The Other Hollywood

by Legs McNeil

  LINDA LOVELACE: The police take me out to where the living room area was, and there’s David on the floor, and there’s thirteen undercover cops with. 357 Magnums pointed at him.

  I’m like, “Oh, shit. What’s going on here?”

  So we get booked. I don’t remember being fingerprinted. I had this sable coat with a fox collar, you know? And this black chick in the holding cell was going, “Oh, baby, wait till I get to you! Oh, look at that coat. What’s underneath it?”

  I had been through a lot with Chuck, but I’m like, “Oh shit, I ain’t ready for this,” you know?

  MARILYN CHAMBERS: Chuck was getting divorced. I was still married, but that was going down the tubes because my husband was very jealous. And I said to my husband, “Well, why don’t you come down to Los Angeles and meet Chuck?” Naive Marilyn, not realizing what Chuck was doing—he was trying to procure me so I could be the next sex symbol.

  LINDA LOVELACE: Thank God the cops kept me outta the holding cell. Eventually Elvis Presley sent his man, Joe, down to bail me out.

  Then we went over to Liza Minnelli’s suite, and Marvin Hamlisch was playing on the piano, doing songs like, “I just got outta jail!”

  Liza and Marvin were just trying to cheer us up.

  I wanted to ask Liza so many things about Judy Garland, her mother, but I was like, “I can’t do that.”

  CHUCK TRAYNOR: Marilyn was married at the time, but that didn’t last too long because I told her, “I appreciate the fact that you’re married, but there really ain’t no room in your life for a husband.”

  I asked, “What are we gonna do with this guy?”

  Marilyn said, “You’re right. I don’t even know why I married him.”

  He was a hippie guy that walked up and down the pier in San Francisco playing his bagpipes—that’s how he made his money. I thought he really was just gonna be a hassle. So I said, “The best thing we can do is fix him up.”

  I was dating Jayne Mansfield’s daughter then—Jayne Marie—and I think that’s who I fixed him up with.

  MARILYN CHAMBERS: When my husband came down to Los Angeles, I told him it was over. I tried to fix him up with this friend of Chuck’s, but he didn’t really go for it. So the last time I saw my husband he was driving away—in my car—with my dog looking out the back window.

  Then he called me up and broke every piece of china that I had over the phone, screaming, “I fucking hate you!”

  He was really pissed. He was really upset. I never heard from him or the dog again.

  CHUCK TRAYNOR: Did I want to take David Winters out? Oh, yeah, I would’ve, in a hot second. I would never have gone behind anybody’s back and tried to steal Linda away.

  I hate thieves. I’d much rather have you come in with a gun and beat the shit out of me, than sneak in my room when I ain’t there and rob me. That makes me violently mad. I don’t like to get violently mad, but I do, and when I do, I’m gonna do somethin’ about it.

  So Butchie Peraino sent Vinnie out to Vegas. I figured Linda was very deeply indebted to me. I didn’t really need Vinnie for muscle or anything; I needed him because I wanted somebody from New York that was good.

  So Vinnie went up to David Winters’s house and talked to him. Vinnie went in with a black rose, and he came out without it, so I’m assuming he gave it to David Winters. But David was too stupid to understand what was goin’ on.

  LINDA LOVELACE: In the beginning David would read poetry, and if he was leaving early in the morning, there’d be a rose on my pillow. I was supposed to do another film with him. Linda Lovelace for President, which didn’t have any hard-core sex in it. So I did it.

  Then, at one point, I was renting a Bentley, and David went out and bought another car. My accountant just gave him, like, eleven grand without even asking me or saying anything to me, you know?

  Then I came across some paperwork where David was paid like $120,000, and he didn’t do shit. I was supporting David on my credit cards.

  CHUCK TRAYNOR: At the same time I was hooking up with Marilyn, Linda marched into divorce court smoking a cigarette because I always hated girls that smoked. Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, and the judge said, “Well, that’s the end of that.”

  TIME, MARCH 4, 1974: MILESTONES: DIVORCED: “Linda Lovelace, 22, exuberant blue-movie star of Deep Throat whose name quickly became a courtroom, if not a household word; and Charles Traynor, 35, her former business manager who now handles Lovelace’s No. 1 competitor, Ivory Snow girl Marilyn Chambers (Behind the Green Door); after three years of marriage, no children; in Santa Monica, Calif. Lovelace, who earned $175 a day for her Throat role, has recently been negotiating contracts on the order of about $35,000 a week as a nightclub performer. Her most recent appearance in Las Vegas may lead to a six-year command performance: She was arraigned there on a drug possession charge.”

  MARILYN CHAMBERS: My play ran for fifty-two weeks, the longest-running play in Las Vegas. I got the key to the city. Two shows a night, six nights a week. It was very hard work. I was exhausted.

  But when Sammy Davis Jr. would be in town, Chuck and I would go over to his suite and party all night. I had always wanted to do something with Sammy Davis Jr., and when he hosted the Tonight Show he was going to have me on as a guest. But the Tonight Show wasn’t ready for me.

  The pornography thing had a bad connotation, and now I was seeing the consequences. I thought it was going to be a stepping stone to bigger and better things. I thought it was going to get me in the public eye, and then I’d be taken seriously as an actress.

  That never happened. Instead it was: “You’re nothing but a slut, basically, who has sex on screen.”

  I was crushed because that’s not how I saw myself, and that’s not how I saw the films. But it was also kind of hypocritical because everybody wanted to know me and meet me.

  CHUCK TRAYNOR: On Marilyn’s twenty-first birthday I got her twenty-one guys to screw. I knew a lady that owned an answering service, and her son—he was about, shit, eighteen or nineteen years old—was a big fan of Marilyn’s.

  So he organized it, and that’s how Marilyn spent her twenty-first birthday—getting screwed by twenty-one guys. The year before, on her twentieth birthday, Sammy Davis Jr. took us out to dinner. Sinatra was there, too.

  When we got married in 1974, Sammy Davis Jr. was our best man. It was a fun wedding, a fun time for everybody involved. And how many people have Sammy Davis Jr.’s name on their marriage license?

  Marilyn and I loved each other, and I was always very protective of her.

  LINDA LOVELACE: I told David I didn’t want to see him anymore after that. He flew to Los Angeles, and then he flew back and beat me up. He beat me up in Kansas City—and it was in front of witnesses, too. I was being dragged by my hair down a hallway in this hotel room. People were standing there, and I was screaming for help and nobody did anything.

  It really bothered me—you know, like when they were making Deep Throat and I was being beaten in the other room? So that kind of ended our relationship. He was the last person in the world I expected to do that to me. But I said, “That’s it.”

  David Winters may be living off the royalties from Linda Lovelace for President—which I never received.

  The Devil in Miss Steinberg

  LOS ANGELES/ARIZONA

  1973–1974

  FRED LINCOLN: Gerry Damiano was a funny guy. I don’t think he even liked doing porn. But I’ll say this for Gerry, he came up with some incredible scripts. He was really talented. I mean, he did The Devil in Miss Jones right after Deep Throat. And I still think The Devil in Miss Jones is probably one of the top three pictures our business ever made.

  HARRY REEMS: After Gerry dashed off something over a weekend, he asked me to read the completed manuscript.

  “It reads great, Gerry. The only thing is,” I said, “is that I seem to have seen this script before. Or something damn close to it.”

  “What do you mean you’ve seen the script before?”

  �
��Gerry, it’s a steal. I’ve read Jean-Paul Sartre. This is No Exit in its thinnest disguise.”

  “Well, what do you expect? I wrote it in a weekend.”

  So that’s how The Devil in Miss Jones was born.

  GEORGINA SPELVIN: Marc Stevens, Mr. Ten-and-a-Half, said to me, “Would you be interested in working on a film for Gerry Damiano?”

  I asked, “Who’s Gerry Damiano?”

  HARRY REEMS: In addition to having a part for me in The Devil in Miss Jones, Gerry wanted me to be production manager and to cast for him—all except for the female lead. He had the lead—or so he thought.

  Her name was Ronnie. “I can fuck and suck better than any women doing this shit,” she was telling everyone. I had seen Ronnie’s dumpy body on film and knew she wouldn’t do.

  GEORGINA SPELVIN: I had no idea that Deep Throat was this big breakthrough film. So when Marc Stevens said, “Gerry Damiano’s the director of Deep Throat!” I had never heard of him or the movie.

  But then Marc said, “He’s doing a new film, and he needs a caterer.”

  I said, “Great!”

  FRED LINCOLN: After Deep Throat, Gerry had a falling out with Butchie Peraino. Because Gerry made The Devil in Miss Jones with Jimmy Bogis and Herb Nitke; up to that point, I’m pretty sure Butchie was Gerry’s sole banker.

  GERARD DAMIANO: I originally owned thirty percent of the profits from Deep Throat. It netted more than $100 million. I really don’t want to go into it. Let’s just say I ultimately got $15,000, which I felt at that point was probably the best I could have done. Because I didn’t want anyone telling me the kind of films I had to make. So I made a bad deal. But I’ve never regretted it.

  FRED LINCOLN: Gerry claims he only got $15,000? He may have. He may have told them to stick the $150,000 up their ass. Gerry worked for the same guy I worked for—the front guy for Mickey Zaffarano.

  Mickey Zaffarano was porn. Mickey was one of the straightest shooters in the business. He looked at the movie, he liked it, he handed you $150,000.

  With these other guys, I had to put them against the wall because their checks bounced. I said, “Whoa! I don’t know about you, but I don’t do this to wear out my old clothes. I do this to eat! You give me a check, I put it in the bank, and I write checks to other people. This check bouncing doesn’t work. You can’t do that with me ’cause I’ll break your fucking legs!”

  GEORGINA SPELVIN: A couple of days later I went over to Gerry’s office to talk to him about doing the catering for the film.

  Damiano told me the budget—and while I was getting over laughing, one of his partners came in and said, “So-and-so is here to read the part for Mr. Abaca.”

  Gerry turned around to me and said, “As long as you’re here, would you mind reading the part of Miss Jones opposite this guy?”

  So I sat down and read the Miss Jones part, and everybody just sort of stood around with their chins on their chests. I guess they’d never heard anyone read for hard-core parts who had done any kind of actual drama before.

  FRED LINCOLN: Georgina wasn’t one of the girls. She was hired to be the caterer on Miss Jones. She was older—she was thirty-seven. Georgina was very talented. Linda Lovelace was never that attractive. Georgina was not stunning, either, but she was a very sexual and charismatic person.

  GEORGINA SPELVIN: Harry said, “You have to do this role. You’re wonderful.”

  But the producers and Gerry said, “But she’s flat-chested, and she’s nearly forty! What are you doing to us!?”

  Needless to say, I was kind of intrigued by the idea of doing a lead role. My ego just came in and absolutely gobbled me up in one bite.

  HARRY REEMS: One late October day I was carving pumpkins in my apartment. I invited over Georgina Spelvin, who I had met a couple of days earlier at one of the casting sessions for The Devil. She’d been in Broadway and Off-Broadway plays and thought of herself as legitimate.

  GEORGINA SPELVIN: Marc Stevens introduced me to Harry Reems. A couple of days later, I went over to his apartment and sat and carved Halloween pumpkins with him. It turned out that he and I had several mutual friends in the theater world.

  HARRY REEMS: While we were carving pumpkins, I asked Georgina casually, “What are you into sexually?”

  “I’m gay,” she said.

  “Have you ever made it with a man?”

  “I’ve made it with plenty of men. I’ve been married. I have children. Right now I’m into women.”

  “Could you do it on camera with a man?”

  “It would depend on the man.”

  “If you dug the guy, what would you be willing to do?”

  “If I dug the guy, I’d be willing to try anything. Sex can be very beautiful. With either sex. Even if it’s somebody you don’t know.”

  I liked her. She was honest, her body was good, and whatever way she swung, she was sexually “together.”

  GEORGINA SPELVIN: I was involved with one of the other women in The Devil in Miss Jones. She was a lesbian, at least when I met her. Basically, she was a schoolgirl who didn’t know what she was. I kind of adopted her. To me, she was a daughter figure. I did not realize that I was a romantic figure to her until it was too late—until she was terribly dependent upon me, and clinging to me, and I didn’t realize how unstable she was. I was really terribly worried about her.

  HARRY REEMS: “Gerry,” I said the next day, “I’ve found Miss Jones.”

  Gerry was not impressed with my candidate—until Georgina took off her clothes, and he saw her marvelous body.

  Fortuitously, Ronnie called in with an impacted wisdom tooth a day or so before filming was to start.

  “How’s Ronnie going to do blow jobs with an impacted wisdom tooth?” I asked Gerry. Good question. Gerry threw in the dental floss. Ronnie was out, and Georgina Spelvin was in.

  GEORGINA SPELVIN: I took the role very seriously and studied the character. I had all kinds of backstory on who she was, where she came from, everything that had happened to her. I was doing Hedda Gabler here, ha, ha, ha!

  The fact that there was hard-core sex involved was incidental as far as I was concerned. I was totally deluded. I had made myself believe that I was an actress. I was showing true life as it really was—including actual sex as it really happened—instead of the phony stuff that you got from Hollywood. That was my raison d’être throughout the whole thing. It was okay; I was okay; I wasn’t a slut.

  GERARD DAMIANO: Viewing sex in a humorous way through Deep Throat gave the American public the impetus that they needed to be adult enough to take their sexuality seriously.

  So I used my real name—Throat was made under the pseudonym Jerry Gerard—and I treated The Devil in Miss Jones as though it was a very serious film, and I felt that that’s what it was.

  FRED LINCOLN: It’s a movie with emotion; it’s just magnificent. You’re looking at a woman who, because of her upbringing, has done what we tell all women they should do: “Don’t do this until you find the right person.” Well, what happens if you don’t find the right person? You end up like this lady—a spinster.

  ANNIE SPRINKLE (PORN STAR): God was a penis to me. I worshiped penises for years. Worshiped them. Really.

  You see, as a girl—Ellen Steinberg, my given name—I was very shy and afraid of sex. I mean, I was a very uptight kid. And my parents were quite open, while I was freaked out. I was terrified about everything—menstruation, giving birth, sex, everything.

  FRED LINCOLN: Miss Jones is a lonely person who has never felt the joy of touching someone she really cares for. Even if you just care for someone for one night! There’s nothing in the world like this. And she was so miserable that she killed herself.

  ANNIE SPRINKLE: I wasn’t aware of my body developing, until the first day we moved from the San Fernando Valley to Panama—and the guys in Panama City would go, “Hey, baby! Hey, baby! Hey, baby!”

  The boys in the San Fernando Valley hadn’t done that. The Valley was like this white bread, uptight, suburban t
hing. Panama was more open, freer—just this tropical paradise.

  Except in Panama, the street harassment was constant, which really freaked me out. I was thirteen. I was still a child, thinking, “Why are these guys making these noises?”

  It was creepy, very creepy. And it was very cruel. I think it was all about: If they couldn’t have you, they had to torture you.

  FRED LINCOLN: You see this middle-aged woman sitting in a bathtub, and she takes a razor blade and slits her wrist. You see her just sit there and the blood going into the water.

  Fuck, man.

  ANNIE SPRINKLE: Homer was my first boyfriend. He held my hand at a movie, and it was just torture. I was just so uncomfortable. Slowly moving his hand over, then he held my hand, and I couldn’t enjoy the movie, you know? I was just scared to death.

  Afterward, he held my hand again as I was sitting next to my dad in the car. I was sweating. There was no erotic connection.

  GERARD DAMIANO: There was no doubt about the depressing and horrible things that were happening to Miss Jones. When she killed herself, you felt it. You knew she was dying because of a lonely existence.

  ANNIE SPRINKLE: I was walking down the street in Panama and this classic kind of hippie biker—a big, hunky, hefty guy with a beard—stopped his bike and asked if I wanted to go for a ride.

  His name was Van, and I just trusted him. Van and I were together about four or five months, but we didn’t have sex. My family was getting ready to leave Panama, so Van set it up so we could go up to his parent’s beach house and take mescaline.