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

by Nelson, Jill C.

  In contrast to her past, Gloria lives a quiet lifestyle today and recently returned to Hawaii after spending a couple of years in Florida. She remains close to her daughter and granddaughter, and continues her weekly e-mail communication with her pals in Club 90.

  I spoke with Gloria Leonard in March of 2010.

  Earth Angel

  I grew up in The Bronx in a very normal — for that time — environment. I am a first generation American, both of my parents came from Europe. My father was self-made. We lived at a time before cell phones, GPS, and internet. Ours was the kind of neighborhood where you would leave in the morning and play all day with your friends, and come home in time for dinner. No one ever looked over her shoulder with any kind of fear. It was a very innocent time.

  I was a very good student; I think I was about an “A” student. Other than starting to smoke at fifteen — that was the most dastardly of any deeds that would be considered a bad girl kind of thing — of course sneaking a lipstick tube under my jacket and then taking it off when I came back home — it was definitely another time.

  It’s interesting; somebody just sent me a link [Google maps] that enables you to find any address with 360-degree photos, so I actually was able to look at the building that I spent the first eighteen years of my life. I even found my bedroom window. It’s totally awesome. I hit two or three other places I’ve lived too and it’s kind of sentimental.

  Although I had three siblings, I was a change-of-life baby. I don’t know if that term is still applicable today. My mother was well into her forties when I was born at a time when that was considered very scandalous as opposed to now a days where it’s sort of chic and divine to have a child in your forties. As a result, although I had siblings, by the time I was five they were all married and gone and out of the house. My two sisters were not in my life once they moved out and started their own families; they sort of forgot about having a kid sister. Any role models that I had were made up in my mind because there wasn’t a specific person I can honestly tell you that was anything of a mentor deliberate or otherwise. I just sort of floated around. I was in a state of inertia for a couple of years.

  My father was a very cold, sort of impervious guy who made no bones about letting me and everybody else know that he was pissed-off about having to be a father all over again, and regrettably, would often introduce me as his mistake. My mom was far more sensitive and motherly, but I think they were just weary, at that point, of raising children. You have to bear in mind that I became a teenager in the 1950s when everything in society was changing. You know, rock and roll music, and hairstyles and clothing styles, and my parents were hard pressed to understand all of the dynamics that were going on in the world. Why I wasn’t the doting daughter — my other two sisters married the first guys they dated and went off and had children. I knew that was not going to be my fate, at least not immediately.

  As a young teenager, we used to hang out; it was like a living room. We called it “The Parkway” which was actually Mosholu Parkway in The Bronx. It was right across from our school which was Junior High School 80 — I don’t know what it’s called now. We’d go and do our homework, have some dinner and dash back out there. Many years later, there was a piece in New York Magazine about us and it was called “The Parkway All-Stars”. It seems to have produced this gaggle of over-achievers. For example, I went to school with Robert Klein. Gary and Penny Marshall were part of the crowd. My friend, Herb Nanas, went on to Hollywood and became the manager to Sylvester Stallone, Rosanne Barr, Gary Busey and Albert Brooks. Interestingly enough, two of America’s leading fashion designers also came from our neighborhood. One was Calvin Klein and the other one became Ralph Lauren, but I knew him when he was Ralph Lifshitz.

  The June 1982 New York Magazine article titled “The Parkway All-Stars Come Home” commemorated the reunion of approximately fifteen hundred members (many had grown up between the 1920s and fifties decades) of the clan, several of whom had gone on to become newsworthy public figures. On May 30, 1982, Gloria Leonard stepped out of a limousine flanked by a group of centerfold girls passing around matchbooks and visors bearing the name High Society, the erotic news and pictorial magazine Leonard published. Along with her comrades, Gloria clamored to purchase one of the “I love Mosholu Parkway” t-shirts that were sold to reunion attendees. According to the New York Magazine piece, in the 1950s, Leonard was one of a tough gaggle of girlfriends named “Earth Angels” branded after the song “Earth Angel,” recorded by The Penguins in 1954. The girls were identified by their matching club jackets and pedal pushers.

  I think we were extremely funny, bright, and inquisitive, and I think there was some kind of magical dust in the air that sort of imbued us with this knowledge that we were at the crest of a kind of a turning point, in terms of not following in the footsteps of our parents.

  Fortune Smiles on the Brave

  I was a huge jazz buff even long before rock ‘n roll became rock ‘n roll. I was underage, but I would lie to my parents and tell them that I was going to the Night Centre at the local school, and instead I would jump on the “D” train and get off at 52nd street and I haunted all of the old jazz clubs. I have the distinction of having seen people like Billy Holliday, Charlie Parker, and Stan Getz. There was no carding in those days and because I was tall, no one ever questioned my age. I was pretty much a jazz-nick who fell into the likes of Lenny Bruce. In fact, if ever there was a mentor that could be considered such, as far as I’m concerned, it would be Lenny Bruce.

  I literally was a groupie. I followed him from gig to gig, essentially, because he was so honest. Bruce verbalized all of the shit that people talked about or whispered about, but didn’t have the balls to openly discuss. Of course, the thing that went off in my mind was, “Wow, here’s a guy who really thinks a lot like I do, and has the chutzpah to get out there and talk about it.” Aside from him being a so-called comic, he really was more of a philosopher as far as I was concerned. I wrote and produced a film for Candida for her Femme line and I dedicated it to Lenny Bruce. The name of the film that I directed for her was called Fortune Smiles (1988). To this day, it is lauded, according to Candida, by some very highly respected, influential groups of people including the American Society of Educators and Therapists, heads of Universities and psychologists. The piece that I did, in particular, seems to have stood the test of time. I’d say it was a couple of years into her Femme line. Candida gave each of us an opportunity to write and direct a film for Femme Productions.

  Fortune Smiles, directed and presented by Leonard, appeared in the 1988 Femme video production Sensual Escape in which Gloria guides the audience through the tribulations of a young dating couple about to embark on an impassioned journey together toward carnal heights. Nina Hartley and award-winning actor Richard Pacheco (in his first comeback appearance in adult films) are featured in the principal roles.

  Anyway, after finishing school I stayed with my sister who had five children for a while on the west coast before I got a job and lived in my own apartment. I was off on my own at a very young age, at least for that time. I was also a virgin until I was eighteen and a half which, by today’s standards, I guess, would be middle age. I really did not like L.A., although this was the late 1950s. Coming from Manhattan and New York City where you could jump on a bus, or a taxi, or a subway, the requirement of having to drive miles to get anywhere was really a turn-off and I returned to New York probably about a year and a half later. I attended college for one semester and was thoroughly bored. I felt that I knew more than the other students did and I bailed on that whole deal. I enjoyed being in the workplace. I was a decent writer, and subsequently, wound up working for a couple of different PR firms in New York where my writing skills were put to good use in the form of press releases and writing liner notes. I worked for a small record company. This was at the very beginning when they were on 14th Street and they had about a thousand square feet. It was really the beginning of the beginning.

&nbs
p; In addition to wanting to write, I thought I might, if things went my way, consider modeling or acting — I’m 5’9”. That was pretty much it. I had a number of office jobs which included the ability to be creative in terms of writing skills, and I had some very funny accounts that I wrote about that, of course, sometimes made big news. For example, during one of my PR jobs, one of our clients was a place in Upstate New York called Black Watch Farms. Their claim to fame was that they produced and sired prize-winning Aberdeen Angus cattle. It turned out that this one bull named Lindirtis Evulse had been purchased for about a million dollars and had been underwritten by Lloyds of London. Poor old Lindirtis couldn’t get it up. He was taken to the University of Alabama, somewhere in the south, where a team of surgeons tried to correct his problem. Amusingly, that year, Esquire magazine–they used to do an edition once a year called “Dubious Achievements Awards” and Lindirtis made the cover. That experience was one of a number of different clients that made the job fun.

  Leonard’s personal achievements are anything but dubious. In addition to being on the ground floor of the now famous Elektra Entertainment Group (founded in 1950 as Elektra Records) where she had been employed as a copywriter, Gloria apparently also worked for Johnny Carson’s publicist, and later, kept in step with the big boys on Wall Street.

  Many years later in the 1960s, I worked for a brokerage firm. At that time, I was the only female at a brokerage place with about forty guys. Ultimately, I got my certificate to be a registered rep and handled several transactions myself. I was there for about two or three years. I wasn’t crazy about it because everything that you do down there and every sentence that you speak, is about dollars and money. I found it very unfulfilling to talk about dollars all of the time, especially when they weren’t mine! It was very dry.

  I had lived in Puerto Rico for a couple of years and I had a job as the assistant production manager for a small film company called United Hemisphere Productions, in San Juan. They actually had the plum contract of Hunt-Wesson where they did the TV commercials for Hunt-Wesson products. They’d take the commercials that were filmed in America, use a Spanish speaking cast and reshoot them. We also did a feature film, the name of which eludes me. It was my responsibility as an assistant production manager when we were shooting day for night, to make sure the streetlights were on, and that lunch was there, and a lot of little jillions of details. When I came back to New York, essentially, I was hoping to get a job in a similar situation. However, it didn’t happen that way so I resorted to my secretarial skills and did a nine-to-five thing working for a large accounting firm which, of course, has now been shut down in shame. That was the Arthur Anderson Company.

  Arthur Anderson Company, based in Chicago and formerly one of five prestigious American accounting firms, received a guilty conviction for offenses relating to the auditing of Enron, the Texas energy corporation charged with overinflating the company’s success and assets by falsifying financial records. Enron was unsuccessful it its efforts to file for bankruptcy in 2001. Although the guilty conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States, Arthur Anderson LLP currently maintains a low profile and functions as a shadow of its former self due to the scandal that tarnished the company’s reputation.

  It was during the time that I was holding these office jobs that I became aware of the adult business — in and around 1974-1975. By that time, I was in my thirties, hardly a time when one considers becoming a sex symbol.

  I’ve been married three times. I’ve outlived two of the three and I don’t know anything about where the third one is. I had a teenage daughter who was about thirteen or so when I got into the business. I learned that in a couple of hours I could earn what it took me more than a week to earn sitting behind a desk. I actually went up for a job thinking I would get a job in production, and it was Radley Metzger — nom du porn, Henry Paris who made The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1975) which is still considered a classic in that genre. Being a bit of a Svengali that he is, instead of working on the film, I ended up being in the film which was my first film.

  The Opening of Misty Beethoven

  Leonard’s database reveals that one year prior to her reputable appearance in The Opening of Misty Beethoven she was part of an ensemble cast in a movie titled Executive Secretary (1974). In conjunction with The Opening of Misty Beethoven, Metzger’s earlier film, The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann (1974) starring Barbara Bourbon, is also deemed one of his most triumphant hardcore motion pictures.

  Jamie Gillis is the one who got me connected to Radley. I did one or two loops and I met Jamie on the set, and somehow, unbeknownst to me, he had told Radley about me. Recently, after Jamie died, I spoke to Radley and we were commiserating about Jamie. I learned that the reason Jamie recommended me is because apparently, he had a girlfriend at the time that was supposedly committed to the role that I wound up doing but pooped out. She backed out of it at the last minute and I guess Radley said to Jamie, “You’d better find somebody else.”

  The Opening of Misty Beethoven is the porn adaptation of the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion starring Jamie Gillis as Dr. Seymour Love, a sexologist who grooms a young hooker Misty Beethoven (Constance Money), into a sex-pert. Commissioned by Dr. Love to transform males with sexual shortcomings into super-studs, Misty’s ultimate conquest is put to the test when she comes between Dr. Love’s two friends (Gloria Leonard and Ras Kean) in a ménage a trois, taking full charge in her provision of sexual gratification for the couple manifested in dominant-submissive fashion. With confidence, Ms. Beethoven is successful in all of the challenges on her list creating a sensation across Europe which increases Dr. Love’s bankability in his field. The young protégé recognizes Dr. Love is empowered by her triumphs, and soon realizes that her role in his success is negated and even mocked by him. Misty tricks Love into engaging in sex with her, and suddenly, the redistribution of power is turned over to Beethoven. Misty is elevated to teacher status while Love is relegated to the dunce chair bound in leather and handcuffs.

  Allegedly set in Paris, Rome, and New York City, with its wry tone and clever script, this excellent Radley Metzger feature’s original musical score was composed by Elephant’s Memory band, the same group that had backed John Lennon on his first few solo records in the early 1970s. Defined by its expansive locations, sizeable production values, and solid acting turns by Gillis, Money, and Leonard (a standout supporting role in her first official feature), not surprisingly, The Opening of Misty Beethoven received high praise and accolades at the time of its 1976 release winning Best Actor (Jamie Gillis), Best Director, and Best Picture awards by the AFAA (Adult Film Association of America). The Opening of Misty Beethoven is also one of the first films to be inducted into the XRCO Hall of Fame. Standing the test of time, the picture continues to trump most of the other classic adult productions in every category. In 2004, a remake was released, Misty Beethoven: The Musical, directed by Jane Hamilton. Video-X-Pix has plans to restore the original picture to near high definition quality for Blu Ray in 2012.

  Misty Beethoven is funny, it’s risqué; it’s witty. Radley was just a brilliant filmmaker and we shot it at a very professional sound stage. Shooting Misty Beethoven was also very difficult because I was really naïve. I didn’t know what the protocol is for behavior on a porn set. In the beginning, I was more concerned with, “Do I look fat? Are my stretch marks showing? Are my feet dirty?” that sort of thing, instead of throwing myself into the work, and especially being thrown in the midst of women ten years my junior. I had a child — they didn’t. Juliet Anderson had started shortly before I did, but she wasn’t a mom either.

  Indeed, Leonard was a seasoned thirty-five year old woman when she accepted the opportunity to appear in the highbrow pornographic film, and was assigned a meaty role. Suffice to say, her maturity was an asset rather than a deterrent. As a single parent who believed in the virtue of honesty, Gloria had conferred with her teenage daughter before proceeding forward with t
he standing offer.

  I actually discussed my decision to work in adult films with my daughter prior to doing it. I explained that just the way there are movies with comedy, and with action, and horror movies, there are also movies with sex. I told her that I was contemplating performing in one and she was very supportive and encouraging. Occasionally, a few years down the line there would be somebody at school who would make some sort of an unpleasant comment to her, but she was tough, she let it roll. She, of course, enjoyed the perks and the benefits. We got to travel and not have to struggle as much. You must remember too, that I have never received a dime in child support. If I didn’t work, we didn’t eat. So yes, I was motivated by the profit, but I was also motivated by it as sort of a political statement because I was so anti-censorship. I thought this was a good spit-in-the-eye to all of the tight-assed people.

  I thought that everybody operated the way that Radley had. Unfortunately, I came to learn down the line that a lot of them were just schlockmeisters. The whole idea of film requires a great deal of skill. You need a lighting person, you need a decent camera operator, you need a sound person; you need wardrobe and so on. In my opinion, the advent of video spiraled the quality of adult material down the tube because every putz with a video camera can be a producer. The overall experience of having worked on the set of a sex film is dependent upon the cast, crew, and the people calling the shots. In many instances, the whole is often greater than the sum of the parts.