The Rialto Report

Memory is a tricky thing. Small details can burn brighter than some of life’s defining events. The act of recall and the power of suggestion can fundamentally alter the content of our recollections. Experiences that seem like they should be tattooed onto our psyches can be lost to time. 

And memory can be selective. Whether that’s by conscious choice, subconscious bias, or pure forgetfulness varies based on a lot of potential facto...

Zebedy Colt is one of least likely characters we expected to feature in a podcast interview when The Rialto Report first began.

For a start, Zebedy passed away in 2004 at the age of 74, after a wildly varied and peripatetic acting career that had started with small parts as a child actor in Hollywood in the 1930s and continued on to regional theater and summer stock across the country, including several Broadway productions. Along ...

Back in the day, everybody seemed to have an opinion about Ron Jeremy – and maybe that was part of his appeal.

He was probably the most ubiquitous of all male adult film stars, and certainly the most polarizing.

In the early days of The Rialto Report, I was keen to interview him. My interest has always been in tracking down stories from the golden age of adult cinema that have never been revealed – but even though Ron’s story had b...

In 1964, Lorey Kaye, a twenty-year-old from New Haven, CT, moved to Manhattan to start a new life in the big city. Lorey was a fresh-faced, dark-haired hippie, who attracted attention as much for her headstrong, determined, street smart attitude as for her striking good looks. She was hired as a waitress in a new nightclub that had just opened in Times Square – called Steve Paul’s ‘The Scene’.

The club was an immediate hit wi...

In ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976), Travis Bickle railed against social decay, moral corruption, and the depraved filth he perceived in the near-bankrupt New York City of the mid 1970s. An insomniac, alienated Vietnam War vet, his taxi trips revealed the city to him as a “sewer” filled with “scum” that needed to be “cleansed”.

It all started over thirty years ago. I thought it would be interesting to track down people who’d been involved in the very first adult films because I was intrigued to learn what they remembered about the time – and find out how the experience had affected their lives afterwards.

Jeanna Fine passed away last month.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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