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

by Nelson, Jill C.

  When we were in films, you had a day rate, you got paid and it didn’t matter if you had one sex scene or three sex scenes, you were expected to perform for a flat rate. You could always ask up front for more money and if you weren’t happy with it, bye-bye. However, nowadays, the pay system is by the scene. To me it’s like video prostitution — it’s like being paid by the hour. It’s a whole other world.

  Nowadays, pornographic material is so readily available and so common on the internet and on DVDs and pay per view, and on cell phones, that it has become an integral part of the cultural landscape that people accept and are not nearly as shocked by anymore. I don’t know if society has become desensitized, but they’ve become more accepting of it as a form of entertainment. Everybody has a sex life. Whether you choose to be celibate or not, you are a sexual being, regardless.

  I am somebody who was at the forefront of what was considered as a rebellious and radical industry that is now quite commonplace. I feel that we championed free speech and freedom for people to do what they want and to watch what they want. There is some material out there that is somewhat reprehensible and that I take issue with; nevertheless, it is still covered by the First Amendment.

  I think, essentially, you really need to have your head screwed on real well before committing to this business. Once your image is committed to either film or video, it’s forever honey. There’s no going back and erasing it. I don’t think we went into this with the idea that we’d become tough. That’s the reality of it all. Unless you’re prepared to deal with the fall-out and any repercussions, don’t do it. I think that by and large, the women that you are dealing with from the so-called golden age are succinct about expressing their experiences and the aftermath, and they know what’s what. Without stereotyping or generalizing, I don’t think that the girls who are presently in the business have any grasp of the topics that we’ve covered here today.

  You know, I’m on all of the quotation sites and this is what I’d said: “The difference between erotica and pornography is the lighting.” It’s attributed to me and I used it once in an interview several years ago, and somehow it got plucked from there. I’m in between George Bernard Shaw and Albert Einstein. It’s really true because dim lighting, or some kind of coverage where you think you’re seeing something, but then, you’re not really sure and then you bump it up a couple of “F” stops and it’s the same thing in a harsh light — it’s suddenly pornography. Film has a depth of field that is totally different from the flatness of video.

  Feminists opposed to the existence of pornography as a form of entertainment at the expense of the alleged exploitation of women, have also expressed opinions about the differences between pornography and erotica — women Leonard faced off against when she was still a participant in the adult business as its unofficial spokesperson. Feminist, activist, and journalist Gloria Steinem once wrote, “Pornography is about dominance. Erotica is about mutuality.” Apart from the flawed observation that (all) pornography is tantamount to dominance, Steinem’s statement causes one to question whether “erotica” can also be about dominance between consenting partners. The late feminist Andrea Dworkin’s definition blurred the two terms: “Erotica is simply high class pornography; better produced; better conceived; better executed; better packaged; designed for a better class of consumer.”

  Perhaps a more precise description of the term “pornography” is a quote derived from the Hollywood film First Monday in October (1981) in which Walter Matthau’s character Justice Dan Snow said “One man’s pornography is another man’s poetry.” In short, the absolute definition of the word “pornography” is rather ambiguous and specific to any given individual and her/his own personal interpretation.

  Back in days of film, my barometer used to be if you removed all of the hardcore sex scenes, would you still have something worth watching. A lot of the old films, you’d have something worth watching. It’s kind of ironic, the very first adult material was what they called “stag” films and they were shot on eight millimeter and there was usually no sound and it would make the rounds every Friday night at some dude’s house who had a projector. Here we are, flash forward, where technology has amped up and anything is possible, but the content is, in my opinion, back to square one. It’s just gratuitous sex for no rhyme or reason. You know it’s interesting, you see all of these so-called Hollywood starlets whether it’s Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian, and John Edwards who all had or have videos out there of themselves having sex, and for some reason it doesn’t seem to impugn upon their existence or their profile. They’re still considered the same as ever. There isn’t that dastardly, “Oh horrors. What did you do?” It’s very much a part of the cultural landscape.

  It was interesting when I did the college talks, particularly seeing the responses from people who were so adamantly opposed to it, afterwards being softened by it having a human face. I applaud you for taking on a topic that in many circles is frowned upon.

  “Gloria Leonard is not just a Porn Star”

  — JAMIE GILLIS

  Along with William Margold, Gloria Leonard was inducted in cement into the Hustler Hall of Fame in front of the Hustler store in 2002. Larry Flynt was unable to be present as he was under the weather at the time, but his daughter, Theresa Flynt, spoke candidly on his behalf. With tears in her eyes, Flynt reiterated her father’s sentiment that Gloria Leonard was the female counterpart to her father. Leonard was clearly moved by Theresa Flynt’s heartfelt words and by the induction ceremony itself, as was Bill Margold who stated his greatest honor was to be inducted into the Hustler Hall of Fame alongside his special friend, “Miss Gloria Leonard.” Of all of the males, she befriended and revered in the business, Leonard had great affection for the former adult thespian, Jamie Gillis.

  Nowadays, I’m divorced from the actual industry itself. I only hear things through the grapevine. The most recent and sad piece of news of course, is the passing of Jamie Gillis [on February 19, 2010]. Jamie and I remained good friends over the years. I recently was dumping stuff from my computer and found a whole bunch of e-mails that we had shared. During one of my trips to New York about three years ago, I had dinner with Jamie and his long time companion, the Restaurateur, Zarela. He was a very interesting and terrific guy. He was mischievous and incredibly intelligent, funny, hot, and smart. He could spout poetry and Shakespeare; he spoke fluent French, and he knew a lot about the world around him. He didn’t rest on his porn laurels.

  I’ve taken Jamie’s death very hard. It’s been harder for me than any of the other deaths that have occurred over the years. I think some of it has to do with the fact that nobody knew he was ill. Not only did nobody know he was ill, but poor Zarela had to carry that on her shoulders. You know I guess we all sort of thought of him as invincible and that he was impervious to these kinds of things. Melanoma is usually associated with skin cancer and yet, he had it internally.

  Jamie inducted me into the Las Vegas “Legends Hall of Fame”. He stood behind my chair and of course, predictably, extolled my virtues, but the thing that he said which actually brought me to sobbing tears is this: “Babe Ruth was not just a baseball player. Frank Sinatra was not just a singer, and Gloria Leonard is not just a Porn Star.” That, for me, is my Kodak moment. It was very, very touching.

  I wrote a piece about Jamie to be read at The Beverly Cinema in California that Bill Margold asked me to do and I used that in there. My tagline following the quote was, “And Jamie Gillis was not just some guy who showed up to fuck.” There was an elegant air about him, even in the most tawdry of settings. I said, “You were a force to be reckoned with. Of course, we will all miss you.” Since I had mentioned his knowledge of French earlier on in the piece, my closing words were, “Adieu, Mon Ami.” He was very worldly. Jamie was one of my favorite guys in the business.

  In the early part of the 1990s, Leonard uprooted and moved to Hawaii, but returned to Los Angeles in 1998 to work for a private Los Angeles company that distributed a
dult material. Gloria is no longer affiliated with the pornographic entertainment industry, but she has graciously given her time to a few high profile film projects during the latter part of the 1990s and in the new millennium. Prior to returning to Hawaii, Leonard participated in an on-camera interview for Cass Paley’s award-winning documentary Wadd: The Life & Times of John C. Holmes (1998), and she joined director Julia St. Vincent to provide commentary for the 2001 DVD re-release of the revolutionary 1981 film Exhausted: John C. Holmes, The Real Story, along with Bob Chinn. Gloria and Marilyn Chambers jointly supplied insightful commentary tract for the Special 30th Anniversary Edition of Insatiable released in 2010. In spring 2012, Leonard provided a full length commentary for the soft version of the Video-X-Pix Special 2 disc re-release of “Misty Beethoven”.

  Autumn of Life

  Everyone extols the virtues of Facebook. I am not a member of any social network because to me, e-mail is fine. Between you and me, if I were to list my real name, which is what I would do if I were using Facebook and you were to Google it, there would always be a link to Gloria Leonard. I have a small circle of genuine friends who I, of course, have revealed myself to, but you know, my neighbors don’t know.

  The whole Club 90 group sprung from Annie [Sprinkle] and me while planning a baby shower for Jane Hamilton’s [Veronica Hart] first child. I verbalized something to Annie that I guess she construed as something negative about the business, as it likely was. We used to be fearful of talking down about the business for fear of not getting work. She expressed a desire to return to being Ellen Steinberg [Sprinkle’s birth name]. You know, “Ellen Steinberg wears sensible shoes. Annie Sprinkle wears four inch stilettos.” “Ellen Steinberg is chubby. Annie Sprinkle is curvy.” She went through this whole litany of this duality, and it then occurred to me that maybe there was a need for women in this business to have a safe environment in which to discuss very personal issues. That was how Club 90 was born and, of course, our one Commandment was that nothing we ever discussed there could be revealed outside. It was called Club 90 because that was the numerical address of one of the people whose home we used for a lot of the meetings.

  We’ve been pals for over thirty years and we connect on almost a daily basis. It’s a real sisterhood and it’s a great, not only support system, but you’re dealing with people who have gone through the same experiences as you have. You know, appearing on film, sexually, isn’t like anything else. You can’t compare it to prostitution or anything else. It has its own set of foibles and repercussions.

  The one thing I would change is to probably have been savvy in terms of business and finance. I was somewhat naïve in terms of what my worth was, given the scope of what was ultimately earned using my likeness and my appearances. The truth of the matter is, in the long run, here I am and I’m in my late sixties and I am struggling, financially. I’m looking into a reverse mortgage because I was just cut off of one credit card and my limit lowered on another. My bills far outstrip any income I have, so it is kind of sad that after fourteen years with a magazine, and in the business, and all of the money that was made off my likeness and my tuchas, that I’m struggling. It seems that all five of us in Club 90 are struggling. We commiserate online about it all the time about how fucked up it is that this stage in our lives we’re sweating nickels and dimes.

  About a year ago, I moved from Hawaii to Florida. I still have my house in Hawaii which I have rented out to a very nice gal, but my daughter and granddaughter live here. My granddaughter is fourteen and I was feeling like I wanted to be near them. I was in my late sixties and who knows; nobody knows how much time we have left on this planet. I just felt that I needed to spend more close time with the little family that I do have. My life today pretty much revolves around my daughter and my granddaughter, and my friends. I’m in Sarasota, which is on the Gulf side. It’s across the state on the Gulf of Mexico side and it is a gorgeous location. We’re not all in New York anymore. Candice [Candida Royalle] is on Long Island. Veronica Vera is the one hold out in Manhattan. Jane lives in L.A. [now in Las Vegas]. Annie is in the San Francisco area, and here I am, another old Jew living in Florida, just what they needed.

  Last year (2011), Leonard returned to her home in Hawaii. However, early in June 2012, Gloria flew to New York City to attend the wedding of Veronica Vera and reconnect with her Club 90 group of girlfriends, many of whom had not seen one another in fifteen years. Several of the women, including Annie Sprinkle, Jane Hamilton and their friend Kat Sunlove, also participated on a panel at the Museum of Sex a couple of nights following the wedding. While Gloria was in town, she joined the gathering organized by Candida Royalle on a small vessel docked at the West 79th Street boat basin marina on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Since Candida had suggested I plan to come on board during my visit to New York, I happened to be sitting in the sunshine with my friend and her daughter-in-law, when suddenly, I noticed Gloria hurrying along the dock toward the boat. I hadn’t known for certain she would be there that late afternoon and was pleased to meet in person as we conversed and joked over a couple of glasses of Cabernet. Leonard is extremely affable and very funny. She has the soul of a comedian and a memory like an elephant.

  I do some writing. I’m actually working on my book which has taken me far too long to get motivated to do. About a month or so ago, a very dear friend of mine in New York, who had nothing to do with the adult business — we were just neighbors and have remained really good friends thirty years later — has a girlfriend considerably younger who is a TV commercial producer and has done other production projects. She apparently won in some kind of a contest, ten hours of studio time at a major studio in New York. She was commiserating with my girlfriend on how to use this studio time. My girlfriend started telling her about me, and my life, and she was just immediately hooked. I’ve been spending days upon days answering pages and pages of single-spaced questions, and lining up people for on-camera interviews that are willing to talk about me. I’m also going to make a west coast trip to talk to some of my west coast friends. We’re all doing this on a whim and a prayer. Who knows, maybe something will come of it and maybe nothing will come of it, but it seems like a worthwhile thing to tackle.

  I’m going up to New York in May to do some of the on-camera stuff. I’m paying my own airfare. They’re coming down here in two days to go through a dozen or more boxes that have been languishing in my daughter’s garage. You know, I’m not that ego driven. I never did the scrapbook thing. This gal seems very savvy. She sees it with a number of different platforms like maybe for a web episode, maybe for a film festival, and so on. So right now, I’m looking into, along with a lawyer, the whole intellectual property thing.

  Presently, Leonard’s legacy is on ice. In the interim, Gloria continues to document her life in autobiographical format in the event she plans to publish one day.

  All of my awards that I’ve won over the years are somehow in those boxes. I don’t remember what all of them are anymore. I know it sounds rather braggadocio, but only so many awards one could win in the adult industry and I’ve won pretty much all of them and then some.

  AFAA Awards. COURTESY OF WORTH MENTIONING PUBLIC RELATIONS

  Gloria Leonard.

  9.

  Rhonda Jo Petty

  Roller Girl

  PHOTO COURTESY OF RHONDA JO PETTY

  “I wouldn’t change my life for the world. I’m grateful to be alive today because I should really be dead. I’ve experienced a life that most people could never say that they have. It’s made me who I am. It has been a hell of a ride.”

  — Rhonda Jo Petty

  Rhonda Jo Petty might not have achieved the status of elite female performer as some of her contemporaries like Seka and Ginger Lynn, but she has clearly etched out a place as one of the sexiest and most provocative “B” females of the golden era. A Chatsworth, California native, Rhonda Jo gained notoriety as a Farrah Fawcett clone during the promotion of her first starring role in Disco Lady (1978)
because of the remarkable resemblance she bore to her Hollywood counterpart. Petty quickly magnetized a cult fan base that appreciated her inclination for the raunchier rape and fisting scenes which became synonymous with her name after her second adult feature Little Orphan Dusty (1978).

  During her tumultuous developmental years, Petty and her younger sister were subjected to an abusive father who had an affinity for dirt bikes, multitudes of drugs, and a brief association with Charles Manson and his devotees at Spahn Ranch in Chatsworth. Prior to her parents’ separation, Rhonda raised goats and discovered a love for horses and Equestrian riding, a hobby that provided shelter from her stormy home environment. After several episodes of truancy from school and a thirty-day stint in Juvenile Hall, Petty moved in with a boyfriend and decided to try her hand at nude modeling which led to her foray into X-rated movies. Fearful of her father’s reaction after opting to use her real name in Little Orphan Dusty, Rhonda Jo went into hiding for almost two years.

  Throughout her career, Petty ingested drugs in all shapes and sizes, and engaged in several volatile relationships including an affair with a Hells Angel biker from Palm Springs. Despite her reckless lifestyle off camera, Rhonda Jo approached her roles with a conscientious and professional attitude recognizing that her work in adult entertainment was a job, not unlike any other form of employment. Petty believes it is she who inspired the “Roller Girl” character personified by Heather Graham in P.T. Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997), and not the late porn actress Shauna Grant after showing off her prowess on roller skates in films Sex Rink (1979) and The Champ (released in 1980).