California Girls, also released in 1980, is a compilation fashioned from a series of loops. Not a great picture by any standards, it enabled Petty to strut her stuff as a primo Roller Queen/hustler on the Venice Beach boardwalk where she effortlessly skated circles around co-stars John Holmes and Tiffany Clark. Filmed at the height of the disco era, Rhonda’s impressive “hell on wheels” roller derby performance obviously made an impression on Boogie Nights director Paul Thomas Anderson, as is evidenced by the integration of the “Roller Girl” character played by Heather Graham, in the 1997 film.
The jury seems to be divided when polled about the accuracy quotient regarding the popular film Boogie Nights which had the partial effect of rendering the pornographic film industry into an acceptable commodity. Many golden agers believe the feature to be a true portrayal, while others don’t. Petty’s feelings are somewhere in the middle, but she doesn’t dismiss the likeness between “Roller Girl” and herself. It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Boogie Nights is corny. They got the outline of everything that happened, but then they made it corny. I saw the Amber Wave [Julianne Moore] character as Gloria [Leonard] and Bobby Hollander in the Burt Reynolds role. Gloria was like our mother because she was older than the rest of us. Roller Girl was supposed to be me. The wife [played by Nina Hartley] who was in the sex scenes was Bill Margold’s ex-wife, Drea. She used to do that to him where she had sex with men. I’d really like to see the real thing done one day.
Girls and Boys Club
I always had a good reputation for showing up on time. I was always a good worker and there was never a problem. I did pride myself on that. I always suited up and showed up. No matter how sick and fucked up I was I always suited up. Work and money motivated me. I got very good at it — the lighting and the angles. I knew what they needed. My dad instilled good work ethics in me.
I think that a lot of the girls came from abusive backgrounds. We didn’t really talk about that then, but down the road, I found out. I always felt when I was working that a lot of the girls were there to prove their sexuality. It would just be the biggest turn-off to me. I couldn’t stand it — they weren’t the big names. Some of them were really screwed up. They just couldn’t wait to work and they loved it, and they were just idiots in my eyes. I didn’t like people who weren’t professional. They were there to get fucked and prove what a good fuck they were and, “Look at me!” They would walk around and spread their legs — even when they weren’t working! I just hated that. Most of the bigger names were all professional. I saw it as a job and you were there to work.
I didn’t like working with any men who walked in that I didn’t know. There were a lot of times that I would refuse to work with guys, if it wasn’t Paul Thomas or Eric Edwards or Ron [Jeremy]. If I didn’t like them and they seemed funky, I wouldn’t work with them. I never did. I never screwed anybody that I can think of, off the set.
John Leslie and Eric Edwards — they were great guys, nice guys. Ron Jeremy really was a character. I always got a kick out of him, and I liked Ron, but he would drive me crazy. He’d come in the dressing room and expect me to bend over for him. Annette Haven had her nose in the air, and Marilyn Chambers. You’d be in the bathroom with some of them at the awards shows and they wouldn’t even acknowledge you. The rest of us all got along great. We had fun together, we partied together — Sharon Mitchell and Vanessa Del Rio, Kandi Barbour, and me. The last I heard and this was years ago, is that Kandi Barbour became a prostitute and was living in a little tiny rented room in New York.
Kandi Barbour, a popular 1970s adult film starlet, was found dead on a street in San Francisco on January 26, 2012. According to Wikipedia, Barbour was fifty-five years old, homeless, and had been living on the streets.
I always got along with Sharon Mitchell. We did a few movies together, but I don’t think we ever worked together in a sex scene. The majority of the girls I got along with — we were all doing the same thing.
I felt very in control. Once I had made a name for myself, I could say what I would and what I would not do. I could say, “No, I’m not working with him, and no, you’re not putting a “cum shot on my face.” I view myself as a person who has her own opinion and who has had her own experiences. This is who I am. I took a serious approach to the business and I liked the money. I think another reason that I got into the business is because of my attitude. My parents were not there for me at all. I feel like I got dropped off at the end of the world. By the time I left the house, they didn’t give a shit if I went to college. There were no offers like, “Oh, Rhonda, what are you going to do with your life?”
I thought to myself, “Fuck my dad. I’ll show him. I can take care of myself.” That was my attitude back then, and it wasn’t real healthy, but it drove me to show him that I could take care of myself and I didn’t need him. I think that I did what I did because I was abused as a child. All I was doing was continuing the abuse. That’s how I look at it.
During the era when I worked, it was a big party and the people became my family. These directors and producers, they felt like family. Everyone would watch out for one another and you’d go over to their house and have dinner. It was a tight circle. A small, intense community that was all underground. I started working for Bobby Hollander and Gloria Leonard at Gourmet Video, and I would party with them a lot. I would also party with Bobby when Gloria wasn’t around. He did Quaaludes and cocaine.
In and amidst the perpetual party atmosphere, Rhonda continued to appear in films. A couple of the movies she is most proud of were produced toward the end of her twelve year run as an adult performer.
I enjoyed making Country Comfort (1981) which I think was VCX. They took us to Paul Getty’s ranch to make that film. They had found this little cabin and they went to Western Costume and got us these dresses from the Western days. They spent some money on that film and it had Georgina Spelvin in it. I love her; she was great, and she really took me under her wing. That’s a cute little movie and I’m pretty well known for it.
The western feature Country Comfort starred Rhonda Jo Petty (as Beth), Georgina Spelvin (as Martha), Drea (as Clara), and a young actor Ginger (as Sarina, not to be confused with Ginger Lynn) as four southern rural women trying to make ends meet at the end of the Civil War. Life for the females takes an interesting turn when stud Tom (Randy West) arrives at the ranch to deliver the news that Martha’s husband and son (Beth’s spouse) were killed during battle. Beth, who has been having her libidinous way with the farm hand Marsh (played by Tommy La Roc) in her husband’s absence, is suddenly relieved of guilt for her betrayal and becomes engaged. Meanwhile, Momma Bear Martha hires Tom to help Marsh with chores around the spread and he finds his way into her heart.
Another great film was Baby Cakes [released in 1982]. The people that produced that became a part of my life for a while. They’d have me over for dinner and I met the producer’s younger sister Pandora. Baby Cakes is one of my best films that might still be available to buy.
Baby Cakes, an Essex production chronicles the adventures of three girlfriends on a four hundred mile bicycle trip down the California coastal road 101. The northern California location was particularly cold while donning skimpy costumes, especially in Big Sur where most of the filming occurred, but Rhonda Jo described this project which included Randy West, Mike Horner, and Billy Dee, as an easy flowing experience that allowed for her and the others to leisurely bicycle their way along the picturesque California shores. Petty’s ease and comfort with the material and setting, is likely why her performance is natural and realistic.
I was in the adult industry for about eleven-twelve years from 1974-1986. The last film that I made was Satisfactions which was in 1983. Satisfaction is a great film and it did really well. It got great reviews. I looked good on the cover — there’s a big box cover of me. I still have the red shoes that I’m wearing in that film. I did a scene where I’m on a construction site with three guys, and from what
everybody tells me, it was a great sex scene. I think it even got “Best Sex Scene” that year. You can still get it, but you know I’ve never seen it. I have it here but I need to watch it one day.
Rhonda Jo’s hot scene with three construction workers played by Ron Jeremy, Herschel Savage, and Danny Weirdman in Robert McCallum’s cleverly crafted Satisfactions definitely gets the juices flowing, especially when Petty is initially paired with Savage. Dressed in a white mini-skirt, red stilettos, and thin panties, Rhonda Jo (as Connie, the boss’s daughter) ascends a stepladder taunting Savage who is positioned at the bottom looking up her skirt. Tired of her cock teasing, Savage roughly grabs Connie from the ladder and plants a hard kiss on her mouth. Turned on, Connie asks for more and Savage is only too willing to “satisfy” her needs as the two get down and dirty, and are eventually joined by Jeremy and Weirdman for a foursome.
It is a recognized fact that at the zenith of porn’s golden era during the mid-late 1970s and into the early 1980s, celebrity adult performers such as Marilyn Chambers, Georgina Spelvin, Seka, Rhonda Jo Petty, and many others often attracted the attention of mainstream Hollywood admirers. Max Baer who played the handsome, dim-witted “Jethro Bodine” in the 1960s TV series The Beverly Hillbillies (and later became a producer and entrepreneur) was a familiar face amongst the X-rated crowd and often attended adult shows in Las Vegas near his home. Petty’s initial encounter with Baer started with a simple phone call one evening more than twenty years ago placed by Max and his cohort, Academy Award-nominated actor Nick Nolte. Max and Rhonda began a closely-knit telephone friendship that lasted until 2004. Baer once sent Rhonda a medical prescription and flowers when she was ill, and visited Petty faithfully at the Adult Entertainment Shows in Las Vegas whenever she appeared.
On the Road Again
As is often the expectation and standard among many women who work in films as sex performers, eventually they take their merchandise on the road where they are hired to appear as feature dancers — not unlike rock bands that tour to publicize their latest musical offering. Most will agree that the lure of big money is attractive, but as Rhonda Jo explained, stripping from city to city takes its toll in more ways than one after a few years.
At a certain point, you could only make so many films. I was growing tired of making films and it was just time to go on the road with them and promote them. The last six to eight years before I quit, I was doing performances all over the United States and Canada, where the money was good. After you got popular, the nightclubs wanted you to come and be their main attraction, but you had to do a strip tease show. It started to be the thing where we’d go to the strip clubs and we would become headliners. After the show, I would spend five — ten minutes on the microphone answering questions. It was good money. That was very popular back then, and from what I hear, it is today too. It’s just easy good money, and you are out there promoting your films. I was pulling in eight to ten thousand dollars a week, and then after each show, I’d do Polaroid photos and sign them — that was another thousand — two thousand dollars a week. I did that for eight years and I then would shoot a movie here and there. I did make some in between and did some magazine shoots, and I was just all over the place. A lot of us did because the money was difficult to turn down.
I did a lot of shows in Windsor, Ontario, and I appeared once in Vancouver and in Toronto one time. I loved Toronto. The bar was very small but I loved the shopping there. There was a club in Windsor called Jason’s and there was the Million Dollar Saloon.
When I started, there was one club in Chicago with the burlesque strippers. I remember one lady, Dixie Dew, a burlesque stripper, used to help me with costumes. We porn stars were moving into their territory, but I got to meet these old burlesque queens. Back in those days, they didn’t have implants; they would get silicone injections in their butts and their boobs, and when they got older, they’d all these lumps because of their injections. Dixie Dew had a lumpy butt by the time she was old.
The shows were half hour each and ran from noon to midnight. I’d fly into a Holiday Inn, and I did so many of them it got to the point where I wouldn’t know where I was. I would work solid for two months. I’d work six days a week and five shows a day. On Sunday, I would fly to my next gig. It was very lonely on the road. I had an agent and he would book the shows for me. This was from the late seventies until the day I quit, which was in 1986. I started in the business in 1974, and I quit the business in 1986 — almost at the end.
It’s a good thing that I was a hard worker and I liked money and doing these appearances at first. I’d fly in and out of New York where I lived for six years and partially in Massachusetts too, because I had a boyfriend living there. I went out with him on and off for six years. He was very verbally and physically abusive. The day he threw my dog down the stairs was the day I ended that relationship.
It was a very lonely life but I had a gay friend, Brian, who would go on a lot of trips with me. He was sort of my entourage and a very close friend. I lived with him a lot in New York and he would go with me a lot to these gigs, all over the United States and Canada. He acted as a bodyguard, but again, it was lonely because I lived in dressing rooms and it was a lot of isolation. It was tough, and I find today that I like to isolate because I lived in such isolation for so many years — living in those dressing rooms and hiding away from everybody. If you came out, they would bombard you. You had to be careful if you went out about who followed you. I sat in dressing rooms for eight years. If I had time off, I’d go down to Florida and live it up. A lot of my money went to cocaine and clothes, and I had a car. I didn’t even really have a home base because I was all over the place, and when I did come home, I’d spend some time with my friend Brian at his house or with an old stripper that I knew. One time I did have a house for a year at upstate New York, but for me to have a place — I was just never home much. I lived on the road. When I got off work, I might fly back down to Massachusetts, or stay in a hotel, or go to Florida or to the Bahamas, and take a break.
I have a President’s pin. It’s from when [George] Bush senior was Vice-President. Every single city I went, there would be advertisements in the paper stating I’d be appearing at a certain club. When I was in Kentucky and at the Kentucky Derby, I made an appearance at a club there and these men appeared in black suits. They gave me an invitation and a President pin and asked me to come to a party. They dropped off the box and the President’s pin, and when I lifted the lid of the box, inside of it was a note that had the Ramada Inn written on it, along with the room number. This was in 1983, I think. Vice-President Bush had wanted me to go to his hotel room. I never went! I couldn’t get off work to go but he sent two guys in black suits to the club where I was working. I still have the pin and the box. This stuff is on my bar — I protect it. Bush senior portrays himself as this self-righteous, holy, religious person, and here he wanted me to show up at his hotel room.
In 1985, I had a nervous breakdown in Dayton, Ohio. I was at a point where I was overworked and I was an alcoholic, and my stomach was so bad that I developed ulcers. I was living on Maalox, milk, and vodka. It was getting very bad for me; I had a nervous breakdown at a hotel in Dayton.
The last night I was working there, a guy came up to me and said he had cocaine and friends and invited me to go out with him. I went out and I blacked out. The next memory I have I was stuck in my hotel room, and all of my acrylic nails were melted. I was trying to smoke a cigarette lighter. They were trying to take it away from me, and I was waking up out of this blackout going, “What happened?” They told me I was trying to kill myself. They said, “You tried to light yourself on fire. You tried to jump out of a window. We’ve been sitting here with you all night.” I ended up going back with the same guy to his house a couple of days before flying home and he started to say, “Oh, I love you. You need to quit the business. I have money,” and on and on. He scared me and I got the fuck out of there as quick as I could. I was experiencing a nervous breakdow
n at that point, and I flew back to Boston where my manager was. I was so bad I could barely talk, and I ran to the bathroom in the back of the bar that my manager had owned. He sent me to the psych ward and that started a trend of going in and out of hospitals for two years, in and out of psych wards. Back then, rehab was just starting to happen. It was a nightmare.
Emotionally, I was a wreck. All of those years I was using, and now I wasn’t using. The emotions I had shoved down inside of me were coming up. During that time, my manager was trying to get me to go here and there, and I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it sober. After two years of trying, we both agreed — that was it, I was done. That’s when I moved back to my family’s house in California. I went and lived with my sister.
I went to beauty school for manicuring and I got my license and did that for a while. It was extremely hard for me. Then I met my husband who was a friend of my sister’s husband. They had worked in business together and they introduced us.
Horses lend us the Wings we Lack
At first, I wanted nothing to do with men. I had been so jaded and so hurt, but he just kept coming and coming. I finally went out on a date with him and after two years, we got married. He had no problem with my past at all. Even to this day, he’s always going on the internet to buy up my stuff and see what’s for sale — posters and so on. I don’t want to say he’s supportive of it, but he’s fine with it. In fact, he’s got bigger eyes for it than I do. Sometimes, I couldn’t give a shit where I came from but he thinks it’s great and wonderful.
GOLDEN GODDESSES: 25 LEGENDARY WOMEN OF CLASSIC EROTIC CINEMA, 1968-1985 Page 32