Monday, June 12th 1972. That same day Mature Pictures, owner of the World, ran the following ad in several local newspapers: “Call theater for sensational title of our new film.” In the first couple of months that it ran, ‘Deep Throat’ was a modest hit. Gerard Damiano remembered it was grossing about $15,000 a week – easily recouping the production costs and on the higher end of the porn revenue scale at the time, but nothing outrageous. Early reviews were mixed too. Al Goldstein, founder of Screw magazine, gave the film 100% on his infamous peter meter, saying, “I was never so moved by any theatrical performance since stuttering through my own bar mitzvah.” Al Goldstein As for mainstream reviews, well – if you assess the film on the basis of the prestige of the publications that reviewed ‘Deep Throat’ then the movie was a success. But if you judge it by what the reviews actually said, then the story is a little different: The New York Review of Books described the film as “witless, exploitive and about as erotic as a tonsillectomy.” New York magazine dismissed it as a prime example of “idiot filmmaking.” Roger Ebert wrote, “It is all very well and good for Linda Lovelace to advocate sexual freedom. But the energy she brings to her role is less awesome than discouraging. If you have to work this hard at sexual freedom, maybe it isn’t worth the effort.” By mid-August 1972, ‘Deep Throat’’s modest popularity was dying down. The film had satisfied the producers, the director, and hopefully the audience who’d seen it, and it was set to go the way of the rest of the adult films that had preceded it, and fall into obscurity. End of story. Early ad for ‘Deep Throat’ But then on Friday August 18th, something happened that would change the trajectory of the film forever. The Public Morals Division of the New York City Police Department busted the movie. Criminal Court Judge Ernst Rosenberger accompanied a police officer, Michael Sullivan, to view ‘Deep Throat’ at the World Theater. When the showing finished, Judge Rosenberger immediately authorized police seizure of the film. So five police officers found World Theater manager Bob Sumner and issued him a summons then and there. But the ‘Deep Throat’ bust wasn’t an isolated incident at the time, and wasn’t the only New York sex industry target that August 1972. Earlier in the month, police had busted a number of peep shows, massage parlors, and adult theaters in the Times Square area. It was all part of a campaign by Mayor John Lindsay to clear midtown Manhattan of smut. Skeptics complained it was the usual political show the city officials put on every so often – raids that went nowhere as the legal grounds were shaky and demand for adult products was high. And so the World’s owners were used to these cyclical, cynical, and time-consuming busts. They sent their lawyer to court the next day to get permission to continue showing the movie until a hearing was scheduled in three weeks time. But just a week and half later, the police were back at the theater. According to the law, they couldn’t seize the film again, but they did arrest two employees for promoting obscenity. At this stage, even the bust of ‘Deep Throat’ didn’t make huge waves, though others had started to take note. A judge in Binghamton, a town three hours away from New York, noticed that ‘Deep Throat’ was playing in his town too. He figured maybe he should do something as well, so he seized copies of the film from a local theater, setting off a second court battle. ‘Deep Throat’ continued to show in a smattering of theaters across the northeast through the end of 1972. And then in December, the obscenity case kicked off by the bust of the World Theater finally made it to court. The prosecution started with a simple approach – it screened the movie, assuming a straight forward viewing would be enough to prove its point. But Mature Pictures had hired Herbert Kassner, an attorney seasoned in defending the adult industry. He brought in a panel of experts who argued why the film was not obscene. One sample opinion was: “I submit that a film in which a woman very plainly asks to be satisfied and is given that privilege on film advances that life right of women.” The case wrapped in early 1973 and on March 1, the judge issued his opinion: “‘Deep Throat’ – a nadir of decadence – is indisputably obscene by any legal measurement. This is one throat that deserves to be cut.” He ordered the film banned from Manhattan theaters and all copies in Mature Picture’s possession to be        turned over to the police property clerk. Immediately following the decision, the World canceled all further showings of ‘Deep Throat’ and placed the now infamous statement on its marquee: ‘Judge Cuts Throat, World Mourns.’ Suddenly it was game on. Busts and prosecutions kicked off across the northeast, buoyed by the New York City decision. Then the media picked up on the latest developments about the salacious film, and began running regular stories to juice readership. Overnight it became a self-fulfilling vicious circle: the increased media scrutiny prompted city officials to continue their raids, with ‘Deep Throat’ now an easy target. And all this activity piqued the public’s interest, so crowds turning out to see the movie increased. Not just normal regular raincoat people either. Celebrities like Warren Beatty, Bob Hope, Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Johnny Carson. And as more people saw it, more people talked about it. As Ralph Blumenthal wrote in the New York Times in January 1973: “[‘Deep Throat’] has become a premier topic of cocktail-party and dinner-table conversation in Manhattan drawing rooms, Long Island beach cottages, and ski country A-frames. It has, in short, engendered a kind of porno chic.” It was becoming clear that by now the film was raking in big profits. What was also clear was that the mob didn’t want Gerard to collect his share. And that meant Lou ‘Butchie’ Peraino, who used the alias ‘Lou Perry’ in the credits of the film. Ralph Blumenthal wrote about it in the New York Times as follows: “According to Lou Perry, Damiano – the third partner in the film production – asked to sell his share when the film faced legal problems and had not yet begun to make money. ‘He was compensated what he asked for – $25,000.’ Perry said, ‘He was even asked to stay. This was his decision.’ “That sounds like a bad deal, I told Damiano as we sat one night with associates in a restaurant on Eighth Avenue. ‘I can’t talk about it,’ Damiano said. “‘Why?’, I wanted to know. “‘Look,’ he said, ‘you want me to get both my legs broken?’” So why ‘Deep Throat’? Why was this the porn film to break into the mainstream, making millions along the way? Some said it was because it was the first hardcore film shown in cinemas – but it wasn’t. Others said it was the higher quality of the film – but Gerard Damiano himself said ‘Deep Throat’ was no great work of cinema, and there are plenty of better adult films that pre-date it. Or was it because it was the first adult film to incorporate comedy or have its own music soundtrack? No and no again. Or was it because Linda was the girl next door who had a sexual party trick? Hardly: several actresses could already have fit that description. In the end, ‘Deep Throat’’s outlandish success seems to have been a combination of attempted censorship, gleeful media coverage, and good old human curiosity coming together smack dab in the middle of the aftermath of the sexual revolution: ‘Deep Throat’ is notable because of the cultural phenomenon that played out around it, and not because of the film itself. * 3. Enter Chuck and Linda When the maelstrom of media attention first hit, Chuck and Linda had no idea it was happening. They were still tucked away down in Florida, scraping by on the back of Linda’s sex work. Linda remembered that period as being particularly difficult between her and Chuck – so bad that she decided to try and leave the marriage again. She headed back to her friend Patsy who lived in South Florida, but once again Chuck caught up with her. She later remembered Chuck’s pitch to her over the phone: “Linda, I love you and I need you,” Chuck said. “You are my wife and I’m your husband. We are fucking married! And there is no way we should be apart. Now I know things have not been perfect for you – I can admit that. But there is no way I’m going to take this shit from you. Now you just make your little goodbyes there and get yourself packed up because I am coming over to get you and that is that!” Linda capitulated and returned to Chuck. And then Chuck and Linda received a call from Butchie Peraino, by now ‘Deep Throat’’s owner and lead distributor. He said he needed them back in New York toot suite for interviews and promotional events. ‘Deep Throat’ was a hit, and he wanted to make it an even bigger hit. Chuck smelled opportunity. Of course they could come back and publicize the movie, he said. Anything for a fee. The flight back to New York was a non-stop Chuck Traynor coaching session: “I schooled her on what to say. Always sound sexy, always look cute. Wink at the camera, wink at the interviewer. Always talk about nudity, you always want to be nude. Always be titillating. You’d rather be having sex than doing anything. It was just schooling. Teaching her what to say, how to say it, when to say it.” As Linda remembered: “Chuck made up complete new identities for us. I was twenty-one years old, not twenty-three. He was a New York City photographer. And he discovered me in my home town of Bryan, Texas. He chose Bryan, Texas, because he had once worked there and he knew where the nearest movie theater was. “’I don’t want to use the name ‘Traynor’ in any interviews,’ he said. ‘We don’t want the whole fucking family down on our asses. From now on you use the name from the movie, Lovelace. And I am J.R., your husband and manager. These people think you’re the turn-on queen of all time. Anyone asks you why you suck cock, you say you love it. “Chuck went over every question I might be asked and then he told me the answers I was supposed to give. If someone asked me a question we hadn’t gone over, I was supposed to wait until Chuck chimed in with the right answer. That was Chuck’s complete thinking on the subject of public relations.” Landing back in New York, Chuck immediately began working the media circuit. Overnight Linda was everywhere: across television, magazine, radio, and newspaper interviews, Linda painted herself as a sexually liberated, small town hippy girl making it big in New York. She said that after living in the back of a station wagon in Kentucky, she and Chuck had moved to New York where she worked as a topless dancer and model. When a reporter asked her if her performance in ‘Deep Throat’ was genuine, Linda responded: “It’s me and that’s what I can do, and how I really am. In most porno films, people are not enjoying themselves, looking at the ceiling. But I’m enjoying it one hundred percent.” Many journalists didn’t buy Linda’s act: it was too perfect, too enthusiastic. When feminist and journalist Nora Ephron tried to get underneath what she perceived to be the veneer, Linda insisted that she had no sexual inhibitions whatsoever. When Bachelor magazine asked Linda if she was being exploited as “a male fantasy dream girl,” Linda asserted, “I’m just pleasing ME.” In another interview, Linda said “I’ve always been liberated, always done the things I want to do when I want to do them. I don’t worry about this one or that one or anybody else. I’m the first woman in an X-rated film to openly seek pleasure and gratification when that’s always been the role of a man” Chuck Traynor Linda was a national star, subject of late night chat show monologues as well as smutty teenage playground jokes. As for Chuck, he was all too happy to go along for the ride. Some however were less happy – and that included the Boremans, Linda’s family. Linda’s sister Barbara was still living in New York at the time the film broke. She remembered hearing a story about the movie’s legal troubles on the local news one night – but at that point she was still unaware that Linda was the film’s star. All she knew was that she found public fascination with the film ‘disgusting’ so she turned a deaf ear to the continuing prattle. But in April 1973, a friend called Barbara and told her to pick up a copy of that month’s Playboy magazine. Barbara protested, but the friend insisted, saying it was important. So Barbara did as instructed, and opened the pages to find her sister, stark naked, and describing her joyful experience as the star of ‘Deep Throat’. Barbara cried out “Oh my God, it’s my sister,” picked up the phone to call her parents. “I’ve got some bad news.“ she said. “You’re not going to like this, but I think our Linda is Linda Lovelace.” At first, Linda’s mother Dorothy refused to believe it, even though someone had been anonymously sending her ‘Deep Throat’ news clippings in the mail. Linda’s friend Patsy later said she always thought the articles were sent by Chuck to further humiliate and isolate Linda. It was up to Linda’s sister Barbara to call Linda and confront her. Linda fessed up immediately: “I’m sorry” Linda told her, “I didn’t want you to know because I knew you’d be upset or angry.” “I’m not angry,” Barbara told her, “because I don’t know who Linda Lovelace is. I only know who you are.” Linda’s father John was also dismayed by the news. But he dealt with the revelation differently: he set off to go to a local theater playing ‘Deep Throat’ and see for it himself. Barbara later said: “He was in the theater for ten minutes and when he came out, he vomited. He realized that was his daughter, and it was a shock. I was in shock, too. We all were.” Barbara was in a difficult position: “Was I going to chastise her after I found out? No, she was over 21. And I was always proud of her. I loved her and in my eyes she could do no wrong.” Linda’s other sister Jean agreed. When she found out, she dismissed ‘Deep Throat’, saying it was “a stupid thing to do.” But America has an obsession with celebrity, and few are immune to its power. And so, as Linda’s celebrity grew, so did her family’s acceptance. In fact, they started to celebrate Linda’s fame and ignore how she earned it. A few months after learning about Linda’s role in ‘Deep Throat’, Linda’s mother Dorothy told a journalist: “That’s my daughter, Linda Lovelace, the star.” * 4. ‘Deep Throat II’ Chuck wasn’t the only one eager to capitalize on the success of ‘Deep Throat’. Butchie Peraino and Phil Parisi, the exclusive rights holders to the film after making Gerard Damiano an offer he couldn’t refuse, wanted to keep the gravy train rolling. If one ‘Deep Throat’ was good, a second could be even more lucrative, right? With Gerard Damiano out of the picture, Butchie and Phil approached another New York adult industry director to write and direct the sequel. Joe Sarno was a veteran sexploitation filmmaker and no stranger to Chuck Traynor – in fact, Joe had hired Chuck to work on and in a few of his softcore movies shot down in Miami in the late 1960s. Joe Sarno was an unlikely choice to direct a sequel. He was more known for his moody, black and white sexual melodramas where the sex was suggested more than shown. Indeed, Joe had been reluctant to start shooting explicit sex when the industry turned from soft to hard, and he did it only because it was easier to raise money for pornographic films. But the producers knew Joe could pump out a movie quickly and efficiently – and time-to-market was going to be key to exploiting ‘Deep Throat’’s notoriety. Joe was finally sold on the idea when the producers told him that though wanted some hardcore scenes, the plan was to release the film “soft” – as an R-rated production. This would increase the size of the market, maximize the audience, and minimize more legal trouble. The budget for the second Throat movie was almost three times larger than the first, coming in at $70,000, but the plot, well… that was just as thin as in the original. Here we go: Russians are trying to gain access to American secrets known by a patient of sex therapists, Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems. Or as Linda later said: “I still don’t understand what that movie was about but I can tell you how it was explained to me. The central figure is a computer worker for the CIA and the FBI: the computer is tired of government work and wants to make spaghetti. In the course of the movie, the computer makes love to me. “But bad as the movie was, it actually taught me some of the rewards of being a celebrity. I didn’t have to do any of the sexual acrobatics that made the first movie such a success.” While Deep Throat II didn’t have any hardcore sex in it, ironically it did have many of New York’s adult industry most celebrated performers. For starters, Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems returned to reprise their roles, and this time they were joined by Jamie Gillis, Marc Stevens, Tina Russell, Andrea True, Levi Richards, Georgina Spelvin, Helen Madigan, and Chris Jordan. ‘Deep Throat II’ lobby card Andrea True – who a few years later would release the smash disco hit ‘More, More, More’, but at this time was a prolific adult film performer – recalled her first impressions of the Traynors. She described Linda as “very quiet, soft-spoken, and pretty” but noted that nobody on set really got to know her well because Chuck was often lurking nearby and his presence was off-putting. Linda later returned the compliment, saying that Andrea was “very intelligent, a college graduate, and much too smart to be doing what she did for a living.” Andrea’s original role in the film was small, not much more than a side part. But as Linda struggled to remember and deliver her lines, Joe Sarno re-wrote the script in real time, expanding Andrea’s role to compensate for Linda’s poor performance. Andrea suspected Linda’s state of mind was fueled by her prolific use of marijuana and hash oil on set. Andrea True But Andrea wasn’t the only performer on the receiving end of frequent script changes. Re-writes were coming in fast and thick, and not just from Joe Sarno. Two line producers ‘suggested’ for the cast by Butchie Peraino started adding and cutting dialog and scenes at will. That was hardly ideal for an experienced director like Joe Sarno, but as an employee of a production company run by mob affiliates, he didn’t dare object. In truth, the film production was becoming a mess – with no one seemingly fully aware of what they were doing. When ‘Deep Throat II’ production was close to complete, Chuck asked Andrea True to join him and Linda for dinner at the Plaza Hotel where they were staying. Andrea remembered Chuck dominating the dinner conversation while Linda remained largely silent. Andrea spent the night in Chuck and Linda’s suite, and the next morning, they were woken up to the FBI loudly pounding on the hotel room door. Andrea panicked, but said the scene ended with Linda autographing photographs for the delighted agents. ‘Deep Throat II’ production wrapped in 10 days but the film didn’t wind up in theaters for almost a year. When it was finally released, it was a dismal flop, earning just a fraction of its predecessor and receiving universally negative reviews from critics. Whereas Al Goldstein had called ‘Deep Throat’ the best adult film ever made and gave it 100% on his peter meter, he declared ‘Deep Throat’ II the worst film he’d ever seen”, rating it a negative 500%. Andrea True attributed the film’s failure to one point alone. She said “Its central theme wasn’t Lovelace giving ‘Deep Throat’, and that’s all people wanted to see.” But what ‘Deep Throat II’ did provide was a payday for Linda. Chuck had negotiated a salary of almost $40,000 plus five percent of the film’s net profits. The money meant Chuck didn’t push Linda to turn tricks during production. In fact, Linda later said that the filming of ‘Deep Throat II’ in January of 1973 represented a welcome respite in her marriage. She recalled: “With a future that seemed promising, Chuck was confused. It no longer made any sense for me to be a hooker. In fact, that kind of thing might just damage my value as a movie star-celebrity-author-Godknowswhat. That was my first payoff: I had turned my last trick.” For a few weeks, it almost felt like a normal marriage. * 5. ‘Inside Linda Lovelace’ – The Book Linda and Chuck’s dealings with Andrea True didn’t end when ‘Deep Throat’ II’s production wrapped. Andrea had a friend named David Zentner who had founded a number of men’s magazines as well as the publishing company Pinnacle Books. When Andrea told David about working with Linda, he immediately asked to be put in touch. In short, David wanted to sign them up to a book deal. Andrea agreed on the condition that should a book get published, she would get 10 percent of the profits. Somehow Zentner agreed so Andrea made the call – and it was no surprise that Chuck was interested. Chuck negotiated the terms which consisted of a $40,000 advance. Zentner hired a ghost writer who sent a list of questions to Linda, but it was Chuck who delivered the answers. In a later interview, Chuck said: “I wrote the book with another guy. The book and its theme were totally my idea. I created all the sex situations in it, just like I created Linda Lovelace herself.” Written in less than two weeks, the book was provocatively titled ‘Inside Linda Lovelace’ and focused almost exclusively on Linda’s supposed hypersexuality – though it does include several pages devoted to Traynor’s virility. Chuck’s authorship is supported from the very opening of the book. On the dedication page is just one short, declarative statement: “To Chuck Traynor – the creator.” The book is a perfect distillation of how Chuck wanted the world to view Linda – and Chuck himself. Written in her voice, it’s full of provocative and defiant statements that were transparently from Chuck himself – even if Linda insisted it was all her own work when she was interviewed. Interviewer: “Is everything that you say in your book Inside Linda Lovelace true?” Linda: “Oh yeah, definitely true. I told exactly how it is. With no hang ups or inhibitions about sex.’” Here’s a sample: “Of course, I wouldn’t have hit it this big had it not been for Chuck’s special interest and his careful training program. He was the one who turned me into what I am today. “What I have done was my own idea, and I defy anyone to prove I am a victim of some sort of psychological trauma. “He didn’t bullwhip me into performing like a circus pony, I was the most willing pupil a teacher could ever have. Since I was so earnest, he devoted the time necessary to help me with my accomplishments.” The book was such an obvious puff piece, few critics bothered to review it. One of the few who took the time to read it described Linda as: “… a prisoner in a cage whose bars are composed of cocks. And she has been so thoroughly duped she seems quite happy there. Each age gets the heroine it deserves, and by God, we deserve Linda Lovelace.” Despite the negative reviews, David Zentner arranged a book tour to promote ‘Inside Linda Lovelace’. The tour began at the aptly named Gaslight Club in New York City and a number of media outlets were invited, including Screw magazine. Head honcho and provocateur-in-chief Al Goldstein was always on the lookout for a publicity opportunity – and he spotted a golden chance. He showed up with stills from Linda’s infamous 8-mm dog loop and a blow-up advertisement from his magazine stating “Linda Lovelace, star of ‘Deep Throat’, untangles the tingle of Fido!” When Goldstein confronted Linda at the event, asking her whether she’d ever had sex with a dog on film, Linda calmly asked Chuck to have Goldstein escorted out. Another reporter was intrigued, and so he pressed for an answer. Linda brushed the claim off saying, “Look at the picture, it’s not me, it’s an Oriental girl.” Goldstein later confronted Chuck about the event, and asked why Chuck had kicked him out when he knew the accusations of a dog loop were true. Chuck answered: “Well, at that time, see, we were being approached by major studios because Linda was right on that edge, and of course, my thing was to always break that ice. To take somebody from pornography into legitimate films.” Outside of this drama, the book tour was uneventful. ‘Inside Linda Lovelace’ sold reasonably well, but years later when Linda recalled the book, she said: “That whole thing was written by Chuck Traynor. He would ask the writer at night what kind of questions he was going to ask the next day, and then he would review with me the answers I was supposed to say the following day.” Linda went further: “I hate the thought that people today can still pick up that piece of trash and think it has anything to do with me or my life. The book should have been called ‘Inside Chuck Traynor’.” * 6. Eureka In the spring of 1973, Chuck decided he and Linda should move out to California to try and break into the mainstream film business. To prepare for their expedition, Chuck contacted his lawyer Phil Medina to help him and Linda create a production company. This is the same Phil Medina, you may remember, who in the summer of 1971 had helped clear Chuck of drug smuggling charges. Medina incorporated a new company, ‘Linda Lovelace Enterprises’ in Miami, Florida, and then Chuck and Linda headed west. Once they landed in Hollywood, California, Chuck immediately began pursuing deals for Linda, convinced that big money was just around the corner. But as Linda noted, Chuck always seemed to get in the way of the very things he wanted. A Lake Tahoe nightclub deal fell through because Chuck insisted on a $50,000 payday when the producers wouldn’t go above $35,000. Film offers stopped coming in when Chuck said they wouldn’t accept anything less than a $300,000 guarantee. Linda was offered a monthly sex column in a popular magazine, but Chuck turned his nose up at the money being offered. Chuck did successfully negotiate the occasional paycheck for Linda though. One was for a TV commercial for the M&J Shoe Company, In the ad, Linda cajoles: “I’m Linda Lovelace, and I know what you want. You’re looking for comfort, variety, and style. So I guess we have a lot in common. Like in shoes.” While they may not have been closing many offers, the steady stream of attention did continue. Among those interested in lavishing attention on Linda was Playboy editor Hugh Hefner. When Linda first met Hefner, she’d been put off by him. As she prepared for a Playboy magazine shoot, Hefner cornered Chuck to ask him about Linda’s dog loop. Hef said he was fascinated by cross-species coupling, and wondered what it would take for Linda to recreate it for him. Linda, in a Playboy shoot But Linda eventually warmed to Hef, after all he was charming, and complimented her on her looks and personality. Hef gave them both all access passes to the Playboy mansion, enabling them to come and go as they pleased. Hef even suggested a secretary for the Linda Lovelace Enterprises company, a former Playboy bunny named Dolores Wells, who had been Playboy magazine’s Playmate of the Month back in June 1960. Chuck and Linda interviewed Dolores and offered her the job – Linda was impressed with her kindness, Chuck liked Dolores’ ample bosom. Linda and Dolores went on to become fast friends, with Linda confiding her secrets to Dolores. Linda was also taken with Dolores’ young daughter – she told Dolores she yearned for children of her own someday, though not at this stage in her career, and not with Chuck. Linda and Chuck continued seeing a lot of Hugh Hefner, though Linda was under no illusions why Chuck was so keen on befriending Hef: “Chuck’s primary goal was to bring Hugh Hefner and myself together sexually. He saw this as the beginning of a great palship. Chuck had this picture of Hefner and himself as arm-in-arm buddies, sharing the sexual wealth of the world.” Linda, in a Playboy shoot It wasn’t all plain sailing. Chuck suggested to Linda she should have sex with Hefner’s dog at the Mansion. Linda was horrified, and also disappointed at Hefner’s role in the suggestion. She remembered: “Hefner had no way of knowing I was there against my will; no way of realizing that I was Chuck’s prisoner. I know I shouldn’t hold something like this against him, but it was being staged for his benefit – and he was a part of it all. Months later, when a mutual friend told him that Chuck had forced me to do everything I did, he was very upset by it. “Until that night, I felt that Chuck was absolutely insane, far gone. I was sure there would be no one else like him in the whole world. And then we meet someone very rich and famous like Hugh Hefner, a very well-known name around the world, and in an instant, he was right down there on the same level with Chuck Traynor.” Linda and Hef * 7. When Linda Met Sammy Davis Jr. The Playboy Mansion wasn’t the only place Linda and Chuck met celebrities in Hollywood. Warren Beatty, Joe Namath and author Shel Silverstein were among those who courted the couple. But perhaps the most famous friend they made was Sammy Davis Jr. Sammy was a born-and-bred entertainer: from singing and dancing as a child, to screen fame in the 1950s, to Rat Pack membership by 1960. By the time Sammy met Chuck and Linda, he was almost 50 years old, and seemed to be facing something of a mid-life crisis. Though he had recently married his third wife, Altovise, Davis was fascinated with youth culture and the sexual revolution. As his biographer Wil Haygood later described it, “Davis had no intention of being left behind.” Sammy and Altovise Sammy dove head-first into the world of sexual experimentation and pornography, seemingly with the blessing of his new wife. He would throw regular orgies, arrange for porno screeners to be sent for home viewing, and when ‘Deep Throat’ exploded onto the scene, of course Sammy was interested. To mark the occasion, he rented out the Pussycat Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard and invited celebrity friends to join him and Altovise for a showing. As Sammy later wrote in his autobiography ‘Hollywood in a Suitcase’: “When ‘Deep Throat’ did the rounds, I could almost feel the earth reverberate. I made no bones about the fact that when they started making explicit sex films, I became an immediate and avid collector. There was no lack of people of both sexes to flock to see my collection, and I gave the premiere of ‘Deep Throat’ in several countries. I am anything but prudish in these matters, and I loved the day they threw out the etchings and put everything onto celluloid. “But the significance of ‘Deep Throat’ in terms of the taboos it shot down in the history of movies is huge. It was the first time you could take your wife to the neighborhood movie to see explicit sex scenes. Someone had to be first across the line, and Linda Lovelace got there.” Thoroughly taken by the film, Sammy decided he had to meet its leading lady. Learning Linda and Chuck were now in California, Sammy invited them over to dinner with him and Altovise. Linda later recalled meeting Sammy: “Our first night at Sammy’s house was a typical Hollywood social evening, dinner followed by a movie in the star’s private screening room. Then the four of us sat around and talked. That night, the conversation remained fairly general despite Chuck’s constant efforts to divert it into the gutter. “I can no longer remember the first time that a scene actually came down between Sammy and myself… but once it did happen, it happened almost every night. I liked him as a person. Every night we were together, we’d spend hours just talking and sometimes we’d spend the whole night just rapping about his past. “But there was another side to him. He would like to tie me down on a bed, then have other women come in and make love to me while he watched. There were times when Sammy and Chuck would have Altovise and myself go through a scene together while they watched. And that other side of Sammy could be scary.” Chuck confirmed this side of Sammy, but, typically, made himself the center of the story, saying: “Sammy used to tell me he was more interested in meeting and knowing me than he was in fucking Linda. He would fuck her, but that was secondary. He said, ‘I gotta know how you control women. I gotta’ know what makes them follow you like they do. What motivates you? Why do you do it?’ “I said, ‘Well, beats shovelin’ shit for a living.’” Linda described one evening at Sammy’s house with Chuck where the three of them were watching ‘Deep Throat’. Linda said Sammy asked her to teach him to ‘Deep Throat’ – and this provided Linda with an unusual opportunity to humiliate Chuck. She suggested Sammy practice on Chuck so that she could comment. Here’s how Linda told the story: “Sammy asked ‘Do you think Chuck would mind?’ “‘Mind?’ I said. ‘No, that’s the kind of thing he’d go for in a big way.’” “Of course (I knew) this was definitely not the kind of thing Chuck would go for. In fact, it may have been his greatest fear, the one possibility he dreaded most. I knew whenever he put down another man, he’d call him ‘that fag.’ “Chuck existed in a very narrow sexual area. Probably because of his experiences with his mother, he hated all women and could never just have straight sex with a woman. But he was also a former Marine and a gun nut; in that super-macho world, there was no room for gays. “So where did that leave him? That left him with cruelty and animals and whatever other bizarre possibility he could dream up.” Linda said that Chuck didn’t feel he could jeopardize the valuable relationship by stopping him. So Sammy fellated Chuck. Linda knew the consequences of having engineered this, but she couldn’t resist it: “I knew that I’d be punished, but this time it was worth it. The experience revealed something about Chuck that I hadn’t known. His cowardice. There he was, in pain and scared, but unable to speak up. He didn’t know how to handle it; didn’t know what to do. The expression on Chuck’s face that night will always be with me.” The two couples began spending more and more time together. They went on holiday to Hawaii, where Linda says Sammy confessed his love for her. He even broached the idea of them leaving their respective spouses for each other. While Linda said she was never in love with Sammy, she did enjoy the protection the relationship with Sammy provided her. Sammy’s attention kept Chuck on his best behavior and continued to shift the balance of power in the Traynor marriage. Chuck would put up with a lot for the financial doors he felt Sammy could open – even though Sammy publicly downplayed the help he could provide. An article in the Orlando Sentinel read: “Sammy protests he’s being given more credit than he deserves for helping the porno flick queen achieve general-audience fame. ‘I haven’t done anything I wouldn’t do for any friend,’ Davis says modestly. ‘Her ‘old man’ Chuck Traynor just happens to be a friend of mine. “‘Old-friend Chuck,’ explains Sammy, ‘has been itching to capitalize on the publicity Linda has received from her ‘Deep Throat’ starring exposure, particularly anxious to take advantage of the big-money offers that have been pouring in from Las Vegas clubs. The journalist continued that “the main problem Linda’s mentor was having was figuring out what talents she could display on stage that wouldn’t get her arrested. And this is where good-buddy Sammy came in.” One of the more bizarre ways Sammy tried to help the Traynors was by inviting Linda to be on the Highway Safety telethon he had planned. Now, Sammy was National Entertainment Chairman of the Highway Safety Foundation, an Ohio-based non-profit organization founded by Richard Wayman, a partner at the eminent accounting firm Ernst & Ernst – now Ernst & Young. Wayman was an avid photographer with a particular obsession for pictures of car crash scenes. He formed the foundation to produce and distribute highway safety videos. Wayman made his most famous highway safety video in 1959. Titled Signal 30 – which referred to the Ohio State Highway Patrol code for a fatal car crash – the short film showed extremely graphic footage of crash victims. Sammy became involved with the foundation as it was a cause close to his heart. In 1954, he’d crashed his car when another vehicle stopped short in front of him. That accident left him with multiple facial fractures and caused him to lose his left eye. According to journalist Martin Yant, Sammy and Richard Wayman had more than highway safety in common. Firstly, both had ties to the Teamsters Union – which in turn had ties to the Mafia. Sammy’s personal finances were a mess and he owed a lot of money to the mob; and Wayman had pitched Jimmy Hoffa for financial backing of his highway films. And second, both Sammy and Wayman had an abiding love of pornography. The mob saw a way to get involved with Sammy and Richard Wayman: what if they got involved in financing highway safety films which they would ship around the country as a front for distributing something much more lucrative – porn films. Interstate transportation of pornography was illegal and the target of federal busts, so having a wholesome front for it would be welcome. Martin Yant said this strange scheme worked – and the Highway Safety Foundation became one of the biggest national distributors of pornography. The arrangement provided Wayman with a ready backer for his legitimate films. And it benefited Sammy, who was happy to be on the receiving end of porn films to show friends old and new. Back to the Highway Safety telethon, Wayman pitched the concept to Sammy, admiring the money Jerry Lewis raised for muscular dystrophy with his telethons. Sammy was all in on the idea, knowing he could build a great event around his many friends including John Wayne, Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason, Carol Burnette – even then President Richard Nixon. And Sammy invited Linda to participate too, asking her to make a short speech during the program. But when Sammy included Linda on the performer list, he got strong pushback and a clear message. Linda would not be allowed into the event. Not wanting to rock the boat, Sammy let Linda and Chuck know her appearance was a no-go. This was the first time Linda understood that her porn-fueled celebrity status had limits. While the telethon didn’t work out, it was likely a blessing in disguise for Linda. The event was a complete fiasco. The production wound up costing far more than the event raised, forcing Wayman to resign his foundation position. Still, Sammy felt guilty about having to cut Linda out, so he decided to introduce her to a trusted friend and music producer to help her develop an act she could take on the road. * 8. The Flamboyant David Winters David Winters was born 1939 in London, emigrating with his family to the U.S. as a teenager. He longed to become a professional dancer and convinced his mother to enroll him in classes. Thanks to his acting as well as his dancing abilities, within a year Winters was performing with the likes of Perry Como and George Balanchine. And by the 1960s, Winters was choreographing for celebrities like Elvis Presley, Ann-Margret, and Liza Minnelli. He met Sammy Davis Jr. in 1965 and the two became both creative colleagues and personal friends. David Winters, center left, blond hoodlum, in ‘West Side Story’ (1961) Winters had another talent: he had a track record of taking performers with limited talent and making them more than they were. Sammy thought he’d be the perfect person to help Linda and suggested Chuck give Winters a call. So Chuck called, and reached David Winter’s manager who said Winters wouldn’t be interested in working with someone from the adult industry. But soon after, Chuck did get a call from Winters himself who said that, on the contrary, he was intrigued at the prospect of working with a porn star. He told Chuck: “I don’t want to do Mitzi Gaynor’s act, and I don’t want to do Florence Henderson’s act. All these people are boring to me. I want to do something that’s interesting and maybe this girl, maybe there’s a bit of a spin to it, you know?” David came to the offices of Linda Lovelace Enterprises to meet the Traynors. Secretary Dolores Wells showed Winters photos of Linda while he waited, including ones of her performing her famous oral act. This made him uncomfortable and he thought of leaving, but then Linda walked in and his mind changed: “It was like a movie: this girl comes through the door, and she looked like she was a teenager from a Midwest school: sweet little face, a couple of freckles here and there, and just charming. Very sweet and unassuming.” David Winters and Linda Linda later recalled meeting Winters for the first time, writing: “Describing David Winters as flamboyant is to seriously understate the case. He wore stretch pants and boots, a loose chemise with puffed sleeves, and a pocketbook with jingling bells on it. As I met him for the first time, David handed me a single long-stemmed rose. I took one look and decided he was wonderful. Chuck took one look at David Winters and decided he was ‘a fag.’” Chuck told David he’d already arranged a stage show for Linda. He had worked with their lawyer Phil Medina on a contract with Miami’s Paramount Theater at a salary of $15k a week. They had the location and the financial backing; they just needed help with Linda and the actual show. David asked Linda to sing, dance, and act for him and quickly understood why the Traynors were looking for assistance. But interested in the challenge and charmed by Linda, Winters agreed to produce the show. He brought in colleagues to teach her to dance and sing, personally shuttling Linda from studio to studio. Winters claimed it was during one of these car rides that Linda first came onto him. She started by caressing his thigh and before long was showcasing her infamous ‘Deep Throat’ abilities. Whether Chuck put Linda up to this or not is unclear – bartering her sex for favors was by now his MO. But Linda later said she found Winters unique and alluring. Linda’s lessons continued but the prognosis wasn’t good. Winters was direct with Linda: “You can’t sing, you can’t dance, and you’re not a great actress. You’re not Sarah Bernhardt, and nobody wants to see you get up on the stage and recite Shakespeare, anyhow. So I don’t know what to do with you.” But the Traynors had signed a contract, and Winters was committed to helping in whatever way he could. He hired backup dancers and singers for the show, hoping they would help draw attention away from what Linda lacked. He also hired the writer Mel Mandel who wrote lines that played off Linda’s past. Here’s Linda’s show opener as an example: “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for coming…oh, excuse me, I can’t say that. It’s so hard….oops…it’s so difficult for me to say anything. Every time I open my mouth… oops, sorry about that.” You get the drift. Linda and David Once rehearsals started in earnest, Linda was feeling good. She was meeting new people, learning new things, and her confidence was increasing. But Chuck was still a problem, this time doing anything he could to sabotage her. He stayed out late partying – causing Linda to be repeatedly late when she couldn’t get him up in the morning. When Linda finally did show up to rehearsal, David warned the couple that if they didn’t take preparation seriously, he was going to stop backing the show. Chuck took offense at that, and barked at Linda to pack up because they were leaving. But Linda stood up for herself, and refused in front of everyone involved. “‘No!’ I screamed at him. While Chuck and I were going at each other, the rest of the company stood silently by. They were all frightened of him. He was at his worst. He hit me in front of everyone else. “It was then that our writer, Mel Mandel, said something that changed my life: ‘I think I’d rather be dead than not really be living.’” Chuck stormed out. Shortly after, Linda went with Lovelace Enterprises secretary and friend Dolores Wells to the Malibu home she shared with Chuck knowing he’d be out. She threw some personal possessions into a bag and headed to the Beverly Hills Hotel. After checking in under the last name ‘Hyatt’, Linda called David Winters and dropped a bombshell: she professed her love for him, and said she was leaving Chuck once and for all. Linda and David said Chuck’s reaction was immediate. He began harassing them both. Chuck also called Dolores Wells telling her he was grabbing a gun and would be hunting the pair down until he found them. Chuck even called Butchie Peraino in New York, telling him Linda had been taken against her will and he needed some muscle to get her back. David Winters remembered being at home one day with two friends, sunbathing nude by the pool, when an unknown visitor showed up. Winters recalled the man saying: “Look Mr. Winters, I dressed nice for California, huh? I dressed respectful for you. I’ve got a nice shirt on. But I’ve been told to kill you. I’m here to kill you. We know you know where Linda is, so you’d better get her. You got 24 hours.” While the visit frightened Winters, it also infuriated him. He purchased a gun himself and called Chuck, challenging him to have it out once and for all. After that, Winters said he never heard from Chuck again. So, why now? After over two years of Chuck’s abuse and volatility, why was this moment the final straw for Linda? Had Linda finally realized the celebrity that ‘Deep Throat’ brought her? That she now held the balance of power in the relationship and could use it? Or was it her new relationship with David Winters? Linda always seemed to need a man to help guide and protect her, and perhaps Winters was the latest on offer. As for Linda, she always credited writer Mandel’s words about really living as her wake-up call. Ironically Mandel later said that his comment was directed at Winters, not Chuck. It was a reaction to Winter’s domineering style and Linda’s seeming inability to stand up for herself. He said: “I began to think she had no life of her own and was really at the whim of whoever happened to be involved with her. David was a powerful little guy. He would say, ‘you gotta do this and you gotta do that.’” Perhaps Linda just lacked the confidence to believe she could succeed on her own, and she saw Winters as a logical replacement for Chuck. Instead of insulting her, as Chuck so frequently did, Winters bestowed compliments on her and allowed her to believe anything was possible.” And so, on September 28th 1973, Linda filed for divorce in Santa Monica, citing abuse and irreconcilable differences. The story of the Traynors was over. But in a way it was also just beginning. * On the next episode of Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story… * The post Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story: Part 5, Deep Throat Explodes (and so does Sammy Davis Jr.) appeared first on The Rialto Report.

This is Season 2 of Svengali – ‘The Chuck Traynor Story: Part 4, The Making of Deep Throat… What Really Happened?’ Previously on Season 1 of Svengali: Chuck Traynor was born in Connecticut in 1937 to a single mother. Raised by his grandparents, he relocated to Florida when he was young, joining the marines when he finished high school. After leaving the service, Chuck married and divorced three times while working on the fringes of the sexploitation film business. In his late 20s, Chuck bought a biker bar in Miami that was a front for prostitution. If that wasn’t enough excitement, he was busted for importing marijuana into Florida from the Caribbean. In 1970, Chuck met Linda Boreman – who would later become Linda Lovelace. After a year of turbulent incidents together, they set off for New York looking for opportunities to make money in the city’s burgeoning sex industry. At first, Chuck sold nude photos of Linda, and then pimped her out privately after she was turned down by the high-end madam Xaviera Hollander. Chuck then found work for them both appearing in explicit sex loops. The first loops were standard fare, but they soon escalated and in one loop, Linda was filmed having sex with a dog, an experience she was to later claim was the lowest point of her life. Then, a turning point of sorts: Linda was working on a loop shoot which was cut short when the filmmaker, a relatively inexperienced director named Gerard Damiano, witnessed Linda’s unique fellatio skills. Gerard decided to create a full-length film around Linda’s party trick. Linda was unsure about the idea, but Chuck was all too happy for the couple to graduate from sex loops to hardcore features. When Gerard Damiano wrote the script for ‘Deep Throat’, he originally called it ‘The Doctor Makes a House Call’. He had no clue his film would go on to become a cultural milestone and one of the most profitable movies ever made. With a handful of sex films already to his name, Gerard thought ‘Deep Throat’ would be just another step to becoming the director he wanted to be in a world where he saw adult and mainstream movie-making converging. Chuck and Linda also had no inkling what lay ahead when they agreed to Linda’s starring role. All they knew was that they were going to make $1,200 for Linda’s participation, a sum that could cover rent for a year in 1972, and that Linda referred to as a “great train robbery.” You can read or listen to the previous episodes here. This episode running time is 50 minutes. ——————————————————————————————————————- 1. Deep Throat: Pre-Production Before we dive into the production and release of ‘Deep Throat’ (1972), it’s helpful to recap the plot of the film. Don’t worry, it won’t take long – I could write it on the back of a napkin. Linda Lovelace, played by Linda Boreman/Traynor, confides to a friend that she’s sexually unsatisfied. Her friend sends Linda to a doctor who identifies the root of Linda’s problem when he finds her clitoris at the bottom of her throat. The doctor hires Linda to take care of men in need of sexual treatment as a therapeutic twofer. One of those patients falls in love with Linda and proposes marriage, giving the film a happy Hollywood-style ending. Gerard Damiano on set When Gerard Damiano went home to write the script that winter weekend in 1971, he knew he wanted to make a light-hearted, fun film that put women’s sexuality at its center: “When I shot Deep Throat, men didn’t even know what a clitoris was, no less where it was. So the fact that I put it in her throat says, yeah maybe it’s in the throat or maybe it’s under your armpit, but wherever it is you better look for it.” “‘Deep Throat’ was from Linda Lovelace’s point of view. Most of the films that I made that I was most proud of were films that I consider shot from a female point of view.” All very laudable, even if Gerard seemed to see no contradiction in the fact that the only way for Linda to achieve satisfaction was by performing an act reliant on men, for the pleasure of men. But the script makes its points in a playful manner. It’s filled with one-liners, and the humor that was later recognized as a key element to Deep Throat’s success. As Gerard remembered: “I knew in order to do this, you know, with a little bit of sugar helps the medicine go down, that I had to keep it light, airy, and funny and not make it like, she was doing something that she didn’t like.” So Gerard had a script and a female lead: now he just needed money to make the movie. He turned to mobster Lou ‘Butchie’ Peraino who had already helped fund one of Gerard’s earlier films. You may remember from the last episode, Chuck had already met Butchie at the Film Center building when he and Linda first arrived in New York. Butchie was the son of mobster Anthony Peraino, a member of the Colombo Crime Family, one of the notorious ‘Five Families’ of New York. Butchie wasn’t the brightest tool in the box, but he already saw the potential for big profits in the adult industry, and was bankrolled by his father to exploit the opportunity. The good news was that Butchie agreed to an initial budget of $18,000 to make Deep Throat – higher than most other sex films at the time. The bad news was that he was hesitant about casting Linda. Was she pretty enough, could she act, and what about the scars on her body – the result of Linda’s car smash a couple years before? Gerard shared Butchie’s doubts with Chuck and Linda. Chuck – ever the svengali – came up with a typical Chuck solution to convince the mobster. As Linda later recalled in her book ‘Ordeal’, Chuck said: “‘We can get Lou to change his mind if you’d just go in there and give him a blow job.'” Linda complied, and her oral skills did the trick, turning Butchie’s ‘meh’ into a ‘hell yeah.’ Chuck Traynor But what about Linda’s ability to act? Yes, she’d performed in a few loops, but they were all short movies, without dialogue, and with barely any story lines. ‘Deep Throat’ would be a full-length feature film and, while the plot was admittedly thin, there was enough dialogue to put Linda’s thespian skills to the test. Gerard recognized that, and so arranged informal acting rehearsals with Linda off and on for three weeks before production began. This was unprecedented for an adult film at the time. It still is. But it seemed to kinda, sorta, almost work. At least Linda was committed. Gerard later praised Linda for her dedication, saying: “She was serious enough to retain what I tried to teach her. It’s not very often that you get people willing to learn.” While Gerard rehearsed with Linda, production plans for ‘Deep Throat’ were being ironed out. Butchie Peraino suggested that they shoot the film in Florida. As Gerard remembers it: “My partners were in the loops business and they used to shoot loops in Florida, so they said ‘You’re going to go to Florida and there’s a man there that’s got actors, he’s got actresses, he’s got everything, he’s got locations.’ Getting out of New York in the winter and going to Florida was a wonderful thing.” Gerard was happy to leave the cold wintry conditions of New York behind, but there was an added bonus to shooting in Florida for him: the fourth annual Adult Film Association of America (AFAA) convention was taking place at the same time at the Deauville hotel in Miami. Dave Friedman, sexploitation filmmaker and president of the AFAA, was at the event’s helm and over 300 delegates were due to fill the Baccarat conference room. This event was a big deal: after all, America’s 700 adult movie theaters were pulling in $15 million a week at this point – and lots of people wanted in on the action. Ironically, as ‘Deep Throat’ was about to be shot nearby, Dave Friedman was actually railing against the new generation of hardcore filmmakers, saying: “They can’t shock the customer anymore. It’s all been said. They violated one of the most important tenets of show business. They gave away the last act before the curtain went up. All we can do now is make bigger and better movies that eventually will make the general release theaters.” As it is, Gerard never did get time to attend the convention – he was too busy shooting what was to become the biggest adult film of them all. Before heading south from New York, Gerard needed to secure a few key cast and crew for his film. It’s worth pausing at this point, and looking at the other members of this unusual bunch of characters responsible for making ‘Deep Throat.’ Let’s start with Harry Reems: Harry had met Gerard a year before when Gerard had hired him for a part in his first hardcore film, Sex U.S.A. Here’s how Harry described Gerard in his 1975 book ‘Here Comes Harry Reems!’: “Damiano has been called the Mike Nichols and Ingmar Bergman of porno films. From my own experience I call him an honest filmmaker who cares about the art of film. “He’s a grown-up Wizard of Oz, a short jolly jelly bean. He has a gray goatee and a funny little toupee. With his Guccis and portfolio-size wallet and Caddy, he’s sort of the stereotype of the second-string Hollywood director.” Harry had already been introduced to Linda because it had actually been Harry on the receiving end of Linda’s oral performance the day Gerard was meant to shoot a loop but stopped short when he saw what Linda could do. Bits of that loop footage eventually made their way into Deep Throat. Waste not want not. Harry pitched himself to Gerard for ‘Deep Throat’, wanting to act the part of the doctor, but Gerry turned him down, saying it would be too expensive to take Harry to Florida. Harry was eager to learn about the craft of film making from behind the camera so he offered himself up as a $25-a-day unit manager. He also offered to drive Gerry’s beloved blue and white Cadillac down to Florida from New York – the same car Linda drives during the opening of the film. Gerard relented; Harry was in as unit manager. Harry Reems Then there was Ron Wertheim. Ron had been on the New York sexploitation scene as an actor and crew member since the mid 1960s. Gerard first met Ron when he began exploring the world of adult film and cast Ron in a small part in his 1970 softcore movie Teenie Tulip. An adult film director who went by the name Duddy Kane described Ron Wertheim as follows: “He was originally an actor. He was one of those people that went to Hollywood on a contract and was in some movies. Then somehow he got sidetracked. He was just another guy who always dreamed about making movies and was in that whole group of filmmakers, beatniks, who made up that scene. He was always pursuing some project, some screenplay or other. He was a very interesting guy, extremely knowledgeable, but clearly mentally unstable.” Ron Wertheim (left) Gerard was also looking for someone to play Helen, Linda’s friend in the movie, who recommends medical treatment for Linda’s sexual dissatisfaction. He came across veteran actress, Dolly Sharp. When I asked Gerard how he came to cast Dolly, he said he had no idea where she came from. But Dolly was likely introduced to Gerard by Ron Wertheim who had written the screenplay for an adult film she’d performed in the previous year. Gerard was immediately impressed with Dolly: “She was wonderful. I really don’t know where she came from or where she ended up because I’ve never seen her again since, which was a shame because I certainly would have used her.” It’s no surprise Gerard was so struck by Dolly. While she may have only been on the adult scene for a year or so, Dolly had had a long and successful entertainment career under the name Helen Wood. Helen had been an acclaimed dancer on Broadway. A contract girl for Twentieth Century Fox who starred in a major studio picture with Debbie Reynolds and Bob Fosse. A showgirl on the Las Vegas Strip, working with notable performers like Liberace, Sammy Davis Jr, and Louis Prima. Unlike Linda and Harry who were in their early 20s when they made Deep Throat, Dolly was in her late 30s. This is adult film agent Tallie Cochrane describing Dolly: “Dolly Sharp came in my office one afternoon dressed in a trench coat, high heel shoes, and put her rain coat down and her umbrella and she says ‘I’m Dolly Sharp’ and I said, ‘Well, I’m glad to meet you, Dolly Sharp.’ And I said ‘Tell me what you’ve done.’ She said. ‘I’ve only done a couple of things, but this is what I’ve been doing most of my life’ which had been dancing, and you could tell, I mean, she could take her leg and lift it above her head – straight up like this –  unbelievable. They, well, trust me, they used that everywhere she went. She was a contortionist. “Everybody loved working with her and she was punctual. She was like a secretary, I mean, she’d show up and get her costumes on and her makeup and she’d just sit there and read her book until it was time for her to go on. Dolly was a great girl.” As Harry noted in his book, Dolly told Gerard she’d only perform in ‘Deep Throat’ if there was a part for her then boyfriend Billy. Gerard was keen on Dolly for the role of Helen so he agreed to the demand. Helen Wood/Dolly Sharp – with Liberace and Sammy Davis Jr Last but not least among Gerard’s New York recruits was Joao Fernandes. Here’s Joao describing how he wound up in New York making adult films: “I was born and raised in Rio, Brazil. And I actually grew up watching American movies. And really basically learning about American life. And obviously, you know, I began to wonder, I wonder if I can take part in this. “I decided to come to New York when I was about 21… 1963 maybe. I registered at New York University to learn film. I made a short movie with Ron Wertheim. We met a guy in New York called Sam Lake. And in those days, it was not porno yet. I started with nudies. “At the time I wasn’t shooting yet – I was an assistant. There was an idea underneath it all – that was our way in to make movies. And eventually obviously we’ll do really serious work. That was the plan.” Joao’s relationship with Ron Wertheim paid off in the form of a job as cinematographer on ‘Deep Throat.’ Joao Fernandes on set with Gerard Damiano All the other cast and crew were secured by Butchie Peraino’s local guy down in Florida. And that guy was Lenny Camp – the same Lenny Camp Chuck and Linda knew from their Miami days when Lenny took pin-up shots of Linda at Chuck’s request. The same Lenny who claimed that it was him who introduced the concept of deep throating to Chuck and Linda when he told them about his then girlfriend Vicki’s special talent. * 2. A ‘Deep Throat’ Road Trip to the South The ragtag New York crew headed down to Florida to shoot right after new year’s. It was early January 1972, and New York was coming off one of its biggest snowfall dumps of the winter season. Everyone made their own way south: Gerard flew down a few days early to ensure everything was ready. He also paid for Dolly and her boyfriend to fly down to Florida, a stipulation Dolly had made when negotiating her participation in the film. Harry Reems picked up Gerard’s beloved Cadillac and a film crew member on Tuesday morning of January 11th – and they began the 20 hour drive to Miami. Cinematographer Joao Fernandes drove down in a van with a couple of other members of the small production crew, bringing their film making equipment with them. As for Chuck and Linda, they drove down with Butchie’s father Anthony Peraino. Chuck was in awe of the mobster, and so, to keep their benefactor happy, Chuck directed Linda to offer Anthony her special ‘deep throat’ treatment during their overnight stop. But the offer had the reverse effect: rather than please Anthony, it offended his sensibilities. He lectured Chuck, telling him Italians don’t let their wives cheat. Linda remembered Chuck was uncharacteristically chastened, sulking for the remainder of the ride down. As Linda later wrote in her book ‘Ordeal’: “Old Tony reminded me that not everyone in the world was like Chuck. I always had difficulty turning to other people for help; I imagined they’d all turn out like Chuck. Even now, several years after the fact, I get the feeling that there is something of Chuck Traynor in everyone.” The cast and crew all converged at the Voyager Congress Inn in North Miami. The motel had opened 15 years earlier, and was advertised as follows: “Whether you want to relax in the restful gardens, sunbathe on the observation deck, or take an invigorating dip in the pool, the Voyager offers a vacation that is keyed to your mood. You are located in the midst of everything your heart desires.” But even in its early days, the hotel had a seamier side. In 1959, state officials suspended the hotel’s liquor license for allowing a bellboy and manager to act as pimps, providing encounters-for-pay to the Voyager Congress’ hornier guests. As for why the Voyager motel was chosen out of all possible locations, it came down to Lenny Camp again, who was a grumpy operator at the best of times: “I knew the owner. I told the manager to expect many people – but the producers were cheap sons of bitches and made everyone share rooms to lower the cost.” Harry Reems recalled arriving at the Voyager hotel in his book. “I found Gerry lolling poolside. ‘Hiya, Harry,’ he greeted me. ‘Have a drink. Have a swim’. Damiano had a seasoned taste – and tolerance – for Jack Daniels. So did I. Many the night we found a bottle of Jack Daniels good to the last drop. And fought for it.” When Chuck, Linda, and Anthony Peraino arrived, Linda was happy to see Harry. They had met when they almost made a loop together, and Linda liked him. She appreciated his warm personality and what she described as his “good sense of humor.” Linda was also pleased because she sensed that Chuck was jealous of Harry, a resentment she ginned up by flirting with Harry. She later recalled: “​​Harry’s strongest appeal to me was the fact that Chuck didn’t like him at all. Chuck constantly referred to Harry Reems as “that asshole,” and Harry pretended Chuck didn’t exist.” Once they arrived at the motel, Chuck made Linda swim long laps in the pool, stating “These people don’t want flabby people in their movie.” Linda later recalled in ‘Ordeal’: “Every day Chuck had me out in the swimming pool doing laps for hours at a time. After our training sessions, Chuck would try to impress upon me the importance of Deep Throat to our lives. ‘This is the biggest thing I’ve ever pulled off. Think about it. Where would you be without me? Without me, you’d never have learned a fucking thing. I’m the one who taught you everything. I’m responsible for all this.’” In the days leading up to the start of the shoot, Lenny Camp was supposedly lining up the rest of the crew and the locations. But, as the crew found out, Lenny’s efforts weren’t always successful. The first problem Gerard faced was a big one: he needed an actor for the role of Dr. Young, the physician that diagnoses Linda’s sexual ailment. Lenny was supposed to find someone local – but either couldn’t or didn’t. Gerard claimed he had to step in, make some calls, but also ended up empty handed. Harry Reems remembered it in a different way: “’You’ll have to play the doctor,’ Gerry told me. ‘I’ve decided you’d be better than anyone else I’ve seen down here.’ “He implied that he had looked everywhere and couldn’t find anyone in my league. I surmised that he hadn’t gotten away from the pool or the relaxing charms of Jack Daniels.” * Deep Throat: Day 1 If there was one consistent theme that ran throughout the duration of the Deep Throat shoot – it was winging it. On the first planned day of production, the cast and crew made their way to an apartment complex Lenny Camp claimed to have secured for the majority of the shoot – but it didn’t end well. In fact, it didn’t even start well. This is how Gerard remembered it: “When we showed up with a truckload of equipment and started to unload at the location, the manager came running out and said ‘What the hell are you doing?’ and I said ‘Well we’re going to shoot a little thing in here with so and so Lenny Camp…’ and he says ‘Lenny Camp? You get off my property or I’ll call the cops.’ “Well, you say ‘Cops’ and three minutes later we were gone, and so everything that we were going to do went out the window the first day. “I said ‘Now what are we gonna do?’ I said ‘Well we’re at the Voyager motel, let’s go back to the motel and we can use one of the motel rooms to shoot this scene, then we could do the pool scene.’ And meanwhile Lenny Camp was working with the production manager going around to find different locations. We went by the seat of our pants.” Gerard spent the rest of that first day negotiating with the manager of the Voyager Inn, seeking permission to shoot by the pool. Luckily, the motel wasn’t busy at the time and they worked out a deal for the following day. Nevertheless the first day’s shoot was canceled. And while all this was going on, what was Chuck up to? Well, most people involved in the production remembered him starting off the day in a good mood. But as the hours passed, his mood darkened and his abusive side surfaced again. Linda later said it was because she was getting a lot of attention – and Chuck felt his usual rigid hold over her slipping away. The attention emboldened Linda, and that first night, Linda pushed back on Chuck while the rest of the cast and crew were enjoying drinks and music. Linda knew that mouthing off to Chuck wasn’t the best idea, and sure enough, when they got back to their room that night, Chuck exploded. Linda described the events later in her autobiography: “Chuck was yelling at me now, and I realized that the party sounds from the next room had stopped. Suddenly I was screaming back at him, angry, too. Even the anger felt good and I let it out. The presence of other people diminished him and diluted my fear of him. It gave me courage. “But talking back to Chuck was a major offense. The first punch sent me crashing over backwards onto the bed. He went berserk. He picked me up off the bed and threw me against the wall separating us from the crew. He tore my bathrobe off in two pieces. By this time, I had learned that the best way to handle a beating was to roll myself up into a tight ball on the floor – protecting my breasts and my stomach from his boots.” At this stage, we need to pause and recognize that conflicting narratives emerged from the set of Deep Throat. On the one hand, you have Linda’s version – as told in her autobiographies and to interviewers over the next years. Then you have the various versions told by other people on set – Gerard Damiano, Harry Reems, Ron Wertheim, Joao Fernandes, and others. That first night, Linda claimed she cried out, loud enough that she had no doubt the crew in the adjoining rooms could hear her: “‘Help!’ I called out. ‘Oh God, please! Someone, help me!’ “I figured out of 20 people, there might be one human being that would do something to help me and I was screaming for help, I was being beaten, I was being kicked around again and again, bounced off of walls. And all of a sudden, the room next door became very quiet. Nobody, not one person came to help me.” * Deep Throat: Day 2 The next morning, Gerard and the crew set up to film by the Voyager Inn pool. They wanted to get an early start as the forecast predicted the weather would reach the mid 80s by lunchtime – perfect for sunbathing, but less ideal for a production crew hauling heavy equipment in the Florida heat. Linda arrived poolside with Chuck, understandably more withdrawn than she’d been the day before. When Chuck stepped away, Linda said a crew member approached her and quietly asked if he could help her. But Linda turned him down, not trusting anyone associated with the production since they’d done nothing to step in the night before. According to Linda, everyone else acted as if they were unaware of what she claimed occurred between her and Chuck the previous evening. But one detail from the poolside scene they filmed that day is indisputable. As Linda sits poolside with Dolly Sharp, the black-and-blue marks on her legs that Gerard noticed – bruises on the outside of her left thigh – are clearly in evidence. Today they are often cited as proof of Linda’s abuse. Linda herself mentioned them later when questioned about her claims of mistreatment, saying: “So many people say that, in ‘Deep Throat’, I have a smile on my face, and I look as though I am really enjoying myself. No one ever asked me how those bruises got on my body.” But in every conversation I ever had with Gerard, he said no one on the set, including him, knew Linda was being abused during the ‘Deep Throat’ shoot. In contrast, Gerard remembered a great start to that first actual day of shooting. He said: “We began with the pool sequence – with Linda Lovelace and Dolly Sharp – where Linda confesses that she’s never felt firecrackers exploding when she made love. It was terrific.” To be fair, Linda also recalled a positive first day of filming once she had put the events of the previous evening behind her. As she wrote in ‘Ordeal’: “We laughed a lot that first day of shooting while we were doing the poolside shots, the walking-down-the-street shots and the knocking-on-the-door shots.” So from the vantage of the film production, the day ended successfully. Gerard captured all the poolside shots he wanted and was pleased with what he got. That evening started a daily tradition that would last the remainder of the shoot: Chuck and Linda drove the day’s footage to the Miami airport so it could be shipped back in New York for processing. Linda and Dolly by the pool * Deep Throat: Days 3-4 – Fort Lauderdale For the next two days, the production headed half an hour up the coast, north of Miami, to Fort Lauderdale. After having screwed up the original location, Lenny Camp had managed to secure an alternative. Linda remembered the Fort Lauderdale house and its owner: “We shot at a nice home in Fort Lauderdale. It belonged to a young guy whose only interest was getting into chicks. He tried every device to make us. He brought cute chicks, handsome guys, and before we finished that two-day shooting schedule, he was practically begging us to stay on after our day’s work. We didn’t and left him practically in tears.” This second day of filming was actually the first time Linda was going to be filmed having sex for ‘Deep Throat’. More specifically, it was the first time Linda was going perform the act the entire movie was conceptualized around: deep throat. But as Gerard later recalled, it nearly didn’t happen. He remembered: “The morning we shot the deep throat scene, she came was almost crying. She says, ‘I won’t be able to do it good.’ “I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ She says, ‘Chuck is so jealous. So, if I really get into the scene, he’s going to be mad at me.’ “So I had the production manager send him into Miami. I said, ‘We’re running out of film, we need more film.’ So, Chuck went into Miami to buy film. And we shot the so-called ‘deep throat’ scene, and she was wonderful.” Sending Chuck on errands became a tactic Gerard regularly employed over the following days to keep him off set and away from Linda while they shot. It was a maneuver Linda later claimed Chuck complained about to her in private: “’You see the way they’re treating me?’ she said. ‘They don’t seem to realize that I’m the man who trained the star. If it wasn’t for me, they wouldn’t have a fucking star, and they wouldn’t have this fucking movie.’” Dolly Sharp in the Fort Lauderdale house * Deep Throat: Day 5 – Superbowl Sunday The fifth day of the shoot was a Sunday. Superbowl Sunday to be exact, and it so happened that the Miami Dolphins, formed only a handful of years before in 1966, were playing the Dallas Cowboys. While the game was played in New Orleans, the Miami streets were dead quiet. Everyone was either in their home or at the bar, glued to a TV. For Gerard, the event offered the perfect opportunity to film on the streets in an unimpeded way. “I’ll never forget it was during the Superbowl when the Dolphins were playing for the national championship. We said we’ll take time that they’re playing football, the streets will be empty, everybody will be inside watching television and we shot all the outside scenes. We had no trouble at all just flowing around in my Cadillac and Linda she was afraid to drive but she did wonderful.” The Miami Dolphins eventually lost to the Cowboys 24-3 – after a halftime tribute show to Louis Armstrong who had died just a few months earlier – but that day’s Deep Throat shoot was a definitive win, even if the perennially annoyed Lenny Camp found something to complain about, recalling: “They didn’t know where to go to shoot the driving scenes so I sent them out to Collins Ave, and they spent the whole day shooting Linda driving up and down. They were crazy to spend so much time doing that. What did they think this was? ‘Gone With The Wind?’” In addition to capturing the film’s iconic opening footage that day, serendipity struck when the crew bumped into an acquaintance of Lenny’s named Sepy Dobronyi. Sepy was famous in Miami, where he was known as the Hugh Hefner of the city. He certainly had an eclectic life, describing himself as ‘a Hungarian-born sculptor and aristocrat, art collector, world traveler, movie maker, pilot, wine collector, sportsman, playboy, and bon vivant.’ His family had been the crown jewelers to the Royal House of Hungary dating back as far as the 15th century, and were bestowed with the title, ‘Baron’, by the King in 1540. By 1972, Sepy had turned his attention from Hungarian to Hollywood royalty, counting talents such as Frank Sinatra, Bjorn Borg and George Hamilton as his friends, regularly hosting them at his elaborate house in Coconut Grove, Miami. Sepy Dobronyi When Lenny and Gerard explained that their next location had fallen through, and they were looking for a place for their final days of shooting, Sepy immediately offered up his home. Gerard remembered Sepy’s proposal as follows: “’I’ve got this great place,’ he told us, ‘and some good dope, so we’ll party and we’ll smoke and we’ll all have a great time.’” In truth Sepy’s home was the perfect location. It had been designed in 1961 by Otto F. Seeler, a professor of architecture at the University of Notre Dame, and was encased by walls of glass and coral rock. It featured a large circular fireplace rung by a royal blue couch. Because Sepy’s star sign was Taurus, the roof was shaped like a bull’s head complete with two copper horns extending over the canopy. While the main house was extravagant, a guest house on the property was what caught Gerard’s attention. The more modest location would serve perfectly as the doctor’s office. Gerard negotiated a reasonable rental fee with Sepy and the two men shook hands – everything was now set for the final days of production. * Deep Throat: Days 7 – 9 On the seventh day of shooting, a young woman named Carol Connors arrived on set. Lenny Camp had seen Carol several weeks before production of ‘Deep Throat’ began and, as Carol recalled, approached her: “I was romping on the beach one day and a photographer came up and gave me his card. He took some pictures of me and the next week he called to tell me a friend was coming down from New York to make a movie and that he might have a role for me. The photographer didn’t tell me it was for an X-rated movie, but if he had, I wouldn’t have known what he meant. I was incredibly naïve then.” But when Carol read lines for Gerard, he made it clear to her that ‘Deep Throat’ was going to be a hardcore film and that she’d be expected to perform explicit sex on camera. When Carol asked some friends their thoughts on taking the part, they told her lots of famous actresses got started this way. So as Carol later remembered: “Here was my chance. I had been a cashier in a movie theater and this was like a dream come true.” There was even a role for her boyfriend, and soon-to-be husband, Jack Birch. Carol Connors would go on to make several adult films and years later, she and Jack would be parents to Hollywood actress Thora Birch. But that January day in 1972 marked Carol’s first time in front of the movie camera. Her sex scene took place with Dr. Young, aka Harry Reems, who donned a white coat hastily purchased from a barber supply shop early that morning. Carol played Harry’s nurse and sexual partner who chronicles Linda’s wellness journey. In his book, Harry remembered shooting at Sepy’s house in his usual colorful way: “As a crew member, I was rigging up the lighting. As an improviser of the script, I was feeding lines to Linda. As an actor who was about to connect with Linda, I was popping my zipper – and I spent five hours that day in the nurse’s mouth and two in her cunt.” Harry also recalled Sepy well, referring to him as ‘Handsome Harry’ in his book, saying: “He was a bachelor, maybe 28 or 29 years old, a nice gent who lived solo in his ranch-style house with a swimming pool. Most of his waking thoughts turned lightly to love in any season… and swings and orgies. Our crew – and our project – could not have been more welcome. “He was all decked out in his snakeskin pants and leather shirts and medallions and rarin’ to party. But we were all exhausted from pursuing our Muse all day long and turned down his invitation. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, ‘what a bunch of dead dicks you all turned out to be!’ “‘Handsome Harry’ never could figure out why after a long hard day in front of the cameras we weren’t all chomping at the bit to swing into a wild orgy.” Gerard remembered Sepy’s libido getting in the way as well, saying: “Sepy was there, watching, carrying on, trying to make out with everybody in sight. He’d had a lot of stuff shot there, and he figured that if he just played his cards right, at the end there would be a big party and everyone would carry on. Now that’s a pervert!” As for Linda, she later told a journalist in the Miami News that she had become intimate with Sepy between takes. The reporter wrote: “As Linda tells it she had a brief, but somewhat ecstatic encounter with Sepy in his bedroom, which contains a bed shaped like a Viking ship.” Whatever actually happened on Sepy’s Viking bed, Sepy reacted in mock horror to Linda’s claims: “She used my name and she described the thing itself, but not me. She made it sound crude, but I’m much more refined. I just don’t like this low-class way of talking about sex. It destroys the whole illusion; whether it’s a secretary or a duchess, there must be illusion. If I don’t get that, then there’s nothing.” Sepy claimed he instructed his lawyer to take legal action against Linda. On the last day of filming at the house, Gerard moved the crew to Sepy’s wine cellar. He had concocted a scene where Linda visits a patient with a Coca-Cola obsession. She comes bearing a unique cure: a glass dildo with a hole down the middle to serve as a straw. Harry remembered the scene vividly in his book: “Gerry had someone make a glass dildo for ‘Deep Throat’. The guy who made it guaranteed it wouldn’t break. When the scene was over, everybody was happy and laughing. Laughing made Linda contract the muscles of her vagina. The dildo came flying out of her. It landed on the floor and shattered into a million splinters of glass. So much for the guarantee of glass dildoes. Ralph Nader, are you listening?” But while Harry was worried about the dildo, cinematographer Joao Fernandes had something else on his mind. He recalled: “I was surprised that Sepy let us into the cellar with all the expensive bottles of wine. I asked him why he trusted us. He just said that he had added a few bottles of poison amongst the expensive wine so he would know immediately if anyone stole his wine.” Needless to say, nobody drank the wine. Linda visits the doctor – in Sepy’s wine cellar * Deep Throat: End of Production The ‘Deep Throat’ shoot had been hectic: but despite location issues, last minute casting, and horny house owners, the crew that shot the film remember those days positively. Even Linda later recalled a camaraderie and sense of fun on set, with everyone involved in the production frequently joking and teasing each other. But despite this, several years later, Linda famously went on to denounce the film and anybody who sees it. She claimed that the film shows her being raped. And that assertion has framed discussion of the movie ever since, a conversation largely reduced to the question of whether Linda was telling the truth or lying. This question is unnecessarily reductive and simplistic. What’s more, it betrays a degree of sexism that verges on misogyny and victim blaming. That’s not to say we can’t question Linda’s version – especially because most everyone on set that I’ve spoken to recalls Linda as a happy and willing participant in the film, not to mention a wife often fawning over her husband Chuck. So what is the truth? And given that ‘Deep Throat’ is one of the most successful films of all time, shouldn’t there be a more informed debate about Linda’s allegations? Let’s break things down to better understand what actually occurred on the set of ‘Deep Throat’ and how Linda came to view it. Let’s start with the violence that Linda claims Chuck inflicted on her during the making of the film. Actually there is no controversy there. Chuck himself later confirmed it occurred. He said: “Did I beat her up? Well, yeah. With Linda, if she and I got into a hassle, it wouldn’t be beneath me to backhand her or bend her over my knee and beat her ass. “Yeah, (on the set of ‘Deep Throat’) we did have a disagreement, a pretty strong disagreement. She was telling me she didn’t wanna do scenes that day, that she had a headache or a backache or an ass-ache or somethin’.” So the next question is, how aware were the other cast and crew members that Chuck beat Linda while the film was being shot? When Harry Reems was later questioned about this, he flatly rejected having any knowledge of violence. “My only frame reference of knowledge with Linda Lovelace and her relationship with Chuck Traynor, was those eight days and there was no sign of any brutality. She was not forced to do anything at gunpoint. She was not beaten. There was no makeup to cover her bruises. There was no makeup man. We had an $18,000 budget. We were lucky to have costumes, for God’s sake. [chuckle] And you want need only to look at the film to see that the girl is having a terrific time. Her stories and her arguments are totally… they’re not credible, they’re just not credible.” But when Gerard was later confronted with Linda’s claims, he gave a more conflicted response. Have a listen to this exchange, and see how by the end of it, Gerard is admitting that Chuck beat Linda up – precisely as a result of ‘Deep Throat’. Interviewer: “She now claims that she was beaten and forced to do that movie. Is it true?” Gerard: “I don’t believe it. I really don’t believe it. I don’t even think she believes it. She claims that somebody forced her to do the movie but has she ever said who it was?” Interviewer: “Chuck Traynor.” Gerard: “Well. Chuck happened to be her husband. I mean if she’s talking about a bad marriage there’s forty million bad marriages in the United States today.” Interviewer: “More than that. She says she was beaten during the movie and that the marks from these beatings are clearly visible in the movie. You were perhaps close as anybody. Did you see these marks?” Gerard: “She had an argument again with her husband and she was a little banged up. But um the reason for it was she was enjoying the film too much. He got jealous that she was really enjoying Harry Reems – although he didn’t mind her doing the film, she wasn’t supposed to enjoy it that much.” In another interview, Gerard went further: “I’ve often tried to pinpoint the psychology of Linda. She seemed to have a distinct sadomasochistic relationship with Chuck, to the point where he constantly dominated her. They were never anywhere where she wasn’t holding him or touching him. There was this strange need all the time. And she was never out of Chuck’s sight. They were always a little apart from the group. “But as close as they were in the daytime, I knew Chuck would bang Linda off the wall at night. The next day she’d appear on set black-and-blue.” In another interview, Gerard again recognized that Linda had been in an abusive relationship – but this time claimed that it was precisely ‘Deep Throat’ that eventually enabled her to break free. “(Linda) had some kind of a bad life with her husband. But due to the popularity of ‘Deep Throat’, she was able to break away from him. So it probably saved her life.” So the evidence is clear: Chuck admitted to beating up Linda, and Gerard admitted he was aware of it. The mitigation that Gerard offered over the rest of his life was that it couldn’t have been that bad because Linda had been happy on set. “She had the best time of her life during that film. Watch it. See it. And see if there’s anything in her eyes. See if the smiles aren’t there.” In one of his last interviews, Gerard re-iterated this: “When it was all over she really came to me and cried that the film was over because she was never so happy as when she was making that film.” But claims like these inflamed Linda later on: Interviewer: “When people think about you, they say things like ‘Well, she seemed to enjoy it. She wanted to be there.’ Does that make you really angry?” Linda: “That one makes me especially angry. They talk about the smile on my face but nobody ever mentions the bruises on my body.” So we return to the question: was Linda coerced into making ‘Deep Throat’ or was she there by choice? Let’s consider the coercion angle: We know Linda had been in an abusive relationship with Chuck for over a year before ‘Deep Throat’ was filmed. We know there was a pattern to their dynamic: Chuck would push Linda to do things that would ultimately benefit him, like prostitute herself, pose nude for photos, and make hardcore loops. Yes, we’ve seen that Linda was at times a casual sexual explorer and a hippy, but that she would also on occasion push back against Chuck’s suggestions. And when she did, things would get violent. So Linda learned it was often easier to go along with what Chuck wanted – and Chuck wanted Linda to make ‘Deep Throat’. But did Linda enjoy herself on the set? The answer seems to be yes – and that is confirmed by Linda in her book ‘Ordeal’ even when she is sharing harrowing stories of Chuck’s dominance. Is there a contradiction to this? Not necessarily: after a year of Chuck playing the commanding figure in their relationship, all of a sudden Linda was the star – and she was treated like one. The cast and crew were kind to her, deferential even, and invested in making sure conditions were right for her to give her best performance. It must have been a relief after months of ups and downs with Chuck. So it shouldn’t be difficult to hold these two thoughts at the same time: that Linda was being abused during that week in Florida, but that she did also find elements of the Deep Throat film set to be reassuring. Which leads us to the central allegation that Linda made: when we watch Deep Throat, are we watching somebody being raped? If we’re looking for signs of a woman kicking and screaming, clearly and repeatedly saying no during the act itself, we’re not going to find them. But if we think of rape as unwanted sex performed under threat of violence then yes – we are witnessing Linda being raped. Linda would not have been there, doing what she did, if not for Chuck’s threats. So where does this leave us with ‘Deep Throat’, 50 years after it was released? What do we do with any art that becomes problematic if we become more enlightened about it? ‘Gone With The Wind’ has been removed from a number of streaming services until a discussion of its historical context regarding racism can precede it. ‘Last Tango in Paris’ has become difficult to watch since Maria Schneider spoke of her feelings of sexual humiliation on set. These questions are important to ask about ‘Deep Throat’ too. And what about the people who made ‘Deep Throat’: were they complicit in her rape? I don’t believe Gerard or Harry or anyone else on the set of ‘Deep Throat’ would have made the movie with Linda if they knew she was there against her will. At worst, they saw evidence of a wife domestically abused by her husband – an issue often treated as a private family matter in the early 1970s. At best, they witnessed a woman enjoying herself and the attention she was receiving. It’s easy to imagine them interpreting Linda’s relief at being there – and having a break from Chuck – as happiness and pleasure. Later on, adult film star Gloria Leonard famously said that Linda “was a woman who never took responsibility for her own choices made, but instead blamed everything that happened to her life on porn.” Good quote, except that it’s not true, and it’s not fair. Later in life Linda would be co-opted by the feminist movement who placed the blame for Linda’s abuse on the adult film business. But Linda didn’t blame porn at this point – Linda blamed Chuck. Her husband. Her pimp. And the manager of a new persona, Linda Lovelace – a star about to skyrocket into the stratosphere. * On the next episode of Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story… the explosion of Deep Throat and the impact on Linda and Chuck. * The post Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story: Part 4, The Making of Deep Throat… What Really Happened? appeared first on The Rialto Report.

New York. Mid-1970s. A new counter-cultural scene emerged. Punk was marked by attitude, antagonism, and angry, anarchic music. It attracted a new breed of musician and fan. Non-conforming, anti-authoritarian. It expressed itself visually in provocative new ways. Ripped T-shirts, leather jackets, Dr. Martens boots, and spiked mohawks. Overnight, punk caused a jagged splash across mainstream America.  The media couldn’t get enough of the phenomenon. Snarling, monochromatic photos of the new bands and their followers were splashed across magazines. They looked like stills from a post-apocalyptic film noir. Pouting damaged subjects, a transgressive sexuality, and a seething resentment against the world. The Ramones resembled a feral wolf-pack. Patti Smith, a sullen, androgenous misfit. Richard Hell, a vacant, haunted ghost.  But my favorite photograph from the time didn’t feature anyone famous. It wasn’t even of a band. Just a couple of punk groupies sat on a staircase. The girl in the foreground stares at us. She’s wearing a ripped mini-skirt, fishnets, and a wife-beater with the writing: “Beat Me, Bite Me, Whip Me, Fuck Me.” But it’s the girl behind her that always caught my attention: silver, skin-tight, spandex pants. Cropped blonde hair, and a leather jacket opened to show a bare chest. She expresses no interest in the camera, but looks at the other girl with a combination of arousal and sadness. For years, I wondered about this girl: who was she? What was her story? I found more pictures of her, and learned that her name lived up to expectations: she was Debbie Revenge. Part of a gang called the Revenge Girls. They ran a legendary punk clothing shop called Revenge in the East Village. They claimed to be the first punks to have colored and shaved hair, they turned up to every punk show, and kept pet tarantulas in a fish tank. I learned that Debbie was also an adult film performer. In fact, she had two separate adult film careers. The first, as a punk in New York, the second fifteen years later in Los Angeles. When I came across pictures from her west coast films, I noticed a big difference. Gone was the young, pouting girl in the photograph. Debbie looked much older, ill, and strung out. It was striking and disturbing. What had happened to the girl in the photograph? I tracked Debbie down – and heard her story. A remarkable journey from being a heroin-addicted underage prostitute in Times Square to her role in New York’s punk music scene, and what happened after that.  This is the story of Debbie Revenge.  This episode running time is 91 minutes. ————————————————————————————————– Debbie Revenge: Photos     photo by Rich Verdi photos by Rich Verdi                   Listening to Stiv Bator, photo by Eileen Polk with Dee Dee Ramone photos by Rich Verdi       photos by Rich Verdi       with Richard Hell, photo by Eileen Polk     photo by Eileen Polk   Revenge clothing store featured in Carter Steven’s film Punk Rock! (1977)   as Debette * The Fifth Season In our exclusive interview podcast with Debbie Revenge, she talks about working at ‘The Fifth Season’, a legendary gentleman’s club / brothel operating in New York in the 1960s and 70s. Here is a bonus article about the venue, first published in the July 9, 1973 issue of New York Magazine. An Evening in the Nude With Gay Talese By Aaron Latham Gay Talese and his party crowded into an old Ford and headed across town. The car bounced and rattled like the one in which Gay had first discovered sex long ago in high school. But this car was different in one crucial respect. His back seat was missing. No matter. Gay had long since outgrown back-seat grappling as well as many other small-town sexual practices. He now knew fancier places to undress in. We were on our way to one of them. Love in this car would have been torture—just riding in back was bad enough. Three of us squatted side by side on the car floor, like the monkeys who were blind, deaf, and dumb to evil. I felt a high-school-dance nervousness. I wondered how I would look. I was not at all sure that I would know the right steps. When we reached The Fifth Season at 315 West 57th Street, we all staggered out of the car. As we walked toward the nudist health spa, my knees, which had been cramped during the ride, felt weak. We squeezed into an elevator and rode it down to the basement, where we filed down a long Freudian corridor. There were six of us in all: Gay was there with a girl named Janet whom he had met at George Plimpton’s Paris Review party four days earlier. I was with Sally Keil, who has been my girlfriend for the past two years. Gay had also invited a massage parlor manager named Stephan Weisenberger and a masseuse named Amy. At the end of the hall, Gay used his membership key to open a door behind which lay a brave nude world. We all marched into a coed locker room. Amy, whose profession was taking off her clothes, was the first one to get undressed. Talese was almost as fast. The son of a tailor, Gay loves clothes, but he also loves to take them off. He slipped out of his cut-in tweed jacket, his turtleneck, his tweed trousers, and his jockey shorts. His 41-year-old body was in good shape. The rest of us watched Gay and Amy closely, as if to learn how to disrobe; then we haltingly followed their example. We all wrapped towels around our waists and Gay led the way to the swimming pool. Amy shed her towel almost immediately and—wearing only a cigarette—walked up to a huddle of toweled men and asked them for a light. They looked as startled as Humphrey Bogart did in To Have and Have Not when Lauren Bacall appeared in the doorway of his hotel room with a similar request. Bogie had called Bacall “Slim.” None of the men staring at Amy’s chest called her “Slim.” After glasses of wine, we all dropped our towels and dived into the heated pool. We played a beach-ball game while overhead a giant mirror ball rotated, reflecting light in every direction, reminding me of my high school’s senior prom. When we got out of the pool, we did not put our towels back on. Gay led the way into the weight room showing it off proudly to his visitors. I picked up a barbell and found that my knees still felt weak. Amy, not interested in weights, picked up a long phallic cue and joined a game of eightball. Stephan showed Janet, the girl who had come with Gay, how to stand on her head. She toppled over several times but eventually managed to stand erect, her breasts seemingly confused by the reversal of gravity’s demands. Gay surveyed his upside-down “date” and decided to teach her something more useful than a headstand. When she had removed her clothes, he had discovered that she was getting fat. Gay put her down on a mat and started her doing sit-ups. Hard work had made him famous and hard work could make her thin. Gay Talese still believes in that much of the American Dream. He could shed his clothes and many old practices but he is no more likely to shed his habit of work and self-improvement than the nuns who had once taught him were likely to shed their habits. Gay, who is genuinely generous, always wants to help people, wants them to better themselves, wants them to succeed. If he is not playing girls’ gym teacher, then he is coaching less polished writers on their craft. His advice to other journalists is similar to the advice he gave Janet: strain for leanness. When Amy finished her pool game, I wanted to play her, but there was one problem. The game cost a quarter and I did not have any pockets. Gay, pursuing a cheaper entertainment, took Amy in his arms and they started to two-step, their dance floor bordered by barbells. The puffing fat girl paused in her sit-ups to watch them. Gay pulled Amy very close as the mirror ball spun on its axis. Gay said, “This is the way we used to do it in high school.” Amy stopped dancing. She wanted to ask Gay something. The question went back to last summer when he had managed the massage parlor in which she was employed. “All the time you worked at The Middle Earth, you never came on to me. Why not?” Amy demanded. Gay said, “It would have been bad for business.” Amy reached out and took hold of Gay’s penis as calmly as if it had been a pool cue. She was ready to play a new game. “I’m going to tear it off,” she said. “I love it. I love it,” he said. “Do it. I have dreams about it. I have fantasies about it.” Amy continued to tug gently at Gay as if his appendage were thee knob of some reluctant bureau drawer. Gay kidded, “Next time I work there you can chain me and then whip me.” Amy said, “I’d hit you with a chair.” Gay said, “I love chairs, especially Chippendale.” Amy gave another pull and repeated her threat: “I’m going to tear it off.” A less specific tug had drawn Gay into massage parlor culture a little over two years before. The initial discovery had come one night when he was walking home from P.J. Clarke’s with his wife, Nan. She had been the first to see the second-floor sign which advertised LIVE NUDE MODELS, and she had known her husband well enough to know that he would see it too and want to go up. She already half-suspected that he might someday write a book about the world he found at the top of the stairs. Gay not only wanted to go up, he wanted his wife to accompany him. Nan demurred. Gay gave here the keys to their 61st Street brownstone. While she walked home alone, he mounted the steps. Talese came back time and again, and he began thinking more and more bout massage parlors and other embodiments of sexual ferment in the country. The idea of a book about an American Sexual Revolution gripped him and would not let go. It would be an ambitious book, but all Gay Talese’s writing life his ambitions had grown with each project. He had started out doing sports pieces and later features as a reporter for The New York Times. Then he had moved on to become a contributing editor at Esquire, where his profiles of people like Floyd Patterson (“The Loser”), George Plimpton (“Looking for Mr. Hemingway”), Alden Whitman (“Mr. Bad News”, Joe Louis (“The King as a Middle-Aged Man”), and Frank Sinatra (“Frank Sinatra Has a Cold”) may have changed American journalism more than any other work done by any other writer in the past decade. Tom Wolfe and Normal Mailer were more brilliant, more dazzling, more !!!!!!, but for that very reason they could not really be copied. Their techniques without their intelligence became ludicrous. But Talese was different. Other writers could read his Esquire pieces and actually learn from them. He taught hem to shadow their subjects for days or weeks (the way he did), so that in the end it read like a nonfiction short story rather than a newspaper story. After writing a long series of nonfiction Esquire articles which read like fiction, Talese was ready, by the late sixties, to attempt a nonfiction “novel.” He chose as his subject The New York Times, where he had worked for a decade. The result was The Kingdom and the Power, which sold for 85,000 in hardcover and 250,000 in paperback. Then, searching for a topic even bigger than The Times, he settled on the Mafia. The result was Honor Thy Father—an ironic title since his father did not want him to write about Italians who broke the law—which sold 200,000 in hardcover, 736,000 in Literary Guild and bargain editions, and 2.2-million copies in paperback. Ever since Gay had finished Honor Thy Father, he had been looking for a subject even bigger than organized crime. There could be only one: sex. Talese discussed the idea with Doubleday. He eventually signed a two-book contract with the company. The first book was to be about sex in America, both in and out of massage parlors; the second was to be about Frank Sinatra. The total price agreed upon for two books was $1.2 million. Talese was paid $200,000 on signing. Doubleday then sold the paperback rights to the sex book to Dell for $700,000. Talese has not yet written one word. (Talese does not know what the new Supreme Court obscenity ruling might do to his plans.) To research his book on America’s sex change, Gay went to work managing not one but two massage parlors. He served as the day manager at one and as the night manager at the other. Gay defends massage parlors by saying, “It is obviously better to be masturbated by massage girls than to masturbate yourself.” His day would start about noon, when he would walk over to The Middle Earth, at 51st Street and Third Avenue, and open up. The Middle Earth stands around the corner from the Random House building where Nan Talese works as an editor. While Nan sat her desk on the eleventh floor of a glass-and-steel skyscraper, Gay would sit at this desk on the second floor of a brownstone. While up above Nan flipped through the pages of manuscripts, down below Gay would flip through the pages of a photograph album displaying pictures of the girls he had available. When the customer selected a photo he liked, Gay would call the girl’s name and then ask for $18. The girl chosen would appear and lead the customer into a massage room. Half an hour later, she would say goodbye to the customer, stuff the sheet in a garbage can that served a laundry hamper, and go to the bathroom to wash her hands. At 7 p.m., Gay would leave The Middle Earth and proceed to his second job at The Secret Life, at 26th Street and Lexington Avenue, where he not only took the customers’ money ($15), but frisked them before he let them have a girl. He twice removed guns from men who had come for massages (one was a policeman). Gay held the guns at the desk until the men were finished with the girls. He did not want his book to turn into an In Cold Blood. Amy relaxed her grip on Gay. She had been only kidding about wanting to injure him. He had hurt her pride by not making a pass at her at The Middle Earth, but she still considered him a good manager. Amy said, “I doubt I would have stayed there if it hadn’t been for you.” Gay, flattered, told her, “I always said you were the star—an Everyman’s Myrna Loy.” Stephan, the massage parlor manager, said, “Gay, of all the managers, you are the only one who was sincere.” Gay said, “There is nothing wrong with being a massage parlor manager if you do it well.” And he had tried to do it well, applying his belief in hard work to his job as massage parlor manager just as he had always applied it to his writing. He had wanted The Middle Earth to be a success the way he had wanted The Kingdom and the Power and Honor Thy Father to be best sellers. If a customer came in and found his favorite girl occupied, Gay would charm him into waiting. If a neophyte crept in but lost his nerve and was on the verge of bolting, Gay would try to put him at his ease. Since Gay had worked so hard at the business, he had expected the girls to work hard, too. He had once fired a girl who didn’t, who sent customers away early. Stephan said, “The girls were in competition with Gay. He dressed nice. They had to look nice, too.” Amy reminded Gay that he had told her to go to an orthodontist. He had reasoned that with better teeth she would make a better masseuse. Gay had wanted to straighten Amy’s teeth the way he wanted to straighten out his friend David Halberstam’s prose. Halberstam listens to Talese and says he has learned a lot. Amy didn’t listen. Gay could not understand people who did not make an effort to be better. Gay, a fight fan, told Amy, “I wanted you to go for the record. The record was eight sessions. I wanted you to do nine. You coulda been a contender.” Talese and the people with whom he had once worked reminisced at pool side about the business: Gay said, “Remember the minor tycoon from the garment district who would come in and give you girls panties as a tip? He brought them in a paper bag.” Amy said, “He always wore see-through red underwear. At the end of a session, he would show me pictures of his wife and children.” Gay said, “One guy we had at The Secret Life would have fit right into the Nixon Administration. Gray suit, gray tie, white shirt, tall. He walked the way I have seen men walk at the U.N. He came into The Secret Life, took me and aside and told me, ‘I want your most lovely girl.’ It so happened that that same day I had had a high fashion model come in with her portfolio. She had done television commercials. I hired her. When this man asked for my best girl, I nodded with great pride at her. The man said, ‘I want a massage but I need time to set up my equipment.’ He opened a beautiful attaché case. He had a camera. He also had lovely, lovely handcuffs, like from Tiffany’s. There were jewels. He had a small whip made by a fine saddle-maker. Also a dildo, but not a mail order dildo, a lovely dildo, beautifully done. He wanted the fashion model and he offered a $75 tip. She said sure but she wanted the money first. He was her first customer. I put them in the room nearest the desk. But what would I have done if there had been trouble, big macho massage parlor manager? After half an hour, the man came out just as natty as ever. He came back many times.” Gay suggested that we adjourn to the steam room. Inside, the vapor in the air gave everything an unearthly quality like a movie vision of the afterlife: we might have been on a Hollywood set for Don Juan in Hell. Amy, who was given to excesses, turned the steam up higher and higher until it was so hot that we could not stand it any more. We retired to the showers. Gay shared a spigot with Sally and washed her back. He seemed to have practiced hands. He had been to Esalen and had studied their massage book. (Once a woman had come into one of the massage parlors where he worked and asked for a session. Gay had taken her into one of the massage rooms and given her a rubdown.) I wondered what I would do if Gay’s hands moved beyond Sally’s back. They didn’t. We left the showers and returned to poolside, where were met by a girl named Carol. She wore a gold cross which swung to and fro between the Gothic arches of her bare breasts. Carol sat down beside Gay. He playfully pulled her over on top of him, her crucifix bouncing against his chest. As a boy growing up in Ocean City, New Jersey, Gay had watched the gold crosses hung on the chests of nuns. Their breasts, like their ideas of right and wrong, never moved. Ocean City was a small town on a small island in the Atlantic Ocean. It was a Methodist town. The catholic minority, most of whom were Irish, composed a small island within the larger island. The Italian Catholics formed an even smaller island within the Catholic community itself. Born in 1932, Gaetano (Gay) Talese grew up an Italian Catholic in an Irish Catholic school in a Methodist town, an island within an island within an island. From the very beginning, Gay was an outsider with a vengeance. Since Gay was the son of Joseph Talese, a flamboyant tailor, he was even more of an outsider than he need necessarily have been. Gay says: “My father dressed elegantly in a town that did not appreciate elegance. He wore white suits. He had a mustache in a town where there were no mustaches. For a long time, I was embarrassed by him. He was different and he demanded that I be different at a time when I didn’t want to be different.” When Gay tried to fit in, however, he was usually disappointed. He became an altar boy in the church, but the Irish priests gave him the worst Mass, 6 a.m., leaving him feeling betrayed. Gay says, “The Catholic Church was foreign to me because it was Irish.” Still, the son was embarrassed when his father would stalk out of Mass because he did not like something an Irish priest said. It would also embarrass Gay when he would discover his father down on his knees in the hallway at home. Gay says, “Other children caught their parents screwing. I caught my father praying.” Joe Talese often made Gay uncomfortable, but the father was also his son’s greatest strength and perhaps the single largest influence on his life. Gay did poorly in parochial school, but the father did not blame his son, he blamed the school. As the owner of a dry-cleaning business, Gay’s father and the fathers of the church had an understanding: so long as Joe Talese’s son was passed from grade to grade, there would be no charge for cleaning the priests’ dirty linen. The church was willing to be bribed but it was not willing to enjoy it. Six out of eight years, Gay was promoted to the next “on trial.” The message that came through to Gay as he was growing up in Ocean City was, as he says, “The rules weren’t for me.” The town’s blue laws were made by the Methodists and therefore were not for him; the Catholic Church’s commandments were enforced by dictatorial Irish priests and nuns and so were not for him; later on, the rules of fidelity would not be for him, nor the New York laws which rapped the knuckles of massage parlor managers. After he finished parochial school, Gay entered the public high school, where he continued to do poorly. The summer before his senior year, Gay met a girl from Penn State University who had come to Ocean City to spend her vacation working as a waitress in one of the resort town’s restaurants. She was much like the girls he would later know who would come to New York to spend their college vacations working in massage parlors. The year was 1948. Gay borrowed a 1946 Ford and drove the Penn State girl to the beach. The decade was the fumbling forties and Gay did fumble, but by the time he got home he was no longer a virgin. The high school principal tried to convince Joe Talese that his son was not college material, but the father would not listen. When Gay was turned down by Rutgers and many other nearby schools, the Talese family doctor, who had attended the University of Alabama, helped the uncertain student get into his alma mater. In the fall of 1949, Gay Talese entered Alabama, where he was once again an outsider—a Northerner in a Southern school. Gay liked Alabama. He majored in journalism and his grades improved. He also fell in love for the first time. Gay had a Chrysler which was big enough for him and his girl to make love in the front seat. Later they registered under pseudonyms in motels. In the spring of 1950, Gay made love for the first time to an absolute stranger. He was in St. Petersburg, where had gone to watch the Yankees in spring training. A pretty girl came up to him on the street and said, “Jerry—Jerry Coleman—I saw you play yesterday.” Gay decided to be the Yankee star for the girl. That night they slept together. (Years later, when Gary told Jerry Coleman the story, the player was furious.) After blue-law Ocean City, Gay found the South both sensuous and liberating. In the Confederacy, he enjoyed the beginnings of a sexual emancipation. And he stopped going to Mass forever. When Gay graduated from the University of Alabama, he reluctantly left his girlfriend and came to New York hoping to land a job on The New York Herald Tribune. He had to settle for a job as a copy boy at The Times. His girlfriend in Alabama though that he was a reporter. One night, when Gay came in carrying a stack of newspapers which he was supposed to distribute around the city room, he saw his Alabama girlfriend sitting on a couch waiting for him. He dropped his papers. The love affair ended with a thud. Gay Talese’s interest in the girl whom he had brought to The Fifth Season seemed to end with the dropping of a towel. It was shed by a tall girl who had just appeared at poolside. She made a graceful nude dive. She was the only one in the water. I watched her solitary figure moving back and forth from one of the pool to the other. I looked away and when I looked back there were two figures swimming side by side, the girl and Gay. Sitting by the pool, I noticed a scene that looked like a version of Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe. A fully clothed man stood chatting with a gaggle of nude men and women. I learned that his name was Craig Nolan and that he operated The Middle Earth and The Victorian massage parlors and produced pornographic movies. Fifth Season regulars said that he never took his clothes off when he came there. This shy pornographer stood in the tropical heat of the health spa—wearing his turtleneck, his gray trousers, and his matching gray shoes—sweating. After a few laps, Gay and the girl climbed out of the pool together. She turned out to be taller than he was. The girl’s name was Kathe. Gay told the story of a girl from Bogotá, Colombia, who had worked at The Secret Life. One day a man came in, put down his money, and then looked at the girls available. Expressions of mutual horror passed over his face and the face of the girl from Bogotá. The man was her brother-in-law. He picked up his money and ran out. She cried hysterically. Still the girl from Bogotá continued to work at The Secret Life, although her secret had been found out. Gay said, “She was breaking out of her Catholic upbringing.” Talese, who was breaking out of his, went on to boast that some of his massage parlor customers were priests. While Gay Talese chatted with nude girls at poolside, Nan Talese was at home with the couple’s daughters. She was reading manuscripts, paying bills, and helping the girls, Pamela, nine, and Catherine, six, with their homework. Gay says, “I revel in the fact that the children are not doing well in school.” Nan does not revel in that fact. She insists that she prefers an evening at home with her children to an evening skinny-dipping in a health spa. Nan is always having to explain to people why she does not go where Gay goes, do what he does, and act the way he acts. One evening, Nan & Gay had dinner with Shirley MacLaine & Pete Hamill & Joni Mitchell & Warren Beatty, who all asked as many questions as children who had just heard about sex. What they wanted to know was how Nan was reacting to her husband’s liberation. Shirley MacLaine took an equal-rights position: she seemed to imply that every infidelity on the part of the husband deserved an equivalent infidelity on the part of the wife. Nan tired to explain that if she adopted Gay’s life-style, that would not be liberation but a new kind of subjugation. It would amount to her trying to be him. She did not want to take a lover for every lover Gay had, because to her sex “terribly private.” The discussion went on until the restaurant closed. That dinner has been re-enacted countless times since with a different cast but with more or less the same dialogue. One evening during a dinner in the Talese apartment, Gay said, “I want to get into my subject and I did. Getting head from an N.Y.U student is not going to threaten a marriage of fourteen years.” Nan said softly, “It was disturbing.” The massage parlors disturbed Nan. The whole sex book has disturbed her. She has been especially disturbed by the threat it poses to her own privacy, for Gay’s project has made people embarrassingly curious about her. One evening at a dinner party, which Nan gave for playwright Robert Anderson, the conversation was almost exclusively about Gay’s book. Gay told of interviewing the New York Knicks’ Walt Frazier; he had asked the player if he made love before games. Frazier had said yes, explaining that if he were tired at game time, he passed the ball more often. Gay went on to tell about asking Masters and Johnson how often they made love; they had refused to answer. Gay criticized the sex researchers for their lack of candor; Nan defended them. Gay said that he would have no objection to telling anyone how often he and Nan made love. Nan said that she would object to his telling or writing about her in bed. Gay argued for frankness, but Nan opposed it. He could not war her down. Nan was a velvet tank. She told her guest, “There’s been a lot of talk about sex around here lately.” Growing up in Rye, New York, the daughter of a banker-broker, Nan had not often heard sex discussed. When she was in her early teens, she had entered the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Greenwich, hoping to become a nun. She says that what attracted her to a life in a nunnery was “the marvelous privacy, safety, and study.” She felt the opposite of an outsider. But at Manhattanville College, she began to see philosophical contradictions in the church. By the time Nan met Gay in 1957, she had given up on the nunnery and the safety of chastity. Gay—who says, “Sure, I would have liked to screw my mother”—thought Nan looked like his mother and the resemblance helped draw him to her. They dated for two years before deciding to marry. Gay had gone to Rome for The New York Times to cover the making of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. He asked Nan to join him there. When she arrived, Gay told her that he did not want to marry in a church. It was the impulse of a defiant outsider. He was flaunting his position as a fallen Catholic in the Catholic City, marrying outside the church in Rome. Nan went along with the idea, but when her parents found out they were horrified, blamed Gay, and never completely forgave him. Nan and Gay both had careers. Nan’s Random House office, where she pursued her privacy and her study, took on something of the air of a cloister. Meanwhile, Gay had no office at all but simply a desk in the Times newsroom where a bedroom, opening off one of the editors’ offices, gave the shop something of the air of a brothel. Gay says that if drink were the vice of The Herald Tribune, then sex was the vice of The New York Times. When it comes to bedrooms, Gay was no longer an outsider. Gay’s adventures even found their way into Lois Gould’s novel, Such Good Friends, which was published by Nan’s own Random House. Gay says that the character Timmy Spector was loosely based on him. Ms. Gould wrote of Timmy that he had “been sleeping around for years” but that he did not want a divorce because “he likes things this way, where he can come home when he’s through playing.” Nan says that she accepted Gay as he is years ago. Gay says that he would not mind his wife’s doing as he does, but his friends remember a near fight when someone made a pass at Nan. In the past, Gay’s books have tended to draw him and his wife closer together. She would come home from her editing job and read whatever he had written that day aloud; then she would make suggestions. But the new book, the sex book, had been different. It has kept them apart. Gay told Nan at the beginning that, if she forced him to choose between his sex book and her, he would give up the book. But Nan says that she knew that if she precipitated such a showdown it would have broken up their marriage. “I tried to get Nan to come to the massage parlor where I worked to have lunch,” Gay said one evening. “I thought she would enjoy the massage parlor, too.” “It seemed indelicate for me to be there,” Nan said. “I don’t think there is anything wrong with the massage parlors, but they go against my own sense of privacy. Public sexuality is in every way antipathetic to my idea of sexuality. I can never imagine being a part of that world.” In that world, the world of public sexuality, Gay, the outsider, is an insider, and Nan, the insider, is an outsider. She did, however, agree to accompany Gay to a nudist camp in New Jersey because she made a distinction between open sex and open nudity. Gay was proud of his wife, but he kept peering at her as if he expected her to dissolve. “There was a point when you realized that this was not exactly my field,” Nan told Gay. “I was out of place.” For Nan, the worst thing about the book is that it has taken Gay out of town so often. Last fall, he went to California to stay a few weeks and ended up staying almost half a year. Gay stayed on because he was seduced by a place called Sandstone, a nudist sex commune in Los Angeles’s Topanga Canyon. Sandstone had taken what Esalen had begun and carried it to its logical conclusion. Sandstone had institutionalized the orgy so that it was always there when you needed it. Sandstone stood as a monument to prostate power. Many of the openly copulating residents practiced the reverse of fidelity: they were strict about not making love to anyone to whom they had made love to before. It was like patterning your life on Oh! Calcutta! Gay moved in and stayed. Oh! Sandstone! Gay told a reporter for Coast magazine, “I’m not that young anymore, and lately the most I’ve been doing is about once a day. But I’ve been engaged at least four times a day since I’ve been here. After a hundred times, it gets a little wearing.” But Nan could hear a kind of exhilaration in his voice when she talked to him on the telephone. When Gay returned to New York, his friends say that he was more easygoing than they had ever seen him. He had grown up in a resort town but he had had to go to California to learn to relax. Gay says that his research on the sex book has not changed his sex life with his wife either for the better or for the worse. Nan, who tries to evade such questions, says that she is not sure and will only know later, in retrospect. “After fourteen years, I still find her very exciting,” Gay says. “There is just no comparison.” Gay and Nan are still very close and their marriage seems a strong gone. They are not only husband and wife, but friends. Still, Gay concedes that since he started working on his sex book, his life with Nan “has not been a honeymoon.” Gay lounged beside The Fifth Season’s pool like some decadent John the Baptist waiting for new believers to baptize. He welled with the fervor of someone new to the faith. He seemed to want everyone to dive head first into the wet, warm sexual revolution. Gay was preaching the advantages of life in a massage parlor to Kathe and Carol. He had left the trade months before but he was still trying to recruit new masseuses for The Middle Earth. The girls were interested. “I’ll take you up to The Middle Earth tomorrow,” Gay promised them, “and I’ll give you a massage.” For a year now, Gay has been inviting people to join this new world that he has discovered. Many have accepted his invitations, but they have been none of his closest friends. David Halberstam did once consent to come up The Middle Earth for a visit, but he was appalled. “Halberstam wanted it to be like a dentist’s office,” Gay told his poolside flock. He added, “David takes himself so seriously. He sees himself as a part of history. His sense of self is second only to that of Charles de Gaulle—maybe.” Since Gay has not been able to bring his celebrity world and his massage parlor world together, he commutes back and forth between the two. He hangs out with the social fringe at The Middle Earth to feed his outsider’s need to be among other outsiders, but he also hangs out at Elaine’s to satisfy his outsider’s need to be an insider. Actually the two places are not as unreconcilable as they might at first seem. In many ways, Elaine’s and The Middle Earth are similar, for both are characterized by middle-aged men and young girls, the one establishment massaging the body, the other massaging the ego. (Once Gay actually took a masseuse to Elaine’s, where she blended in perfectly. Later, he took her home to the folding couch next to his writing desk under the pretext of giving her copies of his books.) Someone at poolside proposed an orgy. After all, it was almost midnight, The Fifth Season would be closing soon, and everyone needed something to do. A songwriter generously offered his nearby apartment. Gay led the way to the locker room where we were to suit up for yet another sexual outing. I had been undressed long enough so that now putting on clothes was its own kick, but one of the orgy volunteers found getting dressed to be a trial. His name was Bernhardt Hurwood, the author of The Girls, the Massage, and Everything. “Where is my underwear?” yelled Hurwood. “Who stole my underwear? Why should anyone want to take my wretched old underpants?” We filed out of The Fifth Season and streamed onto 57th Street, Hurwood trying to catch up. Gay and two girls walked three abreast, one big, one middle-sized, and one small, like Papa Bear (in this case, Kathe since she was tallest), Mama Bear (Gay), and Baby Bear (Janet). I am one of those people who have never been invited to an orgy and I may have been looking forward to it. In front of Carnegie Hall, Gay took Sally and me aside. He said that the others felt that the presence of a reporter would inhibit them. Sally and I agreed to go home. While we waited for a taxi on the corner, we watched the others walk off arm in arm into the orgiastic night. * The post Punk and Porn in New York City – Part 2: Debbie Revenge, The Punk in the Photograph appeared first on The Rialto Report.

In the first part of the Sue Nero interview, we heard about her upbringing and subsequent move to San Francisco where she started work in the adult film industry. In this concluding episode, Sue remembers her move to New York, where she worked at the Melody Burlesk and the Harmony Theater, as well as becoming a fixture in the XXX rated film business. It’s been a long difficult road. But what’s important is that she’s finally ready to confront it and talk about it. This is part 2 of Sue Nero’s story. You can find part 1 here. This episode running time is 69 minutes. ______________________________________________________________________________           Marc Stevens, Ashley Brookes, Jamie Gillis, Sue Nero   Sue Nero, Dian Hanson   photo by Vivienne Maricevic   *   The post Sue Nero: Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More (Part 2) – Podcast 126 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Some interviews take longer to happen than others. As for Sue Nero: well… it’s complicated. Let’s start at the beginning: Sue Nero was a larger than life, super-hero of a porn star. She harked back to the golden age of Hollywood movie queens – voluptuous, busty and shapely – an hourglass of beauty, but at the same time, she embodied pure sin and lust. She was the girl next door – if you lived next to house of ill-repute. but at the same time, she embodied pure sin and lust. She was the girl next door – if you lived next to house of ill-repute. She was the rare example of a performer who had a fully-fledged movie career on the west coast and then the east coast. She had a prolific career of photo spreads in adult publications such as Gent, Adam, and Cinema-X Review. And she was one of the first stars to recognize the lucrative potential of touring around the country as a burlesque stripper. Her career was turbulent – marked by family issues, violent men, illicit drugs, and bad fortune – and the devoted adoration of her many fans. Simply put, when we started The Rialto Report a decade ago, she was one of the people I wanted to interview the most. But then there was that incident with the video. Let me explain: I became friends with Sue several years ago, and we had plans to do an interview about her career as an actress and dancer. As a teaser, I suggested showing a video of her dance routine at the Harmony Theater on our Rialto Report website. Sue was thrilled to see the 35-year-old footage, and excited for us to share it. But within minutes of posting it, I started receiving messages – abusive and threatening – from her husband, Stan. Needless to say, I removed the video, and Sue and I scrapped plans to do an interview. Just as upsetting was that her husband seemed bent on convincing Sue that her entire adult film past was wrong, and that she should end all association with it. And so, Sue Nero disappeared from my life as quickly as she had arrived. We stopped communicating, and I didn’t know how she was getting on. I often thought about her, and to be honest, I worried about her too. And then earlier this year – Sue got in touch. She said she was getting divorced. She had decided to move on. She said she had found a new acceptance about her past. And now, she wanted to come out – by doing a Rialto Report interview. And so we did. And it was a moving experience. That’s not to say that Sue’s version of her past is all happy and rosy. Far from it. It’s been a long difficult road. But what’s important is that she’s finally ready to confront it and talk about it. This is April Hall, and this is part 1 of Sue Nero’s story. This episode running time is 75 minutes. _____________________________________________________________________________________               *   The post Sue Nero: Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More (Part 1) – Podcast 125 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

It was early summer in 1977, and the adult film actor, Jamie Gillis, should have been on top of the world. He was perhaps the most successful and recognizable male figure in the relatively new, relatively glamorous, world of adult entertainment. He’d just starred in The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976), the most accomplished sex film to date – and he suddenly found himself to be a public star of sorts, fielding offers for mainstream films and theater productions, appearances on chat shows, as well as being offered plenty of easy money for more porn movies too. So why was he experiencing such a dark existential crisis? Jamie was a world-weary 34 at the time, hardly an old man, but nevertheless an aging one, and he was more acutely aware of decay than most. He was a tormented soul, a unique combination of dry self-confidence and wry self-loathing. His doubts plagued him: the choices he’d made in life, the future that seemed to be coming far too quickly, the potentially imminent end of his career in adult films, and his lack of money. “I belonged in a Rolls Royce or on the Bowery: I just couldn’t tell which,” he said. He was a mess of contradictions: he felt old for the first time yet was unavoidably attracted to youth, he was haunted by thoughts of death yet still felt like a little boy, he didn’t enjoy many other people but he was afraid of being alone. And above all he was driven by, and was almost a slave to, his uncontrollable appetites. Food, art, sex. Especially sex. So in the summer of 1977, Jamie was at a crossroads – and embarked on a trip to Europe. Or in his own words, not so much a voyage of self-discovery, rather one of self-destruction. In truth, he wasn’t sure he’d ever come back. He took the boat from New York to France and selected cities that would match his most profane and insatiable appetites. He started in Paris, before going to Berlin, Copenhagen, and finally Stockholm. He intended to stay until he spent all his money, or until he ran out of hope. He almost didn’t come back at all. But if this story isn’t about adult films, why is it relevant to The Rialto Report? The answer is simple: the real story of the golden age goes far beyond just the movies. And it revolves around the people who were making the films – who they were, why they became pornographers, and how they felt about it. And to this day, Jamie Gillis undoubtedly still remains one of the most intriguing, enigmatic, misunderstood, controversial, and elusive of all adult film performers. Jamie didn’t take much with him on the trip – some clothes, cigarettes, travelers checks, and a book or two. But he did take a cassette player – and each day and night he recorded his experiences, thoughts, and feelings in an uncensored manner: the thrill of the chase, the emptiness of feeling lonely, the ecstasy of sex with a new person, the perversity of being different, the joy of new food, the fear of growing old, and vivid dreams of Tyrone Power – the Hollywood film actor whose character in the 1940s film ‘The Black Swan’ Jamie had been named after, who haunted his dreams continually. And remarkably, after his initial despair, Jamie’s trip became a revelation: somehow, against all his expectations, he found a form of redemption, and even love. That journey is recorded in these hundreds of hours of intimate cassette tapes that have never been heard before. They add up to a 1970s travelogue, a confessional, a sex tour. But mostly they are a portrait of a complex man trying to find his own brand of beauty within personal darkness. And if you know anything about Jamie, you’ll know this journey is not for the faint-hearted. This podcast is 77 minutes long. —————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Jamie Gillis in 1977 * The post Jamie Gillis in Europe, 1977 – His Audio Diaries: “Life Is Easy When You Don’t Know How” appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Kay Parker, one of the biggest names in golden age adult film, passed away this last week. She was 78. Kay was a west coast actor who entered the business through a friendship with performer John Leslie, and an appreciative director, Anthony Spinelli. She featured in well-regarded films such as ‘V’ – The Hot One (1978), Sex World (1978), Dracula Sucks (1978), Firestorm (1984), The Dancers (1981), and Chorus Call (1978). And then in 1980, she starred in the film series that is still one of the most watched from the era, Taboo. In the 1980s, she appeared regularly in films with a new generation of much younger stars such as Traci Lords and Angel. When the video era took hold, she retired and become a metaphysical counselor. Now it’s fair to say that I’m guilty of a little skepticism when it comes to this kind of new age philosophy, and so when I spoke to Kay for The Rialto Report interview that you’re about to listen to, she said she had one condition: she wanted to give me a spiritual reading. So I accepted. I figured it would be fun to spend another hour in her company. And so for over an hour Kay and I talked about our journeys. Now I’m not going to claim that I was won over by her beliefs that we’re all inter-planetary travelers on paths that last forever. After all, I’m a repressed, middle-aged Englishman. But what did happen was this: Kay got me talking about things I rarely share with anyone, opening up about emotions, dreams, and fears. She listened with empathy, before offering sensitive and wise advice. It was a disconcerting but surprisingly comfortable process. After Kay’s session with me was over, I suggested that she was perhaps an unlikely adult film star: an English sweetheart, polite and reserved, calm and refined, sage and shrewd. Surely there had been some cosmic mistake which had led her to doing what she did? She replied that I was perhaps an unlikely adult film interviewer: an English sweetheart, polite and reserved, calm and refined, sage and shrewd. Surely there had been some cosmic mistake which had led me to doing what I do? And that was Kay: she was sweet, funny, gentle and considerate – always making the person she was with feel special and valued. She appeared bemused by her success as a sex performer, but always had time to speak of everyone with great fondness. I spoke to her recently when I heard she was experiencing health issues. As always, she was optimistic and happy, keen to talk and find out what I’d been up to even when her energy was flagging. The world has lost some warmth with Kay’s passing. I look forward to seeing her somewhere in the cosmos in the thousands of years ahead of us. This episode running time is 103 minutes. ____________________________________________________________________________ Kay Parker podcast: On this episode of The Rialto Report, Kay Parker talks about her beginnings in war time Birmingham in England to becoming a star in the California adult film industry. With tales of Sex World, Robert McCallum, Taboo, Annette Haven, Caballero, Joey Covington, Jefferson Airplane, Abigail Clayton, John Leslie, ‘V’: The Hot One, Firestorm, Traci Lords, Health Spa, Kat Sunlove, Mike Ranger, Joey Silvera, Kirdy Stevens and much more.Also featuring special appearances by Eric Edwards, Seka, and Richard Pacheco. * Kay Parker photos: Kay, with Anthony Spinelli   The premiere of ‘Firestorm’ with Eric Edwards Kay at work at Caballero Annie Sprinkle, Veronica Hart, Kay Parker The post R.I.P. Kay Parker (1944 – 2022) – The Rialto Report interview appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Kitten Natividad died in Los Angeles this past week. The cause was kidney failure after suffering from cancer. She was 74. Kitten was a genuine cult pop culture figure who, over the last six decades, had a wild life and a storied career: she started out as a cook and maid for Stella Stevens – the Hollywood actress famous for ‘The Nutty Professor’ and ‘The Ballad of Cable Hogue’. Then in the late 60s, Kitten was a go-go dancer on the Sunset Strip, and a beauty queen in the early 1970s when she was twice elected Miss Nude Universe. She was an actress too, appearing in box office hits such as ‘Lady in Red’ with Gene Wilder, ‘Another 48 Hours’ with Eddie Murphy, and ‘Airplane!’. And in recent years, she was a legendary in-demand burlesque dancer appearing in sold-out shows all over the world. But perhaps The Rialto Report remembers her most fondly for her appearances in two of Russ Meyer’s later films, Up! (1976) and Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979). And for many years she and Russ were the first couple of sexploitation movies, partners on set as well as in life – quite a feat given Russ was not an easy man to live with. After they split, Kitten fell on hard times, dealing with alcohol, drugs, and illness. She made a series of hard-core sex films before turning her life around and re-inventing herself as a grand dame of bawdy, raunchy, good clean fun. In person, Kitten was a force of nature, and a person we never grew tired of. She had a gentle, angelic smile, but don’t be fooled: she was a feisty, tough, old-fashioned dame. In truth, she ran circles around us: we emerged from every conversation with her feeling like we had been mauled by a bear, played with like a rag doll, and made love to by a goddess. She may have been named Kitten, but she was more like a hungry tiger. Fortunately, we got on well, so we’d often ask to interview her. She was reluctant. We explained that she was the last of her kind and her legacy – in her own words – was important. She always kicked back. We kept insisting, and one day she told me that she just didn’t like to expose herself.  In fact, her exact words were that it was easier for her to show her pussy than her life. Somewhat foolishly, we asked her what she meant. Finally though, we managed to persuade her, even though she expressed doubts right up to the last minute. But I shouldn’t have doubted her. We spoke for hours. And Kitten finally exposed herself. So here she is: this is the sometimes naughty, often rude, usually sweet, occasionally cantankerous, frequently outrageous, disarmingly tender, but always engaging, beautiful and loving, Kitten Natividad. Goodnight Kitten. Keep fighting. This podcast is 68 minutes long. —————————————————————————————————————————————————-                             * The post R.I.P. Kitten Natividad – La Reina, Her Last Interview – Podcast 123 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

In the first part of ‘The Trials of Chesty Morgan’, Chesty endured unimaginable hardships in her life – a Jewish girl growing up in Nazi-occupied Poland, both her parents killed in the conflict, followed by a difficult life in Israel, and the eventual promise of a new life in the United States before her husband was killed in a botched robbery. Chesty decided to become a burlesque dancer to make ends meet, soon becoming one of the highest earning performers in the country on the stripping circuit. The Rialto Report spoke to Chesty Morgan, now aged 84. This is the concluding part of her story. Read the first part here. ——————————————————————————————– 1973 – Double Agent 73 Doris Wishman was in a bind. Hardcore sex films had just started to be exhibited in theaters – and were making good money, but twice-married, sixty-something Doris wasn’t keen. And that was a problem when the flaccid-soft nudie-cutie films you’ve been making for the previous decade were suddenly as unfashionable as a polka-dot poncho on a pole dancer. Explicit sex films would one day play a role in Doris’ career, but she wasn’t ready yet. Instead, Doris listened to an acquaintance who’d just witnessed the full Chesty Morgan experience in the flesh so she investigated. Doris didn’t much like what she saw: “This was a woman born with a large bosom. To me they’re not sexy. It’s like a woman born with two heads…[but] she was a gimmick and that was what I was aiming for.” Doris appreciated that Chesty’s chest could make up for the lack of explicit kiss kiss bang bang, so she arranged a meeting. Doris and Chesty loosely agreed on a three-picture deal, the first of which, ‘Deadly Weapons,’ was shot in the summer of 1973. Chesty played an advertising executive who tracks down the mobsters who killed her boyfriend and then smothers them with her huge breasts. To say that Doris Wishman worked in an idiosyncratic manner is like admitting the Pope sometimes attends mass on Sundays. For a start, her actors never received a script. Doris would tell them roughly what to do and say, while roughly scribbling down what they actually said on a large notepad so that she could roughly overdub the lines later. Filmmaking was not a precise science in her hands. The relationship between director and star was testy as Chesty remembers: “I didn’t get along with Doris. She was unfriendly and not kind. I work best with people that I like, and I didn’t like Doris. I worked better with men, like Harry Reems. I liked him.” Doris wasn’t enamored with Chesty either, with good reason, as she explained to a Boston Globe reporter: “She was a horror. Of all the people I worked with, she was the only person I couldn’t get along with. We were shooting Double Agent in White Plains, N.Y. I think the call was for 10 in the morning. Everybody’s there. Chesty isn’t there. 11, 12, 1, 2, 3, 4. By then, everyone’s weary. So I started to pay people. All of a sudden, she walks in. She says, ‘I vaz sick.’ I didn’t say a word. Next day, her boyfriend tells me that they were on their way to White Plains and she was reading the paper and she said, ‘Marty, there’s a sale on Delancey Street. Turn around!’ So he turned around. He was afraid of her. That day cost me a lot of money and aggravation.” Doris Wishman Deadly Weapons was first released in early 1974, and newspapers reported that it had a dramatic effect on cinemagoers: “The sight of Chesty Morgan smothering a man to death with her outsize bosom proved too much for some cinemagoers this week. Hundreds crowded into Stafford’s Picture House to see Chesty Morgan’s vital statistics of 71-32-36. But their illusions were crushed when she took off her bra, and those Deadly Weapons swung into action and smothered the first victim. The cinema started emptying as people headed for home sickened by their experience, which was far from titillating. Even the theater owner admitted: The people left not because they were offended by the content of the film.  “The acting was terrible and I admit Chesty Morgan’s bosom is not very pleasant to watch. One accurate description is to compare them with overgrown vegetable marrows.” The follow-up, Double Agent 73, cast Chesty as a secret agent with a surveillance camera implanted in one of her nipples. Doris was proven right: Chesty’s presence was an enticing commercial draw (“Seeing is Believing,” read the tagline), outweighing Doris’ woeful filmmaking abilities, and both films were successful. Their personal conflict was decisive however: two movie collaborations for the two women were sufficient, and plans for the third film never materialized. Doris reworked that script into The Immoral Three, where a stand-in for Chesty’s Double Agent character is murdered in the opening scene, and her three daughters seek revenge. Deadly Weapons (1974) ——————————————————————————————– 1974 – Lilian Stello Chesty Morgan’s first year in the stripping business had been profitable beyond her dreams, but it had unexpected consequences. The most acute was loneliness: “One friend asked, ‘How can you be lonely when you have all the people in the audience watching you?’ But I just looked out and saw everyone out there, especially couples, and when I finished my show, I had to go back to my hotel room and I was alone, you know? It was a very lonely life.” She’d been a widow for almost ten years, and had done everything for herself since then. In those ten years, she’d got what she wanted but lost what she had. She earned enough to be more than comfortable, but she missed the girls, busy at school and cared for by paid help, she missed the stability of home life, and she missed the companionship of a partner. Not that she was short of offers: “It’s a hard business leaving your family. And men are all the time making proposals to me. I’d like to get married again, but now I don’t know if a man is after me or my money.” She kept men at bay, still wearing her wedding ring, and avoided suspicious women too: “Most women are jealous of me. They get scared they will lose their men.” After a show in one city, a doctor offered her $5,000 to spend the night with him. Chesty flat turned him down: “I have a reputation to protect. I’m not in that kind of business.” But as time passed, she realized she wanted somebody for her children – and for herself. The main problem was her mental block against men. Specifically, their intentions: “I couldn’t decide to get married. I was scared that I was gonna lose my home. I was afraid to bring a new man inside the home. Would he take everything I had?” Friends agreed: “They asked me, ‘How can you get married if you work like ten men? One man wouldn’t be enough for you because you’re always working. You won’t sit down.’” Enter Dick Stello. Dick could not have been more different from Lilian. He was the relaxed, easy-going, comic relief in every situation. Everything was always upbeat with Dick. He once put a life-sized wooden Indian in the passenger seat of his car, and drove it around holding animated conversations with it. By day, he was a highly respected National League baseball umpire, having entered the majors in 1968, and going on to work five National League championships, the World Series in 1975 and 1981, and two All-Star Games. In his spare time, he did stand-up comedy in his hometown of Boston, wrote country music songs, and headed for the golf course. Lilian liked him immediately, though she admitted he wasn’t without fault. For instance, she told him he was way too generous, often giving cash away to needy friends who found themselves short. But Dick was the man that broke through Chesty’s defenses, and in March 1974, after a two-month courtship, they tied the knot. Lilian bought him a red Cadillac with a white padded top, a Rolls Royce hood, and a Continental tail. Dick bought Lilian a new diamond, marquise cut, and nearly an inch long. In truth, their lives were almost completely incompatible: Dick was on the road for the entire baseball season, just as Chesty was headlining burlesque theaters across the country year-round. Even when they made efforts to meet on the road, it was problematic. Early in their relationship, Chesty went to watch her husband umpire the 1973 All-Star game in Pittsburgh. She wore what she called her ‘funky suit,’ a navy-blue stretch number with gold chains that left little of her over-endowment to the imagination. It caused a near-riot in the stands: “People began looking at me. Pretty soon a crowd began to gather around. Then they were finding that nobody was looking at the game. Everyone was looking at me. So they sent the security guards to take me out of the stadium. Now I cannot go to any more of the ball games. And to pay Dick back, I will not let him go to see my performance,” Chesty laughed. Sometimes their paths would cross during the baseball off-season. In November 1974, they found themselves in northern Kentucky. Dick turned up at the night club where Chesty was appearing but had to wait for six hours until she finished her act. Dick reacted to the gathered press, “If she thinks I’m going to travel around all winter and do this, she’s crazy!” Lillian had a plan to make the marriage work which she shared with interviewers: “I will perform for a few more years until we have enough, and then I will stay home and take care of Dick and my girls and the house.” ——————————————————————————————– 1975 – Barberina In Fall 1974, Federico Fellini, the Italian film great known for his distinctive blend of fantasy and baroque, was in New York to promote his latest, ‘Amarcord.’ While staying in the city, Fellini, a lover of abundance and an appreciator of excess, heard about the legend of Chesty Morgan, and enquired where he could see her act in person. One night, he slipped his press obligations and watched her perform. He was enraptured with Chesty, a person he called “the woman of all women, an exquisite creature.” Fellini was ushered backstage to meet his would-be muse. Years later, he remembered that she’d told him that, as a teenager, she’d been flat-chested and ashamed. Then, while suffering from a minor illness, her doctor had given her some injections, and her preponderous chest materialized overnight. Fellini called it “a divine miracle from Mother Nature.” Smitten with her, Fellini invited Chesty to be in his next film, ‘Casanova,’ starring Donald Sutherland. Chesty dyed her hair black and went to Rome where she played the part of Barberina, the lady in waiting for a Countess who was Casanova’s secret lover. In one scene, Casanova and Barberina meet in a tailor’s workshop where Barberina unintentionally arouses Casanova by loosening her corset. He undoes it fully, and chases her around the room, breasts akimbo. Donald Sutherland and Chesty Morgan, on set of ‘Casanova’ Fellini said that the Barberina character symbolized the attachment that Casanova experienced for a mother that he never had. Her breasts symbolized the maternal qualities that Casanova was deprived from enjoying. He said the scene was pivotal to the film, which makes the decision to ultimately cut it out puzzling, ostensibly because the film was too long. Chesty’s memories of Fellini are positive (“a good man, smart and cultured”), and she enjoyed the experience (“but all the girls were jealous of me,” she insists), but she missed the U.S. acutely. “Nothing beats the United States. It is always the place I want to be. I never want to leave” ——————————————————————————————– 1979 – On Tour By the late 1970s, the Chesty Morgan touring routine was a well-oiled, industrialized, rinse-and-repeat, cash-generating machine. She would turn up in a town, conduct (invariably grumpy) interviews for the local rags, pose for publicity shots, deliver back-to-back shows to sold-out audiences hosted by money-hungry theater owners, before collecting her fee (which was now over $5,000 a week) and heading onto the next town. Her daughter Eva, now 20, helped with the nightly show, standing mutely in the wings, waiting to collect each piece of expensive costume that her mother discarded. Chesty’s act had developed since the early days, though not greatly, and the reviews still mixed incredulity with contempt: “The lighting wasn’t good, but it certainly appeared as if two flesh-colored watermelons were resting in the bodice of her dress. “Her act was four songs long. Her act starts with a crackly version of Delilah, and then she begins to strip. Her gown is black with silver sequins – a creation that weighed 30 pounds and cost more than $5,000. She cavorted about the stage, a vacant look in her wide, innocent eyes. She took a man’s head in between her breasts. When the man’s head was given back, it carried a smile. She performed gym-like exercises on a rug-covered box. When the tape reached the fourth song, Elvis singing ‘My Way’, she took everything off from the waist up. The entire room seemed to lean forward. Applause. Questions and answers followed.” Some columnists questioned her continuing appeal – before answering it for themselves: “She is a macromastic dancer whose act consists of removing the upper portions of her clothing. Her legs are skinny. She can’t dance. And she’s getting too old for such nonsense. But Zsa Zsa Chesty Morgan still packs them in at strip joints across the North America continent. “Why? The reason is obvious. Her measurements are 73-24-36. That’s correct. She exposes 73 circumferential inches of fatty tissue. When she mounts the strobe-lit stage she looks rather like a pair of Goodyear blimps. With her axial dimensions, I’m surprised she can walk without snow shoes. Watching her dance was like watching two sumo wrestlers playing basketball in a telephone booth.” The innuendo-dripping, sexist sniping left Chesty unconcerned. She knew there is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary – and sometimes, the more salacious and sexist the comments were, the more useful they could be. So she leaned in: she declared that she’d recently insured her breasts: “I contacted Lloyds of London. They did not understand what I was trying to do. Then they sent me to a Philadelphia hospital for an insurance examination. I’ve never seen so many doctors trying to work on just one patient. They kept coming in and taking pictures and examining. I said, “What’s going on? How come so many doctors? I finally got my insurance policy. I have insured them for $100,000.” In interviews, Chesty was never less than brutally honest however, and far from trying to create a glamorous and alluring image, she aired her feelings – and they were invariably negative. She described the business as “unpleasant. Three acts a day, seven days a week, in theaters that often smell of urine.” She didn’t like to be called a stripper, preferring the term ‘burlesque performer’ – though she admitted she didn’t dance anyway (“I just stand there. What I do, dahlink, is posing.”) She railed against pornography: “I don’t do X-ray (sic) movies. Nothing is left to the imagination. The women are either alcoholics or addicts, and many of them are lesbians.” She felt resented by dancers with lesser assets (“I don’t believe in jumping around and doing all those dirty things. I do a complete show with wardrobe. I draw a nice class of customer.”) She admitted she made more money than the other girls and this made them jealous. Sometimes they attacked her and ripped her clothes and she had to call the police in some cities. (“Other girls in the industry don’t like me. The bust is the main thing and I have more of it than anyone else.”) Sometimes she self-mythologized (“When I was young, I was drafted into the Israeli army, but the doctors found that I couldn’t do basic exercises. How can a woman with a 73-inch chest do press-ups? My arms are too short to lift me from the floor.”) But Chesty was grumbling all the way to the bank. With two salaries, Chesty and Dick moved to a new house in St Petersburg, FL – a luxury pad with eighteen chandeliers, plush French furniture, an $8,000 mirror, an onyx parrot, silver fighting cocks, and their red Cadillac parked in the driveway. More income meant even more extravagant stage wear for the Female Liberace of Burlesque: “All my clothes are custom-made in New Jersey. It costs a fortune to fit me. My bras are 32KK. They are called Command Performance and are made by a Texas firm that uses lots of underwire. They cost $60 each, and after a couple of washings, they fall apart.” Happily, it was all tax deductible. But bras weren’t the only thing buckling under the weight of Chesty’s rigorous performance schedule. Her marriage to Dick was suffering too. They continued to travel separately, rarely seeing each other. Chesty had visions of Dick becoming her road manager so they could spend more time together, but Dick had his lucrative baseball gig. Besides, he could be jealous, and there were reports of public fights in restaurants. He was unfaithful too. Chesty knew about his dalliances, they struggled along. Dick still loved her chicken soup with matzo balls, but It wasn’t enough: after six years of marriage, the inevitable divorce came in 1979. Away from the spotlight, Chesty spent time at home with her daughters, helping her younger girl, Lila, with her school homework. The family had come a long way since Joe’s murder, and she remained close to both of them: “When they were small, I’d check on them five times a night, covering them when they were cold. I did that when they were older too. They’d say, “Will you still come to cover us when we are married too?” ——————————————————————————————– 1980 – Wanted And then there were the legal headaches. The police harassment, arrests, overnight stays in prison cells, court dates, attorney’s fees. Large busts, if you will. If anything, it got worse over the years. It had started in 1975 in Miami where she was charged with lewd dancing. Detectives said she performed a slow dance, removing articles of clothing until she was naked except for her G-string. Then, it was reported, “she squeezed her breasts together in a way that was clearly an effort to sexually arouse customers.” The Floridian authorities clutched their pearls. Other times, Chesty provoked trouble – some would say she initiated it, such as at the Flamingo Theater in Miami Beach three years later. Having finished her performance, she strolled out onto the sidewalk, wearing only bikini panties, a see-through robe, and a bobbing necklace. When the noon crowd gathered on Lincoln Road, so did members of the Beach police department’s Strategic Investigations Unit and a few uniformed officers. Baring her torso, billed on the nearby marquee as ‘The 73’ Inch Bust,’ Chesty announced she was striking a blow for the right of women to go bare chested just as men do. The result? She was arrested for “corrupting public morals, outraging public decency, and causing a disturbance.” The prosecution’s case floundered when the state could only produce one witness who was partially offended – and that was a police department clerk. Laura Nader testified that she “wasn’t outraged, embarrassed, or annoyed,” but said she “didn’t feel it proper for the female species to do this.” Chesty’s attorney told the jury that the act was “a social happening and no reason to brand Miss Morgan as a criminal. Tax money could be better spent catching murderers and narcotic dealers.” Chesty walked free. In June 1980, Chesty was busted in Phoenix along with her elder daughter Eve, 21, who was collecting money at the door. The charge this time was “taking part in an immoral performance.” Chesty said the arresting cops had enjoyed the show for three days before busting her. Chesty and Eve were interviewed by police before being placed in a holding cell, and then, perplexingly, ordered to meet with immigration officials before eventually being let go. Wherever she went, one thing never changed: Chesty was always asked if she’d ever had breast enlargement surgery. It never failed to bristle her: “Of course not. When you have silicone, you can’t move around. You can’t do much with them. They look like rocks.” She admitted she regularly considered surgery – but only to reduce the size of her chest. She changed her mind at the last minute every time: “Now I’m glad God made me the way he did. I just love this work. And the money that goes with it.” Sometimes the questioning made her take more proactive steps to prove her point – such as at the Pillow Talk Lounge in Columbus, GA. As one newspaper reported: “When she finished her act, she waddled into the audience to express her gratitude to the patrons. She insisted her endowments are God-given and thought it important to prove the point. So she offered a tactile test: patrons were invited to squeeze – a dozen men standing by to knead two monstrous globules. They looked like supermarket shoppers testing the honeydew melons. While all this was going on, two policemen walked in, looked and left. “The next day, she was busted for obscenity.” ——————————————————————————————– 1983 – Eva In July 1983, tragedy struck her life again. Her elder daughter, Eva, was killed in a car accident in Brooklyn. She was 25. Dick Stello, divorced from Chesty but still close to the family, dropped everything to come and offer support, but Chesty was inconsolable: “When my husband Joe died, it was like the end of the world. But if you lost a million husbands, it is not the same as losing one daughter. Husbands you can get, but a child…” There was no way to escape her grief but to block out the memories: “The only time I could forget that my daughter was dead was when I was on stage.” Chesty had started to acquire real estate in Florida. It could have become a full-time concern, but she refused to give up touring. She needed the attention from her audience at shows to take her away from the pain. She went back and hit the road harder than ever. ——————————————————————————————– 1984 – Hoochy Koochy The Walkman. Cabbage Patch Kids. Rubik’s Cube. And it’s morning again in Ronald Reagan’s America. Those who expected the burlesque queen to fit the stereotype of a hardened, dumb blonde found out they were dead wrong. Be it politics, human rights, feminism, or the controversies surrounding her work, Chesty had strong opinions and was eager to express them. She was a firm supporter of Ronald Reagan. She felt strongly that all people should work, take pride in their professions, and do their jobs with style. She admonished lazy people who expected a free ride, and frowned on the welfare system which she said encouraged people not to work. She considered herself a feminist in that she felt strongly that a woman should establish her independence – something she learned after her marriage to Dick failed. And she wasn’t afraid to put her principles into practice – even if it meant getting arrested again. According to court papers, Chesty was admonished in Boston in 1984 after a burlesque dance, a partial striptease, and a question-and-answer routine where she told jokes and stories relating to her breasts. The problem arose when she invited the audience to touch her breasts to prove they were real. Two policemen were apparently waiting in line and she allowed them to touch her and put their faces on her breasts. As a result, the theater’s liquor license was withdrawn. Chesty went on the attack, taking the authorities to court, and holding press conferences: “My boobs belong to the world. They’re attached to my body, but they belong to the public. I feel there is nothing wrong with the act because my public just wanted to see if my bust is real. The reason I get into trouble is because of these people who run for politics. These politicians… they don’t like the hoochy-koochy.” Her attorney said she was just “establishing a link between her and the audience. It violates her right to free expression guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.” Chief Justice Alan Hale retorted, “Are you seriously saying to me that letting people touch this woman’s breasts or snuggle up to her… is protected speech?” The judge ruled against her: apparently there is no constitutional right to let bar patrons grope her bosom. Chesty lost that battle but won the publicity war. ——————————————————————————————– 1987 – Dick Stello Four years after Eva’s death in a car accident, Dick Stello was killed. He was 53. He pulled over on State Road 33 in his Cadillac to put a dealer’s tag on a Lincoln. He was standing between the two cars when a third car ran into the Cadillac, pinning Dick and crushing him. Despite their divorce, Chesty and Dick had remained close. They spent holidays together, were due to be together for Thanksgiving, and spoke all the time on the phone. Their relationship had bemused Chesty: “We’re divorced and yet, we’re still going out. How come we’re always together?” It was another deep tragedy in her life: “I am still in shock. Here was a man who wanted to live. Every time he walked in, he was a ray of sunshine. He never had a bad word to say to anyone. And he had so much life in him. “I can’t believe he won’t be calling me anymore.” ——————————————————————————————– 1991 – End of an Era Chesty’s last performance took place in Houston in 1991. It was the first night of the Persian Gulf War. Times had changed, the competition was younger, the theaters were smaller, and the paychecks were dwindling. (One theater manager disagreed: “We put on the best entertainment in the world here. We’ve had Frank Sinatra here. Well, his son. And Dionne Warwick too. Actually, her daughter. But some real class acts. Like Chesty Morgan!”) She took the stage to Lou Rawls’ You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine, before announcing, “I like to think my boobs belong to the public.” Two further songs played, before her final number: ‘New York, New York’. An ironic tribute to the city that had saved her from the ashes of war-torn Europe but killed her dreams of a simple family life. Chesty Morgan had breathed her last. It was over. ——————————————————————————————– 2000s – The Republican When I spoke to Lilian, I found her happy to talk – though not necessarily about the topics I had lined up. Nowadays she spends more time thinking about politics and the country’s future than dwelling on the past. She worries like a Republican, railing against immigration, rising crime and taxes, and falling house values. She distrusts most politicians, hates Democrats, and watches Fox News avidly. Her love for conservative rabble rousers like Hannity and Carlson is second only to her devotion to Donald Trump. Above all she has a die-hard patriotism: “the United States is God’s country. This is the best country in the world. Have you ever been abroad? This is the safest place. I’m never going to leave. I’m so thankful to America. Everything that I have… America gave to me. I have freedom because of America.” She’s been frugal with her career earnings which she invested carefully over the years. She still lives in St Petersburg where she owns a portfolio of apartments. She claims she is a dream landlord for her tenants, fixing any repairs immediately – and personally. She still makes matzo ball soup, and bakes half a dozen or more cakes each week that she gives to friends and tenants alike – with the choice items going to employees at Home Depot: “Home Depot is the best company. They are amazing. Everyone is helpful there. I spend most of my time in the store!” Fixing the roof on a rental property When pushed, Lilian will also talk about her past. She remains proud of Chesty Morgan, mentioning that she still has many costumes – most of which she still can almost fit into. She stays trim, but her back kills her: “My breasts have been inconvenient, and some days I wish I never had them. Now that I’m older, it’s hard to breathe. My daughter helps me find bras on the internet, but they are expensive. I don’t like to jiggle so I need proper bras. I am 30LL now, you know.” She still thinks about breast reduction but mistrusts doctors. I ask what she considers her proudest achievements. She talks about her daughters. Lila is a Florida attorney who lives nearby. She raised them in difficult circumstances and thinks she did a good job. But she also mentions her own work ethic: “I worked very hard. If you work hard, you accomplish great things. We need people who want to accomplish. That’s what makes America great.” Chesty Morgan and friend She talks constantly and entertainingly. She is only quiet when she remembers the tragedies in her life: her murdered parents, her murdered husband, her ex-husband’s death, and her daughter killed in a car accident. She returns to Joe’s murder: “I lost my husband and everything had to change. But it’s not the fault of America. I can’t blame America for it. America gave me the chance to be a success.” Lilian sighs. Her lack of sentimentality means that self-reflection is tiring for her. “Joe’s murder changed everything. I had no choice but to be Chesty Morgan after that.” At Florida Holocaust Museum, St Petersburg (courtesy of The Ledger) ——————————————————————————————– Epilogue The phone rings for an age. Eventually someone picks up, but the line remains silent. Hello? I ask. Silence. I’m looking for a man named Kazle Anthony? Silence. “Who’s asking?” I’m writing an article about someone who was affected by a homicide in Brooklyn in 1965. Silence. Are you Mr. Anthony? Silence. “What do you want to know?” I wondered when you got out of prison? Silence. “March 2007.” Where did you serve time? “Wallkill State Prison in Ulster County, New York. Over 40 years.” What happened to your friend, Reginald Batten?” “He got out in 1972.” How did that happen? “Conviction was overturned on appeal.” Any idea what happened to him after that? “Nope” What do you remember about the robbery and the murder in Bed Stuy in 1965? Silence. “What did you say you’re doing?” I’m writing an article about a family member of one of the victims. Her life changed forever after that moment. Silence. “Everything changed after that. For everybody.” Tell me about it. “It was a long time ago.” Silence. “Better not to go digging up old stories, you know? You don’t know what you’ll find.” The phone line dies quietly. Spring Valley Meat & Poultry, 1965   Spring Valley Meat & Poultry location, 2022 ——————————————————————————————– “Chesty Morgan and Watermelon Rose Raise my rent and take off all your clothes With trench coats, magazines, a bottle full of rum, She’s so good, make a dead man come” – From ‘Pasties And A G-String (At The Two O’Clock Club)’ – Tom Waits * The post The Trials of Chesty Morgan – Doris Wishman, Fellini, The Law and Me, Part 2 – Podcast 122 appeared first on The Rialto Report.