The Rialto Report

Last week The Rialto Report published an article about meeting the Avon film director, Phil Prince – and we were overwhelmed by the positive reaction we received. A number of you asked why we didn’t put the story out as a podcast as well. The simple answer is that we usually do one or the other, but we realize that many of you prefer to engage with us through our podcasts – so as an early holiday...

The 1970s was the decade of adult films and theaters in New York City. It started out with cheap and crude black-and-white softcore films, enjoyed the breakthrough of porno-chic spearheaded by the landmark film Deep Throat (1973), and ended with big-budget films that looked like regular Hollywood films – with fully explicit sex. At the one end of the spectrum were champagne directors like Radley M...

As much as we enjoy talking with veterans from the golden age of adult film, I’m aware that their perspectives are always those of an insider. Their observations, experiences, and even memories are affected by the fact that they were wrapped up in the industry. And an insider isn’t always the most impartial witness. So we’re always keen to seek out people who ended up in porn by accident, or...

Keli Richards ’ career in adult films was short and sweet. Her flame burned brightly at a time when Ronald Reagan was president, video was king, and Los Angeles was staking a claim to be the adult film capital of the world. She was part of the mid 1980s cohort that included Traci Lords , Ginger Lynn , and Christy Canyon , and she was known for her big hair, Boston accent, and enthusiastic performa...

On this episode of The Rialto Report , we listen to a rarely heard documentary made in 1988, called ‘Working for Mr. X’. The mid to late 1980s marked an inflection point for the adult film industry. Home video had firmly taken over from theatrically released movies, making the business more widespread than it had ever been before. Never in history had so many people consumed sexually explicit mate...

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. There’s this powerful American politician who’s at the top of his game. Then you’ve got a notorious sex worker with a love of performing. They have a scandalous affair that rocks Washington. And a media storm sweeps the nation. It’s on the nightly news, and all over the newspapers. People just can’t get enough of it. That’s right – I’m talking about Wilbur...

It’s with great sadness that The Rialto Report marks the passing of Jennifer Welles . She passed away last Tuesday at the age of 81. Jennifer Welles was one of the last truly old school performers. In the 1950s she was a song and dance lounge club performer, in the 1960s she was a burlesque dancer and then soft core film actress, and in the 1970s when she was 40 she became one of the superstars of...

Johnnie Keyes passed away this week from complications following a recent stroke in Seattle, Washington. He was 78. He was best known for his role opposite Marilyn Chambers in the 1972 Mitchell Brothers’ film Behind the Green Door . When you start a podcast series like The Rialto Report , focused on people who were active 30 or 40 years ago, you have to expect that sooner or later they will...

The Rialto Report tried to interview Lynn LeMay . Believe us, we really tried. You see, for ages we’d wanted to talk to her about her memories of her adult film career. She’d started making films in New York in the 1980s, where she worked with many of the golden age greats like Jerry Butler , Joe Sarno , and Jamie Gillis . Then she moved to California, where she appeared in movies by people like H...

To celebrate her 64th birthday, we re-visit our 2013 interview with Seka – the last star of the golden age of adult film and the first star of the video era. Tales of John Holmes , John Leslie , Dracula Sucks , Swedish Erotica, drugs, boyfriends, Morton Downey Jr , Alan Thicke , Sam Kinison , comebacks, retirement, and her new book Inside Seka – all on this episode of The Rialto Report. This episo...

We’d wanted to interview Leslie Winston for several years, and judging by the number of requests we’ve received at The Rialto Report , many of you have been curious to hear from her too. And why not: Leslie started out in the early 1980s as a popular pin-up model, appearing in scores of magazines across the country. She was on the cover of many of them, often with different names. She was Lisa, Ly...

The adult film actor, Jamie Gillis , would have been 75 next month. Eight years after his passing, he’s remembered for his three decade career as one of the better actors in the industry – and this was the golden age period when acting actually meant something. I spent a lot of time with Jamie and interviewed him on several occasions before he passed in 2010 – in fact one of the interviews, about...

This story begins with a single photograph, taken in 1967. It’s a photo of Jimi Hendrix , and it shows him sat on a table in his familiar hat and rock star jacket. Jimi is smoking, and he looks relaxed and happy. He seems to be sharing a joke with a man sat on a chair in front of him. I first saw this picture in the early days of the internet, and became fascinated by it. And what struck me about...

April Hall remembers Jerry Butler: This one is a hard one to take. Jerry Butler passed away last week. It makes no sense, because there was no one more full of life than Jerry Butler. I first met him a few years ago, and within minutes he was stripped down to the waist to show me his physique, before dropping to the floor and challenging me to a press-up contest. I know a losing bet when I see one...

Imagine this. It’s one night in New York in 1974. You’ve partied with friends. You stumble home at midnight, turn on the TV and flop onto the couch. On screen is channel 35.  This isn’t the Partridge Family or the Rockford Files. Did you really drink that much? This was Midnight Blue , a one-hour, regular TV show that aired on Manhattan Cable. And it was like nothing you’d seen before. It was a cr...

We’re on vacation this week, but wanted to wish everyone a very happy Christmas from ourselves – and from two of our favorites… Johnnie Keyes and C.J. Laing (see below). We also wanted to close the year by telling you about ‘ Supporting Characters ‘, a podcast – where Ashley West from The Rialto Report was the interviewee this week . ‘Supporting Characters...

You’ve probably heard us say this before, but Keisha was a different kind of adult film star. She entered the business in the same era as the first wave of video girls who dominated the scene in the mid 1980s. Stars like Ginger Lynn , Christy Canyon and Traci Lords . She appeared in loops, videos, and feature films, as well as countless magazine covers and layouts. She did phone sex, ran her own f...

Jeanne Silver is a Rialto Report favorite and her interview with us remains incredibly popular. She was a firm favorite in films and magazines from the moment she arrived in New York in the mid 1970s, appearing in movies such as The Violation of Claudia , Water Power , Desire for Men , and Every Man’s Fantasy . We looked for Jeanne for almost 10 years before we finally found her. When we did...

Since the filmmaker Radley Metzger passed away earlier this year, we’ve received a lot of email asking if we have a podcast interview with him. In the last few years, we recorded several commentaries with Radley in which he spoke about his ‘ Henry Paris ‘ films in some detail – so instead of going over the same ground, we wanted to do something different. We decided that, rather than l...

For the last 25 years,  we have interviewed hundreds of people who were connected to the birth of the pornographic film industry in New York – from film directors to actors, theater owners and distributors, and a fair number of cops and politicians too. We wanted to make sure that the real story of the era was preserved – not just by journalists, academics, filmmakers or fans, but by the people wh...

If you were a male teenager in the mid-1980s, and you rented an X-rated video cassette by director Greg Dark , it’s likely that the song ‘ Electrify Me ‘ by The Plugz will still send a shiver down your spine. This was the theme to the Greg Dark ’s ‘ New Wave Hookers ’- starring Ginger Lynn , Jamie Gillis , and an underage Traci Lords . This film, and others by Dark, offered a radically...

The Rialto Report is on vacation this week, so we re-visit one of our most popular podcasts – the story of how we found what happened to Helga Sven , star of 1980s adult films and magazine layouts. We also spoke to a fan of hers who tracked her down and has his own unique story to tell. Tales of mid-1980s video porn, the Vegas mob, Stalin’s Red Army, John Holmes, child abduction, Frank...

Andrea True was a unique character. Here was an adult film star from the early days of the porn film industry who became an international superstar as a disco diva. She was a rare example of a cross-over – which is uncommon even today – of someone who went on to find success outside of the adult film industry, succeeding where so many others have tried and failed. But when her music and film caree...

In the 1970s, Andrea True was a rarity. She was a porn star that many people had heard of – even if they knew nothing about porn. She belonged to a select group of adult film actors whose names were widely known for a short time: Linda Lovelace , Marilyn Chambers , John Holmes , and yes, Andrea True . But Andrea’s fame was different. You see, most people hadn’t heard of Andrea because she’d appear...

Rhonda Jo Petty has long been a favorite at The Rialto Report . She started out on the West Coast in the late 1970s where film producers capitalized on her resemblance to Farrah Fawcett. One of her best-known roles was in Little Orphan Dusty (1978) with porn icon John Holmes . Then she moved to New York where she appeared in more films, while traveling the country enjoying great success as a featu...