by Legs McNeil
RUBY GOTTESMAN: Rhonda was flighty. She didn’t give a shit. She was always chasing young boys. I’d come home, and she’d be doing a sixteen-year-old.
I says, “You do that again, and you’re out of here. I don’t want no sixteen-year-olds here—get me in trouble. They gotta be eighteen!”
RHONDA JO PETTY: My relationship with Ruby was—I kind of lived my own life, you know? I was totally hidden, and we had very little sex because he had a little dick and couldn’t get it up. Sorry, but he did!
And when you’re doing that much cocaine, you can’t have sex! He was too fucking coked out all the time. But it really wasn’t about sex. I think it was about having somebody to do his cocaine with because his wife drove him nuts. She was a real bitch—very demanding. She wanted this, and this, and that, and that—and he was killing himself to give it to her.
I think I was his getaway. He’d come by, do his coke, and relax.
BRUCE ELLAVSKY: Ruby took a liking to us, and the next thing we knew he was vouching for us in New York and other places—and arranging for us to go to these clandestine porn conventions.
They were secret meetings where the major players in the porn industry would meet in a particular hotel in a particular city once or twice a year.
Everyone in one place.
Looks Like We Made It
NEW ORLEANS/NEW YORK CITY
1977
PAT LIVINGSTON: Ruby Gottesman really helped us get to the next level. The New Orleans porn convention was the first big one Bruce and I went to, and we got in there through Ruby.
The porn people would follow on the heels of a legitimate publishing convention—they would come in for three or four days at the tail end. Of course, the hotel people never knew.
BILL KELLY: I would follow Pat and Bruce to the porno conventions and harass them, to give them additional credibility with the underworld. If I had the opportunity in a hallway or on a stairway—with other pornographers watching—I would deliberately bump ’em with a shoulder and try to knock them down.
I’d say, “You guys are from my hometown. I don’t like pornographers from Miami.”
PAT LIVINGSTON: We had talked to the bureau about needing girls for cover because we knew we would be offered some at the New Orleans convention if we didn’t have women with us.
The bureau just ignored it. Their suggestion was, “Well, why don’t you be homosexuals?”
So I posed the question, “What happens when they send a guy up to the room?”
Dead silence on the other end of the phone.
BRUCE ELLAVSKY: Pat and I were in the lobby when Ruby told us he wanted to introduce us to someone in the restaurant around the corner. That’s when we met Teddy Rothstein.
Teddy told us that he could supply Golde Coaste Specialties with hard-core eight-millimeter films, magazines, and videotape cassettes—and that he would like to introduce us to Andre D’Apice, a producer of eight-millimeter films.
PAT LIVINGSTON: It was the first real inroad the bureau had ever made into organized crime control of the porn industry—our first real confirmation that organized crime players carved up the country for their porno business.
So immediately after the convention we flew to New York, where we had set up a meeting at Star Distributors on Lafayette Street. The elevator opened up into a huge area—a maze of offices and people milling around. It looked like a shipping warehouse. A lot of boxes and film.
Ruby Gottesman gave us a guided tour. He knew everybody, so we floated around with him, making conversation. Then we sat down with Teddy Rothstein, and he introduced us to Robert DiBernardo—DiBe—who looked more like a Wall Street broker than a mobster.
He wore dapper Italian designer suits and a Rolex watch. He looked dashing and debonair and had the air of being in charge.
BRUCE MOUW (FBI AGENT/GOTTI STRIKE FORCE): Robert DiBernardo was a soldier in the Gambino family who was very active in labor racketeering and the construction trades—and a prolific moneymaker. Everybody knew he had Star Distributors—which was a multimillion-dollar porn company—and a big house on Long Island. He was one of the first wiseguys to drive a little Mercedes Benz convertible.
But the mob old-timers, for whatever reasons—out of their own sense of perverted morality—found pornography to be distasteful. They had no use for pornography or prostitution.
ROBERT DIBERNARDO (FBI WIRETAP): Castellano uses me. He makes me look bad. He says, “Look at DiBe; he makes his money in pornography!”
Mr. Fucking Clean. Does it stop him from taking his cut? “Sorry, Paul, you don’t wanna touch those dollars—there’s pussy on them.” Ha! He’ll take ’em anyway.
He wants it both ways. Get paid; act clean. My ass.
BRUCE ELLAVSKY: DiBernardo was definitely the boss. When he was telling stories about his childhood you could hear a pin drop. Nobody was gonna cut him off—regardless of how they felt about the story—because everybody respected him or feared him.
Then DiBernardo asked me and Pat, “What type of pornography business do you have there?”
Pat and I told him it was a mail-order operation—basically eight-millimeter films—but that we were thinking about getting into the videotape market.
PAT LIVINGSTON: I was talking big numbers—said we’d buy ten thousand magazines that we could turn over in a day. Plus, I told him we operated out of the Cayman Islands, which enhanced our mail-order business. It showed how we could be moving such large quantities, that we weren’t just selling to a lot of little people in Miami—which also gave us credibility.
BRUCE ELLAVSKY: DiBernardo and Teddy Rothstein went into an office and had a closed-door meeting. Then Ruby Gottesman went into the office and had a meeting.
While I was waiting for DiBe, Andre D’Apice came up to me and told me that during the New Orleans convention, there was a lot of apprehension about our porn operation. He told me that Teddy Rothstein had done some checking into the background of Golde Coaste.
PAT LIVINGSTON: We were told Teddy Rothstein flew from New Orleans to Tampa to talk to Paul Howard about us. And Paul Howard verified our story to Rothstein. I guess he did it to help me out because I was a good customer of his when we started MIPORN.
OPERATION AMORE REPORT: “PAUL HOWARD, aka Dilbert Eugene Craver. Subject worked for TED ROTHSTEIN and STAR DISTRIBUTORS for twenty years in New York City and Cleveland. Subject became ill in 1974 and was semiretired by ROBERT DIBERNARDO. DIBERNARDO and ROTHSTEIN ship subject pornographic films so Howard can earn an income in Florida by distributing to retail stores.”
PAT LIVINGSTON: I was concerned when I heard Teddy Rothstein checked us out with Paul Howard. All this was coming back to me through Ruby Gottesman, who was now my confidant. He had a lot of information about people being killed—bombings in Chicago, etc. Gottesman told us about a guy who got hit in the head because he hadn’t played ball with Mickey Zaffarano on some movies.
So we had all this hanging over our heads—if we said the wrong thing, if our cover was blown. We were in for some real problems. And we didn’t have any cover from the FBI, we didn’t have weapons; the only protection was being the pornographers we said we were.
So I was thankful that I had gone the long way in setting the undercover operation up, step-by-step-by-step.
BRUCE ELLAVSKY: I wasn’t in fear. I wasn’t paranoid. But sometimes, because of the people we were dealing with, I’d think, “Jeez, how the hell did we pull this off?” When we went to a city, we couldn’t have the local FBI office surveilling us because they might blow our cover. If you’re worried about the danger on this kind of operation, then you really shouldn’t be doing it. I mean, we were pretty much out there on our own—but it’s a voluntary thing. Nobody was forcing us to do it. So you assume the risk and don’t really dwell on it.
PAT LIVINGSTON: Finally, DiBernardo says to me, “Rothstein and Andre D’Apice speak for me.”
So we were given the okay to deal with Star Distributors. Then, Andre D’Apice comes
in, and we talk price. We talk about doing a large deal with large numbers, and Andre agrees to bring the product and the film over to our hotel later that afternoon.
On the way back to the hotel, Ruby says, “Look, you’ve got to be careful dealing with Rothstein and D’Apice. DiBernardo will have you hit in the head if you don’t deal with them right.”
So we meet with Andre D’Apice at the New York Hilton and put our deal together. And Andre says the same thing, “The deal’s good—you’re dealing with good people—but if you fuck us, there are people who’ll kill for DiBe.” That put everything in perspective.
Then he says, “So, are we going to Plato’s Retreat tonight? I can get us three whores….”
Part 5:
PORN GOESBETTER WITH COKE
1977–1980
Down the Drain
NEW YORK CITY
1977–1978
FRED LINCOLN: The idiots that kept the books for Plato’s kept both sets in the same place. I don’t quite understand that. Larry Levenson told me that the mob broke his legs with bats and shit a couple of times. So now the IRS gets the real books—not the cooked books—and Larry’s going away for tax evasion. Of course they wanted the guys behind Larry, not Larry, but you get your legs broken with bats twice—you know, you kinda think twice about talking.
AL GOLDSTEIN: I’m the publisher of Screw, right, and when I come to Plato’s all I get is a massage. Never have I gotten laid there, just massages. Maybe when Larry goes to prison, I’ll take over as manager, and then I’ll finally get laid. I’m forty-five years old and still inept. Josh Alan Friedman, look at him. “How old are you? Twenty-five?”
Just a kid, but he thrives on sleaze, lives in Times Square. It’s okay for him to be inept, but there’s no excuse for it at my age.
PATRICE TRUDEAU: Al Goldstein wants me. I’ll charge him five hundred dollars. He’s a little Jew, so I’ll settle for four hundred. I know he’s an asshole. I can talk to you one way, but I have to talk to him because he’s a rich asshole. Besides, I want his digital watch. It’s a beautiful watch, like a Piaget. That’s what I would really like—a Piaget watch.
AL GOLDSTEIN: I usually don’t get laid unless I pay for it. If I were a real swinger like Bernie Cornfield or Hugh Hefner, I would be getting laid every night by lots of new people. That doesn’t happen. But I’m obsessed with it. I feel I’m much more typical of the normal American male than affluent people who have their choice of harems.
FRED LINCOLN: Why’d Larry get his legs broken twice? I guess because he fucked the wrong people twice.
So Larry’s telling me his story. So I said to him, “Wow. This is incredible. You know, this would make a good movie.”
And Larry said to me, “Well, okay, if you wanna do the movie why don’t you come here?”
I go and I take the recorder and Larry tells me his story and I was transcribing it into a script.
Now Larry’s getting ready to go away to prison for three to five, and he said, “How about you and Tiffany run Plato’s for me while I’m gone?” Because I was married to Tiffany Clark at the time.
So I said, “Yeah, sure.”
TIM CONNELLY: Helen Madigan and I went to Plato’s when Larry was still running it. It was just really gross. The place was disgusting. I once went into a big room where they had a big hot tub—and Goldstein’s in the hot tub and he’s fat. The reality about swingers is that, for the most part, they’re not very good-looking.
FRED LINCOLN: While Tiffany and I were in Plato’s, I didn’t pay attention to what Tiffany was doing. We always had that kind of a relationship. And they’d pass the freebase pipe around, and I’d take a couple of hits, and I’d get up and go fuck.
I was in Plato’s! I wasn’t there to get high.
So I never even realized that Tiffany was standing there with Larry and those other people and staying with the pipe. I never realized how much it affected her.
TIM CONNELLY: Plato’s was really about Larry and Fred running the show and doing their thing. And the guys that were getting close to them were guys that had money or had access. I was always under the radar. I would come to Plato’s, fuck their old ladies, fuck a couple of chicks, and then leave. I didn’t really want to be a part of their world because I wasn’t an equal, on their level.
FRED LINCOLN: Larry would always let celebrities into Plato’s. He let Sammy Davis Jr. in—anybody who was a celebrity could come in, with or without a girl. Richard Dreyfuss used to come in every night—and he was on the balls of his ass—a stone coke freak.
While Larry’s in jail for tax evasion, I’m talking to Richard Dreyfuss, and I said, “You’re a great actor. How’d you like to play Larry if I do his movie?”
I’m thinking, motherfuckin’ score—because this guy’s got an Academy Award, you know? And he was perfect to play Larry. He’s a mutt, too—but a very talented mutt. What a fucking score and a half!
So I go visit Larry in prison, and I tell him, “Wow, Larry, man, I think Richard Dreyfuss’ll do this movie!”
“Fuck him! I don’t want him to play me. I want to play me!”
I said, “Larry, you gotta be kidding me. You can’t even do a talk show. You can’t play you!”
“Why not?!” he asks.
I said, “You know what, Larry? Let’s just forget the whole thing. Because if you’re turning down Richard Dreyfuss…lemme tell you something, you grab him now. He’s gonna sober up, and he ain’t never gonna talk to you again.”
That’s when I realized, “Oh my God, I’m dealing with an idiot.”
That’s when I said to Tiffany, “Let’s just get out.”
“Blow”
NEW YORK CITY
1977–1978
FRED LINCOLN: Cocaine swept New York like a fucking raging fire. I used to love driving at night—you’d stop at a light, look in the other car, and see all these torches blazing. It was amazing to me anyone would do that outside. How stupid. But they did it anyway.
Everybody was doing cocaine.
SHARON MITCHELL: I had been working steadily. Gloria Leonard was editing High Society, and I was working there during the day and babysitting for her at night. I was doing a couple of Off-Broadway plays, and I was in a rock and roll band. You know, we’d do these a cappella versions of “Peter Gunn” and we’d all dye our hair flaming pink and drive motorcycles around the Mudd Club and then scale the side of the building. Just some fun shit. It was great to be young and alive and creative. It was a great life. That’s when I started getting into drugs.
GLORIA LEONARD: They had started High Society with a different girl. What the fuck was her name? Jesus. Brie? She used a couple of names. She was a cutie. She looked a little like Courteney Cox. Brie something or other.
Well, anyway, as it turned out, she was purely a figurehead. And, uh, with drugs being so prevalent on the scene in those days, not the most reliable spokesperson.
I had been a stylist for Peter Hurd, who was a photographer for a lot of the girlie magazines. And we shot a lot of stuff for Cheri—and even High Society—before I became publisher. I would do the makeup and wardrobe, set up the whole scenario. He just came in with the camera and shot the girls with whatever I put there.
So I had a magazine background and brought to the table a certain wisdom that a lot of the younger girls didn’t have. Because by that time I was thirty-six or thirty-seven years old.
RHONDA JO PETTY: I did a lot of shoots for High Society and Cheri. That’s how I met Gloria Leonard—on a shoot for High Society. We became very good friends. We partied together—everything then was cocaine and Quaaludes. We all loved Gloria because she was smart. She was like an older sister or aunt to a lot of us.
GLORIA LEONARD: I was not publisher of High Society in name only. I came in every day. I wrote cover lines, I wrote captions, and I went out and supervised shoots. I’d go on the road and meet with wholesalers and do six or seven interviews a day. We had a public relations firm that represented us. I used to travel p
robably an average of a hundred thousand air miles a year for them.
RHONDA JO PETTY: I’d go see Gloria a lot…. And then—Oh God!—she’d be out of town shooting, and her boyfriend, Bobby Hollander, would call me, and I’d end up at his place because of the drugs.
And that wasn’t a real good thing—but it didn’t end up being a problem because she knew that Bobby screwed around on her a lot.
GLORIA LEONARD: High Society decided to use my voice on a recording giving a little preview of what was coming up in the next issue. But the day the magazine hit the stand, we blew out the circuits for, like, a four-block radius.
So then we bought twenty answering machines. And I figured, “Okay, this should handle it.” Then the twenty grew to a hundred. There was no way we were making money; it was costing us money to buy all these machines! We couldn’t figure out how to make money with this system—until the 976 thing.
SHARON MITCHELL: I could go anywhere I wanted; I could do anything I wanted. I didn’t wear fucking clothes—I wore maybe a G-string and a mink coat. I had a lot of money. It was great then—just great! Coke really helped because I was afraid I was going to miss something. I was really enjoying life so much. Coke really helped me stay up for quite a few years.
Then I started shooting it. And that was fabulous!
GLORIA LEONARD: The genesis of that whole 976 phone sex thing was that AT&T and Ma Bell were told by the federal government that they had to break themselves up. And a part of the breakup was that they had to make some of the 976 numbers available to other sectors of the market.