GOLDEN GODDESSES: 25 LEGENDARY WOMEN OF CLASSIC EROTIC CINEMA, 1968-1985

by Nelson, Jill C.

  This Mess

  All this surprised me as well.

  I didn’t plan to ruin my life

  Throwing myself at your rocky shore

  You bring out the words in me.

  To speak my mind, my heart

  My truth

  I never could hear my own voice

  Over the shattering din of other’s

  You are so quiet that I hear

  A poet’s voice, sweet and steady,

  In my right ear

  Please

  Give that one lots of attention

  During nibble time

  — SERENA

  1.

  Ann Perry

  First Lady

  COURTESY OF GREG YEDDING

  “I liked owning, producing, directing and writing my own stories because I didn’t have anybody to apologize to. I joined the Adult Film Association and I was shooting thirty-five millimeter films. I was the first woman President.”

  — Ann Perry-Rhine

  Seventy-three year old Ann Perry-Rhine (born Virginia Ann Lindsay) was raised in Spokane, Washington, where she enrolled in a private Catholic school and was on the fast track to becoming a nun. While attending the convent, she met her first husband Ron Myers. Smitten, Ann soon abandoned her liturgical garments and revealed a rebellious streak that would prove to be a dominating trait throughout her life and career. Perry and Myers wed around the time Ann waded into the entertainment pool as a model and dancer before emerging as a Pin-Up Girl, and apparently did a photo layout in a 1961 issue of Playboy magazine.

  Along with 1960s sexploitation queen, Marsha Jordan, Ann appeared in Nudie Cutie pictures for director Don Davis, but had her sights set on greener pastures. Strong-willed and determined to compete in a man’s world, Perry adapted easily as a softcore film actress which eventually positioned her for more coveted roles as a writer, director and producer of hardcore movies ultimately under her own company Evolution Enterprises. Attracted to the illegal nature of the business, Ann was arrested on more than one occasion on morals charges and as the first woman President of the Adult Film Association of America, Perry exercised her status to sway members of the press and strategized methods of bringing a better quality product to fans of adult material.

  With the media recognition of two of her productions Count the Ways (1976) and Sweet Savage (1978), Ann attended the prestigious Cannes Film Festival and continued to create a viable product focused on themed-based sex films that showcased actors’ abilities beyond the realm of copulating on camera.

  Ann Perry’s colorful personal life echoes her non-traditional career in the adult industry. She is the mother of two grown children and has enjoyed four husbands. In 1978, during the filming of Sweet Savage, Perry met and eventually married San Francisco attorney, Joe Rhine, who had represented illustrious individuals such as Timothy Leary and members of the Black Panther Party during the 1970s.

  Presently, Ann Perry continues to reside in Southern California, but was unable to participate in an interview for this book due to the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. The following pages contain material from interviews Ann gave for filmmaker Cass Paley’s WADD: The Life & Times of John C. Holmes in 1997, used in conjunction with an interview conducted with her son, Greg Yedding. Yedding graciously agreed to speak with me on behalf of Ann from his home in Arizona, in anticipation that a complete biography will be written about his mother one day.

  Nudie Cutie

  GREG YEDDING: My mother grew up in Spokane, Washington and lived with her mother and step-dad. I met him only once as a child, and I’ve since learned she had other siblings which I didn’t know of or meet until my grandmother passed away. I met them at her funeral that we held in Spokane. Most of the information I have acquired about my mother’s stepfather is from her half-sisters, Mary and Marjie.

  As my mother grew up with her mom and step-dad in Spokane, she attended a Catholic school. While she was there, she met her first husband, Ron Myers. That’s where she got the acting name of “Myers,” which she used in her early days in the Nudie Cutie movies. Later, my dad became her second husband. Mom and Ron met at Catholic school where he was studying to become a Jesuit Priest and my mom was planning to become a nun. Then she started becoming a rebel and she and Ron married. Needless to say, Ron didn’t end up going into the priesthood, and my mother didn’t become a nun.

  She had two kids with Ron, her first husband. Chris was her oldest son and he died at six years old of spinal meningitis. I only met him once. My mother also had a daughter, Linda, with Ron, but I don’t know where she is at this point. She is older than I am. I had grown up with Linda and I knew her as a child. I did track her down about seventeen years ago but we haven’t been able to find her. My aunts and I have all been working on locating her. The reason Linda became a recluse is because when she was thirteen while my mom was married to her third husband Don Perry [after my dad], something happened. None of us knows exactly what happened, but my mother disowned her and threw her out of the house. She hasn’t talked to Linda since.

  In and around 1960-’61 while my mother was still married to her first husband, she started doing modeling, and became a Go-Go dancer in a birdcage for a while in a club. These stories are the things I have found out from talking with family. In 1961, she became a hair model, and then she and my father [Ray Yedding] met in modeling school where my father was a male model. It was a Lou D’Angelo modeling school in Burbank. My mom and dad started dating and she got pregnant with me. I was an unplanned pregnancy and my dad talked her into keeping me. One of her friends worked for a law firm that supposedly drew up the divorce papers for mom and Ron, and then she and my dad got married in Las Vegas.

  I asked her once if there were any wedding pictures because I don’t recall seeing any and she said, “No, we just got married in Las Vegas.” They really did get married but I asked my dad what year he and my mom got divorced and he told me that the year was in 1968. She was trying to fight for child support and custody, and the courts wouldn’t give it to her because they found out she was still legally married to Ron Myers. They ended up doing what they called “dissolution of the wedding” in 1968. She didn’t get alimony, but my dad wanted to be sure that I was taken care of. No matter what private school she sent me, he made sure he paid his half and that I was taken care of.

  My mother had also worked for a clothing store in the early sixties called Harris and Frank Clothing, and in 1961-’62 she was employed by another company, Quality Photos, where she had worked with a man by the name of Norman Arnold who ended up becoming my godfather. They did some photo shoots with me — I was the foremost dairy baby in the early 1960s. I was on the side of all of these milk cartons, but I wasn’t missing. I was a baby model back then.

  In the 1960s mom had used an alias and that name was “Cathy”. As “Cathy,” she was a Pin-Up Girl, and she was what they used to call a “Lindy Girl” for pens where their tops would come down when you turned the pen upside-down. She was on the lid for Lindy Pens. My aunt Mary had told me that my mom was doing that in the 1960s. I did find some of her Pin-Up pictures where she’d called herself “Cathy”. My dad said she did a Playboy layout in 1965, but she said she did the layouts in 1961. I’ve seen the layouts and they are in her garage, but you just can’t get into it right now. They are in her portfolio books.

  Her father apparently came across the Playboy layout. He had known nothing about what she did for a living. I was always told when we went to my grandfather’s house to never talk about what my mother did for a living. Her father knew nothing at all until he found her in the layout for Playboy. Apparently, she was dressed as “Little Boo Peep,” and when you turned the page, she was naked and the sheep was sheared. I’ve been trying to find it, but I can’t. She was also a Playboy Bunny at one time. I don’t know if she actually worked in a club. I’m still trying to locate her Playboy bunny costume.

  Later, she and my dad ran a mail order company out of the living room of
our house. When they started to expand, their friend L.J. Winkler came in to help them and they moved everything to the warehouse. My mom and dad were working together.

  “Are you girls a bunch of nudists, or are you just short on clothes?”

  — RUSS MEYER’S FASTER PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!

  ANN PERRY: I believe that it was in 1961 I was in Playboy Magazine. Not as a centerfold, but because I had done a movie with a comedian from England who wore magic glasses that made everybody nude. You know, when they first started to do the Nudie Cuties, I made a lot of those. It was in the early sixties. The X-rated films of the time were really Nudie Cuties and it was a time when Russ Meyer was shooting a lot of big-breasted ladies.

  Russ Meyer, a German-American former police officer, worked as a still photographer and shot few centerfold layouts for Playboy Magazine before becoming a talented cinematographer. Meyer produced his first official Nudie Cutie film The Immortal Mr. Teas in 1959. “Teas” created a sensation which unleashed a successive flood of films marked by sexual premise, generally supported by strong female roles emphasized by Meyer’s propensity to cast large-breasted women such as Shari Eubanks, Uschi Digart, and later, Kitten Natividad. Hugely successful in his endeavors as a filmmaker, Meyer overwhelmed the imaginations of mostly male consumers and roused wannabes who attempted to craft their own styles and techniques, as they emulated the “King of the Nudies.”

  Perry recalled the protocol for acting in and shooting early films intimating sex.

  When I started in the film business, I worked for [late exploitation producer] Bob Cresse a lot and various other guys that were shooting. I worked up my way up through all the transitions in the business to a little more explicit, as far as being an actress.

  In the films, in the beginning, often times you’d be jumping on trampolines or in a swimming pool. Most of it was bare breasts and you couldn’t show pubic hair. That was forbidden — very no, no, to show pubic hair. There were certain rules that you had to follow. You couldn’t touch a man by the hand. It was interesting. Most of the films were comedies and a lot of the comedians that they used were from England. They were still considered very bad X-rated films at the time and then things eventually progressed. In fact, around that same time, I had a mail order company and I actually got arrested by the FBI for selling film and shipping it across state lines. It was a brochure showing a man and a woman sitting on a bed holding hands, and underneath the picture of the man and woman holding hands, it said, “What do two people do when they fall in love?” Nowadays it would be on TV — probably on the Disney channel. It really progressed from there.

  As cases were won in court, and as people got more artistic with what they were doing, it sort of segued from your Nudie Cuties into a story line and a plot. Still, the sex wasn’t too serious because you couldn’t expose the lower part of your body. Men always wore their underwear or their jockey shorts. Otherwise, they could always prove in court that he was nude. They didn’t show pubic hair, but they could show women from the rear so if they did a sex scene, for example, the camera was usually behind you and you were sitting on top of the guy. He would have his shorts on.

  They weren’t loops; they were full length, features; thirty-five millimeter films. As I was saying, they hired a lot of actors and actresses that were in regular Hollywood films. I was in a film with Barry Bostwick [Susan Sarandon’s boyfriend Brad in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975] one time but these were all still Nudie Cuties. One I did with Diana Dors played all over Europe. They were big in Europe maybe even more so than here in the United States. Some of my friends that were doing films — we would do as many as thirty or forty a year. Many of the producers that were making these films went on later to make general release movies. Francis Ford Coppola did some [adult films] when he first started out.

  Twenty-three year old Francis Ford Coppola, an aspiring director and recent graduate of film school, was hired to shoot forty-five minutes of 3-D color footage containing naked beauties to augment the film Bell-Boy and the Playgirls (1962) transforming it into a quasi Nudie Cutie contender. The German-produced picture that starred buxom babe, June Wilkinson, revolved around a hapless Bellboy hoping to learn about the mysteries of women by spying on them through the peek hole of a theatre wall. Ann (billed as Ann Myers) played one of the topless models. Likewise, in 1962, Perry (billed as Ann Meyers) portrayed Sally, one of the nude sunbathing school girls ogled upon by Frankenstein, Wolfman, and Dracula in the feature House on Bare Mountain directed by mondo, exploitation, sexploitation/ blaxploitation filmmaker Lee Frost, and his partner, producer, and screenwriter Wes Bishop (uncredited). Producer Bob Cresse played one of the leads as Maude Frickert.

  Moving Forward

  According to Yedding, concurrent with Ann’s appearances in some of the early sexploitation films, Perry played a villainess in an episode of the Batman TV series and she was the Mercury Cougar woman who appeared in the television ads. By 1967, life started to abruptly change for Greg and his parents.

  Nineteen sixty-six was when my mom and dad were still doing the mailing list, and in 1966 or 67 is when they moved it into the warehouse. At that point, my dad was working for a jewelry company, but as I’d mentioned, they got divorced in 1968. I had to go to a foster family for a year while they fought in court over me and mom finally won. She was the type of woman that never really wanted to have kids. It was just the thing to do. She wanted to have kids because everyone else had kids, but she didn’t want to have to care for the kids — she would rather someone else take care of us. It was somewhat of a status symbol to have kids. We were always brought up around maids, or houseboys or something like that.

  I don’t really know what her hobbies and interests were but she did like water skiing and things like that, because there were a lot of photos of us water skiing and snow skiing as kids. She wasn’t quite the camper type of girl. I don’t think it was her thing, but she went along with it because her girlfriend had kids the same age so we went together to family events. I remember she did like making my Halloween costumes. Inevitably, I got sent away to school so that she could go do her thing. Eventually, my mom was living with Don Davis, the producer whom she had been involved with in several movies. There was an interesting film my mom was in called Dial a Degenerate (1969) that was made under Don Davis Productions.

  The press-kit for the relatively obscure Don Davis fetish film, Dial A Degenerate, that advertised scenes containing “bestiality” in the promotional poster, highlighted Ann Myers in a starring role with an actual release date of 1969 (IMDb.com listed the film’s release as 1972). “Iann Myers” is credited with writing the original story and screenplay, while curious co-cast members included “John Holmer” and “Frank Mazzone.” IMDb also showed early porn starlet Sandy Dempsey as part of the film’s team of actors.

  While my mom was still appearing in the Nudie Cutie movies, another one of the first films she did for Don Davis was called The Golden Box (1970) and it co-starred Marsha Jordan. As a kid, I used to hang around with my mom and Marsha and go to San Diego to The Pussycat Theatres when they were signing autographs. She would take me along, and I would sneak out of the hotel room and I’d go down and watch her signing her 8x10 photographs for people in front of the theaters. I grew up with Marsha and I was told to address her as “Aunt Marsha” so she was my aunt. I think [Marsha] was an exhibitionist.

  The Golden Box is a campy, robust adventure starring Marsha Jordan and Ann Perry (as Ann Meyers) playing two former models, Diane and Donna, whose destiny is dramatically altered when their composer friend is killed by the mob. The girls are entrusted to inherit his life’s fortune in gold. To claim their inheritance, Diane and Donna must first steal back the book of compositions from their friend’s perpetrators and solve a musical riddle concealed within a lyric. With Jordan’s knock out curves, and Perry’s spry personality, the females (a 1970 sexier version of Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz) decked out in mini-skirts and big blonde wigs, pull out all
of the stops in their resolve to stay on task in pursuit of their pot of gold. The feather light film includes full frontal nudity, and a couple of simulated sexual conquests: Jordan beds the bad guy (played by Roger Gentry, the police officer in The Thing With Two Heads, 1972) working for the mob and in direct competition with Diane and Donna for the gold bars. The good time girls also engage in some oral antics — sometimes two on one. Gorgeous Barbara Mills joins the cast in a sensual encounter at a marina where Diane and Donna are hiding out from the mob’s stool pigeon. It appears Mills is paired with real life husband Frank Mills (billed as Frank Harris, uncredited) as they make love on top of a bunk — humorously revealing afterwards that they are siblings! As dated as this material is, the story is cohesive and brings about some genuine chuckles particularly during the narration sequences provided by both women exhibiting excellent chemistry. Perry and Jordan do a fine job bringing to life a pair of apparent empty-headed blondes, far more resourceful and devious than they let on.

  Anecdotes: In a scene where Jordan and Perry enter an adult movie theatre, Marsha, the Erotic Housewife (1970), co-starring Ann Perry and Roger Gentry (directed by Don Davis and produced by “Sexploitation King” Harry Novak, one of the most influential early cult film directors) is on the marquee. Additionally, in order to indicate the conclusion of a scene, gold bars spin around rapidly in much the same way that the “Bat” signal rotated quickly designating the next segment in the 1960s Batman television series — a distinct reminder of innocent, less cynical times.

  GREG YEDDING: My mother was very much a private woman even though she was outgoing in these movies. Her initial drive was to succeed in business as a woman and she ruled with an iron fist. She wanted to prove to men that a woman could do a man’s job and that’s what she did. She kept a lot of her personal feelings to herself because she thought it was a weakness. She definitely wasn’t going to let that out there. I asked her later on in years after she’d married Joe Rhine why she divorced my dad and she said that he was “too nice”. She meant he wasn’t a strong, initiative type of man that she thought was going to succeed and make money. What she looked for in a husband was someone who was going to be aggressive and make a lot of money. If they were weak or didn’t make money, she moved on.