GOLDEN GODDESSES: 25 LEGENDARY WOMEN OF CLASSIC EROTIC CINEMA, 1968-1985

by Nelson, Jill C.

  I think that the first thirty-five millimeter film that I made was called Count the Ways (aka Let Me Count the Ways, 1976). It was a romance story and women liked it which was great, as far as I was concerned. There was a little poetry in there and it was handled delicately. It did very well. I kept taking the money that I would make on one film and roll it into the next film.

  It is easy to understand how Count the Ways with its snatches of flowery poetry spouted by the actors (Tyler Reynolds, Yvonne Green, Justina Lynn, Joey Silvera and Desiree West are all featured), and injections of romantic interludes would appeal to female audiences. The screenplay, written by Perry and set in an academic institution where the professor seduces his impressionable students by reciting Shakespeare and E.B. Browning, has all of the markings of an adult film strategically fashioned with women and couples in mind. That’s not to say the feature succeeds in its objective to appeal to a broader audience base apart from classic adult film fans, but one can’t discount Perry’s attempt to strive for lofty goals. Within the X-rated world, Ann’s instincts paid off as Count the Ways won an Erotic Film Award and became a successful financial endeavor for Evolution Enterprises.

  Greg recalled the immense popularity of the film upon its release and remarked how his mother’s clandestine mode of employment occasionally impacted his interpersonal relationships.

  Count the Ways (1976) was a big money maker for her. It was her first full feature. She used the name Ann Perry as a director and producer. She still has the ¾-inch videos and has Count the Ways, Teenage Sex Kitten (1975) and Sweet Savage (1978), but as people have distributed them, some of the movies have changed titles. You’d have working titles and then they get changed.

  During this time, I wasn’t really allowed to have neighbor friends over to the house because you’d never know when they’d be filming or something, or running around. If any of the neighbor kids’ parents found out what my mom did for a living, they wouldn’t have wanted their kids exposed to it. I had been interviewed on radio while she was doing radio interviews and they would ask her about family, and she’d say she had a son. They’d ask where I was and she’d say I was at home. They’d ask how I felt about her career and she’d say, “Why don’t you call him and ask him?” Here I am at ten or eleven and they’d call me at the house from the radio program and ask how I felt about my mom’s career. I’d say, “It’s what she does for work. It puts food on the table and I don’t know any different. It is how I grew up.” That, to me was a normal life. The Brady Bunch [television series] is like a freaky family to me. I just didn’t know any different. During the summer vacation as a child, I’d help her in her office and work in her mail order company. I’d be stuffing envelopes and putting adult items in boxes, and sending them off to people.

  My mom and Don wanted to travel so we’re talking about Vegas every month, and Florida — once in a while, if we weren’t in school they would bring us to Hawaii with them. Two or three times a year, we’d go to Vegas with them. My mother’s game of choice for gambling was Roulette, and Don’s game was Craps. They played Craps and Roulette all the time. What they would do was give us a hundred dollars and send us off to Circus Circus [hotel]. We’d hang out there. We’d always stay at the Riviera Hotel and we’d walk back down the strip to the Riviera and page them over the intercom system. Then they’d meet us and give us another hundred bucks, and we’d go either back to Circus Circus, or we’d go to the bowling alley and bowl every night. We really weren’t supervised. We just knew that we had to meet them for breakfast in the morning in the coffee shop and meet out during the day at the pool, and then we’d go see a show. Then they’d give us money and we’d go do our thing.

  I had a little more initiative when we’d go to these shows because I was intrigued by people like Norm Crosby, Eydie Gormé, and others. I’d find my way backstage through the kitchen after these shows and I’d go through the dressing rooms and get their autographs. A cute little blonde boy in a suit jacket — man, you can go far. Nobody questioned why this little kid was walking the halls. This is the early seventies, so I was ten or eleven. I still have my autographs of people we met.

  My mom wasn’t a drinker and she wasn’t a smoker; she was a very controlling woman. She was a very cold woman. Like I said, there weren’t a lot of physical emotions displayed growing up, but I knew she was fair. She took me away when there were problems from husbands and we’d spend the night in a hotel. She was my mom and I love her to death, but I received physical affection from my father.

  Madam President & Sweet Savage

  ANN PERRY: After I had joined the Adult Film Association and had been shooting thirty-five millimeter films for three, four, five years, I became President of the Adult Film Association. I was the first woman President. I’m pretty sure that I got elected President [of the Adult Film Association] because gentlemen that I had worked for in four or five films: Don Davis, Dave Friedman, and Vince Miranda, got their heads together and made the decision to elect me because I was their buddy. We used to hang practically every evening after we got finished shooting, and they probably thought that they could tell me what to do. Dave would remain Chairman of the Board of Directors and then I, as President, would be great for publicity. It was good press, and it was great for the Women’s groups.

  The late Dave Friedman, known for producing exploitation and “roughie” pictures, is one of two co-founders of the original Pussycat theatre in the early 1960s located at 7734 Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, Los Angeles. By 1968, the theatre had expanded to a dozen Pussycat adult movie houses reaching across the state of California. Vince Miranda, in conjunction with his lover George Tate under their company Walnut Properties, bought a fifty percent share of the theatre in 1968 and renovated the façades and furnishings to the tune of one million dollars. After enjoying almost two decades of success, by the mid-1980s, due to diminishing attendance records resulting from the advent of video, the Pussycat theaters were forced to shut down or make the conversion to regular admission movie theatres. At present, only the first and authentic Pussycat theatre remains. In 1985, at the age of fifty-two, Vince Miranda died from cancer complications.

  In their way of thinking, they believed they were still controlling the Adult Film Association and now they had a woman, sort of like a figurehead, sticking out there. They should have known better because I have my own mind and I like doing what I like to do. That’s why I liked owning, producing, directing and writing my own stories because I didn’t have to apologize to anybody. I always figured if I had one that didn’t make money, hey, it’s my money, so who cares? I mean, I would care, but on the other hand, I wouldn’t really feel I had done an injustice to somebody else. I would go along and I was always friendly with a lot of the little producers and the people that were just starting out, and the actors and the actresses. I believe I dealt with them all on my level. We were all filmmakers, as far as I was concerned and I never felt that I was above them. I think that, in a sense, there were a lot of people in the Adult Film Association by then that sort of believed the same way I believed, that it was time that the higher-ups stepped down. I was re-elected for two years so that made three years that I was President of the Association. The important thing was that we wanted the people that were starting out, the little people, to have a chance in the industry, and not just have the industry exist as it had in the past. There were too many rules and regulations.

  Around this time, I shot a film called Sweet Savage (1979). We were shooting two versions of our movies with the same actors and actresses. I would shoot a version clear through with hardcore scenes, and I would shoot a softcore version with the same people. I’d hire hardcore actors and actresses and that worked real well because my foreign sales at that time were heavily soft core — not much hardcore. It ultimately became a blessing because when cable TV started to buy film, they were buying softcore footage/films and I had all of that. It worked really well.

  We shot Sweet Savage for
almost a month in Arizona which was real different from shooting a day in an apartment when you’re shooting a sixteen-millimeter film. We went through a period where people didn’t shoot in Los Angeles because the heat was on, so to speak, and you just didn’t do that. I always felt you know — I like this business and there is nothing wrong with it, and I’m going to shoot where I like to shoot.

  Sweet Savage, another offspring of Evolution Enterprises, is set in the Wild, Wild West, and contained lavish production value evidenced by the exterior sets, costumes, and musical score. “Savage” starred Native American porn actor, Bethanna, as a young woman who falls in love with a white man (John Hollabaugh). The Caucasian male town folk (John Seeman and Jesse Adams) are none too pleased by the cowboy’s choice for a mate, so they gang rape the native maiden triggering a small tribal retaliation involving the girl’s brother (played by Tyler Reynolds). Incensed, Bethanna’s big brother kidnaps the sister (Eileen Welles) of Bethanna’s boyfriend and takes her virginity — only to discover he made a mistake and the real perpetrators hadn’t yet been caught. Upon realizing the error of his ways, the young native man apologizes to Welles in a letter and teams up with his sister’s lover to catch the real bad guys. Carol Connors (in only two segments, although she received top billing) is featured as a busty saloon girl while her real-life husband, Jack Birch, imbibes with Connors in the opening oral scene on a stagecoach. Sweet Savage won a prize at the Erotic Film Awards. It deserves an “A” for effort.

  You could show a film that would be okay for almost anyone. Again, I always had a problem being convinced that hardcore X-rated material really was bad. I thought that it had a lot of merit and I liked my own films. It was also this time that a couple of the feminists groups here in Los Angeles, one of which is still in existence called NOW, were picketing us. Everybody really kind of benefited from all of that though. We started to get a lot of publicity. We also started getting national publicity and a lot of magazines were calling and wanting to do interviews.

  The National Organization for Women (NOW) has been in existence since 1966, with Advocacy for Women’s Rights at the heart of the group’s fundamental mandate. Since its inception, NOW has grown to over 500,000 members strong, and champions reproductive freedom, lesbian rights, a halting of violence against women, and equality for all.

  In the midst of the eye of the firestorm that saw the ranks of various women’s groups such as NOW and WAP (Women Against Pornography) vehemently protest an industry that repeatedly produced films containing explicit sexual content, Ann Perry, accompanied by her latest cinematic effort, Sweet Savage, proudly attended the Cannes Film Festival. Greg shared in his mother’s pride of the success of Sweet Savage. Eventually, he was hired to work behind-the-scenes on Ann’s productions.

  Sweet Savage would be my mother’s jewel. I would definitely say that’s her golden child. The way they represented Sweet Savage (1978) at Cannes was under the title Sexy Sweet Savage.

  I grew up working in my mom’s business and eventually, working for the production company distributing her films and other things. I’d have to go to these film marts where everyone was showing them. We were doing the posters for Sweet Savage and hired a photographer named Blasco to do the box covers and magazine posters. The hair and make-up artist didn’t show up on set so because I’d gone to a few years of hair school and now I was working in my mom’s business, she said, “Greg, you’ve got to do hair and make-up for these photos.”

  I said, “I don’t know anything about this.”

  She said, “You know more than anyone else about this.” I did the hair and make-up for the posters and Blasco loved what I did and told my mom’s company that she needed to send me to professional hair school. I went to Paramount, and I started doing make-up for Paramount and began working on The Carol Burnett Show and other shows.

  Candida Royalle, Carol Connors, Sharon Mitchell, and Eric Edwards: these are all people that I grew up with and associated with on a daily basis. I grew up in adult world without kids so my friends were my mom’s business associates. My mother hired some interesting people in her movies like Aldo Ray, who had been in all kinds of war movies. I think he played the head villain in Sweet Savage. Some of these films were shot in her office. They would have fog machines, and I’d be lacing girls up in corsets and it was great fun. I also did the make-up for Undercovers (1982) when she was working.

  Perry is billed under the directorial credits in Undercovers as Virginia Ann Perry in this funny spy spoof about a high tech device inserted into the vagina of Becky Savage. The mechanism has the power to make men climax in three minutes reducing them to an infantile mental condition. Savage, Sharon Mitchell, and especially Samantha Fox and Bobby Astyr, are terrific in their assigned roles on a quest to harness the appliance with the potential to ruin men and alter world order. Real life companions at the time, award-winning actors Samantha Fox and Bobby Astyr shared in an intensely beautiful love scene complete with a crackling fireplace and appealing set design inducing the tone for a romantic atmosphere and genuine show of eroticism. With meticulous attention paid to scenery, costumes, and makeup, this thoroughly enjoyable caper is one of the best of Ann Perry’s collection.

  My mother didn’t want to make fuck films; she wanted to make love stories, which is evident in her films with candle lighting and costumes. She wanted to make romance movies. A lot of her films came from personal fantasies and she told me once that even the girl-girl scenes came from her own fantasies.

  Meanwhile, the tension between her and Don Perry was getting thick back then and Joe Rhine happened to be her attorney. He was a big criminal attorney in San Francisco during the sixties and seventies. Kennedy and Rhine was the name of their law firm. They were a pro bono type law firm back then. Joe was Angela Davis’ attorney and Timothy Leary’s attorney and The Black Panther coalition. Joe and Kennedy had helped Timothy Leary escape from prison — which was kind of a big deal. There were a lot of other famous clients. Eventually, Michael Kennedy became Ivana Trump’s divorce attorney.

  The partnership of Kennedy and Rhine also represented porn forerunners Artie and Jim Mitchell back in their prime as the law firm built its unfettered reputation by weaving a diversified tapestry encompassing a radical, anti-establishment clientele. Joseph Rhine, lauded for efficiently and compassionately representing the little guy, and the oppressed, became Ann Perry’s fourth husband. Ann and Joe were married for twenty-six years until Rhine’s death from heart failure in 2003.

  Out of all of my mom’s husbands, besides my dad, Joe Rhine was the best. He was awesome. They started dating when she was on the set of Sweet Savage (1978) because he was her legal representation. It was filmed here in Arizona. That was one of my first times meeting Joe because I stayed with her while she was divorcing Don Perry. I believe I was thirteen at that time. Don was Jewish and he wanted me to have a bar mitzvah, but it wouldn’t have been legal because my mom wasn’t Jewish. At that point, they were really fighting so she whipped me away to Arizona. I had gone to school here [in Arizona] in `75, and that’s where I met one of Joe’s daughters [on set] and we had our own private time in the hotel. They started dating and I eventually learned more about Joe. He was very big with the Farmer’s Union, and he was a very well known guy.

  Joe and Kennedy decided to dissolve their law firm because Kennedy and his wife wanted to move back East to New York. That’s when Kennedy started working for Donald Trump’s wife Ivana. He began handling her divorce from Donald. Michael Kennedy didn’t want to do pro bono work anymore, but Joe is kind of that down-to-earth, hippie-type dude, and still wanted to do that stuff so he and Bob McDaniels teamed up. They became the law firm of Rhine and McDaniels, and continued doing the pro bono work.

  After Joe and my mom started dating and they moved to the Hollywood Hills, I remember that the rental house was down the street from Doc Severinsen. Bob McDaniels had one of the rooms in the house and he was a nudist and a pothead, so he’d be walking around the house nud
e and stoned all the time.

  Meanwhile, Ann’s notoriety as a female adult filmmaker continued to make waves as she explained.

  A couple of major magazines contacted me and we did interviews, very extensive interviews. I did a big interview for Playboy magazine; the Japanese version came out and they took photographs of me and they had a big spread in the Japanese Playboy magazine. So all countries were getting interested in what was happening in the United States, X-rated wise. I called up reviewers that reviewed general release films for Variety and I actually got people to come out and review my films. I would get screening rooms and serve little goodies. It was done professionally just like the major people were doing and so it started to be accepted like that. When we had screenings, we had people from all over. There always had been an interest in our films from the other side. There was always a lot of interest and I think that they saw money. Of course, we always had two or three versions of our films.

  Ann’s private life was business as usual, as Greg revealed how his mother’s wedding to Joe Rhine was one for the record books. One could never guess-who-was-coming-to-dinner in the Perry-Rhine household.

  Eventually, she and Joe decided to get married at the house and the Mitchell Brothers were both their best men at the wedding. One of them was the flower girl coming down the stairs throwing rose petals out of a basket. My mom is an avid animal lover and she had this parrot named Flipper at the time. The judge asked if anyone objected to the marriage and everyone was quiet in the background, but you could hear the parrot go, “Oh, no!” They were filming it so you could hear on tape.