The Other Hollywood Read Online Free PDF Page A

back then. She now says that orgies and things that went on were actually set up hooker deals, and that she hated that, and I’d beat her up if she didn’t do it, but that was bullshit.
    I mean, everybody would just get stoned and party, you know?

If You Can Make It There, You Can Make It Anywhere
    NEW YORK CITY
1969–1970
    HARRY REEMS (PORN STAR) : In 1969, everybody in the East Village was going to make it as an actor. Whether you went to an anti–Vietnam War rally or a macrobiotic restaurant, all the talk was about auditions.
     
    MARILYN CHAMBERS (PORN STAR) : I grew up in Westport, Connecticut, about fifty miles west of New York City. When I was about sixteen, I learned how to write my mother’s name on notes to get out of school—and then I’d take the train into the city to go to auditions.
    My whole growing up consisted of me in front of a mirror playing records like West Side Story and Bye Bye Birdie. I really wanted to be Ann-Margret, to tell you the truth.
     
    ERIC EDWARDS (PORN STAR) : While I was in college in Waco, Texas, I got a scholarship from ABC Television to go to New York to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. They auditioned twenty thousand people from all over the country, and I think they picked sixteen people. I mean, this was the big point in my career, it was like a stepping stone—I was getting letters from Lillian Gish, from the president of ABC, from all these top executives saying, “You have received a scholarship to come to New York.”
    In fact, Lillian Gish handed me my diploma. Henry Fonda was there backstage; I spoke to him in awe. I was, like, melting.
     
    GEORGINA SPELVIN (PORN STAR) : One of my first experiences in New York was when the state employment office sent me to see about a modelingjob. It was a big, high-class studio, and I had to see someone with one of those hairdresser names: “Mr. Charles” or “Mr. Gary.”
    After everyone else had left, he brought me into the studio and—through the course of taking many pictures—he eventually got me very drunk and nude and then he balled me. I don’t even remember how I got home; I passed out midway through the thing. But I never got the chance to tell him I had the clap, and I wondered how long it took him to find out and connect it to me.
     
    MARILYN CHAMBERS : My dad was in the advertising business, and he really tried to discourage me from modeling. One of his big accounts was Avon—“DING DONG! AVON CALLING!”—so he knew about models. He told me, “It’s a cutthroat business. It really stinks. And I don’t want you to be involved.”
     
    ERIC EDWARDS : When I got to New York I was signed with the William Morris Agency. I had a three-year contract. I was sent out to different auditions and movie companies, and I was getting work—I had Close-Up toothpaste and Gillette TracII commercials running on television.
     
    HARRY REEMS : I enrolled in a no-fee neighborhood acting class. Presto! I was doing Coriolanus in some marginal coffeehouse where they passed the hat around at the end of the performance. I hammed it up to high heaven. I was lousy. But those scrapings out of the hat somehow kept me alive until my roommate split for greener pastures. In no time, I went from burgers and beans to eviction notices and welfare.
     
    MARILYN CHAMBERS : I figured the best way to get involved in being an actress was to be a model. So I went to the Eileen Ford Modeling Agency first—and Eileen Ford told me I was too fat. And my face wasn’t angular enough. And it was too flat. I was so humiliated.
    Then my dad started telling me, “Well, you’re too fat.” But I wasn’t fat. I was never fat.
     
    GEORGINA SPELVIN : I wanted to be a dancer. My first love has always been ballet; I still think it is the high church of dance. I still practice the principles on a daily basis. But I had neither the training nor the body to make it as a dancer.
    But I was fortunate enough to get a job as a replacement dancer