The Rialto Report

Jeanna Fine passed away last month. If you’re a regular listener to The Rialto Report, you’ll know that we like to interview a person from a different angle. It’s a more intimate and personal exploration, rather than just revisiting someone’s fleeting moments on camera. And it can be a challenge to convince someone to open up in that way. Sometimes it’s quick and easy to persuade a person to talk, but many others are more difficult: some interviews have simply ended up being off the record, or subjects changed their minds after finishing the conversation. A few decided that their interview shouldn’t be released until after they pass, while others just weren’t very interesting. And then there was my interview with Jeanna Fine. We’d originally contacted her for all the usual Rialto Report reasons: Jeanna had been one of the adult industry’s biggest, and longest lasting, A-list stars, and I was keen to hear her personal story. She’d first appeared in X-rated films in the mid 1980s – getting her name supposedly when Barbara Dare told her that Jeanna looked so fine. It was the tail period of the so-called ‘golden age’, just as the business was changing into a more corporate, studio-driven, rinse-and-repeat video industry. But there was nothing standard about Jeanna. She stood out from pack, fiercely individual, different from many other identikit, girl-next door performers, with her short platinum-blond spiky punk hair, or later, long dark hair that turned her into a scowling femme fatale. She was androgenous, full of confrontational attitude – and her scenes bristled with a bad-ass aggression. And Jeanna’s rebellious streak didn’t seem confined to her appearance, and the word was that she would turn up to shoots when and where she felt like it, and sometimes not at all. Sometimes she made scores of films in a matter of weeks, and then disappeared for months, even years. She had a long-term, and volatile, relationship with fellow actress Savannah. Jeanna eventually walked away from it – just before Savannah killed herself. On one of her breaks from the world of X, she got married and had a son, only to return to making films a few years later. Her on/off career continued into the 2000s. But, and there’s always a but, I wanted to know more about the woman behind the strong, confident, and forthright exterior, this character so full of piss and vinegar. I sensed a vulnerability, that her glamorous life in front of the camera perhaps masked secrets that were a world away from adult films. In short, who was the woman that created Jeanna Fine? So I reached out to her, and over the next 10 years, we became friends and confidants through a series of conversations, phone calls, emails, and texts. When we first spoke, she’d been living a rural life in upstate New York for over a decade, and was experiencing something of an existential crisis. She was at a crossroads in her life: she’d experienced recent tragedies – the suicides of both her husband and brother, she was empty-nester, and she was trying to figure out what she should do next. Intriguingly, she decided to emerge from anonymity and return to the X-rated industry. She turned up at an adult fan convention, she’d set up a Twitter account (as it was back then), and had a friend show her how she could earn money with a web-cam. But the return to the sex industry was problematic, and I could see that she hadn’t expected the extent of the emotions, the old secrets and lies, that this new direction was bringing back to the surface. What was being stirred in her past, I wondered? Jeanna insisted that she was keen to do the interview – she announced it on Twitter – but I was worried that she was feeling fragile. This podcast is the result of that conversation. With big thanks to Patrick Kindlon and Self Defense Family – for the wonderful monologue, and to Steven Morowitz and Melusine – for the Video-X-Pix photographs. This podcast is 52 minutes long. —————————————————————————————————————————————————————————– Jeanna Fine – Video-X-Pix photos * Jeanna Fine portfolio * The post Jeanna Fine: The Lost Interview – Podcast 157 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Regular listeners will know that over the last few years, I’ve spoken to many female adult film actors who were active from the 1960s through to the late 1980s, and, as interesting as their experiences were, it also made me intrigued to find out what it was like to be a male in the business during the same time. So a few months ago, I contacted actor/director/agent and X-rated film producer, Bud Lee, to hear about his life – which I was curious to hear about, not only because of his career, but also due to his marriages to two of the biggest stars of the 1980s and 90s, Hyapatia Lee and Asia Carrera. In the first part of my conversation with Bud, he spoke about how he got into the industry with Hyapatia and the struggles they encountered being a couple in the business. This episode picks up in the late 1980s, when their relationship broke down just while Bud’s career making films for companies such as Vivid, Playboy, and Adam and Eve, was taking off. And Bud is still working today – filming scenes and being an agent – and he reflects on the significant changes that he’s seen in the industry, as well as the people involved. You can hear Part 1 of the podcast here. We have also included the transcript of an episode of the Donahue television show from 25 November 1986 which featured a conversation with Bud Lee, Hyapatia Lee, Jeanna Fine, Tony Rush, Nina Hartley, and David Hartley. The full episode can be viewed here. This podcast is 49 minutes long. ——————————————————————————————————————————————————– Bud Lee and Hyapatia Lee – on the Donahue show: full transcript * The post Bud Lee – From Hyapatia and Asia to Only Fans, Part 2 – Podcast 156 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

The adult film business is unique in that it has usually focused on women as the figureheads and main stars, and therefore often relegated men to the background. Over the last years, I’ve spoken to many female adult actors – from the 1960s through to the late 1980s, and it’s been interesting to see how their memories, experiences, and lives were affected as the sex film business changed.  But I also wanted to hear from someone on the other side of the equation – and find out what it was like to be a male in the business, perhaps a partner of a major sex film star, or someone who was a performer, director, or agent in the business. Bud Lee is unique in that he has been – and still is – all of these things and more. And what’s remarkable about his life is that it mirrors the history of the industry itself: consider this – after meeting and marrying Hyapatia Lee, one of the biggest stars of the 1980s, they appeared in adult films together, before Bud became a director for adult industry mogul, Harry Mohney, directing large and expensive productions like ‘The Ribald Tales of Canterbury’ before working for Vivid Video, one of the biggest production companies of the era. Then Bud married Asia Carrera, one of the biggest names of the 1990s adult film industry, making films for Playboy and Adam and Eve, before becoming a talent agent. Today he’s still filming, for performers wanting content for their OnlyFans accounts – a far cry from the golden age, and a stark reflection of just how much the business has changed. All this from someone who had no background in the sex film business before he met Hyapatia back in the 1970s – in fact he was a plumber who’d briefly considered divinity school and a theological life. This podcast is 65 minutes long. ——————————————————————————————————————————– Bud and Hyapatia Lee   Bud and Hyapatia Lee, 1984 AFAA red carpet * The post Bud Lee – From Hyapatia and Asia to Only Fans, Part 1 – Podcast 155 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

In 1979, Dennis Posa was on the verge of stardom. Against all odds, as Dennis Parker, he’d just released a disco record on a major recording label and was managed by the same team responsible for many of the biggest disco acts of the time. I say, against all odds, because less than 10 years earlier, he’d been a college dropout, the product of a difficult childhood on Long Island who struggled with his sexuality, who had moved to New York to unsuccessfully pursue a career as a theater actor. Dennis was always a collection of contradictions: he was a private loner – who could also be the popular and gregarious center of attention socially; he took a desk job on Madison Avenue like a latter day backroom character in ‘Mad Men’ but he dreamed of acting and singing; he seemed happiest when he was in his beloved apartment painting a landscape or doing his carpentry listening to his jazz records but he also enjoyed hitting the road on his motorbike and driving across the country, or hanging out in the city’s gay bars at night. And then in the mid 1970s came adult film stardom – in straight sex films no less. His face – and body – adorning movie posters and adult film screens across the country as one of the industry’s top stars. That level of fame would be eclipsed however when he met the superstar disco music producer, Jacques Morali. They became a couple, and Jacques wanted to cast him as one of the Village People, before deciding to make Dennis a solo star. They recorded an album for Casablanca Records. This is what happened next. This podcast is 38 minutes long. ————————————————————————————————————————————– When Dennis’ LP, ‘Like an Eagle,’ was released in 1979, the promotional rollercoaster started in earnest. Early that year, Dennis made an appearance on The Merv Griffin Show. This was a big deal. The Merv Griffin Show was an American television talk show institution. It had run from 1962, and by the late 1970s was one of the most prestigious shows for celebrities to appear on. It was nominated for Emmy awards most years, and more often than not, won them. Just take a look at the guest list on the day that Dennis first appeared on it: it featured Glenda Jackson, David Soul of Starsky and Hutch, and Brooke Shields. Needless to say, Dennis sung ‘Like an Eagle’. Sadly, recordings of the episode have never been released, so we have to rely on the memories of those who tuned in to see it – and they vary somewhat. Henri Belolo, Dennis’ record producer, was over the moon: “I was just so happy to see Dennis on television,” he remembered. “Dennis was broadcast from coast to coast singing his heart out, and that was when there were just three or four TV channels – so everyone in the country could see him.” For Skip St. James, Dennis’ ex-partner from the early 1970s, the memories have a bittersweet tinge: “I didn’t see much of Dennis after he moved in with Jacques,” he said. “Then one night, out of the blue, he invited me over for dinner, and he turned on the Merv Griffin show, and there he was singing ‘Like an Eagle’ on TV – all dressed up in shiny silver clothes. He’d invited me over because he wanted me there to share it. I was impressed, although it was strange seeing him sing that kind of music. He hated disco and he hated dancing! Dennis was a jeans-and-leather guy, and was clearly uncomfortable in that silver lame’ jumpsuit. I thought he looked ridiculous. And when he smiled… it was like neon on his teeth. They were way too bright. But he was very proud of it, and I was very proud of him for it. We stayed in touch, but I never saw him again after that evening.” As for Steven Gaines, the co-writer of the big two songs on Dennis’ album, ‘Like an Eagle’ and ‘New York By Night’, well, his memory was less favorable: “When Dennis premiered ‘Like an Eagle’ on the Merv Griffin Show,” he said, “I invited a whole bunch of people over to my house. We all watched and suddenly Dennis appeared – and he looked like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz! And he couldn’t really dance or move either. It was very artificial and clumsy. It was so bad that we started laughing. There were six or seven of us there just rolling around on the floor because it was so bad.” Whatever people thought, Dennis was a hit, and he was in demand: he went on to make more television show appearances, including further bookings on The Merv Griffin Show, including a disco-themed episode on May 3, 1979, where he appeared with The Village People, The Ritchie Family, Patrick Juvet, and his partner, Jacques Morali. Jacques felt that it was his responsibility to get Dennis maximum exposure for the new record, and so he set up a list of high-profile engagements that included The Mike Douglas Show, another high-rated chat show, and an appearance in a French feature film ‘Monique’ (1978), which featured ‘Like an Eagle’ as its theme song. A special mention should also be made of an appearance on a French television show called Exclusif, which is effectively a music video for ‘Like An Eagle.’ You can still see it on YouTube and it’s glorious. In it, Dennis stands underneath the marquee of the Broadway Theater on 53rd Street singing ‘Like an Eagle’, before striding through the streets delivering an extravagant rendition, and getting a perplexed reaction from the New York commuters around him. He looks great, and you have to admire his absolute commitment. It’s peak Dennis Parker, disco star. * All this attention meant that Dennis was suddenly a celebrity around town, and nowhere was that more evident than on the nightlife scene. He was a regular at Studio 54, where there were lines around the block to get in, but Dennis was welcomed with open arms and ushered behind the famous velvet rope into the VIP area. Dennis may have been an awkward disco star, sometimes uncomfortable with all the glitz and glamor and preferring the quieter jazz clubs, but he did love the night life – and the admiration that brought him. And that attention came in droves – from men and women, and Dennis didn’t turn many opportunities down. and he was still getting great reviews for his performances. One friend, James Dunn, remembered: “Dennis became a great sex symbol after his record hit. People – men and women – would go wild over him. It just seemed weird to me. But I can tell you one thing: I knew a guy who went to bed with him. I asked him, “What was it like?”, and he said, “Oh my God… I don’t know even what he did to me. It was incredible.” Dennis was living the high life, and the publicity firestorm surrounding him wasn’t confined to America either. As Henri Belolo remembered: “We took Dennis to Europe on a promotional tour because we had strong connections with our record companies there. First, he went to France, then around Europe, where he did many TV show appearances.” Dennis’ travel itinerary at the time was like a member of a royal family: over the first summer, he made four promotional trips to Europe, visiting France and Spain. Then he went to Italy, where he headlined a ‘Save Venice’ festival. Next was Medina in Morocco where a huge public party was held in his honor, Rio where he stayed with Ursula Andress, the ex-wife of John Derek, who’d directed him in ‘Love You’, and then to Majorca where Jacques commissioned a large – and expensive – portrait of Dennis from a renowned artist, which he wanted to place over the headboard of his bed back in New York. Jacques accompanied Dennis on every trip – they were still a couple, despite the temptations that both of them succumbed to regularly – but in the interests of selling records, they decided it would be better for Dennis to present himself in public as an unattached, straight male – so they would concoct elaborate stories for the media to build Dennis’ image as a heterosexual, playboy lady-killer, complete with accompanying pictures showing him embracing a selection of beauties. Here’s an extract from a breathless article from a magazine at the time: “(Dennis) first stop was Paris, where (he) met and promptly fell for a Parisian beauty named Michelle. She was the costume designer for a hot Paris nightspot, The Crazy Horse Saloon. Through Michelle, Dennis met the star of the Crazy Horse show, Lova Moor, and soon the trio packed up and took off for the south of France.” Dennis’ friend, James Dunn, remembered Dennis finding this subterfuge amusing: “When (Dennis) came back from his latest European trip, (he) would joke about the love affairs they’d invented for him. Jacques had so many contacts with women in show business it was easy for them to arrange.” Dennis, avec beards, in South of France * Back in New York, Jacques had his eye on the next stage of his plan for disco domination – and he figured it was time for them all to make a move into film. Jacques had been impressed with the musical films, ‘Saturday Night Fever’ (1977) and ‘Grease’ (1978). Even though he wasn’t a fan of the music featured in either, he wanted in, so he became friends with Allan Carr, who’d done the famous ad campaign for Saturday Night Fever, and had co-produced Grease, which, thanks in part to his promotional prowess, had become one of the highest-grossing films of all time. At first, Jacques and Allan hit it off. Allan was a powerful powerbroker with an interesting backstory: in the 1960s, he’d worked behind the scenes at Playboy with Hugh Hefner and was a co-creator of the Playboy Penthouse television series, which in turn launched the Playboy Clubs. His career really took off in 1966, when he founded a talent agency which managed actors, like Tony Curtis, Peter Sellers, and Ann-Margret, and then produced a string of television specials with stars such as Joan Rivers, Paul Anka, and Cass Elliot of The Mamas and the Papas. Side note: it was Allan Carr who was responsible for the invention of the story that Cass Elliot had died by choking on a ham sandwich. Apparently, he thought that the story – even though deeply humiliating to Mama Cass – was preferab

I’ve always loved movies, especially the films I grew up with in the 1970s. I was seduced by their gritty realism, social commentary, complex characters, and a more honest portrayal of the human condition. And I was fan of that generation of film stars too: always surprising, sometimes conflicted figures, artists more than the celebrities that we have today. Movie genres seemed less important to me, so when I first saw Wade Nichols in an adult film on the big screen, it had just as big effect on me as, say, seeing Brando in ‘The Godfather’, De Niro in ‘Taxi Driver,’ or that fish thing in ‘Jaws.’ Ever since then, it feels that Wade Nichols has always been a part of my life, never far away from my thoughts. I’ve sometimes found myself wondering what it would’ve been like if Wade Nichol’s career had continued into the mainstream. Wade Nichols is Indiana Jones in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ perhaps. Or how about John McLane in ‘Die Hard.’ Mr. Miyagi in ‘The Karate Kid.’ Ok, scrub that last one. The point is that he captured my imagination in a way that was just as powerful as many of the recognized greats, and so I wondered about the possible twists and turns of his life that were prevented by his death. Years ago, I turned my attention to finding who he really was, and perhaps also, why he’d remained important to me ever since my teenage years. That disproportionate impact of an early moment in your life that is instrumental in creating your adult sense of self. This is Wade Nichols: ‘Like An Eagle’ – His Untold Story. This is Part 2. Parental Advisory Warning for those not familiar with The Rialto Report: this podcast episode contains disco music. This may be disturbing for younger listeners who may wish to switch off. As for the rest of you, clear a space on the dance floor and let’s get down. This podcast is 42 minutes long. ————————————————————————————————————————————– In 1975, Donna Summer was a little-known American singer who’d been living in Germany for eight years where she’d appeared in stage musicals. One day, she was playing around with a single lyric, ‘Love to Love You Baby,’ which she sang to an Italian musician and record producer, Giorgio Moroder. He liked the hook, and came back a few days later, having turned it into a three-minute disco song. He suggested to Donna they record it together. She wasn’t sure about the idea, mainly because the whole thing that Giorgio had come up with just sounded so damn sexual. In the end, she agreed to sing it as a demo which they could give to someone else. So she did, but the trouble was that her erotic moans and groans so impressed everyone who heard it that, they decided to release it as a Donna Summer single anyway, and ‘Love to Love You’ went on to become a small-time hit in Europe. Fast forward a few weeks, and a tape of the song found its way to Neil Bogart, who was the president of Casablanca Records in the U.S. He listened, liked it, and decided to play it at a party at his home the same night. Next day, Bogart got Moroder on the phone. There was a problem with the song, he said: at the party, he’d started playing the song and approached a girl, but by the time he’d started speaking to her, the three-minute single had come to an end. So he had to run back to the tape deck, rewind it, and start playing it again before resuming his pick-up lines with the girl. Just as he got to the stage of propositioning her, the damn song ended again. Same drill: rewind the tape, and start it over again. A few minutes later, he was at the point of asking the girl to join him in the bedroom when, you guessed it, the song finished once more. So, as Bogart protested to Moroder, “How is this meant to work?” Giorgio threw the question back to him: “How long do you need to meet a girl, chat her up, seal the deal, take her to the boudoir, and do the deed?” he asked. Bogart paused, doing the sexual math in his head: “I reckon sixteen minutes should be enough,” he said. And so, sure enough, Moroder and Donna Summer made a recording of the song that lasted just over 16 minutes, and released that version in the U.S. In fact, it took up the entire first side of the album of the same name. But it worked, and the single hit number one on the Dance chart and became one of the great disco songs of all time. I once read that a group of scientists estimated than 1.5 million babies had been conceived to that 16-minute record. The time was right for music and explicit sex to be combined. And so who was better placed to take advantage than Dennis Parker? * 1976 Let’s go back to 1976. They say when a man makes plans, God laughs. Certainly, Dennis’ life was nothing like he’d planned, but he had few complaints. For a start, he was now a movie star, adored and lusted over by men and women, earning reasonable money for his screen appearances in X-rated movies, and regularly interviewed in magazines who fawned over his acting talent, not to mention his smooth 1970s good looks. Every couple of months, Dennis would get a call from someone on the adult film scene offering him another porn job. He’d always happily accept, turn up and do the business – which usually meant reciting lines with casual, effortless cool, having sex with the latest starlet, and then leaving with a few hundred dollars cash in hand. Most porn film jobs took a matter of hours, usually over a day or two, though sometimes there’d be an ambitious project where an aspiring sex-film Francis Ford Coppola wannabe had raised enough money to make a movie they were convinced would be the mythical mainstream cross-over success. Films like ‘Blonde Ambition,’ ‘Punk Rock,’ ‘Honeymoon Haven,’ and ‘Maraschino Cherry’ came and went with Dennis calmly enhancing them all and impressing fellow performers and fans alike. By now, he’d jacked in his office day job, which meant that he had more time to devote to his art, carpentry, motorbike, jazz record collection, and his partner, a young actor/model, Joey Phipps, who he adored and doted on. They lived a quiet life in Dennis’ tiny apartment, punctuated by wild nights out in Manhattan sex clubs. Ah the gay clubs of the 70s: Dennis came out when he was in college and spent the next decade in New York’s darkest, horniest and most outrageous corners. Their names are all you need to know. The Eagles Nest, the Anvil, the Ramrod, and the Toilet. It was the era of poppers, gloryholes, and anonymous hook-ups in sweaty backrooms. As if that wasn’t enough, Dennis also had a sideline as a male escort for wealthy clients who responded to his weekly ad for personal services. It was extra cash, and his friends told me about how he enjoyed meeting different people and making them happy. In short, Dennis’ was a normal life in which almost everything was abnormal. And then it all changed. He met a Frenchman, a music producer who’d recently moved to New York and was starting to enjoy huge international success writing and producing disco hits. He had an impish, youthful face with a chipmunk smile. His name was Jacques Morali. * The Birth of Disco Jacques Morali was born in 1947, the year before Dennis, in Casablanca, French Morocco, to a Moroccan Jewish family. According to legend, he had a fiercely protective upbringing, and there are stories that he was dressed as a girl by his mother when he was growing up. When he was 13, his family moved to France, where Jacques became a musical prodigy, gifted at playing different instruments, and writing songs in any style. He wasn’t afraid to be different: he was original, flamboyant, and gay. He was also outgoing, outrageous, and gregarious, and seemed to know everyone on the music scene in Paris. By the end of the 1960s, he was in demand, writing music for orchestras, for the Crazy Horse cabaret and strip club, and for himself in his bid to launch a career as a solo artist. And because of his knack for writing instant melodies, he was also writing and producing songs for others. An example Is an early single, a long-forgotten song called ‘Viva Zapata’ for a long-forgotten artist called ‘Clint Farwood’ which gives you an example of the hallmarks of his developing style. Upbeat, check. Cheesy, check. Annoyingly catchy, you bet. But Jacques, just like his music, was restless and always changing, and he was constantly looking for the next big idea. He was also impatient, demanding, and dissatisfied with the level of his success in France, so he started to look to America as being where he could really hit the big time. In the early 1970s, he discovered the music that was coming out of a studio in Philadelphia called Sigma Sound where the Philadelphia International Records label were recording a streak of hit singles. Songs like the O’Jays’ ‘Love Train,’ recorded at Sigma Sound, which hit number one in 1972. As strange as it sounds, Jacques Morali wasn’t the only prominent music producer and songwriter in Paris at the time who came from a Moroccan Jewish family in Casablanca, Morocco – and the other one was Henri Belolo. Given their similar backgrounds, it was natural they gravitated to each other. Henri was ten years older than Jacques: he was also a talented musician, but he differed in that he was also a highly successful entrepreneur: Henri had already set up his own record label and music publishing company, imported and promoted records into France, as well as organized concerts in Paris by the likes of James Brown and the Bee Gees. And, just like Jacques, Henri was eyeing the music scene in America. In 1973, Henri traveled to New York and set up a record company called Can’t Stop Productions to establish a presence in the U.S. music market. During his trip, he went down to Philadelphia to see friends, and that’s where he discovered the same music scene that Jacques had fallen in love with. I met and spoke to Henri Belolo several times over the years, and his excitement for that music still shone decades later. As he told me: “I started to listen to this ‘Philly Sound.

This past week I phoned Paul Thomas, former adult performer and film director, also known as PT. I’m heading out to LA shortly and was calling to set up a date with him and his wife. Seeing the two of them when I’m out west is one of my favorite things. It starts sitting together in their backyard under the Los Angeles sun, catching up on what’s been happening since my last visit. Then strolling slowly through the Venice canals as PT pontificates on one thing or another and his wife and I roll our eyes at him, before we end up at a local restaurant lingering over a meal and drinks. PT’s wife picked up his phone. I said I was calling to make a date with them. She told me she’d found PT dead in their home a few hours earlier. She spoke with disbelief. PT had endured a few health challenges in recent years and apparently had been feeling ill over the past few days, but nobody saw this coming. On the contrary, he’d recently suggested to me that we all take a biking holiday together in the south of France. PT’s wife said she couldn’t believe she’d never get to speak with him again. I feel the same way. PT and I had a playful relationship from the very start. While some found PT’s arrogance to be a flaw in his character, I always found it endearing – a feature, not a bug. And not because I enjoy egotism – humility is one of my favorite traits. But because with PT, you could put a pin in his balloon of self-importance and it would fast deflate, leaving us both laughing. I last texted PT a few weeks ago to ask him what he remembered about a director of one of the old adult films he’d acted in. PT wrote back that the director was short and fat and could be overly prescriptive in choreographing the sex scenes. Then he countered saying actually the man was tall and skinny and that he left the performers to direct the scene themselves. Either way, he said, it was too early in the day to be sure, and that he was too sober to think properly about these questions. He wrote, “You know me well enough to know that I’d like to make up all sorts of shit right now because it would make good copy, but I know you don’t want me to stray too far from facts.” He closed the text saying “We have much to talk about. I’ll leave the light on for you when you next come to California.” He was one of the true originals: a talented performer, adult film director, husband, father, and my friend. I’m April Hall, and this is a reprise of my interview with PT.  Please leave the light on for when we meet again. This podcast is 169 minutes long. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Paul Thomas Paul Thomas, or PT as he’s typically known, is one of the iconic names of the adult film industry. He was born Philip Toubus, and started out as a porn performer for the Mitchell Brothers in mid-1970s San Francisco. Until the last few years, was still in the business as a director. During the past four decades, PT won every kind of adult award – from Best Actor to Best Director, and was inducted into every Hall of Fame the sex film industry has ever invented. But there are two aspects to PT’s background that make his presence and success in adult film even more interesting. First he came from a wealthy family – one that owned household-name businesses like Sara Lee and Jim Beam – and he was brought up in relative luxury. And secondly, by the time PT started his career in sex films in his mid 20s, he’d already achieved considerable success and fame on stage in musical theater. He’d starred on Broadway in Hair and played the role of Peter in the 1973 film version of Jesus Christ Superstar. In fact, he was being groomed by the William Morris Agency in Hollywood for a big career in mainstream television and movies. So with all the money and success, what motivated PT to move into the newly formed adult industry – a business frowned upon by much of mainstream society, not to mention full of legal and reputational risks for its participants? It all comes down to a series of questions: Why? Why did he do it, when he had so many alternatives? Why did he stay in the business for so long? And what effect has it had on him? These questions have stayed with PT to this day. I’ve known PT for years, and we’ve talked about doing an interview for almost as long as I’ve known him. We actually started once, but after over five hours of conversation, we realized that we hadn’t even reached the time he’d started school, so we scrapped the idea. Recently though we decided to try again, and this time I got PT to agree to a strict format. I would pick ten areas of his life that have shaped him. Ten provocations – in keeping with the biblical theme of his most famous role in Jesus Christ Superstar. I would ask him whatever I liked about these subjects – and nothing would be off the table. We’d cover adult films, both as an actor and as a director, his troubled relationships, his experiences with drugs, his multiple times in jail, and much, much more. And we’d finally see if we could get closer to answering the question that has plagued PT for so long: why the hell did he go into, and stay in, the adult film industry? This is the first time PT has told his story. These are the ten provocations of PT. * Paul Thomas in Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)   Paul Thomas in Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)           PT and April Hall *   The post R.I.P. Paul Thomas (1949 – 2025) – Podcast Reprise appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Years ago, I first saw the 1970s adult film Barbara Broadcast (1977) on the big screen, and it made a big impression. In the film, there’s a scene which shows a man standing behind an industrial kitchen worktable, a shirtless, mustached piece of beefcake that was Wade Nichols. Rugged yet pretty. Lean, toned, and handsome. He looked like the Marlboro man from the distant plains, if that cowboy had inexplicably turned up in New York and started moonlighting as a Manhattan sous-chef. He had the appearance of a man in love, or a rather a man in lust, most likely with himself. He was the perfect embodiment of the era, that made you wonder if you were to look up ‘1970s America’ in the dictionary, there could well be a picture of Wade Nichols there. I immediately wanted to know more. It turned out he’d been a prolific actor in many adult films over a four-year period in the late 1970s, much loved and much missed. Slowly over the years, I found other details, but often they were in the form of conflicting rumors. Though he’d been the leading man in many straight sex films, he was supposedly gay, or maybe bisexual? Some remembered him better as the lead actor of a popular TV soap opera, while others said he was a big disco recording star who’d come close to being one of the original Village People. And then there was the question of how he’d died: it had been reported that he shot himself in 1985, but others insisted he was a victim of AIDS. I was hooked on finding more. But because it was before the internet age, I had no way of finding out much about him. So, years ago, I started to track down anyone who had known him, from his family, to acquaintances from the New York club, bar, and disco scene, adult film actors and directors, music and television industry friends, and many more, to try and find who he really was. I ended up writing an article for The Rialto Report with the information I learned. But my interest didn’t end then, and I continued to track down, reach out, and contact anyone with memories of him. This is Wade Nichols’ story –  in podcast form. This podcast is 50 minutes long. ———————————————————————————————————– Why is that so many of the movies we first saw as teenagers remain important and enduring to us for the rest of our lives? Same thing for the music and books that we discovered back then. And, why does it become rarer that we have that same deep connection to films we discover as we grow older? Psychologists have suggested it’s because our teen years coincide with the period referred to as “the emergence of the stable and enduring self.” Basically, the thinking is that this period, occurring between the ages of 12 and 22, is the time when you become you. As a result, the experiences that contribute to this process become uncommonly, and disproportionately, important to you throughout the rest of your life. This is because they didn’t just contribute to the development of your self-image; they are part of your self-image. In other words, these experiences and memories become an integral part of your sense of self. Ok, ok, so much for the theory, but what does that have to do with the life of an adult film actor who died 40 years ago? The answer is that today’s story is personal. Well, all the stories that I cover are personal in some way, but this one is perhaps even more so than the rest. When I first saw the 1977 adult film ‘Barbara Broadcast’ as a teenager, I knew nothing about the male lead, Wade Nichols, but he made an impression on my teenage self. I know, I shouldn’t have been in the porn theater in the first place. Wholly inappropriate, too young, etc. and so on. I get it. But I was there, and I watched it. And I liked the film. And yes, just like some of the other films I discovered then, it stayed with me in a strangely meaningful way. It’s part of the reason I wanted to find and tell the stories that I share on The Rialto Report, I think. It became part of understanding that moment as a teen when I sat wide-eyed in a theater. Perhaps part of the memory that had created that sense of self all those years ago. * 1. Freeport, NY (1950s): The first information to know is that ‘Wade Nichols’ was really a fictional character, existing only for the sex film screen. Wade’s real name was Dennis Posa. He was of Italian heritage – a fact that he was proud of. I found out that Dennis’ father originally came from Casamassima, a small town in southern Italy. That was the first surprise to me in this story, because the summer before I saw ‘Barbara Broadcast’ all those years ago, I’d actually visited Casamassima as a young boy. I remember it being a tiny, picturesque place, notable mainly because it was called ‘The Blue Town’. That name dated back to the 1600s when a ship arrived in the nearby port of Bari bringing sailors who’d all been infected with the plague. They came ashore, and all hell broke loose. In a short time over 20,000 locals had died in the epidemic. In response, the most powerful Duke in the town ordered all of the buildings, monuments, and churches to be painted with quicklime mixed with sulphate copper. These chemicals slowed the spread of the plague from infected corpses by accelerating the decomposition of the bodies and thereby reducing the bacteria – and these chemicals were bright blue in color, meaning that the town literally turned blue overnight. It was a story that Dennis would tell over the years – joking that it was ironic that one of the biggest stars of blue movies had, in effect, come from the Blue Town. After moving to America, Dennis’ father grew up in an Italian neighborhood of the Bronx. He was a popular kid and a small-time rogue, and he ran around with a bunch of minor league hoodlums and gamblers, getting in and out of trouble all the time. He hung out in jazz clubs where his friend, the noted jazz musician Johnny Guarnieri, headlined on piano with his band. Dennis’ mother was dating Johnny’s bass player, but when she met Dennis’ father, it was love at first sight – or something like that. They hooked up and got hitched the following year. Dennis’ father was 26, his mother was 20. Once he was married, Dennis’ father felt he had to go straight, so the newlywed couple did the sensible thing and moved out to the commuter town of Freeport, NY, thirty miles east of Manhattan, on the south shore of Long Island. They rented an apartment, and his father got a job as a florist, while his mother worked in the children’s section of the local library.  And there they started a family – two boys, Richard and then Dennis, who was born in 1946. A quick word about Freeport: it was a great place be in the summer, a popular and vibrant spot where people from Manhattan flocked to vacation, but the rest of the year, it was a little different – an anonymous, depressed, forgotten, and empty place – which made it pretty grim for residents. I tracked down Dennis’ brother, Richard. Richard is a quiet-spoken friendly man, with a bemused but huge affection for his younger brother, and he was happy to share memories of their childhood. He fondly remembered their first years which he described as happy and good. Their father was a good-looking man and he was initially caring towards the boys. After a while though, something snapped: overnight, he seemed to lose interest in the family, and started to disappear for weeks at a time. When he returned, he’d fight with his wife – and sometimes get verbally abusive to the boys too. It transpired that a big part of his problem was his gambling, and he regularly squandered the money that was meant for the family’s food. Richard remembered that Friday was the weekly food shop day, but often his father would just take the money and not return home. When this happened, it was usually because he’d fallen behind with bookies, and needed the cash to settle his debts. On one occasion, the family found out that the bookies were threatening to break his legs if he didn’t pay up… so they helped him out and covered the debt for him. But he never paid them back, so the family joked that next time, they were going to be the ones breaking his legs. Richard remembers that it all seems amusing now, but at the time, it had a destabilizing effect on them. It wasn’t a happy childhood any more, he said, and at times, home life became pretty uncomfortable. Dennis was the more daring of the two, and one time he decided he was going to go through their father’s affairs – where he found $8,000 worth of racing stubs. Bear in mind, in those days their father’s annual salary was only $5,000 a year, so this was a huge amount to be betting. Dennis wanted to confront him, and the brothers discussed it but, in the end, decided against the idea. The boys weren’t the only ones suffering: the family problems took a toll on the boys’ mother as well. Just when the boys needed her the most, she became agoraphobic and withdrawn, afraid of leaving the apartment. As a result of all this, neither boy were close to either parent, and initially, they weren’t particularly close to each other either. For a start, the two brothers were very different. Richard was studious, into reading, mathematics, and school work. Dennis liked artistic pursuits, preferring to draw, paint pictures, and make things, developing an interest in carpentry. But physically, there was no getting away from each other. The family apartment was small, and they shared a tiny room throughout their childhood years. What they did have in common was a passion for their pets, and as kids they always had dogs and cats. Both boys were also keen members of the rifle team in High School – though their love for animals meant they had no interest in hunting. While I was getting a sense of Dennis, I wanted to understand what he was like as a boy. What was his character like, I asked Richard? Did he have friends, and was he popular? Richard remembered that Dennis was initially quiet socially, but went through a sudden change whe

Who was the original actor cast in the lead role of the golden age blockbuster, The Devil in Miss Jones (1973)? Not Georgina Spelvin, the talented doyenne of adult films who starred in many pre-video era features, first in New York then in California, and who was the eventual star of the film as ‘Miss Jones.’ No, Gerard Damiano first chose another actress, Sue Flaken, to fill the role, only to change his mind at the last minute. The movie went on to become one of the biggest hits of the era, making Spelvin one of the most famous of the first generation of porn stars. The sliding doors moment changed Georgina Spelvin’s life forever. But what of Sue Flaken, who was instead relegated to a minor, non-speaking part in the film? Who was she, why did she miss out on the life-changing role, and what happened to her afterwards? The answer includes supporting involvement for Allen Ginsberg, Tommy Lee Jones, Georgina Spelvin, Harry Everett Smith, Al Gore, the Chelsea Hotel, Joe Sarno, Terry Southern, industrial quantities of hallucinogenic drugs, and much more. This is the untold story of ‘Sue Flaken.’ This podcast is 35 minutes long. ——————————————————————————————————————————- sliding doors /ˈslīdiNG dôrs/ plural noun definition: a seemingly insignificant moment that has a profound and lasting impact on a person’s life or the trajectory of a relationship. These moments, while often unnoticed, can dramatically alter the course of events and significantly affect future outcomes. * What if Franz Ferdinand hadn’t been shot, and the event that triggered World War I hadn’t happened? What if young Adolf Hitler hadn’t been rejected twice from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and instead had gone on to became an artist instead of pursuing politics? Butterfly-effect inflection points which, if they had turned out differently, might have caused a different world. Or another example, only less consequential perhaps: what if Gerard Damiano hadn’t decided at the last moment to promote Georgina Spelvin from her role as the cook for the cast and crew on The Devil in Miss Jones (1973) and instead given her the starring role? The story is oft-told: Damiano was shooting the follow-up to Deep Throat (1972) in a converted apple-packing plant in Milanville, Pennsylvania, and needed someone to provide craft services for the long-weekend location shoot. He offered the job to Chele Graham, an ex-Broadway chorus girl who’d featured in stage productions such as ‘Cabaret’, ‘Guys and Dolls’, and ‘Sweet Charity’ before being timed-out by her age – she was a near-ancient 36 by the time of ‘Miss Jones’. Chele accepted the catering job, needing the money for a film collective that she and her lover were setting up in lower Manhattan. Damiano had already hired someone for the all-important lead role of Miss Jones – a newcomer named Ronnie, an actress he was raving about – but by the time production started, Chele had become Georgina Spelvin and assumed the role of Miss Jones, instantly creating one of the more memorable characters in adult film history – as was borne out by the contemporary critics. Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, “‘The Devil in Miss Jones’ is good primarily because of the performance of Georgina Spelvin in the title role. Miss Spelvin, who has become the Linda Lovelace of the literate, is something of a legend. There burns in her soul the spark of an artist, and she is not only the best, but possibly the only actress in the hardcore field.” Addison Verrill writing in Variety wondered, “If Marlon Brando can be praised for giving his almost-all in ‘Last Tango in Paris,’ one wonders what the reaction will be to ‘Miss Jones’ lead Georgina Spelvin? Though she lacks the specific sexpertise of Linda Lovelace and she’s no conventional beauty, her performance is so naked it seems a massive invasion of privacy.” So the sliding doors of history closed shut, Georgina was unexpectedly immortalized as an improbable sex star, and Damiano had another sex film hit. History is often written by the protagonists, but truth is most often found in silence and the quiet places. Everyone else has told their story about the film, so what about Ronnie, the original Miss Jones? When Georgina was catapulted into A-lister sex-film stardom for the next decade, Ronnie disappeared without a trace. She became a parenthesis in a footnote to the appendix of adult film history. Who was she, and what happened to the original Miss Jones? * Gerry Damiano had rated Ronnie highly: “She’s really a dynamo,” he said to Harry Reems, the movie’s male lead, who wrote about her in his autobiography, ‘Here Comes Harry Reems’ (1975). Gerry continued, “She’s voluptuous, she’s got a wild afro-cut, and an ass that just won’t quit. Ronnie was enthusiastic about being given the Miss Jones role too: “I can fuck and suck better than any woman doing this shit,” Harry said that she told everybody. But the reason that Georgina took her place has been a mystery for decades. In fact, there are three versions on record. Firstly, in her autobiography, Georgina claimed that her getting the part was all a happy accident: she’d been meeting with Damiano to discuss the food: “We discuss how to feed 17 people for three days on $500. An actor arrives to read for the part of Abaca. Gerry asks if I would mind reading the part of Miss Jones with him since I’m just sitting there.” She remembered that Damiano was so impressed with her read-through, that he offered her the part. Harry Reems’ recollection was different, claiming Georgina was only given the lead role when Ronnie was diagnosed with a dental issue two days before the production started: ‘“How’s Ronnie going to do blow jobs with an impacted wisdom tooth?” I asked Gerry. Good question. Gerry threw in the dental floss. Ronnie was out and Georgina Spelvin was in.” The last version comes from fellow ‘Miss Jones’ actor, Marc Stevens – aka Mr. 10½ on account of the supposed length of his furious fescue. Marc remembers the last-minute change the most prosaically in his memoir: “(The film’s production had) the usual whining, ego-tripping, and petulance endemic to film. Ronnie decided, all of a sudden, she didn’t want the starring role. (Instead) she wound up blowing me in another scene.” It’s true. Whatever issues Ronnie had with motivation – or her teeth – she did in fact appear in ‘Miss Jones’, in a smaller, sex-only role, partnering with Georgina Spelvin to give head to Marc Stevens. She appeared in the credits as ‘Sue Flaken.’ It remains among the only feature film footage of Ronnie, and she’s an electric presence. (She appears as ‘Terri Easterni‘ in The Birds and the Beads (1973), and supposedly made brief appearances in two other X-rated films: Lloyd Kaufman’s The New Comers (1973) (tagline: “The First X-rated Musical!”) and the one-day wonder, Sweet and Sour (1974), but both are virtually unfindable today.) In ‘Miss Jones’, she’s filmed in a single spaghetti-western-style close-up. Her face is framed by a thicket of coal-black curls, and punctuated by roundly incredulous eyes to which an immaculately-applied smokey-eye contrasts with Georgina’s 1970s porno-blue eye shadow. Ronnie smiles a lot, showing off detergent-white teeth like a suburban neighborhood picket fence. Sexually, Ronnie steals the scene, performing enthusiastically, selfishly even. Her sequence exists within the film to show Miss Jones making up for having been a virgin for too long – but, just like Ronnie’s unknown life, the scene exists in its own microcosm, unconnected to anything that precedes or follows it. And then Ronnie disappears behind the sliding doors, and is never seen again. Sue Flaken (left), and Georgina Spelvin, in ‘The Devil in Miss Jones’ (1973) * Whenever I met people who’d been present on set with Ronnie for those few short days – people like Gerry Damiano, Georgina Spelvin, Harry Reems, Levi Richards, and others – I always made a point of asking about her. Remarkably, given that they’d all known her for such a short period several decades earlier, everyone still had a memory or two concerning her. And many of their memories were the same: Ronnie was beautiful, exciting, but unpredictable, wild, feral even. She wasn’t part of their usual repertory group of performers, but rather teetered around the edge, maverick and unpredictable. No one had any idea what her second name was. Then I met Jason Russell, former husband of New York’s first porno star, Tina Russell, and sometime adult film actor himself. I interviewed him in his Florida home towards the end of his life, when his world-weary, tobacco-stained cynicism betrayed his every statement. “Ever hear about ‘Rabid Ronnie’?” he non-sequitured with a jaded sigh at the end of the day. I perked up. You mean the Ronnie who was in ‘The Devil in Miss Jones’? Jason mumbled back, “Yep, that one. She was a trip. Whacko. Insane. I wrote about her in Tina’s book. Only worked with her once. It was on the set of Joe Sarno’s Sleepyhead (1973). Crazy chick. Fierce. Almost killed the whole film.” I pulled out a copy of ‘Porno Star’ (1973), Tina Russell’s autobiography that Jason had ghost-written, and found the description of events. “Halfway through the first day, one female member (Ronnie) of the cast announced, “I’m tripping my brains out!” She proceeded to flip out to the point where she caused herself and many others a lot of pain, and cost the budget at least $2,500 to $3,000. We had to find a replacement for her role overnight, and re-shoot with the new girl all that we had managed to shoot the first day. This was only the second time that such a situation had occurred in the three years that we have been working in the business. We all went home with grueling tension headaches.” What happened exactly, I asked? “Acid, I’m guessing. She dropped a tab, and she was gone. She lost her mind. She was like a wild horse. Flared nostrils and violent eyes.” Did you ever come across her after that? “Nooo. She vani

In the first part of our interview with Susan Hart, we heard about Sue’s early years in 1970s Los Angeles, growing up in a strict Catholic family, running away from home when she was 15, and becoming involved in a bad relationship. She escaped – into the army of all places, before finding a different kind of home, of sorts, as a prolific performer in the early adult video industry. But what is unusual and remarkable about her story is that Susan is willing to tell it at all. As you will hear in this concluding episode, Susan left Los Angeles in the late 1980s and pursued a professional career, living in constant fear of being confronted by her past. When we contacted her, we had no idea that it would bring out many of her worst fears. This is Sue’s story. You can hear the first part of our interview with Susan Hart here. This podcast is 60 minutes long. —————————————————————————————————————————————- Susan Hart: Adult Industry Photos                             * The post Susan Hart – Confidences and Confidence, Part 2: Podcast 150 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Perhaps one of the less obvious aspects of The Rialto Report is that it may lead to the impression that people involved in the adult industry forty or fifty years ago are all pretty comfortable talking about their pasts and have led serene lives, free of incident, since they stopped making sex films. After all, our podcasts and interviews are filled with people talking pretty openly about their experiences. In fact, quite the opposite is normally the case. You see, the truth is that the majority of people we approach – actors, directors, producers – are usually rather keen to not go public with their memories. And that’s understandable: despite the length of time that’s passed since their images and names were splashed across posters and theater screens, the reality is there is still a very real stigma in current day America for something they did all those years ago. The result is that, sadly, these voices are largely absent from the selection of oral histories that we present in The Rialto Report. So all that begs the question: why on earth did Susan Hart agree to an interview? You see, Susan was a prolific actress in the California video explosion of the mid 1980s. She appeared in a hundred or so movies and countless spreads in men’s magazines. She had an interesting backstory too: a Latina from Los Angeles, the product of a Catholic upbringing, she joined the Army to break free. Then, she became an adult film performer and later was approached to take part in a sting operation against the sex film business. She was pretty, happy-looking, popular, and we always wondered about her. So we sent her a letter. Little did we realize that she’d spent the last 40 years terrified that her past would catch up with her, and that her biggest nightmare was someone like us contacting her and asking her to reveal who she was, and is. But we spoke, and Sue agreed to tell all – including exploring how she feels about it today. She still can’t quite understand why she did adult films, but we hope she’s happy about this interview. This podcast is 60 minutes long. —————————————————————————————————————————————- Susan Hart: Personal Photos                                 * The post Susan Hart – Confidences and Confidence, Part 1: Podcast 149 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Previously on Chasing Butterflies – Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida: After Dolores Carlos’ retirement from acting in South Florida nudie films in the late 1960s, she still remained close to her circle of Cuban filmmaker friends, and none more so than José Prieto, Greg Sandor, and Rafael Remy. They would still meet regularly, and all three took an active interest in her daughter Marcy’s well-being. From time to time, they would joke about the fortune teller that the three men had consulted when they escaped from Cuba. Greg Sandor had moved out the California and had indeed found the money and respect that had been predicted for him. Similarly, José Prieto had found a degree of fame and notoriety following the success and outcry that followed the release of films he made, such as Shanty Tramp (1967) and Savages from Hell (1968). The only exception to the mystic’s forecast was Rafael Remy: he’d fared well and was not seeing the trouble and strife that had been foreseen in his future. Rafael had lived a lower profile existence but with more regular work than his two friends: due in part to his jack-of-all-trades skill-set and willingness to get involved in anything, he was always in demand. He was a cameraman, editor, lighting, gaffer, soundman, and production manager who was cheap and could always be relied on to deliver a decent job. But as the 1960s turned into the 70s, the film business was changing: the innocent exploitation films that had greeted them when they arrived from Cuba were giving way to more explicit sex movies whose legality was questionable, and Rafael was suddenly being offered an altogether different kind of job. Over the last twenty years, I’ve tracked down and spoken to many people involved in the Florida film business of the 1960s and 1970s. Their overlapping personal histories reveal an untold chapter of adult film history – and the hidden role that Cubans played in shaping it. These are some of their stories. This is the concluding episode of Chasing Butterflies, Part 4: Rafael Remy’s story. You can listen to the Prologue: Dolores Carlos’ story here, Part 1: Manuel Conde’s story, Part 2: José Prieto’s story, Part 3: Marcy Bichette’s story. With thanks to John Minson, Tom Flynn, Ronald Ziegler, Leroy Griffith, Veronica Acosta, Marcy Bichette, Mikey Bichette, Lousie ‘Bunny’ Downe, Mitch Poulos, Sheldon Schermer, Ray Aranha, Manny Samaniego, Barry Bennett, Randy Grinter, Herb Jeffries, Tempest Storm, Chester Phebus, Michael Bowen, Norman Senfeld, Richard Falcone, Lynne O’Neill, Something Weird Video, and many anonymous families and friends who have offered recollections, large and small, over the years. This podcast is 45 minutes long. * 1.    Rafael Remy, the fortune-teller’s prediction – and Emile Harvard In the late 1960s, Rafael received a called from someone called Emile Allan Harvard. In a strong Eastern European accent, Harvard explained that he was new to Florida and was looking for a film man: someone who knew how to put a movie together, someone who knew where to find actors, crew, locations, and equipment. Harvard had heard that Rafael could be the man to assist him, and that Rafael was a man with expertise who’d built an extensive network of contacts in the years since he’d arrived penniless from Cuba. But Rafael was wary: he asked around about this new arrival in the state, but could find no one who knew anything about Harvard. Rafael was right to be cautious: Harvard was a mysterious hustler with an unusual history. Emile Harvard was a Romanian Jew, who’d started his adult life in 1930s Bucharest training to be a cameraman. And then in the build-up to World War 2, Harvard became a spy for the British. It was a volatile period in Romania as the country’s fascist dictatorship was aligned to Nazi Germany and the government was suppressing any opposition by force. Despite the dangers, Harvard loved the subterfuge. He was given a cover profession to conceal his espionage activity which was to be a newsreel cameraman for British Movietone News. He used these media credentials to gain access to key government sites and report on them to his British paymasters. It was a perilous assignment, but one he performed with alacrity. Romania was a key supplier of the oil for the Nazi war effort and so he also gathered information on the refineries and transport routes. Then he captured footage of Romanian military operations, like airfields and supply depots. But Harvard never seemed happy doing the same activity for long, and soon he was suggesting ways that he could sabotage Nazi efforts. His motivation was less born out of deeply-held ideological convictions, but rather out of a love of excitement and intrigue. A later acquaintance described Harvard as “an enigma, rather than a real person, a shady, shape-shifting person with many identities, a man who you felt you could never truly know.” The useful life of a spy is a limited one – and in 1943, his cover was blown when Harvard apparently blabbed to someone he shouldn’t have and was reported to the authorities. Life In Romania was suddenly impossible for him so his British employers moved him to Tel Aviv, a city then in British-administered Mandatory Palestine, where he got married and had a daughter, Esther. When the war ended, Harvard obtained Israeli citizenship before moving to Canada, first Montreal, then Toronto, where he started a career as a TV producer and director. He formed several small-time companies, including Harvard Productions, ostensibly to make television series for the American market. His wartime activity may have been over, but in truth Harvard still enjoyed living a partly fictional life, and with each career move, he inflated the achievements on his resumé which he generously shared with the press. He frequently spoke about working for MGM for twelve years, producing content for NBC, CBS, and Pathé, and having a successful career in Hollywood – none of which was true. A few years later, without any major credits to his name, Harvard decided on a radical change of direction: after a vacation to see his brother in Miami, Florida in 1960, he was inspired to announce that Harvard Productions was planning a Florida-themed club in Toronto to be called ‘Oceans 11’, after the Rat Pack movie that had hit the cinemas that year. It was to be an exclusive, high-end, rich-members-only place, which he described as a “health and entertainment” club. The Florida theme meant palm trees, a glass sun-roof, a 500-seat restaurant, nightly entertainment, and a swimming pool with a state-of-the-art wave machine – all to be housed on the top three floors of a Toronto office building. “It will be just like Miami Beach,” Harvard told the newspapers, who lapped up the project with excitement filling pages of breathless newsprint. It was ambition on a grand scale, the kind that comes from someone with a big imagination, not to mention someone whose own money is not at stake. Sure enough, the project failed when it was the funding failed to materialize, and so for Emile Harvard and Harvard Productions, it was back to square one. Just like the wartime spy Harvard had been, the next years were spent donning various different identities and promoting different business schemes. Some seemed serious, others were harebrained. They included hawking time-share properties, selling Jacuzzis, and offering dubious healthcare products (“at last a cure from embarrassing itching!” read the copy for one innovative cream.) Perhaps part of his success came from his appearance: Harvard was a tall, distinguished, and earnest-looking man who projected intelligent seriousness. But in 1967, Harvard was in the news again, this time posing as a doctor, prescribing Belltone hearing aids, and persuading pensioners to sign up for exorbitantly-priced payment plans. He was arrested and charged for his involvement in the fraudulent scheme. Each time he was embroiled in a scandal, Emile Harvard somehow managed to wriggle out, and re-emerge a year or two later involved in another dodgy deal. The irony was that he was never afraid of the media. Quite the opposite: he was first in line to give newspapers interviews and quotes, just as long as they spelt his name correctly. * 2.    Emile Harvard and ‘Fear of Love’ (1970) And so, in the late 1960s, on the lam from his latest scam, Harvard turned up in Miami, in his early 50s, with his wife and two teenage children. This time he decided to return to his first love – filmmaking. A cursory glance at the local theater scene in South Florida convinced him that he needed to speak with the most powerful and influential player in town – and that was Leroy Griffith. Griffith’s theater business had come a long way since he moved to Miami in the early 1960s and bought the Paris Theater staging burlesque shows with Tempest Storm before meeting Dolores and moving into the sexploitation movie business with men like Manuel Conde. By the early 1970s, Griffith’s empire had grown to 12 adult theaters, including the Paris, Roxy, and Gayety theaters, and 15 adult book stores in the area, and he claimed to have produced 30 softcore adult films too. By now, Griffith was a well-known figure in Miami, though he was at pains to point out, in an interview in 1969, that he made films that specialized in ‘nudity’ and not ‘exploitation.’ ‘Exploitation’, he explained carefully, referred to “torture, fetishes, and lesbianism”, subjects that he just wouldn’t touch. Griffith was intrigued by Emile Harvard: here was an older, seemingly sophisticated European, who boasted of a successful Hollywood career and wanted to make films for him to exhibit. Griffith told Harvard to speak to José Prieto and Rafael Remy, two men who would give him a crash course download in Florida low-budget filmmaking. So Harvard did, and came away impressed with both the Cubans’ experience. But Harvard explained he wanted to make a different kind of flick. He didn’t wan

Previously on Chasing Butterflies – Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida: You may remember Marcy Bichette’s start in life from our earlier episodes: she was born Marcelle Denise Bichette in St Petersburg, Florida in August 1950 to a young married couple who had distinctly different ambitions in life. Her father, Maurice Bichette, had married looking for a settled, quiet existence, but her mother, Dolores, wanted to live her life moving in the opposite direction. Dolores had come from a protected, patriarchal, patriotic Cuban household, and she longed for the excitement and glamor that she saw onscreen in her favorite Hollywood movies. Maurice and Dolores’ marriage couldn’t, and didn’t, last. They divorced, and Marcy lived with her father and his new wife Mary, while Dolores, moved to Miami to pursue a modeling career. Dolores did well, changing her name to Dolores Carlos, her photos featuring in magazines and newspapers, winning beauty contests, and then, starring (and being arrested) for a hit nudie film, Hideout in the Sun. The success of that film led to her appearing in other films such as Pagan Island (1961), Diary of a Nudist (1961), and Blaze Starr Goes Nudist (1962) in quick succession, and thereby becoming the unofficial pin-up queen for nudists. But perhaps Dolores’ biggest impact came in the way that she became a tireless advocate, promoter, and organizer of the Cuban immigrant film talent that had arrived in Miami, a group of people keen to make a new life in the U.S. after escaping the Castro revolution. Her friendships with local film producers and theater owners like K. Gordon Murray and Leroy Griffith kick-started the American careers of many of these Cubans in Florida, including men such as Manuel Conde, José Prieto, and Rafael Remy. The only downside in Dolores’ new life in the early 1960s was that she was separated from her adored daughter Marcy, a problem that she longed to fix. Over the last twenty years, I’ve tracked down and spoken to many people involved in the Florida film business of the 1960s and 1970s. Their overlapping personal histories reveal an untold chapter of adult film history – and the hidden role that Cubans played in shaping it. These are some of their stories. This is Chasing Butterflies, Part 3: Marcy Bichette’s story. You can listen to the Prologue: Dolores Carlos’ story here, Part 1: Manuel Conde’s story , and Part 2: José Prieto’s story. With thanks to John Minson, Tom Flynn, Ronald Ziegler, Leroy Griffith, Veronica Acosta, Marcy Bichette, Mikey Bichette, Lousie ‘Bunny’ Downe, Mitch Poulos, Sheldon Schermer, Ray Aranha, Manny Samaniego, Barry Bennett, Randy Grinter, Herb Jeffries, Tempest Storm, Chester Phebus, Michael Bowen, Norman Senfeld, Richard Falcone, Lynne O’Neill, Something Weird Video, and many anonymous families and friends who have offered recollections, large and small, over the years. This podcast is 39 minutes long. Marcy Bichette * 1.    Marcy Bichette, beginnings After the divorce, Maurice had quickly remarried. This new wife was his third and final: his new bride, Mary, had already been married four times before, and together they would enjoy, or rather endure, a decades-long relationship. Mary was a difficult character and Marcy, her step-daughter who lived with them, would suffer as a result. Marcy, age 7 Maurice and Mary quickly started another family, which would grow to include three children of their own, Maurice Jr, known as Mikey, Valerie, and Dante. Mikey, the oldest of the three, remembers growing up with his step-sister Marcy as being one of the best parts of his childhood. Marcy was eight years older and took over maternal tasks from Mary, such as playing and dressing him. The kids also remember Dolores coming to see Marcy whenever she had breaks from modeling and filming in Miami: they loved Aunt Dolores’ visits and all her glamorous, exciting stories. Needless to say, Maurice’s feelings were less enthusiastic – he still didn’t approve of Dolores’ lifestyle – but his problems with his ex-wife didn’t stop them both from being close to Marcy. Everyone recalls Marcy was his favorite out of all the kids – in truth, Marcy was everybody’s favorite – and, despite their separation, Maurice and Dolores doted on her. Marcy and Dolores For someone who’d had an unconventional home life, Marcy seemed the most normal girl in the world. Family members today describe her as an unusually gentle and thoughtful person. They talk about her kindness and the way she saw the good in everything and everyone. She was unfailingly happy and positive. She never had a cross word or thought, never had an argument, and made everyone feel special. One person however wasn’t a fan, and that was her step-mother, Mary. Mikey, Mary’s eldest son, pulls no punches in a description of his mother: “My mother could be a bad person, a monster at times. She resented the attention and love that Marcy had – especially from her father – and so she made Marcy suffer, and treated her terribly. But how did Marcy respond? Marcy respected my mom no matter what: she never reacted, never said anything bad against her. She just bore the brunt of all the evil and turned the other cheek.” Mary’s neglect of Marcy continued when Marcy developed an infection in her heart in 1959, and spent four months recovering in hospital. Marcy returned home with a permanent heart murmur and more ill treatment from her step-mother. It got so bad that her father Maurice eventually called Dolores, and they agreed that Marcy had to move out, go down to Miami, and start a new life living with Dolores. It was heart-breaking for Maurice and his other children who never forgave Mary for her behavior. Dolores and Marcy, hospital in 1959 Dolores however was over the moon. Sure, it could’ve been a difficult situation for her: Dolores’ career was taking off – and hers was hardly a kid-friendly lifestyle. She was appearing in racy, not to mention scandalous, nudie films, arranging meetings for her coterie of Cuban filmmaker friends, and hustling her own sex film projects around town to potential financial partners. Dolores, photographed by Bunny Yeager It made their everyday life complicated, but Dolores and Marcy both loved the new arrangement and Dolores relished living with her daughter in her small apartment on NW 1st St. And despite her physical distance from her father, Marcy called Maurice every Sunday without fail, something she continued to do for decades. However busy she was, Marcy made regular trips to visit him and his family, where she loved taking care of her step-brothers and sister. Despite her parents’ acrimonious separation, Marcy harbored no favoritism, loving them both equally as if they were still together. In Miami, Marcy started attending the city’s Senior High School where she fit in immediately. She was popular there, acting in the lead roles in high school productions and playing the piano and guitar in music groups. She had a sweet singing voice, and teenage friends still remember her carrying a guitar everywhere. She loved singer-songwriters and sung in music groups, transforming Dolores’ apartment into a rehearsal space for her latest musical project. She was Dolores’ daughter in every way, loving performing and dreaming of a career in show business. But her biggest passion was animals, especially dogs, and she spent hours training them and playing with them. She signed up for animal welfare organizations in her neighborhood, always taking in strays. One of her friends said of her: “Marcy had such a passion for life and animals, and everyone loved her. I almost hate to say it because I’d love to give you some gossip or salacious stories, but that’s the truth. She was a sweetheart. I still picture her running around the back yard as a teen chasing butterflies.” Dolores and Marcy * 2.    Dolores Carlos – The Nudie Queen Single Mother In the mid 1960s, Dolores told friends she’d never felt happier and yet somehow, she still felt strangely unfulfilled. Deep down, she knew she couldn’t live this life forever. Time moves slowly but passes quickly, and she wanted to remain relevant and use her accumulated knowledge and connections to create a more lasting career. She argued that she’d made as many films as anyone else, she had well-connected and powerful friends, and she could mobilize a Cuban film crew at the drop of a hat, so why was it so difficult to get someone, anyone, to take the chance and invest in her? She wondered out loud about whether it was because she was a woman, or a Latina, or that she was in a business that prized youth and beauty – and there she was, a single mother now in her mid 30s. Or perhaps it was because everyone still thought of her as being just a sex film actress? She knew that success was a double-edged sword – on the one hand, she was still offered plenty of nude film and modeling work which helped pay the extra bills after Marcy moved in, but it also perpetuated the stereotype of her as being just a sex object. Dolores, photographed by Bunny Yeager She did much more than that, she said, and the variety of her work did have a striking range: she was called upon by film production honchos like K. Gordon Murray to assist and advise in their film productions; she advised theater chain managers like Leroy Griffith on new film ideas; she found work for scores of Cubans; and she’d started writing film scripts and movie pitches. She knew she was appreciated, admired, cherished even, but whatever she did, she never seemed to be able to parlay her success into a more profitable, respectable, and permanent career: “I could be a powerful rocket, but at the moment, I’m a failure to launch,” she told a friend. And Dolores worked more regularly than most. In the 1960s, she appeared in a lengthy sequence of sex films that reads like a history of South Florida sexploitation: there was Bunny Yeager’s Nude Camera (1963) – a Barry Mahon effort which featured many models shot

Previously on Chasing Butterflies – Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida: Manuel Conde had lived several lives even before he moved to Miami, Florida. He’d been born José Conde Samaniego in 1917 in Galicia, in northern Spain, though his family fled to Cuba after General Franco’s fascist coup d’état in the 1930s. And then, in 1959, Castro overthrew the government and enforced Communist rule over Cuba. Manuel, having already fled one dictatorship in Spain a few years earlier, took his family and fled to Miami, Florida, smuggling out a sexploitation film that he’d just made, called Girls on the Rocks. In Miami, Manuel met Dolores Carlos. Dolores was a newly semi-famous actress and model on the local scene, having starred in (and been arrested for) a successful nudism film, Hideout in the Sun (1960) made by Doris Wishman, which she followed by appearing in a handful of other nudie cutie films. Dolores introduced Manuel to the growing community of ex-pat Cuban filmmakers that had settled in south Florida after Castro’s coup, and together they shot a nudie short in 1961, Playgirl Models. Dolores and Manuel arranged a meeting with Leroy Griffith, an energetic, entrepreneurial force of nature, who’d recently moved to Miami and made a name for himself by acquiring a string of theaters where he exhibited burlesque shows and then adult sex films. The three of them made a full-length feature was called Lullaby of Bareland (1964). In 1966, Manuel and Dolores teamed up with Leroy Griffith to make a film with a decent budget – Mundo Depravados – starring Tempest Storm, one of the country’s best-known burlesque performers, and the movie was ostensibly directed by her husband Herb Jeffries, a suave and seductive film and television actor and popular jazz singer who had a large following in the African American market. ‘Mundo Depravados’ was released with eye-catching promo material – “A Sinerama of Sex and Fear!” – and is one of the most bizarrely entertaining film experiences you can have. Over the last twenty years, I’ve tracked down and spoken to many of these people. Their overlapping personal histories reveal an untold chapter of adult film history and the hidden role that Cubans played in shaping it. These are some of their stories. This is Chasing Butterflies, Part 2: José Prieto’s story. You can listen to the Prologue: Dolores Carlos’ story here, and Part 1: Manuel Conde’s story here. With thanks to John Minson, Tom Flynn, Ronald Ziegler, Leroy Griffith, Veronica Acosta, Marcy Bichette, Mikey Bichette, Lousie ‘Bunny’ Downe, Mitch Poulos, Sheldon Schermer, Ray Aranha, Manny Samaniego, Barry Bennett, Randy Grinter, Herb Jeffries, Tempest Storm, Chester Phebus, Michael Bowen, Norman Senfeld, Richard Falcone, Lynne O’Neill, Something Weird Video, and many anonymous families and friends who have offered recollections, large and small, over the years. This podcast is 40 minutes long. José Prieto * 1.   José Prieto – Timing They say timing is everything. Sometimes it’s a well-oiled, precision-calibrated clock, but other times it just kicks you in the balls. Take José Prieto, for example. It was the late 1950s, and here was a man who’d spent his entire life waiting for that big break that would give his life meaning, that would fulfill his dreams, but fate always seemed to be a case of wrong place, wrong time, and that elusive, life-changing moment of success remained forever out of reach somewhere off on the horizon. José was a small, wiry man, consumed by nervousness, and his world-weariness hung on him a cheap, oversized suit. His head seemed constantly lowered as if trying to figure out the answer to life’s latest conundrum. Some dismissed him as dour and uncommunicative, but José had close friends who knew the truth. Guys like Greg Sandor or Rafael Remy. They’d worked with him in the Cuban movie business over the years, stuck around to get to know the real José, and found him a quiet, thoughtful, smart, and diligent man. Funny and mischievous even, especially when he’d had a few El Presidentes in him. José Prieto was Cuban-born and Cuban-raised. He’d lived in the country’s capital, Havana, all his life: it was a city of well over one million inhabitants, but it felt like a village to him. He mixed unobtrusively with everyone, from high-level government officials to pimps, petty criminals, and low-level gangsters. It wasn’t that he was particularly affable, but more because he wasn’t considered a threat to anyone. He knew his country wasn’t perfect: it was overseen by Fulgencio Batista, an un-elected right-wing military dictator who’d taken power by force in 1952. Batista’s regime was corrupt and becoming increasingly repressive, but José was smart enough to know the secret to living a comfortable life in Cuba was to fly below the radar and avoid the attentions of the men in power. If you kept your nose clean and your wits sharp, you could navigate this world comfortably. And so, José had become a proficient jack of all trades in the Cuban TV and film business. The 1950s was a ‘Golden Age’ for Cuban cinema: it started when many American films were screened in theaters across the country, partly due to Batista’s close ties with the U.S. government and business interests – and then continued when several American films were shot in Cuba during this time, taking advantage of the island’s proximity and exotic appeal. Suddenly local studios were established in Havana which increased local TV production. Cuba became one of the first Latin American countries to introduce television in the 1950s, which quickly became popular, producing a variety of hit shows, including comedies, soap operas, and live music programs. In a career that had been going over 20 years, José had produced, lit, shot, even acted in tens of these productions. Most of all though, he saw himself as a director, and occasionally he got the chance to be in charge. Some of his productions had been hits, others came and went virtually unnoticed, but he ploughed on, waiting for that one opportunity that would establish himself as a major player. But the Cuban film industry, for all of its strengths, was still small compared to Hollywood or Mexico, and the big breaks never came his way. * 2. ‘Our Man in Havana’ (1959) And then, José’s timing changed, and he was suddenly in the right place at the right time. It started when he read that Columbia Pictures were going to shoot a major motion picture right there in Havana. Not only that, but it involved three of his favorite people: it was to be directed by Sir Carol Reed, it would star Sir Alec Guinness, and it was based on a new book by Graham Greene named Our Man in Havana. The story was a satire that mocked the intelligence services, especially the British MI6, and their willingness to believe reports from their local informants. Alfred Hitchcock had been the early favorite to make the film, but he backed out when he couldn’t afford the film rights to the novel. José had read and admired the novels of Graham Greene, especially ‘The Power and the Glory’ and ‘The Heart of the Matter’, and his interest in the upcoming movie production only increased when it was announced that the film’s cast would include English acting royalty, Ralph Richardson and Noël Coward, as well as American stars like Burl Ives, Maureen O’Hara, and Ernie Kovacs, to help sell the film to an American audience. José’s opportunity came in the last weeks of 1958, when Graham Greene and Carol Reed visited Cuba. They were there to do two things – view locations and hire the local crew. When they arrived, Reed was shocked and concerned by what he saw on the streets of Havana: signs that Batista’s regime had become more vicious were everywhere, and Reed was concerned about how filming could take place against the backdrop of such violence and intimidation, after all, Greene’s book was hardly reverential to the Cuban dictator. Columbia Pictures suggested a local production manager as a solution: a real life ‘man in Havana’ who could navigate the political and logistical roadblocks. José saw his big chance and wrote to the studio asking to be considered. He was granted an interview, and made an impassioned case: he was more than just a fixer, he said. Havana was his backyard. He knew almost everyone, and if he didn’t know someone personally, well… he knew someone who did. He was experienced in putting together a movie production, he could arrange a complex shooting schedule, and he could do everything else that you couldn’t put a price on. Where would they find film equipment? José assured them that whatever they needed would be delivered immediately. Where would the best production accommodation be? José would get the choice rooms in the top hotel in Havana – the famous pink and white Capri Hotel, in reality, a casino cum whorehouse, owned by the Florida mobster Santo Trafficante, Jr., which was fronted by the entertainer, George Raft. Capri Hotel, Havana How would they find actors, or extras for the street scenes? José would produce any number of eager locals, excited to be in a big film production. What about the nightclub scenes… where could those be filmed? No problem, said José. He had a cousin who worked at the Tropicana, Havana’s most notorious nightclub, another location owned by the mob. What’s more, he could arrange for strippers, bartenders, and local business men to be extras in the scene as well. The production team was impressed. José had the experience, technical knowledge, and the network of contacts that they needed. He was hired on the spot, and in the records of the production, he was given the credit of ‘Assistant Director (Cuba location scenes)’. He even found jobs on the shoot for friends like Greg Sandor and Rafael Remy. Both had good credentials, having worked in local and international productions, Remy having already been an uncredited assistant director on John Sturges ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ (1958) starring Spencer

Previously on Chasing Butterflies – Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida: Dolores Carlos was from a fiercely Cuban family, even though she was born in Tampa, Florida in October 1930, and never visited her country of origin. Her Cuban heritage and good looks, not to mention her patriotism, came from her father, Gus, and grandfather, Carlos, who had run the family’s cigar making business. Growing up was complex for Dolores: she was close to her family, but she dreamed of breaking free and having a glamorous life as an actress, seduced by the silver screen and the movies of 1940s that she cut school to watch. At 17, she broke away, but found herself swapping her strict family home for married life – and being a stay-at-home mother after she gave birth to her daughter, Marcy. The marriage ended in divorce, and Dolores needed to support herself – which she did by modeling: she modeled for Webb’s department store, newspapers, pin-up photographers and local businesses. Her career quickly took off, aided by winning beauty contests and making personal appearances at fairs, carnivals, and balls. Within no time, her pictures were appearing all over the land – even in other countries. She became close friends with a Miami model, Louise Downe, also known as Bunny, and they often worked together. Most of all though, Dolores wanted to work in films: she introduced herself to every producer she could find and turned up at every audition, but when she turned 30 without any offers, she figured that her dream was probably not going to happen. Then in 1958, Doris Wishman contacted her. Doris had had a career in film distribution, but following the death of her husband, had decided to make a nudist camp film, ‘Hideout in the Sun’, and wanted Dolores for the lead role. Dolores accepted with a degree of nervousness given the subject matter – and her fears were realized when Doris and Dolores were both arrested filming a nude scene on the beach in Miami, and Dolores was found guilty of indecent exposure. It was a scandal that was splashed across the newspapers and shocked her family. For Dolores however, the arrest, and the subsequent success of the film, proved to be a watershed moment: she finally felt independent and decided to double down and move to Miami where she could pursue the new film and modeling opportunities that were now coming her way. She appeared in several more nudist camp films, countless newspaper photo spreads, and became a local celebrity, appearing on stage to introduce visiting Hollywood stars, like Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis when they brought their shows to town. Her life was made even happier when she was joined by her teenage daughter Marcy, who moved to Florida to live with her. Dolores was often accompanied on her film and modeling jobs by her friend, Bunny Downe, and together they decided to produce their own nudist movie, and so they arranged meetings with various impresarios in Miami. One of these was with K. Gordon Murray, a legendary carny entrepreneur, who was a hugely successful importer of Mexican children’s films which he would skillfully dub for the American market. But Dolores had another outlet for her talents: on January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro’s communist rebels had seized control of Havana, Cuba’s capital. Many Cubans, fearing the consequences of the new revolutionary government, fled to Miami looking for work and a new life. Among the influx were many who’d worked in Cuba’s film and television industry. Dolores’ passion for helping Cubans and her newly acquired network of film contacts was ideally suited to helping these immigrants find work in the new sex film industry in Florida. Over the last twenty years, I’ve tracked down and spoken to many of these people. Their overlapping personal histories reveal an untold chapter of adult film history and the hidden role that Cubans played in shaping it. These are some of their stories. This episode is Part 1: Manuel Conde’s story. You can listen to the Prologue: Dolores Carlos’ story here. With thanks to John Minson, Tom Flynn, Ronald Ziegler, Leroy Griffith, Veronica Acosta, Mikey Bichette, Bunny Downe, Mitch Poulos, Sheldon Schermer, Ray Aranha, Manny Samaniego, Barry Bennett, Randy Grinter, Herb Jeffries, Tempest Storm, Chester Phebus, Michael Bowen, Norman Senfeld, Richard Falcone, Lynne O’Neill, Something Weird Video, and many anonymous families and friends who have offered recollections, large and small, over the years. This podcast is 40 minutes long. * 1.    Manuel Conde – Cuban Beginnings Manuel Conde was an improbable playboy: at 5’6” and bald as a polished billiard ball, he wasn’t often mistaken for Tony Curtis. What made Manuel a ladies’ man was a combination of circumstantial factors: for a start, he lived in New York in the 1940s and 50s, where he ran a successful – and glamorous – photographic business, specializing in portraits of wealthy dowagers and Cuban movie stars. You could always spot his pictures: each one was embossed in the corner with his impossibly elegant and unique imprimatur, ‘Conde of New York.’ He got his start in the business after befriending another photographer, a Jewish man Maurice Seymour, who became a mentor to him. Manuel’s business took off, and before long, his photos were ubiquitous. ‘Conde of New York’ photographic portrait Then there was Manuel’s jet-setting lifestyle, splitting his time between Cuba and the Big Apple – in an era when both locations were the playgrounds of the rich and famous. And finally, there was his enigmatic and mysterious background. Manuel had actually been born José Conde Samaniego in 1917 in Galicia, a fiercely independent kingdom in the north of Spain. For centuries, Galicia had pressed for self-government and for the recognition of its own unique culture, and in 1936, it finally won the right to self-determination by establishing a Statute of Autonomy. The people had got what they had wanted for generations – but this new beginning was frustrated by General Franco. His fascist coup d’état in the same year kick-started a long dictatorship throughout Spain, and so Manuel, barely twenty at the time, fled with his family to Cuba. But by the mid 1950s, Manuel was bored of the photography business. He loved working with cameras but had grown tired of the high-maintenance prima donnas who posed for his studio portraits. He wanted to start a new career – and he wanted to make films. New York was a closed shop due to the strict unions, so he turned to the nascent film industry in Cuba where he found work as a cameraman on a variety of projects. In 1956, he teamed up with an aspiring director, Mario Barral, and they made Cuban Confidential (aka ‘Backs Turned’). It was a drab, black and white, pseudo neo-realist drama notable only for the depiction of the pre-Castro Havana streets (“People are real…” – the disclaimer read at the beginning – “any resemblance is a happy or bitter reality.”) Manuel took a producing credit in return for taking the film back to New York with him and seeking U.S. distribution, but it was slog and he would struggle to make any progress in selling the movie in the years ahead. Nevertheless, encouraged by the experience, Manuel established a small film studio in Havana and shot newsreels of the Cuban political situation for Movietone, the New York newsreel company. He also made an upbeat musical comedy ‘Around Cuba in 80 Minutes’ (1957), featuring entertainers who appeared at show spots on the island, such as the Tropicana in Havana. The movie premiered in 1958 in Cuba, and would later achieve a second life in the U.S. as a nostalgic view of Cuba for homesick compatriots. Then two major events happened that turned Manuel’s life upside down: first he met Maria Maury, a woman almost twenty years his junior, who became his wife. And then, in 1959, Castro overthrew the Batista government and enforced Communist rule over Cuba. Manuel, having already fled one dictatorship in Spain a few years earlier, wasn’t in the mood to stick around and try life under the new boss. The only things keeping him in Cuba were family, which he could take with him, and his new studio film business which, under the newly-enforced trade embargos, could not be transferred to the U.S. So, to get around the restrictions and to have something to bring as a calling card, Manuel decided to make one last movie – an exciting, commercially attractive feature that he would take with him as he left Cuba behind, and that could he could sell in the U.S. In early 1961, Conde shot a sexploitation film, Girls on the Rocks (originally titled ‘Drums of Cupid’), in a week-long shoot on the outskirts of Havana. It could have been a risky venture given the repressive nature of the new regime, but with his usual combination of charm and obstinacy, he made the film, even getting support and help from some of the communist revolutionaries. ‘Girls on the Rocks’ (1961) But making the film was only half of the problem: the more dangerous part was getting it out of the country. In late 1961, Manuel arrived at the Havana airport to leave the island for good, with the film reels for ‘Girls on the Rocks’ as well as his comedy ‘Around Cuba in Eighty Minutes’ ready to smuggle both into the U.S. Conde’s wife, Maria, later explained: “Manuel was flying in and out of Cuba all the time with the newsreels he shot. He had a permit to go to New York to develop color film because there were no color labs in Cuba at the time. So one day he gathered up the family and everything we could carry, and said it was time to leave.” Not so fast, said the customs officers when they saw the film reels in Manuel’s luggage. Manuel explained that it was just newsreel footage of Castro, but the officials didn’t buy it. They insisted that he needed to leave the footage behind. Manuel called their bluff: he told them to phone Castro’s personal office and experience the dictator’s reaction when he found out that they were trying to re

Cuba may only be 90 miles from the southern tip of the United States – a leisurely boat trip on a calm day – but since the 1950s, the island has seemed part of a distant world, too many communist miles away. It wasn’t always the case. For years, Cuba was almost an extension of America, almost another star on its star-spangled banner. Links between the two countries dated back to when the Cuban cigar industry first arrived in Florida in the 1830s, and Hispanic communities developed in Miami as impoverished Cubans emigrated, dissatisfied with Cuba’s poor economy, a high poverty rate, and the various military dictatorships. Cuban tourists followed and soon the city became home to a variety of Spanish language amenities. And then on January 1, 1959, everything changed: Fidel Castro’s communist rebels seized control of Havana, Cuba’s capital. The new dictatorship reduced American influence on the island and, by the early 1960s, had seized all American-owned property in Cuba. The United States responded with an embargo restricting commerce between the two countries, which is still in place today. Many Cubans, fearing the consequences of Castro’s new revolutionary government, fled to the nearest part of America, the state of Florida, and that influx of people changed Miami: before the revolution, just 10,000 Cubans lived there, but three years later, in October 1962, nearly 250,000 more Cubans had arrived, and that number would grow to over 1,000,000 by the 1990s. Many of the new arrivals had been professionals and tradesmen back in Cuba, and they arrived in Florida looking to continue to work in their chosen fields as doctors, lawyers, auto-workers, and manual laborers. And then there were those who’d worked in Cuba’s film and television industry. Over the last twenty years, I’ve tracked down and spoken to many Cubans who worked in the Florida film business in the 1960s and 1970s, people who made their home and careers there after escaping their home country. Their accounts uncover a Rashomon collection of overlapping personal histories that reveal an untold chapter of adult film and the hidden role that Cubans played in shaping it. These are some of their stories. This is Chasing Butterflies: Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida. This is Dolores Carlos‘ story. With thanks to John Minson, Tom Flynn, Ronald Ziegler, Veronica Acosta, Mikey Bichette, Bunny Downe, Mitch Poulos, Sheldon Schermer, Ray Aranha, Barry Bennett, Randy Grinter, Michael Bowen, Norman Senfeld, Richard Falcone, Something Weird Video (nearly all films mentioned in this series have been found with them), and many anonymous families and friends who have offered recollections, large and small, over the years. This podcast is 41 minutes long. —————————————————————————————– 1.    Dolores at the Opa Locka Community Center Every time Dolores Rose went to the weekly women’s group at the Opa Locka Community Center near Miami, she made sure she dressed well. She’d have her hair piled high, a string of fake pearls around her neck, high-heeled espadrilles, and she could still fit into her powder blue cigarette pants. Sure, she was the wrong side of 60, and she knew that being old was mandatory, but looking old was optional. This was no God’s waiting room for her, this was her time to shine. This week’s gathering was more special than usual for Dolores. Each meeting was turned over to a different woman who’d make a presentation to the rest of the group about something of general interest. Pie-baking, bird-watching, bee-keeping, flower-arranging, that sort of thing. Sometimes the only really interesting part was when the discussion was derailed by the profane, never-ending questions that came from an elderly Jewish woman named Freida. This week was Dolores’ turn to present. She steadied herself at the front of the noisy group, and took a breath. “I wanted to tell you about a long time ago,” she said, “when I was a big star in sex films.” A silence descended on the room like a thick wet blanket. Frieda whispered loudly, “Holy shit. Did I come to the right meeting?” * 2.    Dolores Xiques Dolores Xiques was Cuban through and through. No matter that she was born in Tampa, Florida in October 1930, and never even visited her country of origin. Her Cuban heritage and looks, not to mention her patriotism, all came from her father, Gus Xiques, a fervently passionate Cuban, though ironically, he too was a Floridian, born in Monroe County in 1899. Gus was a cigar maker who’d inherited the family business from his father Carlos. He raised a family of four in northern Florida by himself after his Cuban wife passed, and Dolores was his youngest child. He was a strict, hard-working man, and top of his belief hierarchy was loyalty to their country of origin and to their fellow Cubans. Not just any Cubans, but American-Cubans. Gus taught each of his children that all Cuban immigrants had endured a common journey, a mutual struggle, and they could collectively survive in America only if they helped each other out. Supporting fellow Cubans should always be a priority in their lives. Dolores’ family was a tight-knit one (papi Gus re-married after Dolores’ mother died – to another Cuban woman, of course), and Dolores grew particularly close to her grandfather, Carlos, a one-time cigar-maker from Camaguey, Cuba, who’d emigrated to Key West, Florida back in September 1886. Gus and his family lived at 3405 Green St, Tampa, and Dolores attended nearby Jefferson High School where most of the students were Hispanic or black, drawn from the adjacent Latino communities of Ybor City and West Tampa. Records suggest that Dolores did well in school – her grades were better than most, and she was pretty and popular. But family members say that, as she grew into her teens, she longed to step outside of the strict confines of her Latina family. Against her father’s wishes, she’d sneak out of school, often ending up in movie theaters, where she’d gaze at her idols, Jean Harlow and Rita Hayworth, and craved a more independent and glamorous life. In school, she joined theater, music, and dance groups but somehow it didn’t feel enough. She wanted more. Her ticket out came in 1947 when she was 17, in the form of Maurice Bichette, a dashing and handsome New Yorker from Orangeburg, ten years her senior. Dolores Carlos – aged 18 Maurice had a mildly checkered past: he had three kids from a previous marriage, was in the middle of a divorce, and had picked up a couple of arrests for reckless driving that would eventually lead to losing his license. Seeking a fresh start, he’d moved down to St Petersburg where he found work with the Clear-View Venetian Blind Company. He had a few goals: he was looking to stay straight, get a job, settle down – and part of that whole equation entailed finding a wife. It was a whirlwind romance: Dolores and Maurice announced their engagement just months after meeting, and tied the knot on May 9th, 1948, settling in St Petersburg at 4465 Crestwood Drive North. The engagement announcement in the newspaper featured a close-up portrait of Dolores with a flower in her hair – looking like her idol, Margarita Cansino, the actress of Spanish descent who became a huge star after changing her name to Rita Hayworth. Dolores and Maurice were both good kids: their problem was that they just weren’t good for each other, and cracks in their relationship appeared quickly. Part of the issue was age-related: Dolores graduated high school the same month as their wedding, Maurice was her first boyfriend, and she was just looking to leaving her strict family home and enjoying greater freedoms. She wanted to experience racy, swashbuckling adventures like those described by her grandfather Carlos. Maurice on other hand, trying to correct the errors of youth, was looking for a quieter, more settled life. For a time, they made it work: they fixed up their new home, took vacations down in Miami, and in August 1950, Dolores gave birth to their daughter, Marcelle Denise Bichette, who quickly became known as Marcy. It was a life-changing moment for both of them and baby Marcy became the center of their worlds. Over the next decades, no matter what else was going on in each of their lives, Marcy would always be their first priority. Dolores, Maurice, and Marcy, 1954   Dolores and Marcy, 1955 Dolores loved being a mother and doted on Marcy, but the realization was already dawning on her: had she had just swapped one set of restrictions for another? She was barely 20 years old, without a job, and now she was stuck at home with a new-born and daily chores. Housework can’t kill you, sure, but why take the chance? Had her dreams of being someone been crushed before she’d even begun? Arguments sparked between the couple: love may be blind but marriage was a real eye-opener for her. Dolores’ loneliness was made worse when she lost her beloved grandfather Carlos and then her stepmother within a year of Marcy’s birth. Dolores, headstrong and determined as her father had taught her, decided she needed a career. Dolores and Marcy, 1957 * 3.    Dolores – The Model In early 1953, Dolores sent off her resumé to Webb’s City in St Petersburg. Webb’s was a one-stop department store covering ten city blocks. It was a precursor to Walmart, with 77 departments, 1,700 employees, and the slogan, “There’ll be no more hoppin’ around the town a-shoppin’. But instead of applying for one of Webb’s many sales assistant roles, Dolores had her eye on something more exciting: she wanted to be a model for them. Webb’s had historically been associated with elderly citizens keen to spend their pension money, but top management had recently decided they needed to change and appeal to a younger crowd, and so they started a model training program for girls between 15 to 20 years of age. Dolores faced resistance from all sides: for a start she was already 23, her father, Gus, didn’t deem modeling to be a respectable occupation, a

A few years ago, I was researching an article for The Rialto Report when I came across a 1980 radio program from WBAI, a popular New York City station that specialized in progressive and alternative voices at the time. This particular show featured a prostitute named Iris De La Cruz. Iris wasn’t directly connected to the adult film scene in New York at the time – though she was friends with several of the adult performers – but I knew of her because she wrote for men’s magazines like Cheri, Partner, and Eros. Her monthly columns were an eye-opening account of her life working as a street prostitute, and this edition of the WBAI show was more of the same, with Iris talking about her experiences and then taking questions from callers to the station. But the reason that I found this show compelling wasn’t just Iris’ connection to the sex business in New York in the 1970s. No, what was startling, jaw-dropping even, was that Iris had brought a guest onto the show, her ten-year-old daughter, Melissa, and was interviewing her in a completely unfiltered way about what she thought of Iris’s street-walking job. Even for a program from 40 years ago on a counter-cultural station like WBAI, it still makes for a surprising, engrossing, but sometimes jarring, listening experience. In the current age of debate around parental controls, book bans, and school curricula, this frank, public discussion of sex work between a mother and young daughter is an exchange that probably wouldn’t, and couldn’t, happen today. I listened back to the show several times – and each time, the same questions came into my head.  Who was Iris De La Cruz, and why did she expose her daughter to a potentially traumatic experience at such a young age Who was Melissa, her daughter, and what did she make of this – would she even remember it today, or did it actually have any lasting effects? And then, what happened to this mother and daughter in the years after this show was recorded – after all, Iris would likely be in her 70s today, and Melissa in her 50s. I wanted to find what happened to both of them. This is April Hall. And this is Iris and Melissa’s story. This episode’s running time is 61 minutes. Many thanks to Melissa De La Cruz for her participation and kindness. Thank you to Veronica Vera for Scarlet Harlot and Aphrodite Awards photos. Visit Veronica’s site for more on New York’s world of sex work, art, and activism. We never ask you for money or accept any advertisements for what we do, but if this story means something to you, we’d love it if you went to the Iris House website and considered making a donation, however small. We’re not associated with them in any way, but they do such good work and well… we know that Iris would be grateful to you. Thanks so much. ______________________________________________________________________ Iris De La Cruz Jean Powell, P.O.N.Y. spokesperson before Iris de la Cruz Iris defending surge pricing Prostitutes of New York (P.O.N.Y.) newsletter Sex worker rights activity Scarlet Harlot protesting down by Wall Street in downtown NYC Aphrodite Awards hosted by Annie Sprinkle (middle) with Iris de la Cruz to her right * Excerpts from Iris’ publication Kool AIDS On Ice * Melissa De La Cruz The opening of Iris House by Melissa de la Cruz and her grandmother in honor of her mother Iris Early photo of Melissa and her grandmother, Iris’ mother Beverly Rotter Iris House carrying Iris’ legacy today * The post Iris De La Cruz – And Her Daughter Melissa: Street Walking Blues – Podcast 143 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Howard Ziehm, the pioneering adult film director, theater owner, author, polymath, and friend of The Rialto Report died last week in California. Over the years, I visited Howard on several occasions at his beautiful hill-top house in Malibu in California – “It’s the home that porn built”, he would joke. And he was right: Howard had enjoyed a long career making and exhibiting adult films, and in his last years, he enjoyed a happy, comfortable, and well-deserved retirement. Ten years ago, he even wrote a lengthy autobiography, ‘Take Your Shame and Shove It: My Wild Journey Through the Mysterious Sexual Cosmos’ in which he told the eventful and entertaining story of his life. The irony was that when I met up with him, we ended up talking about everything except his adult film past: he always wanted to show me his collection of classic cartoons depicting golf scenes – he’d published a book of favorites which featured a foreword by Bob Hope, and I wanted to talk about his experience playing music and managing folk clubs in heyday of the 1960s. Not that Howard was stuck in the past – quite the opposite: he was keen to talk about politics, culture, and technology innovations. On one of the last times that I saw him, I asked him what he thought about the state of the adult film industry today, and the new developments in AI,   streaming porn, webcams, cam girls, and live interactive sites like Chaturbate. He was enthusiastic: “These instant, intimate interactions are like going back to the beginning of the sex film business,” he said. “Except that now you can enjoy it all in your own home.” I asked him if he ever logged on to any of these sites. “Of course, I do!” he laughed. “Every day! Except I don’t like to pay. After everything I’ve done to help create this adult film industry over many decades, after all the risks I took and the court cases I had to fight, I figure… I should get some things for free, right?” This episode’s running time is 102 minutes. ______________________________________________________________________ Original introduction to the Howard Ziehm podcast Make no mistakes about it, Howard Ziehm is one of the people who invented the adult film industry. He was there taking still photos for adult bookstores in the 1960s – when the most you could reveal was a girl in her underwear. He made some of the first color loops – when all you could show was the subject writhing on a mattress by herself. And then in 1970, as the market finally demanded hardcore, he made the groundbreaking ‘Mona: The Virgin Nymph’. Time magazine called it the ‘The Jazz Singer’ (1927) of fuck films. Variety called it “the long-awaited link between the stag loops and conventional theatrical fare” and it was listed it their annual Top 50 grossing films – the first pornographic film to feature. And it was the first nationally released 35mm adult feature film to play in actual movie theaters. In short, it was the blueprint for the 1970s porno chic hits that followed. Howard went onto make many more adult films over the next decade, including ‘Flesh Gordon’ (1974), a science fiction adventure comedy erotic spoof of the Flash Gordon serials from the 1930s. So who was the mysterious Howard Ziehm behind these films? Fortunately he’s finally completed his autobiography which The Rialto Report is assisting Howard to publish shortly. And it’s a hell of read. It’s a huge, entertaining, and riveting book that names names, settles scores, and tells truths. It’s also one of the best biographies you’ll read about anyone in the film industry. And it turns out here was someone who was going to be a theoretical physicist, owned one of the most successful clubs of the 1960s folk scene, worked as a nude model, had a drug running scheme importing marijuana across the border into the US, played guitar in a Los Angeles band called Father Plotsky and the Umbilical Cord – and all that before he ever even thought of making a porn film. Today we’re joined by Howard Ziehm to talk about his surprising life leading up to the film ‘Flesh Gordon’. It’s quite a ride. _______________________________________________________________________ ‘The Virgin Runaway’ (1970) (directed by Howard Ziehm) ‘Hollywood Blue’ (1970) Japanese one sheet for ‘Hollywood Blue’ (1970)    ‘Mona’ (1970)  ‘Harlot’ (1971) Newspaper ad for ‘Harlot’ (1971) (using an alternative name)   Newspaper ad for ‘Harlot’ (1971) (using an alternative name)  Beverley Cinema     The post R.I.P. Howard Ziehm: Mona… (and marijuana, music, and M.I.T.) – Podcast Reprise appeared first on The Rialto Report.

By the mid 1990s, Dian Hanson could’ve been forgiven for thinking that she’d finally made it – and that nothing was going to derail her career in magazine publishing that had started two decades earlier. She’d had an improbable and volatile journey, from a troubled upbringing and difficult marriage, to working as a nurse in rural Pennsylvania, before somehow launching an explicit men’s magazine called Puritan for the mob in New York. There followed a succession of writing, publishing, and editing jobs on men’s magazines whose titles eloquently reveal their sexual content: Hooker, Expose’, Partner, Adult Cinema Review, and Juggs, to name a few. Her greatest triumph was Leg Show magazine – which Dian turned into a high-selling juggernaut. It was a match made in heaven: Dian, long fascinated and deeply compassionate about sexual quirks and fetish, an audience that was crying out for a more intimate connection with their magazine, and a publisher, George Mavety, who gave Dian near-complete creative control. But then just as everything seemed to be working out perfectly, the internet happened – crippling the sex magazine business. To make matters worse, her employer, George Mavety, died. The good times were suddenly retreating in the rear-view mirror. In this final episode of the series, Dian talks about what happened next, and how she re-invented herself with Taschen books. It’s a story that includes characters as diverse as Linda Lovelace, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert Crumb, transvestite model Kim Christy and transsexual porn star Sulka, Vanessa Del Rio, and many more. You can listen to the Episode 1 here, Episode 2 here, and Episode 3 here. This podcast is 52 minutes long. ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————- Dian in ‘Crumb‘ documentary, 1991 ‘ Photo for Crumb portrait   R. Crumb portrait   Dian standing on Leg Show reader, 1995   New York, 2000   Dian and Larry Flynt event, 2008   With Liz Earls of ‘Days of the Cougar’ book, 2011   Explaining porn at Los Angeles Public Library, c. 2012   With ‘The Art of Pin Up’, 2015   In Dian’s Taschen office in Hollywood, 2018   Dian with boyfriend Daniel, Christmas 2019   Naomi Campbell party, 2020   Onstage with Arnold Schwarzenegger, David Geffen Theater, Los Angeles, 2023 * The post Dian Hanson – Chronicles, Part 4: The Taschen Years – Podcast 142 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

In the first part of ‘Dian Hanson, Chronicles,’ Dian spoke of her upbringing in the northwest United States, an often shocking family life with a difficult and frightening father – who just happened to be the supreme grand master of a sex-magic cult. It was  a difficult childhood that included bullying, sexual assault, and running away from home, culminating in an unhappy marriage to a transvestite which ended after her troubled and abusive husband forced them to put their daughter up for adoption. One of the few highlights and true interests from her teen years was Dian’s discovery of sexuality and pornography – thanks in part to the work of the psychologist Krafft-Ebbing and the growing permissiveness in the country, as exemplified by the publication of the strangely titillating Illustrated Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. In the second episode of our series, we heard how Dian got divorced and moved on with her life by finding work as a nurse in Pennsylvania – despite lacking any formal training – before starting a hardcore magazine, Puritan, with a boyfriend – despite not having had any experience in publishing. Dian liked the sex magazine work much more than she liked her boyfriend, so she ditched him and went on to partner with Peter Wolff, an eccentric veteran of the New York sex publication scene. Together they helmed popular titles such as Partner, Adult Cinema Review, and Oui, and though the pair were alternately and repeatedly feted and then fired, they developed a template for a new type of publication: a men’s magazine that would be guided by the desires of the readers. Episode 3 is about the 1980s and 1990s – and how Dian’s career continued in the ever-expanding and competitive world of sex publications. You can listen to the Episode 1 here and Episode 2 here. This podcast is 51 minutes long. —————————————————————————————————————————————————————————– Standing on Fakir Musafar, Partner magazine, 1982   Dian Hanson, 1982   Dian with George Mavety, c. 1988   Dian, with Rick Savage, c.1992   Leg Show column photo, c. 1994   With Juggs managing editor Matthew Licht, 1995   Leg Show column photo, c. 1997   In Yoxford, England, c. 1997   With Rose Bailey, Leg Show   Leg Show, 1999 * The post Dian Hanson – Chronicles, Part 3: Going Solo – Podcast 141 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Dian Hanson is a unique figure from the world of men’s magazines in New York in the 1970s and 1980s, a world that overlapped strongly with the adult film business. Last time, in the first episode of this podcast series, we heard about her surprising, and often shocking, upbringing: a hippie and high school dropout from Seattle, her father was supreme grand master in a sex-magic cult, and a childhood that included being bullied, sexually assaulted, running away from home, even being considered by her parents as a possible partner for a much older friend-of-the family who just happened to be a pedophile. By 20, Dian had developed a passionate and life-long interest in pornography – thanks to three unlikely sources: the work of psychologist Richard von Krafft-Ebbing, the publication of the bizarre Illustrated Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, and the appearance of the first sex films that had started to be shown in theaters. But paradoxically, by her late teens, Dian found herself a world away from all these stimuli – as an unhappily married wife, pregnant, and living in rural Mississippi. In this episode, we hear how Dian recovered from that difficult, not to mention tragic, marriage and found her way into the burgeoning men’s magazine business in New York – albeit through an abusive boyfriend. Quick note: Dian asked that we don’t refer to this ex by his given name, but rather call him “he who shall not be named”. Obviously, I respected that choice. Dian talks about the first magazine she worked on – the mob-financed Puritan – a trailblazing, still legendary publication, that was the first hardcore magazine aimed at the newsstands in America. After that came Dian’s partnership with Peter Wolff – a similarly important character in magazine history. For years, the pair of them tore through a host of New York adult titles leaving a trail of both success and bewildered confusion behind them, as they pioneered the trend for reader-contributed magazines. Along the way, she crossed paths with people like adult film actors Vanessa del Rio, Ron Jeremy, and Marc Stevens, highbrow art-world darlings like Robert Mapplethorpe and Gay Talese, and low level mob bosses like Robert DiBernardo. You can listen to the previous episode here. This podcast is 75 minutes long. ——————————————————————————————————————————————- Dian Hanson – In Pictures Dian with a model, 1979   Dian, on her wedding day, 1980   Dian with Vanessa del Rio, 1980   On a Partner shoot, 1981   Dian, 1981   With Long Jeanne Silver, Toni Rose, and another in 1981   With Lisa DeLeeuw and a mobster, backstage at Show World, 1982 * The post Dian Hanson – Chronicles, Part 2: The Peter Wolff Years – Podcast 140 appeared first on The Rialto Report.