"No Agenda" Book Review by Gore Gore Girl

I'd like to extend my appreciation to Gore-Gore Girl (XXX through feminist lens) for composing the following in depth analysis of "Golden Goddesses". The review can be found here: No Agenda Book Review: Gore Gore Girl

Hi folks! An exciting book review for you today: Golden Goddesses: 25 Legendary Women of Classic Erotic Cinema, 1968-1985 by Jill C. Nelson, who previously co-wrote the John Holmes biography, Inches. This book is a real labor of love; a collection of lengthy interviews and background stories behind 25 women of the golden age. Each chapter is effectively a mini-biography, with intimate interview responses from the women themselves and occasionally their loved ones (as in the case of those no longer living, such as Marilyn Chambers and Ann Perry), as well as brief analyses of significant works by the women in question and a plethora of photos. At nearly 1000 pages, this is no fluff piece, and Nelson's (and her publisher's) willingness to allow the space necessary for these women to voice their experiences - diverse, unexpected, often inspirational, sometimes sad, occasionally unsettling - should be applauded.

Sex work usually polarizes people, as evidenced by the simplistic "pro" and "anti" porn binary, a binary that affects not only writers on the subject, but sex workers themselves when representing their work and themselves. The lack of agenda behind Nelson's project naturally leads to a diversity of stories, some of which are not positive. This, to me, is one of the strengths of the book. When considering the ways in which people write and talk about sex work, I often think about a comment I read from Dutch sex worker Jo Doezema in Wendy Chapkis's fantastic book, Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor. Reflecting on her work, Doezema writes,

"I think for almost everybody I make it more positive than it is, because everybody has such a negative idea about it already. So you tend to only talk about the good things or the funny things. With most jobs, if you have a shitty day or a bad client or something, people don't immediately say that it's because of the kind of work you do and that you must stop right away. But with prostitution, I've always felt that if I didn't convince everybody that this work was fantastic for me and that I really loved it that they would all be on my back to quit. Anytime something negative happens in your work, it just confirms peoples' worst suspicions." (120-121).

This insightful perspective can, I think, be applied to all types of sex work, and Nelson's agenda-free approach is refreshing in that it allows for the full spectrum of experiences: good, bad, and in between. For this reason, the book is not always a comfortable read. The project prompts questions, provokes critical thinking, and opens up a space for these women to truly voice themselves and their experiences rather than functioning as a "ventriloquist's dummy," to borrow Anne McClintock's phrase, for whichever agenda-driven group needs them. Through careful structuring, Nelson manages to narrate these women's stories while at the same time never overshadowing or undermining their voices.

What piqued my interest about this project, aside from the opportunity to read about the lives of such incredible women who are too often overlooked or dismissed (at best) by mainstream culture, is the fact that Nelson is not a long-time porn fan. For this reason, there is a refreshing degree of subjectivity throughout the book- a lack of agenda, as Nelson puts it - which leads to interviews that are thorough, yet also intimate and often surprising. Nelson explains it in her introduction, "Occasionally, family and friends have been puzzled and queried as to why I have chosen to dedicate much time and energy to developing two books centering on this unusual group often misunderstood and even persecuted by society. I smile and answer, 'I'm not interested in writing a book about Julia Roberts.'" (16). Indeed, Nelson seems drawn to these women for the same reason I am, and her goals for the book are made clear from the outset. "My intention is to escort readers to a clearer understanding of the beautiful and intrepid females who favored an alternative profession in adult cinema that was cultivated at the apex of the 1960's sexual revolution" (17). What sets the book apart is the diversity of women included. While superstars of the screen such as Seka, Amber Lynn, and Marilyn Chambers take up the majority of the focus, women who worked behind the camera are also featured, such as screenwriter Raven Touchstone, writer/director Roberta Findlay, and writer/producer Ann Perry, creating a project that acknowledges a fuller spectrum of female contribution to adult film than is typical. 

"Golden Goddesses" 2012 Book of the Year: Gram Ponante

Thank you to journalist Gram Ponante for selecting "Golden Goddesses" as one of the best adult-themed books of 2012: Best Books of 2012: Ropey Volley Awards. The following book review is excerpted from Ponante's piece on three selected books.

My favorite adult-themed books of 2012 had no shades of grey within them whatsoever; they were accounts of people who, if they had doubts, made bold choices anyway. Then there was my book, which is chock full of doubt.

I read a number of memoirs, How To books, and coffeetable tomes, but none were as useful or enlightening as Jill C. Nelson’s comprehensive and brilliant oral history Golden Goddesses: 25 Legendary Women of Classic Erotic Cinema, 1968-1985. It is a massive book, and the kind that equally encourages flipping between chapters as it does a front-to-back reading.

“Golden Goddesses” was conceived shortly after Nelson finished her exhaustive oral history of John Holmes, “A Life Measured in Inches.”

“I met many of these women when collecting interviews for the John Holmes book,” Nelson says, “and if (“Inches”) told many stories while explaining John’s, (“Goddesses”) is much more of a history.”

It is an amazing history, and one that is that much more significant by virtue of the subject matter. While people like Veronica Hart, Annie Sprinkle, and Nina Hartley have both the resources and resolve to tell their stories, many of Nelson’s interviews, especially as delivered through the filter of hindsight by people like “Taboo”‘s Kay Parker, “Aunty Peg”‘s Juliet Anderson, or Rhonda Jo Petty, would have likely never been told with such detail had Nelson not happened along.

Nelson, a low-key Canadian in her 50s, compiled this 900+-page tome over three years, and I have never encountered a more comprehensive detailing of the gleeful freedom of the porn lifestyle of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s as well as the repressive society that made it inevitable.

Petty speaks of getting bullied into a fisting scene.

“I let [the director] intimidate me because of where I came from,” she says. “When my father heard about the film, he threatened to break my arms and legs.”

Packed with more than 300 photos as well as a selected filmography of the profiled stars, “Golden Goddesses” is a must-have for porn fans as well as a compelling social history.

Book Review: All Tomorrow's Parties by Jeremy Richey

I'd like to extend my gratitude to writer/critic Jeremy Richey for the following piece on my book. Golden Goddesses: All Tomorrow's Parties

All Tomorrow's Parties: A Look at Jill C. Nelson's Golden Goddesses 
by Jeremy Richey (Moon in the Gutter)

Film Critic Mark Cousin's exhausting 2011 fifteen-part documentary The Story of Film serves as a frustrating reminder that mainstream film studies continue to ignore the valuable alternate history of adult, exploitation and genre cinema, as well as many of film's most brilliant fringe filmmakers. The 'Story' of film belongs as much to what many would label 'bad' cinema as it does to what most agree on as 'great' cinema and until filmmakers as far ranging as Borowczyk, Findlay, Franco and Metzger are given their proper place along such esteemed directors as Ozu, Sirk, Welles and Spielberg, then the accepted history of film is false or, at the very least, incomplete.

Thankfully there are an increasing number of film critics, historians and enthusiasts who are becoming more and more vocal about the history of cinema that mainstream authorities have spent decades attempting to wipe out. Author Jill C. Nelson's astonishing Golden Goddesses: 25 Legendary Women of Classic Erotic Cinema, 1968-1985 is one of the best in depth studies yet that delves into one of the most notoriously ignored genres in all of cinema and it stands as one of the most important books dealing with an 'alternate' history of film since Pete Tombs and Cathal Tohill's Immoral Tales and Tim Lucas' Maria Bava: All the Colors of the Dark. 

An epic near 1000 page book, Golden Goddesses is made up of 25 fascinating, and lengthy, interviews with some of adult and exploitation cinema's greatest actresses. Beginning with Ann Perry and ending with Nina Hartley, Nelson offers up portraits of two dozen of the bravest and most intriguing figures in film history that you may, or may not, be familiar with. Golden Goddesses stands in sharp contrast to the endless number of books dealing with recycled information on the same film icons who get covered year after year... Nelson's book is a shockingly new and refreshing work and remains a compulsive read from the first page to the last.
Golden Goddesses is a noteworthy book due to many factors with perhaps the first being Nelson's incredibly refreshing non-judgmental stand and writing style. Golden Goddeses isn't presented with the same 'cautionary tale' stand style as most books dealing with adult cinema. Nelson shows clear care and love for these talented artists and her goal of just letting them tell their stories (while Nelson puts their tales and work into historical perspective) is inspiring. Golden Goddesses offers up a startling portrait of twenty-five strong women all with very different stories to tell... some triumphant, some sad but all unique and very, very real.
While Golden Goddesses operates as a biography on the actors Nelson gathered together, it also operates as the history of this ignored genre film history so greatly deserved and I salute Nelson for her mini-reviews of the films that come up in discussion throughout the book. While most authors would have been content in skirting the films (bad and good) that these actresses appeared in, Nelson understands that one of the most important aspects of each one of these women's lives are indeed the cinematic legacy they left.

While each chapter of Golden Goddesses stand on their own as truly valuable works, there are definite highlights throughout the book. Nelson's chat with Georgina Spelvin is quite an eye-opening look at an incredible life that includes cameos by everyone from The Rat Pack to Bob Fosse and the talk with filmmaker Roberta Findlay is, simply put, one of the most important looks at an important cult-filmmaker we have ever had.

Personal favorites include the section on the glorious free-thinking flower-child Serena, actress turned feminist-filmmaker Candida Royalle and the astonishing Veronica Hart, whose razor-sharp wit and intelligence comes through on every page. Golden Goddesses also includes one of the final interviews conducted with the legendary Marilyn Chambers and what a bittersweet read it is.

While there are tales (Rhonda Jo Petty, Sharon Mitchell, Kelly Nichols and Amber Lynn's in particular) that detail many of the struggles with abuse and addiction that is so often aligned with the history of adult film, the main attitudes that leaps off the pages of Golden Goddesses are defiance, independence, originality and strength. These twenty-five artists are ultimately not anyone's victims... they remain, for the most part, wonderfully rebellious free-spirits who LIVED a life and Jill C. Nelson has served them up a fitting and powerful tribute with Golden Goddesses.

Spotlight on Amber Lynn

Amber Lynn at 'Golden Goddesses' Book Launch

The following excerpts are extracted from chapter 22 of Golden Goddesses titled Amber Lynn: The Blonde Panther:

     Orange County, California generally conjures images prevalent in the popular TV show by the same name depicting affluent white privilege, texting teens languishing on perfectly groomed beaches ambivalent to the sun’s harmful rays while surfer boys gauge the wave action in anticipation of their next big adventure. Growing up in the OC for Laura Lynn Allen however, was anything but idyllic or opulent. After her parents’ complicated break-up at age three, Lynn was placed in foster care for a period of four years at which time her mother convalesced in a hospital following a mental breakdown. Tragically, at age seven and shortly after Lynn finally left her foster home, her mother was killed in an automobile accident leaving Laura to be placed under adoptive guardianship.
     As she grew into an attractive young woman, Lynn took advantage of the omnipresent sunshine and mild temperatures offered by the allure of the Orange County coastline. With her ultra tanned skin, precocious sex appeal, and bleach blonde hair, Amber set her sights on a modeling contract while destiny seemed to be in her corner in 1983 when she crossed paths with Althea Flynt, wife of the magazine mogul, Larry Flynt at one of West Hollywood’s prestigious nightclubs.
     After modeling for Hustler and Penthouse, the natural next step was a meeting with the successful west coast director, Bobby Hollander. Hollander cast Lynn in her first film Personal Touch 111 (1983) with Bunny Bleu and Lisa DeLeeuw.
     “When I got out of the [foster] home and went back to my mother, within that year of returning home, my mother was killed in a car accident in front of me. My life was spared because I was thrown from the car. I was seconds and inches from dying and I witnessed my mother’s death. I was almost decapitated in the car. This all happened by the time I was seven and a half years old. I suffer from PTSD and there was a kind of a huge splitting in my childhood. That’s what children do when they suffer from traumatic events because they are too young to interpret. They split so that they don’t go into shock. I didn’t find this out until years later in therapy and I was able to leave myself to create a character and be someone completely different. Now in my mid-forties when I look back at it squarely, even with all of the recovery, it’s still huge. In my memory, I had a short relationship with my mother, but a few things my mother had said to me always stuck. Her words formed me on the very little information that mattered. My mother was a Lithuanian Jew. She had wanted me to marry once and she wanted me to be a wife before I was a mother. On these little things, I rely.”

     “When I came into the industry, I was a kid. I was escaping from all of that past. I was so ready by the time I got on the road to come to L.A. and be an actor to get the hell out of what had happened to me as anyone could imagine. I was going into modeling and got into the industry by accident. I had come to Los Angeles from Orange County where I had been modeling to get into the magazine side of modeling. I wound up getting involved with Hustler and Club and Penthouse Magazines. There was a photographer named Jay Stephen Hick who shot me for Penthouse and that was my focus. These people separated the model from the porn actress. At that time, it was very important that you were separated. Girls who modeled for Men’s magazines didn’t necessarily do porn and now they are kind of required to do so much more than what we did.”

       “John Leslie’s death changed my idea about doing this interview because his passing triggered many memories and it triggered the first time I met John. I was going to do a film for the late Bobby Hollander who was actually the man who discovered me and got me into the industry. I went over to meet Bobby Hollander for a go see, to talk about a part in a film where it was planned for me to do a single, pretty girl scene. It was not sex and it was not supposed to be hardcore or so it was promoted to me. I was just a magazine model, but I guess he had seen me in a magazine so I went there and he pulled out a pipe and I got loaded with him. It was the first time I had ever experienced smoking cocaine. The next day I was on a [porn] set and I made my first movie. 

     There were drugs involved and they were definitely used as a ploy. The first time I smoked cocaine I had no idea what I was doing. I thought that I was smoking grass. I had done grass in bongs but I had never done freebase. I didn’t even know it existed. Now, you can’t rape the willing. Let’s just be honest. You can’t rape the willing and I was willing. You make the decision. The decision is laid out right in front of you no matter how the manipulation occurs. You have a free choice to walk across that line or not. You have to take responsibility and accountability. That’s the deal. Were there manipulations? Of course there were. That’s business, in all business. The bottom line though, good or bad, is that’s how I got in.” 

     “I’ll never forget the day I set eyes on Jamie. He came into the make-up room where he would always hang out and I was sitting in the chair. Here he was this older, revered actor in the industry and they were making a big deal of him. He had this beautiful curly hair which I loved. To this day men with curly hair is one of my things. He was very elegant and this wonderful talented actor. I was just sold on it all.

     When I met Jamie Gillis, I just thought he was a nice Jewish boy and he was. He was crazy and sexually deviant, and all of those things that other people have talked about he could absolutely be, but he was also a brilliant man and he was really the love of my life in that respect. I was very young and Jamie knew everything about me. He knew where I’d come from, he knew what had happened. When I got into the industry I didn’t want people to know who I was and where I’d come from because then people would always judge me as the kid from the broken home, or that I’d come out of foster homes. I didn’t want that. I wanted this bright, shiny persona. That’s what the industry gave me the ability to do. I was able to recreate something new and exciting that didn’t have all of this heartbreak and tragedy. That’s why I got into that industry and just took off." 

Spotlight on Laurie Holmes/Misty Dawn

The original 'Spotlight on Laurie Holmes/Misty Dawn' (excerpted from the book) posted July 2012, was deleted when I tried to correct the text formatting after I recently updated my blog. Therefore, I have re-posted it today.

At forty-nine years old, Laurie Holmes (born Laurie Rose) is an apt example of what it is to be a survivor although she’d be the first one to proclaim she’s nobody’s victim. As the youngest of three children from a nuclear family in New Mexico, Laurie was not unlike any other little girl growing up in the southwestern United States during the late 1960s and 1970s. The daughter of a military man and kindergarten teacher, Laurie grew rebellious in nature during her teen years. She was sent to live in foster homes before becoming pregnant by her boyfriend at age sixteen. When she was unable to reclaim the carefree years she’d lost before becoming a young mother, Laurie entered adult movies in 1982 to support her young son and chose the stage name “Misty Dawn”.  

     In her first feature film, The Best Little Cathouse in Las Vegas (aka For Love or Money, 1982) Laurie co-starred opposite her favorite veteran actress at the time, Rhonda Jo Petty. Although her tenure as a performer was sporadic, her petite stature in conjunction with a high-spirited girlish essence and well-formed figure, made Laurie popular with male audiences.

     "My first movie was called The Best Little Cathouse in Las Vegas (1982) with Rhonda Jo Petty who was starring in the lead role. Rhonda became one of my favorite actresses for the longest time. 

      In the early years, I was star struck and found it all to be extremely exciting. After a while, I found that it wasn’t what I had initially thought. I didn’t get as much work when I first started working just like everyone else, and there was always someone new or prettier coming along. I found it was hard to cope with feelings of rejection at such a young age. It was very difficult. You are so young and you try to hide those feelings. I know I did, but still, they are there inside of you to deal with."

     "I danced from age twenty-nine to thirty-five, and even at that age it was rough. I needed the speed to get me there and keep me dancing throughout the night. I needed the alcohol to cut the chase of the speed. The sugar in the alcohol also gave me a false sense of energy and security. In my experience, ninety-nine percent of the girls were in the same boat I was. There was usually one girl in the entire bunch that didn’t need the drugs or alcohol, and usually, she was the youngest one.

     In many ways, stripping is much harder on your body and your psyche than doing porn. When you are in a movie, you have wardrobe, a make-up artist, and a cameraman looking to get the best angle on you. When you are stripping, you don’t. Women are stripping because they can no longer get work in the movies. It takes a lot of energy to dance all night, so like I said you have got to have something to get you there and keep you there. You know in your mind that you’re not the same hot sex object that you used to be and the competition is fierce, yet when you come out on stage everyone is expecting to see the way you were, not the way you are now. It takes even more drugs and alcohol — and some tips — to make you feel like 'you’ve still got it,' until the next day when you wake up, look in the mirror and your reality and mortality is staring back at you. Then you turn around and do it all over again. It is rough enough for a regular aging stripper, but to have the expectation of being what you used to be on top of it ― yet, if you were to use a different name other than your porn name, nobody would come see you at all. 

     I think it’s extremely sad that many of the girls don’t know how to become normal working people after porn, and they have such little self-esteem they think they can’t do anything else but rely on their aging and abused bodies. It’s a vicious, psychological cycle enhanced by your over-the-hill aging body. Again, I stripped for roughly five years and I would never do it again. I feel sorry for those girls. Porn was much easier and prettier."

Book Review by Ian Jane

As book reviews for Golden Goddesses start to come in, I will be posting some of them at this blog. The following review is written by Ian Jane. Jane's excellent website, rockshockpop.com, contains news and reviews about pop culture including music, film, books, magazines and theatre. The link to this review can be found here: Golden Goddesses review: Rock, Shock, Pop  Thank you, Ian.

"Author Jill Nelson follows up the seminal John Holmes: A Life Measured In Inches (which she co-wrote with Jennifer Sugar, who provides an introduction to this latest book) with a massive 950 page tome entitled Golden Goddesses: 25 Legendary Women of Classic Erotic Cinema, 1968-1985. Once again published by Bear Manor Media, this latest effort from Nelson casts a wider net and rather than focus on one single subject, instead covers the life and times of twenty-five of the greatest female performers to make a name for themselves during the golden age of adult cinema. The end result, is a fascinating mix of biographical insight and, dare we say it, a distinctly feminist slant on an industry often reviled as sexist and misogynist. It’s this mix that makes the book so fascinating and infinitely readable as it provides us, not only with the dirty details on who did what, when and why, but it also provides a unique snapshot into the porno chic movement of the day that, like it or not, had a profound cultural impact on North American society.

Interviewed here are the following actresses, pretty much every one of whom should be familiar to regular readers of this site: Ann Perry / Jody Maxwell / Barbara Mills / Candida Royalle / Marilyn Chambers / Annie Sprinkle / Georgina Spelvin / Sharon Mitchell / Serena / Rhonda Jo Petty / Gloria Leonard / Juliet Anderson / Kitten Natividad / Kay Parker / Julia St. Vincent / Kelly Nichols / Seka / Veronica Hart / Laurie Holmes / Amber Lynn / Ginger Lynn / Nina Hartley / Christy Canyon / Roberta Findlay / Raven Touchstone

That list gives you a pretty good idea of the sort of broad cross section of the industry that the book covers, but it hardly does justice to the material itself. Never before has anyone seemed to have had access to the type of personal and in-depth content that Nelson’s subjects offer up here. Whatever her secret is, the woman has a serious knack for drawing out details that few others before her have been able to provide, and while quite a few of the ladies showcased in the book have done plenty of interviews prior, just as many have not.

Roberta Findlay makes a great example. A fairly reclusive woman by nature, Nelson interviewed her by telephone and snail mail – no email or chat here, it was all done the old fashioned way. Her efforts paid off though, as through this correspondence, which must have been pretty time consuming, Nelson is able to paint a much more detailed portrait of Findlay than anyone before her. We get to know her not just as a filmmaker but first and foremost as a human being. We learn about her relationships with Michael Findlay and with her second husband, we learn of her work in the recording industry and about her thoughts on the various movies she made, and throughout all of this we get a good feel for her attitude towards her life and towards her work.

Nelson also interviews a few actresses who are no longer with us, Juliet Anderson and Marilyn Chambers. This gives their stories some historical importance as they are not only likely some of the last interviews they gave before their untimely passing but also the most detailed. Chambers’ accounts of her rise to superstardom and crossing over, however briefly, into the mainstream are a fascinating document of a bygone era while Anderson’s discussion of her infamous ‘Aunt Peg’ character are completely charming and shed some interesting light on why those movies were and remain so popular.

Thought it would have been easier and perfectly interesting in its own right to have simply asked questions of these women about their career highlights, Nelson instead takes an obvious personal interest in each of her subjects. This allows for Georgina Spelvin to open up about her battles with alcohol and Rhonda Jo Petty to discuss the abuse she suffered as a girl at the hands of her father. If you want to know Gloria Leonard’s thoughts on the difficulties of getting by once a porn star hits her golden years, you’ll get that too along with insight from the continually sex positive Annie Sprinkle, who spends as much time talking about her work outside of the film industry as in it. Serena reveals intimate details about her infamous relationship with the late Jamie Gillis while Seka reminisces not just about her exploits on camera but on her adventures at New York City’s long gone swingers club, Plato’s Retreat.

If there’s one complaint to levy against the book, it’s that the three hundred or so photographs used to compliment the text didn’t replicate so well on the printed page. They often look soft, harshly compressed or both. The plus side is that if you want images of any of the ladies featured here, a Google search is only seconds away from anyone reading this. Golden Goddesses isn’t a book you’re going to buy for pretty pictures of pretty ladies, it’s a book you’re going to buy for some seriously fascinating and revealing stories from a collection of unsung heroines of the adult film industry.

The amount of detail here, the layers which Nelson manages to peel back in order to expose the people behind the personas, is outstanding. Anyone with a serious interest not just in the history of adult film but in the very definition of celebrity and the rise and fall that goes along with it should consider this a must read. Never before has a book tackled its subject with the grace and care which Nelson shows here – let’s hope she’s able to tackle a second volume, or even make a series out of this as once fans make it through the mammoth tome, they will most certainly be left wanting more."