The Rialto Report

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...

Fanne Foxe died this past week at the age of 84. She was famous for being the stripper that ended the career of one of the most powerful American politicians of the 1970s – Arkansas congressman Wilbur Mills , chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. But Fanne, whose real name was Annabelle, was so much more than a scandalous footnote of history.  While she grew up in small town in Arg...

Who is John T Bone – and why did The Rialto Report find him languishing in jail when we looked for him? John T Bone was one of the more controversial figures in adult film history. But as we heard in the first episode of our mini-series about him, he was also an enigma wrapped in mystery with a fascinating past. Before he ever got involved in making X-rated films, he was a notable figure on...

Who is John T Bone – and why did The Rialto Report find him languishing in jail when we looked for him? John T Bone was one of the bad boys of 1980s and 1990s adult film, a moviemaker responsible for some of the most controversial moments in X-rated film history.   He worked at the cheap end of the porn film business – but his films nevertheless always stood out. It was John, for example, wh...

Carter Stevens , one of the adult film industry’s true originals, passed away this week. He started to make his first feature film before the landmark success of Deep Throat , and he was still in the sex business thirty years later. For a time it seemed like he was everywhere. In the 1970s and 1980s, he directed a series of increasingly popular and ambitious films that included  Lickity-Spli...

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...

From 1985 until 1997, Misty Blue Simmes was the biggest female name in professional wrestling. She held belts from the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) and the Ladies Professional Wrestling Association (LPWA) , was courted by Vince McMahon of the WWE , and graced the pages of all the major wrestling magazines. But wrestling wasn’t Misty Blue’s first time in front of the camera. Before there was M...

Jim South didn’t act in many adult films, and certainly didn’t take part in any sex scenes. He didn’t direct, produce, or finance many movies either. But if you watch any film made in Los Angeles since the mid 1970s, the chances are that Jim South was intimately involved in who you’re actually watching on-screen. For years his company, World Modeling , supplied talent to the adult film industry. A...

The Rialto Report is 100 episodes old today. When I first had the idea of doing a golden age adult film podcast, I realized it was a pretty specialized and niche subject area. But I thought that the real history of this time had never properly emerged, and I wanted to provide a place where it could be told by the pioneers, in an unfiltered way. Good or bad. I read somewhere that the average number...

‘Once Upon a Time…in the Valley’, a new podcast series co-produced and co-presented by The Rialto Report ’s Ashley West , launches today with the first three episodes. Episode 1 – T-R-A-C-I It’s 1986. The San Fernando Valley. And, it turns out, the biggest star in Adult, isn’t one. Episode 2 – Wanted: Figure Models A 15-year-old Redondo Union High sophomore lear...

I’d always wanted to interview Angel Kelly. She was a big name in 1980s adult film, and one of the few black female superstars of the industry. She was a founding member of the Pink Ladies, the west-coast adult actress support group with Nina Hartley , Jeanne Fine , and Porsche Lynn . She acted with the big names of the day – people like Sharon Mitchell , Lois Ayres , Billy Dee and Mike Horner . A...

Amber Lynn is the perfect example of the adult film video vixen in all her glory. Back in the 1980s, together with fellow stars Traci Lords, Ginger Lynn , and Christy Canyon , she was the face of the new era in adult film. Actually, forget film: they personified the industry’s move onto videotapes. These stars were young, they were wild, and they were on your VHS TV screens when your parents went...

Have you ever had that experience when you’re watching a film – and you become fascinated with one particular actor? You’re seeing them play a part in the movie, and you know it’s just a performance. It’s fiction. Acting is just acting, right? But then you wonder how much of their real self might be coming through the screen. A few years ago, I saw an unusual piece of film that featured an actor c...

If you popped a porno tape into your VCR anytime from the late 80s on, chances are you’d be watching Randy Spears in action before long. Randy was a good-looking guy with solid acting chops and a talent for comedy, and he made close to 2000 adult movies between 1988 and the early 2010s. He performed with the biggest names in the business, like Sharon Kane , Nina Hartley and Tori Welles – and...

The adult film actor Jamie Gillis died ten years ago this week. I started The Rialto Report because I wanted to show that there was much more to the world of adult films than just adult films. And Jamie was one of the best examples of that. Jamie was one of the great performers in film history, but he was much more than that. He was a French literature graduate, a theater actor, mime artist, trave...