by Holmes, John
4
Little did I realize that the one-time gig with Harry would land me a career. I did know one thing for certain, however: If I was to continue performing in Harry’s kind of filmmaking, cash was the only way to go. No more bounced checks for me! From that day on I began telling people that my middle initial, C, stood for cash, I never liked my real middle name, anyway.
My experience with Harry convinced me there was money to be made in modeling. The thought so consumed me that I began looking through classified ads in the L.A. Free Press in the hope of finding leads for part-time jobs to fit into my class schedule. Most of the listings were come-ons from characters that wanted up-front money themselves: “Give us fifty bucks…” It was the people who didn’t ask for handouts that caught my attention. As it turned out, they were looking for nude models.
I began showing up at Crossroads of the World, an attractive Hollywood landmark of sorts, on Sunset Boulevard. Behind the storefront facades, in darkened back rooms, were miniature sound stages. They weren’t anything fancy, just a few lights on tripods, a camera, scattered pieces of worn furniture, a rumpled bed, and backdrops. It wasn’t MGM, but something was obviously happening between the walls. Unknowingly, I had stumbled onto the pornography capital of the United States.
My first assignments were for magazine work. In the mid 1960s, a made model had to keep his back to the camera. I even had to keep my underwear on since showing a man’s ass was illegal—or so they told me. Then they began to get really chancy and off came the underwear. For one series of shots, I had to dry-hump a female model. Everything was
39 simulated but it looked real in the photo, probably too real, for once the shots got into circulation, the photographer got busted. But, times were changing. The court decided the photos were not obscene, which led to more frontal nudity. It was a gradual process until the courts allowed even penetration to be shown.
Each of the shops at Crossroads had a porno shooter who shot everything from nude stills to live action 8mm “loops.” I remember walking into the shop shortly after my first visit to meet with a photographer named Dave, who had taken stills of two girls in a lesbian scene with a black guy. Dave was scared stiff, having just received a phone call to alert him that he was in trouble. Without another word, Dave started loading all his negatives and camera equipment into his Cadillac and sped away down Sunset. Not thirty seconds later, what appeared to be the entire LAPD Vice Squad swarmed Dave’s studio. He had gotten away just in time.
Sex was all around me. I was drawn to it, and it was drawn to me. The producers, if they could be called that, were anxious to get me away from posing for magazine shots and into film work. What made me valuable, they said, were my size and my ability to sustain an erection and orgasm on cue.
With film offers suddenly coming my way, I dropped out of UCLA. For the first time in my life I was making decent money, and I had found something I really liked doing. It was certainly more enjoyable, for me, anyway, than washing dishes, selling brushes, and chasing accidents. I was also getting an education in cinematography without having to pay for it. When I wasn’t performing, I visited other filming sessions at Crossroads where I learned camera techniques, lighting, make-up, and various ways to dress a set. It was all small-time, bottom level stuff, but it was a start. Actually, a few of the men were quite knowledgeable about filmmaking. At one session, a cameraman who had worked for Cecil B. DeMille during the early days of talkies befriended me. Meeting him gave me the feeling that I was headed in the right direction, despite the surroundings.
The movies being made at Crossroads were no different than the movie Harry made of me and Linda at our apartment that night. By today’s standards they weren’t really movies at all, but rather minute-long “loops,” short scenes of quickie sex action that have been shown for years at adult arcades for a quarter a throw. Loops had no real story lines, no sound, and were shot in black and white. Quick to make, and easy money!
Loops were hot stuff in those days. Shot on Super-8 film, they were reduced to 8mm and packaged in plain white boxes, which were delivered to an underground lab. There, five hundred to one thousand copies were made and the negatives destroyed. Today, loops would be pushed as “limited editions,” but at that time they were totally illegal and had to be sold undercover, usually out of the trunks of cars parked near magazine stands, bookstores, even bars.
In the mid-1960s, a loop sold for fifty dollars. Even a minimum sale of five hundred loops brought in big bucks. The only out-of-pocket expenses were for lab costs and the models. It was even more profitable when the models were given bum checks.
During that time it seemed everything was starting to come my way. I had plenty of job offers, sex (both on and off the set), and the money was getting better and better. The only thing I didn’t have in my life was stability, but I was hoping to feel that void, too. I had met a girl months earlier when I had worked for the Ambulance Company. Her name was Sharon, and she was a nurse at County-USC Medical Center where she worked on a team that was pioneering open-heart surgery.
Sharon and I had hit it off almost from the start. I began calling her again, then seeing her, and things got serious. I wanted to keep it that way, so I never mentioned what I was doing for a living. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed; I simply wanted everything to be perfect. Above all, I didn’t want to lose her. It worked out fine that way. Sharon and I were married in the fall of 1965.
I should have been honest with her because when I did admit to what I was doing; her reaction was exactly as I feared it would be. I can hear her voice even now as she said, darkly, “You’re having sex with other women?”
I told her they meant nothing to me: I had absolutely no feeling for those women. I was simply doing a job, my job. That was the way I made money. It would take a special person to understand what I was saying. Sharon was special in many ways. She was bright, attractive, level headed, and stable. But she could not accept my work.
Maybe I expected too much. Maybe she expected too much. I only knew that from that point on, our marriage was over. And while we remained married for the next nineteen years, we lived together for only a handful of them and rarely spoke to one another. During that time I never mentioned to anyone that I was married, legally or otherwise. It was my secret. Perhaps Sharon kept our marriage a secret too.
In my mind, I felt I had been faithful to Sharon. Outside of work, I was. But once our relationship fell apart there was no stopping me. I was on the ground floor of a booming industry, and I knew it. With work steadily coming my way, I performed in nameless 8mm loops, posed for magazine layouts, and even took stunt man jobs in the occasional television series. The more I worked, the more people I met who introduced me to increasingly important people in the industry, such as producers, directors, and money-men. They all had one interest in common: pornography.
Sex was taking over my life. Films, however, were no longer my primary outlet. Over the next few years I became involved in numerous personal relationships. There was a girl from San Diego, a fiery redhead. Within a few weeks I was not only seeing her but her two redheaded sisters. Then I found myself with their redheaded mother. It worked out fine for awhile; at least until they started to talk and discovered I was doing all of them. Red heads—talk about tempers!
Husbands offered me money to fuck their wives, sometimes while they watched. Wives paid me to come back when their husbands weren’t around. No matter where I went there was always someone new to meet, always some place to go, always a waiting bed.
New York was no different. I had thought my earlier stay there to visit my ex-Army buddy was living a fast life with nothing but girls, girls, girls. But that experience paled compared with what was to come. Since I had last seen Tony, he had managed to work his way into a circle of “the right people.” No pretending for Tony, only the real thing: the kind that drips money.
My entrée was immediate. I had no illusions as to why I was so readily accepted. I basically thoug
ht of myself as nobody. I wasn’t movie-star gorgeous, and I had few social graces. These women were after one thing, and I knew it. Of course, what they wanted came at a price, but the price was no obstacle and they were willing to pay handsomely.
The “circle” consisted mainly of divorcees and widows, patrons of the arts who seemed sympathetic when I’d tell them I was a starving actor trying to make my way into a Broadway production. The depth of their sympathy was of no consequence in their willingness to support me completely. At one point I was involved in simultaneous affairs with five dowagers. They were often less than satisfying but I was getting what I wanted, and I always gave my partners a good time. I had developed a technique as a teenager because of my size. It was during those years I discovered that, because of my size, I had to go slower and spend more time on foreplay than other guys did. If I just jumped in the saddle I caused a woman pain, so I learned to take my time with extended foreplay to make her more receptive to me. My rule of thumb came to be that when a woman pulled me to her she was sufficiently lubricated to receive me.
I learned too that while a flat, muscular stomach may appeal to women visually, a slight bit of stomach is more exciting in bed. That’s because even the slightest paunch adds friction and stimulation to the pubic area. The more padding around a man’s stomach, the more he will stimulate his partner. Beer, anyone?
Sexual gratification had never been that important to me, not while I was working, anyway. I was certainly working in New York, and the rewards were way beyond my expectations. I was on the receiving end of spectacular offerings: apartments furnished with priceless antiques, all leased in my name, Mercedes Benz automobiles, diamond-studded jewelry, and more cash than I could possibly spend. The biggest single haul came not from the daughter of a powerful crime figure but from a woman known to be “as rich as Rockefeller.” I would have cleaned up even more had her attorneys not offered me fifty thousand dollars to get lost. With the sisters from San Diego, I had begun to lead a double life. Now, I was immersed in complications that were becoming impossible to keep secret. I took the money and returned to California, but the good times were far from over.
5
Above the Sunset Strip in the Hollywood Hills, a new club had opened. Its name was Eden and it catered exclusively to couples and single women. Open only on weekends, Eden was an immediate sensation, often turning away as many as 2,000 customers a night. “You’re a big reason for my success,” the owner, a former cop, excitedly confided to me one evening. “You’re the draw. People want to see you and meet you.”
I didn’t want to get caught up in the night club scene again when I was first asked to attend. I was filming, putting in long hours virtually each day of the week. But my weekends were free and I couldn’t stay away. My inquisitive mind got the best of me, and I quickly became a regular.
The action at Eden was frantic. People somehow found their way there from all parts of the country to be a part of the “swinging singles” experience that was sweeping America. Eden was swinging, to be certain, everything from singular groping and nudity to group sex. I met some fascinating people, among them a couple who offered me ten thousand dollars to father a child for them, a request I turned down.
Bored with the teeming activity, I began to stray from Eden to begin a series of relationships, fancying myself a romantic.
I was first smitten with an actress who was then with a well-known pop singer. When those pairings failed I began seeing a real knockout lady with a sensational body. A dancer, she had starred in films and was currently headlining in Las Vegas. She was also unhappily married. For that reason we agreed never to have intimacies at her house, only at the apartment she had leased for me. Six months into our relationship, she invited me to her home. It was safe, she told me; her husband was away on business. Besides, we’d been drinking and everything was fine with the world.
45 My leggy friend and I were in bed were in bed when we heard a sound at the front door. Jumping from her arms stone naked, I grabbed my clothes and ran for the sliding glass door that led to the terrace. Outside in the darkness, as I began to step into my pants, I heard gunfire. Then I felt the searing pain in my leg. The force of the blow hurdled me over the terrace rail and down the ivy-covered hillside. Still naked but now bloodied and in pain, I somehow managed to climb back up the slope to my car and drive to the nearest hospital, where I passed out on the steering wheel horn.
When I woke up I was facing two uniformed policemen who were full of questions about the gunshot wound. I was quiet for along moment as I strained to come up with a possible alibi. Nothing made sense so I said with all the sincerity I could muster, “I’m a stunt man in the movies. I was rehearsing for a scene when my prop gun went off. I didn’t know it was real.”
The cops looked at each other, shaking their heads. I’m sunk, I told myself. Then one of the men said, “Stupid. Be more careful next time.”
“You’re right,” I answered. “And I will.”
With that, they were gone.
I let out a sigh of relief and began to relax. No more encounters with the police, I vowed silently. No more! I wanted to take my vow seriously, but somehow I couldn’t. There was no way of predicting what the future held for me. I couldn’t even predict what tomorrow would bring. Not so surprisingly, perhaps, my dancer friend continued to remain in my life. Or, rather, I continued to remain in hers when she divorced her husband and moved me into her house. Being a dancer, she knew all about legs. I couldn’t have had a better therapist to get me back on my feet.
The relationship held yet another surprise for me, however. After nearly a year together she let one of her dainty shoes drop. She had secretly remarried and was supporting her new husband in Las Vegas. How was I to know she was seeing another man during her frequent trips away for headlining performances? It was time for me to move on.
More despondent than I cared to admit over the breakup, I became a regular at the bars of Beverly Hills’ posh hotels where I became chummy with the bartenders. “You get a lot of lonely, rich old ladies looking for some action,” I told them. “I’m the action. Fix me up and I’ll cut you in on the take.” I met some fascinating ladies and received the usual expensive gifts, including complimentary “vacations” for two to such destinations as London, Paris and Rome, but I was like dead meat on the rack. I had lost all enthusiasm for what I was doing. I was smoking and drinking more than ever,
The sexual revolution was reaching an all-time high. Within the Los Angeles area, a number of individuals were beginning to organize companies and invest huge amounts of money in making adult entertainment. Theaters were opening in major cities for the exclusive showing of porno movies. Following the release of such films as Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones, branded obscene but upheld by the courts, the public no longer seemed to have a problem with being seen in lines at porno movie houses. Unlike the days of seedy-looking men with long trench coats, it had actually become acceptable for couples, even groups of friends, to attend such places. Porn had suddenly become a part of popular culture.
Between all my running around and whoring, I had made a handful of feature films myself. The names of the earliest ones are long forgotten, but I believe The Ladies Bed Companion was among the first.
Feature movies were definitely a step above loop life. Scripts weren’t necessary to churn out a loop, and besides, scripts were evidence if found in a raid. Now we were given actual pages with storylines and dialogue to memorize. And we had shooting schedules of days instead of hours.
I had met Hawaiian-born director Bob Chinn in 1970. Now, several years later, I ran into him again. “I’m making another porn flick,” Chinn told me,” and I’d love for you to be in it.” What Bob had in mind, I didn’t know, but he certainly came along at the right time.
The chance encounter led to my being cast as Johnny Wadd, a nononsense, gun-toting private eye à la Dirty Harry, whose capers led him into more beds than dark alleys. At first, Chinn had no n
ame for his character. We were standing around MacArthur Park in Los Angeles one afternoon when he asked me if I had any ideas what to call the film. “Why not name the lead guy Johnny Wadd,” I suggested, “and that could be the title of the film.” Being of Chinese descent, Bob didn’t immediately understand what “Johnny Wadd” implied, but after trying it out on a few people he got the message and decided to use it.
Johnny Wadd was my first real screen characterization and Johhny Wadd, Detective, my first film with Bob Chinn, was a great working experience for me. It had a plot with substance, a large cast and crew, a sixweek shooting schedule, a big budget, and location filming. For the first time I had a chance to work away from sheltered studio walls.
Bob and I made a good team. He allowed me to shape my character, whose trademarks were a big dick and a pinkie ring (an enormous diamond-encrusted dragonfly that had been given to me by a lady friend as a reward for “services rendered”), as well as giving me free reign in the creation of my sex scenes. I didn’t tell Bob how to edit and he didn’t tell me how to fuck.
Following Johnny Wadd, Detective, we made Ensenada Wadd on location in Mexico. Filming on location has its drawbacks, as we soon discovered. While in Ensenada to shoot prison conditions and squalid street scenes for background shots, we were threatened with arrest for working without a permit. Facing a possible five-year jail sentence, we were able to escape only because our newer, revved-up engines could outrun the posse.
While in Hawaii for Waikiki Wadd, I signed a contract to work nights at a dingy downtown Honolulu club performing simulated sex on stage with an attractive young partner. We never did anything but we were nude and the act was choreographed to such a point that it was highly erotic. The girl and I created such a sensation that the club owner kept renewing our options.
The act continued long after the completion of Waikiki Wadd. In fact, months passed before I had to return to Hollywood for the start of another film. I gave the club owner two weeks’ notice, but he would not let me go. The next thing I knew, I was being arrested on lewd conduct charges and heading for a trial which lasted five months. It seemed odd to me that while I was free on bail I was allowed to continue performing at the club. It seemed less odd when I realized that I had been set up by the club owner. With one phone call to a friend at the police department, he got what he wanted: more of me and a lot of free publicity.