The Other Hollywood Read Online Free PDF

in The Pajama Game on Broadway. Then I got into the chorus; then I got the understudy to the lead role. When the lady playing it, who was a gal named Neile Adams, decided she would rather run off and marry Steve McQueen, I got to play the lead role for the last year that the show ran in New York. Then I was invited to recreate the choreography and the role for a touring company that went to South Africa.
     
    SHARON MITCHELL (PORN STAR) : My dad was a cop. A drunk, dysfunctional cop. You know, a womanizing kind of guy. My kind of guy, ha, ha, ha! A guy that I’ve been role modeling after—and looking for others just like that—all my life. I learned a lot of interesting examples from him. You know: lying, cheating, and associating with mobsters. I always had an Uncle Don this, an Uncle Vito that.
    Now that I look back on it, I had every toy in the world. And we had dryers and washers and everything. I mean, cops don’t make that much money, and we had this huge house.
    Then my mom hit him on the head with a frying pan—because he was out fucking someone else—and the marriage was over shortly thereafter.
     
    MARILYN CHAMBERS : So after that I went to the Wilhelmina Modeling Agency—and, God, Wilhelmina was just so nice to me. She accepted me, and she signed me. I was totally thrilled.
    Needless to say, though, I didn’t get that many modeling jobs. It was tough because at that time Twiggy was in—flat and skinny. Even though I didn’t have big boobs or anything, I was very athletic.
    I did do a Clairol commercial, and they ruined my hair. It was falling out in the sink. It was horrible.
     
    GEORGINA SPELVIN : When I came back from South Africa, I couldn’t get another Broadway show, try as I might. I did shows and stock and touring companies and what have you, but my next appearance on Broadway wasn’t until Cabaret . And again, I went in as a replacement and did the show for about the last year and a half of its run. By that point, I was getting pretty long in the tooth to be a dancer. And I got tired of not having any money.
     
    ERIC EDWARDS : I had major commercials running on television and had some good residuals coming in. Still, there were times I needed to pay the rent.
    But it wasn’t just the rent. I was going through a divorce—and I thought the porn business would help me to prove I was a sexual person. My wife wasn’t all that interested in sex. She blamed me for all of our problems. And I believed her. I thought I was a lousy fuck.
    So when I saw an ad in Screw magazine that was looking for actors and actresses who were willing to, you know, take off their clothes and “do it,” I submitted my photo.
     
    GEORGINA SPELVIN : I started working for the JCPenney Company in the audiovisual department, creating slide shows, creating soundtracks, doing a lot of tech stuff. And in the course of that, we made a series of shortfilms—what they called point-of-sale (P.O.S.) presentations—around department stores.
    I became absolutely entranced with film and film editing. I thought, “This is what I want to do when I grow up! Thank you!”
     
    HARRY REEMS : One day two old veterans of burlesque came to the drama workshop looking for a “third banana,” a young guy who would help them through all the wheezes that have been used on the circuit since the beginning of time—the nuthouse bit, the golf bit, the crazy doctor bit.
    The old duffers offered me a hundred and seventy-five clams, and I was on my way. First stop: Staten Island. The next stop was Atlantic City. There we got third billing behind the headliner, Damita Jo, and “The Astonishing Assie: Interpreter of Exotica,” which translated to “stripper.”
     
    SHARON MITCHELL : Where I grew up in Jersey, I was a hick, and I was adopted. My family were farmers. New Jersey was the Garden State—all dairies and farms and woods and lots of snow and animals.
    My mom was having trouble getting child support from my dad. So it was me and mom and