Word: actore
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...lived in some mid-world between crime and art. And it was adventurous." Porn films preoccupied critics, cops and the courts. Often financed by Mafia families, they attracted the crusading instincts of local, state and federal prosecutors, who shut down the films and secured the conviction of one actor. They were directed by men who could fancy themselves as artists, and starred off-Broadway actors as well as the occasional gifted ingenue -like Linda Lovelace, star of the movie that created the craze (and the phrase) "porno chic," Deep Throat...
...name Jerry Gerard on Deep Throat. That film's lead players, Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems, were really Linda Boreman and Herb Streicher. The star of Damiano's next film, Devil in Miss Jones, called herself Georgina Spelvin -George Spelvin being the all-purpose pseudonym for a stage actor doubling a role (and Georgette for an actress). Jamie Gillis, another star of proto-porn, says that when he saw his face on a blue-film poster, "I thought, 'My God, I'm a serious actor. People are gonna see this poster and it's gonna ruin my career...
...York porn was both slicker and edgier, more professional, as were its actors. Gillis cites a Shakespeare gig he did for Manhattan's Classic Stage Company. Eric Edwards starred in a Close-Up toothpaste commercial; it was pulled when he was spotted in a porn loop. In his 1975 memoir Here Comes Harry Reems (quoted in The Other Hollywood), the actor recalls, "I was doing Coriolanus in some marginal coffeehouse where they passed the hat around at the end of the performance." He got more valuable training when he signed on with two burlesque vets...
...screen talent was in it for the art. "I purposely would not act," says 70s performer C.J. Laing. "I despised the people in these films that said they were actors. I was like, 'You've got to be kidding me! This is about fucking and sucking!'" But quite a few thought it was about process and progress. Once the off-Broadway types got into porn, they relied on the actor's invaluable gift for self-hypnosis to convince themselves it was somehow legit. Spelvin, who says she appeared on Broadway in The Pajama Game and Cabaret, recalls, of Devil...
...Damiano was shooting a 10-min. loop, set in a hospital, with Reems as the patient (he has a bandage bow-tied around his ailing member) and Linda as the ministering nurse. Then she performed her sleight-of-throat. As the actor recalled: "I couldn't believe she ate the whole thing!... It was a frightening sensation. My first thought was, 'Will she bring me back alive?'" (Spoken like a smart third banana.) "Gerry's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets and the cameraman's jaw brushed his shoes. I think all of us there knew we were present...