Remembering Barbara Mills

In memory of Barbara Caron Mills, who would have been sixty-three today, I have reposted this excerpt from our interview in June 2010 which appeared in Barbara's chapter (2) of the book titled 'Eat, Read, Live.'

A well respected sexploitation actress, in 2010 Barbara Mills reflected on her history in adult pictures with an air of indifference and bemusement. She is best known for her exceptional thespian work in The Love Garden (1971), Blue Money (1972) and Gabriella, Gabriella first released in 1972.

Shortly after turning seventeen in 1968, Barbara left her home in Massachusetts and ventured to Venice Beach, California. Eventually, she established permanent roots there, along with her husband of more than forty years, Frank Mills. Drawn to its bohemian vibe and idiosyncratic lifestyle, Mills flourished in the relaxed beach community and continued to develop her artistic skills while accepting occasional work doing nude modeling and acting. Augmented by her long brunette mane and classic appeal, beautiful Barbara considered her employment in adult films a stepping stone that enabled her to pay the bills so she could focus on her primary love, painting.

At fifty-nine years old on December 15, 2010, Barbara Caron Mills passed away peacefully at her 'spa' home in Koh Samui surrounded by Frank and her loved ones. I interviewed Barbara in the summer of 2010 while she and Frank were visiting their daughter Carly in Venice, CA.

With beguiling charm, Barbara fondly reminisced about her life and years in adult entertainment and valued the charm of the era in which she worked. The following is a short excerpt from our interview.

      “Venice Beach has really always been an artistic community ever since its conception. Being that most of the streets were canals when they first built the city and then it was the Gay nineties and the Roaring twenties, and bathing beauties and muscle beaches started. It was crazy. There were a lot of poets: Ginsberg and Laura Lee Zanghetti lived down here and it evolved, but it has always stayed bohemian. So it’s a very comfortable place to live. It’s cold sometimes with the wind coming in off of the Pacific, but other than that, it’s a good place to be.”

      “In the beginning, I worked at Woolworth’s behind the soda fountain. It was horrible. I was just a messed up kid and I knew I had to go back to Massachusetts. I told my mother I wanted to come back. She was worried about me even though she let me go and we decided I was going to go to hairdressing school, so that’s what I did.”

I was back at home until my mother died in March. At that point, things got crazy. My grandparents were too old to take care of us. We were very close to my grandparents [my mother’s parents]. My father’s parents died young, when I was a baby, so I never really got to know them. My aunt and uncle were almost at the point of being too old to take care of us at the time, so they hired a housekeeper.

      “I met my husband Frank in 1969. Shortly after my mother died, I came out here and met him. He tried to meet me in Massachusetts; he was from Massachusetts too. He came back to Massachusetts to his brother’s high school reunion. Our mutual friend thought we’d be perfect together so Frank called me on the phone, and he sounded so pompous, you know. He did imbue me for a few years with ideas and some lofty intentions, but now he was in California trying to get into the film business. I didn’t want him to come to my dinky little town just to meet me. I ended up moving in next door to him three months later.

I looked at him and I said, ‘God damn, he looks like John Lennon.’

      “Frank got me work and he got me an agent. One of his neighbors, I forget her name, got me into modeling. I did quite well strictly modeling – and then came the Sexploitation films. It all started when the United States was allowed to show X-rated films, which was around 1968; right when I started. Hal Guthu was my agent’s name. He was a sweetheart. The last time I actually saw Hal was in 1972.”

      “I thought Chain Gang Women (1971) was really funny because it’s not my voice. They dubbed it. It was Christmas time and we had plans to go back to Massachusetts to visit our families so it has someone else’s voice and it’s really funny.”

      “Actually, sometimes I can remember things from back then and sometimes I can’t. I didn’t willingly hold onto any memories. There are some things in my past where I say, ‘I’ve got to remember this and I do.’ It was a job, after all. It wasn’t a career move; it wasn’t an art form per se. It was a job and it paid well and it left time for living. I enjoyed the people. And it wasn’t sexual.

I wasn’t crazy – I was completely nude in my film appearances but no penetration, no genitalia and no oral sex. That would have been stupid. If you’re going to sell it, you might as well keep your anonymity. They never tried to get me to do more.”

      “When I remember my former work in films, I believe we left behind a really free spirit. We weren’t condemned for what we did. We were sometimes greatly appreciated for our work. It was interesting. It was an innocent time, it wasn’t considered real.”
Golden Goddesses: 25 Legendary Women of Classic Erotic Cinema,1968-1985 © 2012 Jill C. Nelson

Golden Goddesses Book Review by John Harrison

I'd like to thank Australian pop culture writer John Harrison (the author of the Headpress published book, Hip Pocket Sleaze: The Lurid World of Vintage Adult Paperbacks) for composing the following review of Golden Goddesses. John's next project, a biography titled Rene Bond: America's Tragic Teen Fantasy, is due out later this year. Please also visit John Harrison's blog:  Sin Street Sleaze. 

Golden Goddesses: 25 Legendary Women of Classic Erotic Cinema, 1968-1985

"I made it a rule, an absolute rule for all of the films that no women were allowed on the crew except for make-up. The technical crew: cameraman, gaffer, grip and sound — I never hired a woman. I don’t like women." (Roberta Findlay)



There is a continuing, undeniably voyeuristic fascination with people who were involved in the golden age of adult cinema (both in front of and behind the camera). Perhaps it’s the fact that they were both pioneers in a field of phenomenally popular (and perennially profitable) entertainment, yet also looked down upon as outcasts by the majority of mainstream society, who were happy to inwardly look but outwardly condemned. Or perhaps it’s partly because the people then had definitive personalities, looks and styles, unlike the mostly cookie-cutter, fake blonde and siliconed boobed porn starlets of today.

The co-author of the definitive John Holmes bio, Inches, Jill Nelson returns with Golden Goddesses: 25 Legendary Women of Classic Erotic Cinema 1968 - 1985. Told in an oral history format, Nelson has selected a diverse range of names to interview - including not just performers but also screenwriters, directors and costumers - which not only give us a terrific insight into the adult film industry during this rapidly evolving outlaw period, but allows us to know them as women, individuals and human beings. The bulk of the credit for this, of course, belongs to Nelson herself, who has obviously been able to win the trust of her subjects enough for them to open up a lot more than they would have in the pages of publications like Adam Film World back in the day.

Picking out highlights is a tough ask. The interviews conducted with actors who have since passed on (Marilyn Chambers, Juliette Anderson, Barbara Caron Mills) resonate with a certain sadness, but also serve as fitting epitaphs. Likewise, the chapter on actor/director Ann Perry (House on Bare Mountain, The Toy Box, Sweet Savage) also has an emotional timbre to it, since Perry’s battle with Alzheimer’s meant that her son had to do most of the talking for her. Elsewhere, Jody Maxwell (often billed as ‘The Missouri Stick Licker’) talks about losing her film virginity to Jamie Gillis and her unique talent for being able to sing while performing oral sex, and Laurie Holmes remembers her life with John and her disdain at the current state of the porn industry.

If I had to pick a favourite chapter, however, it would have to be Nelson’s interview with the normally publicity-shy Roberta Findlay. Along with her husband Michael, Roberta Findlay was responsible for some of the more notorious of the sexploitation black & white ‘roughies’ that emerged from the New York underground of the mid-to-late 1960s, including Satan’s Bed (1965, starring a pre-Lennon Yoko Ono), Take Me Naked (1966, written by and starring Roberta) and the infamous Flesh trilogy (The Touch of Her Flesh, The Curse of Her Flesh and The Kiss of Her Flesh). They later turned to the drive-in and grindhouse circuits, producing the 1971 Manson-inspired filmSlaughter, which had footage added to it by Allan Shackleton and re-released in 1976 as the notorious Snuff (‘The film that could only be made in South America...where Life is CHEAP!’). After Michael Findlay was killed in a 1977 helicopter crash, Roberta went on to direct hardcore features such as Mystique (1979) and Shauna: Every Man’s Fantasy (1985, a tribute to Shauna Grant, who had committed suicide a year earlier), as well as returning to exploitation and horror with the likes of the grimy Tenement (1985) and Blood Sisters(1987). An impressive oeuvre indeed, and Findlay relays a lot of great anecdotes and memories, from hiding film reels at the bottom of a well to avoid the authorities, getting a cyst in her breast removed (a result of years of filming with a 40 pound Panaflex camera) , and her love for dialogue and disdain at actually having to shoot hardcore sex ("I was always disgusted by the sex scenes so I’d say "Okay, everybody screw". That would be it").

Other names covered in Golden Goddesses include such well-known names (at least within the industry and it’s supporters) as Seka, Kay Parker, Georgina Spelvin, Christy Canyon, Nina Hartley, Annie Sprinkle, Ginger Lynn (whose chapter touches on the industry-changing Traci Lords underage scandal), Veronica Hart, Kitten Natividad and Serena.

At 950 pages, Golden Goddesses is an expansive and exhaustive tome, heavily illustrated with over 300 black & white photos (including many candid and childhood snaps), and an essential addition to the library of anyone with more than a passing interest in its subject matter. I only hope that Nelson returns to the adult genre in the near future, as her two works on the subject so far have provided welcome breaths of fresh air in a field filled with uninspiring, sensationalistic and inaccurate studies.

Review Copyright 2013 John Harrison