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

by Nelson, Jill C.

  When Amber introduced Buck Adams to John Holmes on the set of Body Shop in 1984, Holmes was employed as a line producer and actor for VCX. Body Shop (directed by Bill Amerson under the name Bill Williams) takes place in a mechanic’s garage where the girls, headed up by Madame Jackie (Amber Lynn) along with her boyfriend Russ (R. Bolla), give a new definition to a “lube and oil” job. As the joint proprietor of the girls’ outcall service centre, Jackie/Amber is decked out in white short-shorts, stiletto boots, and a tiny red shirt. She joins in on sexually ambitious outings with R. Bolla and Scott Irish while big brother Buck, in his first shot as a porno performer, engages in a three-way with Tracy Duzit and Pamela Jennings on the hood of an automobile. Adams actually burned his leg on the carburetor during his sex scene because he didn’t think it would be prudent to stop the action midway in his first time out. The incident left a permanent scar.

  Amber and Holmes worked together in more than a few films beginning in the 1985 release Rubdown where they had hot sex in a Jacuzzi, another leading role for Amber. Lynn portrayed one of three girlfriends (along with Bunny Bleu and Kimberly Carson) that decide to open their own escort service after one of the girls (Carson) is sexually harassed by their boss (Harry Reems). Overall, Rubdown (directed by Bill Amerson under the pseudonym Bill Williams) is not particularly memorable, but some of the sex scenes are undeniably torrid.

  Lynn, Holmes, and young Tom Byron made for a dynamic trio in The Adventures of Dickman & Throbbin,’ the 1986 parody of the 1960s Batman TV series. In the best scene of the spoof, Amber, playing the naïve, teenage starlet Brooke, is sexed-up by the pair of “sexorcists,” Dickman and Throbbin’ (magically appearing in a cloud of dust) in her bedroom. Dickman (Holmes) delivers a funny tongue-in-cheek monologue about Brooke’s pussy while Throbbin’ (Byron) punctuates his dissertation with humorous lines such as “Holy Hemorrhoids, Dickman!” or “Holy douche bag, Dickman! I think I’m going to throw up!” It’s a bit of a stretch to imagine Amber Lynn in the role of a wide-eyed virgin, but the video scores points for ingenuity and flavor. Keli Richards, Pat Manning, Joanna Storm, Mark Wallice, Peter North, and Steve Powers co-star.

  John always said to me, “You’re too pretty and you’re too big boobed.” He liked much more natural looking girls. I was still brand new when I first worked with him and I remember he could not get a full erection. Everybody was doing drugs back then. It was the eighties and it was part of the deal. It was the porn industry and that was part of the make-up of the industry.

  Love, Stardom, and other Drugs

  My mentor was probably Jamie. Jamie taught me everything. Jamie taught me how to fend for myself in the world for the first time. Here, I had lost my mother and my father died when I was eleven. I had my brother, but in the early part of my career, I was hiding my career from my family so Jamie is the one who helped me. He was sort of like the John Derrick to Bo — that’s what Jamie and I were like.

  Sexuality is very empowering. The funny part about it is that I’m completely the opposite in my personal life and the way I run my relationships. They don’t match. I often will say, “What would Amber do in this situation?” I’ve come to that because there is no problem for me in that respect. She would always do what’s right for her. She’d have no problem. With me, I tend to second guess myself a little more so there is a difference in the personalities. When you’re an actor, you break down a character. They try to decide what they look like, what they dress like, and who they are. They bring life to the role. Jamie was a Shakespearean actor and was very brilliant and highly trained. Early in my career and in my experience through Jamie, I decided to create the persona under the same idea. For me “Amber Lynn” was everything that Laura always wanted to be. All of the things that I really wasn’t capable of this persona could be. Often times, I acted in ways when I was doing a role that wouldn’t be comfortable to me as Laura. Me as “Amber Lynn” is a very assertive personality and a ball buster. People will say, “She’s nothing like that in real life. She’s much more of a romantic and sultry.” I am a different person. I’m sure Tom Cruise isn’t blowing up buildings in his real life either.

  Amber continued to turn heads and provided inspiration for countless male fantasies with her expressive vocal exuberance in the midst of many of her starring roles opposite some of the hottest men and women in the X-rated business.

  At the time I began, we were just crossing into the video age. I’ll never forget the first time somebody recognized me. I was coming out of the Pussycat theatre with Jamie, and I was wearing a pair of white hot pants and white pumps and they had zippers on the sides. They were completely short. We were walking across the street on Western Avenue and a cop sped up and slammed on his breaks, and stopped right in front of us. He turned into the driveway and two cops got out of the car and said to Jamie, “You get over here and put your hands on the hood of the car.”

  I looked at them and I said, “Why?”

  They said, “Don’t ask any questions. Just get your hands on the hood of the car.”

  Jamie said, “Officers, officers, please. What is going on?” They thought I was a prostitute.

  Jamie said, “That’s not a prostitute. Look!” He pointed across the street at the Pussycat theatre and right in front of the theatre was a giant poster of me that was from the movie I had just done called If My Mother Only Knew (1986). I had on the exact white hot pants that I was wearing that day, and I had gum in my mouth and I had this little hairdo. They looked at the poster and they looked at me and they looked at Jamie, and they let go of me. They’d had my hands behind my back because they were handcuffing me. They let go and they said, “Oh. That is you.”

  They were in complete shock and Jamie said, “Guys, guys, guys. Calm yourselves down. She’s not a prostitute she’s an adult film actress.” That was so amazing because at that moment I was shaking it off and then I thought, “Yeah, I’m an actress.” They recognized Jamie right away. When I was out with Jamie people knew who he was. Jamie was incredibly famous. He and I would go to restaurants in small areas and people would know Jamie immediately. He had this deep voice and he would clear his throat before he would ever say anything. If he wanted you to listen to him, he would clear his throat and he would look at you so that you would go, “Oh,” and then he would say what he had to say, but he would always clear his throat first.

  Jamie hated drugs. He loved to drink wine and he loved to smoke those certain cigarettes and have his coffee. One of the reasons Jamie said he hated drugs is because he watched drugs destroy me, and our relationship. He saw that I got into the industry because I got high on freebase and freebase was the kind of drug that would completely unleash your inhibitions. I was on the minute I got high and Bobby Hollander would give tons of it out on his sets. Jamie knew that drugs destroyed our relationship in the end. I went away on a movie set and went to work for Svetlana on a film called Miami Spice (1986), and once again, we’re in Miami and somebody broke out a big bag of whatever. I would get up in the morning with all good intentions. I would have told him that I had sworn off drugs forever and that I was never going to do it again. There were months when I would do absolutely nothing and we would go back to a blissful life, as blissful as it could be because we had a very normal conventional relationship with a bond and an agreement, and an understanding around it.

  You will find this with most people in the industry in spite of the lifestyle. The commitment to the union in the relationship is always very deep and very true with any of us. If you look at me and Jamie or John Stagliano and Karen or Nina Hartley and Ira — people have these very stable commitments where you can’t get between it. It’s a very strong bond.

  When I was still living with Jamie they had called me to go to Europe to work in a bunch of films and the first place I went was Paris. I wound up jumping on a plane with Sharon Mitchell and I had the time of my life. Mitch and I went to Paris during the craziest time of my career, and we made boatloads of money and we came back pennile
ss. We just partied and I hooked up with this Parisian biker gang and made one of them my boyfriend. I wound up having to call Jamie. I’d spent all of the money and ended up getting into a lot of trouble, and filled up two shopping carts with our belongings and left the hotel. I had to call Jamie and I had to say, “I need you to get me a ticket home,” and he did. I had lost my passport and he got me a ticket home. I remember getting off the plane and he was waiting for me in the airport because he was my rock. I opened my hand and all I had was a handful of coins. I handed him the coins saying, “Here you go. This is my purse.” The idea was that I was going to go to Europe and make all of this money and we were going to buy a house, and get settled. I was there for four months and spent the money aimlessly, and partied and it was just insane. This is what the industry does. It feeds off of that, and especially if you have an addictive personality. Jamie and I ended up breaking up, and as I mentioned, he had an affair with Careena Collins that I never forgave him for until years and years later. He said it was my partying, that destroyed the relationship. I said it was his affair. That was it.

  The Amber Lynn Show

  After I left the relationship with Jamie because he had been such a stabilizing force, I spun way out. I went out and I decided that I was going to get out of the industry and get clean, the year that I moved to Canada. A club owner came down and gave me a call, and said there was another club owner that wanted to meet Ginger and me. They wanted us to go to Canada and dance. I had never danced in my life. I didn’t know how to dance. I was a porn star not a dancer. They said, “That’s okay, all he wants you to do is appear at the club.”

  I said, “Maybe that would be fun.” We went up and then Ginger called me literally, the night before we were to board the plane. She was going into a legitimate acting career at the time which was around the same time she had started to become involved with Charlie Sheen. She said, “I know that I promised to do this thing with you, but my manager thinks it’s a bad idea and I’m going to take this career for all it’s worth. You’re going to see me get an Oscar one day.”

  I said, “You’ve got to be kidding. They don’t give girls like us Oscars, Ginger. What are you thinking?” The man who I had danced for in Canada had success with my show. Ginger didn’t show up, and he flew up Tracey Adams and she came and did the show with me. It was a huge success and we made tons of money and later on down the road, Ginger wound up coming up and dancing but not for a long time. Tracey and Roberto Rovella [the club owner], who was my boyfriend started bringing in other acts. He brought in Marilyn Chambers and Seka, and he brought in Barbara Dare and down the road, I think, Christy Canyon. I know Porsche Lynn was also there and Danielle and lots of people would start dancing. They would make a lot of money and they would go home happy. I started going from club to club to club in Canada because Canada had already been featuring specific dancers long before I ever got to it. In Canada, they had feature dancers that would come in and they would put on these wild and elaborate shows, but they didn’t really have names other than for the contest they’d win by putting on these shows. They’d do dance shows like Miss Nude Canada and they’d win these titles and travel the clubs and do elaborate shows with fire and costumes. When I came in [Roberto’s] idea was that he was going to use porn stars where everybody would have an idea who the porn stars were. He brought me into the club and had the dancers show me how to dance because I didn’t know how at first. He put me in a costume and put me up on a stage, and advertised it and it was gangbusters.

  At the time when I met Roberto, I was living in Jamie’s house. I went up to Canada and I danced, and then I started a relationship with Roberto and we lived together. He had helped me to start my dancing career. We did it together. He owned the club and I was the feature entertainer. We were actually engaged to be married and I had a ring on my finger. It was a beautiful diamond ring. We were going to do all kind of things together. Then we broke up and he went off with some other dancer, and I moved back to Los Angeles. It was an extremely devastating break up for me. Then I just went on the road. I had a friend I had met in the industry and she went out on the road with me as my tour manager. Together, we built “The Amber Lynn Show” which was the biggest and highest grossing show up until that time ever known in the adult entertainment industry. It was huge and it was successful everywhere I went. That friend actually wound up being involved in a very devastating situation that happened to me later on where I was robbed. Some people that were in the industry did it. She was part of the situation. It was another actor in the industry, and it was something that happened that was completely betraying. Drugs, greed, or money was probably the motivators. There are a lot of people out there who prey on the girls because the girls are making all of this money and often are partying and unclear — foggy or unstable — whatever is going on and they wind up in precarious situations. I had my wits about me, but we would be partying at least a couple of nights a week because that was our job to party when we were in the clubs. Patrons are buying you drinks — it doesn’t have to be drugs — they are buying you drinks and your job is to entertain. After the shows, everybody is drinking and it is part of the festivity. It doesn’t have to be outlandish. It’s just the course of the day, and at the end of it, it’s a grueling schedule.

  I was dancing for between four to eight hundred people in a show on weekends. One time I danced in New York City and I broke all records. There were twelve hundred people to see my show. It was at Goldfinger and there was a line around the building to get in. News cameras came and they asked people if they were protesting the strip club and they said, “No, we’re waiting in line to see Amber Lynn”. It was on the news.

  I danced in Toronto many times. I would go up there and I danced for the House of Lancaster, and Spiro, and people thought I was coming in from the States, but the truth was I came up from Niagara Falls. It was a great deal and it got me out of the business. I was no longer making films but I was living off of the name I had already created in films. I was keeping it alive by traveling, and touring and doing the dancing. It was a brilliant transition.

  I was dancing in Canada when I found out about John Holmes being sick because he called me. He never told me that he was HIV when we worked in the Italian movies together: Carne bollente [aka The Rise of the Roman Empress, 1987] and The Devil in Mr. Holmes (1987) in the fall of 1986. He never told me that, but he called me up and asked us to send him money and we sent him money. He said, “I’m broke and I’m destitute and I don’t have any money, and I’m sick and I need help.” I remember going up into the office and talking to him and saying “I’m really sorry” and everything and he never said to me “I had HIV when I worked in a movie that you were in and I’m sorry.” He might have even told me that he had AIDS, but he didn’t tell me that he had exposed me to it. I had worked with him, but he didn’t tell me he’d had it on the set. In fact, the person that told me that he had it during the time that we went to Europe was my brother. My brother had Bill Amerson call me. Bill Amerson was the guy that was behind him. I had left the industry and the industry was not testing, and then all of a sudden, there were all of these rumors going around. I was up in Canada and my brother had Bill Amerson call me and say, “You need to get tested because you worked with John and John was HIV positive.” This was after John died. He literally waited until after John died to tell me. He waited to tell everybody. I got tested and I was like “Wow”. I wasn’t actually exposed to him in that respect. You’d have to have some exposure to their semen. I remember when I was working on the set with him, at one point, he actually pushed me away from him and I took it as a slight.

  In a fortunate twist of fate, all of the women who worked with Holmes in the two Italian films tested negative for HIV, including Tracey Adams and the former Italian pornographic actor, model, singer, and elected member of the Italian Parliament, Ilona Staller (aka Cicciolina).

  Later on, Jamie and I almost got back together. At the time, I was engrossed in trav
eling on the road and dancing, but Jamie came back to me and said, “I want us to get back together and I want us to do this again.” I was making money hand over fist. I was literally carrying my money off of stages in trash bags. I was so into working and involved in the whole grind of being a star and out there touring that I was not focused or interested at that time in our relationship.

  We talked about that recently when Henri Pachard was dying. Jamie said, “I wanted to come back to you and I wanted us to get together and I wanted us to get married. I would have given you anything you wanted.” I wanted to get married and I wanted to have a baby. I wanted a normal life and I couldn’t get that settled, I just couldn’t.