The Other Hollywood

by Legs McNeil

  BOBBY ELKINS: They put a contract out on Vinny. It was the old man, Anthony Peraino, Sr., and the son, Butchie, and the other son, Joe the Whale.

  RICHARD ROSFELDER: My partner and I went to the Sovereign News Company to inform Reuben Sturman that he was under investigation. When we got there, we walked up to this guy who was cleaning the snow off his windshield, and he asked, “Can I help you?”

  It was really nasty out—the snow was blowing and stuff—and I said, “Yeah. We’re looking for Reuben Sturman.”

  He said, “Go ring the buzzer on the building over there.”

  So we rang the buzzer and said, “We want to talk to Reuben Sturman,” and this guy said, “Well, he just left.”

  That had been Reuben, cleaning his windshield. This would’ve been sometime after the acquittal because during the whole trial, Reuben had a goatee, which was uncommon at the time. So Reuben had shaved everything off, and he was waving and smiling as he drove away down the street.

  We never did hook up with him.

  BOBBY ELKINS: The Perainos all went back to New York, and they let Vince run Arrow Films. They closed Bryanston Films down, and then they said, “Vince, we found this place in the Valley.”

  It was when I was out of the business. In fact, when I went back over there, Vince was called back to New York, and they had a guy at the airport waiting for him, and we thought they were going to kill him, so we stopped him from going to the airport. We caught him in time and told him not to go there. Vinny’s still alive.

  ROGER YOUNG (FBI SPECIAL AGENT): Rosfelder started Sturman around 1978, and I started the Sturman case around 1982. Once we knew about each other, Rosfelder and I coordinated our efforts nationally. Rosfelder went overseas and worked the financial part, and I worked the “Interstate Transportation of Obscene Matter” part.

  HAROLD LIME (PORN PRODUCER): Reuben Sturman gave me my start. Did he give me permission to exist in this business? Yeah, he was the Godfather.

  GLORIA LEONARD: Reuben was like the granddaddy of the porn business. He threw some fabulous New Year’s Eve parties.

  RICHARD ROSFELDER: Reuben had a three-day event; the tradespeople from all over the world would come to Cleveland for his infamous Christmas parties. It was a real big-time affair. And then when Reuben bought his big mansion out in Shaker Heights, he had the big party out there. Robert DiBernardo was among the guests.

  BOBBY ELKINS: Yeah, some kid told me that Reuben was connected to DiBe. Steve loved DiBe. He used to go to New York to see him, and evidently DiBe loved him, too. Everybody liked DiBe; he was a pretty good guy. And DiBe was a real good earner. He was big—one of the biggest.

  RICHARD ROSFELDER: Was Reuben Sturman the McDonald’s of pornography? Yeah, I would have to say so. He took a hamburger and marketed it in a way that was fairly successful. But his choosing to be involved in the production and distribution of pornography had as little to do with pornography as it did in my investigating him. He did it because he was looking to make a buck.

  HAROLD LIME: Reuben financed a lot of my movies—The Ecstasy Girls, Abandon by Night, and Society Affairs. That’s why I did Society Affairs with Harry Reems—because Reuben wanted to get a “name guy.” And I guess nobody wanted Harry, so he was flattered.

  RICHARD ROSFELDER: Before Reuben’s 1978 trial and acquittal for obscenity, the Strike Force had asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate Sturman’s tax evasion, which included allegations of Swiss bank accounts, phony names, and stolen passports.

  ROGER YOUNG: Reuben Sturman’s goal was to have a piece of every single hard-core video sold—so that any time anyone sold a video, he would get a dollar or two out of every single one.

  RICHARD ROSFELDER: Reuben Sturman’s ego required that he fall victim to some vast government conspiracy to bring him down. It’s almost laughable.

  I was in the office of the attorney in charge of the Strike Force, who appreciated that probably within a few short months, Sturman would be in prison for God knows how many years. But the attorney basically agreed to allow the tax investigation to go forward, as a courtesy to me—a young, naive agent.

  Nobody got up after the acquittal and screamed, “LET’S GET THE TAX GUYS TO GET HIM IF WE CAN’T GET HIM!”

  ROGER YOUNG: Did Rosfelder go to the Swiss government and get them to open Sturman’s bank accounts? Yes.

  RICHARD ROSFELDER: The Sturman tax case was the first time in history that the Swiss government produced bank records under the “Organized Crime Exception” to the treaty. And that would support the conclusion that the United States—as required under the provisions of the treaty—presented information to the Swiss government that proved Reuben Sturman was involved in organized crime.

  REUBEN STURMAN: I paid a million in taxes every year, but there was a couple of million I didn’t tell them about.

  RICHARD ROSFELDER: He had about fifty Swiss bank accounts. I don’t know how much money he had—millions, anyway. He estimated his net worth at $250 million.

  REUBEN STURMAN: I should have paid my taxes.

  ROGER YOUNG: Reuben was kind of a straight Jewish guy from a nice neighborhood in Cleveland. He taught aerobics at the YMCA, bowled a lot, and had season box tickets to the Cleveland baseball stadium.

  Then he fell madly in love with Naomi Delgado. Reuben said the reason he put money in Switzerland was so that he wouldn’t have to give any to his first wife.

  BILL KELLY: Pornographers used to come around Reuben’s office and throw bags of money at him. Fifty thousand, a hundred thousand—it would stack up like it did in the Deep Throat case.

  ROGER YOUNG: After Reuben got divorced and moved his headquarters to North Hollywood, he was out jogging all the time. We think he was trying to keep up with Naomi, ha, ha, ha. Naomi is very good-looking, and Sturman was basically infatuated with her. He even had a face-lift to look younger for her.

  We knew that Naomi had family in Mexico and that Reuben was trying to promote her singing career.

  NAOMI DELGADO: How long did I know Reuben prior to our marriage? Ten years. He had two homes, one in Cleveland, Ohio, and one in Van Nuys, California. In Sherman Oaks, on Waddington Street. I never lived in Cleveland with Reuben.

  ROGER YOUNG: Naomi had ulterior motives that Reuben didn’t know about—like bringing her whole family up from Mexico as soon as they were married. Aunts, uncles, mom, dad, and all their kids—and all their kids’ kids.

  As one person explained it to me, “Roger, just be thankful that you’ve never met her because she is your worst nightmare.”

  Shattered Innocence

  LOS ANGELES/FARMINGTON, MINNESOTA

  1983–1984

  GLORIA LEONARD: Shauna Grant got in over her head. I think what happens to a lot of girls in this business is that they feel that they have to live out what they perceive to be a stereotypical porn star lifestyle twenty-four/seven.

  And everybody was doing drugs. I went into a Bank of America and the teller asked me if I could get her some blow, ha, ha, ha!

  KELLY NICHOLS: After a while the movies got on Shauna’s nerves because she never felt like she was an actress. And she was about as wooden as you could ever get—but she was gorgeous. But she thought I was a great actress, and I’m like, “Oh, come on! It’s porno!”

  JIM SOUTH: Shauna got mixed up with Jake Ehrlich, a drug dealer in Palm Springs.

  BUD LEE: Shauna moved in with this guy. As their cover—to explain how they made their money—they owned a leather store.

  KELLY NICHOLS: Shauna’s boyfriend was always in jail.

  TIM CONNELLY: Jake got busted for dealing, but he arranged for Shauna to take care of the leather store and his house while he was inside. They were still “seeing” each other.

  JIM SOUTH: Shauna was selling drugs on the side, and Jake knew it. Shauna knew there was no way she could talk her way out of that—and people said she could talk her way out of anything.

  And of course, when you’re really into coke—which I’ve never don
e and will never do—I’m told that you get extremely paranoid.

  KELLY NICHOLS: At any given time, Shauna and Jake were either having a lot of fun, or they were in a lot of trauma. They were either partying with John Milius, or they were worried about losing the farm. And in between all of that, she and I were deciding what we were gonna wear, ha, ha, ha.

  TIM CONNELLY: I was friends with this porn actor, Joey Silvera, and he would see Shauna whenever she’d come to New York. So one night Joey brought Shauna over, and she was just so totally coked out that she couldn’t talk. So I had no interest in her.

  You know, after I got high and fucked and had a good time, I’d be that way by three in the morning, frozen in a bathroom somewhere. But Shauna was like that from one in the afternoon, you know?

  PEOPLE, MARCH 14, 1988: A PORN STAR’S SUICIDE AT 20 LEAVES A LEGACY OF SHATTERED INNOCENCE: “Shauna’s final disintegration began on Feb. 21, 1984, when Jake Ehrlich was arrested for violating probation on a previous drug charge. Left to her own devices, Colleen became depressed and disoriented, squandering Ehrlich’s money on drugs.”

  MICHAEL LONDON: Colleen told friends that she was visiting Ehrlich regularly at the Los Angeles County Jail—but she seems to have avoided all contact.

  PEOPLE, MARCH 14, 1988: A PORN STAR’S SUICIDE AT 20 LEAVES A LEGACY OF SHATTERED INNOCENCE: “On March 14 she went to Los Angeles’s Ambassador Hotel for the Erotic Film Awards, the porn industry’s version of the Oscars. It was her last taste of glamour—Francis Ford Coppola was among the guests at her table. During the night, she received a porn-movie offer, and, with her cash dwindling, she accepted.”

  HENRI PACHARD: Shauna and Laurie Smith came to visit me at the Hyatt Hotel looking for coke. I didn’t have any; I was trying to get some. I was getting scheduled to shoot a movie in the Bay area in a few days. There had been talk about putting Shauna in the movie, so I told her, “I think you’re going to be in a movie I’m directing.”

  Shauna goes, “Oh, wow. Cool.”

  So they hung out for about an hour, and then Laurie mentioned that she was going to the awards show that night with Francis Ford Coppola and Gray Frederickson, and maybe they’d see me there.

  KELLY NICHOLS: I had come out to Los Angeles with Tim Connelly because Shauna and I were both nominated for Best Actress in 1983. Shauna was nominated for Best Actress twice in that category; I was nominated once, and Veronica Hart was nominated once. Even Shauna thought it was weird that she was nominated—she’s a bad actress, and she gets nominated twice?

  LAURIE HOLMES: Shauna Grant was the only porno girl I ever knew that needed cue cards, ha, ha, ha.

  BUD LEE: We were sitting with Francis Ford Coppola, Gray Frederickson, and this guy in this flashy leather coat that looked like it had been simonized—who turned out to be Jake Ehrlich, Shauna Grant’s boyfriend. The guy was the cocaine dealer to the stars—that’s how he knew all these people.

  Shauna got involved in the right circle.

  HENRI PACHARD: I was seated down front, and at the next table was Francis Ford Coppola and Gray Frederickson—the guy that did The Godfather—sitting with Shauna Grant and Laurie Smith.

  So when they called my name out for Best Director, I turned around to get up and Francis Ford Coppola nodded his head and smiled at me because he knew the feeling, you know?

  KELLY NICHOLS: When they announced that I won Best Actress, it was such an amazing moment. It was just wild. After the show, Shauna came up to me and said, “I’m really happy you won. You totally deserved it. And I just love you for it.”

  That was really sweet because Shauna didn’t talk a whole lot.

  HENRI PACHARD: In my acceptance speech, I talked about how the kind of movies we made required a certain amount of courage, and I referred to the movie Apocalypse Now, which I was very much taken with.

  Then I said, “And he’s here with us tonight, Francis Ford Coppola,” and I gestured toward him, they took a shot, and he waved. I said, “This is courage.”

  He got a big applause and everything.

  After the show was over I went off with some girl to get fucked up and get some sex, and apparently Francis Ford Coppola was looking for me.

  TOM BYRON (PORN STAR): That was the night Shauna was with Francis Ford Coppola. Was Coppola banging Shauna? Maybe, I don’t know.

  But do you remember Raven? Okay, Raven had a friend, Laurie Smith, and they used to love to do coke together. They used to hang out at Gray Frederickson’s house—he was one of the producers of The Godfather, okay? So Gray Frederickson liked to do coke, and he liked porn chicks—you do the fucking math.

  SHARON MITCHELL: Laurie Smith and Shauna really had that ticket into the Hollywood crowd.

  KAREN APPLEGATE: They brainwash these girls and make them believe they’re going to do something for them, but their only intention is using them for dirt.

  MICHAEL LONDON: Colleen’s prospects at the time were uncertain. She told friends that a Hollywood producer had offered her a role in an upcoming film entitled Sci-Fi High, but the producer denies it, and the story may have been created out of Colleen’s frustration for a career in straight films.

  BOBBY HOLLANDER: They were playing with her head.

  HENRI PACHARD: I had heard that Shauna was a little bit of trouble—that she was flaky and did too many drugs—so when we were getting ready to go to San Francisco for the shoot, we decided to give her good friend Laurie Smith a job, too, to make sure Laurie delivered Shauna to the set.

  MICHAEL LONDON: Laurie Smith was a really tough girl, and she had a definite point of view about how the people in the straight Hollywood world promised jobs to these young girls and did not deliver—but kept sleeping with them in the process.

  TIM CONNELLY: The day after the awards show, Kelly and I went to Laurie’s hotel room because we were going to buy some coke.

  It’s the middle of the afternoon, and we end up waiting around for three hours because Shauna went out to do something and got lost—and Shauna lived in Los Angeles.

  So we got high with Laurie for a few hours. She was just crazy, flitting all around the room.

  When Shauna finally showed up, she was just totally coked out. She could barely talk.

  KELLY NICHOLS: Shauna was like, “I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I’m supposed to work for Henri Pachard in San Francisco, and I don’t think I want to.”

  I go, “Well, don’t.”

  She goes, “I’m just really upset. My boyfriend is in jail again, and I’ve got this shop.”

  There were some thugs coming by the shop and hustling for money. I don’t know how much of the truth I was getting, but Shauna said their checks were bouncing and she didn’t know what to do. It definitely didn’t sound fun.

  TIM CONNELLY: Kelly and I decided to leave because we had to fly to San Francisco the next morning—Kelly was going to work for Alex DiRenzy—but Laurie and Shauna were trying to get Kelly to take Shauna’s part in Henri’s movie because Shauna didn’t want to go.

  KELLY NICHOLS: Shauna knew that if they could get another star of equal value, then they wouldn’t be as hard on her. Like if Shauna could promise that I would be there, then they wouldn’t slam her as bad. You know, all would be forgiven.

  I was like, “Okay, fine. I can do it. No big deal.”

  She said, “But you’ve got to tell me for sure if you’re gonna do it.”

  I said, “Okay, I’ll tell you for sure.”

  MICHAEL LONDON: On Tuesday, March 21, Jake Ehrlich reached Shauna by phone at MGM/UA, where Frederickson and Beckerman had offices. A long, loud, hysterical call ensued. When it ended, Shauna left for the airport to fly to Palm Springs without a word to Laurie Smith.

  HENRI PACHARD: The night before she was supposed to come to San Francisco, Shauna called and said, “I guess if I don’t show up a lot of people are gonna be disappointed, huh?”

  I said, “Well, we’re all counting on you being here.”

  You know, I told her, “I’ve never had a c
hance to direct you, and I hear you’re really good, blah, blah, blah.”

  She said, “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Great, honey. Thanks. See you tomorrow.”

  KELLY NICHOLS: I called Shauna at her house in Palm Springs, and she sounded in really good spirits.

  She said, “Thank you for working. I just don’t feel like going up there.”

  I said, “You sure? Everything’s fine?”

  She said, “Yeah, I think I’m just gonna hang out here for a while. But I really, really appreciate it.”

  In retrospect, without reading too much into it, she just didn’t want the wrath of one more person against her.

  HENRI PACHARD: Laurie calls me up on the morning of March 21, 1984, and tells me that Shauna “sort of had an accident.”

  I asked, “What happened?”

  “Well, she kinda shot herself in the head, sort of.”

  I asked, “Is she dead?”

  Laurie said, “Uh, sort of.” Really. Denial. This is 5:00 or 5:30 in the morning, and Laurie said that Shauna took a rifle and shot herself.

  Laurie said, “Can I please come do the movie anyway? I need to get out of here. I’m really scared.”

  I said, “Absolutely.”

  KELLY NICHOLS: I got a call from Laurie. She was freaked. They wouldn’t let her in the hospital room because she wasn’t family. Because Shauna was still alive when they got to the body. She was a vegetable, but she was still alive. They had her on a respirator, and a whole side of her face was gone. Laurie was just…you know, this was her friend.