Say "Ah!"

Pornographic films often make money but rarely make stars. In the Fifties there was Candy Barr, the Texas stripper, whose notoriety may have been due as much to her imprisonment for marijuana possession as it was to her sexual prowess in the legendary stag film, Smart! Alec. It took more than a decade and millions of feet of film before the patrons of porn found another sex star worthy of the name---Linda Lovelace, leading lady of the record-breaking skin flick Deep Throat. It was Linda's first screen performance, and she really blew it. Circus sword swallowers possess an unusual ability to align mouth and throat, control their breathing, suppress the instinctive gag reflex and do their thing. So does Linda. The movie wasn't titled Deep Throat for nothing. In it she performs oral feats exceeding anything ever recorded on film and apparently defying the laws of anatomy.

It goes without saying that this skill is revealed in association with male performers who set a few anatomic records themselves.

(continued on page 180)Say "Ah!"(continued from page 100)

The movie itself is many cuts above the usual hard-core: It is competently photographed, imaginatively written, occasionally funny, actually involves some acting and even has a plot. Linda plays a jaded Miami Beach playgirl who orgies with her roomie, to whom she confides her frustration at never achieving orgasm. At her roommate's suggestion, Linda takes her problem to a freaky shrink who, after much probing with his primary diagnostic tool, determines that she is mentally and physically normal except in one fascinating respect: Her clitoris is located deep in her throat. Naturally, the good doctor confirms his diagnosis with the willing Linda, who not only achieves her first climax but leaves her benefactor stupefied with satiation. Recognizing a good thing when he sees it, he hires her as his assistant and she embarks on a rewarding career as a sexual therapist who meets and masters one male patient's sex problem after another. Thus does Linda find true happiness. And, as it turns out, fame.

After Deep Throat was released in New York by Damiano Film Productions early in 1972, it soon attracted attention as something distinctly different in skin flicks. So did Linda. An explicit interview in Screw, the New York sextabloid---which awarded the film an unprecedented 100 percent on its "Peter Meter," thanks to her performance---triggered the interest of other publications and led to more reviews, interviews and articles. Even Women's Wear Daily decided the picture---and Linda---had made some sort of entertainment history that deserved memorializing. The film itself, meanwhile, was grossing something in the neighborhood of $35,000 a week---a fact that has not escaped Linda's attention. "I only made about $1200, out of which I had to take my manager's cut, for that picture. Next time I want to get a decent salary and a percentage of the profits." For Throat, those profits should be considerable. It was floating around the 25 mark on Variety's list of the 50 top money-makers at a time when it was playing in only two theaters, thanks to legal problems. The outcome of an important New York City case was not known at presstime, but the defense marshaled an impressive array of expert witnesses who praised the film's content and quality and the fact that it presents sexual gratification as the right of women as well as of men. In Binghamton, New York, a jury saw the film, heard testimony that it artistically satirizes American sexual attitudes and turned in a verdict of not guilty.

What has doubtlessly piqued wide public curiosity as much as Linda's fellatial talents is her ingenuous style: a shy innocence combined with sexual enthusiasm and an utter absence of inhibitions. This image contrasts sharply with that of the traditional pornographic-movie performer---a bruised and needle-tracked prostitute, often unattractive, suffering from combat fatigue. With Linda, it soon becomes apparent from meeting her in person that her role in Deep Throat involved little acting; she was very nearly playing herself. "I really do dig getting it in the throat," she told us. "Everything turns me on, actually; my preferences depend on my mood, but I'd say right now I like throat, ass, cunt, one, two, three, in that order." As we said. Linda is remarkably uninhibited. Quiet and unassuming, however, she speaks softly, smiles readily and displays a warm, friendly personality that falls short of being gregarious. In jeans, she looks like she comes from Marlboro Country, but a miniskirt transforms her into a big-city working girl. At 22, she's not sexy in the movie-star sense, yet she possesses a free and easy sensuality that seems healthy, natural and spontaneous. In short, she's the all-American girl without the all-American hang-ups. Bright as a button, sweet as honey, carnal as hell. If anyone could write a movie script based on the stories of the traveling salesman and the farmer's daughter, Linda Lovelace would be the perfect heroine.

Linda came to Deep Throat, or vice versa, because of her boyfriend. She was living in Texas when she met J. R. Traynor, a New York free-lance photographer working on an agricultural assignment. After returning with him to Manhattan, she went to work as a clerk in a head shop until Traynor met a local film maker and told him about Linda's unique erotic skills. The result was Deep Throat, filmed in New York and Miami in a couple of weeks on a $25,000 budget, with no great expectations other than a quick buck. When it began to turn into something much more than that, Linda found herself unprepared for her sudden role as a celebrity. It's understandable, then, that she doesn't act like one.

What does she think of all the publicity she's received? She grins, thinks for a moment and decides she isn't quite used to it, but it's fun and it hasn't changed her life very much or her attitudes at all. "When I'm in New York, where the movie ran a long time, I'm sometimes recognized on the street. A guy will stop, with this questioning look on his face, and then say something in a low voice, like 'Deep!,' and smile and walk off. I get kind of a kick out of it." The main problem, she says, is that too many guys she's met since Deep Throat assume she's as indiscriminately horny as the girl they saw in the movie and expect her to treat them to a demonstration. "This," interjects J. R., "is like expecting Charlton Heston to behave like Michelangelo." Does being a porn star ever cause her embarrassment? Oh, no, she told us. There's nothing wrong with sex: why should she be embarrassed? It's the most natural thing in the world. How does she feel about the fact that oral sex is still illegal in most states and considered perverted by many people? This time she shrugs. She can't understand that, and anyway, it's their problem, not hers. People who don't do it, she believes, don't know how to enjoy sex; probably they're afraid of it. J. R., she says, was her escape from all that---from middle America, its moral hypocrisy and its sexual restraints.

After meeting Linda and J. R. and spending even a short time socializing---they're an inseparable team living a mildly hippie life style in Miami these days---it's perfectly obvious what a nice girl like her is doing in a business like hers: She's sexually fearless, knows who she is and what she wants, and has a deep respect for other people as individuals, as long as they reciprocate. Cynics, con men, exploiters and role players she politely tolerates as a professional inconvenience that must be suffered for the sake of earning a living by making movies, as she would like to do, pornographically or otherwise. Consequently, she and J. R. know many people but associate with only a few close friends. Linda would rather spend a quiet evening at home puttering around with a new recipe than dine out in an elegant restaurant. And she says she likes keeping house as much as she does cooking. Come to think of it, a well-rounded girl like her would make a hell of a wife.