The Rialto Report

When you think of adult video vixens in the 1980s, you may think of Ginger Lynn , Christy Canyon , or Traci Lords . But they weren’t the only fan favorites on the scene. Take Tina Marie : she was like a Robert Crumb goddess come to life. She started out in men’s magazines and sex loops in the early 1980s, and quickly moved on to starring roles in feature films before stepping behind the camera to...

A look back at Ray's controversial life and work in his last years, in light of the investigation into the disappearance of several women.

After the death of his wife, Ray Horsch returned to the world of adult film.

A few years after first meeting Ray Horsch, I returned to his home in Philadelphia to film an interview with him. It was there, and in subsequent visits, that I met a number of people who knew him: filmmakers, artists, a number of women who moved into his house for varying periods of time. I also met his former wife Amy McHale with whom I corresponded for a while. It was only this year, I learned...

When I first visited Ray Horsch at his home in Philadelphia to interview him, most of the conversation was about New York in the early 1970s. More specifically, Times Square. The adult movie theaters. The live sex shows. The people who worked in them. The strange, seedy ecosystem that flourished there long before Times Square became the Disney-fied tourist destination we know today. Ray had been p...

Today the Rialto Report re-visits our relationship and the various interviews with Ray Horsch , the subject of a ongoing murder investigation. This isn’t a normal Rialto Report series: needless to say, much of it is disturbing. If this isn’t for you, we get it. We’ll return to more typical content soon. You won’t have to wait long, we promise. In the meantime, If you know any information that may...

The concluding part of Brandy's story - and tales of Buttman, John Stagliano, People's Court, being blacklisted, and the infamous flame wars.

Over the years, Brandy Alexandre always seemed to have a habit of turning up at unexpected times and in unexpected ways. For example, she went to work in the adult film industry – after being raised a Mormon. Even more surprising – she was already familiar with sex movies due to a string of inappropriate older boyfriends who’d introduced her to adult theaters: the result was a teenage curiosity fo...

Kathy Harcourt was an English XXX star in America in the early 1980s. She appeared with Lisa DeLeeuw , Seka , Billy Dee , and Ron Jeremy in adult films and 8mm loops. She featured in magazines, stripped at the Melody Burlesk , turned up at all the industry parties. And then she was found dead in Manhattan’s East River amidst rumors of a mob hit. Over the years, her life and death has been a myster...

In the previous episode of The Complete Disappearance of Cheri Champagne : After years of hearing mysterious stories about the 1980s adult film actor, Cheri Champagne , I was keen to see if she was still around and interested in talking about her life. The trouble was that no one seemed to have heard from her for almost forty years. There were many reasons why she intrigued me: from the strange be...

Cheri Champagne was active in adult films in New York in the early 1980s - a pretty, dark-haired performer, an unusually cool, devil-may-care manner, and a reputation for being enigmatic. What happened to her has remained a mystery. Until now.

In this era where everyone seems to be chasing follows, likes, shares, and clicks I have to admit I try not to look at which Rialto Report interviews have had the biggest audience. The reason is simple: I’ve wanted to cover all people from the golden age of adult film, regardless of their notoriety, because all stories are interesting and informative, big or small, famous or unknown. But if you re...

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 th...

In the first part of my interview with Tanqueray, we heard the striking story of Tanqueray’s early life – long before she became such as viral sensation on social media as a result of her appearances on Humans of New York. She was called Stephanie and she’d had a tough upbringing, raised by a strict single mother in an all-white upstate New York area, and then a teenage pregnancy, an unfortunate r...

Back in 2014, a woman called Stephanie contacted me at The Rialto Report . She described herself as ‘a designer of erotic costumes’ and shared some memories of the old days when she said she’d made garments for many people in the early adult film business. Vanessa del Rio , Gloria Leonard , Bambi Woods , and others, she said. I must admit I didn’t follow up very quickly – after all, I reasoned, is...

The former adult film star Tiffany Clark passed away this week. Some might say this comes with the territory when you cover an industry that began almost 60 years ago. But while Tiffany started in the business in 1979, she was only 18 at the time and just 65 when she died of cancer. Others might ask why I would be sad about somebody I interviewed once almost 10 years ago. But I lucked out with Tif...

Memory is a tricky thing. Small details can burn brighter than some of life’s defining events. The act of recall and the power of suggestion can fundamentally alter the content of our recollections. Experiences that seem like they should be tattooed onto our psyches can be lost to time.  And memory can be selective. Whether that’s by conscious choice, subconscious bias, or pure forgetfulness varie...

Zebedy Colt is one of least likely characters we expected to feature in a podcast interview when The Rialto Report first began. For a start, Zebedy passed away in 2004 at the age of 74, after a wildly varied and peripatetic acting career that had started with small parts as a child actor in Hollywood in the 1930s and continued on to regional theater and summer stock across the country, including s...

Back in the day, everybody seemed to have an opinion about Ron Jeremy – and maybe that was part of his appeal. He was probably the most ubiquitous of all male adult film stars, and certainly the most polarizing. In the early days of The Rialto Report , I was keen to interview him. My interest has always been in tracking down stories from the golden age of adult cinema that have never been revealed...

In 1964, Lorey Kaye, a twenty-year-old from New Haven, CT, moved to Manhattan to start a new life in the big city. Lorey was a fresh-faced, dark-haired hippie, who attracted attention as much for her headstrong, determined, street smart attitude as for her striking good looks. She was hired as a waitress in a new nightclub that had just opened in Times Square – called Steve Paul’s ‘The Scene...

In  ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976), Travis Bickle railed against social decay, moral corruption, and the depraved filth he perceived in the near-bankrupt New York City of the mid 1970s. An insomniac, alienated Vietnam War vet, his taxi trips revealed the city to him as a “sewer” filled with “scum” that needed to be “cleansed”. Around the same time, another taxi driv...

It all started over thirty years ago. I thought it would be interesting to track down people who’d been involved in the very first adult films because I was intrigued to learn what they remembered about the time – and find out how the experience had affected their lives afterwards. Bear in mind, this was over 30 years ago, before the era of social media, search tools, and online databases, so I ha...

Jeanna Fine passed away last month. If you’re a regular listener to The Rialto Report , you’ll know that we like to interview a person from a different angle. It’s a more intimate and personal exploration, rather than just revisiting someone’s fleeting moments on camera. And it can be a challenge to convince someone to open up in that way. Sometimes it’s quick and easy to persuade a person t...

Regular listeners will know that over the last few years, I’ve spoken to many female adult film actors who were active from the 1960s through to the late 1980s, and, as interesting as their experiences were, it also made me intrigued to find out what it was like to be a male in the business during the same time. So a few months ago, I contacted actor/director/agent and X-rated film producer, Bud L...

The adult film business is unique in that it has usually focused on women as the figureheads and main stars, and therefore often relegated men to the background. Over the last years, I’ve spoken to many female adult actors – from the 1960s through to the late 1980s, and it’s been interesting to see how their memories, experiences, and lives were affected as the sex film business changed.  Bu...