The Rialto Report

Cuba may only be 90 miles from the southern tip of the United States – a leisurely boat trip on a calm day – but since the 1950s, the island has seemed part of a distant world, too many communist miles away. It wasn’t always the case. For years, Cuba was almost an extension of America, almost another star on its star-spangled banner. Links between the two countries dated back to when the Cuban cig...

A few years ago, I was researching an article for The Rialto Report when I came across a 1980 radio program from WBAI, a popular New York City station that specialized in progressive and alternative voices at the time. This particular show featured a prostitute named Iris De La Cruz. Iris wasn’t directly connected to the adult film scene in New York at the time – though she was friends with severa...

Howard Ziehm , the pioneering adult film director, theater owner, author, polymath, and friend of The Rialto Report died last week in California. Over the years, I visited Howard on several occasions at his beautiful hill-top house in Malibu in California – “It’s the home that porn built”, he would joke. And he was right: Howard had enjoyed a long career making and exhibiting adult films, and in h...

By the mid 1990s, Dian Hanson could’ve been forgiven for thinking that she’d finally made it – and that nothing was going to derail her career in magazine publishing that had started two decades earlier. She’d had an improbable and volatile journey, from a troubled upbringing and difficult marriage, to working as a nurse in rural Pennsylvania, before somehow launching an explicit men’s magaz...

In the first part of ‘Dian Hanson, Chronicles,’ Dian spoke of her upbringing in the northwest United States, an often shocking family life with a difficult and frightening father – who just happened to be the supreme grand master of a sex-magic cult. It was  a difficult childhood that included bullying, sexual assault, and running away from home, culminating in an unhappy marriag...

Dian Hanson is a unique figure from the world of men’s magazines in New York in the 1970s and 1980s, a world that overlapped strongly with the adult film business. Last time, in the first episode of this podcast series, we heard about her surprising, and often shocking, upbringing: a hippie and high school dropout from Seattle, her father was supreme grand master in a sex-magic cult, and a childho...

If the name Dian Hanson rings a bell for you nowadays, it may be because she’s a senior editor and writer for Taschen , the gold-standard, high-end book publishing company, where she has over 50 books to her credit. In fact, she’s also the so-called head of the company’s Sexy Book division where she’s overseen impressive and weighty tomes that include The Art of Pin-Up , The Book of Butts , Breast...

Geri Miller may not be the most famous name from 1960s sex films, but she may well be the most interesting. With a story that includes Andy Warhol, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Joe Sarno, the Peppermint Lounge, Ringo Starr, Joe Dalessandro, Mick Jagger, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, the Young Rascals, and stripping in front of the Queen Mother’s house, Geri lived a technicolor life in a psychedelic era. Th...

The Rialto Report recently acquired a collection of behind-the-scenes photographs and stills from the Stephen C. Apostolof / Edward D. Wood Jr. film Orgy of the Dead (1965) which we are sharing below.  Many of them feature Pat Barrington , which gives us the chance to revisit our podcast about her remarkable life If you’ve never heard of her, Pat was big in the 1960s, when she was a popular actres...

On the previous episode of Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story : On the heels of a very public divorce, Chuck Traynor and Linda Lovelace were finally separated and began to forge their own paths. Chuck wasted no time partnering with up-and-coming adult star Marilyn Chambers , becoming both her manager and her husband. Linda combined a professional and romantic relationship with producer and choreog...

On the previous episode of Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story: To everyone’s surprise, the sex film Deep Throat (1972) had become a financial hit and a cultural phenomenon. And everybody involved was determined to capitalize on the film’s success – and that included Chuck Traynor , husband and manager of Linda Lovelace , the movie’s leading lady. When the film blew up, Chuck put Linda throug...

F.M Bradley died last month just a few weeks shy of his 70th birthday. I can’t say I was surprised – Bradley had been in a nursing home ever since I found him in 2021 after years of looking. He was bedridden, and we had a few false starts before we finally settled down for our interview due to his ill health. But even though he was unable to walk, whenever we’d video chat it was easy to see...

Michael Findlay was a young New Yorker, fascinated with film and the mechanics behind it. Julian Marsh was his alter ego, a movie director possessed with a singular twisted vision. Richard Jennings was a sadistic, deranged movie character, one-eyed, confined to a wheelchair, and hell bent on revenge. The films Michael Findlay made seemed to be so single-minded, unique, and personal, that they begg...

Sex and violence have been part of movies since the very beginning. Ever since Thomas Edison made and exhibited ‘The Kiss’ in 1896, an 18 second clip of a couple embracing, moviegoers have been shocked by onscreen depictions of lust. The outrage over ‘The Kiss’ was understandable: it was one of the first films ever shown commercially to the public, and kissing in public was prosecuted at the time....

In the first part of The Rialto Report ‘s conversation with Lisa Cintrice , we heard about her colorful upbringing, from a mobster father, to becoming pregnant as a teen, and then a shotgun wedding to the brother of a notorious New York strip club manager. All of a sudden, she found herself at the heart of the New York adult film business, and what’s more, starring in a movie, The Starmaker...

Lisa Cintrice had a colorful life: for a start, her father was a New York mobster who was related to the most famous Italian priest of all time, Padre Pio, a man so terrified of God that he manifested stigmata, the same wounds in his hands and feet that Jesus suffered when he was nailed to the cross. And for much of her adult life, Lisa was afraid too – largely because of her career in adult film....

Seventy is no age to die. Especially not for a man as decent and good as Harvey Cohen. But last week, Harvey, who used to be the adult film star known as Herschel Savage , passed away in his home in Los Angeles. Despite his performing pseudonym, Harvey was a gentle, sweet man, who’d chosen his nom de porn in an attempt to combine the nerdy New York Jewish self that he was with that of the sexual s...

In the 1970s, New York was a city on the edge: it was on verge of bankruptcy, beset by a crime wave, and overrun by the rampant sex industry that was taking over Times Square. Different people reacted to the city’s critical state in different ways. Some, like Phil Russo, an idealistic cop in the Public Morals Squad, were hellbent on reversing the trend, doing everything they could to identify and...

In 1970s New York, hardcore sex films and adult bookstores raged across Times Square like a forest fire. It was great for the sex business, but it also depressed tourism and commerce, and emboldened organized crime in an already deeply beleaguered city. The cops fought back, busting theaters and sex shops on a regular basis. It had little effect: most of the sex operators just paid the fixed fine...

As we were preparing this weekend’s post, we received news of the passing of Neville Chesters, legendary figure of the 1960s UK music scene, adult film producer (using the name Neville Chambers), and friend of The Rialto Report. As a tribute we are reprising our 2018 interview with him, in which he talks about his remarkable life. R.I.P. Nev. (25 June 1945 – 27 April 2023) * This story...

On the previous episode of Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story: When budding film director Gerard Damiano saw Linda Traynor/Boreman giving head, he stopped shooting the short sex loop he was planning then and there, choosing instead to make a feature-length movie around her unique talent. Linda had her doubts, but her husband Chuck was all in on the idea, loving the $1,200 payment that came with th...

This is Season 2 of Svengali – ‘The Chuck Traynor Story: Part 4, The Making of Deep Throat … What Really Happened?’ Previously on Season 1 of Svengali: Chuck Traynor was born in Connecticut in 1937 to a single mother. Raised by his grandparents, he relocated to Florida when he was young, joining the marines when he finished high school. After leaving the service, Chuck married an...

New York. Mid-1970s. A new counter-cultural scene emerged. Punk was marked by attitude, antagonism, and angry, anarchic music. It attracted a new breed of musician and fan. Non-conforming, anti-authoritarian. It expressed itself visually in provocative new ways. Ripped T-shirts, leather jackets, Dr. Martens boots, and spiked mohawks. Overnight, punk caused a jagged splash across mainstream America...

In the first part of the Sue Nero interview, we heard about her upbringing and subsequent move to San Francisco where she started work in the adult film industry. In this concluding episode, Sue remembers her move to New York, where she worked at the Melody Burlesk and the Harmony Theater, as well as becoming a fixture in the XXX rated film business. It’s been a long difficult road. But what’s imp...

Some interviews take longer to happen than others. As for Sue Nero : well… it’s complicated. Let’s start at the beginning: Sue Nero was a larger than life, super-hero of a porn star. She harked back to the golden age of Hollywood movie queens – voluptuous, busty and shapely – an hourglass of beauty, but at the same time, she embodied pure sin and lust. She was the girl next door – if y...