by Legs McNeil
So if you want to talk about John Holmes’s social life, you’re going to have to talk to someone else.
DAWN SCHILLER (JOHN HOLMES’S GIRLFRIEND): When I was fifteen, my father divorced my mother in Florida, and I chose to move with him to California.
But we had nowhere to live. Then a hitchhiker we picked up on the way to California told us we could stay with his girlfriend. But when we got there, she said she would have to ask the manager first. So in walked John Holmes. He was the manager of the apartment complex.
John looked me up and down and then asked me how old I was.
I said, “Fifteen.”
And he went, “Mmmmmmm, too bad.”
SHARON HOLMES: By 1973, I was literally eating my own guts alive because of the emotional upheaval of trying to deal with John’s porn career and maintain a physical relationship with him. I couldn’t handle it anymore; I was hospitalized with pancreatitis.
The doctor sat me down and said, “You know, if this keeps up, you’re going to lose your pancreas. You have to do something about this. Do you know what is bothering you?”
Surely, you jest. Of course I knew.
So when I got home, I told John, “I have no problem with your living with me, but I don’t want anything to do with you physically. I don’t want to hear about what you’re doing. I’ll do your laundry. I’ll be your mother, I’ll be your confessor, I’ll be your sister, I’ll be your friend, but I don’t want to be physical anymore.”
He begged and pleaded, saying, “This porn stuff means absolutely nothing to me.”
I said, “John, it doesn’t mean anything to you, but it means a lot to me. I’m married to a hooker. I’m not comfortable with that. I can’t handle it anymore.”
So by 1975 we no longer had a physical relationship. We slept in the same bed, we hugged, we kissed, we felt intimate with each other—but not sexually intimate.
So John found Dawn, a skinny fifteen-year-old whose dad was one of those expatriates who settled in Thailand after Vietnam because of the drug connection. On his first trip home after the Vietnam War, Dawn’s father told his wife he wanted a divorce and that he wanted to take the kids to California—to Disneyland.
When they got here, they moved into our apartment complex—five people in a one-bedroom apartment.
DAWN SCHILLER: John knew that me and my sister liked to smoke pot, and he always came home with the best stuff. He’d say, “Here, try this,” flick it on the couch, and leave. He always had a dramatic air. And I thought, “God, he’s cool!”
My sister thought he was weird because he was too old to be hanging around us. She figured that out. But I liked him.
SHARON HOLMES: Dawn was a very nice-looking girl: big-boned but skinny. And John hired Dawn and her sister, Terry, to do the gardening around the apartment complex, so they could make their own money. Their father had money, but he didn’t spend it on his kids. He was always off doing some business deal with his friends from Thailand.
DAWN SCHILLER: John Holmes courted me for about a good six months—and always with my sister, like a chaperone. He had to pay her in armloads of frozen Snickers bars, so she wouldn’t bitch about having her apartment used or having to share her pot.
TOM BLAKE (LAPD VICE DETECTIVE): In 1973, we had an informant that advised us that John Holmes was going to be involved in a film with some other people, and we were told that they would be meeting at a certain location in Hollywood.
They would tell the actors and actresses to go to a restaurant at a certain time and wait. They’d never tell them where the film was actually being shot.
We were able to find out what restaurant they were at, and we observed that several women—plus some males, including John Holmes—were at this location. We ran license numbers of the vehicles and found out the names of these people. Then we followed them from Hollywood out to Moorpark, in the Valley, and observed them going to a residence.
DAWN SCHILLER: John and I were getting closer and then he started getting camping trips together—to the beach—in his van. He had a Chevrolet van with a WADD license plate. I guess that was a porn series that he did. The camping turned into overnight camping, always with my sister, and John always made it fun. He’d build a big bonfire on the beach, and we’d eat peanut butter brown sugar chocolate chip cookies, which is the ultimate when you’re stoned.
He was quite a romantic.
TOM BLAKE: John was very famous. He was probably the biggest male porno star in the United States through the seventies and eighties. He was very well known for his tool, if you want to call it that.
We’d seen him at several locations but had never been able to make a case on him. And John, most of the time, did not procure people to be involved in films.
John was basically working through an agent—but on this particular film, he was actually the one that procured these two girls who lived in Calabassas.
I believe they were only sixteen or seventeen years old. We found this out because we made the search warrants on the house where they shot the film. Then we obtained the film from the laboratory and viewed it and ran the licenses through the DMV and found out who the two girls were. Then we interviewed them.
DAWN SCHILLER: One time John set it up at the beach so that my sister couldn’t be there and asked me to go camping by myself. And, like, we both knew this was the night.
TOM BLAKE: We obtained the arrest warrant through the Ventura County district attorney’s office. Then myself and Detective Joe Gandley and a couple of other people went to John Holmes’s house in Glendale.
We knocked on the door. John answered it and let us in. We met his wife, Sharon. Very nice lady. We sat down and talked a little bit. We advised him that we were arresting him for pimping and pandering for that film shot in Moorpark.
He said, “Oh no, those girls?”
I said, “Yeah, those girls.”
I think he knew they were young, and I think he probably knew that they were the ones that talked about him.
I mean, he was really nice. He says, “I’m an athlete. I don’t smoke. I don’t drink. I run every day.” He had a cupboard in his kitchen that probably had twenty-five or thirty vitamins he took every day. He was a health fanatic.
Anyway, we ended up arresting him and booking him. And I did not see him until we went to court up in Ventura.
DAWN SCHILLER: So we went to Malibu, walked on the beach, and it was a full moon. It was low in the sky. It was perfect, and John was very quiet. We just sat on the rocks and watched the moon. The atmosphere was magical.
TOM BLAKE: I think that this was John’s first real encounter with the LAPD—as far as being arrested. We went to court, and after being convicted of pimping and pandering, John was going to be sentenced to three years in jail.
He had an option through his attorney to either cooperate with me and be on probation for three years—or do three years in jail.
So John decided he’d talk to me. He and I worked together for three years, until the terms of his probation ended in 1976.
DAWN SCHILLER: Without saying anything, John got down from that rock and just took my hand, and we walked to the van and that was the night.
Yeah, I was completely shocked by how large he was. But it was like being a virgin again. He was very attentive. He knew how to get you to relax, you know?
And he was extremely gentle and extremely awesome. Just awesome…
TOM BLAKE: John would tell us who would be shooting the films—the producers, the directors, and sometimes the money people backing the films. And when the films were being shot, he would tell us where the actors were being picked up.
All this made our work much easier.
DAWN SCHILLER: When Tom Blake—Big Tom, we called him—called on the phone at Sharon’s, that meant something, like some mysterious signal. It was a code word, and I was absolutely supposed to put the call through, no problems. He was the only person that had the home phone number, so that was a big deal.
TOM BLAKE: Through John Holmes, we already knew the shoot location, so we could set up police officers for surveillance with our vans and our cameras. We’d shoot people coming in and out of the location. It was perfect identification.
DAWN SCHILLER: Big Tom was always immediately directed to either Sharon or John. I handed it to Sharon if John wasn’t there or straight to John if he was. If not, it was, “Just tell him Big Tom called.”
SHARON HOLMES: After Dawn and John became intimate—though I didn’t know it at the time—Dawn became like a daughter to me, and I tried to show her that John wasn’t God almighty. But I guess to a fifteen-year-old who’s getting showered with gifts—and John telling her how wonderful she was—she would have done anything he wanted.
And eventually she did do anything he wanted.
DAWN SCHILLER: I felt as if I was his newborn child. I mean, that’s how precious he treated me.
But then John would have to go away to do a film. I knew what kind of movies he was making, but we never really talked about it. I just knew he was going to work. It was called “going to work,” and he never brought it home.
Part 3:
SHOW WORLD
1975–1977
Boxed Lunch
NEW YORK CITY
1975–1977
VANESSA DEL RIO: I started go-go dancing at Billy’s on Sixth Avenue.
One day this guy walked in with a dollar in his hand, and there was a girl dancing on the stage. He threw the dollar on the stage, stuck his finger in her pussy, and then just kept walking. It was like, “Stick your finger in a slut for a buck.” I don’t even think he looked at her.
ANNIE SPRINKLE: It was the Harmony Burlesque—that was changed to the Melody Burlesque—that started the trend of porn stars doing live burlesque. Tina Russell was the first porn star I remember appearing in person at the Melody. It was a big deal for a porn star to be so out in public, and it was successful.
SHARON MITCHELL: I was one of the first porn stars that was billed as a “porn star” who started stripping at the Melody Burlesque on Forty-eighth Street. None of the old strippers liked me. Except Tempest Storm—who I actually started as a cofeature underneath. Oh, I loved Tempest! She was so great to me. But all those old strippers were like, “What do you think you’re going to do?”
I said, “Bump and grind.”
They said, “Ha! Not with that body, kid!” Because I was this skinny girl, I went out there and tried to imitate what they were doing, and it wasn’t quite working. The old strippers were like, “Kid, isn’t there some other kind of dance you can do?”
So the first thing I stripteased to was the entire “Rhapsody in Blue”—from beginning to end. All in lace, jumping around the stage and doing leaps and bounds and high kicks and spread shots everywhere! It was fabulous!
FRED LINCOLN: The Melody was owned by my friend Freddie Cincadi, who was also the assistant district attorney of New York City. How he got away with that for twenty years, I don’t know. But Freddie was my best, best buddy.
We hung out. I brought girls to him. I brought Serena to the Melody. I brought Annette Haven to New York. I brought Lesllie Bovee, Sharon Mitchell, and Ming Toy. Anybody that was in the business, I put them in the theaters, and they made a ton of money.
VANESSA DEL RIO: The Melody started the famous “boxed lunch”—which was when the girls sat on the stage or on the bar in front of a guy—and the guy would eat her out. It cost a dollar! Then she’d wipe herself with a baby wipe and move to the next guy, until she made her way around the bar. And in the middle of the stage was a little mountain of baby wipes.
ANNIE SPRINKLE: All those baby wipes! There would be twenty dancers on the stage with their legs spread in a line, and each dancer had her own box of baby wipes mixed with dollars bills! And that’s where lap dancing started.
FRED LINCOLN: The girls used to make so much money. My God! Those guys were just lined up. All I could think of was, “Wow, men are really pathetic.”
ANNIE SPRINKLE: The Melody was way ahead of Show World on everything.
VANESSA DEL RIO: At that time, we didn’t really have much to do with Show World. The Melody was true burlesque.
FRED LINCOLN: The Melody used to call it “Mardi Gras,” when the customers could lick the girl for a dollar a lick. The girls used to take the dollar and throw it over their shoulder; the guy would get down, lick once, then this leg would push him away, and the other leg would reach out and grab the next one; the girl would take his dollar and throw him out.
It was like this leg assembly line.
What was funny was we went out in the lobby and the guys would talk about how they got to the girl! They’d say, “Wow! I could feel it trembling. If they gave me just one more minute…”
SHARON MITCHELL: I was doing a movie and two guys were going to stick their cocks in me, at the same time, both in my pussy. And my pussy’s not really big. I certainly wasn’t going to let them fuck me in the ass. Because I knew damn well my asshole’s about the size of a fucking dime, a pea. I thought, “No, that will never work.”
But I really didn’t know how to say no.
I had befriended these guys I had done a couple movies with on and off, and a couple of girls that were really nice to me, like Vanessa Del Rio—who protected me and really helped me.
Vanessa said, “You look like a kid from Jersey!”
I said, “I am a kid from Jersey!”
So she took me shopping, and spent like two thousand dollars on me in one day. She took me to the Late Show and Trash and Vaudeville—all those little hip places. They cut my hair and whipped me into shape.
ANNIE SPRINKLE: When Show World started to have porn stars appear live, that’s what put me through college.
TIM CONNELLY (FORMER PORN STAR): First Rod Swenson booked Show World—he’s the guy who married Wendy O. Williams and managed the Plasmatics. Wendy used to do live sex shows at Show World long before I got there. Then Rod Swenson gave way to Freddie Lincoln, who was a great guy—and then Freddie Lincoln gave way to Ron Martin.
But there was a short time when Ron Martin booked the show downstairs, and Freddie booked the show upstairs.
FRED LINCOLN: I used to do a thing in New York City’s Greenwich Village called the Party, which came about because I took an ad out in Penthouse asking if anybody had any bizarre fantasy that they were afraid to share. And we got thousands of letters—some of the most pathetic creatures on earth, ha, ha, ha. And we would reenact them in this loft in the Village—every Friday and Saturday night. It was a big success; it was packed every weekend.
Before we closed, Ron Martin came down and said to me, “I wanna take you uptown to Show World. And you can have the lower theater.”
I said, “And I can do anything I want?”
He said, “Yeah. Anything you want.”
TIM CONNELLY: Fred started this thing at Show World called the Ultra Burlesque—which could be anything; S and M shows or burlesque skits, live sex or strippers.
The concept was “what you gave them is what they expect they should get”—it could be Serena coming from San Francisco and stripping; if she wanted to fuck, they’d bring a guy to fuck her. And depending on how she wanted to fuck, they’d bring in a dominant guy or a submissive guy. At that time, Joey Silvera was working there. Jamie Gillis would blow in every now and then. Helen Madigan and Marc Stevens—it really was anything goes.
SHARON MITCHELL: Vanessa Del Rio lived in Independence Plaza, and I was doing a movie with her. But I really wasn’t up on my cocksucking technique.
She said, “Well, you know, I can help you with that.”
So one day she takes me over to see her boyfriend, Johnny. She sets up a three-way mirror around Johnny’s dick. She gives me a bunch of coke, right? And teaches me how to suck dick. “Now be aware of your nose and your angles…. It has to feel good as well as look good…and watch the camera now…”
It was really helpful. Because when I was sucking Johnny’s cock in front o
f the three-way mirror, I could see how I looked from every side.
Then I got into pussy hair coiffing. So I would exchange these cocksucking lessons in exchange for coiffing Vanessa’s pussy hair.
FRED LINCOLN: The Mitchell brothers and I used to exchange people for our clubs. I would call them up, and we would discuss different girls and different acts. See, I was the first person to ever put porno girls in theaters and nightclubs in New York.
I did it by convincing this guy, Bernie, to hire Bambi Woods. He paid her three thousand dollars and told me, “If she don’t make this money back, you gotta pay us.”
I said, “Don’t worry. I’ll get your money back.”
She packed the club.
TIM CONNELLY: When I came to New York, I was married to an English girl, a girl I’d met in Chicago. Our marriage had pretty much failed, but she wanted to come with me to New York.
We were walking through Times Square, and we decided to go to Show World. I couldn’t believe there was this giant multilevel emporium of pornography, you know?
We went into one of those dollar peep-show booths. The screen came up, and there was this pretty good-looking Puerto Rican girl. And my wife, who was pretty normal in terms of sexuality, gets wildly turned on by this naked girl writhing and masturbating and talking dirty to us. I had never had that experience with her before. So on the way home I just pulled her in to some building and took her on the stairwell and fucked her because we were just so turned on.
I felt weird about it afterward. You know, like what the fuck happened to me? I knew I was entering a new area. It was exciting—and confusing.