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

by Nelson, Jill C.

  Walter and I were happy. We fought, of course, but I forget those times. He would just clam up. He was what you call passive-aggressive. The argument would just end. I couldn’t fight! I wish I could remember everything more so that I wouldn’t be so unhappy, but I can’t. I only remember the good stuff, but there was plenty of bad stuff. Walter was a stubborn mule of a man. It either had to be his way or not at all, but that was okay. He was very special.

  Take Me Naked.

  Roberta Findlay.

  Angel on Fire. TVX HOME VIDEO

  Fantasex.

  The Tiffany Minx. GOURMET VIDEO

  Glitter.

  Sear Sound, New York.

  6.

  Jody Maxwell

  Portrait

  COURTESY OF JODY MAXWELL

  “I feel that being in adult films was empowering, but maybe even more than that it was emancipating. Now, if those two things are a form of feminism I guess it could be called that. I found making adult films liberating. I found the industry liberating.”

  — Jody Maxwell

  As an erotic film star, Jody Maxwell is renowned not only for her acting talents, but for a specific specialty, one she was able to perfect during a relationship with a boyfriend while majoring in speech and theatre at college. Her unique gift involves singing and performing oral sex simultaneously — no small feat for those who might consider giving it a try. More importantly perhaps, is the Kansas City, Missouri native’s awareness of her competence, confidence, and self worth; characteristics in which she credits her family for providing a solid foundation, particularly after surviving a psychologically devastating experience at age ten.

  Jody’s father and grandfather were prominent attorneys. Her mother’s craft was providing accident victims and WWII veterans with artificial human eyes, a delicate procedure that required a great deal of skill and concentration. Although her parents eventually separated, Jody acknowledged that their social conscience as well respected community leaders made an impact on her choice to become a forward thinking individual.

  A straight “A” student who won “Miss Buick,” Maxwell maintained a scholarship at private girls’ school, and had the honor of graduating with the highest achievements and awards in the area of speech and literary competitions and meets in the hundred-year history of the school. She enjoyed a large group of friends and became involved in sports and politics before embarking in theater and speech studies at the University of Missouri. At nineteen, Jody’s mother was tragically killed in an automobile accident leaving a void she worked hard to overcome.

  Prior to graduating from university, Jody attended a lecture given by Deep Throat director Gerard Damiano, and was invited to have dinner with him and several guests following the symposium. Impressed by her remarkable facial bone structure, raw beauty, and stage background, Damiano offered Maxwell a starring role in his next picture. He was taken aback when Jody informed him she first wanted to seek her father’s permission who had become county prosecutor. Her father examined Damiano’s offer scrupulously, and after giving it his stamp of approval, Jody was on her way to New York City to do a screen test for the lead role in Portrait (1974).

  As a discerning hardcore, film actor, Maxwell’s credits are limited as she often turned down roles in order to keep her options open for non-adult film work. In the 1980s, Jody cleverly created her own brand of softcore sex show, incorporating a stand-up routine that encouraged audience participation. Throughout her film and stage career, Jody also had monthly columns in Escapade, Capers, and Cheri magazines, and wrote feature stories for them as well. During her post-adult film career, Maxwell contributed pieces to sexually oriented magazines such as High Society and Adult Cinema Review, and worked as a phone sex operator as herself with an elite company. The details of which are included in her 2004 book My Private Calls. Maxwell has also been employed as a substitute teacher. Her inherent desire to encourage youths to strive for excellence has been her mandate.

  Currently, Jody is re-developing her memoir and working on an erotic novel while sidelining as an editor for a publishing house. Presently living in the Northern California area with her second husband of more than twenty years, Jody is an exceptional bowler, she loves to read, and duly supports her home- town Kansas City Chiefs and Royals.

  I interviewed Jody Maxwell in the spring of 2010.

  Corn Fed Redhead

  I was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. I was a Mid-Western corn-fed girl all the way. Corn is a big crop in Missouri, but I’m totally a city girl. My father was a prominent attorney, and my mother was mostly a homemaker, although she did have a career. In all of the time I’ve done interviews I’ve never told anybody that she worked with artificial human eyes; she fitted them in people’s heads. This was for people who had lost their eyes due to accidents such as during fireworks, and so on. There was a great demand for this procedure after WWII. My mother had learned how to do this long before I was a gleam in her eye and before my parents had met. She was introduced to two German men situated in the Chicago area and they taught her this profession. Not many people could perform the technique adequately, and my mother was excellent at it. We’d be at home having dinner and she’d receive a telephone call that someone had lost an artificial eye in a summertime party or something like that, and she’d have to leave.

  The two men who had taught her were actually glassblowers and they learned the profession in Germany. They came to America and because they had done glass blowing, they were able to match the eyes perfectly. You couldn’t tell the difference. The eye would actually move in the socket and everything. She would usually only work one day a week running the Kansas City office for them as people would heal from surgery in between. They were based in Chicago. My mother would take care of patients. The rest of the time, she was a homemaker. Former professional football player, Fred Arbanas, was one of her patients; he had an artificial eye.

  My mother was also actively involved in a lot of volunteer work, and she was involved in charity work. It was a great love of hers. Both of my parents were the founders of the Missouri Safety Council and they were both heavily into charities, organizations, and helping people. They served the Chamber of Commerce and they were both on boards. That’s the kind of background they had, and that’s how I was raised, to be exposed to things like that. Because I was an only child, my family did a lot of activities together. We took trips and we did social things together.

  On one such trip, during a family vacation to Banff, Alberta, in Canada when Jody was about twelve years old, she was introduced to Walt Disney and his wife who (figuratively) kidnapped her for the entire day. Once it got close to dinnertime and Jody still hadn’t shown up, her parents were set to call the Mounties when Disney and his wife returned with Jody in tow. She remembers the experience as one of the best of her childhood days.

  My parents demonstrated affection toward one another. Now, my father was a handsome man, something of a Casanova type guy. He subscribed to Playboy and he would show me Playboy interviews. Playboy magazine had a reputation for excellent stories, so I grew up reading Playboy because of the pieces in there. Sometimes I would take an article out and use it for school. Our home was open that way, but we didn’t really discuss sex per se. Overall, I’d say that my father was more open-minded than my mother was. My parents and I frequently interacted together, but later, when I got into my teens, I wanted to go my own way. I was a typical teenager. I’d say we were pretty much a well-rounded family.

  Jody’s near picture perfect family life was sadly disrupted when she became the victim of two perpetrators who robbed her of her innocence one summer day in a brutal and vicious manner. She hadn’t yet reached puberty. Through her adult eyes, Jody’s ability to accept the incident for what it was is truly admirable.

  I got raped when I was ten by two high school boys. If you want to consider that a loss of virginity, I guess, you could, technically. It was bad. That incident has become a nightmare problem for me.
I came from intelligent people and because I had a wonderful dad, I was smart enough to realize that those boys were not the norm. I was ten, and I knew that. I did not turn against boys or men because of that experience. I had a boyfriend in grade school at that point who had been my boyfriend since I was four years old, and he was wonderful. I always had a boyfriend; I don’t think I was ever without a boyfriend in my entire life. It was an emotional experience, and it still hurts. I understood that, in general, boys are not that way. I survived it in other words. Girls and women need to realize there are a lot of bad apples out there, but there are also a lot of wonderful men. Bitches are out there, and there are a lot of wonderful women. We are made up of all kinds of different people, and there are bad people in all walks of life. You just have to accept people. The one thing I am going to do when I write my memoir is name those two people because I’ve never done that. I’m going to save it for my book. They both turned out to have great careers and they never had to pay the price for what they did. It’s a very complicated story that I don’t want to go into right now. They say that after an experience such as that one occurs your grades are supposed to fall. I was devastated — it happened in the summertime, but my grades did not fall. Over the years, I had to compartmentalize what happened in order to survive it. I was not going to let it ruin my life.

  Eventually, I won a four-year scholarship to my high school. It was a scholastic scholarship, so I had to maintain an A average in order to keep my scholarship. I went to St. Teresa’s Academy that was a private girl’s school. I was active in a lot of different organizations while I was there. I was a class officer and I have a list of organizations documented in my yearbook that is a couple of inches long.

  I feel I did have a wide range of friends. I had my favorites, obviously, a close group of friends. A couple of gals and I used to be called “The Three Musketeers”. I also had another group of girlfriends I used to run around with quite a bit, too. We had a number of slumber parties, and I was first attendant Homecoming Queen, which means that I was first runner up. I received a crown too — this was at Rockhurst High School, an all boys’ Jesuit school. I won a dancing contest when I was in school. I had lots of friends, but I also had buddies who were guy friends. They would call me for advice about their love lives; they always wanted my advice. It’s been that way my entire life. People come to me for advice, whether I can give it or not. I also participated in something called Mock United Nations during my junior and senior high school years. We drew for countries. I actually participated two years. My first year I drew a small African country I knew nothing about, but by the time we began I knew EVERYTHING about it; the country was Dahomey [part of West Africa, now known as the Republic of Benin]. The second year, my jewel, I got the United States and that was so wonderful! We became the United Nations. It was a thrilling experience. In college, I participated in MISL [Missouri Intercollegiate State Legislature]. We got to take over the legislative branches of government for several days. It was wonderful.

  By the way, I would be remiss if I didn’t add something about my parents: as beautiful a marriage and as close as they were, my father left me, and my mother on the first day of my junior year in high school. He had fallen for some gal. He broke my mother’s heart and mine as well. He returned home Easter weekend. It was very shocking to everybody because no two people were closer than my parents were. They did everything together. I was always daddy’s girl.

  When I graduated from high school, I had the highest number of points and awards, and certificates that the school had ever seen from all the speech leagues in the greater Kansas City area, covering areas of Missouri and Kansas. My honors and awards, and overall points that have never been surpassed were in the field of speech. This is the oldest private school west of Mississippi, so the school was over a hundred years old at that point. I was accepted at every college to which I applied. I didn’t get turned down anywhere. I didn’t go to the university, USC. I was planning on attending just because my father suddenly said to me, “Oh, by the way, you can’t take your car in your freshman year.” My father had given me a brand new convertible for my sixteenth birthday. I honestly don’t have what might be considered a typical porn background.

  I got married after my first year of college at age eighteen and a half. Maxwell became my married name. My father had said, “Why don’t you wait another year and I’ll get you a sailboat?” I decided not to wait. I love sailing — I should have taken the sailboat.

  Jody remained distracted with academia and friendships after her marriage to Jim Maxwell, but another tragic set of circumstances supervened.

  My mother was killed in an automobile accident in Colorado when I was only nineteen. It was very sad. My parents were separated when my mother died in the accident. She was a passenger and it was bad. Everybody in both cars had been killed. Four people died that day. It was a rough time for me that year and very traumatic too. I am not sure you ever get over a violent death of a family member like that. Anyway, I lost my mom then.

  I had a little girl, but she was born prematurely, and she passed away. This wasn’t too long after my mother had died. After I married Jim Maxwell, my father fell for another gal and left home again. Eventually, my father remarried, and I have three stepbrothers, and later, a half sister.

  When I went to college, I majored in theatre and speech and I starred in plays. Rhinoceros was the first. I believe that speech was probably my greatest love. I was a member of the Speech League and I continued heavy involvement in public speaking. I did that and I entered all kinds of competitions. I also enjoyed my involvement in politics. I did have political aspirations but my grandfather said, “Please don’t.” My grandfather [who sat on special council for United States Government] and I were very close. This was my father’s father. When he ended up passing on, it was on the national news. My grandfather had prosecuted Tom Pendergast in Kansas City. There was a lot of that kind of thing going on back then; it was a certain era. Pendergast was a bad guy.

  Tom Pendergast reigned as a political “boss” over Kansas City and Jackson County, Missouri, while giving employment to workers during the Great Depression. Pendergast, a drinker and gambler, was also instrumental in strategizing the election of key politicians when he managed to manufacture an abundance of false votes in the 1936 election. Specifically, Pendergast’s efforts tipped the scales to influence the favorable outcome of the election of Harry S. Truman (who eventually became the thirty-third President of the United States) when Truman became judge of the County Court of the eastern district of Jackson County, Missouri.

  In his 1948 book, Missouri Waltz, The Inside Story of the Pendergast Machine by the Man Who Smashed It, Maurice Milligan, the DA of Kansas City and investigator of fraud cases pertaining to political elections, wrote extensively about the intricacies of the Pendergast trial, and how he was able to effectively bring about a guilty conviction. Also worth noting is that during the Democratic primary, Truman defeated John J. Cochran and Tuck Milligan, the brother of the federal prosecutor Maurice Milligan. Pendergast, whose case was built on a $750,000 insurance scam, pled guilty to charges of tax evasion during a period of ten years from 1927-1937. He was fined $10,000 and sentenced to federal prison for fifteen months.

  Damiano Calling

  Gerard Damiano came to my university because he was speaking there, in Kansas City. That’s how we met. It was my last semester in college. I was President of the local chapter of Zeta Phi Eta, National Professional Communications Fraternity for Women. I was involved in Republican politics, which is how we were introduced. Anyway, a friend of mine had introduced me to Damiano. I was going to do a story for their publication. We were introduced, and then Damiano started asking me questions. He told me I was pretty and he loved my facial structure. “Beautiful,” is actually the word he used. I told him that I was majoring in theatre and speech and was in a play at the time. His eyes got huge and he asked me to have dinner with him that night. I hesitated, but
then he said we were going to have dinner with all of these other people who owned the Chelsea theatre in Kansas City. There was going to be a dinner party at Jaspers. This was an excellent gourmet Italian restaurant that is famous. I thought, “That sounds pretty harmless, I can drive there.” I agreed to have dinner with him and I picked him up at his hotel. We all went to dinner and during our meal he said, “How would you feel about starring in my next film?”

  Damiano said that I could replace Linda Lovelace. He wanted to give me a name and I said, “Did you give Linda Lovelace her name, Jerry?”

  He said, “Yes”.

  I said, “I don’t think I want you picking out my name.” I wanted a name that sounded like a normal All-American gal because that’s what I was. I may be sexy, sensual and erotic, but I wanted to be America’s sweetheart, that was my attitude. He said, “Okay, well think about it.” I had not intended to use the name “Maxwell”.

  At that point, my father had become a county prosecutor and my mom had already passed away. I told him I had wanted to check in with my father to make sure he didn’t have a problem with it. Damiano knew my father was a prosecutor and he said, “Am I going to be safe?” He had told me he’d get back to me after graduation, so he called and said, “Have you thought about a name yet?” This was three months since we’d met, he had asked me to do a screen test and I said, “Well, let me talk it over with my father.” My father had known about Damiano because he’d read about him in Playboy. My father thought about it; my stepmother is a former Playboy Bunny. Anyway, he said that if I wanted to do it to go for it. I know he’d seen some adult films. He made sure that Damiano knew where I was at all times, and everything was on the up and up. I absolutely had his blessing.