The Other Hollywood Read online

  TEMPEST STORM: They called it flashing. They’d flip the G-string up real fast. Right in your face.

  Most of the girls were willing to do whatever it took. There was no more art to it anymore; it became just a way for the girls to make fast money, which I don’t put down. To each his own.

  SHARON MITCHELL: When you’re adopted through the Catholic Church, you have to attend parochial school. It’s a lease that comes on the child that can’t be broken. And the nuns come every month to check up on you. I think if that lease is broken, they take you and resell you to someone else—probably a zoo or a circus, you know?

  I had a uniform, but I think I destroyed it because I was dying to get out of Catholic school. I think I got out sometime after grade school—after confirmation. You have to go through so many sacraments, and then you’re allowed out. But there was a condition—I had to go to catechism, which was fine.

  It was the sixties, and my mom went out and bought me my first colorful outfit to wear to school. It was a little pink and purple flowered miniskirt. I had purple fishnets with a little garter belt thing.

  And I had hot pants.

  HARRY REEMS: I couldn’t take my eyes off Assie those first few nights. About the fourth or fifth night she asked me if I’d like to go out with her after the last show. A friend of hers was a cocktail waitress in a club up the street. The waitress friend loaded us with drinks that really got us bombed.

  We left the club at dawn. Assie agreed to have a nightcap—just one—in my fleabag room. Drunk as I was, I was still nervous as hell.

  MARILYN CHAMBERS: Fortunately, the Cybill Shepherd look came in—so it was a lot easier for me to start getting some work. They’d call me in once or twice a week.

  Then I got a call from Procter & Gamble to audition for the new Ivory Snow box. I was chosen as a finalist. And then I had to go before the clients, and they took me out to lunch—all these men in their three-piece suits. They were very nice. But little did naive Marilyn know that everyone’s always trying to get into my pants. I’m thinking like, “Oh, gee, they really like me!”

  HARRY REEMS: Assie gave phenomenal head but only up to a point. Then we were into a balling scene. I went into my standard missionary position.

  “Harry,” said Assie, “I like you. You are a nice boy. But you have much to learn about how to make a woman happy.”

  SHARON MITCHELL: I had a lot of drunken sex, mostly with much older people in Camaros. I never hung out with my peer group. I just used to go to bars and fuck factory workers. I don’t know why. I think they were just there, and I could drink with them.

  And then I had sex with my girlfriends.

  The first one was about sixth grade. I seduced one of my girlfriends, under some guise of comparing pussies or something. She was definitely down for it.

  Then I fucked all her brothers. She had a few brothers, so I had sex with the whole family. It was kind of neat. The whole family was nice.

  My favorite wasn’t the older brother, the one that deflowered me, although he was very nice. It was the younger brother, who was more tender; he used to hold me afterward. I thought that was really nice. Then there was once when all three of us had sex together—my girlfriend, her brother, and me.

  HARRY REEMS: It seemed like we fucked around the clock. Not to mention all around the house. It was idyllic. Assie was thirty-one, and I was twenty-one. I was having sex until it was coming out of my ears.

  MARILYN CHAMBERS: I got the job, and I was just ecstatic. I thought, “Wow, this is cool. Here was this box that was totally antiquated, like from the fifties—and they’re updating the box cover photo with me!”

  HARRY REEMS: When we got back to New York from Atlantic City, it was not the same between Assie and me.

  She was doing a two-week gig at a burlesque theater on West Forty-seventh Street and the crime and grime of New York had gotten to her. She wanted to go back to Puerto Rico, to her family, and maybe open a beauty parlor there.

  So Assie went back to Puerto Rico, while I poured over the casting notices in Backstage and Show Business. I landed a twenty-five-dollar-a-week job and an Equity contract playing in a weird thing called Spirit Orgasmics at Cafe La Mama in the East Village. It was a bomb.

  “Fuck it,” I told my roommate. “I’m going to Puerto Rico.”

  MARILYN CHAMBERS: When I went to shoot the picture for Ivory Snow, one of the photographers was this really old, old ancient man. And they had the baby for me to hold, and when you shoot children, they can only work for a certain amount of time. Then they have to sleep. So when the baby’s down sleeping, this old guy was chasing me around the dressing room, trying to get into my pants.

  SHARON MITCHELL: I got married at seventeen. Larry Kipp. I met him, and he was a crazy guy. My family threw me an incredible wedding, and I thought, “Well, this really sucks!”

  I went to my wedding only because I felt bad about my family spending all this money.

  But they said, “Fuck it. If you’re not happy, we’ll kill him.” My dad had done something to a boyfriend who’d hit me once—he threw him in jail forever.

  I said, “No, Daddy, don’t kill Larry.”

  HARRY REEMS: When I got to Puerto Rico, Assie said, “Go back home. It won’t work. I’m ten years older. We come from two different worlds.”

  Then we fucked.

  Then she said, “Stay.”

  So I faked my way into a job teaching scuba diving at La Concha Hotel, though I had never scuba dived in my life. I went to the library and read up on it the weekend before I started work. During the first two or three months I taught some two hundred people how to scuba dive, without once putting the tanks on my back.

  MARILYN CHAMBERS: That old Ivory Snow photographer was disgusting. It was gross—this seventy-year-old guy right on me!

  I mean, I was running around, going, “What are you doing?! Get out of here!”

  After we shot the box, they told me it was going to take about two years to get my picture on the new one.

  I said, “Whatever.”

  HARRY REEMS: It was high season in Puerto Rico—and open season. Suddenly a whole Disneyland of vacationing goodies materialized: Hank Aaron; and Mike Seiderhaud, the champion water-skier; and Tom Weiskoff, the winner of the Golf Open came down to shoot some Wheaties commercials.

  And one of the local talent agents got me into the act. In the water-skiing commercial, Mike Seiderhaud was supposed to fall. I was the one who stood in for him and took the fall.

  But I had a double role in that commercial. After that spill, I could be seen close-up in the stands, yelling, “HEY, SEIDERHAUD, YOU DIDN’T EAT YOUR WHEATIES!”

  I made it into the Hank Aaron commercial, too. When Aaron slices the air, I was in the stands booing and yelling, “HEY, AARON, YOU DIDN’T EAT YOUR WHEATIES!”

  FRED LINCOLN (PORN STAR/PORN DIRECTOR AND PRODUCER): That’s how I got into porn—doing television commercials. See, me and this guy Paul Matthews were doing a Benson & Hedges commercial together. It was the one where I’m sitting on a float in the pool, smoking a Benson & Hedges, and I turn around and look at a girl in a bikini and the cigarette blows up the float, and I fall in the water. It was about, you know, what lengths people went to for these extra long cigarettes.

  On the set, Paul and me were talking about girls and stuff—and he asked me if I wanted to do a fuck film.

  To be honest with you, for years I used to dream of some guy coming up to me and saying, “Hey kid, you wanna make a fuck film?”

  SHARON MITCHELL: Larry hit me—and I remembered, you know, about my mom and dad. My dad hit my mom once, and that’s all it took. My mom said, “That’s it.” Because once that happens—it never fucking gets better. I mean, guaranteed that it never gets better. You’ve just got to move on with your life—because all of that heal-change crap will never work.

  Larry was fucking crazy. I saw him put his head through a plate glass window. He’d terrorize me, like step on the gas when I was in the car,
and say, “So, you want me to do this?!!” Sheer abuse and terror.

  Eventually, Larry killed himself. Maybe eight years after we got divorced. I take no responsibility for it.

  MARILYN CHAMBERS: After I graduated from high school, I was going out with this guy, Patrick, who was an actor and a model. In those days they weren’t all gay, ha, ha, ha.

  He asked, “Do you want to go to see a real movie being made?”

  I said, “Yeah! I’d love to.”

  Patrick was playing either Robert Klein or George Segal’s stand-in for the movie The Owl and the Pussycat.

  So I get to the set. I’ve got my little portfolio with me. I’m nervous. I’m standing around watching, totally intrigued, like, “Wow! This is what I want to do!”

  HARRY REEMS: Enough money from the Wheaties commercial trickled down to Puerto Rico for me to live it up. I wined and dined Assie and took her to casinos. Then I deserted her for a week and blew a lot of money. And a lot of girls. Assie blew up like a cyclone when I crept back.

  Out came the Latin jealousy and the temper tantrums.

  “I cook dinner. You be here on time. Do those whores you go with cook dinner for you?”

  I was deeply fond of her. And I loved all the creature comforts of home, of being looked after. But finally I had to admit that she was right. We came from different worlds.

  MARILYN CHAMBERS: While I was on the set, Barbra Streisand started pulling some shit. She was really childish. Yeah, I really don’t want to say that, but I mean she was just horrible! Just a real witch, you know? To everybody.

  Ray Stark was the producer, and Herbert Ross was directing. So Ray Stark was walking around the set, and he came up to me and asked, “Are you an actress?”

  I said, “Oh, yes! Of course.”

  He said, “Well, you know, we just happen to be casting for the part of Robert Klein’s girlfriend. Would you be interested in trying out?”

  I said, “I’d love to!”

  HARRY REEMS: Back in New York, I floundered. There were a few more commercials—Ballantine Ale, JCPenney, Dickies work clothes, a toilet tissue….

  But these were test commercials, and somehow I managed to spend the bread faster than it was coming in.

  GEORGINA SPELVIN: I opened my own editing facility down in the West Village. It was called The Pickle Factory, and we were doing a lot of underground films at that point. I was very much into the peace movement. By the end of the sixties, beginning of the seventies, I was interested in making revolutionary films and ending world hunger.

  We were scrambling to make the monthly rent on the place to begin with, so I said, “Okay, it’s near the first of the month again, and we don’t have any money! Somebody’s got to make some money!”

  So I bought all of the local trade papers—Showbiz and Casting Call—and I just called everybody who was casting films. At that time, there was a lot of tits and ass films going on. Nudie-cuties.

  I’d say, “I know I’m not what you’re looking for in the way of casting; but, I can coil cable and make coffee. I’m looking for any kind of a job. Do you need anyone?”

  And, indeed I got someone who said, “Well, we need someone to scout some locations for us.”

  I said, “You got it! What do you need?”

  So I began to get a reputation as someone who could get things done. And the next thing I knew, I was getting calls to do casting.

  MARILYN CHAMBERS: Ray Stark takes me by the hand; he’s about seventy-something—all the old guys like me, ha, ha, ha—and he takes me upstairs to a room, and there’s a whole bunch of women in there auditioning.

  I’m sitting there thinking, “Yeah, right, there’s no way I’m going to get this.”

  They call me in, there’s a whole bunch of people sitting around a table, they asked me some questions, I go back out, and they come out and say, “You got the part.”

  I went, “What?! You’re kidding?!” It was like being discovered in Schwab’s Drugstore.

  HARRY REEMS: I was broke. I was taking out small loans to pay the rent and telephone bill. So I put the question to a buddy in the National Shakespeare Company. “Do you know how I could get some fast bread?”

  He said, “Yeah, I do, if you consider $75 ‘bread.’”

  I said, “I consider $75 ‘bread.’”

  He said, “You can pick up $75 a day doing stag films.”

  Stag films! Was he kidding? What would that do to my burgeoning career as an actor on the legitimate stage?

  So I said, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  JAMIE GILLIS (PORN STAR): I was driving a cab a few days a week and doing Shakespeare at the Classic Stage Company in Manhattan at night. Driving a cab part-time is pretty brutal. You know, I’d wake up at dawn, drive a cab twelve hours a day, and then I’m doing Shakespeare all night, you know? Pretty heavy.

  MARILYN CHAMBERS: So they take me down to the set of The Owl and the Pussycat. They get me undressed and throw me in bed with Robert Klein. And I was supposed to be topless, but Barbra Streisand said, “Absolutely not.”

  Then we did a thing where I’m walking to the door with him when we’re leaving. It took me about two or three days to shoot it; I was so nervous. But that’s how I got my Screen Actors Guild card. And that’s how I moved into the city, got my first apartment on Thirty-third and Third—and started going to acting classes.

  ERIC EDWARDS: About six months after I submitted my photo to the ad in Screw, I got a call. A guy said, “Can you do it? Because we’re having problems with the guy who’s supposed to do it right now.”

  I said, “Sure, man. I’m a swinger, you know, my wife and I are cool. No problem.”

  I hung up the phone and the shakes started to settle in. I was thinking, “Oh my God—I’m gonna go over there! Can I really perform?”

  JAMIE GILLIS: I was looking at the ads in the Village Voice for jobs, you know, to see if there was something else I could do besides drive a cab. I would never have looked for it, but under a part-time job listing I saw something like “modeling” or “nude modeling”—something that sounded easy enough.

  So I call up the guy and then went over to this dirty basement on Fourteenth Street, next to a funeral parlor. There was a mattress on the floor and this guy in overalls, with long hair, who looked sort of like a hippie, says, “I’ll take your picture.”

  HARRY REEMS: Then a letter arrived from the bank threatening to put out a warrant for me if I didn’t start showing good faith, so I asked my friend if the stag film offer was still open.

  JAMIE GILLIS: So the guy shoots a black-and-white Polaroid of me—and sure enough, he calls me to come in and do a loop. And that’s how I started working for Bob Wolfe.

  FRED LINCOLN: I was still doing legitimate commercials and stage work, but when Paul Matthews asked me to do that first fuck film, I said, “Well, who am I gonna be working with? What’s the girl look like?”

  I figured it was some beast they were gonna get me.

  He said, “Oh, I’m meetin’ her tonight. We’re gonna have a coupla drinks; come along if you wanna meet her. Her name is Utta. She’s from Germany.”

  I go meet her—and my God, she was beautiful. Aww, she was gorgeous; blond hair, German, big tits. I said, “Holy shit. How much you gonna pay me to do this?”

  He said, “A hundred bucks.”

  I thought, “I’m the luckiest guy in the world!”

  Vickie Killed the Nudie-Cuties

  MIAMI

  1970–1971

  BUNNY YEAGER: If Chuck Traynor called me and said, “I have a pretty girl for you to shoot,” I knew she would be pretty. But then he brings over this girl, Linda Boreman—and the trouble with Linda was that she was flat chested. Not that there’s anything wrong with small bosoms, but what I’m thinking is, “I can’t sell her.”

  Another thing: I didn’t want to bring this up, but Linda had a scar all the way down the middle of her chest. But I shot her anyway, more as a favor to Chuck.

  CHUCK TRAYNOR: I’
d made a big mistake with the Las Vegas Inn because in Florida, if you owned a bar, you had to have a P.I.C. card, which stands for “Person in Charge.” And the person with the P.I.C. card—could be one of the girls or a manager—had to be there all the time.

  Well, the ATF came in once, and nobody had a card. So they closed me up.

  LINDA LOVELACE: At that point, Chuck wanted me to go out in the streets and pick up girls to get them to work for his prostitution business. And I was not very good at that at all. I thought, unconsciously, “Well, he’s finally going to get rid of me.”

  He told me that I was a failure at what I was doing, but he didn’t get rid of me. Chuck decided that moviemaking was his next step.

  BUNNY YEAGER: It was while we were doing our second film, Sextet, when Chuck called and asked, “Can’t you use Linda in the film?”

  I said, “Well, we’ve got everybody that we need, but I guess we could throw her in as an extra…”

  So you have to look fast to catch her. She’s just sitting on some guy’s lap on a couch during a party scene. And I only used her because of Chuck.

  CHUCK TRAYNOR: Linda just hung in and hung in after the ATF closed the Las Vegas Inn, so I said, “You know, we should make porno movies or something.”

  I had an old Bolex Double-A film camera that shot sixteen-millimeter film. You shot one side, then turned it over, and shot the other side. Then the lab cut it in half, and you had two eight-millimeter films.

  LENNY CAMP: One time me and Sam Menning, a guy from New York, were making a nudie-cutie film in some condo in North Miami Beach. It was strictly simulated sex, soft-core, because it was 1971, and nobody was doing hard-core then, except for loops.