The Rialto Report

The 1980s and 90s adult film A-lister Jeanna Fine passed away 6 months ago way too young. A few weeks after that, we shared an interview I started with Jeanne but never got to finish. It was mostly about what led Jeanna to get into the adult industry – and the discussion was rounded out by a recording Patrick Kindlon of the band the Self Defense Family shared with us. If you haven’t heard that interview I recommend listening to that too. Absent from that podcast were Jeanna’s thoughts about her time in the adult industry itself – how she felt about films she made like Cafe Flesh 2, Skin Hunger, and Flesh & Blood; the people she worked with including Bionca Seven, Sharon Kane, F.M. Bradley, and Mike Horner; and the life her participation in the business provided including relationships with Savannah and Sikki Nixx. In fact, there was a second part to Jeanna’s discussion with Patrick. We’ve held onto it for a while because, like the first podcast we put out about Jeanna, it isn’t always an easy listen. Jeanna doesn’t pull any punches as she shares her memories of the adult business and she comes across quite raw at times. But in the past months I kept remembering how Jeanna urged me more than once to listen to the recordings she made with Patrick. Even when things were uncomfortable, it was clear she wanted to be heard and understood. So here’s part two of Patrick’s recording where Jeanna is brave enough to be candid and messy and vulnerable. With special thanks once again to Patrick Kindlon and Self Defense Family. This podcast is 31 minutes long. —————————————————————————————————————————————————————————– Sharon Kane, Gloria Leonard, Jeanna Fine Eric Edwards, Sharon Kane, Jeanna Fine, Gloria Leonard   Jeanna with Al Goldstein on Midnight Blue Jeanne in ‘Babylon’ (1998) Porsche Lynn, Jeanna Fine, & Angel Kelly The Pink Ladies: Porsche Lynn, Angel Kelly, Nina Hartley, Jeanna Fine Jeanna with Angel Kelly The cast of Sorority Pink: Angel Kelly, Porsche Lynn, Sharon Kane, Barbara Dare, Nina Hartley * The post Jeanna Fine: Flesh & Blood – Podcast 165 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

I’ve always loved movies, especially the films I grew up with in the 1970s. I was seduced by their gritty realism, social commentary, complex characters, and a more honest portrayal of the human condition. And I was fan of that generation of film stars too: always surprising, sometimes conflicted figures, artists more than the celebrities that we have today. Movie genres seemed less important to me, so when I first saw Wade Nichols in an adult film on the big screen, it had just as big effect on me as, say, seeing Brando in ‘The Godfather’, De Niro in ‘Taxi Driver,’ or that fish thing in ‘Jaws.’ Ever since then, it feels that Wade Nichols has always been a part of my life, never far away from my thoughts. I’ve sometimes found myself wondering what it would’ve been like if Wade Nichol’s career had continued into the mainstream. Wade Nichols is Indiana Jones in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ perhaps. Or how about John McLane in ‘Die Hard.’ Mr. Miyagi in ‘The Karate Kid.’ Ok, scrub that last one. The point is that he captured my imagination in a way that was just as powerful as many of the recognized greats, and so I wondered about the possible twists and turns of his life that were prevented by his death. Years ago, I turned my attention to finding who he really was, and perhaps also, why he’d remained important to me ever since my teenage years. That disproportionate impact of an early moment in your life that is instrumental in creating your adult sense of self. This is Wade Nichols: ‘Like An Eagle’ – His Untold Story. This is Part 2. Parental Advisory Warning for those not familiar with The Rialto Report: this podcast episode contains disco music. This may be disturbing for younger listeners who may wish to switch off. As for the rest of you, clear a space on the dance floor and let’s get down. This podcast is 42 minutes long. ————————————————————————————————————————————– In 1975, Donna Summer was a little-known American singer who’d been living in Germany for eight years where she’d appeared in stage musicals. One day, she was playing around with a single lyric, ‘Love to Love You Baby,’ which she sang to an Italian musician and record producer, Giorgio Moroder. He liked the hook, and came back a few days later, having turned it into a three-minute disco song. He suggested to Donna they record it together. She wasn’t sure about the idea, mainly because the whole thing that Giorgio had come up with just sounded so damn sexual. In the end, she agreed to sing it as a demo which they could give to someone else. So she did, but the trouble was that her erotic moans and groans so impressed everyone who heard it that, they decided to release it as a Donna Summer single anyway, and ‘Love to Love You’ went on to become a small-time hit in Europe. Fast forward a few weeks, and a tape of the song found its way to Neil Bogart, who was the president of Casablanca Records in the U.S. He listened, liked it, and decided to play it at a party at his home the same night. Next day, Bogart got Moroder on the phone. There was a problem with the song, he said: at the party, he’d started playing the song and approached a girl, but by the time he’d started speaking to her, the three-minute single had come to an end. So he had to run back to the tape deck, rewind it, and start playing it again before resuming his pick-up lines with the girl. Just as he got to the stage of propositioning her, the damn song ended again. Same drill: rewind the tape, and start it over again. A few minutes later, he was at the point of asking the girl to join him in the bedroom when, you guessed it, the song finished once more. So, as Bogart protested to Moroder, “How is this meant to work?” Giorgio threw the question back to him: “How long do you need to meet a girl, chat her up, seal the deal, take her to the boudoir, and do the deed?” he asked. Bogart paused, doing the sexual math in his head: “I reckon sixteen minutes should be enough,” he said. And so, sure enough, Moroder and Donna Summer made a recording of the song that lasted just over 16 minutes, and released that version in the U.S. In fact, it took up the entire first side of the album of the same name. But it worked, and the single hit number one on the Dance chart and became one of the great disco songs of all time. I once read that a group of scientists estimated than 1.5 million babies had been conceived to that 16-minute record. The time was right for music and explicit sex to be combined. And so who was better placed to take advantage than Dennis Parker? * 1976 Let’s go back to 1976. They say when a man makes plans, God laughs. Certainly, Dennis’ life was nothing like he’d planned, but he had few complaints. For a start, he was now a movie star, adored and lusted over by men and women, earning reasonable money for his screen appearances in X-rated movies, and regularly interviewed in magazines who fawned over his acting talent, not to mention his smooth 1970s good looks. Every couple of months, Dennis would get a call from someone on the adult film scene offering him another porn job. He’d always happily accept, turn up and do the business – which usually meant reciting lines with casual, effortless cool, having sex with the latest starlet, and then leaving with a few hundred dollars cash in hand. Most porn film jobs took a matter of hours, usually over a day or two, though sometimes there’d be an ambitious project where an aspiring sex-film Francis Ford Coppola wannabe had raised enough money to make a movie they were convinced would be the mythical mainstream cross-over success. Films like ‘Blonde Ambition,’ ‘Punk Rock,’ ‘Honeymoon Haven,’ and ‘Maraschino Cherry’ came and went with Dennis calmly enhancing them all and impressing fellow performers and fans alike. By now, he’d jacked in his office day job, which meant that he had more time to devote to his art, carpentry, motorbike, jazz record collection, and his partner, a young actor/model, Joey Phipps, who he adored and doted on. They lived a quiet life in Dennis’ tiny apartment, punctuated by wild nights out in Manhattan sex clubs. Ah the gay clubs of the 70s: Dennis came out when he was in college and spent the next decade in New York’s darkest, horniest and most outrageous corners. Their names are all you need to know. The Eagles Nest, the Anvil, the Ramrod, and the Toilet. It was the era of poppers, gloryholes, and anonymous hook-ups in sweaty backrooms. As if that wasn’t enough, Dennis also had a sideline as a male escort for wealthy clients who responded to his weekly ad for personal services. It was extra cash, and his friends told me about how he enjoyed meeting different people and making them happy. In short, Dennis’ was a normal life in which almost everything was abnormal. And then it all changed. He met a Frenchman, a music producer who’d recently moved to New York and was starting to enjoy huge international success writing and producing disco hits. He had an impish, youthful face with a chipmunk smile. His name was Jacques Morali. * The Birth of Disco Jacques Morali was born in 1947, the year before Dennis, in Casablanca, French Morocco, to a Moroccan Jewish family. According to legend, he had a fiercely protective upbringing, and there are stories that he was dressed as a girl by his mother when he was growing up. When he was 13, his family moved to France, where Jacques became a musical prodigy, gifted at playing different instruments, and writing songs in any style. He wasn’t afraid to be different: he was original, flamboyant, and gay. He was also outgoing, outrageous, and gregarious, and seemed to know everyone on the music scene in Paris. By the end of the 1960s, he was in demand, writing music for orchestras, for the Crazy Horse cabaret and strip club, and for himself in his bid to launch a career as a solo artist. And because of his knack for writing instant melodies, he was also writing and producing songs for others. An example Is an early single, a long-forgotten song called ‘Viva Zapata’ for a long-forgotten artist called ‘Clint Farwood’ which gives you an example of the hallmarks of his developing style. Upbeat, check. Cheesy, check. Annoyingly catchy, you bet. But Jacques, just like his music, was restless and always changing, and he was constantly looking for the next big idea. He was also impatient, demanding, and dissatisfied with the level of his success in France, so he started to look to America as being where he could really hit the big time. In the early 1970s, he discovered the music that was coming out of a studio in Philadelphia called Sigma Sound where the Philadelphia International Records label were recording a streak of hit singles. Songs like the O’Jays’ ‘Love Train,’ recorded at Sigma Sound, which hit number one in 1972. As strange as it sounds, Jacques Morali wasn’t the only prominent music producer and songwriter in Paris at the time who came from a Moroccan Jewish family in Casablanca, Morocco – and the other one was Henri Belolo. Given their similar backgrounds, it was natural they gravitated to each other. Henri was ten years older than Jacques: he was also a talented musician, but he differed in that he was also a highly successful entrepreneur: Henri had already set up his own record label and music publishing company, imported and promoted records into France, as well as organized concerts in Paris by the likes of James Brown and the Bee Gees. And, just like Jacques, Henri was eyeing the music scene in America. In 1973, Henri traveled to New York and set up a record company called Can’t Stop Productions to establish a presence in the U.S. music market. During his trip, he went down to Philadelphia to see friends, and that’s where he discovered the same music scene that Jacques had fallen in love with. I met and spoke to Henri Belolo several times over the years, and his excitement for that music still shone decades later. As he told me: “I started to listen to this ‘Philly Sound.’ I became friends with the owner of Sigma Sound, which was the famous recording studio where all of the Philly people were recording, and I got acquainted with musicians and arrangers and the music that came out of Philadelphia International Records.” In particular, Henri loved ‘TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)’ by The Three Degrees. The song was released in 1974 as the theme for the American musical television program ‘Soul Train,’ and it was the first television theme song to reach No. 1. Henri told me that the song and the visuals of the TV show changed his life: “I suddenly knew that the next generation of music stars would be more beautiful to look at,” he said, “and that these new artists would be more physical and sexual.” Henri was so impressed with the city that he set up a talent scout office in Philadelphia. As he told me, “I returned to France a different man. I promised myself that I would come back to America, and Philadelphia, when I found THE idea. I just needed to find something unique and big and hot.” So here you have two Moroccan Jews, one gay and one straight, both based in Paris, both ambitious, and talented musically, both enamored by the music coming out of Sigma Studio in Philadelphia, and both looking for ways to break into the American music scene. Back in France, Henri says Jacques started turning up at his office to offer his services: “He was so enthusiastic,” Henri remembered, “Jacques dreamt of going to America, so he was pitching new ideas to me every week.” In the end, Henri told Jacques that if he came up with one really good idea, then he’d take him to America – but it had to be a really special idea, because nothing that Jacques had suggested so far had convinced him. Then in 1975, a breakthrough. Jacques went to see Henri and told him his latest idea: he’d found an old Carmen Miranda song, ‘Brazil’, that he wanted a group of larger-than-life females to sing, and record it with production values that would turn it into an epic record for the clubs. It was a crazy idea, but Henri liked the concept: “You have to remember the word ‘disco’ didn’t really exist at that stage,” he remembered. “But I loved the idea of making a big club record: it captured my imagination, so I agreed to work on it with Jacques.” Not only did he like the idea, Henri agreed to finance a residency for Jacques at Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia, the very home of the music they both loved. The two of them flew out to Philadelphia and within two weeks they’d found three beautiful black women who they named The Ritchie Family, even though the singers were entirely unrelated to each other, and then Jacques hired the best strings and horns from the elite pool of Philly Sound musicians. The single ‘Brazil’ was released in July 1975, and it was the U.S. hit that Jacques and Henri wanted: it peaked at No. 11 on the Hot 100, became a worldwide success, and Billboard were so impressed they created a separate Disco chart for the first time: Brazil hit No. 1 on that chart too. The record convinced Jacques and Henri they should continue to work together, and so they both moved over to the U.S., and became long-term musical partners and a virtual disco-hit factory. Belolo would write the lyrics and handle the business side, and Jacques provided the hook-driven, dance music. More success came quickly with No. 1 disco hits, such as ‘The Best Disco In Town’ (1976) Jacques’ music was characterized by simple arrangements, a unique sense of camp, and simple catchy melodies that could be remembered easily. It wasn’t rocket science, but it didn’t need to be – few others could do it as well as him. In the next eight years between 1974 and 1982, he recorded over 65 albums, for artists as diverse as Cher, Dalida, and Pia Zadora. Henri and Jacques were on top of the world, splitting their time between New York and Philadelphia. Henri remembered that if they weren’t producing music, they were partying: “We were going every night of the week to every club in town,” he told me. “That included the straight and gay clubs – Jacques was gay, I was not – but we had a lot of gay friends, and I was always keen to know what they listened to. I would dance until the early hours, and then go home and get some sleep. But Jacques would party all night – and it was on one of those nights when he met Dennis.” * Dennis meets Jacques There is some mystery surrounding how Dennis first met Jacques. Some friends, including Dennis’ brother Richard, thought that it must have been at a bar or a disco. Could be, though it seems less likely to me as Dennis didn’t spend a lot of his time in discos, and the bars he frequented tended to be ones that were more interested in sex than music. According to others, they met through the ad that Dennis ran in the weekly newspapers. “That was what Dennis told me,” said a friend called Chip that I spoke to. “He told me that Jacques was lonely, or horny, one weekend, and came across Dennis’s ad offering company.” What is known is that when they met in 1977, Jacques instantly fell head over heels in love with Dennis. As Henri Belolo remembered: “Jacques told me straight away that he’d met this sexy and handsome guy that he was madly attracted to. He always said he loved a good-looking mustache! So obviously, Dennis fit that description.” Chip concurred: “Jacques was completely besotted by Dennis, it was obvious for everyone to see. His world suddenly revolved around Dennis.” And so, while Jacques’ music career in America was taking off and he was becoming a household name in the music world, he and Dennis started a romantic and physical relationship. It was a fascinating union: on the one side, a flamboyant, big-time disco music producer, and on the other, a quiet jazz-loving porn star with a sideline doing escort work. There are many aspects that intrigue me here: firstly, there was the fact that Dennis was still starring in adult films when he met Jacques – and continued doing so after they met. But far from being a problem for their relationship, Jacques was intrigued by the emerging and sexual world of XXX, and he enjoyed Dennis’ stature as a sex star. As Henri told me, “Jacques was excited by the fact that Dennis was a porn star… not only in gay movies but in straight movies too. It just increased the allure that Dennis had in Jacques eyes. It was a challenge for him to have an affair with a porn star like Dennis.” And in the free love, anything-goes, no-judgement world of the New York club scene in the mid 1970s, Dennis’ porn films posed no risk to Jacques’ career – if anything, Dennis’ sexual standing was an asset to Jacques. But if Dennis was perfect for Jacques, was the reverse true? What did Dennis find attractive in Jacques? Tip Sanderson, a friend of Dennis at the time, reckoned that it was the showbiz allure that was the appeal for Dennis. “What Jacques had in his favor was the music business,” Tip says. “The glitz, the scene, the money… and he exploited it to the max. He told Dennis he would make him a star, a big music star. Dennis was seduced by that. I mean, who wouldn’t be?” But was it love between Jacques and Dennis? Friends are still skeptical. Tip Sanderson said this: “Jacques was clearly infatuated with Dennis. Totally in love with him. It was sheer physical attraction. But Jacques wasn’t Dennis’ physical type at all, so perhaps the attraction wasn’t as… mutual.” Henri Belolo agreed saying, “Jacques was in love with Dennis, but I don’t know about Dennis. It’s hard to know, but I doubt it. Was Dennis really attracted to Jacques? I don’t think it was mutual. But the fact that Jacques was a successful music producer definitely helped their relationship.” Which brings me to another question. What happened to Joey Phipps in all this, Dennis’ partner who he’d been close to and living with for a while? That was a problem, everyone admitted to me. Most said that Dennis was still in love with Joey. As Tip Sanderson told me: “It was sad because they were tight. In the end, Dennis chose Jacques over Joey. Maybe the allure of fame was more powerful than his feelings for Joey. Either way, Dennis moved in with Jacques.” So Jacques and Dennis became a couple, with Dennis leaving Joey behind in his tiny, beloved apartment, and he moved in with Jacques, a few blocks away, in his luxury, extensive suite at The Bristol, a prestigious uptown New York address in the Sutton Place neighborhood. For some reason, I’m reminded of the Terrence Malick period drama film, ‘Days of Heaven’. It came out around the same time that all this was going on. The comparison is imperfect, sure, but if you haven’t seen the movie, the plot involves an impoverished couple, played by Richard Gere and Brooke Adams. Their life is a struggle though they are essentially happy – but then Gere’s character encourages his girlfriend to marry a wealthy grain farmer, played by Sam Shepherd. The reason is the financial security that this will bring. So she leaves Gere, and he’s left living in their small sharecropper property looking up the hill at the mansion into which she’s moved. There’s a heartbreaking element of poignancy and sadness to their separation, and a reminder that not all stories of true love have a happy ending. Did Dennis get what he wanted but lost what he had? Did his new lifestyle come at the cost of love? It certainly was a step up in terms of lifestyle: being an adult film star had given Dennis’ life an occasional glamor, but this paled in comparison to what he experienced with Jacques. Richard Posa, Dennis’ brother, remembers Dennis telling him that Jacques was making around $8 million a year – and this was back in the 1970s. Jacques was generous with his money, and Dennis’ lifestyle changed overnight. For Dennis, the days of the dark and moody gay leather clubs were over. It was now fancy discos like Studio 54, The Loft, and the Paradise Garage. Steven Gaines, a friend of them both, told me about visiting their apartment: “Jacques gave me a tour. He took me to the bedroom which was really over the top, and everything in it was super-expensive. There was this beautiful suede headboard – and Jacques said in a thick French accent, “Zees ees where I fist fuck my boyfriend.” I don’t know what I was thinking, but I said, “But what about that suede headboard… aren’t you afraid of ruining it?” Jacques looked horrified, and said, “Whaaat? Do you think we’re peeegs?!’” Which reminded Steven of a joke that he told me: “How do you make a gay man scream during sex? You wipe your hands on the drapes.” Henri Belolo, Jacques’s music business partner, was living around the corner from Jacques and Dennis, and they would all hang out regularly. As Henri remembered: “I was great friends with Dennis, and I liked him a lot. We had dinner regularly. And my wife liked him because he was a good guy, very soft-spoken, well mannered, and elegant. In many respects, Dennis was the opposite to Jacques. Jacques was loud and extravagant, and Dennis was quiet and reserved. I’m sure that Jacques drove Dennis crazy a lot of the time.” * The Village People There are two stories about the how the idea for the Village People first came about. Jacques’ version was that he went to a costume ball at Les Mouches, a gay disco in Greenwich Village, way over on 11th Street on the west side. He was so impressed by all the costumes and the macho male characters portrayed by the party guests, that the idea came to him to put together a group of singers and dancers, each one playing a different gay fantasy figure. Henri Belolo remembers it differently, saying that he and Jacques were walking through the Village one day, when they saw a man in a native American Indian outfit walking down the street, complete with bells attached to his feet. They followed him into a bar where he danced on the tables – watched by a cowboy and construction worker. According to Henri, “Jacques and I looked at each other and suddenly had the same idea. We said “My God, these characters. They represent the different types of the American man. We need to start a music group like this!” Whichever story you believe, they took the concept and started work on a single, and signed a licensing deal with Casablanca Records, one of the most famous disco labels – and founded by Neil Bogart, the same Bogart who had requested the 16-minute version of ‘Love to Love You, Baby.’ The label was already prestigious because of acts like Kiss and Donna Summer, but according to Henri, he and Jacques were most excited just because of the name, given that they’d both been born in Casablanca. They decided to name the new group ‘The Village People’ because the idea came from the characters they’d seen in the Village, and the first single was ‘San Francisco (You’ve Got Me).’ The irony was that when the single came out, the group just consisted of one singer, a Broadway star called Victor Willis, who was appearing in the Broadway production of ‘The Wiz’ at the time, and they dressed him up as a cop. Sales of the single soared, and so, as Henri told me, “We said to each other, ‘We’d better put together a real group now’ because we’d signed up to an album with Casablanca Records.” They set about assembling a group of five males, each one having his own distinctive character. To do this they took out an ad in a theatre trade paper which read: “Macho Types Wanted: Must Dance And Have A Moustache.” And who fit that bill better than Dennis? Henri told me that Jacques had been looking for an opportunity to give Dennis a starring music opportunity ever since they had first met: he told me, “To be honest, every time Jacques met someone, he’d say, “I will make of you a star, my dear” with his big French accent. And Dennis was no exception. Except of course, Jacques was in love with him. So this time, Jacques was really serious about it.” Dennis’ brother Richard remembered the same: “When Jacques was putting the Village People together, he offered Dennis a role in the group.” It’s intriguing to imagine Dennis as a member of the Village People. Would he have assumed one of the character identities that ended up in the group, or would he have developed a different identity of his own? Somewhere along the line however, the idea was dropped in favor of making Dennis a star in his own right. As Dennis’ friend Tip Sanderson said to me: “Dennis said that he and Jacques decided that they would not make him part of the Village People – where he would be only one of five members of a group, but rather they’d hold him back and launch him as a solo star instead. And so, the two of them carefully mapped out a plan to create a music career for Dennis.” Meanwhile the rest of the members of the Village People were hired – representing stereotypes such as a leather man, cowboy, construction worker, and native American. They were largely recruited for their look rather musical abilities, with Victor Willis, taking all the main vocal duties. Together they became one of the most successful acts of the disco era with hits such as ‘YMCA’ (1978), ‘Macho Man’ (1978), ‘In the Navy’ (1979), and ‘Go West’ (1980). Their success only increased Jacques Morali’s reputation as a top disco producer and star maker. * Dennis Parker – Disco Star I was intrigued by the decision to give Dennis a solo singing career. I wondered what Dennis thought of the idea. Was he just as excited by it, or did he go along with it because of Jacques’ ambition and exhilaration? On the one hand, Dennis’ ex-boyfriend Skip had told me that Dennis always wanted to be a torch singer, and so this was an opportunity to be produced by one of the hottest disco producers in the land. Dennis did love performing and though this wasn’t acting on a theater stage, it was still about embodying a character. But then there was another side to it: Dennis was a private person, happiest when doing carpentry, driving on his motorbike, and listening to his jazz records. How did he feel about making himself a more public figure? And then there was the type of music Dennis would be singing. Tip Sanderson saw this contradiction too: “Dennis wasn’t a big pop or disco music fan,” Tip said. “So he had a few reservations about the idea of a solo dance music career. But Jacques was so enthusiastic that I guess Dennis was caught up in the excitement.” Whatever doubts existed however, Dennis signed up and went along with Jacques’ vision of making him a disco star – and the first step was a significant one. These are the words of Skip St. James, Dennis’ former partner from the early 1970s: “I saw Dennis on and off after our relationship ended. I knew he’d been dating Jacques Morali. Then at one point, Dennis disappeared completely for a short while. When he re-appeared, he said he’d been in Philadelphia. I was struck by the change in his appearance. He had new teeth and a new nose! His old nose was a handsome Roman one, and when he came back he had a turned-up nose that he said was modeled after mine. I didn’t like his nose because I adored his old one. To be honest, I think he was better looking before the nose and teeth work.” It was true, when Dennis started to be groomed by Jacques for disco stardom, his appearance changed noticeably: his cheekbones, nose, and chin were now leaner, sharper, and more pronounced than the way he looked in the films and the photo features. He looked great, just rather different than the adult film star, and completely different from the nerdy school kid in the pictures that his brother Richard had sent me. The second change that Dennis made was that he stopped making X-rated films. Unlike many ex-adult film stars who leave the business and immediately disavow their sex film past, Dennis never did. The sex films were not something he ever regretted or denied. But his retirement from the adult business was the only sensible course of action if he was going to make a serious bid for stardom in mainstream America. It wasn’t a difficult choice: he was in his thirties, he’d already appeared in over 30 sex films, he didn’t need the money, and according to his friends he felt it was time for a change anyway. One of the last events of his sex movie career was that Screw magazine voted him ‘Man of the Year’ in 1978. Dennis got a kick out of that, and bought copies for all his friends. So now Dennis looked the part, and had a superstar producer in Jacques in his corner, but what about the singing part of this career change. After all, his singing activity hadn’t consisted of much more than humming along to his jazz records, so recording a whole album was going to be a completely new experience for him. One of the skeptics was Henri Belolo. Henri told me about the day he first learned of the idea: “Jacques said to me, ‘We’re going to make an album with Dennis.’ I told him, ‘But Jacques, we can’t. He’s not a singer!’ Jacques said, ‘I know. He’s an actor, but he’s good looking and believe me, we can make him a star. Trust me.’” Jacques’ argument was that they’d already turned several non-singers into the Village People – so why not Dennis? So together they agreed to produce an album for Dennis. Not that Jacques went easy on Dennis: Henri told me that Jacques made Dennis work hard. He got Dennis to take singing lessons, practice night and day, and prepare intensively. And then in 1978, Jacques secured a record deal for Dennis with Casablanca Records, and so the record idea suddenly became real. Henri and Jacques snapped into action and started to assemble a selection of songs. Henri described how they split the work: “Jacques and I had different roles,” he told me. “Jacques was the melodist. He was a magician with all the hooks and the melodies. I was the one that came up with the ideas for the lyrics. But my English was not too good at that time, so I started to write the song in French or in bad English and then I got help.” One of the people he turned to for lyrics for Dennis’ record was Steven Gaines, a journalist who’d just written an article about how the Village People had been formed. Gaines told me, “I wrote about how Jacques was selling the Village People like a sports team with different characters and personalities. And now, he was going on to ‘invent’ somebody else – and that was Dennis.” Jacques loved the write-up, so he called Gaines up and suggested that he write the lyrics for Dennis’ album. Gaines recalled that a few days later, Jacques sent him click tracks to work with. The click tracks were just audio clicks to show the rhythm of the song… nothing else. But he gave it a shot, and came up with the lyrics for ‘Like an Eagle’.” Gaines recalled Jacques’ reaction to that song: “When Jacques heard it, he said that the words were too complicated for people to listen to on a dance floor. I’d done a lot of work on them, and believe me, they weren’t that complicated! Jacques said he would work on them. He did – and in the end, the lyrics were as follows…: ‘Like an Eagle, Like an Eagle, Like an Eagle, Like an Eagle, Like an Eagle, always searching, always wanting, Like an Eagle.’ So, he certainly made them much less complicated…” When the songs were ready, Jacques and Henri assembled many of the musicians that had played on their favorite records that came out of Philly, including the same rhythm section that featured on the Village People records. Also notable is that they decided to use synthesizers instead of strings, which was new for the time. When everything was ready they booked, where else?, the Sigma Sound studios – but not the original location in Philadelphia. In 1977, a second Sigma Sound studio had opened in New York City. It was located in the Ed Sullivan Theater building – that’s the same building where David Letterman’s and Stephen Colbert’s Late Show is filmed each night. This studio was used by the Village People for their records, and would later be used by singers and groups like Madonna, the Talking Heads, Rick James, Aretha Franklin, the Ramones, Whitney Houston, Paul Simon and others. The whole endeavor was now a big deal, and Dennis was at the heart of it all. How did he cope with the pressure, in that environment, in that recording studio? He was surrounded by professional musicians of the highest quality, used to recording with many of the great vocalists of the time. Was he overawed, out of his depth, and did he struggle? I contacted many of the musicians who recorded with Dennis to find out their memories of making the record. Alfonso Carey was the first I spoke to. He was the bass player that played on all the Village People hits… from ‘YMCA’ to ‘Macho Man’ and the rest, as well as records by The Ritchie Family and Patti Labelle. In fact, he also wrote the song ‘Why Don’t You Boogie’ for Dennis which was included on the record. Carey’s first memory was that he found Jacques flamboyant: “Jacques was very ‘out there,’ “Carey told me. “He would let you know in a minute that he was wonderful and gay. He brought Dennis into the studio, and Dennis was completely different. We thought he was cool, and much more chill than Jacques.” I asked Carey about Dennis’ vocal ability. He said that Dennis had talent, not like Victor Willis of the Village People with a voice that could really move you, but he was somebody who could hold a note and that he did all right. Henri Belolo also remembered being impressed with Dennis: “Dennis voice was actually pretty good!” he told me. “We had to work around it at times, for example, Jacques sang certain passages at the same time as Dennis to augment Dennis’ vocals. So on ‘Like an Eagle’ when you hear the high voice sing just after the chorus, that’s mainly Jacques singing. We also used background singers to cover up some parts as well. But I have to say, honestly, Dennis did his part, and did a great singing job for someone who had no experience.” Phil Hurtt was Dennis vocal coach and he also wrote two songs for Dennis’ album: ‘I’m A Dancer’ and ‘I Need Your Love’. Hurtt told me that when Dennis recorded the album, the musicians were actually not there most of the time. That was normal. They’d already recorded the basic tracks by then. So when Dennis was in the studio, he was just there with Jacques and Henri, the engineers, and Phil himself. “I was the only one actually in the recording booth with Dennis because I was teaching him the vocals. I stood alongside him until he got it. That was what I always did.” Phil Hurtt was keen to point out that Dennis had a better voice than you hear on the record. “I think he was misused,” Phil said. “I think if he had been working with a producer who knew how to produce different types of music then he would have done even better. He was a nice guy though. Quiet and polite.” The other song that Gaines wrote for Dennis was ‘New York By Night.’ This is how Gaines remembers writing it: “I wanted to write something that was contemporary about New York, and so I included details like the hustlers on 53rd St. Henri told me: “The lyrics of ‘New York By Night’ are fantastic. One of my favorite lines goes – ‘At Studio 54, they’re waiting at the door, Can’t get in, just can’t win.’ It captures the moment when we went to Studio 54 every night. We were in the middle of the disco revolution. It was crazy, my God, but so much life, so much happiness, so much enjoyment. We weren’t fighting a war, the economy wasn’t too bad, and people wanted to go out after Vietnam. They wanted to have a good time. Sex was starting to get liberated, the gays were starting to come out. Everything was exploding, it was a new generation, and of course they did not want to be the old generation that was pop or rock – they wanted to be disco. That’s what it was.” Once again, Jacques said it was too complicated. He wanted me to dumb it down because he said that Dennis couldn’t sing so many words that quickly.” But this time, Jacques was overruled, both by Dennis, who insisted that he could handle the words, and Henri Belolo – who loved the lyrics. Whoever I spoke to, everyone always seemed to come back to Dennis’ personal qualities. He was gentle, kind, and considerate. Carla Bandini-Lory, the record’s Assistant Producer told me: “Dennis was a sweetheart, and he impressed everyone. He was a gentleman, he held open doors, never acted above the support staff – which many other people at that time did. He was a total pro. He listened, he took direction from Jacques, and he understood what was going on. Even so, he was always in Jacques’ shadow. Everyone was in Jacques’ shadow. Jacques was always the biggest personality in every room.” Steven Gaines, the writer of ‘Like an Eagle’ and ‘New York By Night’, went to the studio and to watched them record his songs, and his memory was similar: “Dennis was very cool, and very low key. I don’t remember a big ego or personality thing about him at all. Jacques was a French queen, quite the opposite… a big flamboyant character. When Jacques was good, he was very, very good, but when he got mean, he was really horrid.” Henri Belolo agreed, and admitted that sometimes Jacques would blow up. Henri said: “During the recording sessions, Jacques got upset and frustrated with Dennis. Jacques could be rude with him. I kept telling Jacques, ‘Relax. Dennis is not a professional singer. You must be patient with him, he’s doing his best. It was your idea to do this album with Dennis, so now you have to learn to work with him. The final result will be good.’ But what amazed me was that Dennis was very calm even when Jacques was angry. Dennis was always calm. I never saw him excited or shouting or mad. He was a pleasure.” Henri was the Executive Producer for the record, so had overall creative control of the record, and he told me he was happy how it turned out. Neil Bogart, the head of Casablanca Records, liked it as well and was excited to release it. Dennis adopted the name ‘Dennis Parker’ to distance himself from Wade Nichols and his previous career as a sex film star. The last step was a photo session of Dennis in New York at night for the record sleeve. Let’s spend a moment on that LP cover, as it’s magnificent. If you haven’t seen, try googling it. It features Dennis at his zenith, all cheekbones, moustache, a hint of a dimple in his sculpted chin, and casually tousled yet carefully curated shoulder-length hair, dressed in a denim shirt and a gray sports jacket. Somehow looking coy, mistrustful and confident at the same time. He knows a secret that he might just share with you… if you’re good to him, that is. I’d pick this picture for my mantelpiece over the Mona Lisa any day of the week. So everything was in place, but how would the disco crowd react? After all, no one had even heard the record yet. Steven Gaines remembers that, just before ‘Like an Eagle’ came out as a single, Jacques got a disc jockey to play it at a gay club called the Flamingo one night. The Flamingo was a calculated choice: the club had opened in 1974, and was New York’s first exclusively gay disco. It was located in an upstairs loft space on the second floor of a building at the corner of Houston and Broadway. The club was actually secret and had an unlisted telephone number because there was a constant fear of police raids. And it was exclusive too: members paid up to six hundred dollars a year for a membership. It was known for its wild parties, there were stories of a Crucifixion night with models dressed as Roman legionaries and a Jesus Christ who would, from time to time, turn his eyes heavenward and ascend a cross. This was the crowd that would be the first in the world to hear Dennis Parker. Gaines, understandably, decided he wanted to see his song unveiled publicly for the first time – especially to this audience, so he went along with his lawyer. As he told me, “It was a big dance place, and an important place to launch a record. There were 1,500 gay guys with their shirts off, completely stoned on ethyl chloride. Then the song came on for the first time, and it was really, really thrilling. “People didn’t know it obviously, and it starts with that whooshing sound before building up. “I’ll never forget how exciting that moment was… it just really, really worked well… at least until my not-so-brilliant lyrics started. It got a great reaction, the crowd really loved it.” When the song came to an end, the Flamingo club members demanded that it was played again. And then again, even chanting the title lyrics over and over. For the second time in his life, quiet, unassuming Dennis had become a star again. * The post Wade Nichols: ‘Like an Eagle’ – His Untold Story Part 2: Disco! – Podcast 153 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Years ago, I first saw the 1970s adult film Barbara Broadcast (1977) on the big screen, and it made a big impression. In the film, there’s a scene which shows a man standing behind an industrial kitchen worktable, a shirtless, mustached piece of beefcake that was Wade Nichols. Rugged yet pretty. Lean, toned, and handsome. He looked like the Marlboro man from the distant plains, if that cowboy had inexplicably turned up in New York and started moonlighting as a Manhattan sous-chef. He had the appearance of a man in love, or a rather a man in lust, most likely with himself. He was the perfect embodiment of the era, that made you wonder if you were to look up ‘1970s America’ in the dictionary, there could well be a picture of Wade Nichols there. I immediately wanted to know more. It turned out he’d been a prolific actor in many adult films over a four-year period in the late 1970s, much loved and much missed. Slowly over the years, I found other details, but often they were in the form of conflicting rumors. Though he’d been the leading man in many straight sex films, he was supposedly gay, or maybe bisexual? Some remembered him better as the lead actor of a popular TV soap opera, while others said he was a big disco recording star who’d come close to being one of the original Village People. And then there was the question of how he’d died: it had been reported that he shot himself in 1985, but others insisted he was a victim of AIDS. I was hooked on finding more. But because it was before the internet age, I had no way of finding out much about him. So, years ago, I started to track down anyone who had known him, from his family, to acquaintances from the New York club, bar, and disco scene, adult film actors and directors, music and television industry friends, and many more, to try and find who he really was. I ended up writing an article for The Rialto Report with the information I learned. But my interest didn’t end then, and I continued to track down, reach out, and contact anyone with memories of him. This is Wade Nichols’ story – in podcast form. This podcast is 50 minutes long. ———————————————————————————————————– Why is that so many of the movies we first saw as teenagers remain important and enduring to us for the rest of our lives? Same thing for the music and books that we discovered back then. And, why does it become rarer that we have that same deep connection to films we discover as we grow older? Psychologists have suggested it’s because our teen years coincide with the period referred to as “the emergence of the stable and enduring self.” Basically, the thinking is that this period, occurring between the ages of 12 and 22, is the time when you become you. As a result, the experiences that contribute to this process become uncommonly, and disproportionately, important to you throughout the rest of your life. This is because they didn’t just contribute to the development of your self-image; they are part of your self-image. In other words, these experiences and memories become an integral part of your sense of self. Ok, ok, so much for the theory, but what does that have to do with the life of an adult film actor who died 40 years ago? The answer is that today’s story is personal. Well, all the stories that I cover are personal in some way, but this one is perhaps even more so than the rest. When I first saw the 1977 adult film ‘Barbara Broadcast’ as a teenager, I knew nothing about the male lead, Wade Nichols, but he made an impression on my teenage self. I know, I shouldn’t have been in the porn theater in the first place. Wholly inappropriate, too young, etc. and so on. I get it. But I was there, and I watched it. And I liked the film. And yes, just like some of the other films I discovered then, it stayed with me in a strangely meaningful way. It’s part of the reason I wanted to find and tell the stories that I share on The Rialto Report, I think. It became part of understanding that moment as a teen when I sat wide-eyed in a theater. Perhaps part of the memory that had created that sense of self all those years ago. * 1. Freeport, NY (1950s): The first information to know is that ‘Wade Nichols’ was really a fictional character, existing only for the sex film screen. Wade’s real name was Dennis Posa. He was of Italian heritage – a fact that he was proud of. I found out that Dennis’ father originally came from Casamassima, a small town in southern Italy. That was the first surprise to me in this story, because the summer before I saw ‘Barbara Broadcast’ all those years ago, I’d actually visited Casamassima as a young boy. I remember it being a tiny, picturesque place, notable mainly because it was called ‘The Blue Town’. That name dated back to the 1600s when a ship arrived in the nearby port of Bari bringing sailors who’d all been infected with the plague. They came ashore, and all hell broke loose. In a short time over 20,000 locals had died in the epidemic. In response, the most powerful Duke in the town ordered all of the buildings, monuments, and churches to be painted with quicklime mixed with sulphate copper. These chemicals slowed the spread of the plague from infected corpses by accelerating the decomposition of the bodies and thereby reducing the bacteria – and these chemicals were bright blue in color, meaning that the town literally turned blue overnight. It was a story that Dennis would tell over the years – joking that it was ironic that one of the biggest stars of blue movies had, in effect, come from the Blue Town. After moving to America, Dennis’ father grew up in an Italian neighborhood of the Bronx. He was a popular kid and a small-time rogue, and he ran around with a bunch of minor league hoodlums and gamblers, getting in and out of trouble all the time. He hung out in jazz clubs where his friend, the noted jazz musician Johnny Guarnieri, headlined on piano with his band. Dennis’ mother was dating Johnny’s bass player, but when she met Dennis’ father, it was love at first sight – or something like that. They hooked up and got hitched the following year. Dennis’ father was 26, his mother was 20. Once he was married, Dennis’ father felt he had to go straight, so the newlywed couple did the sensible thing and moved out to the commuter town of Freeport, NY, thirty miles east of Manhattan, on the south shore of Long Island. They rented an apartment, and his father got a job as a florist, while his mother worked in the children’s section of the local library. And there they started a family – two boys, Richard and then Dennis, who was born in 1946. A quick word about Freeport: it was a great place be in the summer, a popular and vibrant spot where people from Manhattan flocked to vacation, but the rest of the year, it was a little different – an anonymous, depressed, forgotten, and empty place – which made it pretty grim for residents. I tracked down Dennis’ brother, Richard. Richard is a quiet-spoken friendly man, with a bemused but huge affection for his younger brother, and he was happy to share memories of their childhood. He fondly remembered their first years which he described as happy and good. Their father was a good-looking man and he was initially caring towards the boys. After a while though, something snapped: overnight, he seemed to lose interest in the family, and started to disappear for weeks at a time. When he returned, he’d fight with his wife – and sometimes get verbally abusive to the boys too. It transpired that a big part of his problem was his gambling, and he regularly squandered the money that was meant for the family’s food. Richard remembered that Friday was the weekly food shop day, but often his father would just take the money and not return home. When this happened, it was usually because he’d fallen behind with bookies, and needed the cash to settle his debts. On one occasion, the family found out that the bookies were threatening to break his legs if he didn’t pay up… so they helped him out and covered the debt for him. But he never paid them back, so the family joked that next time, they were going to be the ones breaking his legs. Richard remembers that it all seems amusing now, but at the time, it had a destabilizing effect on them. It wasn’t a happy childhood any more, he said, and at times, home life became pretty uncomfortable. Dennis was the more daring of the two, and one time he decided he was going to go through their father’s affairs – where he found $8,000 worth of racing stubs. Bear in mind, in those days their father’s annual salary was only $5,000 a year, so this was a huge amount to be betting. Dennis wanted to confront him, and the brothers discussed it but, in the end, decided against the idea. The boys weren’t the only ones suffering: the family problems took a toll on the boys’ mother as well. Just when the boys needed her the most, she became agoraphobic and withdrawn, afraid of leaving the apartment. As a result of all this, neither boy were close to either parent, and initially, they weren’t particularly close to each other either. For a start, the two brothers were very different. Richard was studious, into reading, mathematics, and school work. Dennis liked artistic pursuits, preferring to draw, paint pictures, and make things, developing an interest in carpentry. But physically, there was no getting away from each other. The family apartment was small, and they shared a tiny room throughout their childhood years. What they did have in common was a passion for their pets, and as kids they always had dogs and cats. Both boys were also keen members of the rifle team in High School – though their love for animals meant they had no interest in hunting. While I was getting a sense of Dennis, I wanted to understand what he was like as a boy. What was his character like, I asked Richard? Did he have friends, and was he popular? Richard remembered that Dennis was initially quiet socially, but went through a sudden change when he was 13 or 14 – coincidentally when he had his tonsils taken out. Overnight, Dennis came out of his shell, becoming more energetic and outgoing, even something of an extrovert sometimes. One aspect of Dennis didn’t change however – and that was his taste in music which stayed with him throughout his life. For a kid who came of age during the 1960s, at the tail end of rock n’ roll and amid the onset of Beatlemania, Dennis’s interest was unusual. He inherited his parent’s musical passion – which meant jazz, from traditional forms like Louis Armstrong to newer artists like Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck. “He would spend hours with his head next to the gramophone listening to jazz records,” one school friend remembered. I asked Richard if he still had any pictures of Dennis from his teen years, and Richard sent me a selection. I was taken aback by what I saw. I was used to seeing Dennis from his adult films, looking sexual and virile, or from his music career where he embodied confident disco chic, or from his time in soap operas where he projected control and confidence. But these teenage black and white pictures were from a different period entirely, and showed someone I didn’t recognize. A geeky teenager with a crew cut, cross-eyed with unfashionable eye glasses, half-smiling self-consciously. Later, I came across an interview that Dennis gave where he admitted as much: “I wasn’t very attractive as a young kid,” he said. “I was a loner so it was tough.” I asked Richard about whether Dennis dated. Richard replied: “He didn’t date in High School, but I didn’t think much about it either. It just wasn’t something that we talked about. I do remember he used to look at the pictures of women in Playboy magazines – but that seemed normal… all of the boys did that. I certainly didn’t get a sense that Dennis’ sexuality was different from the rest of the boys.” And so a geeky jazz-loving, animal-adoring, and gun-collecting Dennis graduated high school in 1964, an initially quiet then outgoing kid, who’d had a difficult home life. His last year book entry read, “Clever, quiet, and profound, Dennis will spread much goodwill abroad as a member of the Peace Corps.” * 2. Philadelphia (Late 1960s) Dennis didn’t seem to have a rebellious streak, but he did have a good number of reasons to leave home and start his own life with his own identity. Whatever plans he may have had to join the Peace Corps were abandoned in favor of heading a couple of hours south to Philadelphia to the city’s College of Art where he enrolled in a degree course studying pottery and design. I tracked down several college friends, and they told me that he was a happy and popular member of their circle. Some remembered he dated a couple of girls, taking one of them back to Freeport to meet the family. I was intrigued, and so pressed them on this, but none of them remember much more about his sexuality. It was while he was a student in Philadelphia, that Dennis became interested in acting. In a later interview, Dennis said it started with a friend who had worked on the Beatles’ films. This person was making an avant-garde, short film called ‘For One Only’, and he wanted Dennis for the lead role. The film was made though apparently never released, but it was a turning point, and Dennis became hooked on acting after that. He started auditioning, one early success being for a 1966 traveling production of Euripides’ ‘The Trojan Women’. After a couple of years in college in Philly, Dennis dropped out. Friends of his still disagree as to why: some say that it was money issues, others say that he wanted to pursue acting in a more concerted manner. Whatever the reason, over the next couple of years, Dennis appeared in a number of low budget theatrical productions in the area, while sustaining himself by picking up carpentry or construction work. It was the start of the typical life of a struggling actor. But what of his future adult film career which was still almost ten years away? Were there any signs, any clues as to what was in his future? A few friends recall that when he was short of money, Dennis did nude modeling nude for still-life art classes at the college. I also found an interview where he later claimed that he appeared in a few ‘nudie-cutie loops’ while in Philadelphia. In this interview, Dennis said: “Some guy named Edwards got me into them – for money – good money in those days. I got $60. It was fine. Art students are notoriously poor. They were the old morality stag films… black socks, boxer shorts… but that was not really porno then. A lot of time we just stood and bounced around. There was very little story, no sound, and they were sold under the counter.” It’s a possible story, I suppose, but it seems unlikely given there is little other evidence and we’re talking about 1966 in Philadelphia. Certainly none have ever come to light. But it was during this period that Dennis told the first of his friends that he thought he was gay. The female friends I spoke to weren’t surprised – though a few of them expressed disappointment: “He was such a gentle, sweet man,” one them, called Sylvia, said. “A lot of us had a secret crush on him, but deep down we always wondered.” Dennis came out to his mother and father on one of his trips home to Freeport. This is how his brother Richard remembers the occasion: “In 1968, Dennis told our parents about his sexuality. He didn’t tell me at the time – I learned about it from a cousin. I don’t know much about these things, but my impression was that Dennis was bi-sexual.” I asked Richard how his parents took the news. “Not that well,” he said. “My mother was squeamish about sex anyway, so she didn’t talk about it with anyone. As for my father, he told other people that he was heartbroken. That was difficult for Dennis. So I guess it was difficult for all of them.” Not long after this, Dennis’ father was diagnosed with lung cancer. He’d been a heavy smoker all his life, and by the time he was in his 40s, he had emphysema and was in bad physical shape. When he became sick, it hit Dennis hard, and he started going back to Freeport every week to see him. His father died shortly afterwards in his mid-50s. * 3. Move to New York In 1968, Dennis moved to New York. He took an apartment at 25 East 38th St, which he’d keep for the rest of his life. It was a fifth-floor walk-up, a small rent-controlled place, and he paid $75 a month. It was basically a studio with a skylight and a tiny kitchen. There was a bedroom but Dennis used that as his art studio, and he slept on a pull-out sofa in the main room. It was an old building – when he took up the floorboards to lay down new flooring, he found newspapers that dated back to World War One. It was cramped, but Dennis loved it and was proud of his new space. Most of all Dennis loved New York – and was in awe of the opportunities it provided. He got into motorcycles, got one of his own, and went everywhere on it… no distance was too short or too long. But his main priority was to see if he could make it as an actor so he set about auditioning for theater parts. Some of his friends commented that he had talent, but all were in agreement that his temperament was not suited to constant auditions. He hated learning a scene, schlepping across town, delivering it to a group of supercilious theater execs, and then never hearing from them again. One friend commented that he thought Dennis lacked the resilient temperament needed to be a successful actor: “He was a gentle soul, a little vulnerable, and he was easily bruised by setbacks,” he said. Nevertheless, Dennis persisted, and in 1969, Dennis replied to an ad in the Village Voice for an off-off Broadway play called ‘The Sound of a Different Drummer’ that was looking for actors to take part in ‘a counter-culture experience’. The heading read: “Do you Dig Being Naked in the World? Love Boys Love Girls? Participate in the Ultimate EMBRACE! Get Bread for Doing Your Thing in Our HIT SHOW”. Dennis auditioned and got the part. He claimed later that at first, he had no idea what it was all about and was attracted simply because it was a regular, paid acting gig. This was the era of sexually frank musicals like ‘Hair’ and ‘Oh Calcutta,’ and Dennis embraced the new environment enthusiastically. He appeared in it for several months, but then disaster struck: one night he collapsed onstage and was rushed to hospital with acute appendicitis. This health incident, though not life-threatening, would have a lasting impact on Dennis’ acting career. I spoke to Jon Bletz, a friend of Dennis, who remembered: “It took Dennis some time to recover physically from that, but when he returned to the theater, his part in the play had been given to someone else. Dennis was really upset and discouraged, and so he decided to jack in the whole acting thing. He was already pissed by how much you had to struggle for acting jobs… with little guarantee you were going to get anywhere.” So Dennis gave up on his thespian dream, and decided it was time to get a full-time 9-5 job. He was hired by Jiffy Simplicity, a company that made dress-making patterns for women. But the change in his employment wasn’t the only change in Dennis’ life. According to Dennis’ friend, Jon Bletz, after the disappointment of trying to be an actor, for a time, Dennis seemed to become more jaded and cynical. He responded by hitting the New York gay bar scene hard. As Jon expressed it, “It was like “nothing is gonna get in my way now.”” His first favorite bar was The Eagle’s Nest on 22nd St down by the West Side Highway, and Dennis would head over there every night on his motorcycle. The Eagle’s Nest was one of the legendary gay clubs in New York. It had been a longshoreman’s tavern that opened in 1931, but, prompted by the Stonewall riots in 1969 and the sudden growth of the city’s gay culture, the tavern’s owners painted the walls black and converted it into a gay bar in 1970. Not just any gay bar either: The Eagle’s Nest became the most popular gathering point for the leather-clad S&M crowd and biker groups, eventually spawning copycat clubs across the country. Dennis’ friend, Mark Martinez, remembered the scene well: “The Eagle’s Nest was the best leather bar,” he recalled. “It was isolated in a quiet, dark area by the water, and it reeked of menace and thrill. The place itself was hot and sweaty and exciting. Dennis was there all the time, and I hung with him. He was a beautiful man, and sexually voracious. It was difficult not to love him.” Another friend, Errol Jones, also remembers Dennis in this period. “For years, I ran into Dennis all over town. He seemed to be at every gay club,” he laughed. “You couldn’t miss him. For a start, he was good looking. And secondly, he was… well… willing and enthusiastic.” During this time, Dennis also had his first steady male partner. In early 1969, he’d met Skip St James. Dennis was 26 at the time, Skip was in his early 20s. Skip remembers first seeing Dennis in different bars, and he’d just stand there and stare, finding Dennis absolutely beautiful. Skip says that Dennis chased him around for a year or so, but Skip was always with somebody else. And then one day, they finally hooked up, became a couple, and were together for the next four years. Skip moved into Dennis’ tiny studio apartment on East 38th St – and Skip remembered they weren’t the only people who enjoyed the space… “I remember every Wednesday afternoon, he’d give his apartment to this woman who was married,” he said. “I think she was someone he worked with at Simplicity. Anyway, every week, she’d go there and have sex with her boyfriend. Obviously, we’d have to make ourselves scarce for a couple of hours. But that just seemed very New York back then.” For the first time, Dennis was in a steady relationship and living with his partner. But that didn’t stop him from enjoying the New York night life – as Skip remembers: “Dennis was very sexual. All the time. Sex was number one for him, and always on his mind.” Not just that, but friends remember that Dennis was always focused on his physical appearance. Skip recalls: “I remember wearing tackaberry buckles. Dennis insisted on wearing them, and he bought me one. He showed me how you’d hang your keys from left to right. I was new to all this. He was a showman more than anything else.” Needless to say, their relationship was not exclusive. As Skip remembers, “Dennis insisted it wasn’t exclusive. We had space for other relationships – either individually or together. He was very into three-ways, orgies, and cruising, and he loved leather bars. He liked to watch too. As far as sex would go, he was not a top. He was a bottom. In fact, his big thing was being on the receiving end – and getting fist-fucked.” This being the early 1970s, safe sex, well… it wasn’t really a thing. As Mark Martinez says: “Needless to say, Dennis didn’t use condoms. None of us did. Why would you? We expected to live forever.” Skip confirms this: “Dennis was never safe with sex at all. Once we went to Puerto Rico, and we went to the old part of town where there were all these shacks. I forget what the place is called. It’s supposed to be dangerous. We walked down there. I remember him screwing this Puerto Rican kid in broad daylight.” Another of Dennis favorite hang-outs was ‘The Barn’, a popular gay bar in the Village at 216 Waverly Place. The Barn was a hub that attracted a large crowd – and it had the added attraction of having back rooms. Skip still remembers ‘The Barn’ scene well: “We’d often go back there, always looking for a three-way.” Errol Jones again: “I remember seeing him come out from the restrooms in one place that was renowned for glory holes. So I approached him, and he was friendly. I suggested we go back to my place, but he gestured for me to join him in the back of this club. It was an area I rarely went because it was so dark. But he led me back there, and… well, it’s a happy memory.” For Dennis, it seemed that the only way to get rid of temptation was to yield to it. * What I found interesting about Dennis’ early life was the transformation from a quiet, reserved kid on Long Island, happy in his own company and interested in painting and carpentry, to the outgoing, sexually-liberated party guy in Manhattan. But the real paradox with Dennis was that by day, his New York life was still straight and unassuming. Though most of his friends were people from the bar and club scene, everyone else I spoke to was keen to emphasize his gentleness and kindness, and his love of animals. He still worked as an artist at Simplicity Pattern Company on Madison Avenue, just around the corner from the apartment: it seemed ironic to me that this regular in S&M gay bars spent his days drawing dress patterns for the American housewife. Skip remembers that Dennis was taking his carpentry seriously too, building wall to wall bookshelves and cabinets for their apartment, and spent time drawing with charcoals and painting with oils. And when he wasn’t trawling the bars – without or without Skip – Dennis could be found at any of New York’s jazz clubs. The 1970s was a vibrant period for jazz in the city, with several legendary venues like Village Vanguard, Birdland, and Blue Note hosting many of the greats in their autumn years as well as new emerging artists. Dennis was a jazz fan boy, always hanging around the stage doors after the shows so that he could meet his idols. His large collection of vintage 78s was growing – his preference was 1920s jazz – and he idolized Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, and Sarah Vaughan. He told Skip that he his secret dream was to be a torch singer. He started collecting antique firearms – particularly black powder guns, which had been the primary type of firearm for centuries before the development of smokeless powder and cartridge-based guns, and flintlock firearms. He became a registered gun owner and kept his collection in a cabinet in his apartment that he built. Dennis life seemed to be hedonistic and happy, but in the back of his mind, he had unfinished business. He still had the acting bug, and hadn’t completely given up on the idea of performing one day. Sure, he got the occasional part in no-budget off-off Broadway plays, but friends remember that it was generally unsatisfying to him. From time to time picked up the occasional modeling job, and one such gig was for a popular local gay magazine called ‘Michael’s Thing’ which was a pocket guide to entertainment around town. Ads for bath houses, porn theaters, escorts, and lots of sex… that sort of thing. Dennis appeared in a pictorial on his motorcycle on a bridge over the pool at the Ice Palace at Cherry Grove on Fire Island. His circle of friends loved the mock serious-looking poses, and Dennis took their affectionate ribbing in good humor. The modeling may seem to be a small part of his life, but according to his friends, it was a little more important to Dennis. And that was because Dennis took his looks very seriously. One friend compared him to Oscar Wilde’s character, Dorian Gray, saying, “We all care what we look like, but Dennis took it to another level. He was obsessed with his appearance and freaked out about getting old.” As Oscar Wilde wrote: “Youth is the only thing worth having.” Skip agreed, saying, “Dennis’ looks meant everything to him. He had a good body. He was just naturally trim, not muscular by any means. He was Italian so he was hairy. I never even knew until late in our relationship that he used to meticulously trim all his chest hair down. In short, he was insecure, and he could be self-absorbed. I don’t mean that he was shallow. He wasn’t by any means, but he took great care of his appearance, and he could be vain.” Another friend from the early days, Jon Bletz, remembered, “Dennis never met a mirror that he didn’t like. He was always stopping to look at himself, and ask whether his cheekbones were sharp or if his nose was elegant enough. It was as if he feared that he’d be loved less, or worse still, ignored, if he were to let himself go – so he became obsessive about his looks.” In 1973, Dennis and Skip split. “We had a good time, but most things come to an end, right?” is how Skip remembers it. “In some ways, I consider him the love of my life, even now.” Part of the reason for the break up was that Dennis had started a relationship with Joey Alan Phipps. Joey was an aspiring actor and sometime model for gay photo layouts, and was 11 years younger than Dennis. I found pictures of Joey and was struck by his youthful appearance. Even when he was older, he looked like a perennial teenager, the sort of cheeky, smiling kid you’d see on the Partridge Family TV show. According to Skip, Joey was a roommate of one their best friends: “Joey was a cute kid, and Dennis’ preference was blond Twinkies,” Skip said. “He did date a young black guy once for a short time, but mainly it was blonde Twinkies. I was a blonde Twinkie. Joey was a blonde Twink.” Dennis’ friend Mark Martinez remembers the time well: “Dennis was head over heels about Joey,” he recalls. “At first, we all figured it was just a physical thing, but pretty soon, Skip moved out and Joey moved in, and he and Dennis became inseparable.” * 4. Adult Films In 1974, Dennis decided to quit his day job in the Simplicity office. He was intent on making his living through his carpentry. Friends remember how he was proud of the idea of making a living simply by using his hands. There was something primordial about it, he said. He placed ads in local newspapers and picked up a series of freelance jobs making cabinets, beds, or tables for people furnishing their Manhattan apartments. It wasn’t a huge amount of income, but he was doing what he loved and everyone I spoke to remembers that he seemed genuinely happy. In reality though, Dennis had two other sources of income – and these were two activities that he kept quiet about. The first of these was that he’d started posing for photo sets for gay-oriented companies like Target Studio. A few years ago, I tracked down Jim French, an artist, photographer, and publisher, who’s best known for his alter ego, Rip Colt, and his association with Colt Studio that he founded in 1967 which he turned into one of the most successful gay porn companies in the country. Jim also had a sideline painting portraits that were used as album art for Columbia Records, for singers like Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, and Johnny Mathis – and over the years, Dennis had seen Jim at jazz clubs around town, but it wasn’t until he turned up at Jim’s offices to try out for some modeling work that he realized who Jim was. The audition was a success: Jim was taken by Dennis and offered him work immediately. Jim was older than Dennis – there was a 14 year age difference between them – but their similar interests – jazz, art, design – meant they quickly became friends. Jim told me that they also bonded because he too had worked as an illustrator and artist on Madison Avenue, just like Dennis, except that it’d been a few years earlier and Jim had designed textiles not dress patterns. Jim remembered: “Dennis was one of my favorite models from the time. Always willing, professional, and easy to work with… and he had a great look. It was easy to take great pictures of him.” Jim also remembered that Dennis had another way of earning money too: “It was an open secret that Dennis ran a personal ad in the Village Voice,” he said. “I’m not sure of exactly what the ad was for – but it was for services that were sexual in nature.” The story that Dennis was a sex worker – or more specifically, an escort or prostitute – is something that various people I spoke to remembered. Carter Stevens, an adult film director, who later became close to Dennis, said that he’d described himself as a ‘call-boy’ before he got into films. Jamie Gillis, the adult film actor went further: “He was fag hooker,” laughed Jamie. “He told me plenty of stories about fucking aging queens on the Upper East Side.” And Dennis’ old friend, Mark Martinez, remembers running into Dennis coming out of a restaurant one day with a distinguished older man on his arm – and studiously avoiding eye contact with anyone who might know him. Dennis later told him that the man was a “client” who was “very generous” to him. Then again, several other friends I spoke to insist that Dennis also had clients that were female. Dennis would just joke that it was no big deal, just regular ‘Midnight Cowboy’ kinda work, he said. In 1975, Dennis appeared in his first adult film, a gay porn movie by the director David Durston called ‘Boy ‘Napped’. For this movie, Dennis adopted the name Wade Nichols, created from his middle name and his father’s first name. Durston was one of the first people I spoke to about Dennis, and he still remembered him fondly, describing him as a gift to porn films, being great looking and having an incredible body that looked like he worked out every day – even though Dennis’ brother Richard insists that Dennis never really did any sports. Dennis’ co-star on the film was Jamie Gillis, who was a veteran in the business even back then. Jamie remembered his own beginnings as a period when he’d had performance difficulties, so he was surprised when this newcomer was seemingly so at home on a sex film set: “Dennis told me it was his first experience,” Jamie said. “And it’s not a natural environment. But he was very relaxed. I remember thinking how natural he looked around the other guys in sexual situations. I thought, Here’s a guy who’s not a stranger to having sex in front of an audience… Dennis could perform sexually, and act well.” It seems that at first Dennis just considered Boy-napped to be just a quick way to make some extra cash, but it was a success and he enjoyed it. He figured this could be an opportunity to make some more money with other films, and perhaps establish his own carpentry studio where he could make custom furniture. He found the first adult film parts through an agent called Dorothy Palmer, a tough old broad, straight out of central casting, who operated out of a small, cluttered office near the theater district. Dorothy was notorious for not telling her actors that a role being offered was in a pornographic film, instead leaving it for them to find out for themselves when they turned up on set and find they were expected to do a little more than just recite lines. This left a lot of actors with red faces and indignant reactions. That clearly wasn’t a problem for Dennis, and his acting ability, good looks, and sexual reliability quickly made him a hot commodity – and he was soon appearing in films such as Jailbait and Virgin Dreams. One early admirer was aspiring actor/director David Davidson, who fell for Dennis – much to the annoyance of David’s beard girlfriend, Erica Eaton. Davidson cast Dennis in two of his films, Summer of Laura and Call Me Angel, Sir, in the hope that it would win him favors with the newcomer. The problem was that Erica was also the producer of both films and she wasn’t impressed, which made the shoot of both movies rather problematic. Dennis, calm and unruffled as always, was amused by the love triangle, and enjoyed David’s favors on the side when Erica was away. Looking at Dennis in these early films is like looking at early silent films, in that directors hadn’t accounted for the fact that he could really act and so typically used him as a physical stereotype. But even so, Dennis shines – smoldering intensity, an immaculate porno ‘stache, and pronounced Fire Island tan-lines. The men’s magazines sat up and took notice, eager to profile the new star, and wrote breathlessly about visiting him in his beloved midtown apartment. This from Rustler: “Wade Nichols is special. The handsomest and most talented of this breed of super-men. Perhaps he is the last of the true matinee idols. Right now, he is content, building furniture, traveling and making erotic films. The Clark Gable of Porn was hanging a chandelier when we visited his hand-built (decorated, at least) Manhattan apartment.” Or how about this from Skin Biz: “Young, energetic, good-looking and bold. He comes to the door wearing a tight work shirt and faded blue jeans with a navy-blue handkerchief flapping from his back left pocket. His Manhattan apartment in a 5-storied brownstone is eclectically hip. The flavor is rustic, offset by a burning wood fireplace, beautifully shuttered windows and cabinets which he made himself. A motorcycle helmet, sitting on the floor, accompanies his Honda 550 garaged down the street. His telephone rings nonstop until he finally hooks it to his answering machine. His name is Wade Nichols, one of today’s swinging 32-year-old bachelors, but with one exception. While most men only dream about their sexual fantasies, this man indulges in them… on screen.” Dennis was fast becoming a star in straight porn films, which raises the question that is perhaps discussed more than any other when it comes to Dennis – and that is his sexual orientation. Everything that I had heard about him from friends and contacts – at least since his school days – was that he was exclusively interested in men, and had an active, varied, not to mention voracious sex life on the New York gay scene. Yet when it came to sex work – and this goes for the adult films and his escorting – people who knew him remember that he didn’t seem to have a preference between men or women. Many described him as simply being a gay man who was so sexual that he could perform with anyone. But occasionally, I did speak to someone who disagreed – and one of those was Jim French, the photographer at Colt and Target. “Dennis was this rare phenomenon,” Jim said, “in that he appealed to women just as much as he appealed to men. I always thought he was bi-sexual.” Fellow actor Jamie Gillis was impressed: “I knew he could act, but I was still surprised to see that he started turning up in straight films after Boy-napped. I figured that he was a guy who wasn’t interested in having sex with women… but he was just as natural in the straight films too.” Perhaps the most surprised person was Skip, Dennis’ previous partner from the early 1970s: “When I found out that he was making adult films, I was surprised,” Skip remembered. “Not surprised that he was doing porn, but that he was making straight porn… he never had relationships with women. He wasn’t bisexual in any way.” And then the sex magazines started to come across his gay films and his photo spreads for Target Studio, and they asked him about his orientation. Dennis was smart enough to know that future work as a hetero porn star probably depended on him taking a firm position, so he went out of his way in interviews to deny that there was anything to it: “I’m NOT by nature a guy who fucks guys,” he insisted. “I’m embarrassed by it. I only did it because I got five hundred bucks for two days work.” By 1977, Dennis adult film career was in full swing, and he was appearing in movies by the more notable New York directors such as Gerard Damiano, Radley Metzger, Carter Stevens, and the Amero brothers. As his star rose, something else was happening: Dennis’ mainstream acting aspirations seemed to be receding. Perhaps it was because his acting itch was being scratched, but it was unusual: the mythical cross-over from X-rated to regular films was the holy grail to most of the actors in porn. Even today, when I speak to the pioneers from the early years, they still talk about the forlorn hopes they once had that their sex film success might pave the way into a successful TV or feature film career. Dennis appeared to be different. In interviews, he insisted that he was content making porn, and had no desire to do anything else: “I have no pretensions of becoming a star,” he said. “I already tried legitimate acting and wasn’t making any money. Acting is a tough business. You can spend your whole life going to every casting call and only wind up with small character parts or walk-ons when you’re 80 years old. As an actor in these adult films, I do my best making them good. I’m serious about my work, but not about myself where I believe I’m going to be a star.” I asked his friends about whether this was true and most agreed, saying that one of the reasons for this was that Dennis was always a person who valued his privacy. He liked that that he was able to be a genuine star in the X-rated world, yet remain unknown outside of it at the same time. The adult film industry at the time was a strange beast: on the one hand, it had its own star system, awards, and media, and you could be idolized and admired in that world. Yet outside of that, it was also relatively anonymous – which was exactly what Dennis wanted. From speaking to the various people that Dennis knew in the 1970s, it was clear that Dennis liked to compartmentalize the different parts of his life. He had his family, then there were the adult filmmakers and actors, the gay bar and club scene, his music friends in jazz clubs, the antique gun club members, his clients – both for his carpentry work and his escorting, and there was his partner, Joey. He liked having different personas for different people – often contradictory ones: Here was a loner who enjoyed collecting guns by himself, but was the popular center of attention in social gatherings. He was devoted to his partner Joey, but make sex films and did sex work on the side. He was gay, but was a big star in straight sex movies. He was the epitome of cool, but was also an old-fashioned nerd, his favorite films being ‘Casablanca’ or ‘Captain Blood’, and the only music he listened to were 1920s jazz records. And everyone loved him and said he was thoughtful, kind, and gentle, but they also found him enigmatic and wished they could know him better. Dennis was also afraid of the two worlds colliding, and possibly facing public shame as result. He admitted this in an interview saying, “I have a fear of doing modelling jobs and having them find out a month or two later who I am and what I am doing in this business.” And then there was his family – his mother and brother who had moved down to live in Richmond, Virginia. Dennis visited them regularly. Richard remembers one visit: “Dennis came down, and asked me whether I’d ever been to the Lee Art Theater, which was the local adult film cinema there. I thought it was a strange question and I wondered why he asked it. Later, he told me he appeared in adult films, and I realized that his films had been playing in that theater and that he’d been on all the posters. My mother found out about it at the same time. I know she wasn’t too happy about it but she just didn’t say anything. That’s what she was like.” Richard had been curious when Dennis told him about the X-rated films, and he asked Dennis how he could have sex in front of other people. Dennis said that the nude modeling that he’d done at art school had got him used to it. In the meantime, the movies kept getting bigger. In 1978, Dennis starred in the lead role of Armand Weston’s ‘Take Off’. If any sex film can be described as almost autobiographical of its star, perhaps ‘Take Off’ was it. More intricately plotted that most porn features, it is loosely based on Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ telling the story of Darrin Blue (played by Dennis), a handsome but vain man who is obsessed with remaining eternally young – in his case, by keeping a stag film hidden in his attic. It was a high budget movie involving much of the business’ best talent – both in front of and behind the camera. Dennis received $2,000 for his role, declaring it the biggest, most beautiful porn film ever. And then there was ‘Barbara Broadcast’ – and the scene that introduced me to Dennis. If you’ve seen the film, you’ll already know what I’m talking about. It’s the restaurant kitchen scene. Two actors – Wade Nichols and the incredible C.J. Laing. No dialogue. No music. And no sex either – at least not for the first, and best, part of the scene. Just the industrial kitchen metal clanging in the stifling heat of a New York restaurant kitchen in summer. A restless and curious woman descends a staircase into the sweaty bowels of the building. She happens upon the kitchen. She wanders among the anonymous cooking staff but is invisible to all of them. And then she sees Him, shirtless and sweaty. She circles him smiling. He spots her, and returns her glance with an incredulous, amused gaze. The only noise is the sound of cooking pots banging against each other. These two are at the center of the universe, oblivious to the irrelevant world that circles them. She spies a large metal mixing bowl on the floor. An idea flashes across her mind. She laughs, and kicks the bowl, positioning it beneath her parted legs. She looks back at him, giggling manically. He smiles, his eyes narrowing quizzically like the hero of a low-rent spaghetti western. She starts to crouch over the bowl. The realization of what she might be about to do slowly dawns on him. Years later I spoke to the film’s director, Radley Metzger. He told me he felt dizzy when directing this scene. In 1978, Dennis traveled to California and Hawaii to appear in one of his last X-rated films, ‘Love You.’ The film was directed by former Hollywood actor and now director, John Derek, perhaps more famous for his marriages to Ursula Andress, Linda Evans, and, Bo Derek. ​The film featured a small cast, comprising of just Annette Haven, Leslie Bovee, Eric Edwards, and Dennis. John’s wife at the time, 22-year-old Bo Derek, was closely involved in the production – and became its biggest cheerleader when it was made: “‘Love You’ is sexy and erotic,” she told newspaper reporters. “The picture has very explicit sex scenes. It shows everything. It’s the first beautiful erotic, hard core film ever made. I showed it to 600 women libbers in a NOW meeting and they liked it. They said it was not degrading to women. The picture is about love, and you don’t play around with that.” Years later, Eric Edwards’s main memory of the movie was a nude wrestling match between him and Dennis – which he remembers because John Derek insisted they film it again and again. Eric said, “Dennis was a nice guy. Very respectful. We all liked him. But shooting that wrestling scene seemed to last forever, and John Derek seemed fascinated by it. I wondered if he was gay – which seemed unlikely because Bo was there at his side, watching all the time.” Within a couple of years, Dennis had become one of the biggest stars in the adult industry. He’d earned enough money to make himself self-sufficient, which allowed him to pursue his passions independently. For most people in the adult film industry, this represented success. What Dennis didn’t know was that it was just the beginning. * Tune in next time for the concluding part of ‘Wade Nichols: Like an Eagle.’ * The post Wade Nichols: ‘Like an Eagle’ – His Untold Story Part 1: The Early Years – Podcast 152 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

In the first part of our interview with Susan Hart, we heard about Sue’s early years in 1970s Los Angeles, growing up in a strict Catholic family, running away from home when she was 15, and becoming involved in a bad relationship. She escaped – into the army of all places, before finding a different kind of home, of sorts, as a prolific performer in the early adult video industry. But what is unusual and remarkable about her story is that Susan is willing to tell it at all. As you will hear in this concluding episode, Susan left Los Angeles in the late 1980s and pursued a professional career, living in constant fear of being confronted by her past. When we contacted her, we had no idea that it would bring out many of her worst fears. This is Sue’s story. You can hear the first part of our interview with Susan Hart here. This podcast is 60 minutes long. —————————————————————————————————————————————- Susan Hart: Adult Industry Photos                             * The post Susan Hart – Confidences and Confidence, Part 2: Podcast 150 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Previously on Chasing Butterflies – Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida: After Dolores Carlos’ retirement from acting in South Florida nudie films in the late 1960s, she still remained close to her circle of Cuban filmmaker friends, and none more so than José Prieto, Greg Sandor, and Rafael Remy. They would still meet regularly, and all three took an active interest in her daughter Marcy’s well-being. From time to time, they would joke about the fortune teller that the three men had consulted when they escaped from Cuba. Greg Sandor had moved out the California and had indeed found the money and respect that had been predicted for him. Similarly, José Prieto had found a degree of fame and notoriety following the success and outcry that followed the release of films he made, such as Shanty Tramp (1967) and Savages from Hell (1968). The only exception to the mystic’s forecast was Rafael Remy: he’d fared well and was not seeing the trouble and strife that had been foreseen in his future. Rafael had lived a lower profile existence but with more regular work than his two friends: due in part to his jack-of-all-trades skill-set and willingness to get involved in anything, he was always in demand. He was a cameraman, editor, lighting, gaffer, soundman, and production manager who was cheap and could always be relied on to deliver a decent job. But as the 1960s turned into the 70s, the film business was changing: the innocent exploitation films that had greeted them when they arrived from Cuba were giving way to more explicit sex movies whose legality was questionable, and Rafael was suddenly being offered an altogether different kind of job. Over the last twenty years, I’ve tracked down and spoken to many people involved in the Florida film business of the 1960s and 1970s. Their overlapping personal histories reveal an untold chapter of adult film history – and the hidden role that Cubans played in shaping it. These are some of their stories. This is the concluding episode of Chasing Butterflies, Part 4: Rafael Remy’s story. You can listen to the Prologue: Dolores Carlos’ story here, Part 1: Manuel Conde’s story, Part 2: José Prieto’s story, Part 3: Marcy Bichette’s story. With thanks to John Minson, Tom Flynn, Ronald Ziegler, Leroy Griffith, Veronica Acosta, Marcy Bichette, Mikey Bichette, Lousie ‘Bunny’ Downe, Mitch Poulos, Sheldon Schermer, Ray Aranha, Manny Samaniego, Barry Bennett, Randy Grinter, Herb Jeffries, Tempest Storm, Chester Phebus, Michael Bowen, Norman Senfeld, Richard Falcone, Lynne O’Neill, Something Weird Video, and many anonymous families and friends who have offered recollections, large and small, over the years. This podcast is 45 minutes long. * 1. Rafael Remy, the fortune-teller’s prediction – and Emile Harvard In the late 1960s, Rafael received a called from someone called Emile Allan Harvard. In a strong Eastern European accent, Harvard explained that he was new to Florida and was looking for a film man: someone who knew how to put a movie together, someone who knew where to find actors, crew, locations, and equipment. Harvard had heard that Rafael could be the man to assist him, and that Rafael was a man with expertise who’d built an extensive network of contacts in the years since he’d arrived penniless from Cuba. But Rafael was wary: he asked around about this new arrival in the state, but could find no one who knew anything about Harvard. Rafael was right to be cautious: Harvard was a mysterious hustler with an unusual history. Emile Harvard was a Romanian Jew, who’d started his adult life in 1930s Bucharest training to be a cameraman. And then in the build-up to World War 2, Harvard became a spy for the British. It was a volatile period in Romania as the country’s fascist dictatorship was aligned to Nazi Germany and the government was suppressing any opposition by force. Despite the dangers, Harvard loved the subterfuge. He was given a cover profession to conceal his espionage activity which was to be a newsreel cameraman for British Movietone News. He used these media credentials to gain access to key government sites and report on them to his British paymasters. It was a perilous assignment, but one he performed with alacrity. Romania was a key supplier of the oil for the Nazi war effort and so he also gathered information on the refineries and transport routes. Then he captured footage of Romanian military operations, like airfields and supply depots. But Harvard never seemed happy doing the same activity for long, and soon he was suggesting ways that he could sabotage Nazi efforts. His motivation was less born out of deeply-held ideological convictions, but rather out of a love of excitement and intrigue. A later acquaintance described Harvard as “an enigma, rather than a real person, a shady, shape-shifting person with many identities, a man who you felt you could never truly know.” The useful life of a spy is a limited one – and in 1943, his cover was blown when Harvard apparently blabbed to someone he shouldn’t have and was reported to the authorities. Life In Romania was suddenly impossible for him so his British employers moved him to Tel Aviv, a city then in British-administered Mandatory Palestine, where he got married and had a daughter, Esther. When the war ended, Harvard obtained Israeli citizenship before moving to Canada, first Montreal, then Toronto, where he started a career as a TV producer and director. He formed several small-time companies, including Harvard Productions, ostensibly to make television series for the American market. His wartime activity may have been over, but in truth Harvard still enjoyed living a partly fictional life, and with each career move, he inflated the achievements on his resumé which he generously shared with the press. He frequently spoke about working for MGM for twelve years, producing content for NBC, CBS, and Pathé, and having a successful career in Hollywood – none of which was true. A few years later, without any major credits to his name, Harvard decided on a radical change of direction: after a vacation to see his brother in Miami, Florida in 1960, he was inspired to announce that Harvard Productions was planning a Florida-themed club in Toronto to be called ‘Oceans 11’, after the Rat Pack movie that had hit the cinemas that year. It was to be an exclusive, high-end, rich-members-only place, which he described as a “health and entertainment” club. The Florida theme meant palm trees, a glass sun-roof, a 500-seat restaurant, nightly entertainment, and a swimming pool with a state-of-the-art wave machine – all to be housed on the top three floors of a Toronto office building. “It will be just like Miami Beach,” Harvard told the newspapers, who lapped up the project with excitement filling pages of breathless newsprint. It was ambition on a grand scale, the kind that comes from someone with a big imagination, not to mention someone whose own money is not at stake. Sure enough, the project failed when it was the funding failed to materialize, and so for Emile Harvard and Harvard Productions, it was back to square one. Just like the wartime spy Harvard had been, the next years were spent donning various different identities and promoting different business schemes. Some seemed serious, others were harebrained. They included hawking time-share properties, selling Jacuzzis, and offering dubious healthcare products (“at last a cure from embarrassing itching!” read the copy for one innovative cream.) Perhaps part of his success came from his appearance: Harvard was a tall, distinguished, and earnest-looking man who projected intelligent seriousness. But in 1967, Harvard was in the news again, this time posing as a doctor, prescribing Belltone hearing aids, and persuading pensioners to sign up for exorbitantly-priced payment plans. He was arrested and charged for his involvement in the fraudulent scheme. Each time he was embroiled in a scandal, Emile Harvard somehow managed to wriggle out, and re-emerge a year or two later involved in another dodgy deal. The irony was that he was never afraid of the media. Quite the opposite: he was first in line to give newspapers interviews and quotes, just as long as they spelt his name correctly. * 2. Emile Harvard and ‘Fear of Love’ (1970) And so, in the late 1960s, on the lam from his latest scam, Harvard turned up in Miami, in his early 50s, with his wife and two teenage children. This time he decided to return to his first love – filmmaking. A cursory glance at the local theater scene in South Florida convinced him that he needed to speak with the most powerful and influential player in town – and that was Leroy Griffith. Griffith’s theater business had come a long way since he moved to Miami in the early 1960s and bought the Paris Theater staging burlesque shows with Tempest Storm before meeting Dolores and moving into the sexploitation movie business with men like Manuel Conde. By the early 1970s, Griffith’s empire had grown to 12 adult theaters, including the Paris, Roxy, and Gayety theaters, and 15 adult book stores in the area, and he claimed to have produced 30 softcore adult films too. By now, Griffith was a well-known figure in Miami, though he was at pains to point out, in an interview in 1969, that he made films that specialized in ‘nudity’ and not ‘exploitation.’ ‘Exploitation’, he explained carefully, referred to “torture, fetishes, and lesbianism”, subjects that he just wouldn’t touch. Griffith was intrigued by Emile Harvard: here was an older, seemingly sophisticated European, who boasted of a successful Hollywood career and wanted to make films for him to exhibit. Griffith told Harvard to speak to José Prieto and Rafael Remy, two men who would give him a crash course download in Florida low-budget filmmaking. So Harvard did, and came away impressed with both the Cubans’ experience. But Harvard explained he wanted to make a different kind of flick. He didn’t want to join the crowded field of slasher films, biker movies, or nudie-cuties: he wanted his films to go further and push the envelope. In short, he wanted to put sex up onscreen. Real sex, sex that happened before your very eyes. Harvard formed a company, set up a small office, and offered José and Rafael in-house jobs working on his upcoming sex film projects. José was unsure. He didn’t seek film work as much as Rafael, happy to pick up temp jobs outside of the movie business when he needed money and wait for movies that interested him. He also wasn’t sure about making more explicit sex films. They were still illegal, right? He’d had enough of hiding and fleeing from government interest, and now he preferred to keep his head down and enjoy a quiet life. But Rafael felt differently. This could be a new income stream: the films would be cheap, so there would be more of them. That would mean more regular and reliable paychecks. He was in, and he persuaded José to give it a try as well. In early 1970, Harvard – using the nom de porn of ‘Emilio Portici’ – made their first feature, Fear of Love (1970). Harvard directed, José shot it, and Rafael, the production manager, corralled the available Cuban film crew from Calle Ocho to help out. It was a cash-in imitation of a recent sex documentary called Man and Wife (1969) which had been hugely successful. ‘Fear of Love’ was a similarly pseudo-instructional tale of marital problems caused by sexual woes that are resolved by a marriage counselor – and it too played well in Leroy Griffith’s adult theaters. * 3. ‘Fear of Love’ – the Live Show Leroy Griffith took note of the film’s success, and had an idea: he had a string of former burlesque theaters, so he suggested that Harvard convert the movie into a risqué live performance piece. Griffith even promised he’d finance a theatrical run on the stage at the Roxy, one of his Miami theaters. Harvard liked the idea, and the stage show opened in September 1970, advertised as “an educational drama in two acts.” The cast included one Barry Bennett, a fresh-faced 25-year-old New Yorker, in the central lead role of the sex counselor. Barry had studied acting at college, and Harvard had taken a shine to the kid, offering him the chance to star in movies soon to be made by his newly-formed company. Barry had just proposed to his girlfriend, and wasn’t sure that sex movies were for him, but he jumped at the chance to have a starring role in this high-profile stage production. One of the first people in line to see ‘Fear of Love’ onstage at the Roxy was the Miami Beach mayor. He wasn’t impressed. He reacted by writing a letter to the Dade County Grand Jury declaring that the play showed “live complete nudity, simulated sexual intercourse, and homosexuality among females.” As if that wasn’t bad enough, it also had an “extremely thin plot.” At first, it seemed that the play’s run would be allowed to continue as a Miami Beach Municipal Judge ruled that it was not obscene. But then the performance was busted, and Leroy Griffith and six cast members were arrested when they left the stage. They were ordered to get dressed, and taken to Miami Beach police station where bonds were set at $2,500 each. Griffith was booked for operating a building of lewdness, and the actors for lewd and lascivious conduct. Barry Bennett was arrested, even though he was the only actor who didn’t take off his clothes, and he was charged with participating in an obscene performance. The performance resumed two days later, whereupon the vice squad burst in – and arrested everyone all over again. Griffith protested loudly as he was led away, “People are being robbed out on the street, and yet you guys are in here?!” To which the arresting officer replied: “I think that people are getting robbed every time they watch this performance.” The result of the legal kerfuffle were two 30-day jail sentences and a $600 fine for Griffith, $300 fines for the naked cast members, and a $150 fine for Barry Bennett. When I spoke with Barry years later, he remembered that it was a serious moment for the cast. They were facing jail sentences for simply acting on stage. In October 1970, Leroy Griffith reluctantly took the play off the schedule, and his theater returned to playing adult films. As a sidenote: Griffith was getting beaten up from all sides. In 1971, he stopped showing adult films in some of his theaters so that he could exhibit the feature film ‘Che!’ (1969) starring Omar Sharif. It was an intentionally noncommittal version of the Cuban revolution that recounted Che Guevara’s transformation from doctor to political revolutionary in Fidel Castro’s coup. The movie greatly displeased many of the Cubans in Miami, especially those in the filmmaking community who’d worked on Griffith productions – and they retaliated in force. There were bomb threats, physical violence, and even an incident when a Cuban turned up at Griffith’s office brandishing a gun. It was all too much for the theater owner, and so Griffith decided to go back to the safer activity of exhibiting sex films. * 4. ‘Fear of Love’ – On Tour! Meanwhile, Emile Harvard wasn’t entirely disappointed at the controversy caused by the ‘Fear of Love’ production: he’d arrived in Miami with a splash, made some money, and was now ready for the next step. Griffith and Harvard felt there was more mileage to be obtained from the stage play so they convinced Jack Cione, owner of the Forbidden City Theater in Honolulu to put on ‘Fear of Love’ in a two-week run starting January 7th, 1971. Harvard flew over to Hawaii, and took some of the same actors from the Florida production, including Barry Bennett. Harvard was smart enough to know he had to play up the play’s socially redeeming features, so he gave interviews in Hawaii claiming that “a group of eight psychiatrists came to see the show and they said they were sorry it couldn’t have been seen on-stage 30 years ago – as it would have saved a lot of marriages.” But Harvard wanted to have his cake and eat it: when ‘Fear of Love’ opened, billed as “direct from Miami Beach”, it was also described as “a graphically nude work” and “the most shocking we’ve seen.” The campaign worked: ‘Fear of Love’ was a sell-out twice a day for its engagement. It was reviewed in the local newspapers as “a two-act play, seven actors, serio-comic dialogue, and a lot of simulated sex,” and the TV news ran several features on it. From Hawaii, Harvard took the play to San Francisco when it had a run at the Basin Street West Theater. Harvard heard that the local cops had been tipped off about the play’s run in Hawaii, and they were primed to bust it – so he tweaked the title, calling it ‘For the Love of Love’ in an attempt to throw them off the scent. It was a good idea, but the police were wise to his tricks and the play was busted on opening night, and three of the cast were cited for obscenity. The theater manager panicked and canceled the rest of engagement. Harvard was undeterred and just moved it down the road to the Encore Theater, where it opened in April 1971. Harvard downplayed the hiccup, maintaining that the Basin Street Theater shows had just been rehearsals intended for a private audience. Once again, Harvard granted interviews to the local newspapers, such as the San Francisco Chronicle, and once again he exaggerated the success of the play, saying that it had played for two months in Miami, seven weeks in Honolulu, and would transfer to Washington DC next. Now he boasted his own experience included “33 years of Hollywood and 122 major feature-length productions, eight television series, awards from the Vatican and the Edinburgh Festival, and a track record that included working with Universal, Paramount, and 20th Century Fox.” He claimed the reason he used a fake name ‘Emilio Portici’ was not because his stage play was pornographic, but rather because he was in the middle of “negotiating a major deal with MGM” and didn’t want to jeopardize it. All the bluster and boasting worked: the stage show was a hit again, and additional midnight performances were added to the twice-an-evening offering. At the end of the San Francisco run, Harvard decided to retire the play: it had had a good run, but it was expensive to produce, flying and accommodating his actors and crew, and paying for potential legal fees to defend lawsuits. He decided to focus his efforts and money on his fledgling film studio. In mid-1971, he returned to Miami, and dedicated himself to his new activity: making sex films. * 5. Rafael Remy and Emile Harvard – The Miami XXX Factory So you may be wondering what this all has to do with Rafael Remy. After all, this is meant to be his story. When Harvard got back to South Florida, he called Rafael, now his go-to film man, and explained the plan – and he wanted Rafael to be his right-hand man. His business model was simple: with the help of Leroy Griffith, Harvard would finance and produce sex features and shorts that he would send to labs up in New York for processing where they would then be distributed to theaters across the country. Harvard set up a studio at 1238 North Miami Avenue, and formed an inner circle of trusted associates that would deliver an inexpensive, rinse-and-repeat formula that would maximize profits. This small group consisted of Rafael, who would also be production manager, main cameraman, and editor; Jack Birch, a pockmark-faced wannabe actor who had aspirations to be a Jack Palance-style on-screen heavy, and Jack’s girlfriend Carol Kyzer, a quiet, blonde, part-time model who’d done topless layouts for Bunny Yeager; Brad Grinter, a veteran of the horror film scene in Florida who had just made Flesh Feast (1970), a terrible movie whose one claim to fame was its star, 1940s bombshell Veronica Lake; Brad’s son Randy, a 22-year-old who would be Rafael’s assistant; Harvard’s daughter, Esther, who was given the job of office manager; and finally there was Barry Bennett, the young actor who would take the lead performing role in the films. Carol Kyzer, photographed by Bunny Yeager Barry had an additional role – and a critically important one: he was the one who’d take the films to the labs in New York to get the film stock processed and the prints cut. It was a risky assignment: the U.S. Supreme Court still hadn’t come up with an agreed-upon definition of obscenity and so interstate transportation of pornography was a dicey proposition with offenders facing years of imprisonment. But Barry wanted the extra cash that Harvard promised him – so he figured he could deal with the dangers. Due to the potential illegality of what they were all doing, most of the group took different names to mask their involvement: Harvard reverted to his ‘Emilio Portici’ identity, Rafael Remy became ‘Roberto Raphael’ – if he had a credit at all, Brad and Randy Grinter used any name – just as long as it wasn’t theirs, and most of the time it wasn’t, Jack Birch had a variety of Western-macho names like ‘Jack Colt’ or ‘Michael Powers’, Carol Kyzer became ‘Carol Connors’, a name that she would use for the next decade, and Barry Bennett took the name ‘Marc Brock.’ Harvard would be the nominal director of the films, but in practice, he would share the responsibility with Rafael. For the next three years, Harvard’s studio churned out sex films on a regular basis: titles like Penny Wise (1970), The Good Fairy (1970), The Eighteen Carat Virgin (1971), Mary Jane (1972), Your Neighborhood Doc (1972), School Teachers Weekend Vacation (1972), and Female Stud Service (1972). Most of them were made according to a template loosely agreed with Leroy Griffith: each feature film would be roughly 65 minutes long, and would cost less than $15,000. Most were shot in Harvard’s small studio at 1238 North Miami Avenue, though they would occasionally venture out into fancy houses like a Coconut Grove mansion belonging to a friend of Harvard, Sepy Dobronyi. Nearly all of them starred Barry Bennett, who, as ‘Marc Brock’, quickly became Florida’s leading male porno star. He wasn’t the most charismatic performer you’d ever seen but he could be relied upon to use his improv and comedy skills to fill the holes in the scripts. Many of the movies also featured Jack and Carol, who soon became a married couple. All the films did ok but none were spectacular. Rafael worked hard behind the scenes, and nearly all of the crews consisted of his old Cuban friends, including José Prieto who came onboard for an occasional job. Randy Grinter remembers Rafael telling him that the softcore sex film business In Florida had been built by Cubans, and now it was Cubans who were responsible for the hard-core films too. And then in 1972, Deep Throat became a national smash-hit: it had cost $25,000 and had made several millions for the New York mob that distributed it. It was essentially a New York film: the financing came from the Brooklyn-based Peraino family, and the director, stars, and crew were mostly New York-based. But Emile Harvard didn’t view it that way: ‘Deep Throat’ was shot in Miami, making ample use of the exteriors and locations that he normally used like Sepy Dobronyi’s pad, and two of his featured players, Jack and Carol, both had roles in it. For someone who had labored for the previous two years to make money in the business, Deep Throat’s wild success felt a kick in the teeth to Harvard. He was mad and resolved to get even. Crew members who worked with him remember him shouting, in his thick eastern European accent, about the fact that the success should have been his. Harvard reacted swiftly, increasing production, widening his distribution, and expanding his business: the least he could do was to cash in on the new bigger market that ‘Deep Throat’ had created. * 6. XXX, after ‘Deep Throat’ (1973) Emile Harvard and Leroy Griffith were strange bed-fellows, but their relationship was symbiotic and so they had regular contact about the sex film market – and how to exploit it. For example, Griffith suggested ripping off ‘Deep Throat’ by making a movie called Dear Throat (1973) saying that people would see the ads in the newspapers but not realize that they were two different films with similar names. Harvard obliged, making a cheap knockoff starring, who else?, Marc Brock and Carol Connors. It was blatant plagiarism, and so Harvard used a different name for the film – P. Arthur Murphy – fearing reprisals from the mob owners of ‘Deep Throat.’ It was one of an increasing number of different identities he started to use, as the legal heat increased around adult films. Thirty years after the war in which he’d hidden his identity to work undercover, Harvard still seemed incapable of living a simple life as himself. Not that he’d grown afraid of publicity: Harvard gave a number of interviews to newspapers and magazines. In one of them, he used the name ‘Bruno’ – much to the amusement of the Cuban crews. One interview quoted ‘Bruno’ (“in a guttural European accent”) as someone who “used to be big in Hollywood” and that he was “only turning out this stuff between engagements.” The reporter was even invited to Harvard’s studio where he reported that all the technicians were Cuban, and that “Bruno’s studio contains, as scenery, an office desk, a couch, and a bed: the three essentials for a porno movie.” While he was there, Bruno warned him not to speak loudly as he was making a “quality movie” and the actors “are very sensitive about what they have to do.” Harvard may have been unhappy about missing out on the ‘Deep Throat’ deep cash, but he was still doing pretty well – a fact that was evident to many of the Cuban crew, as one of them remembered: “Emile was a very different guy to us Cubans, but he liked us and always had work for us. He paid by the hour in cash at the end of each day, but we never hung out with him or anything like that. And we could all see that he was making big money.” It was true: Harvard made no attempt to hide a pretty luxurious lifestyle – he lived on Palm Island, a man-made development, situated between the city of Miami and its glamorous suburb of Miami Beach. The area was famous for its celebrity residents, and neighbors had included gangsters Al Capone and Meyer Lansky, and the non-gangster, TV presenter Barbara Walters. Harvard drove to work every day from his large house in a new cherry-red Buick Centurion, and often talked about eating at Miami’s finest restaurants. It may have irritated some of the Cubans who worked for Harvard, but Rafael Remy was happy. As Harvard’s number two, he was faithful to a fault, despite the difference in the money they were earning. Rafael had become the glue who held everything together and he kept people happy. He ran a tight ship, making sure they had a right-sized team for every shoot, choosing actors and crew carefully, and making sure everyone was paid. In 1973, Harvard confided in Rafael that he felt fatigued. Worse he’d started feeling pain in his joints and bones. He figured he was just getting old – he’d recently turned 60 – and said he wanted to take a step back and delegate more of the filmmaking to the others, like Rafael himself, Marc Brock, and Jack Birch. When I spoke to Brock many years later, he remembered the change in how Harvard operated: “Emile was a control freak, and then all of a sudden, he handed the reins over to the rest of us, and so we started to alternate the directing duties.” * 7. ‘Daddy’s Rich’ (1973) – and the (next) Cuban Rebellion In October 1973, Harvard got Marc Brock to shoot his latest film, Daddy’s Rich. Marc was a reliable sex performer, having appeared in most of Harvard’s features and loops, but the Cubans on the crew knew he was a sloppy operator, being regularly picked up by the cops for petty misdemeanors like shoplifting, a small stash of weed, and minor DUIs. Marc put together a rough budget for the movie, but it was higher than normal. The film wasn’t materially different from the rest of Harvard’s efforts, but somehow Marc convinced a distracted Harvard that he needed more money this time. For a start, there were ten crew members – more than double the normal number – and there was an inflated cast of nine. Then there was the location: Marc arranged with Sepy Dobronyi that they would shoot most it in the same Coconut Grove house where ‘Deep Throat’ had been shot the previous year. Rafael argued with Marc that there was no need for the exterior location, but Marc was adamant. And then Marc withheld payment from the Cuban crew after the first day. Harvard had always treated everyone fairly and so the crew were suspicious Marc promised that everyone would be paid the following day, but the Cubans were unconvinced, a clash erupted, and they nearly came to blows. Sepy Dobronyi’s house, venue for the filming of ‘Deep Throat’ (1972)… and ‘Daddy’s Rich’ (1973) One of the crew that I spoke to years later remembered what happened next: “One of the guys, a grip on the shoot, took exception at Marc Brock after that – big time,” he said. “This grip was a new guy, and he was a hothead who liked to overreact. Next day, when the grip didn’t show, I called him up, and he just said, ‘Fuck Brock’. When I told him to do the right thing and come to the set, he threatened to call the cops and tell them about the shoot. We didn’t really believe him but we kept an eye out for the police that day.” Sure enough, halfway through filming, Rafael noticed a cop car slowly coming up the road towards the house. He shouted in Spanish “Get the hell out of here now!”, and the crew scrambled their equipment together, much to the confusion of the semi-clad actors. Remarkably all eight crew on set that day made it out over the rear hedge, and down the lane, where they jumped into cars and fled the scene. They left Marc with Stan, his assistant director, as well as six actors, in the house – who were all arrested. Marc and Stan were charged with manufacturing obscene material, while the actors were charged with lewd and lascivious behavior, and indecent exposure. Sepy Dobronyi, the owner of the house, wasn’t helpful, making a statement to the newspapers that he was playing tennis at a nearby park at the time – and that the actors had broken into his home at which point his house guests had called the police. Harvard, fearful of negative publicity for his business, called Leroy Griffith for help. Griffith snapped into action dispatching his main attorney, Alan Weinstein, to the precinct. Weinstein had been getting Griffith out of scrapes for years, including helping out when ‘Fear of Love’ had been shut down. Weinstein got everyone out of jail – and threw in an indignant statement to the press: “The police had no right to be on the premises,” he said. “There were more cops involved in arresting people taking pictures than there are on a murder case. Someone’s priorities are out of whack.” The arrests caused a mini-media storm in the Miami newspapers, and for a few months, Harvard had to curb back his movie production schedule. Harvard blamed Marc Brock: he’d once viewed Brock as a protégé and an investment for the future, and so he’d ignored Marc’s legal indiscretions because he was essential in transporting the films up to the labs in New York, as well as being a reliable performer in front of the camera, but Harvard had had his fingers burned by this. When Harvard looked into the finances of the film and saw that Marc had been using the inflated budget to line his own pockets, pilfering money for himself, he called Marc and told him he was fired. * 8. Trouble in Wonderland By 1974, it seemed that the immediate hardcore boom after ‘Deep Throat’ was starting to subside, and some of the players who’d been involved were looking to go legit – or at least, go more legit than being underground producers of hardcore smut. Leroy Griffith still played Harvard’s XXX films in his theaters as a cash cow source of income, but he was branching out in other directions. For one thing, he decided to revive the burlesque variety shows that he’d pioneered in Miami in the 1960s, this time opening a big production, ‘Hello Burlesque’ in Miami Beach with strippers, comedians, and music acts. Harvard was looking to diversify too. He’d acquired theaters of his own, including the Cameo at 1445 Washington Ave, and when he and Rafael Remy had to put their sex films on hiatus, they decided to make a different kind of film. Or as Harvard bellowed one day, “Let’s make a serious movie!” Harvard’s daughter, Esther, had written a sensitive script called ‘Of Gentle Heart’ about an escaped convict who befriends a young boy. It was originally intended as a touching character study, but when Harvard got his hands on it, he couldn’t help himself. His exploitation instincts returned, and he renamed it Fugitive Killer (aka Fugitive Women) (1974). Rafael was on hand as always to oversee the production. When the film was released, after a gentle opening on a wholesome and bucolic farm, it turned into a rape and murder exploitation film. Marketed with the catchphrase, “Once he started, he couldn’t stop! If he didn’t rape you, he killed you,” the film was a bizarre mess, and despite being distributed by Harry Novak’s Boxoffice International Pictures, Inc., it failed to raise much interest. It turned out that the film’s lack of success was the least of Harvard’s concerns. They say that bad news comes in threes, and it was certainly true for Harvard in 1974. He’d already scaled back his sex film production as a result of the bust of ‘Daddy’s Rich’, when he lost his son, Roy, who died after a short illness. Then, Harvard received an explanation for the fatigue and pain he’d been experiencing: he was diagnosed with bone cancer. He began treatment immediately, and told Rafael they had to put all filmmaking on hold. Another surprise awaited him though. In April 1975, the FBI turned up at his front door to arrest him: they’d been tipped off by a source that Harvard had been transporting pornographic films between Miami and New York. Two films were specified in the indictment: ‘Valley of the Nymphs’ and ‘Ball and Chain’, which were described by the FBI spokesperson as “really raunchy stuff.” Harvard faced five felony charges relating to “substantive conspiracy counts of interstate transportation of obscene matter,” two of which carried penalties of five years in prison. Arrest warrants were issued for three other people: two of them were Harvard’s New York associates, Charles Abrams and Sidney Levine, who had taken delivery of the films over the years when Marc Brock smuggled them into the city. Both Abrams and Levine were taken into custody. But the final arrest warrant was for Rafael Remy – except that Rafael got away. Somehow, after Harvard was arrested, he got word to Remy and told the Cuban of his arrest. Remy drove straight to Miami airport and left the country, flying to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, to avoid the Feds catching up with him. What nobody realized – not Harvard nor Rafael – was that the FBI source, the person who had alerted the authorities to Harvard’s pornography operation, was actually Marc Brock. After Brock had been arrested on the set of ‘Daddy’s Rich’ – and then fired by Harvard, he’d panicked. He already had a string of minor arrests to his name, and now feared that this time the judge would throw the book at him. So Brock decided to get his revenge on Harvard, and bought some protection for himself, by spilling the beans on how Harvard’s sex film business worked. Brock laid out how he personally shipped films to the New York labs, where prints were struck and shipped to theaters across the country. In return for singing, Brock was granted immunity from prosecution. Three months later, Remy tried to slip back into Miami. He didn’t want to involve family, so he needed someone to stay with. Of all the people he could have contacted, he called Marc Brock, unaware that Brock was working with the FBI. And so, when Remy landed at Miami airport, they were waiting for him. An additional charge of fleeing arrest was added to Rafael’s woes. As for Harvard, he was understandably nervous: he was the ringleader and owner of the business, the man controlling all the moving parts, and the mastermind behind the operation. So he did what he always did when he was in a bind: he hustled. Harvard told the Judge that his bone cancer was terminal, and that jail time would be dangerous to his health. He said that the real criminals were actually the two aging New Yorkers, Abrams and Levine. They were the ones who distributed the films far and wide, whereas he was just a cog in the machinery. In short, Harvard pleaded guilty and offered to testify for the government. The Judge consented, and Harvard was set free. After a life of bluffs, double bluffs, and downright lies, this time Emile Harvard was telling the truth about his health. His bone cancer quickly got worse, and in 1976, his health deteriorated. He died that August. Rafael Remy was eventually let off when the charges against him were dropped. Marcy Bichette, the daughter of his old friend Dolores Carlos, had put on a rock show to raise some money for his legal costs which made the ordeal easier. Marcy Bichette But he was now in his early 50s, and he’d had enough. Within the previous two decades, he’d gone from having a promising career in films in Cuba, working on global productions like ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ (1958) and ‘Our Man in Havana’ (1959) to fleeing Cuba to escape Castro’s revolution, and ultimately making a home in Florida sex films – all the way from the softcore tease days to now being arrested for hardcore films. He often joked that he couldn’t escape the fortune teller’s prediction that had foretold trouble and strife for him, but he consoled himself that he’d lived a full life. Now he wanted the easy life. * 9. Aftermath And so, the late 1970s marked more or less the end of the roads for the band of Cuban filmmakers who had revolutionized sex filmmaking in Florida. Dolores Carlos was living a quiet life still working in the bank, married, and with a new family. Her daughter Marcy toured with her band Bitter Sweet, until, by 1981, when the travel and late nights became too much. She’d been on the road for years, hadn’t had a break, and the lounge scene was dying. Marcy was 30, and figured it was time to accept that the acting and music dreams were over. She found a place in Miami not far from Dolores, and they remained close seeing each other often. Later on, they would go see Marcy’s step-brother, Dante Bichette, play baseball when his team came to Florida. Dante was an outfielder for various teams, and was a four-time All-Star and contender for the Most Valuable Player Award in Major League Baseball. Marcy and Dolores, early 1990s Marcy got work as a bartender, giving much of her spare time – and money – to local animal rescue centers. In 1983 she got married. The guy developed a drug problem, and though she stuck around for three years, his habit effectively ended the marriage. They divorced, and she never saw him again. Dolores and Marcy, mid 1990s From time to time, Dolores hosted reunions for the old Cuban gang, and they’d get together and swap stories. Gradually the reunions became fewer and less well-attended as one-by-one the various friends died. K. Gordon Murray, the exploitation film man, known for re-dubbing and re-releasing foreign fairy tale films for U.S. audiences, and who’d been the first person who had trusted Dolores as a potential filmmaker, ended up getting into trouble with the Internal Revenue Service. They seized his films and took them out of circulation. Murray protested his innocence, but the case dragged and, in 1979, before it could come to a conclusion, he died of a heart attack. As for Manuel Conde, after leaving Florida in the 1960s, he settled in California where he embarked on another stage of his sex film career by producing and directing hits such as The Danish Connection (1974), Deep Jaws (1976), and The All-American Woman (1976). By the early 1990s he’d developed dementia and he died in 1992. José Prieto and Raphael Remy, the two inseparable Cuban friends who’d escaped their homeland after Castro’s takeover, both passed – Raphael, relatively young at 60 years of age, in 1984, while Prieto died an old man, two decades later. In 1996, Dolores became sick and was diagnosed with cancer. The first person she told was Marcy. Marcy was heartbroken, but she immediately called each family member to tell them the news. At first the signs were good, and doctors hoped they had caught everything in time, but it was a false hope. It was a painful, drawn-out process, and Marcy did everything she could to make it easy for her mother. The family rallied – one family member admitted they all pulled together for Marcy’s sake as much as anyone else – but it was to no avail. Dolores died in January 1997. She was 66. Marcy and Dolores, mid 1990s * 10. Endgame In 1999, Marcy married her boyfriend, Tom Flynn. They’d met a few years before, and their first date was going to midnight mass with Tom’s mom. They become inseparable: Marcy had found the relationship she’d always wanted. She stopped bartending so she wasn’t out at night and could spend more time with Tom. She took up a new career – perhaps the one to which she was best suited of all: she became a pet stylist and groomer. Marcy, dog groomer Tom had proposed to her at the Hollywood Beach Hotel in Miami. The venue was significant: Tom’s parents had met there when they’d both been employed by the hotel years before. Not only that but it was also where Tom had been conceived when his folks had taken refuge in one of the rooms during Hurricane Diana, a fierce tropical storm back in 1960. The hurricane happened to hit Miami the night of Marcy’s tenth birthday. So it made sense that their wedding took place there as well. Marcy and Tom, wedding day Marcy and Tom spent the next two decades happily married in South Florida. Tom knew a little about Marcy’s films, and sometimes asked about her past but she didn’t talk about it much. The present and the future were more important to her. Marcy did appear in another film, ‘Marley and Me’ (2007) with Owen Wilson, where she had a fleeting, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it walk on part. And then three years ago, Marcy was diagnosed with colon cancer, the same that Dolores had. Marcy passed away in May 2021 at the age of 70. She was cremated and her ashes scattered at, where else, Hollywood Beach Hotel, where she and Tom had got engaged and married. I took Tom out for dinner recently and told him some of the stories I’d learned about Marcy, her mother Dolores, and the people they’d known and worked with. He was surprised to find out about it all, and shook his head in sad happiness hearing stories about her. Most of all though, he just missed Marcy. “I always wonder what I did in a previous life to deserve her,” he said. “I must’ve done something right somewhere along the way. She was a good person, and she was chasing butterflies to the very end.” Marcy and Tom * Postscript The United States has always been a nation of immigrants – some of whom, like the Cubans in this series arrived in the country fleeing from adversity. The vast majority have helped drive business creation, fuel innovation, and fill essential workforce needs, all core principles of American values. Their stories are often overlooked, but worse, all too often they’ve been maligned and mistreated. I’m an immigrant, and at the naturalization ceremony, the presiding officer will tell you that now you have become an American, the most important thing you can do is to hold onto where you’ve come from: the culture, the customs, the food, and the way of life. If you can do that, you’re told, you’ll be preserving what truly makes America great. You’ll be keeping this a nation that is welcoming of differences, diversity, and inclusion. People like Dolores Carlos, Manuel Conde, José Prieto, and Rafael Remy who came to this country, and chased butterflies of their own. * Marcy * The post Chasing Butterflies: Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida – Part 4, Rafael Remy’s Story – Podcast 148 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Previously on Chasing Butterflies – Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida: Manuel Conde had lived several lives even before he moved to Miami, Florida. He’d been born José Conde Samaniego in 1917 in Galicia, in northern Spain, though his family fled to Cuba after General Franco’s fascist coup d’état in the 1930s. And then, in 1959, Castro overthrew the government and enforced Communist rule over Cuba. Manuel, having already fled one dictatorship in Spain a few years earlier, took his family and fled to Miami, Florida, smuggling out a sexploitation film that he’d just made, called Girls on the Rocks. In Miami, Manuel met Dolores Carlos. Dolores was a newly semi-famous actress and model on the local scene, having starred in (and been arrested for) a successful nudism film, Hideout in the Sun (1960) made by Doris Wishman, which she followed by appearing in a handful of other nudie cutie films. Dolores introduced Manuel to the growing community of ex-pat Cuban filmmakers that had settled in south Florida after Castro’s coup, and together they shot a nudie short in 1961, Playgirl Models. Dolores and Manuel arranged a meeting with Leroy Griffith, an energetic, entrepreneurial force of nature, who’d recently moved to Miami and made a name for himself by acquiring a string of theaters where he exhibited burlesque shows and then adult sex films. The three of them made a full-length feature was called Lullaby of Bareland (1964). In 1966, Manuel and Dolores teamed up with Leroy Griffith to make a film with a decent budget – Mundo Depravados – starring Tempest Storm, one of the country’s best-known burlesque performers, and the movie was ostensibly directed by her husband Herb Jeffries, a suave and seductive film and television actor and popular jazz singer who had a large following in the African American market. ‘Mundo Depravados’ was released with eye-catching promo material – “A Sinerama of Sex and Fear!” – and is one of the most bizarrely entertaining film experiences you can have. Over the last twenty years, I’ve tracked down and spoken to many of these people. Their overlapping personal histories reveal an untold chapter of adult film history and the hidden role that Cubans played in shaping it. These are some of their stories. This is Chasing Butterflies, Part 2: José Prieto’s story. You can listen to the Prologue: Dolores Carlos’ story here, and Part 1: Manuel Conde’s story here. With thanks to John Minson, Tom Flynn, Ronald Ziegler, Leroy Griffith, Veronica Acosta, Marcy Bichette, Mikey Bichette, Lousie ‘Bunny’ Downe, Mitch Poulos, Sheldon Schermer, Ray Aranha, Manny Samaniego, Barry Bennett, Randy Grinter, Herb Jeffries, Tempest Storm, Chester Phebus, Michael Bowen, Norman Senfeld, Richard Falcone, Lynne O’Neill, Something Weird Video, and many anonymous families and friends who have offered recollections, large and small, over the years. This podcast is 40 minutes long. José Prieto * 1. José Prieto – Timing They say timing is everything. Sometimes it’s a well-oiled, precision-calibrated clock, but other times it just kicks you in the balls. Take José Prieto, for example. It was the late 1950s, and here was a man who’d spent his entire life waiting for that big break that would give his life meaning, that would fulfill his dreams, but fate always seemed to be a case of wrong place, wrong time, and that elusive, life-changing moment of success remained forever out of reach somewhere off on the horizon. José was a small, wiry man, consumed by nervousness, and his world-weariness hung on him a cheap, oversized suit. His head seemed constantly lowered as if trying to figure out the answer to life’s latest conundrum. Some dismissed him as dour and uncommunicative, but José had close friends who knew the truth. Guys like Greg Sandor or Rafael Remy. They’d worked with him in the Cuban movie business over the years, stuck around to get to know the real José, and found him a quiet, thoughtful, smart, and diligent man. Funny and mischievous even, especially when he’d had a few El Presidentes in him. José Prieto was Cuban-born and Cuban-raised. He’d lived in the country’s capital, Havana, all his life: it was a city of well over one million inhabitants, but it felt like a village to him. He mixed unobtrusively with everyone, from high-level government officials to pimps, petty criminals, and low-level gangsters. It wasn’t that he was particularly affable, but more because he wasn’t considered a threat to anyone. He knew his country wasn’t perfect: it was overseen by Fulgencio Batista, an un-elected right-wing military dictator who’d taken power by force in 1952. Batista’s regime was corrupt and becoming increasingly repressive, but José was smart enough to know the secret to living a comfortable life in Cuba was to fly below the radar and avoid the attentions of the men in power. If you kept your nose clean and your wits sharp, you could navigate this world comfortably. And so, José had become a proficient jack of all trades in the Cuban TV and film business. The 1950s was a ‘Golden Age’ for Cuban cinema: it started when many American films were screened in theaters across the country, partly due to Batista’s close ties with the U.S. government and business interests – and then continued when several American films were shot in Cuba during this time, taking advantage of the island’s proximity and exotic appeal. Suddenly local studios were established in Havana which increased local TV production. Cuba became one of the first Latin American countries to introduce television in the 1950s, which quickly became popular, producing a variety of hit shows, including comedies, soap operas, and live music programs. In a career that had been going over 20 years, José had produced, lit, shot, even acted in tens of these productions. Most of all though, he saw himself as a director, and occasionally he got the chance to be in charge. Some of his productions had been hits, others came and went virtually unnoticed, but he ploughed on, waiting for that one opportunity that would establish himself as a major player. But the Cuban film industry, for all of its strengths, was still small compared to Hollywood or Mexico, and the big breaks never came his way. * 2. ‘Our Man in Havana’ (1959) And then, José’s timing changed, and he was suddenly in the right place at the right time. It started when he read that Columbia Pictures were going to shoot a major motion picture right there in Havana. Not only that, but it involved three of his favorite people: it was to be directed by Sir Carol Reed, it would star Sir Alec Guinness, and it was based on a new book by Graham Greene named Our Man in Havana. The story was a satire that mocked the intelligence services, especially the British MI6, and their willingness to believe reports from their local informants. Alfred Hitchcock had been the early favorite to make the film, but he backed out when he couldn’t afford the film rights to the novel. José had read and admired the novels of Graham Greene, especially ‘The Power and the Glory’ and ‘The Heart of the Matter’, and his interest in the upcoming movie production only increased when it was announced that the film’s cast would include English acting royalty, Ralph Richardson and Noël Coward, as well as American stars like Burl Ives, Maureen O’Hara, and Ernie Kovacs, to help sell the film to an American audience. José’s opportunity came in the last weeks of 1958, when Graham Greene and Carol Reed visited Cuba. They were there to do two things – view locations and hire the local crew. When they arrived, Reed was shocked and concerned by what he saw on the streets of Havana: signs that Batista’s regime had become more vicious were everywhere, and Reed was concerned about how filming could take place against the backdrop of such violence and intimidation, after all, Greene’s book was hardly reverential to the Cuban dictator. Columbia Pictures suggested a local production manager as a solution: a real life ‘man in Havana’ who could navigate the political and logistical roadblocks. José saw his big chance and wrote to the studio asking to be considered. He was granted an interview, and made an impassioned case: he was more than just a fixer, he said. Havana was his backyard. He knew almost everyone, and if he didn’t know someone personally, well… he knew someone who did. He was experienced in putting together a movie production, he could arrange a complex shooting schedule, and he could do everything else that you couldn’t put a price on. Where would they find film equipment? José assured them that whatever they needed would be delivered immediately. Where would the best production accommodation be? José would get the choice rooms in the top hotel in Havana – the famous pink and white Capri Hotel, in reality, a casino cum whorehouse, owned by the Florida mobster Santo Trafficante, Jr., which was fronted by the entertainer, George Raft. Capri Hotel, Havana How would they find actors, or extras for the street scenes? José would produce any number of eager locals, excited to be in a big film production. What about the nightclub scenes… where could those be filmed? No problem, said José. He had a cousin who worked at the Tropicana, Havana’s most notorious nightclub, another location owned by the mob. What’s more, he could arrange for strippers, bartenders, and local business men to be extras in the scene as well. The production team was impressed. José had the experience, technical knowledge, and the network of contacts that they needed. He was hired on the spot, and in the records of the production, he was given the credit of ‘Assistant Director (Cuba location scenes)’. He even found jobs on the shoot for friends like Greg Sandor and Rafael Remy. Both had good credentials, having worked in local and international productions, Remy having already been an uncredited assistant director on John Sturges ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ (1958) starring Spencer Tracy, which had shot in Havana in the summer of 1956. And then on January 2nd 1959, the revolution happened: Fidel Castro overthrew Batista’s regime and the situation in Cuba changed overnight: military thugs carrying sub-machine guns were everywhere and wagons laden with peasants in chicken-wire cages were drawn through the streets. Castro takes power, 1959 It was a strange time to be starting filming a satire about spying, but the news wasn’t all bad for the film production: Graham Greene had been friends with Castro since an earlier visit, and he wasn’t fazed by any new problems the coup would cause. After all, their film mocked the previous regime of Batista in an unflattering light and also condemned American and British meddling: surely Castro would welcome this prestigious film production – and appreciate the celebrities from England and the United States. The first signs were good: the new revolutionary government of Cuba gave the green light for ‘Our Man in Havana’ to be filmed in the Cuban capital, and so the production moved forwards. But the same treatment was not applied to José. He was now treated with suspicion by the new leaders: Batista’s government had always let him do what he wanted but, bizarrely, he was now considered part of the former regime by Castro’s new government departments – and that made his new job rather more difficult. His first task, before the film started, was to apply for work permits for everyone. This entailed taking the script to the new Ministry of Labor and justifying each cast and crew position to them. Castro’s men listened and then complained that the novel didn’t accurately portray the true brutality of the Batista regime. Early Castro press conference, 1959 Then José received an unexpected offer. The casting director told him they needed a local to play the part of Lopez, Alec Guinness’ assistant in the movie. When José found them a selection of actors, the production team was unsatisfied. The casting director replied that the ideal person for the acting role was José himself. It was a significant part, with plenty of lines and screen time. José wasn’t keen. He was a background kind of guy, he said. Sure he’d acted before, but he was someone who preferred to stay in the shadows. His concerns were dismissed, and Alec Guinness was rolled out to try and convince him. Guinness took him aside and told him that both of their characters were anonymous personalities, mere cogs in the bigger story, men being manipulated by the machinery of government and men in power. Guinness said that it was important that neither of them acted: they just had to “be”. In that way, José’s personality was perfect for the role. In fact, his protestations were proof that he was the right choice. José was cornered: he’d idolized Guinness since the days of ‘The Third Man’ so how could he pass up the occasion to act with the great man? He reluctantly took the role – which he did in addition to keeping the job of local assistant director. (l-r) Alec Guinness, José Prieto Filming started on location in Havana in March 1959 just two months after the overthrow of the Batista regime. On the second day of filming, José was approached by an official from the Minister of the Interior demanding a copy of the screenplay. José explained he’d already provided this to Ministry of Labor. That was irrelevant, he was told. Furthermore, they wanted a full translation – and, a censor would be sent to the set each day, in addition to a government observer, both of whom would shadow José and check that he was not doing anything that was “compromising the revolution.” It made José’s life more painful, especially considering that the Ministry of the Interior quickly insisted that 39 changes be made to make it appear that life during the Batista regime had been even more unfavorable. At other times, José’s work on the movie was more comical but no less serious. Take beards for example: since Castro took over, a beard had come to represent a hero of the revolution. But one of the characters in the film – who played the role of Batista’s chief of police – had a beard. José was called in by the Castro officials and told that all beards in the cast and crew had to disappear. Unwanted pressure didn’t just come from the new government, it came from locals too: when extras dressed up in the blue uniforms of the Batista police turned up for filming, they were attacked by angry spectators. Once again, José had to intervene to find a solution. (l-r) José Prieto, Alec Guinness And then José got a message from Castro himself: the leader wanted to meet the people responsible for the production: Carol Reed, Graham Greene, Noel Coward and Alec Guinness. They were invited to Castro’s bungalow for the day. This would mean losing a whole day of shooting, so José went back and, in a diplomatic fashion, told Castro’s office that it would be difficult to accommodate. It was the wrong answer: José had greatly displeased the leader. He was dispatched back to the film set with a new instruction: the request had now become a demand, and the team were told to meet with Castro the following day. So the next day, Reed, Greene, and Coward turned up for the appointment with an uncomfortable José lurking in the background. They waited for Castro in a palace room surrounded by bearded revolutionaries who informed them that Castro would be turning up shortly. Minutes turned into hours, and José’s unease turned into terrified concern. In the end, the film team left without a meeting. Castro had made his point. Days later, on 13 May 1959, Castro did meet the film crew when he visited the set while they shot scenes at Havana’s Cathedral Square. After he posed for pictures, Castro spoke to the press saying, “Any film company can make any picture they want in Cuba. There will be no censorship in my country. You can make the film exactly as you please. Those are my orders.” (l-r) Maureen O’Hara, Fidel Castro, Alec Guinness on the set of ‘Our Man in Havana’ Not strictly true, however. The on-set censor continued to make frequent demands to José that changes be made – in one of the nightclub scenes, for example, he felt that too much leg and breast was visible. Another time, he demanded that the whole day’s shooting footage be handed over to him for cuts to be made. But José had grown in confidence, and now he refused, standing up increasingly to the authorities, and invariably winning more battles along the way. José did his job well in a way that few others in the world would’ve been able to do, and the film company was pleased with him. He’d done the hard, silent, behind-the-scenes tasks, delivering anything that was requested without fuss, in his usual intense, quiet, and serious manner. He earned the nickname ‘José Practical’ as a result of the calm, pragmatic way he worked. (l-r) José Prieto, Jo Morrow, Alec Guinness But privately, José was far from feeling calm, and his fears were growing stronger by the day. He knew he’d be protected from Castro and his generals for the duration of the filming, but what would happen after the crew packed up and went home? He’d stood up to the government heavies on countless occasions during the film shoot, but how would they treat him in the future? At the end of seven-week shoot, José started noticing things. Friends told him they’d been approached and quizzed about him. They’d also been asked questions about his local associates on the movie, like Greg Sandor and Rafael Remy. He noticed his mail was going missing, and he wasn’t paranoid by nature, but was he imagining it or was he being followed every day when he set out to go to work? It was too much for the veteran film man. He called his contact at Columbia Pictures and asked to have his name removed from the credits of the final version of ‘Our Man in Havana.’ He got a mixed message. They told him they could drop the ‘Assistant Director’ credit, but that the acting credit was unavoidable. After all, his face was up there on the screen for all to see. José tried putting his foot down, but he was told that the best they could do was for him to use another name. José was relieved, but, somewhere along the way, the instruction was lost, and when the film came out, the name ‘José Prieto’ was prominently displayed in the credits – just after the big-name English and American actors. José didn’t want to hang around. In the aftermath of the film, he wanted out before he got picked up and found himself in trouble. He packed his bags, and fled the country, heading over the sea to a new life in Miami. * 3. Life in Miami José didn’t move to Florida by himself. He was accompanied by his two main compadres in the Havana film business, Rafael Remy and Gregory Sandor. The grass looked greener on the other side of the water for all three, and so in 1961 they embarked on new lives in America. The U.S. was the center for capitalism and the center for filmmaking, right, so why not become part of the gravy train? They figured they could seek work quietly at first and earn a steady living in Florida. In fact, it was Sandor that facilitated their move as he was an American, hailing from Burbank, California. Each of the three men wanted to continue working in the film business, but each had a different plan. The one thing they all had in common was that they wanted low profiles, to work under the radar, at least at first, with José especially fearing possible reprisals from the Cuban government. Greg Sandor had it easiest: being an American who’d lived and worked in Cuba for years, he was the least worried. He was essentially a cameraman, who saw that his best opportunity would be in the world of commercials and industrial films. For José and Rafael, it was more difficult. As new immigrants in the country, they headed to the Freedom Tower in Miami – the central location used by the government to process and document refugees from the Cuban Revolution that administered the Cuban Refugee Program. Rafael Jesus Remy was always the more cavalier one. His plan for anonymity was to find film work, any film work he could, but use a variety of mildly different names to mask his participation. Sure enough, over the next years, he would be known as Jesus Remy, Gerry Remy, Ralph Remy, and many others – sometimes even his actual name Rafael Remy. As for José, he was the fearful one. Film work was all he knew, but he’d had direct – and often confrontational – contact with Castro and his men, and so was reluctant to do anything that might draw attention to himself. He was the first of the three to find work – a lowly bellboy position in The Everglades Hotel, a popular mid-range option for business travelers in downtown Miami. It was a steep and strange decline in status for a man who was coming off being an actor and assistant director on one of the biggest motion pictures of the decade. Everglades Hotel, Miami – late 1950s One night the three amigos found themselves outside a tiny shopfront in Little Havana in Miami with a sign outside advertising a fortune teller. They’d had a few drinks and laughed their way into the cramped room, where each sat on an upturned fruit basket and in turn had their future explained to them by a mysterious woman adorned in scarfs and jewelry. The mystic explained she used a combination of sacred instruments, including palm nuts, pieces of coconut, and Spanish tarot cards, to see into the future. She told them solemnly that Greg Sandor would find money and respect. José would find fame and notoriety. Then she paused, as if alarmed by the reading: Rafael Remy would find trouble and strife. Inevitably perhaps, all three of the filmmakers came into contact with Dolores Xiques, now more commonly known by her film and modeling name, Dolores Carlos. She introduced them to the Cuban expat community, a group growing larger by the day but one that was still tight-knit. At the heart of it was Dolores, the caring mother hen looking after men from a country that she’d never visited but that she felt passionately about. She’d become the connective tissue binding the community together. Dolores became particularly close with José. It was an unlikely friendship: she was an American single mother in her early 30s, living with her teenage daughter Marcy, and was the star of scores of nudie films and men’s magazines, who had the trust of film producers, theater owners, movie directors. and crew members. He was a dour, taciturn Cuban filmmaker in his late 40s, often paranoid and fearful, struggling with having left his country so hurriedly. Dolores took José to see her friend K. Gordon Murray, the film producer whose company Trans-International Films bought children’s movies from Mexico and dubbed them for the domestic market. She was still trying to persuade Murray to finance nudie pictures, but apart from re-releasing a perfunctory effort called Eve or the Apple (1962), featuring nudie inserts of Dolores, she hadn’t had much luck in convincing him. He was making too much money with colorful, surreal fairytale films, like ‘Santa Claus’ (1959). But Dolores was persistent, convinced that Murray would eventually come good and move into film production, and she took many Cubans she met at the Freedom Tower to his offices at 530 Biscayne Blvd in Miami. Murray was impressed with José, especially when he recognized him from his appearance in ‘Our Man in Havana’. He found work for José on a variety of film projects, which José accepted if he could them fit in around his Everglades Hotel doorman duties. Dolores also connected José with other filmmakers, many engaged in making South Florida nudie pictures. José became popular, willing to do a variety of jobs, invariably uncredited, often underpaid, but always skilled, professional, and useful. Just one job credited his involvement: an assistant director job for the Cuban man-of-many-hats, Frank Malagon. Malagon had set up a film studio to make films as a way of funding his anti-Castro activities, and his first feature was a nudist movie, Six She’s and a He (1963). Malagon’s partner, Richard Flink, was credited with directing the film but as neither Malagon nor Flink had much experience, it was largely directed by José himself. Many of the crew roles on the film, as with many other similar efforts at the time in Florida, were taken by expat Cubans – which made José feel at home. In the early 1960s, in his first years in America, José worked on tens of films in an uncredited capacity. The Everglades Hotel provided him a one-room lodging in the basement of the building and he worked shifts there, so if was given enough notice, he could usually arrange to be free to work on a film set. * 4. ‘Dios te salve, psiquiatra’ (1966) In 1966, José received a call from his old friend, Greg Sandor. Sandor had done well since they’d arrived from Cuba. He’d found cinematography work on commercials in California, as well as camera work on a few exploitation films. His recent credits included a couple of Ted V. Mikels films, ‘Dr. Sex’ (1964) and ‘One Shocking Moment’ (1965), as well as two Roger Corman produced, Monte Hellman-directed films that starred Jack Nicholson ‘The Shooting’ (1966) and ‘Ride in the Whirlwind’ (1966). Despite his growing success, Sandor had kept ties with his Cuban countrymen in Florida, and he had an idea for José. Sandor was helping another Cuban immigrant, Guillermo Álvarez Guedes, put together a Spanish language production, Dios te salve, psiquiatra (‘God Bless You, Psychiatrist’). Sandor said to José that the time had come for them all to come back and work together again just like in the old days in Cuba. Times were changing, he said, and José should be less fearful and more ambitious, and seek better quality film jobs. Sandor also enlisted Rafael Remy for the new film, as well as other members of the Cuban community in Miami. José took some persuading: being a bellboy for the past years had been demoralizing at first, but it had given him an easy and quiet existence. Giving that up was a risk. José sought advice from Dolores and K. Gordon Murray and both encouraged him to strike out for himself, and return to more regular film work. Murray even promised him film projects that would be funded by his company. So José accepted the job of assistant director, on condition that his on-screen credit would only refer to him as ‘Pepe Prieto.’ He took a temporary leave of absence from the Everglades Hotel for a few months to be the assistant director on the film. The management at the Everglades liked José and were understanding, but also a little skeptical: they told him they’d keep his position open for a while – just in case this film malarkey didn’t work out. (l-r) José Prieto, Guillermo Alvarez Guedes, Gina Romand ‘Dios te salve, psiquiatra’ was a broad comedy of roaming love and Latin muchachos, and starred Gina Romand, a Cuban-born, big name in Mexican films of the time. It was a solid and bankable project, but most of all, it was a reunion of old friends: everyone returned to work for lower salaries simply because they wanted to re-connect with each other again. Talent that had been dormant for years suddenly returned to life. Dolores put together the promotional push that resulted in extensive media coverage and a big premiere. The film turned out to be a modest success in Spanish-speaking areas of the country. Gina Romand José’s first job after ‘Dios te salve, psiquiatra’ was a quickie, Sting of Death (1966), about a deformed man working for a marine biologist who takes revenge on the people that mock him by experimenting with a deadly jellyfish. The film was another for the studio established by Frank Malagon, for whom he’d directed the nudist movie, Six She’s and a He (1963) a few years earlier, and José still just wanted his on-screen credit to just refer to him as ‘Pepe Prieto.’ And then Dolores called. Her long-term strategy with K. Gordon Murray was finally starting to pay off: after years of trying to persuade him, she’d convinced him to fund an exploitation film. Murray insisted that the craze for nudie movies had long passed: instead, he was looking at a more topical feature, albeit something that would still appeal to the sex-and-violence drive-in audiences, and he told Dolores that he’d found the right vehicle and wanted her help. Murray was looking to make a film that would hit the jackpot – and he wanted to know if José would be interested in directing? * 5. ‘Shanty Tramp’ (1967) Shanty Tramp (1967) is one of the most notorious, shocking and scandalous films of the 1960s. It tells the story of a sleazy evangelist who makes a play for a small town’s local tramp, but he’s shocked when he finds that she prefers a local black man over him. Furious, he stirs up the town against the couple causing fights, murders, lynch mobs, ruined reputations, and broken homes. So who came up with the whole concept? The incendiary script, with plenty of nudity, sex scenes, and violence thrown in, was largely written by one of K. Gordon Murray’s staff members, Reuben Guberman. Guberman was a flamboyant New Yorker – or a “fat, Jewish maverick” by his own description. He’d left New York many years before as a teenager to seek his fortune in sunny Miami, Florida, and embarked on a ridiculously varied career that included being a hamburger cook, a drive-in restaurant manager, radio announcer and producer, editor of the weekly Dade County Times-Union newspaper, and political candidate. Perhaps his most surprising career move was discovering that he had a natural gift for lip-synchronization – an essential component part for dubbing foreign films and cartoons for Murray. When Guberman met K. Gordon Murray it was a match made in heaven. Together they invented the looping process of dubbing: this consisted of splicing short segments of dialogue from a movie into a loop, and then playing them back to the voice actor allowing them to watch the film-loop over and over and record an English language track matching the on-screen actors’ mouths as much as possible. Working for Murray in his tiny office in nearby Coral Gables which he called Soundlab Inc., Guberman’s job was to translate the original language scripts into English dialog for the voice-talent, and in many cases, he also provided some of the voices himself as well. But by the end of mid 1960s, the market for dubbed films was waning, and both Murray and Guberman were looking for a new market: they decided that ‘Shanty Tramp’ should be their next project. Murray and Guberman had already started to put the film together and hire a number of the actors when they offered the directing gig to José. José accepted even though he was still working at the hotel: he was hungry and ready to return to the party. Being the head-strong, stubborn guy he was, his first step was to fire most of the actors who’d been offered parts, and he assembled a crew almost completely composed of Cuban expats from his Little Havana hangouts. At the heart of the new film project was his old friend Rafael Remy who ended up doing both the cinematography and editing. ‘Shanty Tramp’ credits showing the Cuban crew If the subject matter was akin to lighting a touchpaper of controversy, the casting of the movie proved to be a forest fire. José wanted proper actors for the lead roles, not the usual untrained and inexperienced sexploitation regulars, so he turned to Dolores and asked her to find suitable principals for the film. Dolores knew all the Cuban crew workers in Miami, but her knowledge of actors – especially serious thespians – was less thorough. She had an idea though: her teenage daughter, Marcy, had recently started acting semi-professionally with the Miami Merry-Go-Round Playhouse, and Dolores – ever supportive of Marcy’s endeavors – was a regular in the audience. She’d become friends with some of actors there, and successfully approached a number of them for the main roles in ‘Shanty Tramp.’ The lead role of Daniel, the black man at the center of the film, was credited to ‘Lewis Galen’: in reality, this was Raymond Aranha, an experienced and highly-rated probation officer for the Dade Juvenile Court. In his spare time, Ray was a keen thespian, and a regular member of local theatrical troupes such as the Coconut Grove Playhouse. Ray changed his name for the purpose of the film, realizing that the movie was bound to elicit strong feelings, and he wanted to protect his promising local government career. He later commented, “I wasn’t worried about the nude scenes. That’s life. It was the interracial part that would be an issue, and I knew I was in the Deep South.” Ray Aranha (aka ‘Lewis Galen’) Then there was the role of Emily, the Shanty Tramp herself, the sexual temptress whose lustful feelings for Daniel cause the race riots. This role was played by ‘Lee Holland’: in reality, she was an attractive, quiet, and reserved Dade high school teacher called Eleanor Vaill. There was even a role for Vaill’s real-life husband, Otto Schlessinger, who played the part of her father. Eleanor Vaill high school portrait   Eleanor Vaill (aka ‘Lee Holland’) in ‘Shanty Tramp’ For the role of the head of the motorcycle gang, Dolores suggested Lawrence Tobin, who had directed her daughter Marcy’s latest play at the Merry-Go-Round. Then there were roles for extras and even they ended up being problematic: such as the vicious motorcycle gang. parts Somehow Dolores managed to convince four actual Broward County police officers to act in the film. She even got them to agree to use their police car – completely unauthorized, of course. Lawrence Tobin (aka ‘Biker Savage’) and four Miami police officers (aka bikers) Ironically one of the only principal people who kept their real name was José himself, who finally came out of the shadows, anglicized his name, and became ‘Joseph Prieto.’ Most of the film was shot in the tiny Empire Studios in Dania, a neighborhood twenty miles north of Miami – even though the publicity would boast, “Filmed in the heart of Georgia’s emotional-infested swamps.” Some of the exteriors were shot on location at a local bar, and just to indicate the extent of the racial climate at the time, Lawrence Tobin, who played role of the amoral head of the motorcycle gang, later recalled that the lead actor, Ray Aranha, wasn’t even allowed in the bar to shoot the scene on account of his race. Ray Aranha and Eleanor Vaill Over the years, I’ve tracked down and spoken to many of the people who appeared in front of camera in ‘Shanty Tramp’ or who worked behind it. I’ve been fascinated by the film, and keen to ask them for their memories. One common theme from these conversations is how clearly each of them remember the shoot – but more than that, how vividly they remember what happened next. ‘Shanty Tramp’ exploded onto the screens in June 1967. K. Gordon Murray had already told local newspapers that this was not an ordinary film event, and that he was entering it into the Cannes Film Festival. Radio and TV stations were bombarded with publicity for the film, and newspapers featured theater ads showing the poster for the film which featured artists impressions of scenes together with an explanation: “Sorry! Because of the abnormal nature of this film, we cannot use any photos in advertisements.” The ads also advised that uniformed police would be present to protect ticket buyers, and that viewers should “come early as thousands may be turned away.” The blanket coverage in the newspapers was so extensive that the pages reserved for letters from readers was taken over by morally upright citizens writing in to complain… which of course only served to increase the film’s exposure. Sure enough, it played everywhere with playdates all over the country. The film itself was certainly provocative. José and his Cuban crew filmed this Southern Gothic melodrama, poking every boundary and taboo and mining the material for every sleazy angle. The ‘n’ word was clearly used on several occasions in the movie, but according to several crew members, the producer Murray, writer Guberman, and director José changed their minds about leaving it in at the last minute. Using their dubbing expertise, the word was removed from the soundtrack before film prints were struck. Attempts to tone the racial elements down though had no effect, and the outraged reaction continued. By September, the State Attorney warned any theater owners showing the movie were liable to be arrested under the state’s new obscenity law. The new statute centered around protecting juveniles from smut and violence, saying: “It is a felony to exhibit a film which exploits illicit sex or perversion or is obscene. By this we mean, lewd, filthy, lascivious, indecent, immoral, sadistic which intends to arouse lust or passion or to corrupt the morals of the youth.” As a promotional gimmick, Murray added a tear-off clip at the bottom of the newspaper ads, which read, “Teenagers! Have the Form Below Signed by Your Parent or Guardian! Sorry! You Will Not Be Admitted Without It!” The Tropicaire Theater was one of the venues that was targeted by the state, and its manager was happy to oblige: “I’m pulling it,” he said to The Miami News. “This movie is too far out for me. Usually, these pictures don’t live up to the advance billing. But this one is for real.” The State Attorney sent an investigator to view the picture, and his report confirmed their worst fears. It was swiftly reported in the newspapers. He wrote, “Various scenes depict prostitution, rape, incest, and even a sex orgy by a motorcycle gang. In the climax, a girl nude except for her panties is shown stabbing her father to death with repeated slashes of a butcher knife.” The investigator also noted that “the drive-in audiences were loaded with under-age viewers.” The loud controversy was music to Murray’s ears. He declared the film was “a smashing success” at more than 1,000 theaters in the three months since its release. Up to now, the story had been one of a scandalous movie that may or may not be obscene that was raking in dollars at the box office. But the newspapers wanted more. They wanted a scapegoat. They discovered the background of some of the main participants: they found that the African American lead male was actually a probation officer, the nude hussy anti-heroine was a school teacher, and some of the biker gangs were cops. Bingo. The news coverage for the next months was taken up by the various arguments that followed. Dolores took the breaking news badly. After all, she’d been the movie’s casting director, and had persuaded all these people to be in the movie. For the last years, she’d taken personal pride in helping people find film jobs, but now she felt personally responsible for the scandals that were about to engulf their lives. The police were the first to be attacked. They started by arguing that it was a lie. Then they said that any footage of the four officers cast in the film had not made the final cut and so no transgression had occurred. Finally they conceded that the policemen in question had all been fired. Meanwhile, Eleanor Vaill, the school teacher who’d used the name Lee Holland, was nowhere to be found. It was reported that, after being fired from her school job, she’d fled to Chicago – where she disappeared and was never heard of again. Actually none of that was true: Dolores had planted that story with the newspapers as a damage limitation measure to shield the ‘Shanty Tramp’ leading lady. In reality, Vaill had voluntarily left her teaching job and she was still living in Miami. In fact, she’d become a full-time actress, and continued to appear in local theater productions, including several with Dolores’ daughter, Marcy. Vaill and her husband did eventually move back to their home town of Chicago, where they became staples of the dinner theater circuit for years to come. As for Ray Aranha, the African American who’d used the name ‘Lewis Galen’ for the lead role of Daniel, despite being commended for his work as excellent probation officer, he was nevertheless fired for being “guilty of conduct unbecoming of an employee of the county.” The case went to an industrial tribunal with ‘Shanty Tramp’ being shown to the panel of the Personnel Board, but Ray never got his job back. I contacted Ray years later, and he laughed remembering the events of 1967. It turned out that getting fired was the best thing that happened to him, he said: “After that, I decided to focus on the theater – acting and writing. And that changed my life for the better.” Ray went on to significant success, winning the Drama Desk Award in 1974 for Outstanding New Playwright, and then acting on Broadway, in films, and on television many times in the years that followed. While all the hoopla was playing out in the press and in the courts, and changing people’s lives forever, what was José’s reaction? After all, this was the man who had feared his name ever appearing in the news again. José had laid low, and somehow it worked. The cover stories and features and scandal had focused on nearly every aspect and every person in the film, except for him. Miraculously, he had remained anonymous. When the dust settled, Murray sent him a bonus from the large profits he’d earned from the film: a check for $1,000. José, normally quiet and reserved, was in the mood to celebrate, and so he called up Rafael Remy and the rest of the Cuban expats who’d made the film, and they headed to the finest restaurant in Little Havana in Miami where José paid for everyone’s food and drinks. The previous decade had been a strange whirlwind journey for him: José had gone from being a minor player in kick-starting the Cuban film business, to a major production director and acting gig in ‘Our Man in Havana’, before escaping Communist Cuba, and now directing a controversial race-baiting sex film. It was a lot for a quiet man to bear. But those who knew him all agreed: he’d never been happier. He was back doing what he enjoyed best. So he went to see the management at the Everglades Hotel, his home and employer for the previous five years, and told them they needed to find a new bellboy. He was a filmmaker again. * Tune in next time for another story in ‘Chasing Butterflies’. The post Chasing Butterflies: Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida – Part 2, José Prieto’s story – Podcast 146 appeared first on The Rialto Report.