Chapter 3: B.J. (Before Jenna)

Chapter 3 “B.J. (Before Jenna)”: Steven Hirsch founds Vivid Video and turns adult actress Ginger Lynn Allen into porn’s first video age superstar. The San Fernando Valley becomes the epicenter of the adult industry. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
The eighties were the golden age of porn. Everybody was
treated so well and we were all so close. It
was just beautiful. Jinger and Allen performer.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
We're just another option for adults. I believe people make
decisions for themselves. It's not for me or anyone else
to pass any kind of world judgment. We make movies
that people want to watch them. We'll continue to do that.
Stephen Hirsch, Vivid Video Founder.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Nobody in the modern era of the adult industry has
been more innovative in mainstreaming their company image than Vivid.
That made them one of the premier brands in all
of Hollywood. Adults or otherwise. Paul Fishbeind, Adult Video News Founder.

Speaker 4 (01:01):
Welcome to Jenna World. Welcome back. I'm your host, Molly Lambert.
This is episode three ej Before Jenna. Pacific Palisades, nineteen

(01:28):
eighty four. At a seafood restaurant off the Pacific Coast
Highway called Gladstone's at the Beach, a twenty two year
old five foot six, brown haired Jewish kid from the
valley named Stephen Hirsh a Gemini and his girlfriend Bren
are meeting up with twenty one year old five foot
four blonde Sagittarius ginger Lynn Allen ginger Lynn has been

(01:52):
doing adult movies for a year. Stephen Hirsh is a
fan of her work who wants to make her an offer.
She agrees to hear him out in exchange for his
promise of endless crab legs, her favorite and an ocean
front view. Ginger Lynn arrives in a lace dress and
heels to meet Stephen and Wren at a wooden picnic

(02:12):
table on Gladstone's outdoor deck, overlooking will Rogers State Beach,
named for the vaudeville cowboy turned radio star. At twenty
two years old, Stephen Hirsch is already a second generation pornographer.
His father, Fred Hirsch, is a prominent distributor of eight
millimeter stag films, which are short films that are at

(02:34):
most ten minutes long, have no sound, and depict hardcore
sexual acts. Stag films were creditless, with no director, stars,
or film crew credited. Because pornographic films were then legal
to make or show. They screened stag films clandestinely at fraternities, brothels,
and men's clubs. Fred Hirsch was a stockbroker first, but

(02:58):
after Wall Street crashed in nineteen sixty two, he decided
to shift gears. When Stephen Hirsh is eleven years old,
his father Fred gathers the family in their living room
to tell them he's embarking on a new career path
selling pornographic film reels for a company called Sovereign News.
All of this takes place not in Horney, liberal California,

(03:20):
but in horny, conservative Cleveland, Ohio. Their father warns young
Stephen and his sister Marcy that other kids might not
accept them if their parents find out what the Hirsh
kid's dad does for a living.

Speaker 5 (03:35):
My biggest concern was what I would tell my friends.
I had a hard time Marcy Hirsch, Stephen's sister.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
I was okay with that. If they didn't want to
be friends with us, I didn't want to be friends
with them.

Speaker 4 (03:55):
Sovereign News Corporation, the company who give Fred Hirsch his
new career selling eight non elimeter stagfilms, is owned by
a Cleveland born businessman named Ruben Sterman, A Leo. The
son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Sterman starts selling comic books
out of the trunk of his car in the late
nineteen forties, he parlays his comic book hustle into a

(04:16):
wholesale business, distributing comic books, tobacco, and candy to newsstands.
He adds adult magazines to the roster in the early sixties,
and their profits quickly surpass his other wares. Rubin Sterman
has been called the Walt Disney of porn for doing
for sex magazines what Walt Disney did for animation, fostering

(04:38):
a new American national pastime, selling a wildly lucrative form
of escapism to the masses Mickey mouse or naked chicks.
At the end of the day, it's all just a
way to leave behind the miserable drudgery of real life
for a fantasy realm. In nineteen sixty four, Ruben Sterman
gets raided by the FBI for the first time. They

(05:00):
bust one of his Cleveland warehouses to confiscate a dirty
book called sex Life of a Cop. He fights prosecution
by filing countersuits and working under aliases to protect himself
against the government's inquest into citizens, minds and pants. Stermin
links with the Gambino crime family. Sterman also establishes the

(05:21):
first legal adult bookstores in the US adult bookstores, which
naturally began in nineteen twenties Europe, were de facto banned
in America, but sexual media still flowed underground. A series
of First Amendment related Supreme Court rulings legalized sex shops nationally,

(05:41):
allowing Reuben Sterman to legally set up business. Local jurisdictions
still limit zoning to push sex shops into unofficial red
light districts on the outskirts of town, which is why
you often see them way out off random freeway exits.
By the late nineteen sixties, Juevern NewsCorp. Is the number

(06:01):
one distributor of adult magazines in America. They're also under
constant threat and surveillance from authorities. Reuben Sterman relocates from
the Midwest to ELA's San Fernando Valley, where a sex
belt is developing. Sterman's booming business buys him a townhouse
in Van Nuys, a line of credit for clothes at

(06:22):
Posh Beverly Hills Men's shop, Vijon, Rolls Royce's Mercedes, and
a yearly seated the Cannes Film Festival. But the US
government is keeping a close eye on his finances, and
in nineteen eighty nine, he's sentenced for tax eVision. Sterman
is ordered to pay two point five million dollars in
back taxes and spend a decade in jail. He also

(06:45):
catches a bullshit charge for interstate transportation of obscene materials.
He strikes a plea bargain, but gets caught trying to
bribe a juror and is given another twenty years for extortion.
He's locked up in Boron, California. He pulls off a
jail break and briefly escapes, but the Walt Disney of
porn is apprehended again in Anaheim, California, home of Disneyland.

(07:12):
Cleveland's porn king, Reuben Sturman, serves out the rest of
his sentence in Kentucky and dies in jail at the
age of seventy three. Despite their dad's unusual job selling
dirty movies, the Hirshes are a model middle class Jewish
mid century Midwestern family. The Hirsh kids, son Stephen, daughter Marcy,

(07:36):
and youngest son Bradley, shovels snow in the winter. In
the summers, they play baseball and mow neighborhood lawns for
pocket money, but Stephen Hirsch feels alienated from the other
kids in Lyndhurst, Ohio. Some of them bully him at
school for being Jewish. He channels his pent up aggression
into a socially acceptable place sports, joining the school wrestling team.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
It helped toughen me up a bit, and it helped
give me the drive to succeed because I had to
prove that I was okay.

Speaker 6 (08:10):
I'd always wanted to do a movie that was pure
fucking nothing else the way eat had been just eating,
and sleep had been just sleeping. So in October sixty eight,
I shot a movie of Viva having sex with Lewis Walden.
I just called it Fuck, Andy Warhol Artist.

Speaker 4 (08:31):
After the Hayes Code of Film Censorship ends in nineteen
sixty eight, stag films are succeeded by full length movies
that can show sex and screen in public. In nineteen
sixty nine, the first film to ever legally show real
footage of explicit sex acts hits the big screen. It's
an Andy Warhol art film called Blue Movie, originally titled Fuck,

(08:53):
starring Warhole superstar Viva and actor Lewis Walden as a
couple talking about the Vietnam War and present Nixon and
engaging an unsimulated intercourse shot in long improvised takes. Blue
Movie is ninety five minutes of talking and ten minutes
of sex. Blue Movie is focused on sexual realism, not

(09:14):
sexual fantasy.

Speaker 6 (09:17):
Scripts bore me. It's much more exciting not to know
what's going to happen. I don't think the plot is important.
If you see a movie of two people talking, you
can watch it over and over again without being bored.
You get involved, you miss things, you come back to it.
But you can't see the same movie over and over

(09:38):
again if it has a plot, because you already know
the ending. Everyone is rich, everyone is interesting. Years ago,
people used to sit looking out of their windows at
the street or on a park bench. They would stay
for hours without being bored, although nothing much was going on.
This is my favorite theme in movie making, just watching

(09:59):
something happening for two hours or so.

Speaker 7 (10:03):
The Warhole films for about sexual disappointment and frustration. The
way Andy saw the world, the way the world is,
and the way nine tenths of the population sees it. Yeah,
pretends they don't, don't Viva actress.

Speaker 4 (10:21):
Blue Movie follows Warholes shorts Blowjob Number one and Blowjob
Number two, which both focus and tight close up on
a man's face as he allegedly receives a blowjob below frame.
Warhole purposely courts controversy, which brings him free publicity. The
Warhole ethos of art, a self consciously consumerist product, a

(10:44):
personal brand, was cultivated working as an illustrator in the
advertising industry. On opening day, Blue Movie grows as a
theatrical house record of three thy fifty dollars, recouping its
shooting budget of three thousand dollars. It makes sixteen thy
two hundred dollars within the week, and Warhol takes home
ninety percent of the box office gross. Andy Warhol gets

(11:08):
his wish for controversy and free promotion when the NYPD
raid the Garrick Cinema on Bleaker Street where Blue Movie
is playing first run. Sees the film reels for obscenity
and arrest the theatre's staff for distributing obscene materials. Warhol
cashes in on the scandal by publishing a book of
explicit dialogue. In film stills from Blue Movie. Conservatives are

(11:30):
afraid of what frank depictions of sex will do to viewers' minds,
but it's too late for the Prudes Blue movie Lights
The Fuse, and shortly after its success, pornographic movies like
Behind the Green Door and The Devil and Miss Jones
become big box office hits. In nineteen seventy five, the
Hirsch family leaves Ohio, heading out west to the booming

(11:53):
geographic center of the pornographic film industry, La San Fernando Valley.
HR is chasing the adult film gold rush and also
outrunning some obscenity charges he caught in Ohio. The Hirsch
family settles into a two story house in Woodland Hills,
a West Valley suburb close to where all the porn

(12:14):
studios and warehouses are clustered. Fred Hirsch's sales model pivots
from super eight stag films to video home system VHS
and Beta tapes as the eighties approached. After being acquitted
of the Ohio obscenity charges in nineteen seventy eight, he
starts his own company called Adult Video Corporation. Woodland Hills

(12:38):
superficially resembles the Ohio suburbs. Aside from its key lack
of snow, the valley is often set dressed with deciduous
trees to play the Midwest on screen. There are a
couple aspects of moving to the Valley that considerably improve
the now teenage Stephen Hirsch's life. He's no longer the
only Jewish kid in town. The valley has become a

(13:00):
place where upwardly mobile, middle class Jewish families settle, not
in the Tudor Revival style mansions of show business Jews
in Hancock Park in bel Air, or the orthodox enclaves
off Fairfax Avenue, but into post war single family homes
with green grass front lawns and white picket fences. They

(13:20):
are Jewish families, like the Hirsh's attempt to seamlessly assimilate
into suburban whiteness in the valley.

Speaker 8 (13:29):
Not only does.

Speaker 4 (13:29):
Stephen Hirsch no longer get bullied for being Jewish at
his new school, El Camino Real High, he reinvents himself
as an all American jock like the ones who bullied
him in Ohio. The Hirsh siblings are also no longer
the only kids they know whose parents work in the
porn industry. Fred Hirsch has professional colleagues in the valley,

(13:50):
and his colleagues have families too. They're all part of
a thriving local business scene that just happens to involve
people performing sex x on camera. The Hirsh's are no
longer local pariahs in the valley. They get to be
just like everyone else. Steve becomes co captain of the
school wrestling team, making his father proud. The suburban San

(14:13):
Fernando Valley is still very square on the surface, but
in the seventies, the porn industry surreptitiously grows and flowers.
There By the mid seventies, the porn industry is estimated
to be turning a yearly profit of ten million dollars.
By nineteen eighty, the yearly profits for pornography have shot
up to one hundred million bucks. Stephen Hirsh graduates high

(14:36):
school and immediately starts working for his dad Fred at
the Adult Video Corporation office in Northridge. The Adult Video
Corporation shop, known as AVC, is a VHS duplication lab
full of worrying video cassette recorders, cranking out tapes from
master copies of old adult film reels. At first, they

(14:57):
try to keep family in business separate, but they work
in such close quarters it proves impossible. Marcy Hirsch sees
her first glimpse of porn on a monitor, and her
dad tells her to stay out of the lab when
he's working. But it's a hard rule to keep, so
they all just adjust to it.

Speaker 5 (15:17):
After that, we would both be in there watching it.
After a while, you almost forget what you're watching because
you see it so often.

Speaker 4 (15:27):
This work arrangement might weird other people out for basic
oedical reasons, but it doesn't really bother the Hirsh's in
the valley. Other kids dads work in industries like aerospace.
At least their pornographer father never helped make a bomb.
Fred Hirsch and his kids are making an honest living
in adult films, and the profits are worth tuning out

(15:49):
seeing a little porn with your dad. By nineteen eighty five,
ABC is making four point two million dollars a year,
with most of it going right back into the operation.
The Hirsh family nets a tidy profit of around half
a million dollars. Steve Hirsch attends cal State Northridge by day,
taking business and journalism classes by night, and on weekends

(16:13):
he packs porn videotapes for shipping in the ABC warehouse
and apprentices with his father, learning the back end of
the adult film business inside and out.

Speaker 9 (16:23):
Bred Hirsch is an affable, nice guy. Steve Hirsch is
a cunning, ruthless businessman. Budley director.

Speaker 4 (16:35):
Stephen Hirsch is wildly ambitious in his own right. He's
seen firsthand how much money there is to be made
in adult films and wants his own slice of the pie.
He's already done the hardest part getting his foot in
the door, so he decides to leave the comfort of
the family business and take a sales job at a
different adult film company, cal Vista International, located in Van Night.

(17:02):
Cal Vista International is an adult film production and distribution
company behind movies like nineteen seventy one's Grand Prix tagline
Fast Cars, Hot Sluts. They have an amazing animated title
sequence where a sexy blonde cartoon woman in a sheer
nightgown points a camera towards the viewer under a night

(17:22):
sky with glimmering stars as the cal Vista International logo appears.
Cal Vista had a huge hit in nineteen seventy three
with French Schoolgirls, a movie where nobody involved is French
or a schoolgirl. French Schoolgirls stars Golden age seventies porn
stars like Harry Reims, Tina Russell, and one of the

(17:44):
biggest and most legendary porn performers of all time, John C. Holmes.

Speaker 10 (17:53):
I don't take drugs. Drugs take me, John Seaholmes.

Speaker 4 (18:02):
Because porn is so disrespected as an art form, it's
much easier to break into than Hollywood, which is a
fortress of knowing the right people or having a famous
last name. So the first wave of porn directors who
get to be credited are a mix of performers and
film school Mavericks.

Speaker 11 (18:23):
I was a journalism major at the University of Miami
when I went to a theater showing foreign films and
Coral Gables and saw Vittorio de Sica's Bicycle Thieves, and
from that time on I was hooked. I had to
become a filmmaker. I moved to California and took theater
arts courses at Santa Monica City College before enrolling at
EUCLA to study motion picture production. Bob Chin director.

Speaker 4 (18:50):
Born in Honolulu to Chinese parents and raised in La
Bob Chin, a Taurus, pursues his dream of becoming a
filmmaker at UCLA Film He's classmates with Jim Morrison, but
because he is Asian American, Bob Chin finds it difficult
to break into mainstream film, so he starts directing porn.

(19:14):
He directs both as Bob Chin and using pseudonyms like
Sparky Shane and Wizard Glick. In the nineteen seventies, Bob
Chin becomes one of porn's first auteur filmmakers and pioneers
the concept of porn franchises with recurring characters when he
links up with John C.

Speaker 12 (19:33):
Holmes.

Speaker 4 (19:35):
John Curtis Holmes, a LEO, is a Bible school dropout
from Asheville, Ohio, who flees his religious fanatic mother and
a string of abusive stepfathers for the Army. Discharged after
three years in West Germany, John Holmes moves to la
where he works as a salesman, factory employee and as
a taxian ambulance driver. He turns twenty one, marries a

(19:59):
nurse and gets a job operating a forklift at a
meat packing plant in the South Bay. The walk in
freezer at the meatpacking plant gives him severe health issues
that cause one of his lungs to collapse. Allegedly, John
Holmes is discovered at a poker club in Guardina. He's
in the men's bathroom at the urinals when an adult

(20:20):
photo agent spots his huge, soft, uncircumcised penis somewhere between
ten and sixteen inches long and tells him he should
monetize it. Holmes starts nude modeling and filming illegal stag
films and loops for money. He goes by John C.
Holmes joking the sea stands for cash because that's all

(20:41):
he accepts after one check bounces. John C. Holmes meets
Bob Chin in nineteen seventy one when Holmes walks into
Chin's office and asks for a film crew job as
a gaffer. Holmes is a skinny, six foot two guy
with big, curly blonde hair and a mustache. He tells
Bob Chin he's an actor too. He looks more like

(21:04):
a hippie weirdo than a leading man type, but Bob
Chin becomes convinced of his star power.

Speaker 11 (21:11):
He pulled down his pants and showed me his credentials.

Speaker 4 (21:17):
Bobchin creates a franchise around his muse where John Holmes
plays a private dick named Johnny Wadd. One Johnny wadd Movie,
nineteen seventy seven's The Jade Pussycat is replicated faithfully in
Boogie Knights. The Burt Reynolds character Jack Horner is a
composite of seventies porn impresarios, including Bobchin. The Jade Pussycat

(21:41):
is set in San Francisco's Chinatown and co stars Linda Wong,
a Japanese American actress from San Francisco and former Homecoming
queen who is one of the first Asian American porn stars.
Bob Chin's Johnny wadd series pioneers the concept of a
porn franchise with sequels and recurring characters in tandem with

(22:02):
seventies mainstream franchises. After the success of Jaws and Star Wars,
Bob Chin's hit movies make John C. Holmes and his
gigantic Dick Horn's first true megastar.

Speaker 10 (22:16):
I've never found a girl who could not take it.
It's really in the way you do it. Though I've
had some women say they've had guys half my size,
we couldn't get it in the problem is that most
guys don't know how to read a lady and what
she really wants. With some you have to be gentle
and romantic and with others. You gotta get down and dirty.

(22:40):
The secret is you have to get in touch with
what they wait.

Speaker 4 (22:45):
Holmes makes seventy five bucks for the first Johnny Watt movie.
Success gets his rate up to three thousand dollars a day,
and he makes thousands of movies. He would be rich,
but he spends it all on drugs and is always broke.
He starts doing crimes on the side, like petty theft,
credit card fraud, and pimping. His coke and freebasing habits

(23:07):
start affecting his adult film work, making him flaky, unfocused,
and unable to stay hard on camera. He gets blacklisted
and dropped by everyone in town, including Bob Chin. No
star is bigger than the industry that made them a star.
Not even John C.

Speaker 10 (23:25):
Holmes friends will get you killed.

Speaker 4 (23:32):
John Holmes becomes doubly notorious for his involvement with the
Wonderland or Four on the Floor quadruple murder case in
nineteen eighty one. The Wonderland Gang were a group of
heroin addicted coke dealers who dealt from a house off
Laurel Canyon on Wonderland Avenue. They robbed a club owner
drug dealer named Eddie Nash, and Nash blamed John Holmes,

(23:52):
who'd been at his house earlier that day and had
left a glass sliding door cracked open. Either Eddie Nash
or another enemy. He sent a team to torture and
murder the Wonderland Gang. Neighbors didn't call the cops because
they were always having crazy parties at the Wonderland House.
The LAPD finds John C. Holmes's hand prints and a
million dollars worth of cocaine at the Wonderland House and

(24:15):
decide to charge him with all four murders. Lead Detective
Tom Lang is later a lead detective in Oj Simpson's
murder case. John Holmes goes on the LAMB for six months,
then stands trial in nineteen eighty two. After a three
week trial, John Holmes is acquitted. He's tried and acquitted

(24:36):
a second time, and then Eddie Nash is also tried
and acquitted. The Eddie Nash trial marks the first time
in American history that a videotape is introduced as evidence
in a trial. Videotapes are also changing the landscape of
porn Companies like the Hirsh Families. AVC are taking over

(24:56):
the business as film gives way to the home video revolution.
The top us producers and distributors are known as the
Big Three, and they're all in the Valley VCA or
Video Co of America in Chatsworth, Essex Video in Northridge,
and Caballero Home Video in Canoga Park. Much like ABC,

(25:19):
Essex Video is also a family dynasty, founded in nineteen
sixty by Jose Domingo Ristreppo from Bogota, Columbia. Rostreppo changes
his professional name to Joe Steinmann. Usually it's Jewish people
who change their names to sound wasp beer, but here
it's a Colombian guy changing his name to sound more Jewish.

(25:39):
In order to make it in the porn business. Joe
Steinmann buys rights to existing adult films and distributes them
on tape at Essex Video. He has four sons, who,
like the Hirsh Kids, work for him. The Steinmann sons
attend high school in Van Nuys by day and pack
tapes in the shipping warehouse at night. Joe's second eldest son,

(26:02):
Jeff Steinmann, becomes the main heir to the Essex Video
brand as it transitions from filmed video in nineteen seventy nine,
Joe Steinman steps down from Essex Video and turns it
over to his son, Jeff. It is Jeff Steinmann at
Essex Video who is first to give performers exclusive studio

(26:23):
contracts and make them what's called a contract girl. Steinman
signs Barbara Dare, a five foot two blonde Jewish lesbian
from Wayne, New Jersey, to make ten films for Essex
Video in one year to earn one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. At its peak, Essex Video racks up forty
million dollars a year and employs a staff of sixty five.

(26:46):
Cal Vista International is not in the Big three, but
it's the fourth or fifth biggest studio in the valley.
When Steve Hurst starts working there, he travels coast to
coast peddling Calvista tapes to buyers at sex shops and
video stores. He's mentored at Calvista by two porn elder
Statesmen and meets another young guy named David James. Hirsch

(27:08):
and David James start privately discussing launching their own studio.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
He was sort of overseeing the warehouse and the mail
order division, and I was overseeing the wholesale division.

Speaker 4 (27:21):
Stephen Hirsch sees the future of the business from his
time selling videotapes on the road. With the move from
film to video, there's been a change in the way
adult content is sold and consumed. While video's ascension signals
the end for porn's old lions, it becomes a backdoor
for a new generation of pornographers primed to embrace the

(27:43):
video age. The battle between VHS and Beta Max for
eighties home video supremacy is decided by porn Sony refuses
to let it. Beta Max tapes carry adult content, but
VHS decides to allow adult content, and thus VHS ends
up burying data. Max video lacks the image fidelity of film,

(28:07):
but importantly, video is much cheaper than film. It also
offers a sensual griminess and immediacy. Video is way less
finicky than film, and did I mention it's cheap. Stephen
Hersch and David James team up to start their own
porn studio. They put the new format right there in

(28:27):
the name Vivid Video. Steve Hirsh wants to be a
porn tycoon. He models himself after his father, Fred, but
also hopes to surpass his success. He has a vision
for Vivid Video using contract girls to market porn stars

(28:48):
like movie stars. In another innovation, Vivid will be first
to put a performer's name in a film's title. In
this way, he will be able to build his performers
brands up to rise in value, and the marketing blitzes
orchestrated around stars will benefit performers and their studios.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
We had a better way of skinning the cat. We
wanted Vivid Video to be unique and separate ourselves from
the rest of the industry. We wanted to focus on
a girl, not just some innocuous movie title. There were
two huge stars at the time, Ginger Lynn and Tracy Lord's.
Fortunately we chose the right one. We focused on Ginger
and she was the first Vivid girl.

Speaker 4 (29:31):
He is glad they didn't choose Tracy because she was
working in porn underage, using a fake ID that said
she was eighteen. This jeopardized the porn business by making
it seem like she'd been knowingly hired while underage, but
really everyone just believed her fake ID was real. Had
Stephen Hirsch chosen Tracy Lords to be the first Vivid girl,

(29:52):
this whole story would be different. But Luckily for him,
Stephen Hirsch decided to bet the house on ginger Lynn Allen.
When Jenna World returns, ginger Lynn Allen becomes Vivid Videos
first contract girl Oh My an Welcome back to Jenna Worldwood.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
I actually helped Vivid form a lot of their ideas.
We worked very closely together. It was a very good experience.
I had a lot of fun.

Speaker 13 (30:36):
Ginger Lynn was comfortably pretty. She didn't have the kind
of beauty that chilled you, it warmed you. She came
along at exactly the right time. William Margold X rated
critics Organization.

Speaker 4 (30:52):
Ginger Lynn Allen is a tomboy born and raised in Rockford, Illinois.
Her father, Wayne Allen, was an alcoholic who physically abused
her mother, Marilyn. Her mother, Marilyn, was born to a
prostitute and adopted into a family of strict Baptists. Marilyn
would beat Gingerlyn and scream at her that she was
evil and ugly like the Mom and Carrie. Ginger Lynn's

(31:16):
parents divorce, and she's so traumatized from her home life
that she tries to commit suicide by sleeping pills at
age twelve. At age thirteen, she moves in with her
dad's parents, who provide a calm, stable environment. She gets
into sex, drugs and skipping class, but still graduates from
Rockford West High at eighteen in nineteen eighty. In nineteen

(31:40):
eighty two, at age twenty, Gingerlyn moves to Redlands, California,
to care for her grandfather. When he dies, ginger Lynn
and a guy she calls her first nice boyfriend move
into her grandpa's trailer park home. She gets a job
at a chain record store called Musicland, but it barely
pays the bills and rent. Then she sees a print

(32:02):
ad for World Modeling Agency, the biggest adult modeling agency
in the LA area. It's run by a dark haired
Texan fellow with a big walrus mustache who always wears
cowboy boots, western shirts and jeans. He goes by the
name of Jim South.

Speaker 14 (32:20):
Anybody can say or have the opinion they want to have,
just like I believe, if a girl is of age
and she's not drugged or coerced, she has the right
to be in a movie. She has the right to rent, buy,
or view a movie. I think there will always be
people who think any of this is degrading for women.

Speaker 9 (32:41):
Jim South agent.

Speaker 4 (32:45):
Jim South is born James Marvin Sowder Junior in Dallas, Texas.
A virgo, he works as a Texas insurance salesman in
the early sixties. In nineteen sixty eight, he moves to
la and gets a job at an agency that reps
fashion models. In nineteen seventy six, James Sowder redubs himself
Jim South and starts World Modeling Talent Agency, which represents

(33:10):
nude models in an office on the valleys Van Nuys Boulevard,
evading LAPD surveillance in the occasional pimping charge. Jim South
runs print ads scouting for new adult talent for decades.
World Modeling Agency and another agency called Pretty Girl International
are the only two agencies who recruit and represent nude performers.

(33:32):
Signing with one of them is the primary way to
break into adult films.

Speaker 14 (33:38):
Holy men in the business are just props. The women
make the line share of the money. The women dictate
who they'll work with and who they won't work with.
Believe me.

Speaker 4 (33:52):
Ginger Lynn Allen answers a World Modeling Agency ad seeking
figure models for one hundred and fifty dollars a shoot.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
He asked me to take my clothes off. I had
no trouble doing that whatsoever. I was never ashamed or embarrassed.
I was always comfortable with my body.

Speaker 4 (34:12):
Now, some people say Jim South is a true professional
with a strict no dating the talent policy. Other people
say he's a real scumbag who offers models cocaine and
champagne to try to get them to take their clothes
off faster. Ginger Lynne signs with Jim South's agency and
he books her first paid photoshoot. On the spot, she
dumps her nice boyfriend and moves to La ginger Lynde's

(34:37):
nude pictures for Hustler and Penthouse get her noticed and
scouted to do adult films. She makes her first one
that year, called Surrender in Paradise, shooting in Maui, with
actor Jerry Butler. Butler, whose real name is Paul Siderman,
becomes her next boyfriend. Jerry Butler stars in adult films
like Raw Talent, which has this indelible dialogue from Butler

(35:01):
and actress Taija Ray, what.

Speaker 15 (35:05):
Do you do?

Speaker 12 (35:07):
I'm an actor.

Speaker 8 (35:08):
Name something you've been in?

Speaker 7 (35:10):
Well?

Speaker 4 (35:11):
I was in a soap opera, Dawn of day.

Speaker 11 (35:14):
I don't watch soaps. Name something else, all right.

Speaker 4 (35:17):
I did some off off Broadway, some one act plays,
some summer revivals.

Speaker 16 (35:22):
Tell me something I might have seen on TV, something
really big, something that's.

Speaker 10 (35:27):
Been on TV. Well, I was in the Vietnam War
and I had a bit part in that one.

Speaker 4 (35:36):
Jerry Butler's father managed the original Coney Island location of
Nathan's hot Dogs, and his grandfather was Leon Trotsky's half brother.
Jerry himself once tied for first place in the Nathan's
hot Dog eating contest in New York. Jerry Butler studies
the Meisner technique, tries out for the New York Rangers,
and drives a taxi cab. After failing to bring into

(36:00):
mainstream acting, he gets into porn and does movies like
Angel Buns, Fixin's In Heat, Debbie does Dallas three, and
Doctor Strange. Sex on set in Maui, Jerry Butler proposes
to Ginger Lynn.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
She accepts, I was making more money in two weeks
than I did in two years, and I was having
great sex with someone I loved.

Speaker 4 (36:28):
Ginger Lynn breaks off her engagement to Jerry Butler halfway
through filming because he insists on method acting, speaking with
a heavy New York accent, and wearing a gross shirt
even when he's not filming. It's her first of ten
broken engagements. Ginger Lynn makes five one hundred and fifty
dollars for Surrender in Paradise. With her eighties video girl

(36:51):
look and strong work ethic, she quickly rises up the
ranks of adult film. Nineteen seventies golden age porn stars
resembled the stars of nineteen seventies New Hollywood. The men
Harry and Ethnic. The women also Harry Bralis and Freaky
Everyone's sweaty as hell. Guys like John Holmes and Harry

(37:14):
Reems are the porn equivalents of actors like Robert De
Niro and Al Pacino.

Speaker 17 (37:20):
Let's face it, we were a hairy bunch back then,
and there was more of the natural woman. I became
famous as a porn star not because I was so
gorgeous or I had the best body, but probably because
people felt comfortable with me. I was kind of like
the girl next door that you could feel like you
could talk to and maybe get lucky with. Veronica Hart, performer.

Speaker 4 (37:49):
The adult film business begins in New York before moving
to La The first performers to have sex on film
are a mix of stage actors, times Square strips, and
downtown artists, which is why monologust and actor Spaulding Gray
appears in a nineteen seventy six porn oh called The
Farmer's Daughters. The porn stars of the nineteen eighties resemble

(38:12):
mainstream nineteen eighties movie stars, clean cut, all American Barbie's
and Ken's. If they're sweaty, it is only with the
healthy sheen of exercise, which includes vigorous sex. Risky business
is a big hit in the eighties, and porn stars
start to resemble stars like Tom Cruise and Rebecca de Morney.

(38:34):
The girls are approachable, pretty preppy babes who do filthy
sex stuff in the movies. So ginger Lynn Allen, who
has the clean cut, blonde, white babysitter look that's in
favor in Hollywood, thrives in the valley. Now that she's
making good money doing porn, ginger Lynn has to make

(38:54):
as much as she possibly can. She has already shown
her tits and ass on the film record, which in
the eighties was considered a social death sentence for having
a normal life afterwards, But ginger Lynn didn't have a
normal life in Rockford either. The girl who looked to
everyone else like a wholesome teenage girl in Illinois was

(39:15):
secretly suffering at home. In Los Angeles, ginger Lynn has
personal freedom from her abusive family and something else, vital
financial independence. Gingerlynn is also well aware that porn, much
like Hollywood, tends to chew people up and spit them
back out. In her first year in the biz, she's

(39:37):
already nearly run the gauntlet of filmed sex acts. She
doesn't want audiences to tire of her novelty too quickly
and move on to new performers, and that is how
ginger Lynn finds herself at Gladstone's on the beach, eating
crab legs by the ocean with Stephen Hirsch as he
paints a beautiful picture of her future at his new studio,

(39:59):
Vivid Video. He makes her an offer an exclusive contract
where she'll become what he calls the first Vivid Girl,
with clauses for casting and script approval, royalties for videotape sales,
and an ad campaign dedicated to marketing her to the masses.
Ginger Lynn knows that Stephen Hirst has nothing to show

(40:19):
for his pitch, but big promises. But he wins her over.
They will launch vivid video together.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
It's the way they talk, the way their eyes are,
way they carry themselves. If there's something that just really
stands out about them, then we send them over to
our photographer. If those look great, we shared a scene
with them, because obviously the sex has to be great.

Speaker 4 (40:44):
Stephen Hirsch also believes that the home video revolution will
open up a lucrative new consumer base.

Speaker 13 (40:51):
Women.

Speaker 4 (40:53):
Anyone too shy or ashamed to admit they want to
see movies of people having sex will now be able
to consume them in a its setting. If the idea
of having to sit in a theater surrounded by raincoated
dudes jacking it is what put you off porn, you're
suddenly in luck. You can now watch it in the
ideal eighties viewing setup. Sitting on a black leather couch

(41:14):
with a glass top coffee table and a neon lit
tropical fish tank, watching on a big TV with a VCR.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
I look like what might be your best friend's sister.

Speaker 4 (41:28):
Ginger Len Allen will give these new female viewers an
avatar they can identify with, providing them an entree into
watching porn. If this nice, normal, suburban girl can do pornography,
surely there's nothing wrong with watching her enjoying herself. The
first female porn stars reflected the sexual revolution spurred by

(41:49):
birth control pills. They were freaky hippie chicks who liked
to eat health food and fuck. Many were political, actively
pushing against social constraints, and accepted female roles in society.
Instead of pursuing homemaking, child rearing, or husband hunting, they
searched for personal ecstasy. But there was also a known

(42:11):
dark side, best represented by deep throats Linda Lovelace and
other women like her, who were pushed by suitcase pimp
boyfriends into doing stuff on camera against their will. Nineteen
eighties porn reflected a backlash against the sixties and seventies,
an attempted reset to an imaginary wholesome as apple Pie

(42:32):
America the Reagan years. Ginger Lenn Allen is young and sexy,
but approachable in an eighties twist, She's also a powerful businesswoman.
She's the perfect screen commodity for her era and for
Stephen Hirsch's big plan to prove that porn is not
a gross thing. For disgusting people. It's a normal, healthy

(42:55):
outlet for human sexuality.

Speaker 18 (42:59):
Stephen Hirsch grew up when porn was a dirty, underground business.
If he was going to be in the business, it
was going to be mainstream. Bill Asher Vivid Video co.

Speaker 4 (43:09):
Chair Stephen Hirsch's promise to make Ginger Lind a big
star is more than just hot beach air. With thirty
eight thousand dollars of capital, funded in part by his father, Fred,
Vivid Video launches itself as the first adult film studio
of the video age. Vivid sinks money into film production

(43:31):
and even more money into the box cover, ponying up
for a pro photographer to do a high fashion shoot
of Ginger at the beach straddling a ceramic lion in
a blue and white striped bikini in an industry first.
Her first movie for Vivid Video is titled Ginger. Before Ginger,
video covers were always a collage of the sex scenes within,

(43:53):
and movies were never named after the star Ginger. The
movie is an instant smack uh hit, establishing Gingerlynn the
person as the video generation's new biggest porn star and
Vivid Video as the new studio to watch Ginger sells
a then record six thousand VHS copies right off the bat.

(44:16):
A softcore cut of Ginger sells even more copies worldwide.
The final gross for Ginger is seven hundred thousand dollars,
which is reinvested into follow up projects like Ginger on
the Rocks, Ginger's Private Party, and I Dream of Ginger.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
The combination of a great box cover and young beautiful
women became Vivid's trademark.

Speaker 18 (44:42):
The girls don't have to worry about anything. We handle
their careers and treat them like stars.

Speaker 14 (44:47):
David James Vivid Video.

Speaker 4 (44:52):
When Jenna World returns, Vivid Video takes off into the stratosphere.
Oh my, an welcome back to gena world. Gingerln Allen

(45:12):
rises rapidly in fame at the same time as another
horny Midwestern girl with a healthy appetite for fund and sex,
Michigan's own Madonna, Luise Chicone a Leo. In nineteen eighty four,
Madonna puts out a music video for Like a Virgin,
directed by Mary Lambert no relation. The lyrics cause controversy,

(45:34):
and the video where Madonna rolls around Venice hornily in
a wedding dress, makes it a cultural Lightning Rod. Madonna's
stardom causes discourse about what sex in the eighties means
for America's horny young daughters, who could be tempted to
leave the stifling suburbs behind to get involved in New
York's bustling art scene and date John Michelle Bosquiat, Madonna

(45:59):
and Ginger Lynn and straight a potential future where women
aren't doomed to be sex objects lacking agency. They can
be sex subjects expressing their feelings and desires. This is
the start of what's called third wave feminism, which involves
using female sexuality to gain power. The kind of power

(46:21):
that can be gained from sexuality is allegedly temporary and
easily taken away by the straight cis male audience who
grant it. Of course, Madonna and Ginger Lynn are also
both skinny, white women, which grants them certain societal privileges. However,
the new nineteen eighties brand of women who are empowered

(46:41):
both sexually and financially terrifies a lot of straight men.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
It was just this moment of freedom to know that
sexually I was going to be able to do anything
that I wanted, and it was okay.

Speaker 4 (46:58):
Nineteen eighty four is a landmark for Gingerlyn Allen. She
wins big at the inaugural X Rated Critics Organization Awards
for her first Vivid video releases, an award show partially
funded by Stephen Hurst's father Fred. The first ever Adult
Video News Awards or AVNS, are also held in nineteen

(47:18):
eighty four. Award shows promote the adult industry, build out
Porn Valley's reputation as the other Hollywood, and provide a
way for people in the porn biz to internally acknowledge
the artistic value of their work.

Speaker 1 (47:34):
The industry definitely felt like a family.

Speaker 12 (47:36):
Back then.

Speaker 1 (47:38):
There were fifty people in the entire industry, and that
included the cast and the crew. It was a wonderful
relationship that developed between the cast members, the crew members, everybody.

Speaker 4 (47:52):
In a black dress with yellow polka dots that she
got from a Sears department store at the mall. Gingerlyn
Allen collect her X Rated Critic Organization Awards trophies for
Starlet of the Year, Video Vixen, and Best Female Performer
Vivid Videos. Contract Girl Gambit has paid off.

Speaker 1 (48:15):
I did what a lot of women do in the
adult industry. You live right here, Right Now Today.

Speaker 4 (48:24):
By nineteen eighty five, ginger Lynn Allen is the biggest
porn star and Vivid Video is the hottest porn studio.
In the span of twenty seven months, She's made sixty
nine adult films, such as Poonies, a porn parody of Goonies.
She stars in New Wave Hookers, about cool girls who
get horny when new wave music is played. New Wave

(48:48):
Hookers pioneers what becomes known as alternative or alt porn.
As the first Vivid Video contract girl, ginger Lynn is
the cover star of sixteen titles, top sellers like Club
Ginger and Ginger Sex Asylum. By nineteen eighty six, Gingerlyn
is making nearly one hundred and thirty thousand dollars a

(49:09):
year off her films and promotional work. She knows that
her current success comes with no guarantees of financial longevity,
but she wants to enjoy it while it lasts. The
girl whose first award show dress came from Sears can
now afford to drop cash on designer clothes at Beverly
Hills boutiques and buy herself a brand new Porsche. She

(49:32):
splashes out on a luxurious European vacation. She also starts
doing a lot of cocaine, as does her boss, Stephen Hirsch.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
We didn't cocain the hotel rooms. We didn't cocin the limos.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
My life is out of control. Some of it was alcohol,
some of it was drugs.

Speaker 5 (49:55):
Now was that.

Speaker 4 (49:58):
Having ascended in the ranks of poor into the pinnacles
so quickly, Gingerlynn has a new dream making it in
mainstream movies. Hollywood is sometimes the final gauntlet for porn stars.
The curtain dividing porn from Hollywood is much thinner than
people think. Some filmed fantasies play in big, fancy movie

(50:19):
theaters and multiplexes, while others play on smaller screens at home.
There's something erotic about filmmaking, whatever the genre, because it's
voyeuristic in porn. The church like eroticism of the film
going experience, the darkened theater and communal hush while you
hope to be astonished is made literal with images designed

(50:40):
to sexually arouse you. Once it was a secretive theater,
now it's a private browsing tab. Even if Hollywood snubs
the supposedly less classy porn industry in public, there is
plenty of private socializing between folks from the valley and
the other side of the hill. There's a quickly established

(51:01):
path from porn to mainstream film, primarily into low budget
B movies in genres like horror and sci fi as
sex worker characters. Mainstream folks, particularly auter director types, but
also everyone in comedy, privately love the adult film business.
The idea of casting a porn star in a mainstream

(51:23):
project to see if they can really act interests everyone,
so in nineteen eighty six, ginger Lin Allen leaves adult
films to try and parley her underground fame into a
Hollywood acting career. She gets cast in her first mainstream project,
a B movie titled Doctor Alien, where she plays a
rock and roll chick. She's then in another B movie

(51:45):
called Cleo Leo with another porn star turned mainstream actress
named Veronica Hart. Veronica Hart is a redheaded adult film
star who had a difficult child custody trial because of
her job and inspired the Amber Waves character in Boogie Knights.
Hart plays the judge in Amber Wave's hearing. Compared to

(52:07):
the movie star treatment, movie star paycheck, and lead build
roles that ginger Lynn got in porn. Mainstream films are
a big financial step down. Now she also has to
audition for parts and hardly ever books. Her mainstream efforts
range from schlock like Vice Academy, a police Academy ripoff,

(52:28):
to Ken Russell's sex work art house movie Whore. Even
with the rise of the vivid video girl, porn is
still mostly backroom stuff. To obtain porn to watch at home,
you still have to buy it at an adult bookstore,
rent it from the other new business spawned by the
VHS revolution video stores, where the X rated stuff is

(52:49):
kept in a curtained off adults only section. Ginger Lynn
Allen ends up in a very unique situation. She is
one of the most famous women on Earth, her films
among the most watched, but not everyone wants to publicly
admit that they know who she is or why. In

(53:09):
nineteen ninety, she plays a hooker named Dove in Young
Guns two and meets star Emilio Estevez's brother Charlie Sheen,
who opted out of being In the sequel, Ginger Lynn
gets into a romantic relationship with Charlie Sheen, and for
even more on that, please listen to my other podcast,
Heidi World the Heidi Fly story.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
Charlie is the only man I ever really loved. People
thought who I was was detrimental to his career.

Speaker 19 (53:40):
Ginger is, in my opinion, one of the finest people
I've ever known. She has a powerful sense of integrity,
a strong internally defined morality, and is at times generous
to a fault. Charlie Sheen actor.

Speaker 4 (54:05):
Charlie Sheen and Amelio Savez come from an acting dynasty
through their father, Martin Sheen. They grew up in Malibu
with other second generation showbiz kids whose parents left the
Method acting studios of New York to work in la
in the burgeoning television industry. The Sheen parents are Hollywood leftists,
and their kids have friends like Sean Penn, whose father

(54:27):
Leo Penn, was blacklisted for refusing to name names of
purported Communists to the House on American Activities Committee. Charlie
Sheen encourages Ginger linn Allen's acting ambitions. He makes her
feel like she can and will be part of mainstream Hollywood.
Charlie Sheen became a major movie star with the box

(54:48):
office hat trick of Wall Street Young Guns in Major League,
but by the early nineties he's had some big flops
and he's plagued by addiction issues. Charlie Sheen and Ginger
Lynn are allegedly doing a lot of drugs together.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
It was almost like he was the male version of
me and I was the female version of him.

Speaker 4 (55:12):
Ginger lenn Allen dates Charlie Sheen through his first major
stint at rehab and stands by her man during his
involvement with the Heidiflies trial. Then he dumps her. She
is heartbroken. She allegedly shakes it off with a six
month long fling with George Clooney after guest starring in
an episode of soap opera Sunset Beat, until she finds

(55:33):
out Clooney is still married to Talia Balsam.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
On a scale of one to ten, I'm going to
give George an eleven for performance, and as far as equipment,
I give him a twelve.

Speaker 4 (55:49):
Ginger finds new personal fulfillment in mainstream acting. In nineteen
ninety three, she hits a high in her Hollywood career
playing a topless dancer named Monique on one of the
most popular shows on TV, NYPD Blue. Her episode Tempest
in a Cea Cup wins an Emmy Award for Best
Drama Direction against stiff competition from three other episodes of

(56:13):
NYPD Blue and the pilot of Lois and Clark The
New Adventures of Superman. By the nineteen nineties, Ginger Lynn
Allen is enough of a household name that she is
allegedly called in to audition for Martin Scorsese's Casino. Naturally,
she auditions for the role of Ginger, which ends up
going to Sharon Stone. According to some sources, Ginger was

(56:37):
Scorsese's top pick and Sharon Stone was the studios I
know that it's impossible to imagine anyone other than Sharon
Stone in the role of Ginger. I dare you to
look up the real Ginger McKenna and see how much
she looks like Sharon Stone. Ginger Lynn Allen has a
vulnerable softness to her that would have changed the character
of Ginger into something very different. Sharon Stone's portrayal of

(57:01):
Ginger McKenna is so remarkable because it is so hard
edged and kinetic, like flipping a shiny coin. That Martin
Scorsese allegedly brought Ginger Lynn Allen into audition for Casino
means he probably saw her movies and thought she had
a kind of genuine star quality, which means Martin Scorsese
agrees with me that pornography is real cinema. End of podcasts,

(57:25):
Just kidding Transition.

Speaker 8 (57:31):
Vivid changed forever the way adult material is marketed there.
The trendset is they tend to copy mainstream entertainment, mainstream
business principles, mainstream graphic arts and advertising principles. Then a
lot of people in the adult business copy them. Christian Man,

(57:54):
general manager Evil Angel.

Speaker 4 (57:58):
After Gingerlyn Allen leave Vivid in nineteen eighty six to
pursue her mainstream acting dreams, Stephen Hirsch moves on to
manufacturing his next Vivid video starlet. While ginger Lynn Allen
came into Vivid with her own established style and some
film credits already under her belt, Hirsch uses his new
power to do a creepy thing that guys with power

(58:21):
in the film industry love to do. He wants to
mold a new actress into his own personal sexual ideal.
The classic example is Alfred Hitchcock and Grace Kelly, followed
by a succession of icy blonde actresses. Hirsh's first Vivid
girl creation after Ginger Lynn is Jamie Summers. Stephen Hirsch

(58:45):
sets his sights on an eighteen year old brunette from
La named Denise Stafford, who goes platinum blonde and takes
the stage name Jamie Summers after TV's The Bionic Woman
to become a Vivid Girl. Jamie Summers is another each
blonde bombshell designed to fill the spot evacuated by Ginger Lind.

(59:05):
With her teased blonde hair and hot pink lips, she
resembles Darryl Hannah in Splash. Jamie Summers is also conveniently
dating Stephen Hirsch. He casts her as a spoiled Beverly
Hills yuppie bitch in her own starring franchise called The Brat.

Speaker 20 (59:25):
I hope you like it. It's about me The Brat.
I take astrology classes, I do aerobics, I eat sushi,
and I'm so busy I hardly have time to satisfy
my horny husband. Jamie Summers. Vivid Girl.

Speaker 4 (59:42):
Jamie Summers and the next few Vivid Girls afterwards all
follow the template set by gingerln Allen. Short and blonde
with a suburban girl next door look. He hires actresses
like Nikki charm A four foot eleven California beach Blonde
and Barbara Dare aforementioned five foot two blonde Jewish lesbian

(01:00:02):
from New Jersey. Vivid video puts out Jamie Loves Jeff,
directed by Paul Thomas. Paul Thomas is a nineteen seventies
Golden age porn performer who moves into directing in the eighties.
A six foot two aires of Greek and Russian Jewish descent.
Born Philip Charles Tubis in Winnetka, Illinois, he attended the

(01:00:24):
University of Wisconsin on a basketball scholarship and majored in
political science. Like a lot of original porn guys, Paul
Thomas was aiming for mainstream success at first, and he
even tasted a little bit. Paul Thomas was a New
York stage actor who was in the New York productions
of Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar. He even played the

(01:00:48):
apostle Peter in the nineteen seventy three film version of
Jesus Christ Superstar. He moved to California and signed with
the William Morris Agency. He was auditioning fruitlessly for tea
shows when he was scouted into porn. Paul Thomas, known
as Pet in the adult industry, stars in Golden Age
porn films like One of a Kind about an enchanted

(01:01:10):
accordion whose music makes everyone so horny they have to fuck.
He even makes use of his musical theater skills when
he composes and performs a song called If Wishes Were
Horses for a Bob Chin movie called Fantasy World. In
nineteen eighty two, Paul Thomas is caught smuggling cocaine into
the US from South America and serves a year in prison.

(01:01:33):
After his release from jail, he returns to porn, this
time behind the camera, directing.

Speaker 12 (01:01:40):
I don't define myself as anything Jeff Striker, performer.

Speaker 4 (01:01:48):
In addition to Vivid Girls, there are Vivid Boys. Vivid
Video puts out gay porn movies like What the Big
Boys Eat. Gay porn is a parallel lane to the
straight porn industry that occasionally intersects. Directors routinely crossover between
gay and straight porn, and wood men sometimes work in both.

(01:02:08):
Some male performers do what's known as gay for pay,
where they take a paycheck to have sex with men
on screen, but do not identify sexually as gay or
fluid in their personal lives. In nineteen eighty seven, Paul
Thomas direct Jamie Loves Jeff for Vivid, where Jamie Summers
has sex with one of gay pornography's biggest stars, a
guy named Jeff Striker.

Speaker 12 (01:02:31):
Someone had labeled me a quote straight actor and gay
porn but universal, I think is the only word I
could actually use to describe my sexuality. I think humans
are humans. I could be sitting next to God knows
what and get turned on. Now.

Speaker 15 (01:02:50):
I think Jeff is great. I'm a big fan of
Jeff Striker. I think he's the carry granted porna and
in person he looks great, he looks real. He has
a great car, like a muscle car. I mean he's perfect.
I think he's the perfect porno star. He does gain
straight too, He's all purpose. John Waters director.

Speaker 4 (01:03:10):
Jeff Striker is born Charles Casper Payton in Carme, Illinois,
in August of nineteen sixty two. A leo, he's raised
in Springfield, Illinois, and gets sent to military school at
age thirteen, and when he gets back home, he learns
his parents are divorcing. He works as a balloon, telegram
delivery man and a stripper until a friend sends photos

(01:03:32):
of him to a gay porn director named John Travis,
who scouts him into porn. Jeff Striker's gay porn career
takes off in movies like Power tool On and Striker Force.
Jamie Loves Jeff becomes one of Vivid Video's biggest selling
titles yet.

Speaker 21 (01:03:50):
Jamie and Jeff used to be the hottest couple in
high school until she dumped him for dorky lawyer Tom,
and Jeff ended up marrying Megan five years later. At
the high school reunion, the former lovers fall in love
all over again, while their respective spouse's embark on a
little grudge fund of their own. Vodkatonic adult DVD talk.

Speaker 12 (01:04:11):
I handpick all the actors I work with. Porn stars
myself included, only have so much life. If you pour
it out in a year, you get burned out. If
you could afford to carefully do a movie a year,
then that's looking for a career. As long as I
look good in front of the camera. When I start

(01:04:32):
looking bad, I'll be the first to get off screen.

Speaker 4 (01:04:37):
Nudity in films has been protected since nineteen sixty nine,
when the Stanley Versus Georgia rulings said people were free
to watch whatever they wanted in the privacy of their
own homes. This led to everything from new Hollywood films
to the full legalization of pornography, all protected under the
First Amendment. Conservatives were pissed, and in response, Congress fund

(01:05:00):
did the President's Commission on Obscenity in Pornography. Set up
by LBJ and carried out by Richard Nixon. The nineteen
sixty nine President's Commission on Obscenity in Pornography found that
there is quote no evidence that exposure to explicit sexual
materials adversely affects character or moral attitudes regarding sex and

(01:05:21):
sexual conduct end quote. President Nixon and Congress rejected the findings,
which did not fit with their anti porn fear mongering
and the puritanical attitudes towards sex in America. In nineteen seventy,
a writer and publisher named Earl Kemp, who writes pulp
fiction paperbacks, sci fi and gay erotica, puts out an

(01:05:43):
illustrated version of the President's Commission on Obscenity in Pornography
and gets charged with his co publisher, William Hamling, with
conspiracy to distribute obscene material. Kemp serves a federal minimum
of three years in one day. In the nineteen eighties,
federal backlash against making and distributing images of sexual intercourse

(01:06:05):
returns via President Ronald Reagan. Despite its profitability, pornographers are
always under threat of getting busted and brought in on
obscenity or pandering aka pimping charges. Porn is mainly shot
in private houses in the north end of the valley
rather than local sound stages because of the constant legal threat.

(01:06:28):
Mainstream sound stages aren't interested in renting to porn folks.
Due to the legal gray area and constant threat of
getting busted.

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
We were like outlaws at the time because it was
illegal to shoot.

Speaker 4 (01:06:44):
The porn industry operates in a clandestine legal space throughout
the seventies and early eighties, even as it becomes big business.
Pornos are shot run and gun style, both because they're
low budget and because they needed to shoot quickly without
attracting at ten tih from neighbors. I had a friend
whose family lived near a pornhouse in the hills of Encino,

(01:07:05):
and you could tell whenever they were shooting there because
the windows would be blacked out with curtains in nineteen
eighty six, the Reagan administration puts out the final report
of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography from a task
force called the Me's Commission. It is known as the
Me's Report. The Mes Report claims a direct connection between

(01:07:27):
porn and an abstract American moral decay, with no actual
evidence to back up its fearmongering claims. The Mes Report
also suggests legal loopholes that can be used by conservatives
to sue pornography studios. The idea is to bankrupt pornographic
film companies through drawn out court battles. In nineteen eighty seven,

(01:07:51):
one such case goes to the Supreme Court. The state
of California tries to charge adult producer and director Harold
Freeman with pimp hal Freeman is a nineteen seventies porn
film crew worker who becomes the director of titles like
Radio k Com Love on the Hershey Highway, one in
two and My Favorite nineteen eighty three is California Valley Girls,

(01:08:15):
about two lesbians who recruit valley girls into a prostitution ring.
In the late eighties, Hal Freeman is producing his hit
Caught from Behind series when the State of California decides
to make him a sacrificial lamb to try charging pornographers
with pandering, the legal term for pimping, rather than the
usual obscenity charges they occasionally level at them. Hal Freeman

(01:08:39):
is hit with five pandering counts under California Penal Code
Section two sixty six I. He appeals and says porn
isn't pimping, it is filmmaking. It's art. The women he
hires to have sex on film aren't prostitutes, they're actresses.
The actors are paid for their performances in the movie,

(01:09:00):
not for doing the sex acts. They are playing characters
who are having sex in the scene.

Speaker 22 (01:09:08):
Defendant Freeman is the president of Hollywood Video Production Company,
which is in the business of producing and marketing adult films.
In September nineteen eighty three, Defendant produced and directed a
film called Caught from Behind Part two. Defendant hired actors
and actresses to perform in the film. As part of
their roles, the performers engaged in various sexually explicit acts,

(01:09:31):
including sexual intercourse, oral copulation, and sodomy. People versus Freeman.

Speaker 4 (01:09:41):
All the participants in Caught from Behind two had been
sent to hell Freeman by superagent Jim South through a
World modeling agency, except for Nancy Conger, the woman whose
private house they were renting for the shoot. Conger asked
if she could be in the movie too, and soon
enough she was signing a release form. The court tries
to find someone being exploited during the making of Caught

(01:10:03):
from Behind Part two, but all they find is a
film crew capturing a group of pro performers and one
amateur engaging in lawful sodomy. Sodomy had been a felony
crime in America until nineteen sixty two. Anti anal sex
laws were homophobic, but they were actually originally created as

(01:10:24):
a way to prosecute heterosexual non procreative sex, including blowjops.
Even married couples could be charged for having anal sex.
In nineteen sixty five, New York was the first state
to reduce sodomy down to a misdemeanor and excuse married couples.
Hal Freeman is convicted in California on all five counts

(01:10:46):
of pandering. He appeals his case to the California Supreme Court,
who overturned the conviction. The state of California then takes
the case to the U. S. Supreme Court hoping to
get a conviction for Freemen there.

Speaker 23 (01:11:01):
I recognize that the state has a strong interest in
controlling prostitution within its jurisdiction, and at some point it
must certainly be true that otherwise illegal conduct is not
made legal by being filmed. Sandra Day O'Connor, Supreme Court Justice.

Speaker 4 (01:11:26):
Supreme Court Judge Sandra Day O'Connor, of whom I am
normally know. Fandra day O'Connor did agree that the state
of California had no case against hal Freemen.

Speaker 12 (01:11:37):
The U. S.

Speaker 4 (01:11:38):
Supreme Court agreed with the California Supreme Court, which characterized
the pandering charges as an attempted quote and run around
the First Amendment and state obscenity laws. Despite landmark rulings
like this one, the First Amendment battles between pornographic filmmakers
and the American government rage on throughout the eighties. But

(01:11:59):
there's no stopping the porn industry behemoth, at least for now,
and so the Valley's porn studios continue to churn out
new films and mint new starlets like Ginger Lynn Allen.
This will be the porn Valley that welcomes Jenna Jamison.

Speaker 16 (01:12:21):
Well, we're very approachable. If I were out and about
and I saw Madonna, I wouldn't even know what to say.
But if I saw Ginger Lynn, I'd be like, oh
my god, I have this boyfriend and he's been doing
crazy things to me in bed, and I don't know
what to say to him. I would feel open enough
with her to talk like she was my sister. It's

(01:12:44):
great because women are much freer when it comes to
their sexuality. In turn, that's helping men because they've got
these women who are trying to swing from chandeliers. Jenna Jamison.

Speaker 4 (01:13:07):
Next time on jenal World, Episode four, The Valley Goes Gonzo.
Jamie Gillis invents gonzo porn with his on the Prowl series,
which takes off as the new hottest trend in Foreign Valley.
Jenna Jamison steps into the industry and makes her debut,
kicking off an illustrious career that will see her surpass

(01:13:27):
even Ginger Lynn Allen to become the biggest porn star
of all time. All this and more next time on
Jenna World. Jenna World is an iHeartRadio production executive produced
by Anna Hostier and Becca Ramos supervising, produced by Bei Wang,

(01:13:50):
produced by Victor Wright, script editing by Jonathan Mills, engineered
by Graham Gibson, and edited by Rory Gagan. Today's episode
of General World featured Yasi Solik as Ginger Lynn Allen,
Noah Garfinkel as Stephen Hirsch, Dave Horwitz as Paul Fishbeine,
Andrea Moore as Marcy Hirsch, Carvell Wallace as Andy Warhol,

(01:14:14):
Gwanadora as Viva, Victor Wright as Bud Lee, Will Sennett
as John C. Holmes, Christopher Chang as Bob Chin, Nick
Ciarelli as William Margold, Grant Crater as Jim South, Fay
Wang as Shirley, Dave McNamee as Jerry Butler, Jamie Minnellis
as Veronica Hart, joey Izzo as Bill Asher, Bridger Winneger

(01:14:39):
as David James, Jason Stewart as Charlie Sheen, Kayden Mark
Gardner as Christian Mann, Seth McCann as Jamie Summers, Ira
Madison the Third as Jeff Striker, Miles Clee as John Waters,
Lauren Gold as Vod Katonic, Alex Papadimus as People Versus
Freeman Lawyer Elena Smith as Sandra Day O'Connor and Laurenceer

(01:15:03):
video as Jenna Jamison

Speaker 6 (01:15:11):
Mm HM