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

by Nelson, Jill C.

  I said, “Guess what, PT? I give a shit about them. I wouldn’t have this piece of footage if it wasn’t for them and they matter to me and I’m not going to let this go.” What happened was cute. The cameraman, John Keeler, called me up knowing I’d been sober for years and said to me, “I really need a meeting”.

  I said, “Let me help to get you to one. Let me meet you here.” He met me outside of a 12-step meeting and said, “With all of this drama going on I don’t want anything to go wrong, so why don’t you give me the master and we’ll make a master copy of it? I can give you back the master and we’ll both have a master and everything will be fine.” He stole the master tape from me. The footage had been shot on my film that I had borrowed the money to buy, and we’re standing here in the middle of this giant dispute and these people are saying, “If you don’t do this, blah, blah, blah…” And John Keeler ran off into the night with the master.

  Amber explained she had willingly given up the master to John Keeler in good faith, expecting it to be returned to her within twenty-four hours. She suddenly found herself in front of a firing range.

  My brother, God rest his soul, called me up in the middle of this and said, “No, sis, I’m not going to work on this production because when this is over these people are going to hand you your ass. You know it’s going to happen, so prepare yourself for it.” That was before everything started to unravel. I always ran to my big brother who has been a mentor in my life just because he was my big brother, not because of a professional relationship. I said to him, “What’ll I do?”

  He said, “Just do yourself one favor. You keep those releases and that paperwork separate from the film.” I handed John Keeler the tape and even though I had the releases I said, “Listen, you can have the film of the people who want to go, but not the people who don’t want to go. You can’t have that.” They said they were going to destroy my reputation and they went to the press, and there was this whole coalition of people who were going to go on and call me all these names. It was a bunch of bullshit because they had no idea of the agreement that was formed that day, nor did they know whether Ron Sullivan had agreed to it. The idea behind it was that Ron had no money and was desperate for money, and if the production didn’t happen, he was no worse for that. If it did happen, then he would have benefitted in any way that he could have and he would have been grateful for it. Everybody called me and said, “You need to step forward and tell them the truth.”

  I said, “I am not going to piss on a dying man’s grave no matter what he does to me. I’m not going to do that because I’m not that kind of a person.” No matter what kind of a person is coming at me, I can’t do that and I held onto those releases. I sat down in my living room with a few volunteers. We bought envelopes and we wrote a letter that said: “The original production that was going to be a non-profit production as I promised you when you came to work on it in whatever capacity has now been stolen from me and is going to be put out as a ‘for profit’ production. I’m now returning your release to you. You can decide whether you want to be a part of the new production based on this new information. Whatever you decide I support you and I appreciate your effort on my behalf. Thank you very much.” We hand wrote each and every envelope and we made sure that every person was re-granted back their release and given the opportunity to return that release immediately over to Ron Sullivan.

  We never went to the press and said anything. The other side did go to the press and burned me at the stake and said Bill Margold had robbed the coffers. It was bitter, incomprehensible lying. It was unbelievable. They thought they could get me to give them the releases because many of the scenes had people who had volunteered to be a part of them and no longer wanted to be a part of them because of the way they were going about things. It was done in a way that was strong-arming and a lot of people said, “I don’t want to be a part of that. That’s hate-mongering.” It was horrifying behavior and that’s not what they had come there to do. We all kind of just kissed it goodbye. The truth of the matter is that Ron’s wife holds the original footage to the original movie that was made out of complete love with the PAW benefit that was called We are the World XXX. The whole idea was that the adult business got to come together just like the original We are the World for the bigger picture. At any time, the movie could be resurrected, and it could be put out as it was originally intended.

  I folded my hands after I made a decision that I felt had the most integrity which was to give everybody individually their personal opportunity to say “Yes” or “No”. A lot of people got together and they made a new production. It is my understanding that they went out with their hair on fire and tried to create. It didn’t go off so well. I’m not really sure, but whether they like this or not, the truth of the matter is if they would have left us alone the production would have been an absolute success as it had been intended. Any profit that would have legally come at the end of it through the 501(c) (3) that was accounted for and metered out would have gone exactly where it was intended which was to the Henri Pachard fund, and then moved forward to Dolores Pachard. The sad thing is it never benefitted anybody, including Ron Sullivan. Horrible things were said that were untrue about Bill and me, that we were stealing money. There was no money! We had potluck on the set where people brought their own food and ate out of their own bowls.

  A huge deal was made about me putting myself on the box cover. It was suggested that it was some evil maniacal move on my part to keep other people from being on the box. That was the biggest joke of all. After being up all night long on the set shooting, I went in to reshoot a scene with Ron Jeremy and one of the girls because he had had some performance issues during the scene. He wanted to be his best and I respected that so I arranged to bring these girls together because we’d worked into the night in the freezing cold. By the time we got the scene shot Ronnie was beat and tired. He made this great move to say, “I’m going to fly the girls down, and I’m going to show up on the set, and I’m going to perform at my best.” We opened the set and arranged for him to come in. I kept talking about what I wanted the box cover to look like, and the photographer was there and I said, “Humor me for a minute. Let’s just get this shot so that we have a back up.” It was never intended to be anything more than a backup. On the box cover day when we were supposed to do the shoot, nobody else showed up. I was standing there with dirty feet and a pair of flip-flops, and I grabbed this ball and they shot a picture of me. It wound up being used as the box cover because there was such an argument about who was going to get to shoot the box that nobody could ever see the forest for the trees. There were so many people fighting.

  Once again, I looked at Bill and I had tears in my eyes. I said, “Bill, don’t they understand what we’re trying to do?” The bottom line was it wasn’t just about Henri Pachard and it was about Henri Pachard, but it was about every other person including John Holmes when he called me up twenty odd years ago when I was in Canada and said, “I’m sick. I’m broke and I need help.” He was calling everybody he had ever known and had worked with in the industry and asking for handouts because that’s what his life and career had been relegated to, and he had nothing left in the end. My vision along with Bill’s, was that together, we were trying to create something. We didn’t know what it was going to look like down the road. We were concerned about getting funding for people who were sick such as Ron, who needed it at that moment.

  “No Legacy is so rich as Honesty.”

  — WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  Maybe that is my legacy that I was able to come in and accomplish something on behalf of the industry and for the industry that couldn’t have been done if I hadn’t been there. Maybe if I hadn’t done the AIDS Benefit years before, the children’s organization would never have accepted money from the Adult industry. If they would have allowed me to finish We are the World, it wouldn’t have been only that one time it could have been another time. Who knows how many people we could have gone on to help and
maybe even create a Foundation? We could have set aside a week a year and have people donate whatever they do. There would have already been a model in place. I was trying to create a model to be able to do it again and again.

  Eric Edwards was sick with cancer at the same time as Henri Pachard and I was trying to say to everybody, “Ron is sick and this is going on and so is Eric Edwards and so are other people.” We can only do so much and Mitch [who had helped Eric Edwards find a place to live] can only do so much, and everybody can only individually no matter how great they are, do so much.

  I felt like there were a lot of things I could have done differently. There are moments that I do regret as far as the production itself. The group who attacked the project and me failed to realize was while I was on that set helping Ron, my own brother was dying and about to pass away within months of Ron. Buck had been fighting his own alcoholism and addiction for years, and instead of me focusing on my own family, here I was trying to help Ron. What was in play in those moments was that I was going to continue to stand for what this industry has always stood for and that is the freedom to choose. I wasn’t going to take anybody’s choice away.

  I had a talk with my brother and I realized at that moment after they went to the press, if I had known it going in I wouldn’t have had anything to do with this situation. I had worked my ass to the bloody bone to help these people. Let me tell you this: I’m not rich. I’m not a rich woman and so it’s not as if I’m some rich do-gooder working on some charity. I was taking time away from my life and my family and my own dying brother. You know, there are people always standing on the outside of the industry just waiting for us to do something unlawful. I go back once again to the Traci Lords issue as a case in point. If you know that the propensity exists for them to turn on you like that, you’re standing on your own.

  According to articles that appeared in the adult press in 2008, Lynn was indeed lambasted by the media and by others, including Ron Sullivan’s spouse who contested Amber’s motives were not genuine.

  They got caught up in the whole force of destroying Bill and me and then they just ran off and created some kind of shoddy production. The original was a beautiful production. I created this satire similar to Saturday Night Live called We are the World XXX. Larry Flynt played God and he was very good. I went into Larry Flynt’s office and shot him. He was going to be at the end of the movie and it was just brilliant. It was really a great piece from an artistic standpoint.

  It would be very difficult to get Bill Margold to be a part of something like that again because he watched me cry. I even said to him the other day, “Bill, maybe someone could approach them and see if they do want to finish the film? If they do our door is open.”

  He said, “I can’t believe you would even consider it after all you’ve been through.” Bill says it clearly, “It’s the playground of the damned.” These people are not necessarily going to be your upright type of individual. They ended up taking one of PT’s scenes and they put together something. I don’t know if they made money or not, I hope they did, but that was the end of it. When that happened, I thought I just had to admit my failure. It was like failing falling forward. It’s okay to fail when you skin your knees. You’re bound to have failure, but if you go all out and you fail while you’re doing your damndest and your best with your integrity and heart intact and stand up for yourself, then it’s okay.

  It was a brilliant, overwhelmingly positive experience because I got to see who my friends were and who my friends weren’t and that’s a gift. We often go through life thinking people are not our friends. When we get into a real place where the shit hits the fan and we’re vulnerable, somebody will come and we’ll realize he or she were in our corner all along. The opposite is true, people that I thought were my friends wound up not being. I realized in the end that I wasn’t in charge or control ultimately and I cannot force my will no matter what I am trying to do and make them see what I want them to see.

  At the time of this book’s publication, We Are the World XXX remains unreleased.

  Big Brothers

  There are good and bad parts of my career. Things I would have done differently like most people with anything you do. Relationships I had ended in ways where I could have done better. There are always things I could have done better and I could have done worse. I have made a lot of friends along the way, and there are people I look back on today that I absolutely love and I pick up the phone and I talk with them. I always got along really well with Annette Haven. I loved her from the minute I met her. She was kind of like a mom. The other person I got along with was Seka. People said I was like the 1980s version of Seka, the blonde bombshell. I give it to Seka. I love Dottie to this day. She’s somebody whom I revere and look up to and respect. We will always be friends. I always got along with Marilyn Chambers, too. I never had a problem with Marilyn. I was very sad to hear she died. I always got along with all of them. Every time someone in our industry passes away, Bill takes it very hard. It also causes him to face his own mortality. You can only get so old in this industry and then there’s nothing left for you anymore. There’s no way to make money anymore. For me, Bill’s been there since the day I set foot in the industry and is like a big brother. He’s still there for me, regardless. He has been steadfast.

  It’s funny, because I really feel like my brother Buck communicates with me and it just felt like he wanted me to participate in this book. My brother was very upset over the whole We Are the World fiasco and when all of that was coming apart, Jamie had gotten in touch with me. There is always something good to come out of anything. Jamie got back in touch with me, and during those conversations with one another, we made all of these amends to one another. We’d had this relationship that had kind of ended prematurely and traumatically and we had some hard feelings, and then through these conversations that came about because of the film we had changed all of that. We were able to really form a loving bond with each other.

  Then my brother passed away and that was the most devastating thing that’s ever happened in my life. My brother died literally, in my arms in the hospital. Again, my brother and I were estranged at that time because he had fallen off the wagon. He had gone back to using and I was desperately trying to control that and stop him. My motive behind that was I wanted him to be there to see his grandchildren grow up, and have his grandchildren have him be a part of their lives and upbringing. I wanted to force him to be something he wasn’t so that he would continue to be there for them. I couldn’t change him into somebody else and when I got to the hospital, certain people didn’t want to let me in because they thought I was going to go in there and control everything.

  The thing I had to do right there in that hospital room was get on my knees and make amends to my brother. Mostly, it was about accepting him for everything he was and everything he wasn’t. He was my hero and the day I walked out of that hospital room, I knew what my job was from that day forward to focus on what was left and that was our family. That was it.

  When my brother passed away, I wouldn’t have buried him if it weren’t for Bill Margold — again. He came to my rescue and got a location. My brother passed away with nothing. He was in the middle of building a studio and they ripped it out from under him and gave us nothing. We really didn’t even have the money to buy a plot to bury him. We had to pull it all together and we were able to get my brother taken care of. His ashes are still with his grandchildren and his family because that’s where we believe he wants to be for now. Bill hand designed and printed the programs for my brother’s funeral. He didn’t want to, but I said, “Bill if you don’t help me do this, it won’t get done.”

  He said, “Okay.”

  We printed this lovely program for Charles Steven Allen, aka Buck Adams: “A brother, a father, grandfather, friend, and legend.” Everybody came and all my brother’s best friends: T. T. Boy, and Brad Armstrong, and John Doyle, and Bill Margold, and all the people that loved my brother. They all showed up
and we gave him something that we knew would make him proud.

  “Aunt Lynny”

  There was a very significant time in my life when I wanted to leave the industry behind and that’s when my great-nephew was born, Noah. He got to an age where he could understand and he’s still very young, but he could understand or compute that knowledge. He did know that his grandpa Buck was a director and he knew his Aunt Lynny was very famous. When he was a toddler, we were in a Denny’s and he was very protective of me. He backed up against me and I felt him put his arms around me. I looked and I didn’t realize what he was doing, but there were a couple of guys across the table at the diner were looking at me because they recognized me. He saw the look on their faces, that kind of leering, excited look. He held his arms around me as if to say, “That’s my Aunt Lynny!” I realized that there was going to come a day when that would maybe come to pass. When he got to be older, I wasn’t working in the industry anymore and I decided that I wanted to close that book.

  When Buck’s daughter Christa was young, I was at the height of my career and she was a baby so there was no way to hide it. You couldn’t have told Christa anything that would change her opinion of her dad or her Aunt Lynny. She just was one of those kids. She has a very open personality anyway. Her husband is in punk rock band so they’re kind of like, “Wow, cool!” She was kind of raised with it. It was explained to her and she kind of accepted it and it was okay, but I could see where a child may not accept it. The bottom line is it’s about acceptance. His grandpa has now passed away, but one of the things I always wanted Buck’s grandchild to have is a very healthy idea of women and of his aunt. I didn’t want that to be fractured at a young age because he got information that he wasn’t yet old enough to be able to hash out. I was worried about that. He’s only eight now and he’s too young to be subjected to this kind of information.