The Other Hollywood (28 page)

LOS ANGELES
1978–1979

BILL MARGOLD
:
John Holmes became the single most recognizable name in the history of the adult film industry and proof that all men are not created equal.

There is an orgy scene in
Disco Dolls
where I’m being blown by Lesllie Bovee, and John’s being worked on by four people next to me. All of a sudden his dick popped out over my head, and I looked up at it—and it was like the opening shot of
Star Wars.

I had the feeling that if I got hit in the head by that thing, I’d get a concussion. So my dick, which was happily ensconced in Lesllie Bovee’s mouth, was no longer interested in working. And she laughed, and he laughed, and I had to laugh at myself.

Such was the legacy of The King.

ANNETTE HAVEN
:
What was interesting was that John Holmes really only worked on camera. His cock was impressive visually, but, let’s face it—as the joke goes, if John ever got fully erect, he’d lose consciousness due to lack of blood to his brain. Because his dick really was
that
big.

And it’s true that his cock was never hard. It was like doing it with a big, soft loofah sponge. You had to kind of stuff it in. I don’t know about other women, but I prefer something in a smaller size that’s actually rigid, and functions really well. Being stuffed full of loofah is kind of interesting, I guess, but not exactly a turn-on.

DON FERNANDO (PORN STAR)
:
The first movie I did with John Holmes was
California Gigolo
. He played an eccentric rich guy who couldn’t keep it in his pants, and I was his man Friday—a butler kind of guy. It was a take off on
Fantasy Island
. We wore the white suits, and it was quite fun.

It was on that movie that I saw his cock for the first time. We did a scene where we were right next to each other; we had two lovely young ladies in the doggie position, and we were plugging away and high-fiving each other. And I remember looking down—it was incredible—and thinking, “That guy’s got a big cock.” It was
scary
.

But I didn’t envy him. Actually, I felt a little bit of pity for him because I never saw him penetrate anybody fully. I remember thinking, “Gee, I feel sorry for that guy. I don’t think he knows what it feels like to put it in all the way to the hilt.”

RICHARD PACHECO (PORN STAR)
:
Every woman who made a name for herself in this business, sooner or later, was ritually enlarged by Mr. Holmes. Some women just found God and were gone. They had reached the promised land, and their scenes were magnificent.

Then there was the other crowd whose faces looked like somebody at a medical exam, wondering when the pain was going to start.

And then there were those who went, “Get this out of me,
now
!”

GLORIA LEONARD
:
I had never met John Holmes until we were cast together in three films that were going to be shot in France.

They brought me and John and a couple of other American actors and actresses over, and one or two tech people—but largely, the cast and crew were French. The first film we did was in Paris. Then we did two more at a marvelous sixteenth-century chateau a couple hundred miles from Paris on the coast of Brittany in a little town called Quimper—which John insisted on pronouncing “kimper.”

John’s a man of culture. He’s got a lot of class. Too bad it was all low!

SHARON MITCHELL
:
When I first worked with John I was petrified because I’d heard the guy had this huge dick. And I was really quite scared because I really wasn’t that experienced sexually.

John came in and the first thing he asked me was, “Do you do drugs?”

I said, “Yeah, I do drugs.”

Then he opens up this briefcase and in it there’s little sections—you know, like a pillbox that says
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
but this was, like, for a whole month. It was like a fishing tackle box, and in each section there’s various powders and colored pills.

And he says, “What do you like? Downers? Uppers? Speed?”

I said, “I like downers. I’ll take a little bit of that and one of those and a couple of these….” So in this loop we did, John is fucking away, and I look like I’m completely dead. It was a really strange thing because I don’t remember having sex with him.

GLORIA LEONARD
:
John was great! I mean, I had all of my girlfriends tell me, “Oh, he’s so big,” and you know, “Sometimes he doesn’t get really hard,” so I was getting all this advice from this one and that one; you know, from Lesllie Bovee and other girls who had worked with him.

Well, I don’t know if it was the French air, honey, or because I was new meat or something—but he was like a rock the whole time! And he could be very charming. We’re shooting this sex scene, and they go, “Okay, that’s enough.” And we were just getting into it, you know? So John grabs me by the hand and drags me down the corridor of the chateau to an empty room—where there’s a bed—and we finished the scene ourselves.

We bought a set of matching Dupont cigarette lighters while we were there—I still have mine. And many months later he sent me a huge box of photographs of our time together in France—with a lovely note and a sterling silver straw from Tiffany & Co.

BOB VOSSE
:
By the mid-seventies, John Holmes was getting a thousand dollars a loop, which was quite a bit more than anyone else in the industry. And in all fairness he deserved more; his loops and his films were out-selling the competition by at least ten to one.

His worst loops, even when they were terrible—and it didn’t matter who the girl was—if John Holmes was in it, would outsell everything.

So his prices kept going up, and he deserved it.

JOEL SUSSMAN (PHOTOGRAPHER)
:
John got real spoiled. He became bigger than himself and made lots of money doing it.

I think that was what propelled him into insanity more than anything else. It was that too-much-too-soon thing. You know, where you start with cigarettes and go to smack. And what do you do after smack? You start doing weirder things to yourself.

He was like a rock star. He did the same thing rock stars did—go up high and burn out. And then you can’t get back in the atmosphere. His life was like a cartoon, and then it became real. When it was a cartoon it was fun, but when it was real it was ugly and scary.

GLORIA LEONARD
:
John could also be something of a prima donna. I told him in France, “This set is only big enough for one prima donna, and I’m it.” He laughed.

BILL AMERSON
:
The myth that created John Holmes was my doing. I was John’s manager and his agent his entire career, and together we came up with the myth that was John Holmes—things like him being a gigolo, about him flying to Europe and turning tricks with wealthy women.

It all added to his box office. And that’s what it was all about.

SHERI ST. CLAIR (PORN STAR)
:
The way he was built, John couldn’t help but be put on a pedestal. People couldn’t quite believe that he was so endowed; they were rather amazed about the whole thing. And it was reinforced over and over again.

Suddenly you’re a celebrity. You go to the awards ceremonies, and you’re constantly being bombarded by people asking for autographs.

One day you’re the girl working at the coffee shop, and then suddenly you’re bigger than anybody else.

And John fell into that; he became a celebrity and lived and breathed that twenty-four hours a day.

BILL MARGOLD
:
John had no understanding of what fame was—that fame is omnipresent, and that when you’re famous you have to answer to the bell every day. And sometimes you just don’t want to get up. So in order to get up, you use things to get you up to avoid the reality of being up.

BILL AMERSON
:
One time John and I were up in Yosemite, fishing, and we ran out of gas. It was during the seventies gas crisis, when you could fill your tank only on alternate days if you had an odd or even license plate. And this wasn’t our day.

So the attendant comes over, and all of a sudden John goes into his Johnny Wadd character—the deeper voice, the attitude, this stance of power—like a detective, like a Damon Runyon character.

And the guy filled up the van with eighty gallons of gas, just because John had turned into the Johnny Wadd persona.

People would do that. We would be flying someplace and John would go talk to the ticket taker, and he would say, “I’m Johnny Wadd!”

And they’d say, “Oh yeah, we know who you are,” and we would always be put on the plane first.

He used that character a lot, and he actually believed at times that that was who he was. He became Johnny Wadd in his own mind; he thought he could do no wrong—that he could solve all these cases. He was just crazy at times. I don’t know about delusional—but yeah, a little loony. It was embarrassing.

REB (FIRST PORN AGENT)
:
I’m not a psychiatrist, but my feeling is that John had multiple personalities. We were on the set once, and it was John’s turn to work, and we looked all through the house and couldn’t find him.

I looked everywhere; his vehicle was still out in front. Finally, I looked in this small closet—and there was John, rolled up in a little ball, and he was afraid. He wouldn’t tell me what he was afraid of; he was just afraid.

BOB VOSSE
:
When John was shooting
Prisoner of Paradise
the producer had arranged to have a CBS news team come in and interview him. Their
angle was that we had a female director, Gail Palmer. So our producer was briefing him on what to say during the interview.

John was sitting in the makeup chair. Gail came up and tried to get him to go over the script, since they had a little extra time. But John didn’t want to have any part of it.

The producer and I walked away, and a minute later we heard, “SMASH! BAM! BOOM!”

We looked over at the makeup table, and there were John and Gail fist fighting as hard as they could—and the makeup girl is screaming, “They’re killing each other!”

So our producer pulled them apart—just as there was a knock on the door.

It was the CBS crew.

They come in, set up, and they’re ready to go. And the first question they ask is: “John, how is it working with a female director? What are your feelings about Gail Palmer?”

John says, “Oh, she’s the greatest director, the most sensitive I’ve ever worked with.”

And this is less than two minutes after he had his fist right in her eye.

BILL AMERSON
:
When I first met him, John wouldn’t do any drug but marijuana. He was afraid of everything else. Then around 1975 or 1976, he got turned onto cocaine by a producer.

There was always cocaine around. It was a commodity in the adult film business. People were
paid
in cocaine.

Anyway, John lived with me at the time, and two hours after he had finished on the set he was still buzzing. He was running around doing things, like waxing his car, washing the dishes, and cleaning the floor. And this was like two in the morning. John thought this was the greatest discovery of his life. That was the first time that John snorted cocaine—and then he snorted it on almost a daily basis for the next few years.

SHARON MITCHELL
:
Everyone had cocaine. Everyone had some heroin. Everyone had whatever they did—PCP, speed, pot. People carried it around with them.

I’m not necessarily saying we needed it to perform in the movies. I’m just saying we preferred it. We carried it one step further than the sixties. It was free sex and a lot of drugs. It was a sign of the times, and everyone was packing whatever their preference was.

But we would all share. We were good that way.

BOB CHINN
:
At that time, just shooting an X-rated film was subject to a bust for pimping and pandering. And if you had drugs on the set,
that would definitely mean jail. So I wouldn’t tolerate drugs on my shoots.

One day I caught John with cocaine on the set. I flushed it down the toilet and said, “John, you can’t do this!”

He became petulant and wouldn’t work. It cost us a lot of time. I said, “John, I haven’t paid you yet. Finish the film, get your money, and then do whatever you want.”

From that point on I couldn’t work with him. It was just too difficult.

SHARON MITCHELL
:
One time I was shooting a film with John in Laurel Canyon, and he just disappeared. Everyone on the set thought he went out for lunch; we were waiting and waiting—and it was getting dark. No one knew where he was. And then all of the sudden we heard a little scream from one of the bedrooms. Some woman had opened up a closet, and John was in there with a base pipe, getting high.

He’d been on the set all day. He just looked up and said, “Where were you guys? Nobody came to get me!”

BILL AMERSON
:
John still tried to work, but he got a reputation for not showing up or for spending most of the time in the bathroom. And people didn’t want to hire him anymore—because John always got paid up front. So producers got to the point where they didn’t want to do that anymore because he wasn’t reliable.

So that kind of slowed his career down.

GLORIA LEONARD
:
I hadn’t seen John Holmes for years. I’d just moved into this house in Los Angeles, and he shows up at my doorstep. I don’t know how he found out where I lived. I was with Bobby Hollander at the time. And I had a girlfriend visiting me from New York, staying in our guest room.