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

by Nelson, Jill C.

  As Georgina reflected upon her indiscriminate teen years, she shared details that came to light regarding family secrets once she opened up her life in a cathartic measure through the release of her book.

  I’ve learned some family history just recently, just in the last few years in getting to know my cousins because I didn’t during the time that I was living away from home, and doing disgraceful things like kicking my feet over my head and fucking people on screen. In my dotage, I’ve reconnected with a lot of my family. A lot of that came about because of the book. I’ve been able to rekindle friendships. I think that in some cases, and in the case of this particular cousin, for the first time they sort of heard my side of it. I was the one who ran off to New York and then did terrible things. As we were talking, and she was talking about her mother who had to get married — of course, in those days it was very sub rosa that her father had been terribly abusive, physically abusive. She was terrified of him and that he was going to beat her mother to death some day. This was totally news to me. I had no idea. They were just always the nicest, grandest couple in the world, but there was a side that I had never suspected. This came out after the book had come out, and my cousin had come to visit her grandchildren and such, and said, “Let’s get together for lunch.” We did, and then subsequently, had gotten together a couple of times and talked about family history which I never really knew anything about.

  Broadway Bound

  Convinced New York was calling her name; Georgina continued her school studies and didn’t become a permanent fixture in the city that never sleeps until she’d taken care of important business back home.

  Dancing was the big thing for me. I had stars in my eyes. I recently saw the film Black Swan (2010) and it’s not a terribly good film; my husband hated it, but it certainly is a very accurate picture of the ballet world. That was my ambition as a child up until the time I went to New York. I had finished my high school in Dallas, and came back and transferred my credits back to Tyler so I could graduate there, and so my dad could come and see me actually walk across the stage and get a diploma. That was very important to him. My going to New York to try to have a career as a dancer was predicated by my getting that diploma. I wasn’t going anywhere until I did that.

  When I graduated from high school, that next summer I got a job in a chorus in a musical at the Dallas State Fair. At that time, they did a series of the musical comedies from New York, and usually imported the stars, if possible. The chorus was hired locally and we would rehearse the numbers ahead of time. We would do the smaller roles. The chorus would be done locally, and then the stars would come and fit into the show. We got to do things like Brigadoon with Van Johnson; they were not big name stars that have lasted to this day, but they were big names at the time. Van Johnson was such a sweetheart, and Edie Adams was doing Wonderful Town that I did. She was married to Ernie Kovacs at the time. He had come in to be with her while she was there for those two weeks. It was my first taste of real showbiz.

  Brigadoon, a musical, is the story of a Scottish town appearing mysteriously every one hundred years. Wonderful Town, another musical with a score composed by Leonard Bernstein, is based upon a 1940 play by Fields and Chodorov centering on a collection of books written by Ruth McKenney titled My Sister Eileen.

  At the end of that season, one of the dancers, a ballet dancer at the same school taught by Nikita Talin who had had the school in Dallas [Academy of Dance Music Theatre], chose a boy Jerry [Jerome] as his lead male dancer. It was hard to find boys willing to do ballet, so if you find one and you’re a ballet teacher, you do everything you can to hang onto him so you’ve got partners for all of the girls. Jerome had been living in the back of the studio when I had lived with the teachers who had an apartment across the street so that I could study every day and go to school.

  Jerome and I got an apartment together in New York at the end of the season in Dallas. That was my way to get to New York. He and I were friends forever. He was the first gay person I ever met and I don’t know what’s happened to him. I haven’t heard from him in months. He hasn’t answered any of my letters and I’m afraid he may have died and nobody’s told me. He’s lived in Hawaii for years and years. He sent me a CD that had been made of his batique art process. He would go out and gather the mosses, the herbs, the flowers, and he made his own colors and created these batique hangings with batique cloths. He washed them in the streams you know, and he has this wonderful video. He sent me a video with hundreds of slides and no note of explanation or anything. They just arrived in the mail and I wrote him back to let him know that I had received them. I didn’t know if there was something special he had wanted me to do with them or hang them. I never heard from him, but I got an answer back from someone saying that he had been working for the city for years in Honolulu and something or other occurred. All of a sudden, the city was suing him for thousands of dollars saying that he had not paid the amount of rent that he was supposed to in the city owned apartment where he had lived for thirty years. It sounded like he was going to be out in the street, so I don’t know what happened to him. I think he wanted his art to be someplace safe because he was possibly literally thrown right out on the street. As I say, this is about six months ago and I haven’t heard from him since. We were friends and roommates for so many years. Nineteen fifty-four is the season that we were together in Dallas for the musicals, and then we came to New York and had an apartment together. We shared apartments and everything was terribly flexible during those years. It’s a big hole in my life right now not knowing what’s happened to Jerome.

  Spelvin was eighteen years old in 1954 when she filled in as a replacement for a can-can girl at the infamous Latin Quarter Supper Club once located between Broadway and Seventh Street on 47th Avenue, also known as Times Square. At the photo shoot prior to her dancing debut, Georgina suited up with a veil barely obscuring one of her breasts. The portrait, considered at the time to be risqué, hung in the lobby of the club for several years until it finally closed.

  I went to auditions and got into industrial shows, and got in the chorus of the Latin Quarter which was great fun. My friends from there surfaced when I was doing the book and I got to spend some time together with them out here. One of my friends has since passed away. That’s what happens when you get to be seventy-five years old, you see, people start to die.

  Spelvin was hired as the lead dancer in the chorus for choreographer, Bob Fosse, in the musical production The Pajama Game reflecting on labor issues in a pajama factory. Starting its run in 1955, the break was Georgina’s first real shot at Broadway. Spelvin’s mother who toted her young daughter around for years from one dance studio to another, and had sewn all of Georgina’s costumes, did not miss her daughter’s opening on the Broadway stage. Playing the secretary Gladys Hotchkiss (Carol Haney was cast in the original role; her understudy was Shirley McLaine) to Myron “Old Man” Hasler (Ralph Dunn), Spelvin awed the enthusiastic audience with her snappy footwork in the show stopping dance number “Steam Heat.” After opening night, young Georgina, along with her mother, cast members and friends, dined at the infamous Sardi’s restaurant adjacent to the theatre. In her memoir, Spelvin said one of her most satisfying moments was when Vincent Sardi himself sent over a celebratory bottle of champagne to her table — a sure sign that she had arrived. When the show closed in New York in 1957, Georgina toured South Africa with it.

  After a quickie marriage in 1957 to a young British actor, Christopher, followed by a quickie divorce a few months later, Spelvin soon fell in love again. Eventually, she was involved in a long-term romance with a married stage manager, Ian. Ian, who later became a producer, hired Georgina to star in a summer stock reverie of Damn Yankees.

  In 1960 while working as a choreographer in Las Vegas, Georgina met up with Hollywood star Sammy Davis Jr. and his “Rat Pack” cronies consisting of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop. The actors all appeared in several films together in the 1960s an
d were in town shooting Ocean’s Eleven (1960). Spelvin became a personal guest of the fellows while they made several appearances at the Sands Hotel. She even joined them in a benefit show for a local Children’s Hospital.

  Georgina first met Davis Jr. in 1954 when she was a chorus dancer for summer stock, and asked for his autograph before he became world famous. As a young hoofer herself, Spelvin marveled at Sammy’s amazing tap dancing abilities, and provided Davis Jr. and his pals with the names of a few restaurants that would serve people of color during the 1950s. Subsequently, Spelvin received an invitation from Davis Jr. to join them for dinner which she accepted.

  In a Pickle

  Georgina has other distinguished accomplishments in her portfolio throughout her early years in New York: She danced in the chorus line for Guys and Dolls (1963), and according to her autobiography, Spelvin was Shirley MacLaine’s dance double and stand-in for the New York scenes of Sweet Charity (1969) directed by Bob Fosse. During down time, Spelvin continued seeking work as a dancer and actor, on stage and in film. Meanwhile, as the swinging sixties wound down, Georgina was about to take centre stage in a new cultural phenomenon.

  Two Broadway shows do not quite qualify as solid credits, but I had faced the fact that I was not destined for stardom and was earnestly pursuing the crafts of filmmaking, and doing what I could to protest the war in Viet Nam. We were trying to live as a commune dubbed “The Pickle Factory,” and we were a group of people eager to be a part of the film world. In order to make films we were trying to get along. We were starving, we being the group of film crazies that lived communally in a warehouse in Greenwich Village. While trying to make a living as a film editor, chance landed me a part in a film that turned out to be a porno. The rent was due. Being sort of the senior member of the club, I looked through the trade papers which I was familiar with from my days of being a dancer, and actually getting to do a couple of real movies: Hello Dolly (1969) and Sweet Charity (1969), specifically — and so grabbed anything that was starting production of any kind of film. I would call and say we had equipment to rent, people to work, we could scout locations, and we could handle commissary craft services if any help was needed. Doing this was how I got asked to work on a film. I don’t really know the name of it anymore, but it was a quick tits and ass film, not a hardcore film. It might have been 1971 or 1972.

  According to Wikipedia, Georgina actually surfaced in her very first film in 1957 titled The Twilight Girls (aka Les collégiennes) — a lesbian story wherein Spelvin appeared topless, and actress Catherine Deneuve is featured in her debut role. Sex by Advertisement (1968) was Spelvin’s first (uncredited) part in a sexually oriented film, a quasi-Sex Ed production in which she played Dr. Joanne Ridgefield. The minor stint was followed up by a similar (uncredited) part in the softcore flick Career Bed (1969) featuring Georgina as a mother who pushes her young daughter into showbiz.

  Just a few months before I did Devil and Miss Jones (1973) I was gathering up guys to play sailors, and I knew somebody who had a boat in a marina in Long Island so I arranged for the location for them. I don’t think I did craft services, I believe it was a send-out kind of a shoot.

  The Beau Buchanan film High Priestess of Sexual Witchcraft (1973) paired Spelvin with New York porn actor Marc Stevens as the Priest. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

  On that film set, I met Marc Stevens who was the funniest, sweetest guy I had ever met who wasn’t totally a fag. He’d sent me to see Harry Reems who was Gerard Damiano’s assistant director. They needed a cook. One of the guys working as one of the crew came over and handed me a script of a film that he was going to shoot that week. He was looking for somebody to play a mother, a mature actress, and I got the job.

  The late Gerard Damiano, a former hairstylist from the Bronx turned prominent adult film director, demonstrated a flair for double entendre within his story telling and was one of the few pioneers of X-rated features to treat his material seriously. Hot on the heels of his success with Deep Throat (1972), Damiano was primed to take an exceptional talent such as Spelvin under his employ when he set about to cast his next meaty picture, The Devil in Miss Jones, in 1973.

  Jerry [Damiano] had me read for the role of Justine Jones and decided that even though my tits were small, I could act so that’s how that got started. I didn’t really realize at the time it was a hardcore film. I knew it was obviously a sexy film, but I’d never seen a hardcore film. I’d seen some hardcore footage before because I’d worked as a film editor a lot, but I didn’t know anything about the business. It was a job, it paid some money, and we needed money. I ended up fornicating before a camera because I was too embarrassed at my naiveté to run away when I found out that’s what it was.

  The Devil in Miss Jones

  In 1973, when The Devil in Miss Jones held its worldwide opening in Toronto, Canada, no cost was spared by director Gerard Damiano. Georgina Spelvin luxuriated in a suite in one of Toronto’s classiest hotels. She was treated to fine dining, champagne and caviar while cavorting with the press and the public who lined up in droves to watch the much-hyped film. Warned beforehand by her New York comrades “Toronto can be quite chilly in August,” (Toronto is rarely anything but hot and humid in August with temperatures usually hovering around the mid-high 80s) and armed with a five hundred dollar spending allowance, Spelvin selected a wardrobe that would hopefully suit all occasions including a pair of platform shoes. Georgina stated in her book that the travel expenses for her trip to the Canadian premiere far exceeded the amount she was paid to star in the film.

  After the success of the Toronto premiere “Devil” made the rounds to New York and other major cities, and was reviewed by the late Judith Crist, founding film critic for New York Magazine after the Herald Tribune folded. Crist gave Spelvin kudos for her dazzling performance as Justine Jones, though her review for the film itself was tepid. Newsweek also covered the film and lauded Spelvin a “remarkably talented actress.” Highly regarded movie critic Roger Ebert gave the film a three star rating out of four and wrote of Spelvin’s performance: “there burns in her soul the spark of an artist, and she is not only the best, but possibly the only actress in the hard-core field. By that, I mean when she’s on the screen, her body and actions aren’t the only reasons we’re watching her. Alone among porno stars, she never seems exploited.”

  “Devil” was one of three films to garner the new term “porno chic,” which included Damiano’s Deep Throat and the Mitchell Brother’s Behind the Green Door, both released in 1972. While Spelvin’s performance and the film continued to amass glowing notices across the United States, Georgina breathed a sigh of relief after she received a congratulatory telephone call from her younger brother. The actress was worried he might not understand.

  Spelvin clarified her reasons about her choice to do the film.

  There was this stuff call FILM back in those dark ages. Tape was later. I felt glad to have a job. I was actually thrilled to do an entire role and build a character and everything which is what I had set out in life to do. When it turned out to be a hardcore film, in the midst of shooting, I was not about to walk off the set; I just went right ahead and did the scene as it seemed to me it should be done. We thought, “Oh boy, we’re in the movies. They want us to actually fuck. Okay.” It’s not as if it was something we didn’t do everyday anyway. That’s more or less how it came about. We weren’t people who went out and said, “I want to be paid to have sex.” We would have been out on the street if that had been the initial idea. We were actors, and if the scene called for you to cry you may require the help of a few eye drops to get you going, but you would really cry — that’s called acting. Being the sort of person who was always willing to live and let live the porno world was just another branch of the business of show, as far as I was concerned.

  The Devil in Miss Jones is the second film I did which involved explicit sex. The script was intriguing, and again, I had originally met Jerry through Marc Stevens with the ide
a in mind of doing craft services for the shoot. It was a weekend shoot; they were just shooting fuck films. Jerry, after having done Deep Throat, wanted to do more. His idea was that sex films could have more meaning and a message so he wrote The Devil in Miss Jones, and directed it, and did a lot of the editing, and put the music together for it and helped me in the kitchen. I was also doing craft services.

  Easily eclipsing several other films of the early adult genre and era, The Devil in Miss Jones, a most impressive picture, is sustained by a foreboding musical score. Superbly, Spelvin plays mid-thirties virgin, Justine Jones, who takes her own life by slashing her wrists in a bathtub, and comes face-to-face with the Devil’s wingman. He grants her one last request for a brief reprieve from an eternity in hell so that she may return to earth and experience her greatest wish, one of the “seven deadliest sins.” Because Justine’s desire is sexual in nature, she is paired with a teacher (Harry Reems) who helps break down her inhibitive barriers so that she may partake of the forbidden fruit with an unmarked slate. Commanded by her tutor to hold a rubber anal plug inside of her rectum prior to embarking upon oral, vaginal, and anal sex with him, Justine experiences an orgasm of epic proportions. Miss Jones goes on to enjoy girl-on-girl action with actress Claire Lumiere captured in tender splendor before taking on two men (featuring Spelvin’s good friend Marc Stevens), and subsequently, a hose, and some fruit — followed by the infamous arousing rendezvous with a slithering pet snake.