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

by Nelson, Jill C.

  As a child I thought I’d become an art teacher. When I decided to get into porn at eighteen, I thought, “Well, I guess I won’t get to be an art teacher.” Who would hire me once I did porn? I was willing to risk it to follow my muse. Interestingly, now I do sometimes teach art and I do a lot of college lecture gigs because I did porn! I am invited to lecture about once or twice a month. I love the college atmosphere.

  I come from creative roots. My grandfather was a portrait painter and a commercial artist. Dad was a tap dancer, playwright, and a singer. There were many times when we would all gather around the piano, which Mom played. My family went to a lot of museums and we traveled a lot, so my parents were very supportive of the arts and we went to the theatre and saw many movies together. My family all loved musicals. The movie Gypsy (1962) was a family favorite, and also West Side Story (1961) and Damn Yankees (1958). Musical theater had a major influence on me. Especially Gypsy, which was about a stripper. It’s a great film with Natalie Wood.

  Gypsy was originally a smash Broadway musical with Ethel Merman in the title role of Rose Hovick, the domineering stage mother of renowned burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee. To achieve success vicariously, Hovick drags her two young daughters, Louise and June, across country in a desperate attempt to secure the girls bookings in various Vaudeville houses. When the girls became too mature to pass as children (and June marries a dancer), at the encouragement of her mother, the shy and lesser talented Louise auditions to strip at a mediocre burlesque theatre and discovers a new and thriving career: thus creating the stage name, “Gypsy Rose Lee.” With original music and lyrics composed by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim, the musical was adapted from Gypsy Rose Lee’s own memoirs and made into a feature film in 1962 starring Natalie Wood (who did her own singing) in the feature role of Gypsy. Rosalind Russell took over the reins as “Mama Rose.”

  Annie Sprinkle didn’t grow up with an overbearing mother who pushed her into stardom, but not unlike Gypsy Rose Lee, as a painfully introverted girl, Annie was a dormant flower waiting to be nourished.

  Of course, I loved the Beatles and I can tell you a sad story. When I was twelve, my girlfriends and I got tickets to the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl, but the day of the concert, I was so terrified that I couldn’t cry or scream just right — I was so excruciatingly shy and was afraid I wouldn’t be cool enough, so I told them that I didn’t want to go. It’s crazy, huh? John was always my favorite Beatle.

  At thirteen, we moved to Panama in Central America and I went to high school in Panama. At fourteen, I did my first LSD, psychedelic mushrooms and marijuana, and that kind of cracked me open and I learned about altered states. That was during the late sixties and happened to be what millions of people did back then. When I was seventeen, we stayed in a house with friends of my parents, Dr. Vern and Bonnie Bullough R.N. They were famous Sexologists who wrote dozens of books about sexuality. They had a huge sex book library. They made an impression on me in that I learned people could study sex, and not have to hide the fact.

  The late Dr. Vern Leroy Bullough, a Ph.D. Dean, lecturer and scholar, wrote several books and editorials on sexuality and diverse practices on the subjects of prostitution, feminism, and medieval medicine. In recent years, Bullough broadened his readership with writings on the history of the nursing profession within the context of the medical community. Bullough earned his Bachelor’s degree in Nursing at California State University in 1981 though he never practiced. As a sexual activist, Dr. Bullough became a lifelong advocate and supporter of gay, racial, and feminist groups. Bullough’s spouse, the late Bonnie Bullough who came from meager beginnings, achieved a Master’s of Science degree in Nursing, and later became a nurse practitioner before her appointment as Professor at California State University. Along with her husband, Bonnie Bullough gave over one hundred lectures on human sexuality and co-wrote and edited more than thirty books. The Bulloughs were Humanists (the philosophy and/or practice centering on human values) and belonged to the Unitarian church.

  I happily let go of my virginity at seventeen when we got back to California. In 1973, I moved to an artist commune in Oracle, Arizona with my first boyfriend. A few months after I gave up my virginity with him, I moved to Tucson and I had sex with fifty guys over the next six months. I automatically began to document my sex life. It was just a little list of names with some notes really, but I thought I should write down their names at least, for some reason. Then I became a hippie in Tucson for years, where I eventually worked in a porno movie theatre selling popcorn. In Tucson, Arizona Deep Throat (1972) was playing. It was around 1973. I’d never seen a porn movie before and I didn’t even know they existed. I got a job selling popcorn at the Plaza Cinema. After work one night, I went to see Deep Throat and I was totally shocked and amazed. I loved it! Wow, I had no idea that there were movies that showed actual sex. I had a thought of sex as something so intensely private even though I had become quite promiscuous. Deep Throat was a lovely film. It was very funny and it had great music. Linda Lovelace was wonderful and a marvel.

  Deep Throat featured Linda Lovelace as a sexually frustrated housewife on a quest to have an orgasm. Her therapist (played by Harry Reems) enlightens her to the fact that her clitoris is located inside of her throat. In order to experience a climax, Lovelace must first learn to perfect her oral technique by “deep throating” males, resulting in immense sexual pleasure and satisfaction for both parties. Buxom Carol Connors (mother of Hollywood actor Thora Birch) who later enjoyed success in adult pictures such as The Erotic Adventures of Candy (1978), Candy Goes to Hollywood (1979) and (director) Ann Perry’s Sweet Savage (1979) played Reems’ nurse. Interestingly, the term “deep throat” is the pseudonym given to the informant Mark Felt who provided The Washington Post writers Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein information about President Nixon and his government’s involvement in what became known as “Watergate” in 1972. In 1974, Woodward and Bernstein published All the President’s Men about the scandal which became an award-winning film in 1976. Felt’s identity was revealed thirty-one years after President Nixon’s resignation.

  The Plaza Cinema was open twenty-four hours a day so guys would come in and talk to me in the middle of the night. They gave me lots of attention. I loved to flirt with them. Then the police busted the theater for showing porn and Deep Throat went on trial for obscenity. I was subpoenaed to be a witness in the trial, to appear in court, and I met Gerard Damiano in the witness waiting room. Linda Lovelace was also there. In the seventies, you would get arrested if you got caught making porn. No one quite knew if it was legal or illegal. Thanks to all the Deep Throat court cases porn [eventually] became legal.

  Damiano was a lovely Italian man. I asked him to teach me to “deep throat”. We became lovers for a year and a half. I was eighteen and he was forty-five, and we stayed friends. I went to Florida for his eightieth birthday. He died a month later in the fall of 2008. He lives on in my heart and my clit.

  Between the time the Plaza was busted and the court case, I had ended up working in a little desert massage parlor. I worked there for three months before I realized I was doing prostitution and not merely being a horny masseuse. Prostitution really fit my needs at the time. I could have gone to college like all my friends, but instead I went on a big adventure.

  Besprinkled

  Damiano really didn’t get me into porn. He didn’t want me to become involved in films. I was already working in prostitution, so he had helped me to get a job in a massage parlor in New York through Al Goldstein who was the publisher of Screw magazine at that time. I liked it; it was a nice job. I really liked the work and was very happy doing it, but I wanted to learn filmmaking so I got a job several days a week apprenticing filmmaking at Kirt Studios. Leonard Kirtman had a big loft film studio in the West 20s, in Manhattan and they would crank out several hardcore feature films a month — mostly “one day wonders.” I was the script girl, sheet changer. I fluffed for a few films and suddenly realized, “I can give a
better blow job than that”. I fluffed for Harry Reems once when he couldn’t get it up. Eventually, Kirtman asked me to do a film and I said, “Okay”.

  Leonard Kirtman, founder of International Film Industries (aka Kirt Film Studios) worked as a taxi driver before producing Nudie and low budget Horror films in the late 1960s-1970s. By the mid-1970s, Kirtman graduated to making hardcore productions. In 1977, Kirtman proclaimed he would no longer be affiliated with pornography, and instead, made films that were R-rated. Eventually, Kirtman reverted to the hardcore market.

  I remember the first time I saw myself as a centerfold. It was the first or second issue of Cheri Magazine. It was a national magazine, but it was all over Manhattan on newsstands. Before the internet, there were lots and lots of Men’s magazines. I remember getting the issue I was in and thinking to myself, “Oh my god.” I’d never seen a magazine with such a big, gaping, pink pussy before. It filled half the centerfold. Up until that time, the newsstand magazines were more like Playboy. It was kind of a big deal at the time. I was excited. It was like, “Wow.” I remember observing how my pussy looked even though I’d already seen it on film, but I didn’t notice it as much somehow as I did in the magazine. The magazine was available right on the corner where anyone had access to it, as opposed to having to go into a theater to see a porn movie. Nowadays, it’s no biggie to be in porn. In the seventies, there weren’t very many people in porn. There was a lot more stigma back then.

  In much the same way that 1970s and eighties pop culture musician David Bowie created a medley of alternative personas such as “Ziggy Stardust” and “The Thin White Duke” to reflect various stages in his life and musical career, young Ellen Steinberg invented an identifiable moniker, “Annie Sprinkle,” reflective of a specific porn genre.

  When I had to pick a name, the word “Sprinkle” popped into my head and I just really resonated with it. I really enjoyed golden showers, spit, cum, waterfalls, swimming pools, hot tubs and the beach — anything wet. Still do! When I first saw myself on the big screen, I was very excited. I was very proud of myself being a shy wallflower and all. I went straight into hardcore. Later, I did about six “B” movies and dozens of documentaries. Eventually, I would pioneer several new film genres: edu-porn, gonzo, post-porn, art porn, feminist porn…In the seventies, the people in porn were all about filmmaking. They almost all aspired to do Hollywood type films. Porn emulated mainstream movies. Today, it’s very different. Porn became its own genre.

  Annie Sprinkle was twenty years old in her feature debut within an interracial group sex sequence in a film titled Seduction (released in 1974) along with Jamie Gillis and Andrea True, the former porn star turned Pop Artist with the 1976 signature hit, “More, More, More”. True passed away from undisclosed causes in November 2011.

  In 1975, Sprinkle surfaced in various productions: Too Hot to Handle, Teenage Masseuse, and Affairs of Janice. During her youthful years in the business, Annie Sprinkle’s name became analogous with some of the fetish facets of the genre, specifically “golden showers,” the act of urinating upon or being urinated on during or after the act of sex, as is evidenced in Sprinkle’s starring role in the Video-X-Pix vehicle Teenage Deviate also released in 1975.

  Billed as Annie “Sprinkles,” Annie’s sweet demeanor renders endurable the rudimentary but intriguing Teenage Deviate (written and directed by Ralph Ell and produced by Leonard Kirtman), about a naive young woman gone astray in New York City. When the film opens, Ella (Annie) is seated in her psychiatrist’s office chomping on chewing gum while reminiscing about the sexual details of her previously sheltered life. Ella attempts to gain a clearer understanding of her severed relationship with her mother. With great fondness, she describes her first sexual experience with a blonde boy (Ras Kean) one afternoon in the backyard of her home. In her description, the boy spanked Ella repeatedly (and hard) on the backside during intercourse, resulting in a golden shower as Ella lightly urinated on her friend prior to his climax. Ella expressed to her shrink the fervor of her mother’s anger when she happened upon her naked daughter and her lover, prompting the doctor to probe Ella further about her experimental love life and how it affected her feelings about herself and her mother.

  In order to gain independence, Ella explained how she’d traveled to stay with her cousin Audrey (Nikki Hilton) in New York City. Audrey had been keeping her louse of a boyfriend Hank (Ed Marshall) in beer and cigarettes while Audrey turned as many as eight tricks a day. Ella fell in love with Hank and shared that the two had an affair behind Audrey’s back. While Audrey was out on the street, Hank manipulated Ella into blowing him and his buddies by reminding her if she truly loved him, “freebies” are expected. As a seeker of genuine love and affection in all the iniquitous places, Ella told the doctor she obliged the creeps and discovered there are worse things in life.

  Quickly, Audrey learns what is going on under her nose and she and Ella become embroiled in a scrap. Audrey tosses Ella out of the tiny apartment, and tearfully, Ella calls her mother only to be verbally berated again (a scene that is poorly filmed as one can clearly tell that the individual playing Ella’s mother is not on the telephone, or even female!). Undaunted, Ella tries her hand at romance once again. This time, her Romeo (Helgar Pedrini) is married — a fact that doesn’t come to light until after the lout takes her to a cheap motel for even cheaper sex.

  Annie as Ella possesses a sweet and lovely essence in her core that inevitably gets her into trouble with the people in her life who attempt to take advantage of her good nature and intentions. Teenage Deviate was released in 1975, but Annie believed it may have been filmed in 1973.

  I started out doing very mainstream, vanilla, hardcore porn, but after a few years, I became kinky. I was the girl who liked all kinds of fetishes and unusual fantasies. I was only too happy to do the S&M scenes, the interracial scenes, golden showers, and most movies back then had a “rape” scene. A few directors could be manipulative and would try to get a porn actress to push herself, but that was the same as any acting or theater job. Overall, I had good experiences. I had only a few bad days, but what job don’t you have occasional bad days?

  I worked a whole bunch with Bobby Astyr. He was a lovely Jewish guy, funny and sweet. Most of the New York porn actors were Jewish guys in the old days. I’m not sure why, maybe the Catholic boys had more shame. There weren’t that many Jewish women interestingly. I might have been the only one! Of course, a lot of the producers and directors were Jewish too, just as they are in mainstream Hollywood.

  Bobby Astyr (born Robert H. Charles) was born in New York in 1937 to Jewish parents, and made over one hundred and forty film appearances until his death from cancer in 2002. During his years in the business, Astyr tried to help many of his addicted and alcoholic porn friends. He was one of Sprinkle’s frequent co-stars with whom she participated in various porn proclivities exhibited in films such as Satan Was a Lady (1975) directed by Doris Wishman (as Kenyon Wintel). Annie (as Anny Sands) plays the promiscuous sister of a soon-to-be-bride. In the first of two scenes with Bobby Astyr (as Bobby Astyn), Sprinkle is bound in leather wrist and ankle cuffs while she (with nary a trace of public hair) and Astyr enjoy oral and vaginal copulation. The scene is accompanied by a buoyant musical score which, in tandem with Annie’s bubbly personality, depicts the hardcore landscape as loose, fun, and pleasurable.

  Sprinkle definitely worked with her fair share of porn’s rogues.

  Porn star Marc ‘10 ½’ Stevens was my close friend and lived down the hall from me at 90 Lexington Ave in New York. He was actually gay, but straight for pay. We worked together a few times. I had a bit of a crush on Jamie Gillis and Harry Reems. They both had a bit of a mean streak, but I liked that at the time. I was rather masochistic, so I found bad boys hot up until a certain point. When I developed more self-esteem, I became less interested because I just perceived them as a bit mean.

  I actually never worked on the west coast the entire time I did films even though I’m from t
he San Fernando Valley where I grew up which is now the porn capitol of the world. The porn capital was New York City in the old days.

  Vanguards & Revelations

  Key guiding lights stirred the young insubordinate with the activist spirit making a vital impact on the impressionable, open-minded Sprinkle during her developing years as a sex worker.

  Xaviera Hollander, “The Happy Hooker” was an influence on my life. I read her book [The Happy Hooker: My Own Story, 1971] early on. Another big influence was Margo St. James. She started the American Prostitutes Rights Movement. In 1975, I joined her non-profit organization: COYOTE [Call off Your Old Tired Ethics]. She had printed this little newspaper Coyote Howls about decriminalizing prostitution and I thought, “What a concept.” Working in prostitution was and still is illegal.

  Before COYOTE, St. James was married to Paul Avery, the former San Francisco Chronicle journalist targeted by the “Zodiac” killer in the early 1970s. St. James is the initiator of the forerunner group WHO (Whores, Housewives and Others). As a frequent lecturer and attendee at multiple international women’s conferences St. James opposed state control over the sexual practices of its citizens, and was credited with decriminalizing prostitution in the state of Rhode Island. However, in an example of a return to the pre-sexual liberation era, the law was reinstated in 2009. Presently, prostitution is still illegal in the United States with the exception of some sections of Nevada. Working legally in sex films in the state of California didn’t occur until 1988 thanks to the Hal “Freeman” decision detailed in some of the later chapters. In a comparison between sister countries, in March 2012 laws banning prostitution in Ontario, Canada were struck down opening the door for prostitutes to work legally in brothels or “bawdy houses”. The federal government has plans to appeal.