The Rialto Report

Regular listeners will know that over the last few years, I’ve spoken to many female adult film actors who were active from the 1960s through to the late 1980s, and, as interesting as their experiences were, it also made me intrigued to find out what it was like to be a male in the business during the same time.

So a few months ago, I contacted actor/director/agent and X-rated film producer, Bud Lee, to hear about his life – which ...

The adult film business is unique in that it has usually focused on women as the figureheads and main stars, and therefore often relegated men to the background.

Over the last years, I’ve spoken to many female adult actors – from the 1960s through to the late 1980s, and it’s been interesting to see how their memories, experiences, and lives were affected as the sex film business changed. 

But I also wanted to hear from someon...

In 1979, Dennis Posa was on the verge of stardom. Against all odds, as Dennis Parker, he’d just released a disco record on a major recording label and was managed by the same team responsible for many of the biggest disco acts of the time. I say, against all odds, because less than 10 years earlier, he’d been a college dropout, the product of a difficult childhood on Long Island who struggled with his sexuality, who had moved to Ne...

I’ve always loved movies, especially the films I grew up with in the 1970s. I was seduced by their gritty realism, social commentary, complex characters, and a more honest portrayal of the human condition. And I was fan of that generation of film stars too: always surprising, sometimes conflicted figures, artists more than the celebrities that we have today. Movie genres seemed less important to me, so when I first saw Wade Nichols...

This past week I phoned Paul Thomas, former adult performer and film director, also known as PT. I’m heading out to LA shortly and was calling to set up a date with him and his wife. Seeing the two of them when I’m out west is one of my favorite things. It starts sitting together in their backyard under the Los Angeles sun, catching up on what’s been happening since my last visit. Then strolling slowly through the Venice canals as ...

Years ago, I first saw the 1970s adult film Barbara Broadcast (1977) on the big screen, and it made a big impression.

In the film, there’s a scene which shows a man standing behind an industrial kitchen worktable, a shirtless, mustached piece of beefcake that was Wade Nichols. Rugged yet pretty. Lean, toned, and handsome. He looked like the Marlboro man from the distant plains, if that cowboy had inexplicably turned up in New York ...

Who was the original actor cast in the lead role of the golden age blockbuster, The Devil in Miss Jones (1973)?

Not Georgina Spelvin, the talented doyenne of adult films who starred in many pre-video era features, first in New York then in California, and who was the eventual star of the film as ‘Miss Jones.’

No, Gerard Damiano first chose another actress, Sue Flaken, to fill the role, only to change his mind at the last minute. Th...

In the first part of our interview with Susan Hart, we heard about Sue’s early years in 1970s Los Angeles, growing up in a strict Catholic family, running away from home when she was 15, and becoming involved in a bad relationship. She escaped – into the army of all places, before finding a different kind of home, of sorts, as a prolific performer in the early adult video industry.

But what is unusual and remarkable about her story...

Perhaps one of the less obvious aspects of The Rialto Report is that it may lead to the impression that people involved in the adult industry forty or fifty years ago are all pretty comfortable talking about their pasts and have led serene lives, free of incident, since they stopped making sex films. After all, our podcasts and interviews are filled with people talking pretty openly about their experiences.

In fact, quite the oppos...

Previously on Chasing Butterflies – Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida:

After Dolores Carlos’ retirement from acting in South Florida nudie films in the late 1960s, she still remained close to her circle of Cuban filmmaker friends, and none more so than José Prieto, Greg Sandor, and Rafael Remy. They would still meet regularly, and all three took an active interest in her daughter Marcy’s well-being. From time to time, t...

Previously on Chasing Butterflies – Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida:

You may remember Marcy Bichette’s start in life from our earlier episodes: she was born Marcelle Denise Bichette in St Petersburg, Florida in August 1950 to a young married couple who had distinctly different ambitions in life. Her father, Maurice Bichette, had married looking for a settled, quiet existence, but her mother, Dolores, wanted to live he...

Previously on Chasing Butterflies – Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida:

Manuel Conde had lived several lives even before he moved to Miami, Florida. He’d been born José Conde Samaniego in 1917 in Galicia, in northern Spain, though his family fled to Cuba after General Franco’s fascist coup d’état in the 1930s. And then, in 1959, Castro overthrew the government and enforced Communist rule over Cuba. Manuel, having a...

Previously on Chasing Butterflies – Stories of Cubans in Exploitation-Era Florida:

Dolores Carlos was from a fiercely Cuban family, even though she was born in Tampa, Florida in October 1930, and never visited her country of origin. Her Cuban heritage and good looks, not to mention her patriotism, came from her father, Gus, and grandfather, Carlos, who had run the family’s cigar making business.

Growing up was complex for Dolores: ...

Cuba may only be 90 miles from the southern tip of the United States – a leisurely boat trip on a calm day – but since the 1950s, the island has seemed part of a distant world, too many communist miles away.

A few years ago, I was researching an article for The Rialto Report when I came across a 1980 radio program from WBAI, a popular New York City station that specialized in progressive and alternative voices at the time. This particular show featured a prostitute named Iris De La Cruz.

Howard Ziehm, the pioneering adult film director, theater owner, author, polymath, and friend of The Rialto Report died last week in California.

By the mid 1990s, Dian Hanson could’ve been forgiven for thinking that she’d finally made it – and that nothing was going to derail her career in magazine publishing that had started two decades earlier.

In the first part of ‘Dian Hanson, Chronicles,’ Dian spoke of her upbringing in the northwest United States, an often shocking family life with a difficult and frightening father – who just happened to be the supreme grand master of a sex-magic cult. It was  a difficult childhood that included bullying, sexual assault, and running away from home, culminating in an unhappy marriage to a transvestite which ended aft...

Dian Hanson is a unique figure from the world of men’s magazines in New York in the 1970s and 1980s, a world that overlapped strongly with the adult film business.