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

by Nelson, Jill C.

  Other great influences for me would be Martin Luther King and Gandhi. Later, when I crossed over into the art world, artist Linda Montano was a guiding force and a huge inspiration. She taught me that life could be art.

  Prominent feminist and performance artist Linda Montano personified the motto: “art is life.” For the past five decades, Montano has explored the intrinsic connection between life and art through the creative process of staging living art ceremonies. She conducts workshops designed to heighten and intensify an individual’s spiritual experience in relation to one’s life.

  I also was influenced by Rajneesh, the “sex guru” through his books and through his disciples, especially Jwala who was my Tantra teacher and friend.

  Sprinkle’s major mentors and influences are often closer to home. Annie is enriched by the rapport and presence equitably shared by women of the same accord.

  Another huge influence on me in my life was my porn star support group, Club 90. We started as a group of eight women and then went to five of us as Sharon Mitchell and Kelly Nichols moved to California, and Sue Nero dropped out. We met for ten-plus years in New York City, then as some of us left Manhattan, we made our meetings virtual, but we get together whenever we can. We have been meeting since the mid 1980s. They are my best friends: Veronica Vera, Veronica Hart, Candida Royalle and Gloria Leonard. We were all porn stars and we formed the first porn star support group where we would go around in a circle and share our thoughts, feelings, dreams, dramas and process. Our chemistry among the five of us has been phenomenal. One day it would make a great Hollywood feature film like the Bette Midler film Beaches (1988) or something like that. We still stay in contact by e-mail at least once a week. We are very close. We’d like to have a reunion sometime soon. We’ve been “meeting” now for twenty-six years or so.

  As mentioned in chapters 7 and 8, Annie Sprinkle and the original Club 90 members joined in June 2012 in New York City for the nuptials of their colleague Veronica Vera. Since the reunion, Sprinkle announced on her Facebook profile there are currently two documentaries in the works about Club 90.

  A lot of the women who were in porn in New York at that time got out of the business, but all of us from Club 90 are still working in an area of sexuality, fully on our own terms except that Gloria is retired. Most of us were innovators of new ideas, products, services, and genres. I think that some people are cut out to be in the sex industry and some aren’t. I was middle class and had a lot of options. I chose sex work over other kinds of work. There are very poor women who don’t have the choices I had and are not doing sex work because they want to. That’s very different. Sex worker activists say “Outlaw Poverty, not Prostitution.” As far as my personal experiences working in porn go, I had a good time and am very proud of my past.

  I think that how we are raised has a lot to do with how we experience sex work. For me, it really did build my self-esteem. I’m a creative kind of person and being a sex worker is a very creative job when done with creativity. In general, my parents supported me. After about ten years or so in sex industry, they realized it wasn’t just a passing phase. They were supportive of the things I wanted to do. They didn’t necessarily like it; they were worried about me, but they did support me in doing what I wanted to do. I wasn’t forced into anything or on drugs or alcohol. That is in the imagination of anti-porn feminists. I have noticed that if you have a drug and or alcohol problem that can make it a lot harder. I tried all the drugs, but never had a drug problem.

  A lot of people have some connection with the porn or sex industry in their pasts. It’s funny because we’re in San Francisco I can’t tell you how many old women come up to me and say, “I used to be a dancer at…” I say, “Really?” You’d never know they were a dancer by looking at them, but a lot of people probably don’t think I look like I could have been a dancer or porn star, for that matter. One time a girlfriend and I went to visit her son. Her son happened to have a girlfriend who looked just like a porn star. She had this Debbie Does Dallas (1978) kind of porn star look with big boobies, and a little, teeny body and blonde hair. I just got the funniest feeling walking around with her that people would be thinking she’s the porn star, but in reality, I was the porn star.

  I think that a lot of people are jealous when other people are having more sexy fun than they are. So they like to judge porn stars as bad people, but they are actually envious. I know, because sometimes I’m that way! I admit it. I can catch myself being judgmental too, occasionally. Then I acknowledge that I did the same stupid shit, the same stuff, and I had a good time doing it. I don’t think people would cop to that necessarily, but I think it’s there. It takes balls so to speak, to do something that certain people look down on; I think it’s like any job. I could never know what it’s like to be in the army. I don’t really have that experience. I could look down on people in the army if I let myself because I wonder how they can do that. How can they sign up to participate in war? I know some people do it because they are poor and they need education, but it’s still kind of a mystery to me. I suppose I’m glad there are some people who like to go to war. Maybe that’s a good thing. I suppose that sometimes war is necessary, but I’d rather be a lover than a fighter. I’m sure that I’m a total mystery to some people. They can’t imagine doing the things that I’ve done.

  Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle

  Admirably, Sprinkle has never allowed her gender to interfere or dissuade her from aspiring to her many endeavors as a woman, a prostitute, a porn star, burlesque performer, feminist, activist or Sex-ecologist. Cultivated as a pure child of the sixties, Annie readily embraced the revolution against conformity and espoused many of the issues and concerns relating to the Women’s Movement. As an original however, Sprinkle effectively fine-tuned components of the feminist agenda to fit her own needs and purposes that are perpetually burgeoning.

  I would love to see women have equal rights and equal opportunities. I’d like to see women in equally represented positions of power. I spoke at a feminist class at the university a couple of days ago and the teacher was talking about how they stopped using the term “feminism” and started using some other term. I believe it was, “Women’s Issues” or something. I love the word ‘feminism’. Many universities are bringing the word back because it’s a very important part of our culture and history. We need to acknowledge the importance of it. I wasn’t a feminist until I went to college and learned the true meaning of the word. My parents were both feminists. Mom once protested the Rolling Stones Black and Blue (1976) album cover. I figured I probably wasn’t a feminist because I didn’t like censorship.

  Some folks truly can’t believe that I actually had a good time and liked and chose my work. As I mentioned, I was never a drug addict or an alcoholic. I was more on the co-dependent side. I experimented with drugs and I really got a lot out of those transcendental experiences. As a teenager in high school during the late sixties, we were doing LSD and I had some bad trips. I was not prepared, but I have no regrets. I think it was a good experience. If you learn, you win. It’s important to make mistakes, especially with sex. How else will you learn?

  When I look back to my best work in sex films, Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle (1981) is kind of a classic. It just got re-mastered and came out with a beautiful three DVD set with booklet that is super great. It’s a nice collector item from the golden age of porn.

  1981 was a seminal year for Annie Sprinkle with the release of Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle, the second highest-ranking adult film of 1982 behind Insatiable. The New York production, a joint directorial venture between Joe Sarno and Annie who was paid an impressive ten thousand dollars, was filmed during the first week of December in 1980. Guided by Sprinkle’s creative and personal touch, the feature is an intimate portrait of the porn star’s private sexual life with friends, lovers, and strangers.

  Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle introduces Annie in the opening segment seated at a piano. Sexily outfitted to feature her abundant bosom, Anni
e is a radiant picture of health and well-being. She begins to share photos of herself: in the first picture, she is a child surrounded by a visibly happy family unit; the second image shows a typical teenage girl alone; and in the third, Annie is flanked by a group of girlfriends. Sprinkle begins to detail an overview of her young life and ascension into the taboo world of erotic work and describes some of her hottest desires as she segues into the subject of her fantasies.

  Annie’s first fantasy: making it with two guys is actualized as two buff male attendants (Roger Ram and early 1980s Video-X-Pix regular Bobby Soccie) make an appearance. The three proceed to sample fruit from one another’s assets prior to a simultaneous double blowjob endeavor uncommonly carried out in Triple X films at that time. Next, Annie brings breast fetishist Sassy into her boudoir for some funky girl time. They are joined by a preppy looking (and slim) Ron Jeremy. Sassy hangs back a little after Jeremy arrives. According to the liner notes for the 2009 Special DVD edition of the film, Sassy retreated because of Jeremy’s apparent body odor. Undeterred by a little human scent, Annie digs into her scene with Jeremy causing “The Hedgehog” to expel his load with great vocal effects. Following, is probably the most provocative scene in the film as Annie cozies up to performer Marc Valentine and explores his buttocks. She fingers him, and they provide mutual analingus (a rare act in heterosexual films during the era) prompting an excitable outcome that (according to Annie) left Sprinkle with a sore anus by the termination of their coupling.

  In the surrounding footage, Annie claims her most memorable and enjoyable sexual encounter is with first time adult actor and Annie’s former real life lover Mal O’Ree. They are featured in a controversial golden shower scene now considered legendary. (The performance was absent from most of the original copies because of potential peril with law authorities, but has since been reinstated for the 2009 re-release.) Until the initial release of this title, golden shower scenes were infrequent and existed mostly on eight-millimeter loops.

  The balance of the sexual rendezvous within Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle continues in the tradition of shock value, but delectable Annie manages to keep things in a comfortable zone for the viewer mostly because of her natural attraction to sex and its spectacular possibilities. Not to be missed is her genuine solo multiple orgasm number coupled with an ejaculation, brought about with the aid of an extraordinary vibrator — the female act was especially scarce at this particular period in the history of adult productions, making it even more enthralling. The scene is anchored by a naughty live sex-capade show in which a few male attendees (Jack Teague, Mike Filene, and Michael Gaunt) join Sprinkle for a public display of affection at a New York theatre while one of her previous films (Sarno’s Slippery When Wet, Video-X-Pix) plays on the big screen. Afterwards, an all female orgy is on the menu concluding with a beautiful daisy chain configuration enacted by all of the women in the vista including Lisa Be, Heather Gordon (aka Heather Young/Colleen Anderson), Barbara Miller, and Lee Starr. Following up, Annie dons her photographer’s cap and instructs a young model (Bunny Hatton) on the finer points of exuding sensuality. With the help of a male friend (Buddy Hatton, Bunny’s husband), the three make love.

  The tone of the decisive finish is fittingly established by Sprinkle once again as she prepares the audience for what is about to unfold. While revealing that one of her favorite sexual experiences is intimacy with someone whom she greatly cares for, Ron Hudd is brought in for this special scene. Evocatively presented with tender kisses, things are sweetened by slow hand foreplay, promising a fulfilling and exciting end. Apparently, Annie felt that her encounter with Hudd didn’t quite translate the message of love she had hoped for, but to the naked eye, the lack of emotion is merely a blip on the radar screen.

  The 2009 Video-X-Pix uncut collector’s edition is an essential acquisition for fans of the genre featuring three disks including a full commentary with Sprinkle, a Q & A with Sprinkle, two bonus scenes, and a twenty-four page pictorial booklet with liner notes by adult film historian Benson Hurst. To sum it up, Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle is a consummate, no-holds-barred submission supple and devoid of artificiality. Obviously, Sprinkle was turned on by the acts of promiscuity and sexual play. Authenticity is Annie’s forte.

  The “Great Dying”

  Thank god I was never brutally attacked or a victim of a brutal rape or of a real crime. That would be another story — if I was at the wrong place at the wrong time or the right time, whatever. I’ve been very, very lucky. I just heard about a friend who was attacked about ten years ago, some guy tried to kill her. She was a dancer and he followed her home and forced his way into her house, and he tried to kill her. It turned out that he had killed two other women. She hit him with a barbell on the head and fought him off. She was too hard to kill. You know, once something like that happens you might be sorry you did something, but I’ve been so, so lucky.

  My friend [the late-porn star] Marc Stevens used to live down the hall from me. He was doing angel dust and crack, and I saw him become totally paranoid, and crazy and desperate. He became a drug dealer and he got so fucked up. Then he got AIDS and eventually died a miserable, lonely death with all his dealers around with guns and his windows blackened. This was right down the hall from me. It was very, very sad, but also very scary for me too.

  Marc Stevens began his porn career in the early 1970s. Regarded by his fellow actors and industry friends as Marc “10 ½” Stevens due to his exceptional physical endowment, after struggling to overcome an addiction to drugs, Stevens passed away in 1989 from AIDS.

  One night somebody climbed around on the balcony and I woke up, and some guy had his hands on my ankles; he was feeling my ankles up. That was probably the scariest thing that has happened in my life. I said, “Excuse me. Could you please leave?” He left. It turned out that he was a friend of Marc’s and he was into drugs. He just liked to crawl around on the balconies when he was high. Apparently, a week or two later he drove right into a brick wall and was seriously injured.

  Marc was never public about having AIDS. He went the way of John Holmes really, with drugs. This was during the mid-1980s.

  Sprinkle earned a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in 1986 and often created erotic imagery. Annie’s close friend Veronica Vera, one time Wall Street trader and former porn star known primarily for her work in Gerard Damiano’s 1982 film Consenting Adults (a story Sprinkle and Vera conceptualized) concentrates her efforts on writing about sexuality issues. More recently, as “Miss Vera,” Veronica operates a cross dressing finishing School for “boys who want to become girls.” A few years prior to his death from AIDS in 1988 (just one year before Marc Stevens), Annie and Veronica spent an afternoon together with their industry friend John Holmes while on assignment.

  A few of my photos are in Cass’s [Paley] film WADD [The Life & Times of John C. Holmes, 1998]. They are photos that I took of John Holmes, just a few casual shots. My dear friend Veronica Vera, a writer, was interviewing him and I went along and just took some photos of him standing at a freeway entrance. He was holding a briefcase. The reason I took a picture of him carrying a briefcase is because he was really into being a businessman at that time. He had started his own business [Penguin Productions], so the story was about “John Holmes: Businessman”. We both went out to lunch with John. He was sweet as pie. He was a darling. I was quite charmed.

  You know the 1980s was a different time for AIDS. I would have sex with people who had AIDS or who were HIV positive. I would already be having sex with them, and when AIDS hit we didn’t really know how it was transmitted. I just assumed I had it because I was already having sex with someone who did. There were no tests at first and people didn’t get tested really, so it was quite a different time than it is now. Now, it’s unforgiveable. I always say my hemorrhoids saved my life because I didn’t have a lot of anal sex. If I’d been having a lot of anal sex, I’d be dead. One of the best presents I ever got from [my partner] Beth was when she got me onto her
health insurance plan. Then, I got a hemorrhoid operation. That’s love…getting your lover a new anus!

  Unprotected anal sex is considered the riskiest form of sexual interaction between two or more partners, as the rectum and sphincter are highly susceptible regions.

  After AIDS hit, I did a lot of spiritual stuff, and learning and exploring the healing arts. Learning about orgasmic breathing was pivotal for me. Learning the “fire breath orgasm” from Harley Swiftdeer changed the way I experienced sex forever.

  Teacher, healer, and martial artist Harry Swiftdeer of the Deer Tribe modified the art of the “Fire Breath Orgasm.” The term has since been redefined as the “energy” orgasm that is a profound mind, body, and soul experience which helps to eradicate pent up anxiety, emotions, and stress that can compromise an individual’s ability to let go in order to attain a total and fulfilling orgasmic experience. It is believed the Fire Breath Orgasm generates enough energy to sustain a person for extended periods. The technique is an interesting practice as it illustrates a defined synergy between sex, humanity, and the cosmos.