“When you first looked at Lorna, you said, ‘Shit, we’re goin’ to jail,” said Fred Beiersdorf, head of Dallas’s Dal-Art Films and one of Meyer’s favorite distributors. Too much nudity, too much sex, too much violence, Lorna was a stick of dynamite that Meyer threw at the world with relish. “They were all afraid of it, and that’s the wonderful thing,” said RM. “When someone is afraid to show it, or concerned with prosecution, then you know you’ve got something.”
Meyer was determined to bust Lorna out of the sex theater ghetto. As Beiersdorf saw it, “Russ didn’t care about the money. He just wanted his pix to play in upscale situations. You had to fight for it, you had to fight for change. Russ was way ahead of his time.” The result, said Meyer, was that “Lorna played the very best RKO houses in New York right down to skid row.” One distributor in Boston convinced the owner of the about-to-be-demolished Capri Theater to let Lorna play one week. It stayed for six months. A theater in Amherst, Massachusetts, was so mobbed that mirrors lining the lobby were cracked. Lorna was a money machine. “You’d open in a drive-in in some little Texas town and sell that sumbitch, every swingin’ dick in the world would show up,” said Beiersdorf. “And it does a zillion dollars!”
Drive-ins were extremely lucrative for guys like Meyer. Dave Friedman estimates that in just North and South Carolina alone, “there were four hundred drive-ins, half of them played skin—and here you were on the buckle of the Bible Belt.” Of course, open-air venues enabled almost anybody to get a peek, which meant trouble from what Meyer dubbed “the tennis shoe brigade”: preachers, little old ladies, and other prim-and-proper types determined to stamp out smut.
The simplest way of countering these moral crusaders was, once again, the patch. “I came from the old school,” Friedman explained. “If there was some heat, you went down to see the chief or the sheriff and you said, ‘Chief, what can I do . . . ?’ ‘Well, y’know, we need a new bathroom in the station. . . .’ It cost less to patch than the First Amendment route.” Increasingly, however, Russ Meyer found himself defending his pictures in court. RM maintained that charges were usually instigated by some ambitious district attorney seeking political advancement—cleaning up local dirt was easy publicity.
Between 1964 and 1968, Lorna was prosecuted for obscenity in at least three states—Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Meyer simply refused to back down.*3 Dave Friedman says it was independents like himself and Meyer who fought for their livelihood while the Hollywood majors watched and waited. “The majors should’ve kissed the independents’ asses. Because the independents are the ones that fought the battles—the majors never took any stand against censorship.” Preachers, payoffs, prosecution—“it was a game, like everything else,” Friedman continued. “You won some and you lost some. A few of us played it well, like RM. Russ was one of the great fighters. He was never afraid.”
Afraid? Hell, Meyer courted trouble. You couldn’t buy the kind of press the tennis shoe brigade provided. Controversy equalled box office. As RM saw it, “If it were all so okay, who would care? Therein lies the secret of any so-called pornographer’s success: it’s the do-gooders that rise up and create all kinds of interest and publicity in this field.”
Russell Albion Meyer, maker of roughies, had gotten much rougher to deal with in the bedroom. “Russ puts women down,” Eve later said in a 1971 interview. “I don’t think he likes women at all.”
Things were not altogether cozy between Mr. and Mrs. Meyer in 1964. Eve clearly disapproved of the path his career was taking. The breezy voyeurism of Teas and its offspring was one thing; an out-and-out humpty-dance like Lorna was another. Eve “didn’t like the idea of me making movies dealing with fucking. She didn’t want me to get involved with other women.” If she only knew. Eve also made the mistake of suggesting that Russ make a real (i.e., Hollywood) picture and leave the sex crap behind. The idea of “going straight” infuriated Meyer no matter who dealt it to him. He liked what he was doing and he was gonna do a lot more of it, come hell or high water.
At the end of the second week of the Lorna shoot, Eve checked into Adventist Hospital in Glendale for treatment of a serious infection, the details of which remain vague. Eve tried to keep it a secret to spare Meyer any further distraction, but a friend spilled the beans and, after the day’s shoot at an old salt mine, Russ tore down in his car to join his sick wife. According to RM’s autobiography, the first words from her lips were, “I can never have a baby, now. I hope you’re satisfied.”
Always a two-fisted drinker, Eve was hitting the bottle harder. According to friend Dolores Fox: “She was drinking a lot, and I think that’s one of the things that Russ got angry at her for.” Meyer liked a cocktail or two, but he was no boozer. “They would fight. When Eve would drink, she would get very nasty.”
Jim Ryan recalled Eve ranting and raving over her husband’s Diner’s Club business expenses. Ryan shook his head and laughed about how prickly Eve could be where Russ was concerned. “She used to call me up and say, ‘Ryan, you bastard, what have you done with that fucker? You bastard, you prick!’ ” Jim was quite fond of Eve, but one day her foul mouth drove even the normally unflappable Ryan to crack. “I came back at her—‘What are you doing, you fuckin’ cunt, calling me a bastard?’ She never did that again.” In the heat of a business dispute, illustrator George “King” Carll—who created many of Meyer’s memorable ad campaigns—wound up on the receiving end of one of Eve’s infamous shotgun missives, this particular one blasting both George and Russ, “implying that we had a homosexual relationship. Can you believe that?”
“Eve was a free spirit,” Dolores Fox went on to say. “She had a mind of her own. She said whatever she wanted to and did whatever she wanted to do.” There is considerable evidence that one thing Eve wanted was other women, and a dismayed RM once suggested as much to Fox. In his autobiography, Meyer alludes to Eve “passing more time with her chickfriends . . . occasionally into the evening” around the time of Lorna, allegedly for something beyond needlepoint. Eve made a move on at least one of her female friends, and later came rumors of an affair with Christiane Schmidtmer, the wild German actress who’d previously gotten friendly with Russ. While visions of Eve as a switch-hitter might’ve made her only more appealing to most smut peddlers, who knows where it sat with “good, clean, wholesome sex” Meyer.
The great Russ/Eve love affair was sinking into the sunset, and Meyer’s next picture would help drown it for good. Before returns on Lorna started rolling in, the couple was so broke that Meyer was forced to resume TV still work. An opportunity arose to work as a director for hire in West Germany, and RM asked his wife how she’d feel if he worked out of the country for a few months. Eve made it quite clear she didn’t give a damn what her husband did.
Trouble ahead.
During his long flight overseas, Russ Meyer reflected on his disintegrating marriage. “The hell with it—I’m going to have a good time,” he told himself. RM was about to experience both good and bad times in Berlin, the latter courtesy of Albert Zugsmith.
A dozen years older than Meyer, Al Zugsmith was a powerful and somewhat feared Tinseltown entity. During a five-year tenure at Universal, he produced Written on the Wind, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and Touch of Evil, then went on to direct some very odd exploitation films. Unlike Meyer, Zugsmith had a notorious reputation for molesting starlets. “One of the most lecherous men in Hollywood” was RM’s summation of ol’ Zuggy.
Based on the infamous John Cleland novel, Fanny Hill is a period piece set in London in 1748 and concerns a young girl who stumbles into a house of ill repute. Zugsmith had originally wanted Douglas Sirk to direct. When that fell through he turned to Meyer, to whom he’d been introduced at a Lorna screening by his son-in-law George Costello, soon to occupy a central role in RM’s behind-the-scenes band of outsiders himself. Things went swimmingly at first. “Russ and I seriously considered making pictures together . . . he would direct one and I would direct one,” said Zugsmith.
Meyer was to receive a salary (deferred until the picture turned a profit) of $25,000. He agreed to the deal only if he’d also get a $200 weekly stipend, three-quarters of which he’d send home to Eve. Fanny Hill was a German-American co-production utilizing the Berlin facilities of Artur Brauner, a Polish Jew who’d survived World War II and rebuilt Germany’s film business from scratch.
Nineteen-year-old Ulli Lommel—later to become an integral member of R. W. Fassbinder’s entourage (Lommel maintains Fassbinder was a Russ Meyer fan, interestingly enough)—was cast as Fanny Hill’s boyfriend Charles. He recalled that offscreen shenanigans were far more lurid than any brothel action in the movie, with the picture’s producer as head pimp. “Zugsmith was what people considered the ugly American—cigar in his mouth, a really heavy American accent—and he showed up in Berlin with a harem of women, all these young girls. Everybody in Hollywood B-pictures between eighteen and thirty-five that had been discovered, and not yet discovered.”
Fanny Hill’s lead role was initially given to Jill Fromer, a sixteen-year-old “discovery” George Costello found working in a San Fernando Valley ice cream shop, but on-location weirdness between Zugsmith and Fromer’s father led to her premature return to the States. Zugsmith hired and fired two other actresses before Artur Brauner cast Italian Leticia Roman for the part. “Zugsmith changed his mind about casting every five minutes,” said Lommel. “Even during the shoot he wanted to change things around.”
Zugsmith and Meyer clashed from the get-go. Zugsmith had promised Meyer sole directorship of their first picture together, but, according to RM, he was handed a contract immediately before filming commenced, stating that they were to co-direct. “Russ knew it was all fucked up, but he stuck it out like a soldier,” said Lommel. “He was treated like a piece of shit by Zugsmith in front of everybody.” The German crew sided with Meyer, as did a sympathetic klieg light, which fell from the rafters one day as Zugsmith strode onto the set, narrowly missing his cranium.
Zugsmith pressured Meyer to broaden Fanny Hill’s comedy, amp up the yucks. During the shooting of the scene where Lommel dresses in drag to sneak the lead character out of the brothel, Zugsmith barged in, upset that the actor wasn’t sporting any cleavage. “He’s a man,” sputtered Meyer. “He doesn’t have tits!” Zugsmith proceeded to mince around with a pair of grapefruits stuck under his sweater to illustrate his point. “Russ just lost it completely, had almost a heart attack,” said Lommel. “He said, ‘Fuck the grapefruits!’ ”
Once the cameras started rolling, Leticia Roman revealed that she had just gotten married—and pregnant. Zugsmith complained that she was too old for the part, Meyer complained that she didn’t take direction, and, according to Ulli Lommel, Roman just complained. “Such a pain in the ass to work with! She didn’t want to be sexy, she didn’t want to be anything. That was a disaster in itself. They wanted to do alternate footage with her, and she didn’t want to show her tits.”
In order to get his part, Lommel had been coaxed into signing an oppressive ten-year deal with Artur Brauner, only to wriggle out of it when his mother showed up on the set to announce that Ulli was underage. “Brauner went through the roof. He showed up in the middle of the shoot on his knees, begging me to let my mother sign this deal.” To Lommel, the cast seemed lost and indifferent. Hollywood veteran Miriam Hopkins wandered around in “a world of her own” as Alex D’Arcy spun tales of his days as Clark Gable’s understudy. Fanny Hill was a disaster. As Lommel concluded, “The experience was totally insane, totally unpleasant, total chaos.”
Perhaps the ultimate insult for Meyer was Zugsmith’s banning RM from the editing room. “I would have gone crazy if I hadn’t known two remarkable women,” said Meyer, referring to a couple of his personal favorites from Fanny Hill’s brothel. First RM cavorted with Christiane Schmidtmer, a sexy blonde who later became something of an Aryan icon playing Nazis on American TV. His second dalliance on the Fanny Hill set was with a German sprite named Renate Hutte, aka Rena Horten, and this one would last several years. Whereas RM’s women tended to come from the darker, almost Wagnerian side of the street, there was something pastoral, even downright sunny about Rena, and those close to Meyer felt that she not only cared deeply for RM, but seemed capable of cheering up the workaholic curmudgeon. “Who really liked Meyer best? Rena,” said Jim Ryan. “I always got the feeling he was happiest with Rena for a short period there.”
Meyer, of course, still had a wife back home. When Eve informed him via transatlantic call that Lorna had gone through the roof in his absence, Russ decided to celebrate with a brand-new Porsche 365-SC, ordering his wife to wire him the four grand purchase price at once. Eve smelled a rat from this extravagant turn in her normally spendthrift husband but felt much better after going out and buying herself a mink coat of comparable value. Meyer got his wheels, and once the troubled Fanny Hill wrapped, he threw Rena in the passenger seat for a European mini-holiday, dusting off the old Leica at each and every pit stop to snap nudes of his new conquest.
Fanny Hill: A Memoir of a Woman of Pleasure was released in April 1965 and turned a modest profit despite some devastating reviews. About as far from a “roughie” as you could get, the picture still managed to offend. “A disgrace to the film industry . . . a setback for the business,” declared Variety. “They said it couldn’t be filmed, and it hasn’t been,” wrote critic Raymond Durgnat. Released to the home video market in the eighties, the picture is a bore, and perhaps the squarest credit on Meyer’s resumé. RM’s magic touch is apparent only in the casting of the bosomy brothel workers, particularly the boisterous Veronica Erickson (an oomph-girl blonde who’d done some uncredited body-doubling for Europe in the Raw) as a whip-wielding dominatrix. Eight years would pass before Meyer’s next attempt at a period piece, and that would be a disaster as well.
Returning home to America, Russ Meyer now had to face the music, and after a solid night of squabbling with Eve, RM relocated to a motel. The Meyers were headed for divorce court. So what did Russ do? Talked Eve into putting up half the bankroll for Mudhoney, conveniently failing to inform her that his new girlfriend Rena was to have a starring role. The fact that Horten spoke no English didn’t deter Russ. He just cast her as a deaf-mute.
Meyer was leaning in the direction of the nasty characters Hal Hopper played in his roughies, and for this RM was unapologetic. “We broke up because I’m a no-good son of a bitch,” said Russ of his marriage. Time and again, he admitted that when it came to women, he was a philanderer, a pussy hound, and a heel. It defused any criticism by way of the trusty I’m-a-pig-I-know-it-and-so-what defense. “He makes his own immorality a virtue,” said biographer and friend David K. Frasier. “I treat women very, very well,” added Dave Friedman. “Russ didn’t. I liked their company; I don’t think Russ did that much. We all used women, of course. But you can use them and like them.” “I don’t like a woman that’s too smart,” offered Meyer in 1990, along with his magic recipe for a happy relationship: “Let’s do what I want to do all the time.”
“Russ was very strange with women,” said Fred Beiersdorf. “They weren’t a big factor. He could just take ’em or leave ’em the rest of his life. When I got divorced, I tried to talk to Russ. He said, ‘Well, you didn’t need her anyway.’ Okay, Russ, but eighteen years of my life? He didn’t give a shit. Tough-guy Russ didn’t give a shit about anybody or anything—except makin’ a movie. Eve was the best thing that ever happened to RM. He never realized what she brought to the table until after she was gone.”
The Russ/Eve divorce wouldn’t be finalized until 1968. It was amicable—according to Roger Ebert, they used the same attorney. Eve remained in business with Meyer as distributor of his films. On March 27, 1977, Eve was killed while on vacation in the Canary Islands. Two 747s collided on a foggy runway at the Tenerife airport, including the one Eve was on, wiping out 583 people in the biggest disaster of aviation history. The Meyers’ friend Mick Nathanson found out at the newsstand. “I saw the headline in the ne
wspaper, and there was the list of casualties right on the front page—there was the name ‘Meyer, Eve, Hollywood.’ That’s all there was. I thought, ‘Wow, that sums it up.’ ”
Eve was buried down in Sunnyside, Georgia. “They have a huge slab covering her, and they had put on it ‘Eve Meyer, Killed in a Plane Crash in the Canary Islands,’ ” recalled Charlie Sumners, who visited the grave with RM. “Russ didn’t like that and I didn’t either.” Sumners, who worked in a foundry, made a bronze plaque that read “Three Times a Lady.” The next time Meyer came through he and Charlie epoxied it to her marker, completely covering the offending passage. “It’s been there for a good many years,” boasted Sumners.
There was only one Eve Meyer. RM bumped up against a lot of fabulous dames in his life, but none would ever be the ally she was. Somewhere deep inside, King Leer felt the loss. “Russ called me when Eve died. He was on the phone for ages, crying,” said Charlie’s wife, Floyce. “Russ cared for people. He really cared for people.”
But nothing was that simple with Russell Albion Meyer. Near the end of his autobiography, Meyer stuck in a two-page tribute to Eve, filled with pinup shots he’d taken. Even here he’d hedge his bets. “And did I ever love her? Hell, yes! Maybe. I think so.”
A return to Lorna’s steamy Sacramento Delta (this time Meyer had the audacity to pass it off as Depression-era Missouri), RM’s next picture, Mudhoney, dropped a few new characters into the soup. Patient, hardworking, and liked by everyone, George Costello came aboard as RM’s assistant director, dialogue coach, and all-around cleanup man. No challenge was too great for Costello, not even when it came to some buck-naked underwater body-doubling for an actor afraid of losing his toupee. George had brought Meyer the Mudhoney script, along with most of the cast, including a few that were to become RM stock players: man of a thousand voices John Furlong, who supplied frantic and highly amusing narration for many a Meyer epic; bug-eyed Mickey Foxx, a somewhat shady character prone to selling porno from the trunk of his car; and last but not least, the mighty Stuart Lancaster.*4
Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film Page 16