by Legs McNeil
KELLY NICHOLS: Shauna was best friends with Laurie Smith, who was Bob Veze’s girlfriend after me. So we were just a tight little circle.
MICHAEL LONDON: At that time—this was pre-video—they were still making actual movies. They were shot over multiple days, the budgets were larger, and there were more of the trappings of a real film—so it was easier to delude yourself that you could use this as access to the legitimate film business.
GINGER LYNN: I had a boyfriend in Illinois who decided—since I now lived in California—that he loved me. So he moved in, and I found myself paying all of the bills.
Was he an asshole? No, more an opportunist than an asshole. We began to have problems.
KELLY NICHOLS: I worked as Jessica Lange’s stunt double for King Kong. They wanted to use the gorilla hands on me—they were like these robot hands with fur.
But after the first day of shooting the hands broke. So I got the run of the MGM lot for two weeks. I just walked around in my little costume, and onto the set of New York, New York, and Logan’s Run.
GINGER LYNN: I always had high expectations of myself, but they weren’t really about being in the entertainment industry. I didn’t come to California to become an actress or a star. I never saw myself like that.
When I was growing up, I wasn’t a cheerleader, I wasn’t a jock, I wasn’t one of the popular people. I was what we used to call a “head.” You know, I hung out in the alley and smoked pot.
EDDIE HOLZMAN (PHOTOGRAPHER/COLLEEN APPLEGATE’S BOYFRIEND): Someone told Colleen Applegate that I made a comment about her weight, so she starved herself. It made me feel awfully powerful. She was very vulnerable at the time. On our third date, she told me she loved me. I told her to slow down and get ahold of herself.
MICHAEL LONDON: Eddie Holzman was a photographer for Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler, but he had his dividing line. He wasn’t happy when he found out that Colleen was doing movies behind his back. You know, everyone in that world has their line: “This is acceptable, and this isn’t.”
EDDIE HOLZMAN: I got tired of being the father figure. She was so young and innocent; she could be an instant star in porn—and instant gratification was what she wanted. Like cocaine.
RHONDA JO PETTY: In 1979 or 1980, I was going out with a big shot at MGM. He’d call me up and say, “Meet me in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel.” Then he’d pick me up and take me to his house; his wife would be out of town. His house was just absolutely outrageous. He used to even send for me at his fucking office. I don’t even know how I met him. It was purely sex and money, ha, ha, ha. He paid me a thousand bucks a night.
KELLY NICHOLS: They were going to use my boobs because Jessica Lange didn’t want hers showing when King Kong’s finger came down her chest. But then at the last minute, Jessica decided she did want her boobs in the movie.
I really didn’t belong in the Hollywood system.
GINGER LYNN: I went to the Colorado River with thirty people from my gym, and along the banks they had all these little bars with signs saying “Hot Legs Contest” or “Wet T-Shirt Contest.”
KELLY NICHOLS: I mean, the whole casting-couch thing—there was more crap like that going on in straight Hollywood than in porn. There were more people that wanted parts so bad—and people would hold that over their heads.
GINGER LYNN: We had run completely out of money by the first day, so me and this other girl started entering these contests. I won the first one—it was a “Hot Legs” contest. I made a hundred bucks and I thought, “Oh my God, this is so cool!”
VERONICA HART: The difference between the porn business and the straight business is that in porn you don’t have to fuck anybody to get a job. I pretty much fucked everybody in Hollywood, and it doesn’t get you anywhere, ha, ha, ha.
Hollywood is all about dangling promises and hopes. That’s the most refreshing thing about dealing with most of the people in porn—we’re pretty down-to-earth and not full of too much bullshit.
GINGER LYNN: There were all these girls that were extremely well-endowed, and I’m average. And the other girls were taking their tops off and pinching their nipples. I was too shy to do that, but I was willing to show my butt and my legs and you could see my wet nipples through my T-shirt.
I think I won three or four different contests. Between my girlfriend and I, we probably brought in four or five hundred bucks a day.
KELLY NICHOLS: I had one experience with a very famous producer. He really liked me, and it was one of those times when I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, so I was fucking him. He was trying to promise me things, but I told him, “I’m just here because I want to be.”
VERONICA HART: I really believed that there would be a merging of Hollywood and us—although when I went into the porn business, I gave up my aspirations to be a straight actress. I realized when I went into porn that this was not going to further a straight career.
“Fuck the straight business,” I thought. “I don’t need the hypocrisy.”
That was the lovely thing about being in the porn business. I didn’t have to fuck anybody or blow anybody to get a job.
KELLY NICHOLS: The producer was trying to tell me, “This town sucks!”
I was like, “No, life is still good….”
He goes, “I’ll show you. Just stay in the other room.”
He makes a phone call and this little girl comes over. She stands outside his office and starts unzipping her top. She goes in. Brings her portfolio. He talks to her then has me come in and meet her—and then he kicks her out.
He says, “That girl is fifteen and a half. Her mom dropped her off and parked down the block. She was upset when she left because her mom wanted her to stay longer. You know why? Because she wanted her daughter to fuck me. That’s the town you’re living in.”
GINGER LYNN: When I got back, my boyfriend and I discussed what had happened on the trip. We thought it would be a good idea if I started stripping at bachelor parties. So I found this quote-unquote agent, and I went to the first bachelor party, and I brought my little tape deck, and my boyfriend came along as a bodyguard.
RHONDA JO PETTY: A lot of these movie star people were very fascinated with pornography, and they’d show up on the sets. Max Baer (Jethro Bodine from The Beverly Hillbillies) was one of my best friends. Nick Nolte and Max Baer would hang out together. And they wanted me to come over and party with them a few times, but I never really ended up doing it.
GINGER LYNN: I hadn’t really thought it through, so when I walked into this room and there were twenty drunk bachelors waiting for the stripper, I freaked. I ran out and left the tape deck—and my boyfriend—and they beat him up. It was horrible.
So I called the agent and said, “You know what? I don’t think I’m really cut out for this.”
GLORIA LEONARD: Robin Leach was a gossip columnist for the Star, the tabloid that we all know and love. Robin is really one of the few gossip people who enjoys relationships with people like Liz Taylor, Suzanne Somers, and Cher. He’s English, and he’s terribly charming, and whatever the protocol for gossip columnists is, he’s followed it.
So our publicist set up an interview because I was getting a lot of attention as a result of all the celebrity nudes we were running in High Society, and of course that was right up the Star’s alley.
GINGER LYNN: I found another ad in the paper that said, “Figure models wanted: five hundred dollars to five thousand per day.” It was for Jim South’s World Modeling in Van Nuys. When I went in, there were two photographers there, and they took Polaroids of me.
RHONDA JO PETTY: Max Baer would call me and just want to know what I was doing and what film I was working on. Then one time I was really sick, and you know what Max did? He sent somebody to the pharmacy to pick up my prescription and bring it to my house.
I really liked him because he didn’t really expect anything from me. He’d just call me and say, “How you doing? Me and Nick Nolte are here together. You going to come party with us?”<
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And I never met him in person, ha, ha, ha, because I would never go! But we continued that phone relationship for about a year.
GINGER LYNN: One of the photographers I met through World Modeling was Steven Hicks. We did test shots for Penthouse, and while we were waiting for the answer, Steven was going to Mexico for two weeks. He said to me, “Don’t shoot for anybody while I’m gone.” But I was brand-new, and I didn’t believe him. You know, “Wait two weeks”?
Then Suze Randall came in and said, “I’ll shoot you now.”
GLORIA LEONARD: Robin took me to lunch at a restaurant, which was a romantic, dimly lit grotto. They showed us to a private room to conduct the interview.
We were sitting next to each other in a banquette, and in his clipped English accent, he asked, “Do you wear black panties?”
I was intrigued that somebody would have such naughty nerve. And I said, “I think I have a pair on right now.”
He said, “Would you think I was terribly brash if I asked you for the pair you’re wearing?”
I said, “Yes, I would, but if you’d like them…”
I thought it might enhance his article. So, very discreetly, I wiggled out of my panties under the lunch table, and Robin put them in his pocket.
Robin Leach was a wonderful lover. He was sensitive—he wasn’t in a rush—and he was very big on foreplay.
GINGER LYNN: Suze shot me for Penthouse. Steven was very upset, but the layout was held for several months, which is very common. At that point Penthouse wasn’t using women who’d done adult films as centerfolds.
RHONDA JO PETTY: There was this one party in the Hollywood Hills—I don’t know how I ended up there, but I did—and Tony Curtis was there. I knew Tony; he would come to the porn sets sometimes. Anyway, he was smoking cocaine, and he’s got himself locked in the bathroom, and he’s threatening to commit suicide. It took them like two hours to talk him out of the bathroom.
GINGER LYNN: Between the time that Suze shot me and my first layout came out, enough months had gone by that I had begun to do adult films.
KELLY NICHOLS: I met Warren Beatty through my friend Ingrid, who was a model. But I was still shy, and everybody comes up to celebrities and bugs them. If you just walk up, celebrities just see a set of tits. They want to fuck you. Then you’re saying platitudes out of your mouth that they’re not even listening to. I liked to be listened to, and I like to make a difference.
KRISTIN STEEN (FORMER ACTRESS): I had been called by Shirley MacLaine’s brother—what’s his name? Warren Beatty.
It was fun getting called by Warren Beatty while my boyfriend was there. He was calling to invite me to his hotel room for a party.
So I went, but he wanted to have a party with these two other girls who were there, and I was very insulted by that. I wouldn’t have minded having a party just with him, but not with these two other girls. I mean, come on. So I just got up and left.
KELLY NICHOLS: I just said hi to Warren Beatty—nothing else. But Ingrid had dated him in New York, and she just loved to fuck Warren Beatty. But she never dragged me into it—she was a really good friend.
See, there was a point where the whole idea of star-fucking just seemed like a really cool thing. But I always felt I was kind of excluded because I’m very shy.
SHARON MITCHELL: I hooked up with Warren Beatty through Tracey Adams—who he kept for a while—while Tracey had a gay relationship with the same woman for years. It was pretty much a secret because nobody talked about sex with movie stars. It’s just an unspoken code that you don’t, you know? You could be shooting dope with the Rolling Stones—but you’d never hear me say that.
KRISTIN STEEN: The two girls with Warren Beatty were beautiful—models or something. I thought it was so weird because I was this skinny, flat-chested chick, and I didn’t think I was pretty or beautiful or glamorous. I think he was just calling random women.
I wasn’t insulted to find out that that was all he wanted, but it was disappointing. You know, like, “This is the world?”
SHARON MITCHELL: I met Warren a couple of times, and we chatted and became friends. Did he come on to me? I can’t answer that, but Warren seemed to know a lot about the porn business. He asked a lot of questions—but not in that fancy, asinine way that most people would bug the living shit out of you. And he knew a lot about sexually transmitted diseases, ha, ha, ha.
VERONICA HART: We’re all just real people. I think we’re all pretty up-front about what we do. Maybe it’s because we’re already exposed. You see us without our clothes on. You see us in our most intimate moments, doing stuff everybody else tries to keep secret.
SHARON MITCHELL: It always struck me that you can’t make friends with the people in Hollywood because you can’t get close to them. I mean, I thought I had barriers; these motherfuckers built the wall. You really couldn’t get close to these people—they gave new meaning to the word superficial—and they had money.
JIM SOUTH: There’s a lot of regular movie stars that are really, really, really into the porn business.
TIM CONNELLY: We call them “porn marks.”
Mr. Untouchable
CLEVELAND/LOS ANGELES
1982
NEW YORK TIMES, JULY 26, 1978: REUBEN STURMAN AND SIX OTHERS ACQUIT TED: “A jury in Federal District Court, Cleveland, that acquitted seven persons of obscenity charges, wrote to Judge William K. Thomas a message saying that they do not believe the average person is capable of having a shameful interest in sex.
“Reuben Sturman and six of his employees were acquitted. They had been charged with shipping obscene materials across state lines.”
RICHARD ROSFELDER (IRS SPECIAL AGENT): I remember reading in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that Reuben Sturman was found not guilty of obscenity—it may even have been front-page news.
I mean, everybody figured Reuben would be found guilty of obscenity. No one expected the acquittal—the agent or the prosecutors or the Strike Force or the public or the media.
NINA HARTLEY (PORN STAR): I met Reuben Sturman a couple of times, and he was very nice to me. I knew the importance of who he was; I knew the significance of him wanting to shake my hand and give me a compliment.
But he thought I was a silly hippie girl because to me sex is utopian, not just a business. And he took it to the whole next level—in terms of sex being a vital business.
RICHARD ROSFELDER: They had interviewed jurors; they were talking about the confusion in determining what obscenity is. And there had been some problems during the trial, where one of Sturman’s associates was found in contempt for saying something to a juror.
NINA HARTLEY: I was more fired up with my youthful enthusiasm for my chosen field than Reuben was. I just talked to him about what I hoped to do with adult material—that I liked making this for couples—and Reuben was looking at me like, “I don’t understand who she thinks watches this. I mean, it’s lonely, single guys.”
RICHARD ROSFELDER: How the Reuben Sturman obscenity prosecution in Cleveland ended up with a Strike Force, I’m not sure. But it was the United States Department of Justice Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, which had eighteen Strike Forces in the United States: New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Miami, Kansas City, Buffalo, et cetera, and all of them answered directly to Washington—and to the attorney general.
NINA HARTLEY: But one does not argue with Reuben Sturman; one listens respectfully to his opinion. It was earlier in my career, and since I was living my dream, I was happy.
Reuben was at the end of his career: “Done that, been there, seen it, got the T-shirt,” you know? Age and jadedness versus youth.
RICHARD ROSFELDER: I felt pretty bad for the prosecutors and the FBI agent, who had worked really hard to put together a case. But I also appreciated that the acquittal created an opportunity for me to do my thing.
BOBBY ELKINS: Was I competing with Reuben? Well, I was with Danny Apple, and what made Danny Apple was the bookstore on Hollywood and Western—that bookstore made so muc
h money.
This old Jewish guy had wanted to sell it to me—because it was in between a pool hall and a bar that I owned—and he wanted $18,000 for the place. I was negotiating with him when Danny came in and bought it. From that moment on, Danny Apple became a millionaire.
CALIFORNIA ORGANIZED CRIME CONTROL COMMISSION: APPLE, DANIEL JAMES: “Apple was sentenced to state prison in 1954 for burglary and robbery. In 1967, he became active in the Los Angeles pornography industry and is now considered to be a major pornography dealer in Southern California. As of May 3, 1977, Apple had recorded with the Los Angeles county clerk seventeen book or magazine stores. He has business connections with the New York Carlo Gambino Mafia organization.”
BOBBY ELKINS: They want to own you, but I wouldn’t let them buy in. I said, “Look, I got partners,” and I mentioned a few people.
Vince DiStephano and I were really close friends. They whacked Bobby DeSalvo, and they were gonna whack Vinny. They said that he took money; I really have no idea if he did or not.
UNITED STATES PROSECUTIVE MEMORANDUM, JANUARY 1980: VINCENT JAMES DiSTEPHANO, aka “Vince”: “Born 12/7/31 in New York City. Last known address: 17248 Barnestown St., Granada Hills, California. DiSTEPHANO works as a manager for LOUIS and JOSEPH PERAINO at Arrow Films and Video, Los Angeles, California.”