by Legs McNeil
But it stuck in my mind, and Jim and I thought of it, and we said this would make a good script. So we got it, and we adapted it.
MARILYN CHAMBERS: I walked in, and there are all these people filling out these green forms. On the questionnaire it got to the point where they asked me if I wanted a “balling or non-balling role.”
I didn’t understand what they meant. I thought it was a misspelling for “bowling.” I wasn’t a very good bowler.
Then I’m thinking, “Wait a minute—they mean fucking? Oh, no. Absolutely not. I may be naughty, but I’m not that naughty.”
I got up and started to leave—the building was this big warehouse-stage kind of thing, with a long stairway going up to some offices on top, and that’s where Art and Jim Mitchell were standing. I had no idea who they were, but they were looking down at me.
ARTIE MITCHELL: I called to her, “Hey! You! By the door! Come on up here…. Where the hell are you going? What’s the matter? At least come up, and talk to us? You don’t have to take off your clothes to talk to us…”
MARILYN CHAMBERS: Art had on this sweater vest and button-down shirt, and nobody in California wore those clothes. But I’m from the East Coast, so I was used to that preppy shit. It was totally Antioch! I felt comfortable with them. They were very friendly, very cool, very San Francisco, and very hip.
JIM MITCHELL: I told her, “You just happen to be who we’re looking for. Marilyn, you’re the girl next door. You’re the face every guy dreams of shoving his cock into. But he never does because he can’t find you! You’re fresh air and apple pie.”
ARTIE MITCHELL: I said, “Listen, you’re classy, and this is going to be one classy film. We’re putting everything we have into it. Let us just explain the concept, tell you the story. The whole thing is a fantasy.”
MARILYN CHAMBERS: I had done a film called Together with Sean Cunningham—it was supposed to be a documentary—and I was topless in that, and it didn’t bother me.
But actual sex? The only kind of sex I’d seen in movies were “smokers”—what they used to call stag films—the kind with the guys wearing black socks and sunglasses. Not very sexy.
JIM MITCHELL: I said, “We’ve been pretty successful making hard-core films. This film here is our shot at breaking through to a mainstream audience. So it’s not like we’re asking you to star in a fuck film. This is going to be a real movie about real sex.”
MARILYN CHAMBERS: I didn’t think I’d be able to fuck on camera; I’d thought I’d break out into a rash or go crazy. But I liked their approach. They didn’t say, “Well, honey, you gotta screw me first.” It was, “Here, smoke a joint,” you know?
ARTIE MITCHELL: That just isn’t part of the test. That’s more like what goes down in Hollywood. Making fuck movies is different somehow; there’s no casting couch—it’s almost too obvious a thing to do.
MARILYN CHAMBERS: There was no script. There was a story, about a woman who’s kidnapped and taken to this club. They showed me these pieces of yellowed paper that were worn from being passed around during the war. I guess one guy wrote his fantasy down, then passed it on to the next guy. That’s how Behind the Green Door came to be.
And I thought, “God, this might be cool. Maybe I can use it as a stepping stone to legitimate movies.”
ARTIE MITCHELL: Behind the Green Door was the first film we’d put real money into and took more time with to get up to the point where it was even in a different class.
We’d taken one month to make one previous feature, but we were learning about cinematography at that point, not thinking we were immediately going to make a masterpiece. We had to learn the skills.
See, there was no precedent to go by, except the old black-and-white stag films. That’s probably why so many of the early porn films looked like that. People didn’t know what to do, you know? “Okay, we’re going to make an erotic movie—uh, what do we do?”
MARILYN CHAMBERS: Nobody was doing full-length features. So I said to the Mitchell brothers, “You know, if I do this, I want this amount of money, and I want a percentage of the film.”
They said, “Don’t call us; we’ll call you.”
I said, “Okay, fine.” Phew! So I went home—and then I got a call, like, an hour later. The Mitchell brothers said, “Okay, we’ve got the contracts ready. We’ll be right over.”
They called my bluff, so I had to do it, ha, ha, ha.
Size Matters
LOS ANGELES
1969–1973
AL GOLDSTEIN: John Holmes was the biggest cock in the business. He always had mythic stature to me. He was almost in the world of Greek Gods. He walked among us with that massive tool, banging on the floor like some huge dinosaur.
So when I met him, I figured I’d meet a guy who had paradise regained, who had everything. Instead I met a sociopath and a liar. In effect, every manifestation of this man’s life was a lie, a distortion, duplicity, a quagmire of deceit.
The one truth was he had a big dick.
SHARON HOLMES (JOHN HOLMES’S FIRST WIFE): I came home from work one evening and found John measuring himself in the bathroom. This was about three or four years after we’d been married.
I thought this was a little strange but okay. So I started dinner, and John came in and said, “I think I’ve found what I want to do.”
That’s when he said, “I want to do porno.”
I said, “Movies?”
He said, “Wherever it will take me.”
I was appalled. I’m sorry; I was appalled. It didn’t sound like something one would want to make one’s life’s work. But what do you say?
BILL AMERSON (PORN PRODUCER/JOHN HOLMES’S BUSINESS PARTNER): I first met John in 1969 while casting for some still-photo porn magazine stuff at the Crossroads of the World on Sunset Boulevard.
We had an open casting call. It was toward the end of the day and in walked this really skinny kid with an Afro haircut. He didn’t look like the type we could use.
My partner said, “Have him go in the back room, take off his clothes, take a Poloroid, and then say, ‘Thank you very much’—and that’s the end of that.”
So we went into the back room.
John undressed.
He turned around. I looked at it and said, “You’re going to be a star!”
SHARON HOLMES: John out and out told me, “This is probably my only shot at being famous for something. I really want to do this.”
I said, “Are you asking for permission?”
John said, “No, I’m going to do this.”
It took me a while to react because I didn’t believe I was hearing this. I told him I wasn’t particularly happy about it because it was one step up from, or one step below, prostitution. So I thought, “Maybe this is a passing fantasy—who knows…”
BOB CHINN (PORN DIRECTOR): I’d just come out of UCLA film school and started making porn films for a budget of about seven hundred and fifty dollars. One day this scruffy, bushy-haired guy came up to the office looking for a job as a grip or a gaffer. He had this big Afro-looking hairdo.
I told him, “We don’t have any openings for grips or gaffers.”
Then he said, “Well, I’m really an actor. My name is John Holmes.”
That sort of rang a bell because one of the actresses I knew had mentioned this guy—told me about his attributes. So I said, “Okay, so you’re John Holmes. What have you done? Show me your credentials.”
And then he showed me his credentials.
BILL AMERSON: It was thirteen-and-a-half inches long. I know because John measured it many times for many people who didn’t believe him. And they’d ask him how thick it was, and he’d say, “Grab my wrist.”
But I didn’t think he would stay in the porn business very long because he was very nervous. He was an awkward kid. He was like a fish out of water. He just didn’t seem to fit.
SHARON HOLMES: When we were first married, John was very quiet and not very sophisticated—he was a country boy. And believe it or not, he wasn’t c
omfortable in large groups. It was hard to get him to agree to go to a Christmas party. I think he was very aware of the fact that he was not as educated as he wished he could be. And I think that made him self-conscious around my nursing school friends.
So even though I was only a year older than he was, as far as education went, I was ten years older because John never really went beyond the ninth grade. He was very, very possessive of me and pretty dependent on me to pay the bills and that sort of thing. I mean, I didn’t realize until after we had been married a year that he had never filed a tax return.
BOB CHINN: After he showed us his credentials, my partner and I sat down and said, “We can make a film with this guy.”
My partner said, “God, what a wad that guy has.”
I said, “Let’s call him ‘Johnny Wadd,’ make it a private detective thing.”
We wrote the first script on the back of an envelope and shot it two days later. I hired John Holmes to play Johnny Wadd at the unheard of price of seventy-five dollars a day; at the time we were paying actors only fifty.
SHARON HOLMES: John had always told me, “Somehow in my life, I’m going to be a millionaire. I am not going to be the failure my father was and my mother is.” He really felt they had nothing to show for all the years they had lived on the planet. That’s why he decided to go into porno—he thought it was his instant ticket to fame and fortune. I was speechless.
John was very immature when we got married. I first met him in 1964 when he was involved with a fellow nursing student friend of mine, and they came over to have dinner. When he broke up with her about two months later, John started bringing me flowers and asking me to go out with him.
John was very, very sweet. He always had an arm around me, we were always holding hands, and things just gradually evolved into a real tight relationship. And we were married five months later.
BOB CHINN: New York was our biggest market, and within two weeks of us sending the film out, our distributor in New York called and said they wanted more films with Johnny Wadd.
Then I called John, hired him, and we shot Flesh of the Lotus. It took one day to shoot the film, we developed it the same night, and then we cut the original negative. It was out on the market within a few days. Within a week after it was shot, it was playing the theaters.
BILL AMERSON: At first John didn’t really like the name Johnny Wadd, but it went over big, and John became a star behind that name. We’d run into people, and they’d call out, “Hey, Johnny Wadd!”
I’m not sure why people were so fascinated by the size of his penis. I just know they were. And it was a great marketing tool, if you will.
SHARON HOLMES: It wasn’t until our wedding night that I found out about his large appendage. Mmm-hmm. He hadn’t warned me about it. And I was probably thinking, “Oh dear,” because I think I was the last virgin left—certainly in California.
But it was no big deal for me because John was a great lover. Very, very thoughtful and very, very gentle. He wasn’t a maniac. Not at all.
BILL AMERSON: The Johnny Wadd series was the start of the star system in the adult film industry. It became famous throughout the world.
SHARON HOLMES: At first, I think John was probably a bit embarrassed by his size because he knew he was different, but I don’t think he knew just how different. I can’t imagine why not because he was in the service, he was familiar with whorehouses in Europe, and had sex with married women. He had a lot of sexual experience. But I don’t think John realized how terribly unique he was until he got into porno.
AL GOLDSTEIN: I was always fascinated with John Holmes because he had everything I didn’t have. He was hung like a horse; I’m hung like a squirrel. He had what all the guys dream about. We’re all size queens. We want to have that big cock.
I’m not gay, but I thought one day I’d love to suck that cock. Feel that power. Transcend my limit in size and swallow his virility in the same way some African tribes cannibalize their enemy. I could see blowing him and swallowing his sperm—and being better for it.
BOB VOSSE (PORN PRODUCER): I’ll give John credit; he was the easiest to work with from the girl’s point of view because he was extremely gentle. He was nice to the girl, he gave her presents—that he probably stole the day before—but she would love him for it. I never had one girl complain or refuse to work with him again.
In fact most of them asked, “Can I work with John Holmes again?”
ANNETTE HAVEN (PORN STAR): I ended up doing my first film with John Holmes, but he wasn’t a name to me. He was just the star of the film or really his dick was. That’s basically what sold John.
But I was impressed with him because he had the wit and the extremely good mind to set up the arrangements so that Lesllie Bovee and I were sharing a bedroom that adjoined his suite.
So I ended up exploring John’s little suite area, and it was really interesting. His entire bathroom was one big line of vitamin bottles—about forty-five bottles—because he was into health food. And then he showed Lesllie and I our room, and then gave me some really excellent head. Got me off, too.
I’m a jawbreaker, a serious jawbreaker, particularly at that time. You give me head for three or four hours, so what? But John got me off in fifteen or twenty minutes.
BOB VOSSE: Some of the girls John would work with would fall in love with him.
I’d tell John, “Do you remember that cute little girl you worked with on that film?”
He’d say, “I didn’t like her.”
I’d say, “But she keeps calling; she wants to see you.”
He’d say, “No, I don’t want to see her.”
He really had no interest in them. After one time, that was it. Except if he was fresh, and he’d slept the night before, then he would do a good job. Sometimes he would do two groups in a day.
ANNETTE HAVEN: After John got me off, he didn’t want to fuck me, which was even better. He went and fucked Lesllie Bovee, which was perfect. So John made a very big hit with me.
And when he got on the set, he did his thing, didn’t try to make a romance out of it. He was a professional. Got it up, got it off, and got the hell out of your hair.
BOB VOSSE: John wouldn’t go to sleep and wake up fresh and ready to work. Instead he’d pick up one of the little girls he hadn’t worked with yet—or maybe it was the girl he was going to work with the next day or some girl who was scheduled to work with some other guy—and talk them into coming up to his room that night. Of course he’d sleep with them, then they’d go to the set to shoot, and he’d have no interest in them, didn’t want to work with them.
So that was part of my job—find enough girls to feed the monster.
BUNNY BLEU (PORN STAR): John and I went on a promotional tour in Texas signing autographs in adult bookstores, and it was really wild—because women would line up around the block. They would actually piss their pants they were so excited to meet him.
One lady actually went home, changed, cleaned up, came back, and said, “I want another autograph.” That takes a lot of balls. I don’t think after peeing in my pants from meeting somebody, I would come back and see them again.
Ebony and Ivory Snow
SAN FRANCISCO
1973
JOHNNY KEYES (PORN STAR): I was in San Francisco, and a bunch of kids said, “Hey, listen, they have an audition for this movie, right? Let’s go check it out.”
So we go down—and it was for Behind the Green Door. I mean, I was in a nude scene in Hair, but the Mitchell brothers asked, like, “Would you do X-rated?”
I said, “Ah, man. Fuck this. I don’t do no X-rated movie shit. I’m in theater. I’m a thespian, you know?”
But the Mitchell brothers had seen me in Hair. They called me back and said, “Listen, man, you should come play this part. There’s gonna be a lot of money, and you’re gonna be on a trapeze, and this chick’s gonna suck your dick…”
MARILYN CHAMBERS: I was still pretty nervous. The black-and-white sex thing�
�I knew this was a very big taboo, as it still is in our country. And I thought, “Now my father’s really going to kill me!” Ha, ha, ha!
JOHNNY KEYES: I couldn’t do the part of the guy on the trapeze—I think I missed the date—so Jim and Artie said, “Well, you’re gonna be the guy behind the green door, and you’re gonna make love to this girl, Marilyn Chambers.”
And then they were like, “Listen here. You take her out, and get to know her.”
So I took her to a restaurant called the Triton right on the water in Sausalito. Then I took her home, and we fucked for a couple of days. She was, just—well, she was impressed.
MARILYN CHAMBERS: When I saw Johnny Keyes’s thing, I went, “Oh, shit! Oh my God! I’m not sure if I can get this inside of me.”
JOHNNY KEYES: In those days it was taboo for black men to fuck white women, but I had been fucking white women for years. When I was playing in a band in Waikiki, they would come in from all over the world…. I was young. I was a real handsome dude, too. That didn’t hurt.
MARILYN CHAMBERS: The first day, we had a couple beers and a joint or something to loosen up. I really didn’t want to know too much about what was going to happen. Because in the movie I am supposedly kidnapped, and I wanted it to happen like the real thing.
It was really fun—they blindfolded me, put a gag in my mouth, and threw me in this car. We did it at night, and when we got somewhere, they shoved me through this door. And I didn’t know where I was going. For real.
It was really cool. It was interesting to be able to just go with it because it was safe, but it was still scary. It was a great fantasy.