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

by Nelson, Jill C.

  On that same evening, I met Shauna Grant in Bobby’s living room. She wound up shooting herself in the head a month later. When I saw her, I thought, “Oh my god, she’s so beautiful. If she could do this, why shouldn’t I do this?” I saw her a few times during the course of this visit. She had been living out in Palm Springs and I presumed she was coming in to hang out with Bobby. They were close and he had managed her career. That was the big story that was handed to me, that he had made her who she was and he was going to do the same for me. I thought, ‘Wow, this is not so bad,” and then the next day I made the film. They set me up really well. The first film was done on the drugs. The second one was done with Jamie [Gillis] and John Leslie and they were huge stars. It was on the second movie I was named “Amber Lynn”.

  The late Bobby Hollander directed pornographic films from 1979-1995 and is one of the first pioneers in his field to transition to videotape. It is believed that Hollander, who discovered famed actress Shauna Grant, provided the inspiration for “The Colonel James” character in Boogie Nights (1997) superbly personified by actor Robert Ridgely (who memorably portrayed “The Librarian Cop” in an episode of Seinfeld). Married for a few years to Gloria Leonard, Hollander died of a brain tumor in 2002.

  I used to hang out on Newport Beach all of the time. I always had a tan and I was a very dark-skinned, little surfer girl. I went by the name I had grown up with which was Lynn. All my childhood friends called me “Little Lynny” and they thought this name was definitely not sexy so we started to kick around names on the set. I went from meeting Shauna Grant, and Ginger Lynn, and Jamie Gillis, and John Leslie, and Danielle — a lot of people don’t know who she is now, but she was a big star back then and one of my very first close friends. They had plans for me from the minute I walked through the door. Jamie saw me and said, “This is my girlfriend,” and he and I became a couple. I had a support system and Jamie ran my early career. He made sure I got the same money that Ginger was getting at that time. He knew what Ginger was being paid, and he said, “Amber’s getting the same because she’s worth it,” and that was it. Jamie was really behind all of that and he gave me the support that I needed to say “no” to things. Once I got my foot in, I loved it. It’s not that I wasn’t willing it’s just that it wasn’t my idea. Let’s put it that way.

  The second movie I made was called Centerfold Celebrities 4 in 1984. I think the reason I had met Shauna Grant was because she had made one [or two] earlier. I went to stay in the hotel where they were going to shoot this film and I was to meet Jamie the next day, but John Leslie was at the hotel and he grabbed me coming through the lobby because I was the new actress. We had a little affair in the room that night. I loved John Leslie and I was always very close to him.

  I talked with Bill Margold recently, and he said that people used to do things back then as if it was a handshake. I picked up the phone and called John’s wife immediately after I heard about his death, and offered her my condolences and sent my love. He was an incredibly special human being and absolutely one of my favorite people of all time. You know how they have the “Sexiest Man Alive” on the cover of the cover of People Magazine. I always picture John Leslie’s face on there. He was so sexy, and he was just so masculine, and smooth and classy. He was brilliant and dirty. He was just all of it. Jamie was all of those things in a different way. As friends and buddies, and as a team, they were an era. They were wonderful.

  I’ll never forget the day I set eyes on Jamie. He came into the make-up room where he would always hang out and I was sitting in the chair. Here he was this older, revered actor in the industry and they were making a big deal of him. He had this beautiful curly hair which I loved. To this day men with curly hair is one of my things. He was very elegant and this wonderful talented actor. I was just sold on it all. When I met Jamie Gillis, I just thought he was a nice Jewish boy and he was. He was crazy and sexually deviant, and all of those things that other people have talked about he could absolutely be, but he was also a brilliant man and he was really the love of my life in that respect. I was very young and Jamie knew everything about me. He knew where I’d come from, he knew what had happened. When I got into the industry I didn’t want people to know who I was and where I’d come from because then people would always judge me as the kid from the broken home, or that I’d come out of foster homes. I didn’t want that. I wanted this bright, shiny persona. That’s what the industry gave me the ability to do. I was able to recreate something new and exciting that didn’t have all of this heartbreak and tragedy. That’s why I got into that industry and just took off.

  Centerfold Celebrities 4 (1984), the fourth installment of the series directed by Bobby Hollander is a difficult to find item. The original series contained footage of Hollander casually interviewing young starlets new to the business that had previously done centerfold work. He would often pair them with veteran performers such as Jamie Gillis, Ron Jeremy, and John Leslie for their initial hardcore scenes. An early critic’s review for this title claimed Amber Lynn (billed as Amber Lynn Lane) and John Leslie’s love scene simmers and is very sensuous. Helga Sven, Tantala Ray, Jamie Gillis, Nick Random, R. Bolla, and Sasha Gabor also co-star. Amber also appeared in the fifth installment of the series Centerfold Celebrities 5 (1985) opposite Jamie Gillis. Interested fans of the early-mid-1980s adult stars might want to consider searching Ebay for the titles belonging to this series.

  I met a crazy woman in Centerfold Celebrities 4 named Tantala Ray who was a dominatrix. I saw her do a scene where she tied up a guy and abused him. She strapped on a dildo and fucked him in the ass, and I loved it. I was like, “Ah, this is insane!” That was where Jamie and I made this connection. Jamie ended up highjacking me, and he took me immediately away on the second movie. It wasn’t before the monster in me had already woken up. I had serious problems with drugs and alcohol when I was with Jamie and all through my life and career. It wasn’t always when I was on set and there were periods when I would not do any at all, but it wasn’t until much later in my life when I was able to label it for what it was. A lot of it was my unresolved stuff that I had never faced, plus the fact that I was in complete denial.

  Jamie and I did a lot of sexual things. He took me to the Pussycat Theatre and I would wear these short skirts and high heels, and this was like our couples night out. Most couples go out to the movies on Saturday night; the movies we went were at the Pussycat Theatre and I was dressed like a trollop. After a while, the guys in the theatre would recognize me, know who I was, and know who Jamie was. They would get all turned on just by being in the room with us. He just thought it was the hottest thing. We would go home afterwards and we would have this great sex with each other as boyfriend and girlfriend, committed people to each other. We didn’t have a lot of sex outside of our relationship until the relationship broke up because Jamie had an affair with [performer] Careena Collins behind my back. That was devastating for me. We really had this very all consuming, totally in love thing for years. We lived together. Actually, I woke up this morning and the first words out of my mouth were, “If I did have one thing to do over again, I would have married Jamie.”

  The Lynn Girls

  After Amber got her first tastes of stardom there was no shortage of film appearances throughout the meat of the 1980s as her lengthy filmography reveals. Lynn boasted performances in well over a hundred videos between the years 1984 and 1989 and many were starring or prominent roles. As Amber ignited heat in the loins of her male fan following with her sassy, pouty lips and sinewy, lithe body, she soon came face-to-face with her rival in the adult scene, Ginger Lynn. The Lynn girls shared the limelight as friendly competitors resulting in a delectable smorgasbord for their admirers, particularly when the two were cast in the same film.

  I met Ginger Lynn shortly after the night that I worked on that set with Jamie. He took me home and that was it, we lived together from that minute on. The following week he took me out to Harry Reems’s house, and Ginger was there and
I met her. She said, “Why don’t you come outside?” and she started feeding me tequila on the patio and then she had sex with me. That was the first time I had ever been with a girl. Ginger was like that and I just thought, “Oh my god. She’s so beautiful.” Once again, I thought, “If she can do this and she’s so beautiful, so can I”. She was brand new and she had just gotten back from Hawaii. I think we left there and went up to the Playboy Mansion or something. It was just a crazy time.

  I love Ginger. I fell in love with her the minute I saw her. We were very young and we had a good connection, and she’s an amazing girl. People often talk about our personalities where Ginger is the sweet one and I’m the ball buster and I’m wild and loud, but she’s the one that if you get her mad, you won’t want to get in her way. Whereas I’m the one who will hesitate and won’t say anything until I’m so angry I’ll just explode.

  As is often the case, behind every successful erotic performer is an enterprising figure. Cleveland, Ohio born Reuben Sturman became the biggest distributor of adult magazines by the late 1960s after his meager start as a comic book salesman. During his prime, Sturman allegedly became of the most powerful men in America as an unstoppable profiteer in the business of selling sex. The businessman and organized crime affiliate was convicted of tax evasion in 1989 and sentenced to ten years in prison. An influx of legal woes encroached upon Sturman’s ability to operate and thrive. He was charged with extortion and died in 1997 in a Lexington, Kentucky Federal Penitentiary, but not before staging an escape from jail in Boron, California. He was later apprehended in Anaheim. It is believed Sturman arranged to have several porn stores bombed and people murdered. In the mid-1980s, Amber Lynn and Reuben Sturman developed a professional arrangement.

  I remember Ginger and I used to do the trade shows together, and I worked with Reuben Sturman for Vidco. I was his contract player. He was the big dude, the godfather of the porn business back then. Stevie Hirsch was just starting Vivid, Ginger was contracted to Vivid, and they would put our booths together. Ginger and I were always signing autographs together: “Ginger Lynn and Amber Lynn,” and we’d be side by side. We were at a Trade Show in Chicago one time and we went to go shopping. Ginger wanted to go over to the mall and check things out. I’ll never forget, the elevator door opened and out walked this girl. She was a long legged woman and she said, “Oh, are you so and so?” We were like, “Yeah.”

  She said, “Oh, I’m Porsche Lynn.” Ginger looked at me and she looked at Porsche, and she said, “How dare you call yourself Porsche Lynn?”

  She looked at us and asked, “What is the big idea?” Ginger was just this little tiny thing. We were all promoted by three different people. The thing of it was that from the gate everyone knew that my name was Laura Lynn Allen and Ginger’s was Ginger Lynn Allen. When they met me, it was like “Wow, you’ve got the same name as Ginger!” Ginger wasn’t anybody at that time. She was brand new in the industry. She was not some famous icon. She was just this new girl who had done a couple of films. They said, “Oh, you kind of resemble each other so why don’t you call yourself Amber Lynn?” We never thought it would be a thing. When I got into the adult business, I never in a million years thought that somebody would recognize me on the street and say, “Can I have your autograph?” The thought never even crossed my mind. My idea of the industry was that we were doing these dirty little films and we were making money for the studios, and yes, there was a camera involved, but not that they would be shown somewhere, where people that I would see out in the real world would see them. I imagined the people who would look at those films as little shady guys in raincoats.

  Once I got in, it became this real competitive thing where Ginger was doing movies and I was doing movies; we were doing movies together. She got this big name and then I wanted to be that big. Then I was big and she was big. Then Christy Canyon came in and there was a third arm to the whole star thing. Ginger and I were at a show in Chicago one time and we said, “I want to be picked up in a limo,” and they said, “Okay”. We said, “I want make-up artist Lexie [Alexis Vogel] on all of our movies,” and they said, “Okay”. Then it was “Our movies are going to be catered!” and they said, “Okay”. We literally dictated the treatment on the set. We were able to create the star system and did so just like the rock and rollers. Ginger used to have M&Ms on the set and I wanted peanuts, and she wanted plain and we got things. We were kids and got certain stuff. She always wanted the make-up artist to do us differently. She liked to look very plain and played down and very girl-next-door. I wanted nothing to do with that. I wanted lots of make-up and hairspray and tiny costumes and my push-up bra, and that was it. I had a very rock and roll eighties style and she had a completely different look. That’s why we were able to co-exist.

  I remember Ginger and I worked very closely on The Grafenberg Spot (1985). We both wanted that film to be very good. It was her movie, her vehicle, and they brought me up to be on it. That was one of the ones where she wanted to make sure we were very different.

  The Grafenberg Spot (highlighted in chapter 21) is a well-crafted, good-looking film, written, directed and produced by the Mitchell Brothers. In her first segment, Amber Lynn (with her pixie face and trademark, voluminous “eighties” hair) plays a patient that Annette Haven (in the role of a physician) encourages to orgasm through direct stimulation of the “G” spot while Leslie (Ginger Lynn) looks on. The Lynn girls, unquestionably beautiful here, are especially noticeable because they are featured together. Later, Amber teams up with Harry Reems to provide him with an extremely unrestrained blowjob. In the “outtakes” features, Amber and Reems are clearly having a good time together as they practice for their forthcoming scene. Lynn taunts him to “come all over my tits,” which he does with colossal effort. Notable cast members include Nina Hartley, another brand new blonde acquisition to the fold, in addition to Rick Cassidy, Lili Marlene, and Thor Southern.

  The movie that my fans never fail to mention, as a favorite is a film by Suze Randall called Love Bites (1986) with Peter North, Harry Reems [and Traci Lords]. Back in the day, before they were popular, I was in this MILF scene where a conservatively dressed woman carrying a brief case and wearing a suit, gets on an elevator and is bitten by a love bug. She proceeds to attack two men [James Miles and Rick Savage] in the elevator sexually, and have her way with them. It was way back in the eighties, and it is probably the most popular scene I’ve ever done because through the years people never fail to mention it wherever I go. The role that I played in Trashy Lady (1985) was a very significant one as well. It was a period piece. Those are the films that I think probably stand out the most for me.

  No longer in her freshman year, Amber held her own with veterans Jamie Gillis, John Leslie, Harry Reems, John Holmes, Eric Edwards, Peter North, and Rick Savage (a former ballet dancer before working as an actor and performer). Lynn proved to be a quick study and her ability to personify a character on camera in addition to performing blistering sex scenes, was evidenced by her feature role as the voluptuous, hard-boiled moll Rita in Trashy Lady (1985) co-starring Ginger Lynn, Harry Reems, and Savage. Set during 1920s prohibition, Rita, a gorgeous, tough-talking broad with a penchant for men, money, and mayhem is hired by a bootlegging gangster Dutch (Harry Reems in a great acting turn) to teach his fancy new girlfriend Kitty (Ginger Lynn) how to become a fast, foul-mouthed dame with the same exceptional ability to handle men in the sack as Rita. For their warm-up session, Dutch pays a young newsy Jimmy (Tom Byron) a handsome sum to be a guinea pig so that Rita can school Kitty in the finer points of fellatio and intercourse. Comically, after Rita shows Kitty the ropes, Kitty straddles Jimmy the kid while Rita seats herself next to the bed with one watchful eye on the make-out session. She applies polish to her (already) heavily lacquered fingernails, fixes her white blonde, curly coiffe, and admires herself in the mirror. Kitty turns out to be an A-plus student, and while she prepares for her first rendezvous with Dutch, Rita pays a conjugal visit to her man Louie (Hersche
l Savage) in the slammer for his part in illegal activities. Louie is none too happy to hear that Rita has been making frequent visits to Dutch’s place, but she explains she was only helping Dutch groom his girl. Louie softens and tells Rita how much he’s missed her — and her body. In a fantasy sequence, Rita proves how much she’s missed Louie as she gives him some imaginative head. Louie reciprocates with impressive cunnilingus that leaves her breathless. They consummate the deal, and shortly afterwards, Louie is back on the beat with the boys with Rita continuing to call the shots. Cara Lott, Bunny Bleu, Mark Wallice (as Mark Wallace) and Rick Savage co-star.

  Toxic Twins

  Soon after establishing herself as a rising young star, Amber’s older brother and former boxer/bouncer, Buck Adams, debuted as a performer in 1984 in Body Shop for VCX. Amber and Buck, along with Melissa and (the late) Lisa Melendez are in the minute category of porn siblings to have worked as actors during the tail end of the golden era.

  There is a myth out there that my brother and I hid that we were siblings until we were booked to do a scene together and we had to confess. That is not true. The truth is that my brother came to the set and I introduced him to John Holmes as my brother. I don’t think I did say anything in the very beginning, but it wasn’t something that we really hid from people. Actually, I don’t think I told John on the set of Body Shop (1984) he was my brother, but they didn’t book me a scene to do with my brother. There was never any reference to that, but people say it all over the place. I definitely introduced him to John, and later, my brother had his own career. When my brother came into the industry there was a period when we were in involved together, but I went off and started dancing and he stayed and blazed his own trail. He had his own success. He was his own person, and he was incredibly talented in his own right. In fact, my brother taught me a lot about directing. He was always very reluctant for us to stand together because there was always a competitive shadow for both of us. We used to go everywhere together. Actually [Aerosmith front man] Stephen Tyler used to wear a shirt that said, “Toxic Twins,” that referred to him and [guitarist] Joe Perry. I used to have those shirts and that was my brother and me. We were like that. We loved, and adored, and respected each other and we were fiercely competitive rivals at the same time.