Hold the Pickle
According to his spouse Helene Terrie, pioneer adult filmmaker Kirdy Stevens, renowned for creating the Taboo series, was the first in his league to provide mail order service for hardcore “loops” and sex films directed toward a select client base in the United States starting in 1967. Ann Perry followed suit, and in the interim, she continued to do favors for friends and associates such as Stevens by appearing in their films even though her interests and focus were rapidly progressing to new horizons. Sheer nudity graduated to softcore, and softcore gravitated to hardcore. The Toy Box (1971) is an example of a softcore horror film in which Ann had a prominent role. Perry remembered how quickly the business transitioned and she took advantage of opportunities.
The business was changing, and as it changed, I did a lot of films that were semi-horror in nature and they had some nudity. Kirdy Stevens made a few of those films that I was in and it really was fun. I was doing a lot, but it seemed that I was more interested in writing so while I’d be sitting around waiting to go on set, I’d be writing scripts. Then I really got into it and started doing the mail order. I started selling photographs through the mail, and I started shooting sixteen-millimeter movies. The first movie that I shot was called Peter the Great, starring a little midget. Again, they weren’t hardcore but they were still what you would consider Triple X. They were bad films for the time. This was the first time that they showed a penis or male genitals. They still weren’t showing females fully nude. They showed a male and [suddenly] that was all right. In the early days, if accidentally, you got a shot of a man in full nudity, the cameraman would often yell “pickle”. That meant that something was showing and they had to reshoot the film. Eventually, it got so that it didn’t matter as long as nobody was touching him, and nothing was happening. I shot Peter the Great and then I went on to shoot more films in sixteen millimeter. That’s how I got involved with the Adult Film Association because I started shooting bigger and better films. I started shooting quite a few sixteen-millimeter movies.
In the beginning, I shot a film called Doctor I’m Coming (1970) with John Holmes [Myers is billed as Ann Meers], and I didn’t do any hardcore in the film. It could have been edited in later, but I didn’t do any hardcore. A lot of times, I got hired to do the dialogue and I didn’t mind working with the people doing the hardcore, but I never did the hardcore myself. In Doctor I’m Coming, I recall that I was on the phone in a lot in different rooms and the actors were all doing hardcore. Later, I shot John in a couple of sixteen-millimeter films. One was called Getting it Up and the other one contained far less plot and more sex that I later shot in thirty-five millimeter. Once I started directing and producing the thirty-five millimeter films, I really didn’t often work as an actor anymore. Although there were some people in the business who were friends of mine like Walt Davis [aka David Stephans] that I did work for when I wasn’t doing work for anybody else, just because I liked him. I still didn’t do any hardcore scenes — whether they added it afterwards or not, I could care less. There was a time when I cared but I didn’t care later. I never did hardcore myself [as an actor] in films.
Ann’s appearance as an “Abon” girl in director Walt Davis’ amusing hardcore feature Olé (1971) epitomized her ability to engage with hardcore performers (Gerard Broulard, Judy Angel, John Holmes, Lynn Holmes, Sheldon Lee and Susan Westcott) in an X-rated film without “going all the way”. Perry’s perky character arrives on the scene delivering products to enhance sexual stimulation just as an orgy is about to break out. She is completely stripped down and spread-eagled beneath various cast members, but the sex is simulated.
It was actually very hard for me when I first began shooting hardcore. I didn’t even want to interview a guy to be in a film and look at his penis because I thought that would make him feel bad so I always asked the males to bring photographs. I would interview them and have them read and I’d look at their body with their shorts on, and then I would hire them without looking at their genitals. Be that as it may, it was hard for me in a scene where people were ejaculating and making love to really use hardcore terms, but it worked and I think that I got along with the people that worked for me pretty well. We always got the shots that we needed, while working quickly or whatever.
I shot most of my films in Los Angeles. We had sizable crews working and we just did it. You had to be careful that nobody was on drugs, and that there were no drugs on the set because I wasn’t about to take a bust for drugs on the set. We always used to say even if you have to pick the actress up and shake her to see if any fall out of her pockets; we don’t want anything on the set. It also makes your shooting a little bit more productive shall we say if nobody is stoned. We were very careful about that and our films were very smooth and went very well.
Changing Partners
While Ann and Don Davis continued to cohabitate, Davis directed a PG (Parental Guidance) film titled Swamp Girl (1971) with famed Country and Western singer Ferlin Husky in the principle role as the swamp ranger. Perry is credited as the production assistant and script girl.
GREG YEDDING: While my mom was with Don Davis, there was a movie she did called Swamp Girl (1971) that was directed by Don. It was actually one of the Nudie Cutie movies back then. They put me in this movie. This was in Florida in the Okefenokee swamps. It was about a little girl who was an orphan and grew up in the swamp. Her father was a moonshiner and he died. When the little girl was young and living in the swamp she was supposed to have been kidnapped, so they stuck me in a mailbag and carried me through the swamp. Then the little sidekick guy that was the caretaker where she was living, killed the kidnappers at the swamp so I played a victim in the bag. I was the stunt kid. When they killed the kidnappers, they had to drop me into a rattlesnake pit. I think they had to do the take about five times because they kept dropping me on my head. It was funny.
Greg shared some of the amusing, and sometimes eccentric sides of his mother while on sets, and at home.
When on location there were alligator farms there. [The film’s producer] Jack Vaughn’s wife and my mom were given baby alligators so she and Jack’s wife had a bet whose alligator would live the longest. My mom brought the baby alligator back from Georgia in a sewing basket between her legs on the plane and spoiled this baby alligator. It started barking on the plane and the woman next to her was dying to know what was in her sewing kit. We kept the alligator in a big fish tank in the kitchen. You were supposed to feed it raw hamburger by placing it on the end of a pencil, and then shove it down its throat. One night my mom decided to give it something different and when she later cooked the hamburger, the alligator choked and died.
When we went back to Georgia, I remember sitting in the Marriot hotel and watching my mom play a contestant on The Dating Game. She and the guy didn’t want to go on the trip together so I don’t know what happened there. We just sat in the bedroom taping hundred dollar bills from end to end. When we saw Jack Vaughn and his wife coming into the hotel, we dropped them over the balcony.
They always said that I was like a forty-year old midget. If my mom held a party at the house, I was the bartender. At fifteen, I would make scotch and water for Don Davis.
My mom and I had this thing where we liked to scare each other. Early one morning, I remember I was thirsty and started drinking milk directly out of the container which we weren’t allowed to do. I was drinking milk out of the container and it was a very windy night. My mom with her long, blonde hair was wearing a long, blue chiffon negligee. She had woken up because the wind chimes were too loud, and she wanted to grab the wind chimes so she decided to walk around to the outside of the house. She walked outside and looked into the kitchen window, and saw me drinking milk out of the milk carton. When she knocked on the window, I turned around and the refrigerator light shone on her face and on her light blue negligee. My heart dropped, the milk carton hit the floor, and I started running in space screaming my head off. It was hysterical.
Once
again, the seven-year itch incited Perry to sever ties with her current flame and join forces with a new mate. This time her husband was not well liked by her children. Ann, who believed successful men were the catalyst to marital bliss, saw her professional life sustain the momentum it had achieved, while her industrious spirit brought about additional opportunities as Greg explained.
Don Perry would be my mother’s next husband after she split with her partner Don Davis. Don Perry owned his own magazine — a money making opportunity. His wife, Patty Gardner, was her best friend. Patty and Don had been married prior to my mother, and they got divorced. My mom got married to Don in 1971. Don was a very abusive step-dad. That’s when my sister Linda came to live with us and something happened. This is an assumption from my aunt and family, but we think that something could have happened between Don and Linda, and that’s why my mom threw her out of the house. My mom would never talk about it again. Even to this day, she doesn’t even know Linda exists. She hasn’t seen her or talked to her once since that day. When we talked to Linda, she said, “You’ll have to ask mom.” She wouldn’t talk about it either so it’s a dead subject.
We were close. Linda was my older sister. We had a normal type of sibling rivalry. Don’s daughter Lisa was living with us, she was older than Linda was. At that point, my mom was trying to boost her career. She was a trophy wife to Don and kids were kind of in the way. I was sent to military school and the girls were sent to private school.
In the 1970s when she was married to Don Perry is when she acquired her production company. The way she got the production company was through someone whose name I’ve yet to find out, but this individual was being indicted. He didn’t want to lose the company so he put my mom’s name on the company and then it belonged to her. He was supposed to sign it over to him later, but she kept it and that’s how she got into the production part of the business. She called the company Evolution Enterprises.
Evolution Enterprises
As proprietor of Evolution Enterprises and throughout the mid-late 1970s decade, Ann Perry enjoyed her most auspicious and profitable years as a filmmaker. Simultaneously, she also became the first female member of the Adult Film Association of America. Perry knew which side her bread was buttered and played fair while integrating into a field that had formerly been an insulated men’s club. By this time, Ann was a seasoned filmmaker but shooting didn’t always go according to schedule, especially when the “heat” was on.
ANN PERRY: I was the first person that they had allowed in the Adult Film Association of America [AFAA] that was shooting sixteen millimeter because it used to be sort of a pecking order. Thirty-five millimeter people were way up on top, and sixteen millimeter people were somewhere close to the bottom. Then there were the eight-millimeter people. Forget it. They didn’t even speak to them. I joined the Adult Film Association, and then I started taking the money that I was making on the sixteen’s that I was shooting, and using that money to make a thirty-five millimeter film. That’s how I started into the thirty-five millimeter, directing and producing. I really wanted to direct my own films because I wrote them. I understood what I meant when I wrote a scene and I knew how I wanted it. The other advantage of it was that if there was a problem while we were shooting, I could say “Okay, everybody, take an hour, I’ll rewrite the scene,” and I would go off and write my own scene and come back and it would work. I understood what it meant from beginning, middle, and end instead of just working on a section at a time. I really had scope of the film.
I was hired to do a film for a producer at Paramount studios one time and he had a partner that hired me to write it and direct it. We went to a sound stage in Hollywood. It was definitely a hardcore film from the front to the back, and they brought a whole bunch of Hollywood people to watch me direct to see how we did it, and to learn how we were doing it — what our camera angles were and how we were lighting and the whole bit. Well, it was very funny. There were two unusual occurrences. One is that I was using a monkey. It was called a Gibbon ape that had belonged to a woman who dated one of the big agents, Hal Guthu. Guthu supplied a lot of the X-rated performers in Hollywood. Hal’s girlfriend’s name was Carol Davidson. Carol had this wonderful ape named Tyler with long arms and long legs so she let me use Tyler in the film. I wrote a crazy hardcore script. It was something like “The Fountain of Youth,” and that anybody who drank the semen from the ape would be forever youthful. That was the premise of the film and it was very funny because the ape was a girl not a boy. When we did close up shots of the ape ejaculating into a wine goblet so that the people could drink it, I had to hide a baby bottle nipple in a wig and have the baby bottle nipple sticking out of the reddish-haired wig. On the close up, it looked like Tyler was ejaculating into the glass, and then it would be drunk, and they would remain forever youthful and prolific.
Just about everybody was in this film. Everything went well the first day and all these Hollywood people were sitting around enjoying and voyeuring, as it were, and just having a good time. The second day, there was a rat someplace. Evidently, the rat got the FBI and the cops involved. They came into the sound stage prior to our meeting to start filming and they went into the attic. We came and we set up, and we were shooting, and I was directing. I was shooting this film and giving instructions and all the cops were up in the attic. During our break, they came down and arrested us all. It was funny. I remember one guy was chasing me around a desk and telling me that I couldn’t use the phone, and I said, “Yes I can,” and I started calling my attorney Stanley Fleishman. I was dialing and running around his desk and the cord was hampering me because we didn’t have cordless phones at the time. Finally, I got a hold of Stanley and I said, “Help Stanley, I’m being arrested.” He said, “Just don’t say anything. Just don’t talk to them.”
Ultimately, that case became a very big ordeal where Judge Dell ruled oral copulation wasn’t illegal between consenting adults. That was our case. That was my case. The name of the producer was Joe Justman and Joe Justman worked for Paramount Studios. We had several court appearances and Joe Justman died during the court appearances. There were many, many actors and actresses, all of whom had their own attorneys, so you can imagine how long this case took to try and get it into court. It never really did get into court, and then Joe died in the middle of all of this. Judge Dell ruled that it was unconstitutional [for charges to be laid] for conspiracy to commit oral copulation which was what I had been charged with because I was the director of the film. I was the conspirator which interestingly, makes that a felony rather than a misdemeanor.
“Conspiracy to commit oral copulation” and other felonies such as “pimping and pandering” during the illegal era of adult filmmaking were charges often employed by authorities to attempt to bring disciplinary measures to those responsible for the production of pornographic movies. Legal eagles like the constitutional attorney, Stanley Fleishman, were often solicited by triple-X producers and affiliates to successfully defend Freedom of Speech and First Amendment Rights.
When you do the act of oral copulation, it’s a misdemeanor and you are charged around fifty dollars. That’s what a prostitute would be charged if she was caught oral copulating somebody in a car. That’s all they were doing. It was very interesting, and that is why the judge was able to declare it unconstitutional because at that time, in the state of California, it was not against the law to have oral sex with a consenting adult. Anyway, that was great and it was a real turning point, except then the police got a little smarter about what they would charge people with when they made arrests.
Counting the Ways
I worked my way through one film called Teenage Sex Kitten (1975) that starred Rene Bond which was another softcore film. Not hardcore. As I’d mentioned, people started adding hardcore to films that had initially been shot that weren’t hardcore. I think the film became hardcore later. You would shoot your soft version and then you would shoot another version and then use inserts. That was very common
ly done. Obviously, it was not as smooth a transition when you were doing that kind of a thing as when we actually started shooting hardcore films.
In Teenage Sex Kitten, adult pop cult favorite Rene Bond played a swinger, Debbie, and paid the ultimate price for her free spirit and sexual proclivities. The story starts out innocently enough: along with her best friend Sean and their two boyfriends, Debbie makes plans for a weekend away in Palm Springs — only the group is short on cash. The guys convince the girls to use their sexual wares to help pay for gas and lodgings along the way. After the group arrives in Palm Springs, Debbie runs into trouble with a bar patron for exposing her privates on the dance floor. She is kidnapped and raped by a violent and frustrated misogynist, then beaten, and accidently killed by the kidnapper’s overzealous, dim-witted sidekick.
Apart from Bond’s overt sex appeal and adorable pixie face, Teenage Sex Kitten (with hardcore inserts) is not particularly pretty, and makes one curious as to why Perry (billed under the directorial name “S.B.”, aka “Superbitch”) wrote and delivered this peculiar and morose story. On the other hand, one of Ann’s subsequent films, Count the Ways, is quite the opposite in its tone and message.
GOLDEN GODDESSES: 25 LEGENDARY WOMEN OF CLASSIC EROTIC CINEMA, 1968-1985 Page 3