The Rialto Report

It was early summer in 1977, and the adult film actor, Jamie Gillis , should have been on top of the world. He was perhaps the most successful and recognizable male figure in the relatively new, relatively glamorous, world of adult entertainment. He’d just starred in The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976), the most accomplished sex film to date – and he suddenly found himself to be a public star of...

Kay Parker , one of the biggest names in golden age adult film, passed away this last week. She was 78. Kay was a west coast actor who entered the business through a friendship with performer John Leslie , and an appreciative director, Anthony Spinelli. She featured in well-regarded films such as ‘V’ – The Hot One (1978), Sex World (1978), Dracula Sucks (1978), Firestorm (1984), The Da...

Kitten Natividad died in Los Angeles this past week. The cause was kidney failure after suffering from cancer. She was 74. Kitten was a genuine cult pop culture figure who, over the last six decades, had a wild life and a storied career: she started out as a cook and maid for Stella Stevens – the Hollywood actress famous for ‘The Nutty Professor’ and ‘The Ballad of Cable Hogue’. Then in the late 6...

In the first part of ‘The Trials of Chesty Morgan’, Chesty endured unimaginable hardships in her life – a Jewish girl growing up in Nazi-occupied Poland, both her parents killed in the conflict, followed by a difficult life in Israel, and the eventual promise of a new life in the United States before her husband was killed in a botched robbery. Chesty decided to become a burlesqu...

Bionca was one of the more formidable adult film stars of the late golden age. She was a tall, striking performer, appearing in over 350 films and countless magazine spreads for 20 years from 1984 through to the early 2000s. She was known for her often-outrageous on-screen performances and smoldering lesbian scenes, and was one of the first to make films in Europe as well as the U.S. with producer...

In 1970, Chuck Traynor – former Marine, sexploitation dabbler, successful Miami bar owner and less successful drug smuggler, met Linda Boreman – a hippie drifter who’d recently had her newborn taken from her and was recovering from a harrowing car accident. They were both looking for something new, a fresh start – Chuck wanted financial opportunities that would prove his macho wo...

When Linda Lovelace met Chuck Traynor , it would have profound implications for both of them. And it would impact adult film and popular culture in America. If they hadn’t met, there would be no Deep Throat (1972), no porno chic, no mainstream debate about an adult film in the wake of the sexual revolution. When Linda and Chuck first met, both were at crossroads in their lives. Chuck had been thro...

We all know the story of Linda Lovelace and Chuck Traynor , right? Linda was the star of the groundbreaking adult film Deep Throat , and Chuck was Linda’s husband and manager. When the movie was released, Linda did tons of television and newspaper interviews sharing how happy she was to showcase sexual liberation and personal freedom. She capped the publicity rounds with a book, ‘The Intimat...

For a time in the 1970s, Harry Reems was the biggest and most recognizable male sex star on the planet. He was a porn Burt Reynolds, famous for his mustache, his sense of fun, and his sexual prowess. One critic described him as being all the Marx brothers rolled into one, a big mess of zany humor, tinged with a hint of melancholy. Harry’s public life had a three-act structure: He was famous becaus...

The film director and production designer Alfred Sole passed away this past Tuesday at the age of 78.  I first became aware of Alfred about 15 years ago when I was looking through the New York Times archives. I came across a 1973 article about a controversial adult film called Deep Sleep . The article caught my eye because the Times almost never covered porn movies and because the story started ou...

Charles William Rotsler (1926–1997) was an award-winning artist and science fiction author. Bill was also involved in the burgeoning adult film industry starting in the late 1950s, first as a stills photographer on the set of adult films, and later when he wrote, directed, or acted in over 20 adult films during his career with Boxoffice International Pictures, In 1966, he created Adam Film Quarter...

The pioneering adult film, Deep Throat , was shot 50 years ago today. The scene was south Florida, and it was Super Bowl Sunday, January 16th, 1972. The local Miami Dolphins were playing, and so the streets of the city were deserted, meaning it was a perfect time to make a film when you didn’t exactly want to draw attention to what you were doing. The filmmakers were a group of New Yorkers who’d m...

Last week a new docu-drama premiered on Netflix. It’s called Crime Scene – Times Square – and we were pleased to be Producers on it. The show examines how the environment in New York’s Times Square in the late 1970s and early 1980s – a nearly-lawless area rife with drugs and sex work – made it possible for one man to commit, and nearly get away with, unthinkable acts of violence. Many of the chara...

June Mack was dead. And no one was on the hook for her murder. Somehow being shot by Russ Meyer made her almost-famous, but being shot by a mystery killer made her almost-forgotten. She’d come to Tinseltown to escape. To start a new life – and she’d been a movie star, bared her charms in magazines, and shared her body in nightly schemes. She made money, bought cars, and lived in clover. But then J...

Somehow June Mack was a footnote in her own life. She was a footnote in film history after she appeared in a Russ Meyer film, Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens . A footnote for her family who forgot she existed. A footnote in L.A., the jaded city where she’d re-invented herself. And a footnote in a shooting that left her dead. It seems strange. June Mack was big, black, and beautiful. So why d...

Let’s admit something: as much as the so-called golden age of adult film was a glamorous era, where sex movies competed with Hollywood blockbusters in theaters across the country, it wasn’t the most racially diverse workplace for a male performer. There was Johnnie Keyes, the African American star of Behind the Green Door in the early 1970s. There was Billy Dee , an accomplished mixed-race actor,...

The film director, Wakefield Poole , passed away this week. He was 85. I remember a girlfriend once catching me sat behind a pile of men’s magazines. Playboy, Mandate, Cheri magazine… I was engrossed in them, oblivious to her or anything else taking place around me. After looking at me for a while, she commented: “It’s really true. You do read sex magazines for the articles.” That’s also tru...

In the first part of the mini-series ‘The Secret Life of Dolly Sharp’ , I went in search for the enigmatic Deep Throat actor with the mysterious past, who seemed to disappear from the face of the earth back in 1972. I spoke to Gerry Damiano and Harry Reems who worked with Dolly on ‘Deep Throat’, to actors who appeared in other films with her like Fred Lincoln and Jamie Gill...

In the first part of ‘The Secret Life of Dolly Sharp’ , I went in search for the enigmatic Deep Throat actor with the mysterious past, who seemed to disappear from the face of the earth back in 1972. I spoke to Gerry Damiano and Harry Reems who worked with Dolly on ‘Deep Throat’, to actors who appeared in other films with her like Fred Lincoln and Jamie Gillis , even one of...

In the first part of ‘The Secret Life of Dolly Sharp’ , I went in search for the enigmatic Deep Throat actor with the mysterious past, who seemed to disappear from the face of the earth back in 1972. I spoke to Gerry Damiano and Harry Reems who worked with Dolly on ‘Deep Throat’, to actors who appeared in other films with her like Fred Lincoln and Jamie Gillis , even one of...

Much has been written about the film Deep Throat since it premiered in New York in June 1972. You may even know the story by now… how the film was the biggest hit of the ‘porno chic’ phenomenon, how it turned actors like Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems into overnight stars, and how it all broke box office records. What’s also true is that the lives of those involved were never the same. – Lin...

There’s a saying that goes, “Tragedy plus time equals comedy.” We’ve adapted that to say, “Golden age adult film plus time equals The Rialto Report .” And that’s because we’re particularly interested in how people who were involved in the birth of adult film remember that period with the benefit of time and hindsight. But occasionally we wonder: what would it be like to go back to, say, 1977? And...

In part one of our podcast with Porsche Lynn , we heard how she survived childhood trauma, befriended Angel Kelly at modeling school, became a stripper at Michigan’s notorious Cinema X, and made her way to Los Angeles where she quickly became one of the most successful porn stars of her era. In this second and final episode of her Rialto story, Porsche and I talk about how she founded the Pink Lad...

Here at the Rialto Report, we focus on bringing original or obscure content to light. We like to unearth stories long ignored, forgotten or under-appreciated, to complement the narratives we already know and reveal a richer, more human portrait of the influential adult industry. And that’s why it took us so long to ask Porsche Lynn to share her tale. Because we thought Porsche’s story had already...

As The Rialto Report heads into an Easter break, we present an all-new podcast about the making of  Centurians of Rome , a story we broke a few years ago, but that has been absent from our site since then. The film has been the subject of much speculation since the movie was first released in 1981. – It was supposedly the most expensive gay porn film up to that point – It was allegedly funded usin...