October 27, 2025 • 51 mins
Chapter 1 “Enter Jennaworld”: Host Molly Lambert introduces listeners to the Jennaworld podcast universe and outlines 90s porn superstar Jenna Jameson’s cultural impact. Jenna Massoli is born in Las Vegas, Nevada to a showgirl mother and cop father, whose romance comes to a tragic early end.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Everyone watches poor No and if they say they don't,
their motherfucking liars.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Kid Rock. I do porno because that's what makes me happy.
I fuck all day, I get money. I love what
I'm doing. There is something wrong with that, Faco sa
Frede performer.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
People often say that the world would be so much
better if it were run by women, But women have
as many faults as men. Their faults are just different.
So the truth is that the world would not be better
if it were run by a woman. It would be
better if it were run by the right woman. Jenna Jamison,
(01:11):
Welcome to Jeno World.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Oh my god, this so good.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
What does pornography reveal about the American sexual psyche? Critics
say that porn degrades and disposes of its workers, So
what's the difference between that and any other job? And
what are we to make of performers who transcended their
alleged disposability and created profitable brands around their screen personas,
like the porn star Jenna Jamison did in the nineties
(01:50):
and two thousands when she made herself into a brand
and became queen of all media. But also, why should
anyone have to become a brand? Just to survive in America?
Why would anyone want to be famous? And then why
would everyone want to be famous? How did a parasocial
connection with a voyeuristic audience become mandatory for everyone with
(02:12):
the advent of social media? How do we maintain autonomy
in the attention economy? And why is the right wing
actively trying to make pornography illegal again? How can I
nut ethically? Welcome to Jena World Jenna Jamison Vivid Video
in the Valley. I'm your host, Molly Lambert. You may
(02:35):
remember me from Heidi World, the Heidi Flyfe Story and
the Secret History of LA. This time, I'll be your
tour guide for Genal World, a narrative nonfiction podcast about
the history of the adult film industry, telling the story
of porn superstar Jenna Jamison and a cavalcade of the
people who make up the colorful world of X rated films.
(02:56):
It's the crazy saga of the rise, fall, and rebirth
of the adult film industry. It has sex, drugs, art,
lots and lots of money, rock and roll, filmmaking, TV,
Howard Stern, the Internet, family, and even.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
Love, love, sex love, sex, love, sex, love, sex, love,
sex love sex.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
In the nineteen seventies, eighties, and early nineties, mainstream media
used the tragic stories of several adult film stars to
paint the porn industry as an inherently bad workplace that
degrades women and leads its performers into addiction and an
early grave. In the nineties, adult actress Jenna Jamison crossed
over into mainstream pop culture and helped to normalize making
(03:49):
porn as just another occupation. During her two thousands media peak,
Jenna helped popularize the radical idea that sex work is
a real job, requiring safe work conditions and fair wages.
The idea that women are sexual beings who aren't degraded
by sex on or off camera remains controversial. After being
(04:12):
legalized in the nineteen seventies, porn is now under attack
on multiple fronts. There are the conservatives who want to
ban porn entirely with Project twenty twenty five and began
a new era of sexual repression. There's also the nightmarish
rise of AI porn, which aims to cut out adult
performers entirely while simultaneously exploiting their images to train visual
(04:35):
models and promote deeply unethical stuff like face swapping filters.
And there's the puritanical way online platforms like TikTok and
Instagram use sexually suggestive content to lure in viewers while
punishing and banning actual sex workers from selling and promoting
their content online. Whatever you think about porn, its continued
(04:57):
legal existence is vital to American freedom of speech. It
is imperative that sexual content remains protected under the law.
Speaker 6 (05:08):
Sex isn't something men do to you. It isn't something
men get out of you. Sex is something you can
dive into with Gusto and like it every bit as
much as he does. Nina Hartley.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Performer Jenna Jamison combined her talent at performing on screen,
skill for marketing herself, an ability to speak up smartly
for sex workers during what would turn out to be
porn's last financial golden era. If she managed to make
both art and money from an industry that is deeply
corrupt and set up to exploit artists, well, that just
(05:45):
makes her a woman in film.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
I'm a powerful woman. I think that's intimidating to a
man on every level. That's why I always go out
of my way to be ultra nice and ultra sweet
and COI because it makes people feel comfortable, and I
want people to feel comfortable around me before I put
them in a headlock.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
This is a story about the American dream at the
end of the twentieth century and the collapse of the
American Empire at the turn of the twenty first. It's
about one woman's self directed rise to power in an
industry that was unknowingly experiencing its final rise to one
last big climax of profit. It's about the people who
make adult films and the place they once made them,
(06:33):
LA's San Fernando Valley Suburbs. This is an American fable
about money, love, sex, and familia. People seem to forget
that adult performers are actors playing roles, and because there's
now so little depiction of sex and mainstream American media,
Horn takes on the load, so to speak, of representing
(06:56):
all sex and intimacy, which it was never meant to do.
Porn depicts sexual fantasies about power and control, and what
people like to watch doesn't necessarily correlate to what they
like in real life. Oh my god, honey, there's a
lot of fear mongering that easy access to porn sexually
dead ends its viewers, but nobody gives viewers credit for
(07:17):
being able to differentiate media from real life. Consuming sexual
images cannot be compared to, nor will it ever replace,
the human experience of touching a real person's body. Is
porn really the reason idealized images of beauty are becoming
ever more unreachable? Or is porn just an easy target
(07:39):
to deflect away from larger issues of how the human
image can be visually idealized into an imaginary fantasy, a
tradition that goes all through art history. I'm just asking questions,
much like Joe Rogan, who will show up here later on.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
We get paid more than the men we call the shots.
We say who we want to work with. In what
way is that degrading? That's us taking hold of our
life life.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
The history of porn is also about shifting media format.
As a medium, porn is always changing to fit new
technology and always slightly ahead of mainstream media. Paul Thomas
Anderson's Boogie Nights covered the eighties shift from film to video,
when porn moved from theaters into homes with VHS players.
(08:32):
Porn had its own studio system, which began in the
seventies peaked with DVDs in the early two thousands and
collapsed as streaming online content to hold just ahead of
the mainstream Hollywood studio system collapsing into streaming. Jenna Jamison
bridged the gap between the old age of print magazines, videotapes,
(08:52):
and DVDs and the new era of websites, social media,
and streams. During her reign as the of porn she
epitomized the perks and pitfalls of selling your personality and
physical image for profit. Where being camera ready was once
reserved for professional performers, now everybody knows how to perform
(09:12):
when a camera is on, and a camera is almost
always on. Your porn has always reflected American culture back
to itself. It's possible to consume media and not agree
with its politics or take them on. I call this
the top Gun theory. Watching Top Gun doesn't mean you
(09:33):
suddenly endorse the US military or that you believe Tom
Cruise is an ace military pilot in real life. For
some reason, we seem to know that movies like Top
Gun are just movies, that they're fantasies. But when it
comes to porn, there's some kind of slipperiness. The nineties
also saw the popularization of third wave feminism, which embraced
(09:55):
an idea that women could use sexual allure as part
of their self concept of power. I did not anticipate
that the feminists rise to power in the bedroom and
boardroom by postmodern girl boss media stars like Madonna and
Jenna Jamison would be followed by decades of sexist backlash.
In real life, desire and beauty are deeply subjective and individualized.
(10:19):
If everybody was only attracted to one media ideal of beauty,
it would be eugenics. I don't think we're going to
completely eradicate unreachable beauty ideals, which span from the Venus
of Willendorf to big titty hentai Ai. But I do
think we've lost the plot when it comes to media
literacy and knowing that the images on screen are false fantasies.
(10:42):
We need to move past the seductive perfection of idealized
images into the messiness of real attraction, intimacy, and the
soft fallibility of human bodies. Making horny movies like any
job can be done fairly or in a way that
explodes it's its workers. Growing up in the Valley, I've
(11:03):
always been interested in porn as a low budget secondary
film industry that went from a legal too autorist cranking
out films that briefly made more money than Hollywood's despite
most people being too embarrassed to admit they watch.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
The best sex takes place in the mind first.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
For a young, beautiful woman, the possibilities seem endless. You
can try cashing in on your youth and beauty, but
you will run out of collateral and need other skills
to fall back on. Eventually, you might make a lot
of money if you're smart, lucky, and cash out at
the right time, but there's also a high chance you'll
lose it all to the house, which almost always wins.
(11:47):
If you're not careful. You might also get caught up
in the high rollers' lifestyle, addicted to spending money and
gambling with your life in an endless party that leaves
you feeling empty inside. You could even start to lose
your own sense of self to the perfect image up
on the screen.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
In this business, you get to see all the double
standards that women are held to in society, and it
is important to keep from perpetuating them. One way is
by refusing to allow anyone to disrespect you.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
So what do you do if you're a young woman
who exactly fits the beauty standards of your era as
a skinny, white blonde with big boobs, and you want
to become independent from your family and escape medical debt
induced poverty. Working against you is the limited timeline afforded
women who become valued as sex symbols by heterosexual men,
as well as possibilities. You might burn out from overwork,
(12:42):
only climb up halfway, or fall off entirely. If you're
Jenna Jamison, you spin the Roulette wheel of faith.
Speaker 7 (12:56):
I remember Jenna. You know she was so beautiful. I
was pretty overwhelmed. I knew that Jenna was going to
be a heartbreaker right away. Larry Mizzoli, Jenna's father.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
I miss my mother more than I can express.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Jenna Marie Mizzoli is born on April ninth, nineteen seventy four,
in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Aires. Her mother is a
showgirl and her daddy is a cop. This is how
Jenna's parents met and fell in love. Lawrence Larry Mizzoli
is born in San Joaquin County, California, in nineteen thirty nine.
(13:36):
His mother, Wanna Lee Dilbeck, Missoli is an Oklahoman whose family,
the Dilbecks, goes back to the British colonists. His father,
Henry Lawrence Massoli, is the son of Italians who immigrated
to San Francisco's Little Italy. The Missoli's claim of family
connection to Italian American nineteen fifties baseball star Joe DiMaggio,
(13:57):
allegedly Jenna's grandfather's second cousin, Jolton. Joe DiMaggio gained his
fame as a New York Yankee, but he was born
Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio in Martinez, California, to Sicilian immigrants delivered
into a family dynasty of fishermen. I couldn't verify the
Massoli DiMaggio connection, but I do believe all the Italians
(14:19):
living in northern California at that time made a nice
sacchi a pio. After high school, Larry Massoli joins the military,
gets sent to Vietnam, and becomes a cold blooded mass murderer.
The United States government then asks him to go to
the Congo as part of a CIA program to trade
(14:40):
counter insurgents during the Simba Rebellion.
Speaker 7 (14:45):
It's interesting because when you first go over there, you know,
you try to be so righteous. And I grew up
with Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, and they never shot
anyone in the back, you know, his white hats against
the black hats, and yet to do everything fair. While
I found out and war the best way to come
home alive is to sneak up on people and shoot them.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
Larry Mossoli briefly tries to retain his humanity under the
conditions of warfare, but quickly descends into killing everybody in sight,
including innocent civilians. The United States government gives him its
most violent toys for the massacre.
Speaker 7 (15:24):
I'll come up to a village and instead of going
house to house, I would level the whole place. Now,
I'll call in the P fifty one mustangs. We used napalm.
I had a contingent of Howitz's and we went from
village to village, killing them all. We just didn't care.
(15:46):
We didn't care.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
Rather than war turning him to pacifism, Larry Mizzoli becomes
a steward of American violence back home too, first for
the Italian mafia and then as a cop. He funnels
his post traumatic stress into more violence because he's too
fucked up to function normally in society.
Speaker 7 (16:08):
I couldn't cope in the world, you know, I couldn't
carry on a conversation.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
When jenal World returns, we'll find out how Jenna's parents
met and fell in love. Oh yeah, welcome back to
jenal World. Jenna's mother, Judy, is born Judith Brook Hunt
(16:38):
in Wichita, Kansas, on April twenty second, nineteen forty one.
A Taurus. Her parents are Doane Casper Hunt and Audrey E.
Smith Hunt. The Hunt side of the family consists of
German immigrants to the Midwest and more British colonists.
Speaker 7 (16:55):
There was no one else in the world for me
but Judy, the only woman I ever loved. Twelve years
that we were together, I didn't even look at another woman,
and finding her was like a fairy tale. You read
about these perfect love stories, but you never think they're
going to happen to you.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
Larry miss Oli ends up in the biggest little city, Reno, Nevada,
working a dubious job in partying. Larry's crew in Reno
includes Johnny Anastasia, nephew of Umberto albert Anastasia. Albert Anastasia
was a mob guy nicknamed the executioner who was instrumental
in murder incorporated the mafia's contract killing branch. Larry miss
(17:40):
Oli is also good friends with another NEPO baby of
a famous man connected to the mob, Frank Sinatra Junior.
Speaker 8 (17:48):
The guy was drunk. He said, you're a singer. You're
a Sinatra. Ain'tia? I said, if I'm standing in a
garage doesn't mean I'm a car. I couldn't stand it.
Here my own voice, Frank Sinai Junior.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
Frank Sinatra Junior has a long standing engagement at the
Harris Casino in Reno. Living in the shadow of his
ultra successful father provides him the publicity benefits of the
Sinatra name, but with it comes the downside of having
a famous workaholic father who is almost never around in
an era when fathers weren't expected to do much hands
on parenting anyway.
Speaker 8 (18:25):
At home, he was dad. He was terribly, terribly human.
This is what the penalty is when you have someone
that has been famous for so long, the legend starts
to eclipse.
Speaker 7 (18:35):
The man.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
Nevada holds special meeting for Frank Sinatra Junior at nineteen,
while trying to launch his own singing career, he was
kidnapped for ransom. This finally got his dad's attention, and
Frank Junior was safely handed back to Frank Senior in Reno.
The media spectacle of Frank Sinatra's sons kidnapping and safe
(18:59):
return was drowned out by a much bigger media spectacle
a few days earlier, the killing of President John F.
Kennedy during a motorcade in Dallas. Larry Is also budds
with William F. Harra, son of rich politician and lawyer
John Harra. Gambling was illegal in the state of California,
so Bill Harra developed a workaround for bingo called the
(19:21):
Reno Game. The authorities repeatedly shut Bill Harra down, but
his dad would bail him out. In nineteen thirty seven,
Bill Harra took his Reno Game to Reno itself, where
gambling had been legalized in nineteen thirty one, along with
fast divorces, in an effort to create tourism there. Bill
Harra became a guiding force in Nevada's casino development and
(19:44):
gambling regulation laws. He was married six times, including a
four month long marriage to country singer Bobby Gentry in
nineteen sixty nine that inspired her to write Fancy, a
story song about a poor teenage girl who becomes an
escort to sugar daddies and remains proud of her life choices.
Fancy is a huge hit for Gentry and a breakthrough
(20:05):
women's lib song for the Old boys Club of mainstream country.
Larry miss Oli, Frank Sinatra Junior, and the executioner's nephew
spend their nights carousing in Reno. They often end up
at Bill Harra's house, where Bill invites old stars like
Mickey Rooney to hang out. They bring party girls over
to Bill's place in limos chartered from the local clubs.
(20:28):
They have their own reserved tables at every joint in town,
including one called the Golden Hotel. There's always a warm
seat ready for Larry. At the Golden Hotel's showgirl review
the Golden Girls. One night. Among the lineup of gorgeous
goals and sequins and feathers, Larry spots a new show
(20:49):
girl with blue eyes, a deep tan, dark coal cat eyeliner,
and nude frosted lips. She's a natural blonde under the
black Cleopatra wig she wears for the show.
Speaker 7 (21:02):
From the moment I laid eyes on Judy, I knew
she was the one. I mean, even though she was
one of identically costume women on stage, she just radiated
in comparison to everyone else. I mean, to this day,
I still can't explain it.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Now.
Speaker 7 (21:18):
I certainly wasn't expecting it. It's like what my mother
used to say about being struck by lightning. Now I
looked at her, she looked at me, and I went, WHOA,
that was it. It was amazing. I mean, that had
never happened to me in my life.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
Larry already has a girlfriend named Barbara, who works as
a Marilyn Monroe impersonator, but he sidelines her to pursue
Judy while the other show girls come out to the
lobby to shoot their shot with the high rollers each
night after the show. Judy is shy and always stays backstage.
This only strengthens Larry's resolved to meet her. Judy already
(22:00):
has a boyfriend too, a local bartender, but one night
Larry convinces Judy to join him and his friend's roving
after party. Larry tells Judy he works at a grocery store,
but he sure knows a lot of celebrity's sons and
other well connected people in Reno for a bag boy.
Larry and his friends have a security detail of football
(22:22):
players from the University of Nevada, and Frank Sinatra Junior
has his own bodyguard on account of the kidnapping his quarterback.
Bodyguard scare off Judy's boyfriend and bring back in tell
that Judy is a twenty year old virgin. Judy lets
Larry buy her one ice cold coke and he takes
her to see his good friend Frank Sinatra Junior performing
(22:42):
at the Reno Haas. Judy decides he is worthy of
devirginizing her if he makes her an honest woman. Larry
doesn't want to settle down and commit to one woman
for the rest of his life quite yet, but he
knows this is his one shot with Judy and he
doesn't want to fuck it up up. After they consummate things,
he starts weeping because he feels so close to her.
(23:06):
He proposes shortly after, and she accepts. Now engaged, he
comes clean about his real profession, hijacking trucks carrying fur
coats and stereos for organized crime. She accepts this about
him too.
Speaker 7 (23:23):
Judy was an extremely intelligent girl from which Tuk Kansas,
you know, not jaded, not very worldly, but very genuine,
you know, very sweet. Judy's whole thrust in life was
to be a wife and mother.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
In the few pictures I have of my mom, she
looks so beautiful, fragile and sophisticated, like a swinging London model.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Showgirls are sexual fantasies made it to commerce. Semi nude
erotic dancers originate in Paris at clubs like the original
Follies Burgeire and the Moulin Rouge, while burlesque dancers have
been taking their clothes off in the US for years.
The showgirl review concept comes to America in nineteen oh
(24:12):
seven via Broadway impresario Florenz Zigfield Junior, who make stage
stars out of his Zigfield Girls. In nineteen eighteen, Follies
Burgeire introduces the first nude showgirls in Paris. Showgirls make
their Las Vegas debut in nineteen forty one at the
l Rancho Hotel Casino during breaks between musical acts. In
(24:35):
nineteen fifty two, the Sans Casino introduces showgirls wearing the flashy,
spangled peacocky costumes that become their signature Las Vegas look.
During the fifties, there are publicity wars between the showgirl
reviews and the flourishing casino ecosystem. The battle to have
the most glamorous showgirls advances at rappac mainstays like the
(24:58):
Desert Inn and the Sands. As showgirls take center stage
with their own shows. The idea of beautiful semi clad
women as diversion between acts, turns into boxing match ring girls.
In nineteen fifty seven, Harold Minsky, the adopted son whose
heir to the New York burlesque dynasty. Minskis brings topless
(25:19):
dancing to Las Vegas, escalating the casino arms race to
produce the most spectacular live show. The Tropicana, known as
the Trop is the luxurious crown jewel of the Vegas strip.
The Parisian Follies Bergeire franchises itself there in December of
nineteen fifty nine, advertising its shows as the cultural intersection
(25:41):
of Broadway and Hollywood in the Desert. Like all Vegas
stunts and frills, showgirls are bait to draw tourists into
the casinos to gamble. The trop crowd wears evening gowns
and suits to the Follies Burgeire show at the Fountain Theatre,
which is known as the Pink Room for its flamingo
pink furniture and curtains. The Trop has a net over
(26:03):
the orchestra pit because of how often the showgirls and
heavy headpieces topple off the stage.
Speaker 7 (26:11):
I quit my job, I sold everything I had. I
got in my car and I drove to Vegas and
we got married. And if she lived, I would still
be married to her to this day. You know I
would never have left her. Let me tell you. It
was the best twelve years of my life, even if
I had the worst life in the world. Afterward, I
knew I'd always have that. I mean, who gets so lucky?
Speaker 4 (26:37):
Judy gets hired at the Trop for the Follies burge Aire.
The newlywed Missolis immediately start trying to get pregnant, but
have no luck, so they turned to the professionals, scientologists.
Larry's brother in law has spent time in Scientology's private navy,
known as the Sea Organization or Sea ORG, having sailed
(26:58):
on Sea Org's flagship, the Apollo, with Commodore Lafayette. L
Ronald Hubbard He turns them on to dianetics. They take
courses they find pricey but useful. Judy gets pregnant. They
have a son they name Anthony Lawrence. When Larry is
thirty four and Judy is thirty two, they have a
(27:21):
daughter they named Jenna Marie.
Speaker 7 (27:25):
She came out of the womb with a smile on
her face.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
All of a sudden, there was another little entity, and
I had to share that universe. Tony Mussuli, Jenna's brother.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
Larry's brother in law, helps him get a steady job too,
working at KSNV, an NBC Network affiliate TV station in Vegas.
Sometimes Larry lets little Jenna come into the studio, sit
behind the news desk between broadcasts, and read off the
teleprompter into the camera.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
I was really in it and really good at it.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
In nineteen seventy five, Judy Massoli gets a mole on
her shoulder checked out and is informed it's malignant. She
is diagnosed with melanoma, which quickly escalates. The Masoli clan
has to watch helplessly as skin cancer ravages Judy, who
becomes too weak from her chemotherapy treatment to take care
of her children or herself. The family is drained emotionally
(28:29):
and financially from the medical bills for her treatments. Even
though Larry's making six figures working at the TV channel,
He's losing it all, trying anything, in everything to save
Judy's life.
Speaker 7 (28:43):
She became very ill.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
She couldn't bathe herself, she couldn't get up out of bed,
she lost all her hair. I can remember so vividly
her screaming at night from the pain.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
Larry sleeps by her bedside with morphine. Judy doesn't want
the kids to see her because she looks so sick.
Larry convinces himself she'll make a miraculous recovery, but she doesn't.
Judith Brooke Hunt miss Oli dies on February twentieth, nineteen
seventy six, when Jenna is almost two. Larry calls an
(29:23):
ambulance and puts the kids in a room so they
won't have to see their mom's lifeless body.
Speaker 7 (29:30):
They've given her about six months to live and she
only lived about ninety days.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
Larry, miss Oli just wants to man up and move forward.
But trauma doesn't desensitize you to new trauma. It just
keeps stacking up already too emotionally fucked up from war
to deal with processing his own feelings. He's now also
too fucked up emotionally to deal with the aftermath of
his wife's death. Jenna turns too, and starts having trouble
(30:01):
sleeping at night. Now five hundred thousand dollars in debt
for his wife's palliative care, the bank comes for Larry's assets,
his vehicles, a boat, and an apartment building he landlords.
Even after that, he's still left with a mound of debt,
so the family moves out of their suburban house into
a trailer park. Larry develops nervous exhaustion and ticks from
(30:25):
the stress. He takes the kids to their mother's grave
regularly at first, and then stops thinking about The loss
is too much for any of them.
Speaker 7 (30:38):
People don't want to be around death and grief. It's
one of those things a person has to go through
on their own.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
From that moment on, Jenna's father is haunted by his
love for Judy, left with only memories and photos of
his beautiful, vibrant wife and their two children together as
living souvenir.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
I just remember being so incredibly confused, you know, I
wasn't diapers. I was just a little kid, and to
have your mother ripped away from you that way devastated
me and changed the whole course of my life.
Speaker 7 (31:17):
That woman was my life. There was nobody else in
the world for me, and I have never been able
to recover from that loss. Never you spend the rest
of your life just searching.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
A few years later, five year old Jenna and seven
year old Tony looked like the children of the Corn,
with matching shaggy blonde mops of hair. Tony wears a
Superman logo T shirt and Jenna wears little ski jackets,
primary color shirts and pinafore dresses. She's a naturally rambunctious kid,
a fearless tomboy who likes to test her own limits
(32:10):
by doing cannonballs into the local pool.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
I remember the pool incident. This was a turning point
in my life. I would just go so far to
get everyone's attention. I would do anything it took.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Jenna always threw caution to the wind.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (32:30):
I would just go out in the middle of the
pool and try to coax my son into diving into
the pool, and Jenna would be standing next to him
in her diapers just watching me, and instead of my
son diving in courageously, Jenna would.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
There's a picture of five year old Jenna in midair.
She vaults into the pool, looking equal parts terrified and excited.
This sets the pattern for the rest of her life.
If Jenna wants to do something, she's gonna do it,
especially if it scares her and makes other people stare.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
I used to sit on my bed and gaze out
the window at the stars and think someday I'm going
to be a star.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
When Jenna World returns, Jenna finds her first true love dance.
Oh my God, Welcome back to Jena World. In nineteen
(33:35):
seventy nine, Jenna starts taking dance classes at fern Adare
Conservatory of the Arts in Las Vegas. Knowing that her
mom was a showgirl, Jenna wants to start dancing too.
Dance classes offer a euphoric escape from her grief. She
can dance for hours and hours without getting tired. Larry
(33:56):
decides to pursue his own dream too, becomes a cop,
which makes him feel like he's in charge in a
world that has robbed him of control. Going on the
beat also gives him a convenient reason not to be
around his kids, who look like his deceased wife.
Speaker 7 (34:14):
I quit a lucrative career for the NBC station to
become a policeman. I went to Night County, Nevada, which
is just north of Las Vegas, and got a job
as the graveyard deputy.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
Larry's old employers in the Italian mafia don't look too
kindly on the cops and definitely don't approve of Larry
switching teams to the other side of the law. As
a graveyard shift cop, Larry busts local whorehouses, stepping into
ongoing wars between rival wardellos run by the mob. The
mobsters start sending him messages to stay far the fuck
(34:48):
away from their businesses.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
One of the mob guys picked up Jenna after school
in a yellow school bus.
Speaker 7 (34:56):
He let all the.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Other kids off and kept Jenna on the bus. He
drove just with her for miles and miles. The deputies
in the Sheriff's department chased him, and finally the bus
pulled over and got Jenna.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
Gangsters in a nice car pull up on Tony at
school pickup, saying his dad said to get in. Tony
bolts off into the desert and hides there until dark.
The kids start going to school with a police escort.
They're paranoid at home too, where the phones are likely
being tapped. Their father is both their protector and the
(35:33):
one who put them in this danger. He tells Jenna
not to look out the windows, afraid she might get sniped,
but Dad's mostly not around to comfort them because he's
out patrolling. Instead, they get a revolving door of dubiously
qualified babysitters. Larry decides what he needs is a maternally
(35:54):
inclined new wife to cook, clean and raise these goddamn kids. Instead,
he gets Marjorie, an old coworker from the TV station
who's always had a thing for him. She's a former
model whose looks favor Marlena Dietrich. He takes her out
on a few dates and then proposes while he marries
(36:16):
her for the free child care. Marjorie is worse than
the bad babysitters. She backhands the kids for backtalk. She
doesn't feed them, but buys luxurious treats for herself, like
yo play yogurt. The kids subsists on a diet of
cheese sandwiches made by their dad and Jenna's attempts to
cook pasta in a microwave.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Marjorie was awful. It was like the evil stepmom. She
was always angry with us, maybe because we were left
over from Dad's other life before her.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Marjorie throws a pot of hot coffee at the kids,
but when confronted, plays dumb to their dad. Frustrate and malnourished,
the kids call up Grandma and tell her they're starving
at home. Grandma is not much better at taking care
of young kids herself. She's an alcoholic who drinks a
(37:12):
big glass of bourbon each night and passes out. She
doesn't cook either, but her kitchen is stocked with microwave
meals and pudding cups. The kids tell dad they're at
grandma's now. They eat her reserves of Hostess cherry pies
and wear her satin nightgowns to bed. Larry takes a
(37:45):
job offer in Florida. He wants to get himself and
his kids the fuck out of Vegas stat They load
up in his brown Pontiac Firebird and speed down to
Panama City. They enroll in a new school fenced off
with barbed wire. Larry gets a forty thousand dollars a
year job as a Florida cop, and Marjorie works as
a dispatcher. They're both hardly around because they work so much,
(38:08):
leaving the children with no supervision and lots of freedom
to get into lots of trouble. At their new apartment complex,
Tony and Jenna are lash key kids. An upstairs neighbor
who calls himself Charlie Daniels and wears a cowboy hat
makes Jenna mayonnaise sandwiches. While this could be creepy, it
(38:29):
is thankfully an innocent kindness from a man who sees
that the kids downstairs are neglected. Jenna also has a
protector in Tony, who beats up kids at school that
bullier try to touch her until he gets expelled for
punching out a teacher. When Marjorie is at home, she
mainly screams and slams doors. She slaps Jenna and spanks
(38:52):
her for perceived disrespect. She also mocks Tony for having asthma.
Most of the time, she just ignores the kids to
lay out back and sunbathe naked. She's awful to them
when their father isn't around, which is most of the time.
Jenna craves real motherly love and care. The Masoli family's
(39:15):
increasing sense of paranoia has followed them all the way
down to Florida. Tony keeps a gun his dad gave
him under his pillow and gives Jenna a butterfly knife.
Like any older sibling, Tony is both Jenna's bodyguard and
sometimes her bully. He puts her on a bike and
shoves it down a steep hill. They sneak into other
(39:36):
apartments in a game they call Ninja, running around wreaking
havoc with throwing stars and samurai swords. One time, Tony
flings a throwing star at Jenna and it gets stuck
in her head. Not very deeply, but it's in there.
Jenna covers for him and tells their dad she bumped
her head. The kids have a sibling pact of shared silence.
(40:00):
Tony gets into an altercation where a kid starts choking
him out. Jenna knows he has asthma and runs over
to save him. Like any good short kid, she jumps
on his attacker like a spider monkey and starts hammering
him in the spine with the handle end of her
butterfly knife. At home, Jenna cries all the time because
(40:21):
she's so miserable, but her stepmom never comes in to
comfort her. Tony and Jenna tell their father he has
to choose a side, Marjorie or them. He picks the kids.
Larry lays down the lod dinner that night. Marjorie doesn't
take it well and stomps around destroying stuff.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
For all his problems, it was reassuring to know that
he was, in his own strange way in our corner
if we ever really needed him.
Speaker 4 (40:54):
His second marriage had been a ploy for instant stability,
but Marjorie only caused more chaos. Even though she hates Marjorie,
Jenna still feels guilty and wishes it all played out
differently somehow. When Jenna is ten and Tony is thirteen,
the kids are sent back to Nevada for another stin
at Grandma's house until Larry can move back. Then the
(41:30):
Mizsoli family moves again to Boulder City, Nevada. Larry is
chasing police work, but also making it so the kids
can never settle in or build friendships. They're forced to
give away the family dogs because the new building won't
allow pets in her mainly unstable life. Jenna's ballet and
dance classes provide one reliable source of happiness, so Jenna
(41:54):
puts all her energy there. She becomes fixated on obtaining
toe shoes so that she can learn to dance on point.
She scavenges a used pair that aren't ballerina pink but
jet black. The point shoes provide a template. When Jenna
wants something, she'll figure out a way to make it hers.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
I went into this very gowky stage. I was very thin,
my head was really big, my teeth were really messed up.
I wore glasses, I had races. I remember in school
gym class looking at all the other girls who were
already shapely, and I looked like I was in third grade.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
Jenna starts seventh grade in Boulder City with glasses, a
prince valiant haircut, and hand me downs. She wants to
fit in and be popular, but can't afford new clothes
or other trendy stuff. In a classic Dolly Parton's Coat
of Many Colors situation, she tries to convert her grandmother's
old clothes into something cooler looking with a sewing machine,
(42:57):
but it doesn't work. At school poo, She's shy and introverted.
Being very short and small doesn't help her feel or
look any less young. She finally makes friends in a
cheerleading class, but they don't like that she's way better
at cheerleading than they are, so they start icing her out.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
I had experience with dance and gymnastics, so I was
super good and they weren't. So they pretty much ganged
up on me and decided they weren't going to be
my friends anymore. They wouldn't talk to me and would
go out of their way to make me feel foolish.
I went through about three months of being completely alone
at school. I had to eat lunch by myself. A
(43:41):
lot of the time. I would skip lunch and leave
school grounds to read a book.
Speaker 4 (43:46):
She ends up quitting cheerleading to win her friends back.
Classic junior high situation, kill or be killed. Jenna and
Tony get another new stepmom, Vivian, one of their father's
student at the Carson City Police Academy. Vivian is better
than Marjorie. She actually feeds them too, making them sandwiches
(44:08):
for school lunches, but Jenna is so stressed out at
school she stops eating, hiding her uneaten lunches in her
locker until it smells so rank she gets in trouble.
Vivian even listens to Jenna and defends her to Larry
when Jenna wants to start shaving her legs to fit
in with the mature teenage girls all around her. But
(44:29):
Jenna's guard is still up and Tony is against new
stepmoms on principle. It's probably for the best, because Vivian
and Larry start getting into screaming fights, and stepmom number
two is out the door fast, putting Jenna back on
her quest for a maternal figure to mentor her into
her burgeoning womanhood. As teen hood approaches, Jenna still looks
(44:55):
like a kid. She grows her hair out and starts
bleaching it. Flat chested, but starts wearing a bra. She
gets her first crush on a guy named Sesar. After
four months of playground love, Seyesar comes over to her place.
Jenna has no idea how to behave around a guy
who's interested in her. She clams up while they sit
(45:18):
on some steps, nervous her dad will come out, and
nervous he won't. Seesar slides his arm around her and
starts frenching her Jenna is disgusted by his tongue in
her mouth. Maybe she's not ready, or maybe she's just
not that into him. Her grandmother interrupts and Jenna pleads
with her not to tell Larry. She never sees Cesar
(45:41):
again because her road dog family pick up and move
for dad's new girlfriend, who lives in Elko, Nevada. In Elko,
Jenna picks cheerleading back up and thrives.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
That's how I started to get a little bit popular
for the first time in my life. Then I started
doing pad because one of the popular girls did them.
I was like, I can shred these people.
Speaker 4 (46:08):
Jenna's love of being on stage and competitive streak makes
her un natural for beauty pageants, but there's something else
motivating her, a huge chip on her shoulder about being
lower class and where that places her in the femininity sweepstakes.
Other pageant girls have momagers who support them emotionally and financially,
and live out their own dreams through their daughters. Jenna's
(46:31):
dad has neither time nor the inclination to be a
pageant dad. But if Jenna wants something, she's going to
get it. So to raise money, she has a bake
sale and her brother and dad sell off some guns.
She makes two K, which only covers the pageant entry fee.
Other girls have dance coaches, but Jenna does it all herself.
(46:53):
She choreographs an original tap routine to the Village People's
hit song about maritime life in the Navy.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
I was always trying to outdo myself. I felt like
I had to prove myself constantly because I felt alone, lonely,
and I wanted everyone to love me.
Speaker 4 (47:18):
Jenna loves winning. She'll enter any competition, especially if there's
prize money at stake. While she's still shy at heart,
whenever she gets on stage, she transforms into a confident performer.
She has a chin length blonde, flip red lipstick, a
red satin young mismodeling sash, and a matching red sweatshirt.
(47:41):
She wins the Elko pageant's overall title and advances to
a state pageant, where she competes against two hundred girls
and wins Best Interview and most Photogenic. She gets accepted
to nationals in Arkansas and has to raise more money
for the entry fee. She washes cars and convinces a
local luxury car dealership to give her one hundred and
(48:01):
fifty dollars.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
I would strap my banner to myself, put my crown on,
and I would walk the streets of Las Vegas asking
for sponsorship. I would go into the car dealerships begging,
please just sponsor me.
Speaker 4 (48:18):
Hustling people out of their money comes easily to her.
All her nervousness and insecurity dissipates when it's showtime. It's
like she's playing a character who's self assured. The more
often she switches over into performance mode, the more fearless
she becomes. She's finding a way to integrate the version
of herself who can involve dauntlessly into swimming pools as
(48:40):
a child with the girl who feels invisible to others
and can barely speak up at school. Jenna gets over
her beauty pageant bug quickly as soon as she realizes
it's a scam, depart her from money that she could
be rustling up for other purposes. Larry uproots his family
yet again and moves them all back to Las Vegas.
(49:02):
Jenna decides she wants to be popular at school this
time around, while her social anxiety is still so bad
that she throws up in the bathroom every day. Something
else happens in nineteen eighty nine, when Jenna Masoli turns fifteen, all.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
Of a sudden, boom, my boobs got huge. I mean,
I can't even tell you. I weighed ninety pounds and
I had like a C D cup, which is very
strange for a little girl. So I remember walking into
my first day of class my sophomore year, and I
wore a tight shirt, no bra, just because I wanted
(49:40):
to like throw it in everybody's face. And I remember
everyone looking at me going, Oh my god, what happened
to Jenna? Next Time?
Speaker 4 (49:57):
On episode two of Jena World, learning from Las Vegas Showgirls,
Jenna tries to become a showgirl like her mother, gets
a job at a strip club and works her way
up to top earner. This will get her drafted into
pornography and take her on a journey from Las Vegas
to Los Angeles. All this and more next time on
(50:19):
Jenna World. Jenna World is an iHeartRadio production executive produced
by Anna Hosnier and Becca Ramos, supervising, produced by Bei Wang,
produced by Victor Wright, script editing by Jonathan Mills, engineered
(50:41):
by Graham Gibson, and edited by Rory Gagan. Today's episode
of Jenna World featured Laurence ser Video as Jenna Jamison,
Miles Gray as Kid Rock, Max Silvestri as Roco Safreddi
Correina Longworth as Mina Hartley, Paul Sheer as Larry, Joe
Mandy as Frank Sinatra Junior, and Wyatt Faar as Tony Massly.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
Oh my god, Honey, h
Everyone watches poor No and if they say they don't,
their motherfucking liars.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Kid Rock. I do porno because that's what makes me happy.
I fuck all day, I get money. I love what
I'm doing. There is something wrong with that, Faco sa
Frede performer.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
People often say that the world would be so much
better if it were run by women, But women have
as many faults as men. Their faults are just different.
So the truth is that the world would not be better
if it were run by a woman. It would be
better if it were run by the right woman. Jenna Jamison,
(01:11):
Welcome to Jeno World.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Oh my god, this so good.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
What does pornography reveal about the American sexual psyche? Critics
say that porn degrades and disposes of its workers, So
what's the difference between that and any other job? And
what are we to make of performers who transcended their
alleged disposability and created profitable brands around their screen personas,
like the porn star Jenna Jamison did in the nineties
(01:50):
and two thousands when she made herself into a brand
and became queen of all media. But also, why should
anyone have to become a brand? Just to survive in America?
Why would anyone want to be famous? And then why
would everyone want to be famous? How did a parasocial
connection with a voyeuristic audience become mandatory for everyone with
(02:12):
the advent of social media? How do we maintain autonomy
in the attention economy? And why is the right wing
actively trying to make pornography illegal again? How can I
nut ethically? Welcome to Jena World Jenna Jamison Vivid Video
in the Valley. I'm your host, Molly Lambert. You may
(02:35):
remember me from Heidi World, the Heidi Flyfe Story and
the Secret History of LA. This time, I'll be your
tour guide for Genal World, a narrative nonfiction podcast about
the history of the adult film industry, telling the story
of porn superstar Jenna Jamison and a cavalcade of the
people who make up the colorful world of X rated films.
(02:56):
It's the crazy saga of the rise, fall, and rebirth
of the adult film industry. It has sex, drugs, art,
lots and lots of money, rock and roll, filmmaking, TV,
Howard Stern, the Internet, family, and even.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
Love, love, sex love, sex, love, sex, love, sex, love,
sex love sex.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
In the nineteen seventies, eighties, and early nineties, mainstream media
used the tragic stories of several adult film stars to
paint the porn industry as an inherently bad workplace that
degrades women and leads its performers into addiction and an
early grave. In the nineties, adult actress Jenna Jamison crossed
over into mainstream pop culture and helped to normalize making
(03:49):
porn as just another occupation. During her two thousands media peak,
Jenna helped popularize the radical idea that sex work is
a real job, requiring safe work conditions and fair wages.
The idea that women are sexual beings who aren't degraded
by sex on or off camera remains controversial. After being
(04:12):
legalized in the nineteen seventies, porn is now under attack
on multiple fronts. There are the conservatives who want to
ban porn entirely with Project twenty twenty five and began
a new era of sexual repression. There's also the nightmarish
rise of AI porn, which aims to cut out adult
performers entirely while simultaneously exploiting their images to train visual
(04:35):
models and promote deeply unethical stuff like face swapping filters.
And there's the puritanical way online platforms like TikTok and
Instagram use sexually suggestive content to lure in viewers while
punishing and banning actual sex workers from selling and promoting
their content online. Whatever you think about porn, its continued
(04:57):
legal existence is vital to American freedom of speech. It
is imperative that sexual content remains protected under the law.
Speaker 6 (05:08):
Sex isn't something men do to you. It isn't something
men get out of you. Sex is something you can
dive into with Gusto and like it every bit as
much as he does. Nina Hartley.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Performer Jenna Jamison combined her talent at performing on screen,
skill for marketing herself, an ability to speak up smartly
for sex workers during what would turn out to be
porn's last financial golden era. If she managed to make
both art and money from an industry that is deeply
corrupt and set up to exploit artists, well, that just
(05:45):
makes her a woman in film.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
I'm a powerful woman. I think that's intimidating to a
man on every level. That's why I always go out
of my way to be ultra nice and ultra sweet
and COI because it makes people feel comfortable, and I
want people to feel comfortable around me before I put
them in a headlock.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
This is a story about the American dream at the
end of the twentieth century and the collapse of the
American Empire at the turn of the twenty first. It's
about one woman's self directed rise to power in an
industry that was unknowingly experiencing its final rise to one
last big climax of profit. It's about the people who
make adult films and the place they once made them,
(06:33):
LA's San Fernando Valley Suburbs. This is an American fable
about money, love, sex, and familia. People seem to forget
that adult performers are actors playing roles, and because there's
now so little depiction of sex and mainstream American media,
Horn takes on the load, so to speak, of representing
(06:56):
all sex and intimacy, which it was never meant to do.
Porn depicts sexual fantasies about power and control, and what
people like to watch doesn't necessarily correlate to what they
like in real life. Oh my god, honey, there's a
lot of fear mongering that easy access to porn sexually
dead ends its viewers, but nobody gives viewers credit for
(07:17):
being able to differentiate media from real life. Consuming sexual
images cannot be compared to, nor will it ever replace,
the human experience of touching a real person's body. Is
porn really the reason idealized images of beauty are becoming
ever more unreachable? Or is porn just an easy target
(07:39):
to deflect away from larger issues of how the human
image can be visually idealized into an imaginary fantasy, a
tradition that goes all through art history. I'm just asking questions,
much like Joe Rogan, who will show up here later on.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
We get paid more than the men we call the shots.
We say who we want to work with. In what
way is that degrading? That's us taking hold of our
life life.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
The history of porn is also about shifting media format.
As a medium, porn is always changing to fit new
technology and always slightly ahead of mainstream media. Paul Thomas
Anderson's Boogie Nights covered the eighties shift from film to video,
when porn moved from theaters into homes with VHS players.
(08:32):
Porn had its own studio system, which began in the
seventies peaked with DVDs in the early two thousands and
collapsed as streaming online content to hold just ahead of
the mainstream Hollywood studio system collapsing into streaming. Jenna Jamison
bridged the gap between the old age of print magazines, videotapes,
(08:52):
and DVDs and the new era of websites, social media,
and streams. During her reign as the of porn she
epitomized the perks and pitfalls of selling your personality and
physical image for profit. Where being camera ready was once
reserved for professional performers, now everybody knows how to perform
(09:12):
when a camera is on, and a camera is almost
always on. Your porn has always reflected American culture back
to itself. It's possible to consume media and not agree
with its politics or take them on. I call this
the top Gun theory. Watching Top Gun doesn't mean you
(09:33):
suddenly endorse the US military or that you believe Tom
Cruise is an ace military pilot in real life. For
some reason, we seem to know that movies like Top
Gun are just movies, that they're fantasies. But when it
comes to porn, there's some kind of slipperiness. The nineties
also saw the popularization of third wave feminism, which embraced
(09:55):
an idea that women could use sexual allure as part
of their self concept of power. I did not anticipate
that the feminists rise to power in the bedroom and
boardroom by postmodern girl boss media stars like Madonna and
Jenna Jamison would be followed by decades of sexist backlash.
In real life, desire and beauty are deeply subjective and individualized.
(10:19):
If everybody was only attracted to one media ideal of beauty,
it would be eugenics. I don't think we're going to
completely eradicate unreachable beauty ideals, which span from the Venus
of Willendorf to big titty hentai Ai. But I do
think we've lost the plot when it comes to media
literacy and knowing that the images on screen are false fantasies.
(10:42):
We need to move past the seductive perfection of idealized
images into the messiness of real attraction, intimacy, and the
soft fallibility of human bodies. Making horny movies like any
job can be done fairly or in a way that
explodes it's its workers. Growing up in the Valley, I've
(11:03):
always been interested in porn as a low budget secondary
film industry that went from a legal too autorist cranking
out films that briefly made more money than Hollywood's despite
most people being too embarrassed to admit they watch.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
The best sex takes place in the mind first.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
For a young, beautiful woman, the possibilities seem endless. You
can try cashing in on your youth and beauty, but
you will run out of collateral and need other skills
to fall back on. Eventually, you might make a lot
of money if you're smart, lucky, and cash out at
the right time, but there's also a high chance you'll
lose it all to the house, which almost always wins.
(11:47):
If you're not careful. You might also get caught up
in the high rollers' lifestyle, addicted to spending money and
gambling with your life in an endless party that leaves
you feeling empty inside. You could even start to lose
your own sense of self to the perfect image up
on the screen.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
In this business, you get to see all the double
standards that women are held to in society, and it
is important to keep from perpetuating them. One way is
by refusing to allow anyone to disrespect you.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
So what do you do if you're a young woman
who exactly fits the beauty standards of your era as
a skinny, white blonde with big boobs, and you want
to become independent from your family and escape medical debt
induced poverty. Working against you is the limited timeline afforded
women who become valued as sex symbols by heterosexual men,
as well as possibilities. You might burn out from overwork,
(12:42):
only climb up halfway, or fall off entirely. If you're
Jenna Jamison, you spin the Roulette wheel of faith.
Speaker 7 (12:56):
I remember Jenna. You know she was so beautiful. I
was pretty overwhelmed. I knew that Jenna was going to
be a heartbreaker right away. Larry Mizzoli, Jenna's father.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
I miss my mother more than I can express.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Jenna Marie Mizzoli is born on April ninth, nineteen seventy four,
in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Aires. Her mother is a
showgirl and her daddy is a cop. This is how
Jenna's parents met and fell in love. Lawrence Larry Mizzoli
is born in San Joaquin County, California, in nineteen thirty nine.
(13:36):
His mother, Wanna Lee Dilbeck, Missoli is an Oklahoman whose family,
the Dilbecks, goes back to the British colonists. His father,
Henry Lawrence Massoli, is the son of Italians who immigrated
to San Francisco's Little Italy. The Missoli's claim of family
connection to Italian American nineteen fifties baseball star Joe DiMaggio,
(13:57):
allegedly Jenna's grandfather's second cousin, Jolton. Joe DiMaggio gained his
fame as a New York Yankee, but he was born
Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio in Martinez, California, to Sicilian immigrants delivered
into a family dynasty of fishermen. I couldn't verify the
Massoli DiMaggio connection, but I do believe all the Italians
(14:19):
living in northern California at that time made a nice
sacchi a pio. After high school, Larry Massoli joins the military,
gets sent to Vietnam, and becomes a cold blooded mass murderer.
The United States government then asks him to go to
the Congo as part of a CIA program to trade
(14:40):
counter insurgents during the Simba Rebellion.
Speaker 7 (14:45):
It's interesting because when you first go over there, you know,
you try to be so righteous. And I grew up
with Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, and they never shot
anyone in the back, you know, his white hats against
the black hats, and yet to do everything fair. While
I found out and war the best way to come
home alive is to sneak up on people and shoot them.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
Larry Mossoli briefly tries to retain his humanity under the
conditions of warfare, but quickly descends into killing everybody in sight,
including innocent civilians. The United States government gives him its
most violent toys for the massacre.
Speaker 7 (15:24):
I'll come up to a village and instead of going
house to house, I would level the whole place. Now,
I'll call in the P fifty one mustangs. We used napalm.
I had a contingent of Howitz's and we went from
village to village, killing them all. We just didn't care.
(15:46):
We didn't care.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
Rather than war turning him to pacifism, Larry Mizzoli becomes
a steward of American violence back home too, first for
the Italian mafia and then as a cop. He funnels
his post traumatic stress into more violence because he's too
fucked up to function normally in society.
Speaker 7 (16:08):
I couldn't cope in the world, you know, I couldn't
carry on a conversation.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
When jenal World returns, we'll find out how Jenna's parents
met and fell in love. Oh yeah, welcome back to
jenal World. Jenna's mother, Judy, is born Judith Brook Hunt
(16:38):
in Wichita, Kansas, on April twenty second, nineteen forty one.
A Taurus. Her parents are Doane Casper Hunt and Audrey E.
Smith Hunt. The Hunt side of the family consists of
German immigrants to the Midwest and more British colonists.
Speaker 7 (16:55):
There was no one else in the world for me
but Judy, the only woman I ever loved. Twelve years
that we were together, I didn't even look at another woman,
and finding her was like a fairy tale. You read
about these perfect love stories, but you never think they're
going to happen to you.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
Larry miss Oli ends up in the biggest little city, Reno, Nevada,
working a dubious job in partying. Larry's crew in Reno
includes Johnny Anastasia, nephew of Umberto albert Anastasia. Albert Anastasia
was a mob guy nicknamed the executioner who was instrumental
in murder incorporated the mafia's contract killing branch. Larry miss
(17:40):
Oli is also good friends with another NEPO baby of
a famous man connected to the mob, Frank Sinatra Junior.
Speaker 8 (17:48):
The guy was drunk. He said, you're a singer. You're
a Sinatra. Ain'tia? I said, if I'm standing in a
garage doesn't mean I'm a car. I couldn't stand it.
Here my own voice, Frank Sinai Junior.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
Frank Sinatra Junior has a long standing engagement at the
Harris Casino in Reno. Living in the shadow of his
ultra successful father provides him the publicity benefits of the
Sinatra name, but with it comes the downside of having
a famous workaholic father who is almost never around in
an era when fathers weren't expected to do much hands
on parenting anyway.
Speaker 8 (18:25):
At home, he was dad. He was terribly, terribly human.
This is what the penalty is when you have someone
that has been famous for so long, the legend starts
to eclipse.
Speaker 7 (18:35):
The man.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
Nevada holds special meeting for Frank Sinatra Junior at nineteen,
while trying to launch his own singing career, he was
kidnapped for ransom. This finally got his dad's attention, and
Frank Junior was safely handed back to Frank Senior in Reno.
The media spectacle of Frank Sinatra's sons kidnapping and safe
(18:59):
return was drowned out by a much bigger media spectacle
a few days earlier, the killing of President John F.
Kennedy during a motorcade in Dallas. Larry Is also budds
with William F. Harra, son of rich politician and lawyer
John Harra. Gambling was illegal in the state of California,
so Bill Harra developed a workaround for bingo called the
(19:21):
Reno Game. The authorities repeatedly shut Bill Harra down, but
his dad would bail him out. In nineteen thirty seven,
Bill Harra took his Reno Game to Reno itself, where
gambling had been legalized in nineteen thirty one, along with
fast divorces, in an effort to create tourism there. Bill
Harra became a guiding force in Nevada's casino development and
(19:44):
gambling regulation laws. He was married six times, including a
four month long marriage to country singer Bobby Gentry in
nineteen sixty nine that inspired her to write Fancy, a
story song about a poor teenage girl who becomes an
escort to sugar daddies and remains proud of her life choices.
Fancy is a huge hit for Gentry and a breakthrough
(20:05):
women's lib song for the Old boys Club of mainstream country.
Larry miss Oli, Frank Sinatra Junior, and the executioner's nephew
spend their nights carousing in Reno. They often end up
at Bill Harra's house, where Bill invites old stars like
Mickey Rooney to hang out. They bring party girls over
to Bill's place in limos chartered from the local clubs.
(20:28):
They have their own reserved tables at every joint in town,
including one called the Golden Hotel. There's always a warm
seat ready for Larry. At the Golden Hotel's showgirl review
the Golden Girls. One night. Among the lineup of gorgeous
goals and sequins and feathers, Larry spots a new show
(20:49):
girl with blue eyes, a deep tan, dark coal cat eyeliner,
and nude frosted lips. She's a natural blonde under the
black Cleopatra wig she wears for the show.
Speaker 7 (21:02):
From the moment I laid eyes on Judy, I knew
she was the one. I mean, even though she was
one of identically costume women on stage, she just radiated
in comparison to everyone else. I mean, to this day,
I still can't explain it.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Now.
Speaker 7 (21:18):
I certainly wasn't expecting it. It's like what my mother
used to say about being struck by lightning. Now I
looked at her, she looked at me, and I went, WHOA,
that was it. It was amazing. I mean, that had
never happened to me in my life.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
Larry already has a girlfriend named Barbara, who works as
a Marilyn Monroe impersonator, but he sidelines her to pursue
Judy while the other show girls come out to the
lobby to shoot their shot with the high rollers each
night after the show. Judy is shy and always stays backstage.
This only strengthens Larry's resolved to meet her. Judy already
(22:00):
has a boyfriend too, a local bartender, but one night
Larry convinces Judy to join him and his friend's roving
after party. Larry tells Judy he works at a grocery store,
but he sure knows a lot of celebrity's sons and
other well connected people in Reno for a bag boy.
Larry and his friends have a security detail of football
(22:22):
players from the University of Nevada, and Frank Sinatra Junior
has his own bodyguard on account of the kidnapping his quarterback.
Bodyguard scare off Judy's boyfriend and bring back in tell
that Judy is a twenty year old virgin. Judy lets
Larry buy her one ice cold coke and he takes
her to see his good friend Frank Sinatra Junior performing
(22:42):
at the Reno Haas. Judy decides he is worthy of
devirginizing her if he makes her an honest woman. Larry
doesn't want to settle down and commit to one woman
for the rest of his life quite yet, but he
knows this is his one shot with Judy and he
doesn't want to fuck it up up. After they consummate things,
he starts weeping because he feels so close to her.
(23:06):
He proposes shortly after, and she accepts. Now engaged, he
comes clean about his real profession, hijacking trucks carrying fur
coats and stereos for organized crime. She accepts this about
him too.
Speaker 7 (23:23):
Judy was an extremely intelligent girl from which Tuk Kansas,
you know, not jaded, not very worldly, but very genuine,
you know, very sweet. Judy's whole thrust in life was
to be a wife and mother.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
In the few pictures I have of my mom, she
looks so beautiful, fragile and sophisticated, like a swinging London model.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Showgirls are sexual fantasies made it to commerce. Semi nude
erotic dancers originate in Paris at clubs like the original
Follies Burgeire and the Moulin Rouge, while burlesque dancers have
been taking their clothes off in the US for years.
The showgirl review concept comes to America in nineteen oh
(24:12):
seven via Broadway impresario Florenz Zigfield Junior, who make stage
stars out of his Zigfield Girls. In nineteen eighteen, Follies
Burgeire introduces the first nude showgirls in Paris. Showgirls make
their Las Vegas debut in nineteen forty one at the
l Rancho Hotel Casino during breaks between musical acts. In
(24:35):
nineteen fifty two, the Sans Casino introduces showgirls wearing the flashy,
spangled peacocky costumes that become their signature Las Vegas look.
During the fifties, there are publicity wars between the showgirl
reviews and the flourishing casino ecosystem. The battle to have
the most glamorous showgirls advances at rappac mainstays like the
(24:58):
Desert Inn and the Sands. As showgirls take center stage
with their own shows. The idea of beautiful semi clad
women as diversion between acts, turns into boxing match ring girls.
In nineteen fifty seven, Harold Minsky, the adopted son whose
heir to the New York burlesque dynasty. Minskis brings topless
(25:19):
dancing to Las Vegas, escalating the casino arms race to
produce the most spectacular live show. The Tropicana, known as
the Trop is the luxurious crown jewel of the Vegas strip.
The Parisian Follies Bergeire franchises itself there in December of
nineteen fifty nine, advertising its shows as the cultural intersection
(25:41):
of Broadway and Hollywood in the Desert. Like all Vegas
stunts and frills, showgirls are bait to draw tourists into
the casinos to gamble. The trop crowd wears evening gowns
and suits to the Follies Burgeire show at the Fountain Theatre,
which is known as the Pink Room for its flamingo
pink furniture and curtains. The Trop has a net over
(26:03):
the orchestra pit because of how often the showgirls and
heavy headpieces topple off the stage.
Speaker 7 (26:11):
I quit my job, I sold everything I had. I
got in my car and I drove to Vegas and
we got married. And if she lived, I would still
be married to her to this day. You know I
would never have left her. Let me tell you. It
was the best twelve years of my life, even if
I had the worst life in the world. Afterward, I
knew I'd always have that. I mean, who gets so lucky?
Speaker 4 (26:37):
Judy gets hired at the Trop for the Follies burge Aire.
The newlywed Missolis immediately start trying to get pregnant, but
have no luck, so they turned to the professionals, scientologists.
Larry's brother in law has spent time in Scientology's private navy,
known as the Sea Organization or Sea ORG, having sailed
(26:58):
on Sea Org's flagship, the Apollo, with Commodore Lafayette. L
Ronald Hubbard He turns them on to dianetics. They take
courses they find pricey but useful. Judy gets pregnant. They
have a son they name Anthony Lawrence. When Larry is
thirty four and Judy is thirty two, they have a
(27:21):
daughter they named Jenna Marie.
Speaker 7 (27:25):
She came out of the womb with a smile on
her face.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
All of a sudden, there was another little entity, and
I had to share that universe. Tony Mussuli, Jenna's brother.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
Larry's brother in law, helps him get a steady job too,
working at KSNV, an NBC Network affiliate TV station in Vegas.
Sometimes Larry lets little Jenna come into the studio, sit
behind the news desk between broadcasts, and read off the
teleprompter into the camera.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
I was really in it and really good at it.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
In nineteen seventy five, Judy Massoli gets a mole on
her shoulder checked out and is informed it's malignant. She
is diagnosed with melanoma, which quickly escalates. The Masoli clan
has to watch helplessly as skin cancer ravages Judy, who
becomes too weak from her chemotherapy treatment to take care
of her children or herself. The family is drained emotionally
(28:29):
and financially from the medical bills for her treatments. Even
though Larry's making six figures working at the TV channel,
He's losing it all, trying anything, in everything to save
Judy's life.
Speaker 7 (28:43):
She became very ill.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
She couldn't bathe herself, she couldn't get up out of bed,
she lost all her hair. I can remember so vividly
her screaming at night from the pain.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
Larry sleeps by her bedside with morphine. Judy doesn't want
the kids to see her because she looks so sick.
Larry convinces himself she'll make a miraculous recovery, but she doesn't.
Judith Brooke Hunt miss Oli dies on February twentieth, nineteen
seventy six, when Jenna is almost two. Larry calls an
(29:23):
ambulance and puts the kids in a room so they
won't have to see their mom's lifeless body.
Speaker 7 (29:30):
They've given her about six months to live and she
only lived about ninety days.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
Larry, miss Oli just wants to man up and move forward.
But trauma doesn't desensitize you to new trauma. It just
keeps stacking up already too emotionally fucked up from war
to deal with processing his own feelings. He's now also
too fucked up emotionally to deal with the aftermath of
his wife's death. Jenna turns too, and starts having trouble
(30:01):
sleeping at night. Now five hundred thousand dollars in debt
for his wife's palliative care, the bank comes for Larry's assets,
his vehicles, a boat, and an apartment building he landlords.
Even after that, he's still left with a mound of debt,
so the family moves out of their suburban house into
a trailer park. Larry develops nervous exhaustion and ticks from
(30:25):
the stress. He takes the kids to their mother's grave
regularly at first, and then stops thinking about The loss
is too much for any of them.
Speaker 7 (30:38):
People don't want to be around death and grief. It's
one of those things a person has to go through
on their own.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
From that moment on, Jenna's father is haunted by his
love for Judy, left with only memories and photos of
his beautiful, vibrant wife and their two children together as
living souvenir.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
I just remember being so incredibly confused, you know, I
wasn't diapers. I was just a little kid, and to
have your mother ripped away from you that way devastated
me and changed the whole course of my life.
Speaker 7 (31:17):
That woman was my life. There was nobody else in
the world for me, and I have never been able
to recover from that loss. Never you spend the rest
of your life just searching.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
A few years later, five year old Jenna and seven
year old Tony looked like the children of the Corn,
with matching shaggy blonde mops of hair. Tony wears a
Superman logo T shirt and Jenna wears little ski jackets,
primary color shirts and pinafore dresses. She's a naturally rambunctious kid,
a fearless tomboy who likes to test her own limits
(32:10):
by doing cannonballs into the local pool.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
I remember the pool incident. This was a turning point
in my life. I would just go so far to
get everyone's attention. I would do anything it took.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Jenna always threw caution to the wind.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (32:30):
I would just go out in the middle of the
pool and try to coax my son into diving into
the pool, and Jenna would be standing next to him
in her diapers just watching me, and instead of my
son diving in courageously, Jenna would.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
There's a picture of five year old Jenna in midair.
She vaults into the pool, looking equal parts terrified and excited.
This sets the pattern for the rest of her life.
If Jenna wants to do something, she's gonna do it,
especially if it scares her and makes other people stare.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
I used to sit on my bed and gaze out
the window at the stars and think someday I'm going
to be a star.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
When Jenna World returns, Jenna finds her first true love dance.
Oh my God, Welcome back to Jena World. In nineteen
(33:35):
seventy nine, Jenna starts taking dance classes at fern Adare
Conservatory of the Arts in Las Vegas. Knowing that her
mom was a showgirl, Jenna wants to start dancing too.
Dance classes offer a euphoric escape from her grief. She
can dance for hours and hours without getting tired. Larry
(33:56):
decides to pursue his own dream too, becomes a cop,
which makes him feel like he's in charge in a
world that has robbed him of control. Going on the
beat also gives him a convenient reason not to be
around his kids, who look like his deceased wife.
Speaker 7 (34:14):
I quit a lucrative career for the NBC station to
become a policeman. I went to Night County, Nevada, which
is just north of Las Vegas, and got a job
as the graveyard deputy.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
Larry's old employers in the Italian mafia don't look too
kindly on the cops and definitely don't approve of Larry
switching teams to the other side of the law. As
a graveyard shift cop, Larry busts local whorehouses, stepping into
ongoing wars between rival wardellos run by the mob. The
mobsters start sending him messages to stay far the fuck
(34:48):
away from their businesses.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
One of the mob guys picked up Jenna after school
in a yellow school bus.
Speaker 7 (34:56):
He let all the.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
Other kids off and kept Jenna on the bus. He
drove just with her for miles and miles. The deputies
in the Sheriff's department chased him, and finally the bus
pulled over and got Jenna.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
Gangsters in a nice car pull up on Tony at
school pickup, saying his dad said to get in. Tony
bolts off into the desert and hides there until dark.
The kids start going to school with a police escort.
They're paranoid at home too, where the phones are likely
being tapped. Their father is both their protector and the
(35:33):
one who put them in this danger. He tells Jenna
not to look out the windows, afraid she might get sniped,
but Dad's mostly not around to comfort them because he's
out patrolling. Instead, they get a revolving door of dubiously
qualified babysitters. Larry decides what he needs is a maternally
(35:54):
inclined new wife to cook, clean and raise these goddamn kids. Instead,
he gets Marjorie, an old coworker from the TV station
who's always had a thing for him. She's a former
model whose looks favor Marlena Dietrich. He takes her out
on a few dates and then proposes while he marries
(36:16):
her for the free child care. Marjorie is worse than
the bad babysitters. She backhands the kids for backtalk. She
doesn't feed them, but buys luxurious treats for herself, like
yo play yogurt. The kids subsists on a diet of
cheese sandwiches made by their dad and Jenna's attempts to
cook pasta in a microwave.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Marjorie was awful. It was like the evil stepmom. She
was always angry with us, maybe because we were left
over from Dad's other life before her.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Marjorie throws a pot of hot coffee at the kids,
but when confronted, plays dumb to their dad. Frustrate and malnourished,
the kids call up Grandma and tell her they're starving
at home. Grandma is not much better at taking care
of young kids herself. She's an alcoholic who drinks a
(37:12):
big glass of bourbon each night and passes out. She
doesn't cook either, but her kitchen is stocked with microwave
meals and pudding cups. The kids tell dad they're at
grandma's now. They eat her reserves of Hostess cherry pies
and wear her satin nightgowns to bed. Larry takes a
(37:45):
job offer in Florida. He wants to get himself and
his kids the fuck out of Vegas stat They load
up in his brown Pontiac Firebird and speed down to
Panama City. They enroll in a new school fenced off
with barbed wire. Larry gets a forty thousand dollars a
year job as a Florida cop, and Marjorie works as
a dispatcher. They're both hardly around because they work so much,
(38:08):
leaving the children with no supervision and lots of freedom
to get into lots of trouble. At their new apartment complex,
Tony and Jenna are lash key kids. An upstairs neighbor
who calls himself Charlie Daniels and wears a cowboy hat
makes Jenna mayonnaise sandwiches. While this could be creepy, it
(38:29):
is thankfully an innocent kindness from a man who sees
that the kids downstairs are neglected. Jenna also has a
protector in Tony, who beats up kids at school that
bullier try to touch her until he gets expelled for
punching out a teacher. When Marjorie is at home, she
mainly screams and slams doors. She slaps Jenna and spanks
(38:52):
her for perceived disrespect. She also mocks Tony for having asthma.
Most of the time, she just ignores the kids to
lay out back and sunbathe naked. She's awful to them
when their father isn't around, which is most of the time.
Jenna craves real motherly love and care. The Masoli family's
(39:15):
increasing sense of paranoia has followed them all the way
down to Florida. Tony keeps a gun his dad gave
him under his pillow and gives Jenna a butterfly knife.
Like any older sibling, Tony is both Jenna's bodyguard and
sometimes her bully. He puts her on a bike and
shoves it down a steep hill. They sneak into other
(39:36):
apartments in a game they call Ninja, running around wreaking
havoc with throwing stars and samurai swords. One time, Tony
flings a throwing star at Jenna and it gets stuck
in her head. Not very deeply, but it's in there.
Jenna covers for him and tells their dad she bumped
her head. The kids have a sibling pact of shared silence.
(40:00):
Tony gets into an altercation where a kid starts choking
him out. Jenna knows he has asthma and runs over
to save him. Like any good short kid, she jumps
on his attacker like a spider monkey and starts hammering
him in the spine with the handle end of her
butterfly knife. At home, Jenna cries all the time because
(40:21):
she's so miserable, but her stepmom never comes in to
comfort her. Tony and Jenna tell their father he has
to choose a side, Marjorie or them. He picks the kids.
Larry lays down the lod dinner that night. Marjorie doesn't
take it well and stomps around destroying stuff.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
For all his problems, it was reassuring to know that
he was, in his own strange way in our corner
if we ever really needed him.
Speaker 4 (40:54):
His second marriage had been a ploy for instant stability,
but Marjorie only caused more chaos. Even though she hates Marjorie,
Jenna still feels guilty and wishes it all played out
differently somehow. When Jenna is ten and Tony is thirteen,
the kids are sent back to Nevada for another stin
at Grandma's house until Larry can move back. Then the
(41:30):
Mizsoli family moves again to Boulder City, Nevada. Larry is
chasing police work, but also making it so the kids
can never settle in or build friendships. They're forced to
give away the family dogs because the new building won't
allow pets in her mainly unstable life. Jenna's ballet and
dance classes provide one reliable source of happiness, so Jenna
(41:54):
puts all her energy there. She becomes fixated on obtaining
toe shoes so that she can learn to dance on point.
She scavenges a used pair that aren't ballerina pink but
jet black. The point shoes provide a template. When Jenna
wants something, she'll figure out a way to make it hers.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
I went into this very gowky stage. I was very thin,
my head was really big, my teeth were really messed up.
I wore glasses, I had races. I remember in school
gym class looking at all the other girls who were
already shapely, and I looked like I was in third grade.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
Jenna starts seventh grade in Boulder City with glasses, a
prince valiant haircut, and hand me downs. She wants to
fit in and be popular, but can't afford new clothes
or other trendy stuff. In a classic Dolly Parton's Coat
of Many Colors situation, she tries to convert her grandmother's
old clothes into something cooler looking with a sewing machine,
(42:57):
but it doesn't work. At school poo, She's shy and introverted.
Being very short and small doesn't help her feel or
look any less young. She finally makes friends in a
cheerleading class, but they don't like that she's way better
at cheerleading than they are, so they start icing her out.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
I had experience with dance and gymnastics, so I was
super good and they weren't. So they pretty much ganged
up on me and decided they weren't going to be
my friends anymore. They wouldn't talk to me and would
go out of their way to make me feel foolish.
I went through about three months of being completely alone
at school. I had to eat lunch by myself. A
(43:41):
lot of the time. I would skip lunch and leave
school grounds to read a book.
Speaker 4 (43:46):
She ends up quitting cheerleading to win her friends back.
Classic junior high situation, kill or be killed. Jenna and
Tony get another new stepmom, Vivian, one of their father's
student at the Carson City Police Academy. Vivian is better
than Marjorie. She actually feeds them too, making them sandwiches
(44:08):
for school lunches, but Jenna is so stressed out at
school she stops eating, hiding her uneaten lunches in her
locker until it smells so rank she gets in trouble.
Vivian even listens to Jenna and defends her to Larry
when Jenna wants to start shaving her legs to fit
in with the mature teenage girls all around her. But
(44:29):
Jenna's guard is still up and Tony is against new
stepmoms on principle. It's probably for the best, because Vivian
and Larry start getting into screaming fights, and stepmom number
two is out the door fast, putting Jenna back on
her quest for a maternal figure to mentor her into
her burgeoning womanhood. As teen hood approaches, Jenna still looks
(44:55):
like a kid. She grows her hair out and starts
bleaching it. Flat chested, but starts wearing a bra. She
gets her first crush on a guy named Sesar. After
four months of playground love, Seyesar comes over to her place.
Jenna has no idea how to behave around a guy
who's interested in her. She clams up while they sit
(45:18):
on some steps, nervous her dad will come out, and
nervous he won't. Seesar slides his arm around her and
starts frenching her Jenna is disgusted by his tongue in
her mouth. Maybe she's not ready, or maybe she's just
not that into him. Her grandmother interrupts and Jenna pleads
with her not to tell Larry. She never sees Cesar
(45:41):
again because her road dog family pick up and move
for dad's new girlfriend, who lives in Elko, Nevada. In Elko,
Jenna picks cheerleading back up and thrives.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
That's how I started to get a little bit popular
for the first time in my life. Then I started
doing pad because one of the popular girls did them.
I was like, I can shred these people.
Speaker 4 (46:08):
Jenna's love of being on stage and competitive streak makes
her un natural for beauty pageants, but there's something else
motivating her, a huge chip on her shoulder about being
lower class and where that places her in the femininity sweepstakes.
Other pageant girls have momagers who support them emotionally and financially,
and live out their own dreams through their daughters. Jenna's
(46:31):
dad has neither time nor the inclination to be a
pageant dad. But if Jenna wants something, she's going to
get it. So to raise money, she has a bake
sale and her brother and dad sell off some guns.
She makes two K, which only covers the pageant entry fee.
Other girls have dance coaches, but Jenna does it all herself.
(46:53):
She choreographs an original tap routine to the Village People's
hit song about maritime life in the Navy.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
I was always trying to outdo myself. I felt like
I had to prove myself constantly because I felt alone, lonely,
and I wanted everyone to love me.
Speaker 4 (47:18):
Jenna loves winning. She'll enter any competition, especially if there's
prize money at stake. While she's still shy at heart,
whenever she gets on stage, she transforms into a confident performer.
She has a chin length blonde, flip red lipstick, a
red satin young mismodeling sash, and a matching red sweatshirt.
(47:41):
She wins the Elko pageant's overall title and advances to
a state pageant, where she competes against two hundred girls
and wins Best Interview and most Photogenic. She gets accepted
to nationals in Arkansas and has to raise more money
for the entry fee. She washes cars and convinces a
local luxury car dealership to give her one hundred and
(48:01):
fifty dollars.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
I would strap my banner to myself, put my crown on,
and I would walk the streets of Las Vegas asking
for sponsorship. I would go into the car dealerships begging,
please just sponsor me.
Speaker 4 (48:18):
Hustling people out of their money comes easily to her.
All her nervousness and insecurity dissipates when it's showtime. It's
like she's playing a character who's self assured. The more
often she switches over into performance mode, the more fearless
she becomes. She's finding a way to integrate the version
of herself who can involve dauntlessly into swimming pools as
(48:40):
a child with the girl who feels invisible to others
and can barely speak up at school. Jenna gets over
her beauty pageant bug quickly as soon as she realizes
it's a scam, depart her from money that she could
be rustling up for other purposes. Larry uproots his family
yet again and moves them all back to Las Vegas.
(49:02):
Jenna decides she wants to be popular at school this
time around, while her social anxiety is still so bad
that she throws up in the bathroom every day. Something
else happens in nineteen eighty nine, when Jenna Masoli turns fifteen, all.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
Of a sudden, boom, my boobs got huge. I mean,
I can't even tell you. I weighed ninety pounds and
I had like a C D cup, which is very
strange for a little girl. So I remember walking into
my first day of class my sophomore year, and I
wore a tight shirt, no bra, just because I wanted
(49:40):
to like throw it in everybody's face. And I remember
everyone looking at me going, Oh my god, what happened
to Jenna? Next Time?
Speaker 4 (49:57):
On episode two of Jena World, learning from Las Vegas Showgirls,
Jenna tries to become a showgirl like her mother, gets
a job at a strip club and works her way
up to top earner. This will get her drafted into
pornography and take her on a journey from Las Vegas
to Los Angeles. All this and more next time on
(50:19):
Jenna World. Jenna World is an iHeartRadio production executive produced
by Anna Hosnier and Becca Ramos, supervising, produced by Bei Wang,
produced by Victor Wright, script editing by Jonathan Mills, engineered
(50:41):
by Graham Gibson, and edited by Rory Gagan. Today's episode
of Jenna World featured Laurence ser Video as Jenna Jamison,
Miles Gray as Kid Rock, Max Silvestri as Roco Safreddi
Correina Longworth as Mina Hartley, Paul Sheer as Larry, Joe
Mandy as Frank Sinatra Junior, and Wyatt Faar as Tony Massly.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
Oh my god, Honey, h
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.