The Rialto Report

In one of his first detailed interviews for many years, Tom Byron joins us to look back at one of the most prolific careers in adult film history. His life story resembles the history of the adult film industry since the beginning of the video age, during which time he’s won just about every kind of adult film award going and is in every Hall of Fame invented by the industry. He’s appeared in lite...

Henri Pachard was one of the most successful adult film directors in America in the 1980s and 1990s – making award-winning films like ‘ Babylon Pink ’ (1979), ‘ The Budding of Brie ‘ (1980), and ‘ October Silk ’ (1980). He worked with the biggest names and won just about every award there was to win in the industry. But back in the 1960s, Henri Pachard was just Ron Sullivan , and he was a yo...

The Rialto Report would never presume to express an opinion about the upcoming political elections in the United States. After all, we’re merely a site that seeks to preserve the oral history of early adult films. However we were interested to note that this summer Donald Trump signed a pledge to give serious consideration to appointing a Presidential Commission to examine the harmful public healt...

The 1980s were a tough period for the golden age of adult films. More and more movies were being made on video, with less care and much less money, and AIDS was becoming a major issue in society. To make matters worse, President Reagan ordered a comprehensive, and comprehensively biased, investigation into pornography. The so-called Meese Report was published in July 1986 and contained 1,960 pages...

Tiffany Clark was a memorable performer on the New York adult film scene in the early 1980s, a favorite stripper at the Melody Burlesk , and a ubiquitous presence on the party scene with her husband and fellow actor, Fred Lincoln . For a time they seemed to be everywhere – from swingers clubs like Plato’s Retreat or fetish venues like Hellfire, to writing, directing and producing their own success...

Some of the first adult movies that were made in New York in the early 1970s starred an attractive and slender woman with long dark hair. If you hung around long enough to read the credits, you’d see that she was called Tina Russell . For a short time in the early 1970s, she was the biggest name in adult films. She was the original porn star. Except that she was unlike other porn stars you may hav...

Vintage audio interviews with Lisa DeLeeuw, Jamie Gillis, and John Seeman. Conducted by Richard Pacheco. Since we started the The Rialto Report , several people have said to us, “Wouldn’t it have been great if you could’ve spoken with these adult film stars back in the golden age itself?” And sure, it would’ve been fun, but part of what I enjoy about our interviews is...

Eric Edwards is a true trailblazer of the adult film industry. He started his adult career in the 1960s and stayed in the business for four decades. He starred in silent loops and narrative features. He moved between acting and directing, softcore and hardcore, and the east and west coast industries. Since retiring from the business, things haven’t been easy for Eric. He lost his home and ha...

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Veronica Hart was a natural candidate for show business stardom. She was born and raised in Las Vegas, and had a natural talent for acting and dancing. But she was smart and adventurous too, and after graduating college in record quick time, she headed over to Europe where she settled in England. It was the time of Bowie and glam rock – and she wanted to be part...

Johnnie Keyes was the first black porn star, and from the moment he emerges in Behind the Green Door (1972), dressed in nothing but crotchless tights and an African necklace, nothing was quite the same again. There may have been more prolific or famous male adult film stars over the last 50 years, but has anyone made a more iconic entrance and statement? He was paired with Marilyn Chambers – the w...

Last week we presented a selection of pictures personally chosen by Barbara Dare from her collection – and have been amazed by the response. We received email from so many of you, all eager to know more about the elusive star of the 1980s who vanished from the scene almost 25 years ago. Barbara was a superstar of the adult industry in the 1980s video era. She started out in New York –...

João Fernandes was adult film’s first true cinematographer. He started in New York in the 1960s shooting black and white soft-core sexploitation films. Then he was the man looking down the camera when Deep Throat , Devil in Miss Jones , The Story of Joanna and other groundbreaking Gerard Damiano films were made. He worked with Doris Wishman , Armand Weston , Jonas Middleton and many others. He was...

We recently heard that one of our all-time favorites, golden age actress Miss Sharon Mitchell , has recently been going through a very tough time. The Rialto Report interviewed Mitch early in 2014 – and heard how she had struggled since the closure of her AIM organization a few years ago. In recent years she’s lived in a rural area in the country outside of Los Angeles where she has st...

April Hall of The Rialto Report writes: Aaah… Billy Dee . It’s complicated. I’d wanted to contact him for years. But accurate information about him was just difficult to find. He was one of my favorite porn actors – who got started in the golden age of adult films in the 1970s and survived into the video era of the 1980s. I heard he’d served in the armed forces during the Viet Nam years, or...

Candy Samples was one of the true larger than life figures that lit up the early adult industry. Whether is it was in black and white cheesecake photo sets from the late 1960s, thousands of magazine appearances, and scores of films – from softcore to hardcore, from loops to catfight wrestling shorts. She had a mischievous, friendly look that stood out from all the other models. She often pla...

Our friend Candida Royalle passed away this week. She was 64. Candida was a former star of pornographic movies who became a self-styled feminist filmmaker at 30 when she started producing and directing films for her own company, Femme Productions. She defined her work as female-oriented, sensuously explicit cinema as opposed to formulaic hard-core pornographic films that she said degraded women fo...

George McDonald was an adult film star at a time when there were no adult film stars. He started in the era of short, silent 8mm films and saw first hand the progression to full-length pornographic features within a couple of years. This was an era of shame and secrecy when no one used their real name – except for George.  And for a time his name was everywhere – he once counted nine theaters show...

The Rialto Report really took off when we tracked Jennifer Welles down for one of our first podcasts. Over two years after its posting, it still remains one of our most popular interviews. We’ve stayed in touch with Jennifer since we first met her and she continues to be surprised and delighted by the level of interest in her story. While she values her privacy, we’re pleased that she chose to sha...

It’s safe to say that Roberta Findlay wasn’t immediately interested when I contacted her for an interview. In fact I lost count of the number of times she told me to just go away. Actually I do remember. It was 14. Or 15 if you count the time I called her afterwards to thank her for this interview. That’s not to say I wanted to force her to speak. But I did try and convince her that her career in...

When we launched the Rialto Report a few years ago, one of the first people we were keen to interview was the actor George Payne . He was a dramatic and intense on-screen presence in early 1980s New York adult films, often playing mentally unhinged characters. We wanted to know more about the man behind the craziness. It turns out George is one of the most gentle people you could hope to meet, and...

When we contacted Sharon Kelly to request a Rialto Report interview with her, we suggested the conversation might take a couple of hours. She wrote back immediately expressing mild surprise that anyone would want to listen to her for that long. Actually to be more precise she said: “Jesus Christ – two hours?! I wouldn’t listen to George Clooney beg to have sex with me whilst a resurrected Jo...

Michelle Maren ’s life has been eventful, surprising and difficult. So much so that she has recently finished a documentary, ‘ An Autobiography of Michelle Maren ’ which she co-directed with award-winning filmmaker, Michel Negroponte . The film is starting to appear in film festivals around the country. It recounts her troubled beginnings as a victim of abuse and domestic violence. By the age of 1...

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...

Make no mistakes about it, Howard Ziehm is one of the people who invented the adult film industry. He was there taking still photos for adult bookstores in the 1960s – when the most you could reveal was a girl in her underwear. He made some of the first color loops – when all you could show was the subject writhing on a mattress by herself. And then in 1970, as the market finally deman...

For the first time on The Rialto Report, we feature a current day adult film performer. But the twist is that Nina Hartley is also one of the true stars of the golden age, having appeared scores of films since her start in 1984. By any standards, Nina is a unique person. The daughter of a socialist blacklisted writer, she was raised in Berkeley, CA and became a registered nurse whilst dancing at t...