The Other Hollywood (32 page)

So yeah, there were times when I drank with him because he would get mad at me if I didn’t drink, and then he’d be verbally abusive to the kids.

GLORIA LEONARD
:
I thought Linda was just a wacko. I was in a green room once for a TV show in New York, and Linda was going to be on the show. She comes in looking like hell, squints her eyes, looks at me—and goes, “You’re in porn—I can tell from your eyes!”

I’m telling you the truth, ha, ha, ha. That’s a direct quote!

CHUCK TRAYNOR
:
I was in England, and Sammy Davis Jr. sent me a manuscript for
Ordeal
. I read it, and then Hefner’s secretary called and said Hefner was kinda upset about it, ’cause Linda was talkin’ about this and that and the parties at his house.

Did Hefner wanna sue? I mean, Hefner surely had the means and attorneys to sue. But I think he just agreed, you know; it would just be more publicity for them.

LINDA LOVELACE
:
The three of us—Chuck, Sammy, myself—were in the screening room watching a porno movie. Or rather, the two men were
watching the movie. I was on my knees in front of Sammy, deep-throating him while he watched the movie.

“I really dig that,” Sammy was whispering, “I’d like to know how you do it. When are you going to teach me? When you going to show me how you do that? Hey, you think Chuck would mind?”

“Mind?” I whispered back. “No, that’s the kind of thing he’d go for in a big way. But let me set it up for you.”

Of course, this was definitely not the kind of thing Chuck would go for in a big way.

“Hey, you can’t just sit there and watch,” I said to Chuck. “You just can’t sit there.”

As I talked to Chuck, I signaled for Sammy to come over. Chuck grunted at me and shifted his weight, making it easier for me to do the job. I was the one who unzipped his trousers, but I wasn’t the one knelt in front of him.

A minute or two went by before Chuck realized that something was different. Then, although Chuck didn’t utter a sound, his eyes were screaming for help. I just shrugged my shoulders and laughed.

Each time that Sammy showed signs of slowing down, I kept him going with instructional encouragement. It was, ironically enough, the same instruction that Chuck had once give me.

“No, no, Sammy,” I said, “push down a little more—he’ll like that. Yeah, that’s right. Keep going. You’re doing fine.”

CHUCK TRAYNOR
:
I called Sammy back and said, “Sam, this is a fuckin’ joke. Other than the fact that she’s talkin’ about you and I havin’ sex or somethin’—well, I guess we’ll have to get married now—but just forget about it.”

Sammy and I never had sex.

Sammy said, “I don’t know where any of this shit came from. You think we should sue ’em?”

I said, “No because if we sue ’em, it’s gonna go into litigation—that’s publicity. Think about that. That book could be in litigation for years—and sell millions and millions of copies. And we ain’t gettin’ a penny.”

I said, “If they wanna make a deal with us, fine, you know. But if they’re gonna play this game, let ’em play it. I don’t give a shit.”

PEOPLE,
JANUARY 28, 1980: MRS. MARCHIANO CALLS HERSELF ‘A TYPICAL HOUSEWIFE’: THE WORLD KNEW HER AS LINDA LOVELACE
:
“‘Little by little I found out what pornography meant,’ recalls Larry [Marchiano], 32. A construction worker, he was shown a still photo from one of Linda’s gamiest eight-millimeter films by a coworker one day on the job.

‘I turned around,’ he says, ‘and walked I don’t know how many miles
that day.’ For a time he was plagued by the predictable taunts, but he says he has learned ‘to care only about Linda and not so much other people.’

For her, that support has been crucial.”

LINDA LOVELACE
:
Larry would go, “Oh, I’m gonna go look for a job.” You know, “Yeah,
right
.” He would leave first thing in the morning and not come home until after midnight. So my world was my children.

You know, all the kids in the neighborhood were always in my yard. I got pieces of wood, and they would make street names after themselves—and we built huts and dug holes in like hidden shacks, you know? I was always doing stuff like that with the kids, and I was happy.

PEOPLE,
JANUARY 28, 1980: MRS. MARCHIANO CALLS HERSELF ‘A TYPICAL HOUSEWIFE’: THE WORLD KNEW HER AS LINDA LOVELACE
:
“‘I thank God I can be with my husband and trust him,’ Linda says. ‘He is the only human being I had met who wasn’t strange or didn’t get into some sexual problem.’”

LINDA LOVELACE
:
Larry took our son out one time and instead of changing his diaper, he went to three friends’ houses; the mothers weren’t around. So he took Dominick to the emergency room and said to them, “There’s a problem down here.”

The nurse took the diaper off, said, “Oh, great” and took care of it.

I mean, what’s so hard about changing a diaper?

In some ways, yeah, Larry was a bit like Chuck. But then again, no. Larry wasn’t into pushing me into that kind of thing and making me go for that kind of a lifestyle. But he was very jealous. I really didn’t have any friends.

PEOPLE,
JANUARY 28, 1980: MRS. MARCHIANO CALLS HERSELF ‘A TYPICAL HOUSEWIFE’: THE WORLD KNEW HER AS LINDA LOVELACE
:
“Linda still fears retribution from Chuck Traynor—especially in the predawn hours after Larry has gone to work—and she complains of chronic insomnia. Her financial situation is precarious; she and Larry rely partially on welfare.”

LINDA LOVELACE
:
One night we came home, and Lindsay had some friends over, and one of the kid’s cars was like a little bit on our next door neighbor’s driveway. Larry had told the kids, “Don’t block anybody’s driveway.”

Larry was drunk, of course. So he totally flipped out and tried to beat this sixteen-year-old kid up, trying to yank him out. The kid was like, “Mr. Marchiano, I’m sorry. Let me just go move my car.”

NEW YORK
DAILY NEWS,
JUNE 8, 1981: LIZ SMITH,
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
:
“The party at London’s Cafe Royal for Linda Lovelace and her book
Ordeal
ended in a ruckus. When reporter Paul Pickering asked Linda a very nasty question about her past, the
Deep Throat
star’s husband, Larry Marchiano, punched him out. (Maybe Larry should change his name to Rocky.)”

LINDA LOVELACE
:
The kid was scared. Larry ripped the chain that he had around his neck, you know, ripped the buttons on his shirt. And I’m like, “Hey, you know, chill here.”

So we’re back in the house, and I’m telling Larry to chill out, and he shoved me. I fell back on the stairs and did something to my thumb—bruised it severely, but it didn’t break. So the cops take him away for domestic violence, and then the state picks it up.

“Wow,” I thought. “Now I don’t have to worry.”

NEW YORK
DAILY NEWS,
JUNE 25, 1981: LIZ SMITH,
OTHER VOICES OTHER RUMORS
:
“Linda Lovelace and her husband Larry Marchiano insist he did not hit Paul Pickering, but rather tried to reason with the British reporter in spite of rude remarks about Linda. When this proved futile, Larry claims, he walked away. Linda is disillusioned by her appearance before the London Literary Press Club. Members laughed when she tried to speak about pornography involving infants and children. She says, ‘They could just as easily laughed about Hitler and the concentration camps!’”

LINDA LOVELACE
:
I’d be sleeping and all of a sudden I’d wake up, and Larry would be there staring at me. He’d break into the house, and he’d just be staring at me, you know? It was kind of freaky.

And then, within thirty days, he was engaged. He got married. But it didn’t last a year.

Now he’s engaged again, you know? And when he’s not engaged, he’s like, “Uhhh, you think we could get back together?”

I just say, “NOOOO!”

1980
–
1981

LOS ANGELES/OKLAHOMA
1980–1981

CHRIS COX (NIGHTCLUB OWNER)
:
In the early seventies, Eddie Nash was known in Hollywood as the “Godfather.” It was well-known that he pretty much ran everything; if you wanted to get something done, you had to see Eddie Nash.

When I first met Eddie in 1970, he had six or seven nightclubs in Hollywood—a gay club, a Polynesian restaurant, a couple of strip joints, and a Middle Eastern place. All these clubs were doing well, and none of them competing with each other.

TOM LANGE (LAPD DETECTIVE, ROBBERY/HOMICIDE DIVISION)
:
I wasn’t really familiar with Eddie Nash, but my partner, Bob Souza, had heard of him from being in Hollywood Dicks [Hollywood Detectives] in 1969 or 1970. Of course, there was a big scandal in Hollywood Dicks in 1970. The cops were all dirty, and they were on the take; they were selling what we call “5-10s”—padding confidential information on real bad guys and getting paid off—or getting free women, free meals.

Eddie Nash loved the cops. He’d say, “Come on in; we’ll set you up!” It’s not a direct payoff—but when Eddie’s name comes up, you remember he’s the guy who bought you dinner and bought you drinks all night. So that kind of nonsense went on, and of course all those guys went to prison—but one of the players behind that was Eddie Nash.

CHRIS COX
:
So I come along and open a gay after-hours club right across the street from one of Eddie’s clubs. And this creates some problems. Club owners weren’t that congenial with each other back then. There were a lot of bomb threats—fire captains arriving at midnight on a Saturday night, things like that.

Then Eddie offered to buy into my club a few times, and I didn’t go along with it. After ten months, my club burned down.

So in the beginning Eddie Nash and I were competitors. But after a while we became close friends. Eddie became like a mentor to me.

DAWN SCHILLER
:
John Holmes referred to Eddie Nash as “brother.” Eddie was portrayed to me as an extremely dangerous person that we didn’t talk about. We were barely able to breathe around him because it could be taken wrong. I didn’t really understand the social structure—other than it was based on fear.

I finally got to meet Eddie Nash after sitting outside of his house more days than he knows because John started taking me with him when he went on drug runs.

I never went into anybody’s home. John would always make me wait in cars, hiding there, with nothing but a Coke can to pee in and a freebase pipe. And John would come by every twelve hours or so and drop off a freebase rock.

CHRIS COX
:
I first met John Holmes at my nightclub, the Odyssey. He was brought into my office by a mutual friend. This was in late 1980, and it was kind of unique to meet him because he was so well-known. I remember seeing his movies as a kid.
Everybody
had seen his movies as a kid.

But when I met him he was pretty heavy into coke. I think his career had gone down the tubes, and he was basically homeless, living in the back of an old milk truck—pretty much living day-to-day. He carried around a big aluminum briefcase loaded up with freebasing paraphernalia—butane, propane, pipes, and nozzles, all the equipment we were using in those days.

DAWN SCHILLER
:
John did bring me into Eddie’s house a couple of times. He basically sold me for dope. He needed to get high, and he gave me—the teenager—in trade.

One time it was my birthday, and I was drilled with this story that I was supposed to be John’s niece from Oregon, in town, looking into nursing schools.

CHRIS COX
:
John kind of befriended me because the drugs were flowing pretty heavily. He knew a good thing when he saw it. Those were the days when everybody was carrying around a two-gram bottle of coke, know what I mean? It was just the right thing to have.

And there was an elite group that was doing the freebasing—because it was so expensive. It was like $2,800 an ounce, so it was just affluent people who could afford to do it back then. There were small cliques around town with little freebasing empires.

DAWN SCHILLER
:
John warned me about how Eddie Nash would treat me. He told me that Nash would leave me alone in the living room for hours with the drugs, money, and jewelry in front of me. And the whole time I was being watched through a two-way mirror. I was left in the living room for hours with all these things in front of me. Nash did it to see if I was on dope. And at that time I was so addicted to coke, you know? So I just broke into cold sweats waiting to be called into the bedroom.

Finally I got traded off.

Nash paid me in coke. When John picked me up I turned all the coke over to him, and then told him—word for word—everything that happened. He backhanded me so hard my tooth went through my cheek.

Why? I guess because there wasn’t as much cocaine as they originally bargained on. I think it had to do with the fact that Eddie Nash could tell I wasn’t John’s innocent niece from Oregon. I mean, he could tell that I had smoked freebase before.

CHRIS COX
:
There was me and my group, and then there was Eddie Nash and his group, centered around Nash’s house in the Hollywood Hills on Dona Lola Drive. His place was a split-level house with a big living room area that was like the waiting room. And people would come by to see Eddie, who was usually in the bedroom. It was like getting an audience with the Pope—you know, you had to wait your turn. The living room was like Siberia; everybody looked very dejected out there. But a chosen few got to go in right away, no waiting. And I was one of them.

But then in 1980 I kind of got put out to pasture, after I introduced John to Eddie Nash. When I first brought John over to Nash’s, it was like bringing over a celebrity. There were lots of girls there, and they were pretty much bumping into each other to get to John. He was well liked up there. He was a conversation piece. John and Ed hit it off very well, and John started spending all his time over at Eddie’s.

My feelings weren’t really hurt. I understood what was going on: John was doing what he had to do to get his own supply.

DAWN SCHILLER
:
The only other house John took me into belonged to this lady that he’d worked with on a porn movie. She lived in one of these massive apartment complexes alongside the freeway in the Valley and turned tricks in her home.

One day John walked me into her condo and announced that I was going to be working for her. She had a list of clients I was supposed to see. They came at certain times during the day, and I, you know, had to take care of them.

What it boiled down to was that John sold me to her, too. And he got whatever money was my cut.

CHRIS COX
:
I watched Eddie Nash’s empire grow and grow—and then I watched it decline. Finally, I saw him locked in his room, his hands all burned from the freebase pipe, and down to a hundred and forty pounds, and you know, never going to the office anymore. They had to bring the paychecks up to him to get them signed. I just watched Eddie deteriorating.

I tried to stop it—tried to help him when it was happening, tried to keep him from losing his wife and kids.

JEANNA NASH (EDDIE NASH’S EX-WIFE)
:
After our separation, when my parents and I took the children to Oklahoma to my aunt and uncle’s farm, my husband hired a girl to follow us.

She came to the farm in order to find out if a certain man was with me. After she left, my husband called me and said to come home immediately.

When I refused, he said, “Don’t come back to California, or I will have two men waiting at the airport to kill you, and I will have your parents killed.”

CHRIS COX
:
Eddie’s house was on a pedestal; he kept his house and his family away from all of the dirtier parts of his life. He was a good father, too. I’d watch him with the kids and how he dealt with them and stuff.

When the freebasing started to get heavy, he was doing it in hotels and apartments and stuff. But then he gradually started to bring it home.

Jeanna was threatening to leave, and all of his other people were saying, “Fuck her. You don’t take orders from
anybody
. Why should you take orders from her?”

JEANNA NASH
:
My husband tried to convince my father that I had been with other men. When my father disagreed, my husband became very angry and said, “I am going to kill all of you, and I’m going to kill her. She is a hooker.”

CHRIS COX
:
When I talked to Eddie alone, I’d say, “You know, Nash, you’re wrong here. Jeanna’s stayed with you all these years. She lays at home in bed at night with no one else to talk to—it’s four or five in the morning—and she knows that you’re with somebody.

“She’s willing to accept it; she loves you that much. She knows she didn’t marry an insurance man who works nine-to-five. She must have married you because she liked you. But now you’re starting to bring it home.”

I told him that it was wrong to bring it into the house.

JEANNA NASH
:
My husband called me later that evening and said, “Send your father out, and I will kill him and leave the rest of you alone.”

I, of course, refused, and he then asked that I send my parents home so we could talk alone. I told him I was too afraid to do that. He then repeated that if I did not do as he told me, he would shoot all of us, including the children.

CHRIS COX
:
I tried to patch it up with Jeanna and Eddie. Then Eddie started getting suspicious of me talking to her. He thought that there might be something going on there. And he’d ask, had I ever seen her with any other guys?

Jeanna couldn’t take it anymore. She moved out—she was staying at her mother’s house in the Valley—and Eddie said he heard my voice in the background on the phone with her. All this madness. And somebody said he saw my car outside of her house. This was during Eddie’s paranoia stages.

JEANNA NASH
:
My husband later returned to the house, and we went into the kitchen, where I tried to calm him down. He told me to pack up the children and come home with him at once and that if I would confess to all the men I had been with, he would forgive me.

I told him I had been faithful to him throughout our marriage and that I wasn’t having a relationship with anyone. He said he did not believe me and then threatened that he would return later to slit my throat. There was some food and water on the table that my husband picked up and threw at me. He grabbed me by the hair and said, “Go ahead and call the police. I may be in jail, but I can still have all of you killed.”

CHRIS COX
:
After Jeanna left, the house started deteriorating. It became the party house; it was always loaded with people, and traffic, and cabs, and everything.

Eddie turned the family home into a whorehouse.

The girls showed up at the house, like, seven in the morning—as soon as Jeanna was gone, you know?

But the main thing was the pipe. The pipe was more important than anything else.

JOHN HOLMES
:
I bought cocaine from the people on Wonderland Avenue. They were heroin addicts who lived in an armed camp. They had two stolen antique guns worth $25,000—which I took to Eddie Nash in exchange for $1,000 worth of heroin. All they had to do to get the guns back was come up with the $1,000—but whenever they got enough money, they’d always call another connection and spend it.

So the guns were with Eddie Nash for a week, then two weeks, then six weeks. Eddie wanted his money—the people on Wonderland wanted their guns back—and I was right there in the middle.

That was when the people on Wonderland Avenue got the idea to rob Eddie Nash.

BOB SOUZA (LAPD DETECTIVE, ROBBERY/HOMICIDE DIVISION, PARTNER OF TOM LANGE)
:
John Holmes was shooting off his mouth about Eddie Nash at the Wonderland Avenue house—and Ron Launius heard him talking about it and started asking a lot of questions: “Has Nash got any dope? Has he got any guns? Any jewelry?” Ron Launius was a fucking thief from way back, so he’s thinking, “Hey, this looks like a pretty good score.”

The Wonderland Avenue gang were doing residential robberies at that time. That was their big thing—going out and ripping off other drug dealers. You know you got some tough bastards when they’re robbing other dope dealers. Because they know they’re gonna face some guns.

DAWN SCHILLER
:
When I was turning tricks for the lady John set me up with, it was like the old Little Orphan Annie story—you live in the orphanage, and you have porridge and that’s it. And you do your chores, and you don’t complain. And if you complain you get a severe beating.

I complained while we were out driving one day, and John, that fucker, just pulled off the freeway and threw me in the trunk—and wouldn’t let me out until I agreed to go back to turning tricks.

DAVID LIND (MEMBER OF THE WONDERLAND AVENUE GANG)
:
It was John Holmes’s idea to rob Eddie Nash—because he knew Billy Deverell and Ronnie Launius had done it before—robbed large drug connections. The plan was that John was to go in the house and leave a door open for us.

DAWN SCHILLER
:
One night, when the madam was out, John came in and asked me to draw his bath and get him a cup of coffee. Up until this time, he hadn’t taken his eyes off of me. I was watched instantly because they knew I’d run any second. So when he asked me to go get him a cup of coffee—while he was in the bathtub—it was my chance to make my break.