Geri Miller may not be the most famous name from 1960s sex films, but she may well be the most interesting. With a story that includes Andy Warhol, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Joe Sarno, the Peppermint Lounge, Ringo Starr, Joe Dalessandro, Mick Jagger, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, the Young Rascals, and stripping in front of the Queen Mother’s house, Geri lived a technicolor life in a psychedelic era. The Rialto Report went to visit her. This episode running time is 43...

The Rialto Report recently acquired a collection of behind-the-scenes photographs and stills from the Stephen C. Apostolof/Edward D. Wood Jr. film Orgy of the Dead (1965) which we are sharing below.  Many of them feature Pat Barrington, which gives us the chance to revisit our podcast about her remarkable life 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,...

On the previous episode of Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story: On the heels of a very public divorce, Chuck Traynor and Linda Lovelace were finally separated and began to forge their own paths. Chuck wasted no time partnering with up-and-coming adult star Marilyn Chambers, becoming both her manager and her husband. Linda combined a professional and romantic relationship with producer and choreographer David Winters, combing the U.S. and U.K. for financial opportunities. But while Linda’s...

On the previous episode of Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story: To everyone’s surprise, the sex film Deep Throat (1972) had become a financial hit and a cultural phenomenon. And everybody involved was determined to capitalize on the film’s success – and that included Chuck Traynor, husband and manager of Linda Lovelace, the movie’s leading lady. When the film blew up, Chuck put Linda through his self-styled media training, positioning her as a small-town, sex-fueled hippie who’d hit the...

F.M Bradley died last month just a few weeks shy of his 70th birthday. I can’t say I was surprised – Bradley had been in a nursing home ever since I found him in 2021 after years of looking. He was bedridden, and we had a few false starts before we finally settled down for our interview due to his ill health. But even though he was unable to walk, whenever we’d video chat it was easy to see the handsome, strapping man who’d made hundreds of films and loops back in the 80s. After our...

Michael Findlay was a young New Yorker, fascinated with film and the mechanics behind it. Julian Marsh was his alter ego, a movie director possessed with a singular twisted vision. Richard Jennings was a sadistic, deranged movie character, one-eyed, confined to a wheelchair, and hell bent on revenge. The films Michael Findlay made seemed to be so single-minded, unique, and personal, that they begged the question, how much were these three characters actually the same person? And what role...

Sex and violence have been part of movies since the very beginning. Ever since Thomas Edison made and exhibited ‘The Kiss’ in 1896, an 18 second clip of a couple embracing, moviegoers have been shocked by onscreen depictions of lust. The outrage over ‘The Kiss’ was understandable: it was one of the first films ever shown commercially to the public, and kissing in public was prosecuted at the time. The Catholic Church knee-jerked instinctively, and said it was a “serious threat to morality...

In the first part of The Rialto Report‘s conversation with Lisa Cintrice, we heard about her colorful upbringing, from a mobster father, to becoming pregnant as a teen, and then a shotgun wedding to the brother of a notorious New York strip club manager. All of a sudden, she found herself at the heart of the New York adult film business, and what’s more, starring in a movie, The Starmaker (1982), while fielding offers to appear in many others. There was only one problem: Lisa had already...

Lisa Cintrice had a colorful life: for a start, her father was a New York mobster who was related to the most famous Italian priest of all time, Padre Pio, a man so terrified of God that he manifested stigmata, the same wounds in his hands and feet that Jesus suffered when he was nailed to the cross. And for much of her adult life, Lisa was afraid too – largely because of her career in adult film. In actual fact, she appeared in only a handful of movies in 1981 and 82. But what made her...

Seventy is no age to die. Especially not for a man as decent and good as Harvey Cohen. But last week, Harvey, who used to be the adult film star known as Herschel Savage, passed away in his home in Los Angeles. Despite his performing pseudonym, Harvey was a gentle, sweet man, who’d chosen his nom de porn in an attempt to combine the nerdy New York Jewish self that he was with that of the sexual stud he pretended to be. Over the years, I saw him frequently – we’d eat out at Musso and Frank’s...

In the 1970s, New York was a city on the edge: it was on verge of bankruptcy, beset by a crime wave, and overrun by the rampant sex industry that was taking over Times Square. Different people reacted to the city’s critical state in different ways. Some, like Phil Russo, an idealistic cop in the Public Morals Squad, were hellbent on reversing the trend, doing everything they could to identify and prosecute the criminal perpetrators, and restore law and order. Others like Varla Romano, one...

In 1970s New York, hardcore sex films and adult bookstores raged across Times Square like a forest fire. It was great for the sex business, but it also depressed tourism and commerce, and emboldened organized crime in an already deeply beleaguered city. The cops fought back, busting theaters and sex shops on a regular basis. It had little effect: most of the sex operators just paid the fixed fine and re-opened the next day with no further consequences. For a police force already laid low by...

As we were preparing this weekend’s post, we received news of the passing of Neville Chesters, legendary figure of the 1960s UK music scene, adult film producer (using the name Neville Chambers), and friend of The Rialto Report. As a tribute we are reprising our 2018 interview with him, in which he talks about his remarkable life. R.I.P. Nev. (25 June 1945 – 27 April 2023) * This story begins with a single photograph, taken in 1967. It’s a photo of Jimi Hendrix, and it shows him sat on a...

On the previous episode of Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story: When budding film director Gerard Damiano saw Linda Traynor/Boreman giving head, he stopped shooting the short sex loop he was planning then and there, choosing instead to make a feature-length movie around her unique talent. Linda had her doubts, but her husband Chuck was all in on the idea, loving the $1,200 payment that came with the role, and its potential to further inject him and Linda into the heart of the sex industry....

This is Season 2 of Svengali – ‘The Chuck Traynor Story: Part 4, The Making of Deep Throat… What Really Happened?’ Previously on Season 1 of Svengali: Chuck Traynor was born in Connecticut in 1937 to a single mother. Raised by his grandparents, he relocated to Florida when he was young, joining the marines when he finished high school. After leaving the service, Chuck married and divorced three times while working on the fringes of the sexploitation film business. In his late 20s, Chuck...

New York. Mid-1970s. A new counter-cultural scene emerged. Punk was marked by attitude, antagonism, and angry, anarchic music. It attracted a new breed of musician and fan. Non-conforming, anti-authoritarian. It expressed itself visually in provocative new ways. Ripped T-shirts, leather jackets, Dr. Martens boots, and spiked mohawks. Overnight, punk caused a jagged splash across mainstream America.  The media couldn’t get enough of the phenomenon. Snarling, monochromatic photos of the new...

In the first part of the Sue Nero interview, we heard about her upbringing and subsequent move to San Francisco where she started work in the adult film industry. In this concluding episode, Sue remembers her move to New York, where she worked at the Melody Burlesk and the Harmony Theater, as well as becoming a fixture in the XXX rated film business. It’s been a long difficult road. But what’s important is that she’s finally ready to confront it and talk about it. This is part 2 of Sue...

Some interviews take longer to happen than others. As for Sue Nero: well… it’s complicated. Let’s start at the beginning: Sue Nero was a larger than life, super-hero of a porn star. She harked back to the golden age of Hollywood movie queens – voluptuous, busty and shapely – an hourglass of beauty, but at the same time, she embodied pure sin and lust. She was the girl next door – if you lived next to house of ill-repute. but at the same time, she embodied pure sin and lust. She was the girl...

It was early summer in 1977, and the adult film actor, Jamie Gillis, should have been on top of the world. He was perhaps the most successful and recognizable male figure in the relatively new, relatively glamorous, world of adult entertainment. He’d just starred in The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976), the most accomplished sex film to date – and he suddenly found himself to be a public star of sorts, fielding offers for mainstream films and theater productions, appearances on chat shows,...

Kay Parker, one of the biggest names in golden age adult film, passed away this last week. She was 78. Kay was a west coast actor who entered the business through a friendship with performer John Leslie, and an appreciative director, Anthony Spinelli. She featured in well-regarded films such as ‘V’ – The Hot One (1978), Sex World (1978), Dracula Sucks (1978), Firestorm (1984), The Dancers (1981), and Chorus Call (1978). And then in 1980, she starred in the film series that is still one of...

Kitten Natividad died in Los Angeles this past week. The cause was kidney failure after suffering from cancer. She was 74. Kitten was a genuine cult pop culture figure who, over the last six decades, had a wild life and a storied career: she started out as a cook and maid for Stella Stevens – the Hollywood actress famous for ‘The Nutty Professor’ and ‘The Ballad of Cable Hogue’. Then in the late 60s, Kitten was a go-go dancer on the Sunset Strip, and a beauty queen in the early 1970s when...

In the first part of ‘The Trials of Chesty Morgan’, Chesty endured unimaginable hardships in her life – a Jewish girl growing up in Nazi-occupied Poland, both her parents killed in the conflict, followed by a difficult life in Israel, and the eventual promise of a new life in the United States before her husband was killed in a botched robbery. Chesty decided to become a burlesque dancer to make ends meet, soon becoming one of the highest earning performers in the country on the stripping...

Bionca was one of the more formidable adult film stars of the late golden age. She was a tall, striking performer, appearing in over 350 films and countless magazine spreads for 20 years from 1984 through to the early 2000s. She was known for her often-outrageous on-screen performances and smoldering lesbian scenes, and was one of the first to make films in Europe as well as the U.S. with producer Lenny Burtman. But Bionca wasn’t just an actor – she was the rare example of a female porn star...

In 1970, Chuck Traynor – former Marine, sexploitation dabbler, successful Miami bar owner and less successful drug smuggler, met Linda Boreman – a hippie drifter who’d recently had her newborn taken from her and was recovering from a harrowing car accident. They were both looking for something new, a fresh start – Chuck wanted financial opportunities that would prove his macho worth; Linda wanted direction and acceptance. The way they tell it, they met and fell in love. They lived together,...