“There was something exciting about" adult films, said Norman Mailer. “It lived in some mid-world between crime and art. And it was adventurous.”
The "Golden Age" of adult films
That was during the 1970s, which is called the “Golden Age” of adult films. It started with a woman named Linda Lovelace and a film called Deep Throat. The crowd back then that made those movies was a creative group of people who saw their work as art and cinema. The actors came from the off-Broadway stage and Broadway chorus line. Mainstream publications such as Time and the New York Times reviewed adult films. Why? In his article, Richard Corliss writes, “Because it was sufficiently dangerous, popular, newsworthy and, frequently, ambitious to warrant the attention of reviewers.” This all began with to Deep Throat.
Lovelace grew up in Yonkers, NY
Lovelace was born Linda Boreman in 1948 and grew up in Yonkers, NY, just north of New York City. She attended Catholic schools in Westchester county: John the Baptist in Yonkers and Maria Regina High School in Hartsdale. While in grade school, Linda wanted to become a nun. Few boys asked her out more than once because she didn’t “put out.” She says that she was the kind of girl who enjoyed going to the beach and holding hands. Linda suffered an abusive upbringing. Emotionally and physically battered, she became pregnant at twenty. After giving birth to a baby boy, her mother brought in papers for her to sign. She signed the papers--not realizing that they were adoption papers--and never saw her son again.
Driving in her Opel Cadet one day, a Chrysler skidded hard into her small car. Linda’s face was smashed into the window. Her jaw was broken, her liver was lacerated and several ribs were cracked and broken. After getting out of the hospital, she moved down to her parents’ retirement home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to recuperate.
"Svengali" Chuck Traynor turns Linda into prostitute and “actress”
It was in Florida during the summer of 1969 that she met Chuck Traynor through a friend. She moved in with him a few short weeks later. A born hustler, Traynor turned Linda into a prostitute and she began turning tricks in South Florida. The couple moved to New York, where they became part of the seedy underground scene. Traynor was Linda’s Svengali, and in addition to turning tricks she was now performing in porno “loops”--10- to 20-minute silent adult films shot primarily in black-and-white 8mm film with little or no plot.
Linda and her “thing” is “discovered” by Gerard Damiano
Hair dresser turned porn director Gerard Damiano saw Linda in one of her 8mm loops. He hired her to perform with a young actor named Harry Reems in SEX USA, a loop that was the first of Damiano’s new production company. The director was shocked when Linda started “doing her "thing.” He had never seen a woman do that before and was so “knocked out” by it that he went home that night and wrote the entire Deep Throat screenplay over the weekend. They began pre-production that Monday. Damiano changed Linda’s name from Boreman to “Lovelace” during this time.
Deep Throat
The script was about a young woman who cannot achieve an orgasm, no matter what she tried. Then she goes to Dr. Young (Harry Reems), who discovers that her clitoris is in her throat. He tells her that having her clitoris down her throat “is better than having no clitoris at all.” She snaps at him, “Suppose your balls were in your ear.” Dr. Young happily replies, “Well, then I could hear myself coming.”
The solution: Dr. Young tells Linda that she has to relax her throat muscles and... Then Linda does that with Dr. Young and she finally has her orgasm. Ecstatically happy, she offers to marry the doctor and be his slave. He rejects the offer, not wanting to upset his sexy blonde nurse, played by Carol Connors. He does offer Linda a job, however, as a visiting “psycho-therapist.” Her duties include her special trick and two different kinds of intercourse. She accepts the position. Please click here to see a scene from Deep Throat.
Deep Throat was shot in Miami, FL, with Mafia money
Miami was near Damiano’s underworld sponsor, Louis “Butchie” Peraino, the son of Anthony Peraino, Sr., who was in the Columbo Mafia family of New York City. Butchie put up the $25,000 for the film and received credit as producer under the name “Lou Perry.” Butchie didn’t like Linda having the lead role because she didn‘t have the “traditional“ look, and wanted the bosomy Carol Connors to play the lead part. Damiano--who wrote the film for Linda and Linda alone--convinced his sponsor and partner to accept his casting choice. The original title was The Sword Swallower, but the director changed it to Deep Throat. Both Perainos hated the title, saying, “No one will understand it! It’s not catchy enough!” Damiano assured the men, “Don’t worry, 'Deep Throat' will become a household word.”
Deep Throat opens June 12, 1972
Deep Throat opened to the “raincoat crowd” at the New World Theater on 49th Street in New York. But something strange happened: Deep Throat went “mainstream.” Screw Magazine’s Al Goldstein wrote in his review that Linda Lovelace was “lovely, thin, young and fresh.…Her enthusiasm and vitality were wonderful.” Film critic Bill Rotsler wrote, “One of the things I liked best…was Linda’s obvious delight in what she was doing. It was infectious and made the entire film more palatable.”
Corliss writes that Deep Throat is “part slapstick, part carnal carnival: it’s a burlesque routine wrapped around a sideshow freak stunt…it’s...shtick. But it was fun and funny in a slummy way.” Corliss writes that attending erotica had now become a “communal” experience. If you were going to see it, then this was the one to see.
How mainstream did Deep Throat become? Bob Hope made a joke about it on TV: “I went to see Deep Throat cause I’m fond of animal pictures. I thought it was about giraffes.”
Eric Brothers - Eric Brothers' forthcoming book,The Berlin Ghetto, will be published by The History Press in the U.K. in 2012.
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