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In London in the 1960s, pornography was a man’s world.

It was viewed by men, written by men, directed by men and filmed by men. If they hadn’t needed actresses to play a part on camera, it would probably have been made by men as well.

And then a woman came along, and changed that world completely.

This is her story.

The mid-1960s were the golden age of truly underground erotic film making, the last grand flowering of the trade before the progressive liberalization of the arts, the advent of new forms of technology (beginning with the VHS tape), and the mercurial success of the movie Deep Throat transformed a once deeply secretive and self-involved industry into… indeed, a mainstream industry.

Soho By Spotlight returns us to those halcyon days; to a gray and overcast landscape of dirty raincoats and secretive doormen, of darkened club rooms and menacing mobsters; and a square mile of seedy businessmen for whom sex films were made for fun as much as finance – at least by the people on either side of the camera.

It is the semi-fictional, but wholly truthful autobiography of one of the era’s most prolific film-makers – a XXX novella that could double as a confessional text book, but which pulls no punches in either direction.

A gripping adventure littered with powerful sex; a fearless expose shot through with honesty and emotion, then draped by a sheen of fragile, furtive eroticism, Soho By Spotlight tells the story of Elizabeth Clark… the eye behind the lens of some of the best-loved British porn films of the era.

Rarely more than ten minutes in length, resolutely black and white, and determinedly dirty, movies like Little Girl Lost, Tonight At Eight and Satan’s Children come to life in these pages. So does the world in which they were made, a world – once again – of dirty raincoats and secretive doormen, of darkened club rooms and menacing mobsters. And sex so hot that it melts the celluloid.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Soho By Spotlight is Chrissie Bentley’s eleventh novel, and her second work to investigate her personal love of erotic cinema – the first,”Pictures Of Lily,” can be found in the Cleis Books anthology Best Women’s Erotica 2011, edited by Violet Blue.

Bentley has been publishing erotica for close to a decade, initially via internet sites such as Ruthies Club and eroticstories.com. Her short stories have appeared in the print anthologies The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica (Robinson Books), Boy Fun, Ultimate Uniforms (both Xcite), Misbehaviour (Black Lace) and more; and in a number of e-book collections too.

She was also creator, compiler and co-editor of the Xcite anthology The Bad Girl’s Sweet Kiss (2010).  Visit her at Constantly Chrissie and Chrissie Bentley.

Peepshow Loops Volume 13

• KY-SEN THE VIETNAMESE, 1wf,1af-1m, Lasse Braun #6, Danish
• YOUNG & LUSTY, 2f-1m, European
• DINNER FOR THREE, 2f-1m, Feature Series #21 (Tina Russell)
• SUZY HOMEMAKER, 2f-1m, Pretty Girls #3, Big Tits
• I GOT RHYTHM, 2bf-1m
• LUSTY GIRLS, 2f-1m, Danish
• GETTING OFF, 1f-3m, Lasse Braun (Bridgette Maier)
• OVERSEXED SECRETARY, 2f-1m, Swedish Erotica #86 (Paul Thomas)
• THE MOONSHINER, 1wf,1bf-1m, Swedish Erotica #114
• BLACK DIAMOND, 1bf-2m, Swedish Erotica #111
• THE BLACKMAILED TEENAGER (PTS 1&2), 1f-2m

With just eleven movies making up the two hour running order, Volume 13 might seem to offer a little less bang for the buck than we normally expect from Blue Vanities, and kicking off with one of Lasse Braun’s less essential offerings probably wasn’t a great idea either.  Ky-Sen the Vietnamese is simply too overly-fussy, with the camerawork flying all over the place, and no scene really standing out in the memory.  But then Young and Lusty comes hurtling out of the Danish milieu and all is forgiven. 

The girl on girl sequence that opens it is a delicious tangle of arms, legs, and everything else, and so hot that it’s almost disappointing that the ladies should leap from the bed the moment a man appears, their own frenzy forgotten in their haste to get some meat in their mouths.  The action continues to grab your attention by the balls, though – and talking of which… no, just kidding.  The final sequence, a passionate 69, with the top girl taking a shafting at the same time, is amazing, though.

Dinner for Three, starring the delectable Tina Russell, opens slowly, with a rather foppish young gent receiving a massage (and a manicure?) from two passing pretties, who only gradually get around to unwrapping him, and themselves; while Suzy the Homemaker keeps the three in a bed theme running, but only after following one girl home from church, while the other is being slowly (if lasciviously) seduced by a gent with the most astonishing sideburns this side of – oops, I was going to say an early seventies porn flick, but you know what I mean.

The other girl, a room mate it seems, finally arrives home and busies herself in the kitchen for a while, presumably unaware of the greedy blowjob taking place just a thin wall away.  She unpacks some bananas… yes, really… and the camera cuts back to her friend devouring one – as an aside, it’s the little visual puns like that which can transform even the most ordinary loop into a laugh, especially as the joke goes on through Mr Sideburns’ orgasm.

Now they’re fucking, and the other girl’s still eating; he comes for a second time, and she’s feasting still.  And when she catches him getting another bj… ah, that caught her attention, and it’ll catch yours as well, as we finally get to see all three of them together – just in time for the movie to end.

There’s more comestibles on display in Lusty Girls, which kicks off with a drinking bout, and some clearly unpleasant wine.  So one of her hosts gets his cock out, presumably to help take away the taste – and it works.  And another Lasse Braun opus, Bridgette Maier’s Getting Off, wipes away the disappointment of the opening flick by setting up the classic encounter between a bored housewife, a mirror, and a series of fantasy sequences that run  the gamut of gardening shears, smacked bottoms, feather boas and some artful (not to mention close-up) photography that really works. 

But we save the best until last, and Blackmailed Teenager – the sad story of a young woman being blackmailed by her cad of a boyfriend into going on the game, or face the shame of having some revealing photographs shown to her family.  Well shot in both vivid color and noir-esque black and white, the movie follows her through her first trick – a graceless encounter with a pair of slobs, which gives Blackmailed Teenager an almost cautionary mood, Reefer Madness for Double Penetration fans.  She clearly doesn’t enjoy it either, which is why she’s hitting the marijuana so hard… yes, it’s pretty damned corny really, but – hey, it’s a lot of fun as well.

Grainy but definitely gripping, the Sex Salesman comes to call , and what is he selling today?  A long tongue and an even longer dick, for the lonely housewife to sample… one of the few occasions, it seems, when a door to door salesman offers the real thing as an incentive to pick up the imitations – although the array of dildos and toys that he’s packing were certainly tempting enough.

Volume eleven is a mixed bag, low on star power (John Holmes and Pat Manning make one appearance each), but high on everything else.  The lesbian “The Dating Game” is a  a slow, tender, builder, one of those wonderful films where the cast have obviously been told to just have fun, rather than leap in with all orifices blazing.  Plenty of laughter and maneuvering into position, a lot of gentle kissing and caressing, and then a sixty-nine that WILL make your mouth water.

Holmes’ hurrah comes with “Big Surprise” – and no surprises for guessing what the surprise is.  Or how big, either.  A couple of girls prepare for a night on the town by complaining that their last conquest had way too tiny a cock for their liking.  So they pick up a guy they find crashed out on a park bench, invite him up to their apartment and – well you can guess the rest, although the great thing about Holmes’ movies is, there’s always enough for everyone, and there’s some close-up cum swapping to be enjoyed at the end.  The girls never do say if he was big enough, although you can sort of guess from the subtitles.  “Look what I’ve got hold of”… “wow, is it real?”

Two hours of action pack out this disc, with a couple of big tit productions, and a solid burst of anal at the end to make sure that all the erotic bases are covered, and the amazing “Loving Spoonful” to make certain that the medicine stays down.  Pass the sugar, please….

Launching, at last, the much anticipated upgrade of the Blue Vanities series of vintage porn loops, 70s Porn is a collection of thirteen 8mm films, remastered and sometimes re-sourced from the prints found elsewhere in the series, and looking better than you’ve ever seen any of them.  Indeed, for anybody who cares about the technical side of things, a short piece amongst the bonus features allows you to watch a split screen rendering of one film, with “before” and “after’ restoration side by side.  Other improvements include introductory shots of the original films’ box art (also viewable among the bonus features), a choice of audio – silent, or the authentic hum of an original projector; and the ability to skip easily from one loop to the beginning of another, or even select the films you want to watch from the menu.  Earlier BV discs, of course, ran as one long program.

The main feature kicks off with the drably-titled, but easily forgivable M81 and M82, a two part encounter between Eric Edwards, Linda Lovelace and an unknown brunette; to adopt the terminology beloved by Friends fans, this is “the one where Lovelace fucks herself silly with a pair of dildos, before her co-stars wander in to help her out.”  Of course, it’s also an opportunity to watch Lovelace demonstrate the skills that would later have her running for president, without having to sit through an hour of associated silliness, an area in which loops (and their stag forerunners) undoubtedly have the edge over full length features.

Supercock follows, the ever-delightful Linda McDowell entertaining John Holmes, who certainly lives up to the billing – only for Mr Foot Long to make even him look like the penis fairy forgot him.

Three installments from the Pretty Girls series are included here, featuring in turn “Terri from OUI magazine” (#81), Nancy Suiter (#55) and “the starlet” (#12), all acting out with unnamed male co-stars and all showing that there’s a lot more to their talents than simply looks.  Terri offers up a remarkable “don’t take your eyes away” style blowjob that must, in turn, have blown away anybody watching it at the time; a trick that Suiter will replicate from the comfort of a luxurious bubble bath.  Some great POV camera work here as well.

Linda McDowell and John Holmes reappear in Wild Beauty, a wonderfully relaxed 1971 Playmate feature which appears to have been shot as much for the cast’s own laughter and amusement as for the audience’s; and Holmes will be back again later, in 1976’s Hollywood Pick-up.  A pair of Vanessa Del Rio shorts, A Date With Vanessa and fever Pitch, meanwhile, remind us what a commanding presence she was on the seventies scene – and why.  Bepearled and high-heeled for much of the first film, she encourages her anonymous beau through the most enthusiastic bit of pussy-eating all disc long, then rewards him by lying back and demanding he fucks her mouth.  Elsewhere, Jungle Paul and Tawny Pearl are the hard-working heroes of a Connoisseur magazine loop, and Ron Jeremy gets blown halfway down the stairs in Cry Uncle, a 1981 Golden Girls production that will make you look at your banister in a whole new light.

Harry Reems is the visual hook of Tina Russell Makes Friends, if only by virtue of the shit-eating grin that he wears beneath an absurdly huge moustache and a bright red gat… and who can blame him, because Tina’s brought a friend along, and while one girl feeds him candies, the other gets to work on his candy cane.  And then, of course, they both do, and Reems keeps grinning the whole way through.  There was a man who loved his work, and no mistake; and here is a disc that you’ll be enjoying just as much.  Oh, and just in case you ever need reminding how fortunate we are to have collections like this to hand, a couple of the original film boxes illustrated as the film moves on have their recommended retail price printed as part of the artwork.  Fifty bucks a pop, for a fifteen-minute 8mm.  Forget about encountering Mr Foot Long in unexpectedly close quarters – that really makes the eyes water!

• COLLEGE STUD, 2f-1m, Swedish Erotica #104 (John Seeman)
• P*SSY GOLF, 3f-3m, Swedish Erotica #106, Danish
• THE KEY, 2f-1m, Swedish Erotica #109
• THE THERAPIST, 2f, Swedish Erotica #113, Lesbian (Chris Cassidy)
• FIRE & SPICE, 1f-1m, Swedish Erotica #115 (John Holmes)
• THE VIXEN, 1f-1m, Swedish Erotica #120 (Paula Wain)
• BOOBS, 2f-3m, Swedish Erotica #126, Danish (Renee Bond)
• TEA TIME, 1f-1bm, Swedish Erotica #133 (Chris Cassidy, Johnny Keys)
• THAI TEASE, 4f-4m, Swedish Erotica #139, Danish
• PING PONG ESCAPES, 1f-1m, Playboy #1802 (Darby Lloyd Raines)
• DELPHIA THE GREEK, 1f-2m, Lasse Braun #7, Danish
• VIRGIN IN HEAT, 1f-1m, Swedish Erotica #127 (John Holmes)
• BREAST FETISH, 1f-1wm,1bm, Swedish Erotica #154 (Desiree Cousteau, Paul Thomas)

A strong collection of Swedish Erotica loops, Volume 18 opens strong and just keeps going… “College Stud,” with his love for hot asses and his gymnastic girlfriends is an eye-opener for anyone who wishes they could still bend like they used to be able to; and although “Pussy Golf” may spend too much time setting up the golf, it’s also dripping with pussy.  Split screen technology is one of several things that enlivens “The Key”… a big dick and two even bigger mouths rank among its other highlights, although no points at all to the male lead, who sits there like a lump through most of the action, and if anybody ever hands out awards for the least inspiring performance in a 1970s loop – well, maybe they did, and he wanted to win it.  His co-stars don’t care, though.

And so to “The Therapist,” opening with a woman detailing her hottest fantasy to her shrink, and then cutting to that fantasy come to life, slow and languorous, and if the camera doesn’t care so much for the close-ups, for once it doesn’t matter.  There’s so much passion and power on display alongside the flesh that it could go on all night and you wouldn’t want it to end.  Plus, anyone thirsting for a “money shot” at the end will get even more than they bargained for.  Quite simply, “The Therapist” is one of the best lesbian loops you’re going to find anywhere and, in case you can’t get enough of Chris Cassidy, she reappears in “Tea Time,” a few loops further on.

Subtitles.  We do need them occasionally, but there was something about the 1970s that rendered them horribly annoying… John Holmes responding to his dick being complimented by replying “all the better to sex you with.”  No, not even “sex you up,” although that would be bad enough.  Who writes these things – and how do we all get the job?  “Baby, you suck a mean dick,” he says, and so “Fire and Spice” has first to survive becoming tawdry and laughable before it really hits its pussy-pummelling stride.

Perhaps the most intriguing title on the disc is “Ping Pong Escapes,” all the more so since it follows “Thai Tease” and leaves you thinking of the peculiar things that the ladies of Bangkok can do with table tennis equipment.  In fact, Ping Pong is a gorilla, on the loose from the zoo, and Darby Lloyd Raines is the beauty who, with a saucy nod to Fay Wray and King Kong, Ping Pong takes a fancy too.  Particularly when he spots her reading the newspaper in the raw.  Of course, it’s not a real gorilla that she monkeys around with, as you realize when she unzips his pants, but there’s sufficient tomfoolery going on to get you ready for “Delphi The Greek,” a sadly fuzzy, but nevertheless endearing slice of Lasse Braun magic, shot in spectacular close-up… and, saving the best to last, the ample charms of Desiree Costello, flashing through “Breast Fetish.”  So, another two hours well spent in the Seventies, and at least one nominee for the Loop Hall of Fame.  Chris Cassidy for President!

• THE DOCK HAND, 1f-1bm, Swedish Erotica #79
• SORORITY STUD, 2f-1m, Swedish Erotica #91 (John Holmes)
• BUBBLE BATH, 1f-1m, Swedish Erotica #92 (John Holmes)
• MILKMAID, 1f-1m, Swedish Erotica #99 (Chris Cassidy, John Seeman)
• THE HOT HOUSEBOAT, 1f-1m, Swedish Erotica #98
• CAMILLE, 1f-1m, Pretty Girls #60 (Kandi Barbour)
• NAUGHTY GIRL, 1f-1m, Collection #33
• COUNTRY GIRL, 1f-1m, Collection #35
• JEWISH PRINCESS, 1f-1bm, Collection #40, Big Tits
• ON THE ROAD, 1f-1m, Golden Girls #9 (Ron Jeremy)
• BAD GIRL, 1f-1m, Golden Girls #142
• JOINT CONNECTION, 2f-1m, Blue Films #4 (Luther Worth)
• THE GOLDEN TONGUE, 1f-1m, Danish

Volume 17 is one of those collections that you never tire of, not only because the cast… girls and boys…. Look so good, but because almost all of the films here make an effort to step beyond the mundane, and throw in something new.  “The Dock Hand,” for example, is slow to start, predictable in the middle, and… weird towards the end, as the action freezes instead into a series of stills, which do allow the cast to show off a few extra tricks, and make sure that we end with a very sensual blowjob.  “Sorority Stud” includes a girl on girl shower scene that is more the erotic for what doesn’t take place between the two; “Bubble Bath” opens with a blinding disrobing scene, which moves into a terrific bedroom scene, complete with one of the best shot 69s of the era; and just in case you’re wondering where “Milkmaid” is going, Chris Connolly gives John Seeman an amazing mouthful.

But best of all is “Jewish Princess.”  It begins with some accidental spillage while watering the plants, for which a sound spanking is quite reasonably administered.  Forgiveness follows, but what takes the film to the next level is the look on her face, and especially in her eyes, after she presents her man with the final blowjob.  This is a girl who enjoys her work, and enjoys her co-star as well.  Not sure if you could get away with that title today, though!

• PUMP ME UP, 1f-2m, Swedish Erotica #141, Danish
• TREASURE CHEST, 1f-1m, Swedish Erotica #156 (Connie Peterson, John Holmes)
• THE MYSTIC, 1f-2m, Swedish Erotica #175 (Eileen Wells, John Holmes, John Leslie)
• UPTIGHT, 1f-1m, Swedish Erotica #246 (Serena, Mike Horner)
• TWO-IN-ONE, 1f-2bm, Swedish Erotica #193 (Sharon Kane, Johnny Keys)
• PARK AFFAIR, 1f-1m, Swedish Erotica #196 (Sharon Kane)
• NEW SPANISH FLY, 2f-1m, Swedish Erotica #27, Danish
• THE ELEVATOR, 1f-1m, Swedish Erotica #49, Danish
• THE REPAIRMAN, 1f-1m, Swedish Erotica #74 (Paul Thomas)
• THREE FACES OF SEX, 3f, Swedish Erotica #61, Lesbian
• ELIZABETH, 1f-1m, Pretty Girls #54
• NANCY, 1f-1m, Pretty Girls #62 (Nancy Suiter, Mike Ranger)
• DIANE, 1f-1m, Pretty Girls #58 (Aubrey Nichols)

There’s a reason why guys know how to fix cars, and ladies wear short skirts when they’re out driving – although the two lads who stumble across a damsel in distress in “Pump Me Up” seem to have left their footpump back at their apartment.  So they gallantly invite the hot blonde home with them, and pump her up instead.  Well, nobody ever said the plots had to be original!

A great collection, this one, with Connie Peterson a vision in blonde, Serena as serene asyou can be with Mike Horner’s cock down your throat, and the two Johns, Holmes and Leslie, a riot in “The Mystic,” a play on all those sex magicking madmen who ran around the late 1960s, convinging gullible beauties that their cocks had all the secrets.  And truly, my child, if let me stick it up your ass, you will see God.

Favorite moments – Sharon Kane getting suggestive with an orchid in the park, and then stumbling across a lone folk singer, strumming solo on a wall.  Oops, she just twisted her ankle, so of course he has to help her out… back to an apartment where strange blacksmith-ing tools are hanging from the walls, and you wonder – what kind of folk singer is he?  Ah, that sort, because no sooner does she get her tits out (some wonderful close-ups by the way) than he has her on her knees before him.  As you do.  And the tools remain hanging on the walls.  The metal ones, anyway.

“New Spanish Fly” takes place in a laboratory, where a white-coated scientist has apparently perfected a new aphrodisiac, and has a cute redheaded assistant to help him test it… occasional subtitles push things along a little, but you do find yourself wondering what was really being said as the sinisterly-steaming liquid is brushed across various soft and sensitive parts.

And so on, through an extraordinarily entertaining two hours of hot humping, dirty bumping and all purpose grinding, all culminating in “Three Faces Of Sex,” a steaming three girl explosion that features one of the prettiest faces on film.  And some of the hottest pussy-eating, as well.

But even a cursory dip into The First Time & 59 Other Magical Moments, a collection of 60 slabs of erotic verse by Texan author Jenny Swallows, should set your mind at ease on one score, while sending your pulse racing on several others.  This is NOT your father’s poetry. 

In fact, the introduction (by author Chrissie Bentley) makes it clear that Swallows herself hates the “P” word,  preferring to view herself as a wordsmith in the mould of Edward Lear, Hillaire Belloc or even Dr Seuss; that is, the purveyor of a stream-of-rhyming-consciousness that simply doesn’t known when to let up.  It’s that brilliant.

The subject is sex, of course – but sex in its rawest, most physically detailed and almost surgically graphic form.  There is love and devotion to be found in these pages, and it’s shaped with such overwhelmingly animalistic passion that the occasional crudity of language and imagery almost passes by unnoticed. 

The verses tend to be short; most barely overflow a page, a couple scarcely top a paragraph.   But scene after scenario is documented with such naturalistic precision that the brevity itself becomes an exhilarating experience, while Swallows’ breathtaking honesty rises above both form and format to create what practically amounts to a whole new literary style, graffiti’d bathroom limericks spray-painted ten feet tall. 

The First Time & 59 Other Magical Minutes certainly won’t be to every poetry-lover’s taste, but we’ve already established that this isn’t poetry.  It’s lyrical lust.

ORDER YOUR COPY NOW FROM: https://www.createspace.com/3406722

Below Blue London (Mojocastle Press) is not so much the tale of one city, as the saga of several, a vivid collection of ten very different, but irrevocably inter-woven stories, each one set in a very different era, but all with the same locale in common, a patch of land in London’s east end where something happened.  What, when and even why it was, we won’t discover until later… the book opens in the present day, then works its way back, a few decades at a time, to the early 1800s.  Then it rockets precipitously forwards again, to an orbiting space station 25 years from now, looking down on the drowned remains of a globally warmed-up London.  But the ruins still remember their heritage, just as they always have.

The first chapter, “Old Times,” sets the stage, as a young female journalist moves into a new development in what used to be London’s docklands, to find her room-mate, and their nights, disturbed by what can only be described as ripples from the past, the sight, sound and sensations of other people making love.  Hungry to get to the bottom of the phenomenon, they trace the history of the area and, in so doing, build up a portrait of a society and culture that modern progress simply swept away, but which was far more alive than any world that replaced it. 

Chapter two takes us back to the yuppie-fied 1980s, and the slow redevelopment of this so-historic area; chapter three to the horrors of the London blitz, and its destruction.  And from thereon, every chapter in turns adds another layer of explanation to what we witnessed in the opening pages, and another layer of mystery as well.  Names begin to recur, some of them the families that lived in the rabbit warren of streets that once covered the neighbourhood, others are simply visiting – a once legendary soccer player, winding down his career with the local club, a soon-to-be-legendary author, building up his… you will never consider Charles Dickens in the same light after reading this book.  Or Thomas Nashe.  The introduction to Below Blue London speaks briefly of a play that the famed Elizabethan playwright wrote and saw performed just once, and which was then suppressed for reasons unknown.  Chapter Eight rediscovers it.

A happy hooker; a pious evangelist; a young girl spending her last night in London before travelling to India to marry her sweetheart; a gypsy queen and an African sorceress.  All pass through these pages, a bright and brilliant cavalcade of exquisitely drawn figures who each leave such an impression on the so fertile soil around them that, even without the explicitly detailed sex that will probably be this book’s chief selling point, Below Blue London would be a masterful creation.  With it, it emerges as one of the most spellbinding erotic novels of the year so far, and one that deserves an audience as vast as the panorama that it covers.

AVAILABLE NOW FROM http://www.mojocastle.com/london/london.html

<!–[endif]–> With thinning white hair, rosacia-tinted cheeks and a frame that struggled to squeeze itself into either of the armchairs that sat around her tiny apartment’s television centerpiece, Joan looked more like an advertisement for Mom’s Apple Pie than anything else. Certainly it was difficult to equate this model of modern American grandmotherhood with any lifestyle beyond the Norman Rockwellian images that clustered in photo frames on every available surface – and almost impossible to believe that, sixty years before, she was something of a movie star.

“Nothing you would have heard of, though,” she blurted out when pressed for detail, and the abruptness with which she changed the subject initially suggested that it was a topic she had no desire whatsoever to revisit, which was strange because almost every conversation she had revolved around her memories – for what else was there for an 80-something year-old woman to talk about, once the daily pleasantries had been exhausted?

She’d been a widow for a decade or more, but she wasn’t lonely. Her family were regular and loving visitors, she had both grandchildren and great-grandchildren to dote on. And that, it transpired, was why she didn’t want to talk about her movie making. Not one of her family knew about it, and she had no intention of ever letting them into the secret. “I was young and it was fun” were defenses that simply wouldn’t wash with her kith and kin; and, besides, she didn’t have copies of any of her films… didn’t even know what most of them were called…. Or even how many she actually made. Only that the money was good – no, strike that; the money was sensational, and that made an awful lot of difference in those dark years immediately following the Crash of 1929.

How did you first become involved in making movies?

“The same way as everybody, I expect. A friend of mine knew somebody who’d come into a movie camera, and was looking for people – I suppose you’d call it ‘auditioning’ – who would make little pictures that he’d rent out to fraternity parties, clubs, the Elks, all those organizations…. The Masons, fire houses, policemen’s balls.”

Did you know what sort of pictures they were, when you first went along?

“They weren’t any ‘sort’ of pictures. Not in that way. All we had to do was dance. It was a little suggestive, he… his name was Sidney, he had a little what he called a studio on Pike Street [Seattle]… he liked us to run our hands over our breasts and below, but there was no actual touching, and we were clothed. Probably not the sort of clothes you’d want to wear on the street, but you couldn’t see anything.

“He had a gramophone player, one of those Edison cabinets, although of course he wasn’t recording the sound, that was just to give us something to dance to. Then he’d set up his equipment, and we’d dance on this little stage he’d built at one end of the studio. One record, one girl, so you’d be up there for a couple of minutes, and that was it, he’d hand you $10 and you were free to go.”

And that was it?

“You have to remember this was Sidney’s business. People paid to rent his films, and they wanted to get their money’s worth. Which meant you couldn’t just get up there and wriggle a little, you had to look like you were… well, getting excited. You had to dance to the camera. A lot of girls didn’t understand that, they thought you could just hop around, run your hands across your stomach a couple of times – easy money. They were the girls who didn’t get called back.”

I assume you weren’t one of those?

“I had ballet lessons when I was a girl, so I knew how to move. And I went out dancing a lot. I enjoyed it, and I learned very early on that, the more you moved, the more boys would look at you. So when Sidney started filming, I put it into my head that the camera was a crowd of boys – which, in a way, it was – and I had to get their attention. There were ten or eleven of us at my first audition, and I think Sidney only asked three of us to come back.”

When did the films start to change?

“When did I start making ‘dirty films,’ do you mean? Well, I was 19 when I first met Sidney, and started dancing for him, and that went on for some months – in fact, I remember my 20^th birthday, because he did the studio up like a birthday party, and had me start out by jumping through a screen that had ‘Sweet 16’ written on it, and then go into my dance routine. So it was after that. Maybe six months.”

How did he broach the subject?

“Sidney was – not shy, but very reserved around us. He made it very apparent that we had a professional arrangement, which I think was important because some of the girls did develop something of a crush on him, which could lead to all kind of problems. But I was at the studio one day, just dancing, and when I was finished he asked if I’d stick around to talk. Well, that was strange, because he’d never done that before. But I stayed while the last few girls danced; then, while he was packing up his equipment, he asked if I wanted to make some extra money.

“I thought he just had more dances for me, but then he explained that someone had seen one of my other films, and had asked… I wish I could remember the exact words, but it was along the lines of, ‘would you be interested in showing the camera what else you can do.’ Something very innocuous. Well, I thought he simply wanted me to dance in the nude, so I told Sidney to let me think about it; which is when he told me that it wasn’t exactly dancing, and I wouldn’t be on my own.”

How did you react?

“How do you think I reacted? I was horrified, but at the same time, $100 was an enormous amount of money at that time, more than I earned in I don’t know how long at work… I worked at the old Woolworths downtown. And I wasn’t exactly a slow developer in that respect. Plus, I also got the impression from Sidney that the request was not one that he was happy about turning down.”

The proverbial ‘offer you can’t refuse’?

“Something like that. So I said I’d think about it and I’d let him know later in the week, but I was waiting for the trolley home and I thought ‘to Hell with it. Why not?’”

Did he tell you who your partner would be?

“Honestly, it never crossed my mind. I assumed it would be one of the male dancers – I knew he made films with them as well, that he rented to hen nights and things like that. Or maybe even him, because he wasn’t a bad looking fellow. So I ran back to the studio and caught him as he was locking up, and I said I’d do it, which I think shocked him more than if I’d said no, because he asked if we could go for a drink, and we went to a bar on First – I remember this so well – and he was just asking again and again if I knew what I was agreeing to, and if I was sure, and what would my boyfriend think… I told him I didn’t have a boyfriend, so then he was worrying that maybe I was a virgin, or I wouldn’t know what to do, or maybe I’d freeze on camera.”

Which were reasonable concerns.

“They were, but I was a very determined girl, and if I made up my mind to do something, I’d see it through. Like the dancing. The first time I did it, there was a moment of ‘what am I doing?’ and then I put it out of my mind. Then, if I decided I didn’t like it, I’d not do it again. In fact, I think I was more worried about Sidney, because as much as it would be my first time, it was his as well, and I don’t think it would have even crossed his mind, if he hadn’t been asked in the way he was.”

Did you ever find out who did actually ask?

“Not exactly, but I had a good idea. There were a lot of little gangsters running around Seattle back then, people who read about Al Capone in Chicago, and thought they could do the same thing here, and some of them did. It wasn’t the Mafia, nothing that organized, but they had the same ideas and methods, and I think that was who got to Sidney. And Seattle also had a very heavy Klan presence, they even had their own lodge on Westlake Avenue [the Klansmens’ Roost], and they were always renting Sidney’s dance films, so I wondered about them as well.

“Whoever it was, they knew someone was making money from that sort of picture, and they wanted to get a piece of it for themselves. And it wasn’t as if they didn’t pay Sidney well. I don’t know if they had anyone else making pictures for them, but once Sidney was on board, he was earning a fortune from them, all tax free, no questions asked.”

And you?

“I didn’t do badly, either.”

Where were you living at the time?

“I was still at home with my parents in Georgetown, so I had to be careful about – about the money, I didn’t want them to know I was earning so much, I was bringing home more in a day that my father was earning in a week sometimes. So I banked most of it, believe it or not, and didn’t let on. Every so often, I’d come home with a ‘bargain’ that I picked up at the market, and I remember ‘finding’ $20 on the street one day, right around the time dad needed some work done on his automobile, but they never did find out.

Did you ever tell any of your friends what you were doing?

“One of my girlfriends knew – the one who introduced me to Sidney in the first place, and I think she tried out for one picture, but it didn’t work out. Going back to the conversation in the bar for a moment – Sidney asked me if I had any male friends I’d want to do it with, and I told him I didn’t want to do this with anybody I knew, or anybody I’d ever have a chance of meeting again. The only analogy I can think of, for the way I wanted to handle this, is – you’re a writer, you earn a living from writing articles. But the way you write them is very different from the way you write a letter to a friend. It’s a completely different mental process. I did the same thing with sex. With a lover it’s one thing, in a film it’s something else. There’s no connection between the two, beyond the actual physical act.

“Now, later I discovered that’s a talent that not many people have, especially boys. They’d come in to shoots, and suddenly they’d be acting like my boyfriend. Kisses, hand-holding – I didn’t want any of that. We were doing a job, so let’s get on with it, and let’s not pretend we’re Romeo and Juliet. And no whispering ‘I love you’ in the middle of a scene. I used to hate that.”

What do you recall about shooting the very first film?

“It was after work on a Saturday. It was bitterly cold, January or February [1931], and I remember hoping the heating would be on in Sidney’s building. I arrived, and we talked for a bit, while he was setting up. Again, I think he was more nervous than I was. My partner was already there, and he wasn’t my type at all – I mean, he was good looking enough, and he was clean… that was something I told Sidney very firmly, they have to be clean. All over. But there was no chemistry at all between us.

“Sidney had what you could call a plot in mind, and I still think it was a clever one. He said there was a lot of films where a burglar broke into a house, found a girl in the bedroom, and they’d start carrying on together. Sidney’s idea was to reverse that. The man would be lying on his bed reading, he’d hear a sound and turn, and I’d be standing there with a mask on, breaking into his house. He’d stand and trying to fight me off, but I’d overpower him and… I had a shortish skirt on and no underwear, so Sidney wanted me to force him back and then sit over his face. The only trouble was, he couldn’t get the camera in close enough to actually show what was going on! I was crouching there, there was this guy’s face between my legs, a camera lens pressing against my stomach, and I was wondering how anybody could watch this back and find it exciting?

“We tried this for what felt like hours, before Sidney finally admitted defeat, and asked if we had any ideas. The guy was saying, ‘well, we could fuck and you could film that,’ but Sidney was still worrying about angles… the next film we made, he had a whole load of new equipment, so I guess he said something to his new ‘partners’ and they set him up with the proper gear.”

And the film you’d started?

“Started and finished! It turned out Sidney had caught enough action on film that he was able to turn in a 10 minute picture, and they loved it. He told me he spliced in a few headshots from some of my dances, so people could see me enjoying myself, I suppose, and that was it.”

Black and White and Blue is available now from Amazon and all good booksellers.