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 My interest was centered on his early career, which was why I was excited when I came across a previously unpublished interview with him from the late 1980s.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 lov

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

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

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 wi

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 arrive

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

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 1

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 – a

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 comfor

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: eac

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 Cuban

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 dan

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 happen

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, Davi

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

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 mak

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

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 kee

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

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 F

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 nam

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