The Rialto Report

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...

In 1972, Alfred Sole , a first time filmmaker, made an X-rated film called ‘ Deep Sleep ’. He didn’t know much about adult films or the industry, so he shot it in his hometown of Paterson, New Jersey and using a cast and crew made up of friends and family members. This meant that the local lawyer, banker, policeman, high school teachers, funeral home director, the mayor’s wife, even Alfred’s wife...

Ashley West of The Rialto Report writes: I’ve always loved Pat Barrington . And if you know who she is, I’m pretty sure you do too. If you’ve never heard of her, Pat was big in the 1960s, when she was a popular actress, model and stripper. She was a stunning and statuesque woman, a mess of high cheekbones, flashing dark eyes, and long limbs. And somehow she managed to look different every time you...

How is that as we approach our 100th podcast, The Rialto Report still hasn’t interviewed Kelly Nichols ? It’s not as if she was a brief flash in the pan who came and left in a hurry: in fact, Kelly had two noteworthy careers in the adult industry. First, she was a star in front of the camera in the early 1980s, where she was considered one of the best actresses in films such as Roommates , Puss &#...

George McDonald , star of Behind the Green Door (1972) and perhaps the first male star of the adult film industry, died yesterday in California. He was 70 years old. Ashley West records his memories of George in a new introduction to our podcast interview with George. This podcast is 99 minutes long. The musical playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify . __________________________________...

John Stagliano is one of the great survivors of the adult industry – and like any survivor, he seems to have had more lives than a cat. He started out in the mid 1970s as – take your pick – an aspiring writer, economist, dancer, magazine publisher, actor, and performer in sex loops. He even became one of the first Chippendale dancers, when the male stripping troupe was wildly successful. But...

Candy Samples, who enjoyed a long career as a hugely popular buxom model in men’s magazines and as an actress in adult films, passed away this week. She was 91. Candy Samples was one of the true larger than life figures that lit up the early adult industry: she appeared in cult movies such as Russ Meyer ‘s Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979) (where she was ‘The Very Big...

What happens when you’re raised in a loving suburban home, an athletic but painfully shy kid who went to church every Sunday with his very Catholic parents? A boy who developed an early love of dance but had to hide it because his mother thought that would mean he’s gay? A young man who was so intimidated by girls he stayed a virgin until he was 20 years old? Well you go on to become one of the mo...

The Rialto Report talks with Christy Canyon – about her life as a pioneering performer at start of the video age of adult films. This episode is 132 minutes long. The musical playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify . _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Christy Canyon The first thing you notice when you meet Christy Canyon...

On the last episode of The Rialto Report , we spoke to adult film actor and director, Paul Thomas , about the first part of his life. How he came from a wealthy background – one that owned household-name businesses, such as Sara Lee and Jim Beam – and how he was brought up in the lap of luxury. How he achieved success and fame on stage in musical theater, starring in Hair on Broadway, and in the 1...

Paul Thomas , or PT as he’s typically known, is one of the iconic names of the adult film industry. He was born Philip Toubus, and started out as a porn performer for the Mitchell Brothers in mid-1970s San Francisco. Until the last few years, was still in the business as a director. During the past four decades, PT won every kind of adult award – from Best Actor to Best Director, and was inducted...

  The actor Robert Kerman , also known as R. Bolla, died this week in New York at the age of 71. His career lasted over 10 years, from the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s, and encompassed work for all the main adult film directors. He was perhaps most well-known as the bumbling Mr. Greenfield in Debbie Does Dallas . As a tribute, we’re re-releasing our 2013 interview with Robert, together wi...