Spirit of the 70's

There is an old saying, "things just aren't what they used to be?" Well, that old cliché could definitely be applied to today's batch of adult film actresses. Of course, change is always inevitable, for both the good and the bad. The plus side of being a woman in adult film today is you do have a better chance to make a viable living doing it. In fact, nowadays being a porn star has an almost pop culture sense of cool to it. While thanksgiving dinners with the family are probably still uncomfortable, being in porn does not have the same stigma that it did thirty even twenty years ago. With today's mass-market porn available online and in video stores, it's easy to forget that at one time porn was very taboo and even illegal. When porn was legalized (in 1970), there was not a whole lot a woman could gain, either financially or career wise from doing it. But what they could gain where things such as sexual liberation, a chance to be on film, and hell, a little bit of money.

One of the things I find really striking about the ladies of the past, especially from the seventies, is that the majority of them came across very honest with their love for what they were doing. Unless you were a superstar (back when that term actually meant something) like Seka or Annette Haven, you were not getting paid a whole lot. Granted, I'm sure the money, no matter how much it was, did play as an incentive for a lot of folks, but back then it was fairly limited. This was way before the Internet and you rarely, if ever, saw girls doing porno just to enhance their stripping career. Nowadays, there are girls who work pretty much as strippers, who will do one or two porn films just to bump their stripping status to "Headliner." Of course, back then here were women who did do both, most of them did porn because they liked it but used the stripping to supplement their income.

Another striking thing about the 70's in particular, is that a lot of the ladies involved were more free spirited and experimental than today's actresses. (Though I'm sure part of this was partially due to the sexual revolution.) You had women like Desiree Cousteau and Marilyn Chambers, who were definitely considered to be stars of the porn mainstream (if there's such a thing), doing things on screen that you couldn't pay one of today's stars to do. The ridiculous thing is that while some of their antics were definitely kinky, none of them were truly reprehensible. In other words, everything was consensual and no children or animals were hurt in the process.

Also, partially due to the films generally being of better quality in the pre-video age, you tended to see women who could actually act. Of course, there were quite a few bad actresses too, but compared to today's batch, you would be hard pressed to find an equivalent of Georgina Spelvin (who got her start in legitimate theater), Annette Haven, or Abigail Clayton (who went on to star in the art film "Bye Bye Monkey" with acclaimed actor Gerard Depardieu.)

A strange thing about the seventies is that even though it was more of a taboo, you saw more porn crossovers back then. The biggest one was probably Andrea True, who had a monster of a hit with the song "More More More," a song that you still here in commercials today. It was even featured in the promos for the hit TV show "Sex and the City." Unlike some ladies who vied for crossover success by shunning their porn past (ala Traci Lords), Ms. True never came across ashamed of her adult film past. In fact, in a few of her interviews, she came across like a healthy woman who loved being creative and also enjoyed being a sexual person. Other notable crossovers, included the aforementioned Clayton (who was also in Joe Spinell's infamous "Maniac), Carol Connors, who was on such TV shows as the Gong Show, and Wendy O. Williams, who went on to be a real groundbreaker and rock legend with her band The Plasmatics. Both Rene Bond and Colleen Brennan (aka Sharon Kelly) appeared in many soft-core sexploitation films, aimed at both the Drive-In and Grind house market. Bond also made appearances on a few games shows. Marilyn Chambers even had a starring role in David Cronenberg's cult film, "Rabid." Despite the minor successes of these ladies or later stars, like Ginger Lynn Allen, no woman (or man) has yet to cross over from porn into being a mainstream film star. The closest anyone ever got to doing a big crossover was Annette Haven. Haven was originally set to star in Brian DePalma's film, "Body Double." But because of her porn past, the studio got cold feet and she was replaced by Melanie Griffith. (Never mind the fact that Haven was probably a far better actress than Griffith.) Part of this has to do with the fact that Hollywood is an industry fed by stereotypes. You're either the good girl or the bad girl and if you've done something so openly and blatantly sexual as porn, you're stigmatized for life by the Hollywood machine. (Though I wouldn't be surprised to learn that a lot of mainstream actors and actresses have far dirtier pasts than most adult film actors.)

The saddest thing about both the Internet and video revolution is that not only did quality become less of an issue but you saw more women who were obviously into it for the wrong reasons. The bigger porn got as an industry, the more you saw women whom either were either working out their daddy issues or whose sole passion was their bank account. (To be fair, to a certain degree, there have always been people like this in film, but they definitely grew, as things got bigger.) Somewhere along the line, porn became less real, which is odd because the whole selling point is to show real, non-simulated sex. But while the sex is still not simulated, a lot of the actors have grown more fake, both in physical appearance and in general attitude. One of the great things about porn of the past was that even when the women were spectacular looking, like Annette Haven or Serena, they were still natural looking and probably very accessible to their male viewers. Nowadays, a lot of the women in porn look great but in a synthetic way, the same way mannequins do. Which is fine to a degree, but it does make it harder for individuals to stand out, unless they are semi-distinctive looking, like Chloe or Chasey Lain.

Even though the industry as a whole has become, thinks to video and the internet, a fast food type of industry, there will always be a handful of actresses, actors and directors who shoot for quality over quantity, it's important to remember the real cinematic mavericks of the past.

Editors note: Heather is a freelance writer who's work has appeared in The Exploitation Journal as well as Scream Magazine and most recently Video Watchdog. She's the hippest chick writing on genre film today!