Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film

by Jimmy McDonough

  George Costello—whom RM had excommunicated back in the Vixen days—bravely came to visit and make his peace with Meyer. Once RM figured out who his old friend was, he enlisted Costello’s help for a shoot he was doing out at the Salton Sea. “When we got back, Jim Ryan told me he didn’t put film in the camera. None of the pictures that we spent all day taking came out.” In September 1999, Meyer attended a fourteen-day retrospective of his work at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. Sporting blood on his neck from an unattended shaving cut, a gaunt, gray, nearly spectral RM made one of his last public appearances.

  The Betty Boop voice. That’s the first thing people mention when Janice Cowart’s name comes up. High, grating, impossible to ignore. “She has a squeaky voice that Russ hated,” said Kitten. “He used to tell her, ‘Ugggh, your voice!’ He thought that she was a good worker. He never hit on her, because she wasn’t the way he liked women. And I guess it bothered her. He thought she had a fat ass and no tits.” Natividad giggled. Cowart’s reputation definitely precedes her. Richard Brummer smiled somewhat wryly when I mentioned her name. “Janice can be very sweet. Don’t cross her.”

  An army brat born January 9, 1949, Janice had been recommended by Meyer’s accountant, Phil Cooperman, and the two met years before Cowart came to work for RM in 1988. “One of the reasons she got into this better and deeper and thicker than anybody is the new computer age,” said longtime RM secretary Paula Parker. “She has a brother who is a computer programmer.” Whereas everything had previously been done by hand, the Internet age left Meyer out in the cold—and completely dependent on his new hire. Web sites? E-mail? Janice could take care of all that. Everybody liked Cowart in the beginning, even Kitten Natividad. “When she first started, she was nice to everyone—‘Oh, is this Kitten? Hold on, I’ll get him for you. It’s Kitten, Russ!’ Then later on it was, ‘Well, I don’t know—he’s really busy right now.’ You could see her changing. She took over.”

  While Cowart would be all sweetness and light with Meyer himself, having to work with her was a trial, according to Paula Parker. “She logged everything. She spent more time logging and keeping info than she did working on the company. It was just totally bizarre to me. Everything I did wrong was noted down.” For years Parker had gotten along fine with Meyer. After Janice arrived, she could do nothing right. If Paula forgot to put a stamp on a letter or happened to leave the air conditioner on when she left, Cowart went straight to Russ. “She’d have to tattle on everything I did.” And what drove Cowart? “She used to always say,” according to Parker, “ ‘I want to own my own business, I need my own business.’ ”

  Kitten, who briefly rekindled her relationship with RM during one of Melissa’s absences, came to work for Russ, driving him places, running errands. It was a bad time in her life—she was broke, facing breast cancer, and had a serious drinking problem (she’s sober now). Giving her a gig was Meyer’s way of throwing her a few bucks. Cowart maintained that she liked Natividad at first, but things turned sour. Janice felt that her drinking was endangering Russ, and she alleged that “[Natividad] was caught taking swigs from RM’s liquor bottles on the job and became very difficult to deal with . . . whenever possible, she was making Russ take her out to expensive restaurants and bringing along her friends, often four or more at a time, and I would see the credit card receipts on Monday. In addition, she took Russ to liquor stores and charged a lot of booze to his credit card, which she would then take home . . . Later she tried to sue Russ without success, and basically we had a very unpleasant relationship at the end. I was very disappointed because she was the one person I felt would be with Russ to the end, to visit him and cheer him up, but it didn’t turn out that way.”*5

  Other observers felt that Cowart saw Natividad’s relationship with RM as a threat. “She was mean to Kitten,” said Haji. “And she knew she had cancer, she was sick, and this chick had no compassion at all. Russ was always there for Kitten—sometimes he complained about it a little bit, but he was always there. And Janice took that away from her.” Added Paula Parker, “She needed insurance, and Janice made sure that she didn’t get it. This is how cruel the woman is.”

  Cowart’s job was to run a business, and she was concentrating on the bottom line. “Kitten wanted Russ to pay for her health insurance, and when she came up with a policy with a very high premium I asked her to do some research on alternative plans so that we could make a decision on what was the best one,” said Janice. “Kitten became irate at this request, and did not want to do any further research. She complained to Russ, who agreed with me, and time passed and nothing got done so the matter was dropped.

  “You might note that over the years Kitten had been very successful and made a lot of money but had no savings and had not been responsible enough to get health insurance for herself, so now she looked to Russ to help her.”

  Love him or hate him, Meyer was an honest guy. “I often would say that Russ lives his life in one compartment,” said Roger Ebert. “Many people have different compartments—a family compartment, a work compartment, a sex compartment.” Ebert was impressed with Meyer’s insistence on mixing everybody together, offering apologies to no one. “Russ wouldn’t take the sarge out one night and Kitten out the next night. All the girls got to meet all the army buddies. Russ taught me not to try to hide so much. To just affirm whatever it is you are or whatever it is you want.” Paula Parker agreed, noting that things became markedly different with Janice Cowart on the scene. Doors were suddenly shut, conversations whispered. “Russ was out front, told you what he thought in front of your face—but he put somebody in position who is the total opposite. Secretive, hiding behind this and that.”

  Friends began to feel cut off. “I saw her start to manipulate and push everybody out,” said Parker. “She was in his ear all the time.” Meyer’s French distributor and friend Jean-Pierre Jackson concurred. “I had excellent relations with Russ for more than fifteen years. From the point Janice went in, things began to crumble. The letters from Russ were less and the notes from Janice more . . . It was so progressive I didn’t realize what was happening.” Jackson wound up in French court defending his right to distribute RM’s films, maintaining that Cowart lost the battle not once, but twice. “She’s not professional, she understands very little. I don’t think she’s very bright. Russ means business, Janice means ego.”

  Lee Blackman, a lawyer who’d engineered some lucrative deals for Meyer, was also out. Jim Ryan thought Blackman did a good job and was sad to see him go, but the bottom line, said Ryan, was that “he and Janice had a problem.” Longtime friends were incredulous that a mere assistant seemed to be pulling the strings in the Meyer empire. “Nobody can get access to him,” RM’s old exploitation crony Dave Friedman complained in 2003. “I can’t figure out at what point she got control. I don’t know where she came from.”

  Cowart’s relationship with Meyer himself was a curious one. “Russ referred to her as ‘the battle-axe,’” said Rob Schaffner, who remembered sitting in the lower level of Meyer’s house working on photographs for RM’s book as Janice loomed in the shadows. “She’d be sitting up there where the computer is, fucking eavesdropping on anything we were talking about. I had many lectures of, ‘Well, Rob, you really shouldn’t talk about titties.’ I go, ‘We’re down there looking at naked chicks’ tits! What do you mean we shouldn’t be talking about fuckin’ breasts!?’ And he’s goin’, ‘That fuckin’ battle-axe.’ ” According to Shaffner, Meyer had a rather unique secret location for clandestine talks in the bottom of the house. “Mr. Teas was cremated and on his couch. Russ had him in an ammo box, and we’d always have to, quote-unquote, ‘go near Teas.’ To actually talk about anything, to be just enough to be out of earshot. And that drove her crazy. She’d come down the stairs and start spying.”

  Friends felt that Meyer grew intimidated by Cowart over time. Dave Friedman had dinner one night with RM at Musso & Franks. “He insisted I come up to the house next day, and I get there and h
e’s showin’ me the house, of course I’ve seen it a thousand times—I said, ‘Who’s the other broad?’ Russ got all uptight. He said, ‘Shhhhh.’ He was totally coherent then, but suddenly there was a fear.” Kitten Natividad recalled discussing her booze problem with Meyer. “He knew I was drinking a lot. I go, ‘I need it.’ He goes, ‘Don’t let Janice see you drink.’ I went, ‘Whoa! Even he’s afraid of her now!’ ” Some felt that Cowart was literally transforming. “Haji told me, ‘Janice thinks she’s Russ Meyer,’ ” said Kitten. “ ‘She talks like him sometimes, acts like him . . . uses some of his words.’ ”

  In the opinion of some, Cowart’s power increased as Meyer became more and more enfeebled. Erica Gavin recalled an agitated Meyer complaining about Cowart’s domination at a dinner with RM and Jim Ryan at the French restaurant Pinot, one of Meyer’s favorite haunts. “He would go to Jim, ‘Y’know, if you don’t do something, she’s gonna take over my entire business. She’s trying to take my business.’ It was like a broken record—he kept going back to that the whole night. It just haunts me, that last dinner.” Paula Parker and her boyfriend recalled being at a party with a confused RM, who asked them, “Do I own my own company?”

  Meyer and Kitten came over to Raven’s for dinner one night. The pair arrived to find no hard liquor, so they trotted off to Ralph’s supermarket, returning with armloads of alcohol. Raven’s live-in boyfriend, Michael, was amazed. “They had vodka, they had whiskey, they had beer, wine, liqueur, Courvoisier, tequila . . .” As the booze flowed, tempers flared. Kitten started ribbing RM, telling him he should be more generous with his fortune. Meyer wasn’t amused. “He’d listen and his eyes would slit,” said Raven. “Russ turned into Gollum.” They stumbled out after a big fight. “Janice calls me a couple days later screaming at me—‘Why is there a ninety-seven-dollar alcohol bill?’ ” said Raven. “Janice calling about his money? About how Russ spends his money?”

  After decades of being institutionalized, RM’s half-sister Lucinda finally gave up the ghost on February 27, 1999. There would be no more panicked calls to Meyer’s office, no more whisperings of dark plots. But Lucinda’s funeral was bedlam. When Raven De La Croix and Michael Ziton arrived at the funeral home, Janice and RM employee Julio Dottavio were there alone. Then Kitten, Haji, and Tura meandered in. And they all waited for Russ and Melissa Mounds, who was back in the picture once more. “About a half an hour later we hear all these voices in the background,” said Michael Ziton. “You hear Russ Meyer, ‘Where is this place, fer God’s sake? Where the hell are we goin’ here?’ He walks in with his girlfriend, boobs up to here—it was like a show, man. We all sit down, he goes up to the front, he goes, ‘Aaaah, that’s my sister there. What a gal, what a girl.’ ”

  Meyer and Mounds were visibly drunk. According to Ziton, RM rose to say a few words, pacing back and forth in front of the coffin: “Dad was a police officer, a real bastard. My sister and I were really close, and our favorite thing to do was pick cantaloupes. And eat cantalopes together.” Things got weirder. “His girlfriend goes, ‘How about some pictures, honey?’ ” recalled Ziton. “He goes, ‘Fabulous idea.’ ” Somebody located Meyer’s camera. “He’s standing in front of the coffin, he’s trying to hug the dead body—‘Okay, you taking a picture?’—he’s posing her,” said Raven. “I wanted to cry.”

  Then Melissa stood up and announced, “We’re gonna miss dinner! And we have to get this body outta here, ’cause this place closes at nine-thirty!” Tura instructed her to say a prayer. “Our Father . . . ,” Melissa began. “Our Father . . .” Silence. Clearly plastered, Mounds had forgotten the rest. “Don’t you know the goddamn Lord’s Prayer?!” shouted RM.

  The entourage proceeded to a nearby eatery called the Blue Dolphin. Taking RM Films employee Jesse Bryner with her, Mounds got up to leave. To retrieve Lucinda’s corpse. She and Meyer were going to haul the body up to the Stockton cemetery where Lydia was interred. More turmoil ensued when Melissa returned. “We almost dropped her,” she reported. There was a big hullabaloo over ice, which RM wanted in order to prevent Lucinda decaying. In the midst of this, Cowart signed Meyer’s name on the bill. According to several witnesses, Meyer was livid, insisting he was fully capable of writing his own signature, and telling her to never do it again.

  Cowart recalled it a bit differently. “For some time it had been RM’s habit to give me the credit card receipt and ask me to calculate the tip and write it in, then he would sign and give me the receipt for safekeeping . . . I remember Russ being somewhat upset at the size of the bill . . . There were some people at the table that night that had ordered quite a bit to drink and the bill was quite large, so Russ was upset about that, not that I had signed the receipt.”

  Out in the parking lot, Mounds almost shut the car door on Meyer, causing another explosion. Screeching out of the lot, they drove off, Lucinda’s body bouncing around in the back of the GMC, possibly on ice. Jesse Bryner*6 had the unfortunate job of manning the wheel, later testifying in court that Mounds berated her elderly beau the whole way home.

  “She said she hated him. She said, ‘Where are you? You don’t even know where you are.’ She was yelling that she was going to go home when we got back to Russ’s house, that she was leaving, which would’ve left Russ with the body. And he didn’t have a driver’s license, so he would’ve been stranded with the body.”

  Meyer and Mounds continued to stumble through the Hollywood nights. At some point the pair got thrown out of a party at the Playboy mansion due to some drunken antics that left Mounds with a sprained ankle. “If you’re going to do something, do it big,” boasted RM. “They sent us home in a limo.”

  Back in the first week of June 1998, the police had been summoned to RM’s Palm Desert home. Meyer was temporarily MIA. They found Melissa Mounds out by the pool, “a loaded gun by a cool drink” at her side, according to court testimony. Mounds informed the police that Meyer had threatened her with the firearm. Melissa told the court that RM’s guns were everywhere. “One time I went to get my shoe from under the bed, I pulled a gun out. It went off this close to my head.” Meyer’s attorney pointed out that she’d scrawled a little note next to the bullet hole in the wall that suggested otherwise: “Melissa shot this hole through the wall in a fit of rage.”

  At this same time Meyer wound up in the hospital with a badly injured hand. He told doctors he’d fallen, but Janice Cowart later testified there had been an argument over a vehicle. “She [Mounds] was upset that he was not going to buy her the car. He told me several times that she hit his arm with a rock.”

  The relationship with Melissa was falling apart, and for the last time. She didn’t like staying at the Hollywood house. “Living in the office atmosphere all the time, nothing is private. We weren’t getting along.” Mounds had been making sporadic trips to visit family in Ohio and decided to move there. On May 24, 1999, she told Meyer she needed a truck, $1,000 spending money, and $49,500 to buy a mobile home. “And when Janice came we discussed it with her,” Mounds claimed. “There were no problems.” An appointment was made for 11 a.m. on Thursday the twenty-seventh at the office of Meyer’s lawyer.

  Something went awry, though. Meyer, Cowart, and Mounds got into a squabble. “There was ongoing arguing pretty much the whole day,” said RM employee Jesse Bryner. According to Cowart’s testimony, Meyer parked himself on the couch in the upstairs office of his home. “He seemed somewhat intimidated and fearful.” Mounds—who, Cowart maintained, “smelled like alcohol”—would periodically barge in. “She was very agitated, pacing the floor, saying that she had to get out of there, that she wanted to leave, that he was going to have to give her money. She was saying her life was going nowhere.”

  Cowart described Mounds bullying Meyer. “She started to berate him . . . about his medical condition, about his memory, telling him that he was crazy and didn’t know what he was doing, that he was pathetic.*7 I thought she was going to hit me.” According to Cowart, Mounds spent the next day recovering in bed, but
things flared up again the night of the twenty-sixth, the day before the appointment with RM’s lawyer.

  Cowart said she received a number of calls from Mounds. “She was just sort of saying, ‘Russ is going to have to give me $49,500, and he is going to have to give it to me this morning, and that’s the way it is.’ ” Melissa maintained she only called Janice once. “Russ was missing and I was worried . . . he took off down the street.”

  When Meyer returned, he and Mounds argued over his drinking. “I asked him to please lay off the gin. He got a beer and poured gin into the beer . . . he likes to spike it up.” As Mounds explained, “He doesn’t like . . . to have anybody tell him that he can’t drink his alcohol . . . or that he’s lost his memory. He gets very, very angry. And he got angry at me and yelled, ‘Nobody is going to tell me that I’m crazy and that I can’t drink or do whatever I want.’ ”

  Mounds maintained that it was a little before 1 a.m. when things spun totally out of control. “He pushed me against the wall . . . then he put his hand around my neck. He was just raging—‘Nobody is going to tell me I can’t drink!’ After he grabbed my throat, I punched him. . . . I was defending myself. I only hit him once.” Those who know Meyer scoff at the idea of him lunging at a woman. Then again, he’d never before been a heavy drinker, and his mind was on the fritz.

  Mounds was arrested, at which time the police discovered she had an outstanding DUI from December 1997. She would be charged with three counts: inflicting corporal injury on a spouse, violence used against a spouse (curious, as Meyer and Mounds were not married), and willfully causing injury to an elder. She was held on $10,000 bail.