The Other Hollywood (13 page)

It was so weird because here’s this little Zen light in the middle of all these hillbillies and bikers—the last people you’d think would be interested in that. They’d say, “Oh, I just like it when he beats these guys up,” you know?

Maybe there’s some connection between the porn industry and the martial arts film business that persists to this day.

ROGER YOUNG
:
Reuben would have different companies for different functions, and of course his name never, ever appeared on any of the papers. It was only search warrants, good footwork, and a massive amount of interviews and investigation that developed Sturman as being the owner of all these things.

STEVE RUDNICK
:
The place was run by a guy named Ray. I might’ve introduced myself once and waved to him a couple of times. He was definitely
in a different league. He was well dressed—casually, but expensively. There was an extremely large Cadillac involved with him.

Ray would rarely come onto the floor, and then to talk only to the foreman. But the peep show booths were produced on time and according to his budget. So he must have known what he was doing.

ROGER YOUNG
:
There is no such thing as
just
a pornography case. It doesn’t exist. In my whole career, in Homer Young—my dad’s—whole career, in Bill Kelly’s whole career, there is no such thing as
just
a pornography case because of all the other crimes being committed—including interstate transportation of obscene matter, skimming and public corruption, under-the-table money, off-the-top money, money laundering, kickbacks to public officials for changing zoning to get a porno store or a sex club where you want it.

LARRY FLYNT
:
Reuben understood that litigation was very much a part of this industry and that you needed the best and the brightest attorneys to win these cases.

ROGER YOUNG
:
Times Square had all kinds of sexually oriented businesses. As the value of the land goes down, the other crimes—murder, rape, drug trafficking—go up. And so when Times Square was at its peak in the sex industry—about 1974 or 1975—New York had to borrow money from the U.S. government to operate the city.

STEVE RUDNICK
:
I remember tripping one day. At that time acid wasn’t a recreational drug; it was an educational experience. And it just came to me—these guys are thieves, you know? They’re killing people for money.

I mean, maybe you gotta kill people to protect your home or your family—maybe kill for an idea, democracy, or anti-Nazism or something like that.

But for money? It’s just not right, you know? As glossy and appealing as these guys were, there was always this realization that “this is blood.”

That these fancy clothes are made out of blood, and the jewelry is just bones.

LOS ANGELES/MIAMI/SAN FRANCISCO
1974

CHUCK TRAYNOR
:
The trouble with Linda started when we went to California. I was trying to line up a show in Vegas for her. We knew Linda had no talent, but Raquel Welch doesn’t either. So I gave a guy named David Winters $10,000 to put together a show, and I gave another guy, Mel Mandel, $3,000 to start writing the music, and everything started like it was supposed to.

LINDA LOVELACE
:
When I became a big name, Chuck saw that a lot of money could be made, and he was more determined than ever that I wouldn’t get away from him. But it was very hard not to expose me to other people. Everybody wanted to meet me. He was afraid of that, but he dug it, too.

CHUCK TRAYNOR
:
I was just doing my job, which was calling Miami and Puerto Rico, trying to get Linda bookings for her show. I finally booked Linda in Miami. A guy down there who owns the Paramount Theater, Leroy Griffith, was going to pay Linda $15,000 a week to go in there with a Las Vegas type–show, comedians, a band, the whole bit. We had gotten a contract for four weeks, with an additional four-week extension, and he had placed the money in escrow.

LINDA LOVELACE
:
I was supposed to sing and dance. I wasn’t really ready for that. But Sammy Davis Jr. had suggested that—for five hundred dollars—one of his friends could help me put the whole thing together.

VARIETY,
AUGUST 29, 1973: LINDA LOVELACE TRIES TO SHED “DEEP THROAT” IMAGE FOR MIAMI CAFE BREAK-IN
:
“Linda Lovelace will shed the
Deep
Throat
image as she heads into the nightclub and stage arena, opening in Miami November 1 and following with the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas for a reported $50,000 per week. In Miami to consult with Leroy Griffith, for whom she’ll open at the Paramount Theater, and with Sammy Davis Jr., who is supervising the act, Lovelace and her manager, Charles Traynor, said more porno films are not out, but that her career will take new directions.”

LINDA LOVELACE
:
The guy that Sammy Davis Jr. recommended started working with me, and I was awful. He put a lot of effort into working with me, but I think he was just doing Sammy Davis Jr. a favor. So we began to look for someone else. I was desperate. The time was getting closer and closer, and I didn’t even know what songs I would sing.

CHUCK TRAYNOR
:
What happened was David Winters, Mel Mandel, and a fellow named Lee Winkler decided to move in on Linda to get her for themselves, and they fucked everything up. David Winters is a choreographer who had been bankrupt for about a year and was at the end of his rope when I gave him $10,000.

Well, first he started bringing Linda flowers. I learned all this later. He told her, “Hey, that fucking Chuck is getting a big percent of the action. That’s stupid. You’re Linda Lovelace; he’s nothing.”

LINDA LOVELACE
:
When I first met David Winters, he was wearing a ruffled shirt of green velvet that looked as though it belonged in the sixteenth century but somehow looked right on him. Everything about him seemed to say, “I don’t give a shit what anybody thinks—this is me!”

He didn’t say a word. He just looked straight at me. And then he very shyly gave me a rose.

I found out later that he gave everyone a rose. It was his way of looking at life and dealing with it.

CHUCK TRAYNOR
:
I don’t think any of them realized that
I
was Linda Lovelace. I mean, that body, the throat, and silicone tits walking around out there was bullshit, you know? She was nothing. But they thought she was a gold mine, and I’m sure they figured that they’d get her away from me—so that they could control her—and all the money would come pouring in. But while I’m paying David Winters to put together Linda’s Vegas show, the guy’s romancing her with these flowers and bullshitting her. And Linda’s buying it, you know? She’s stupid as shit anyway, so she’s listening and believing it.

LINDA LOVELACE
:
Ann-Margret and Tina Louise were talking to David Winters about doing a Las Vegas act at the same time, and I was hoping he’d
do my act and not theirs. I think that the crazy idea of doing an act for Linda Lovelace is what appealed to him. He said it would give him great pleasure if he could pull it off.

MOVIE WORLD,
MAY 1974: ROGER HORRIFIED AS PORN STAR TRIES TO TAKE OVER ANN-MARGRET’S ACT!
“In her greatest moment, her hour of triumph, Ann-Margret was asked to share the spotlight with yet another queen of her own special brand of art. Linda Lovelace, curly-haired siren and queen of the pornography circuit, was in the audience that opening night at the Las Vegas Tropicana Superstar Theater, intent on furthering her own career and breaking into legitimate theater. Linda merely wanted to share a photo session with Ann-Margret, and she brought along her own photographer just in case Ann agreed. But Ann and especially Roger Smith, who makes all the professional decisions for his wife, were appalled.”

LINDA LOVELACE
:
As the days went on, I got into the singing and dancing lessons more and more. I hadn’t heard any music or danced at all with Chuck. But I liked to move. I liked to dance. And now I began to gain confidence.

But Chuck was getting angrier with me every day. And what should have been ten hours became three and four. He would sit in the room and watch the writers and me work, with David at the piano. I could see how he resented it every time I smiled.

CHUCK TRAYNOR
:
Shit had been going back and forth for a couple of weeks. Linda kept coming on like I was the enemy. I was going to give her a check for $5,000 and started to make it out to Linda Traynor, and she said, “My name’s Linda
Lovelace
.”

I said, “Hey, you’re my wife; your name’s Linda Traynor.”

She said, “You just want to make it out to Traynor so you can get half of it.”

I said, “Hey, this is California, you get half and I get half of everything. There’s no hustle going on here.”

She insisted the check be made out to Linda Lovelace.

I said, “Fuck you. It’s going to be Linda Traynor or no check.”

LINDA LOVELACE
:
Chuck said he had done a lot for me. But all he had ever done was frighten me. I became a star because people wanted to see me, even if Chuck said he was the mastermind behind me. Bullshit. If that was the case, he could make anybody a household name.

CHUCK TRAYNOR
:
David Winters told her, “I’m gonna make you another Audrey Hepburn.” Those were the exact words he used; he said that to
her in front of me one time. That’s what David Winters thought in his own pea-brained head, that he could make Linda a legitimate actress.

Then one day I left Linda at rehearsal and went to the office. I called her up at three o’clock to see what time she wanted me to get her.

Linda said, “I’m not coming back to the house. I’m going to go away and think about things.”

LINDA LOVELACE
:
For the first time I told him I wanted to be left alone; I wanted to be free. So I took a deep breath, grabbed a cab, and checked into a hotel.

CHUCK TRAYNOR
:
I had been getting more and more lenient with Linda, and that’s why she wandered off with David Winters. If I had sat on her, like I used to with other girls, Linda never would’ve had a chance to leave.

LINDA LOVELACE
:
When I got to the hotel, the first person I called was Chuck. I tried to make him understand that it was over for us, but it was no use. He screamed for two hours and ten minutes that if I didn’t tell him where I was, he would find me. I listened to him because I felt sorry for him.

CHUCK TRAYNOR
:
Linda said, “I’ll go sit someplace for a couple of days and think things over.”

LINDA LOVELACE
:
Then I called Sammy Davis Jr., and I think if he had said, “Come over here; you belong with me,” I would have gone. Instead, his voice sounded distant to me. He was very sensible: “You have to do whatever you have to do.”

When I hung up, I felt terrible. Because I really dug Sammy. And I was really scared that if Chuck found out where I was, he would beat the shit out of me. That moment was one of the lowest in my life. I didn’t know where I was going or what was ahead of me.

CHUCK TRAYNOR
:
I never saw Linda again. The first thing I heard was from a couple of attorneys who were representing her, saying she was filing for divorce and that she would not honor any of the contracts—because she considered them illegal, that she’d been forced to sign them. Linda said she’d done
Deep Throat
under threat that I’d beat her up and that I beat her up once a week. That was her stand.

LINDA LOVELACE
:
I called David Winters. I told him where I was and asked him to come over. He was there in fifteen minutes. When he came over, I asked him why he had come.

“I’m your friend,” he said.

For a few minutes we talked about continuing the act, and then he left. But I knew I would see him again.

CHUCK TRAYNOR
:
I was left in a real bad position by Linda because we were doing pretty good. We had made about $100,000 in a little less than a year. So, yeah, I was flabbergasted because not only was I stuck, but I was president of a corporation that had committed itself to present Linda Lovelace in Miami.

Not only that, but somebody had stolen my old lady. So I reacted the only way I knew how to react: violently. I was going to find out who the hell was behind this and nail him against the wall.

LINDA LOVELACE
:
I called a lawyer and finally filed for divorce. I felt so relieved, as if a big cloud had been lifted from my head, and I was excited and anxious about the future.

Even though he wasn’t there, David made the day happy. I was happy just thinking about him. It’s nice to like someone. I decided that even if I had to run after him and throw myself at him, I was going to get David. I really wanted him.

CHUCK TRAYNOR
:
I went to David Winters’s house, and he insisted he knew nothing about it. I said, “If you’re a man at all, don’t bullshit me. If you want to take a shot at her, take a shot. Don’t sit here and lie because if I go looking for somebody else, and I find out you’re lying to me, I’m going to come back, and I’m going to be very mad.”

“No, no, I got nothing to do with her,” he said.

Meanwhile, the phone is ringing and people are asking, “Is Linda going to be in Miami? Is Linda going to be in Vegas?

So I’m thinking, “Who could I get? Who could I bring up to—or go past—Linda Lovelace’s fame?”

MARILYN CHAMBERS
:
I had had it with San Francisco and the weather—and I knew that I had to go to Los Angeles—which I really couldn’t stand, to tell you the truth. It’s too phony, and I didn’t like the people. But I knew it was the entertainment capital of the world.

Regardless, one day I got this idea, and I found out how to get in touch with Chuck Traynor. I said, “I’d really like to meet you and Linda. Let’s get together and have a beer at the beach or something.”

He was probably thinking, “Yeah, I’d like to get together and have an orgy.” That’s where his head was at.

CHUCK TRAYNOR
:
I told Marilyn, “You know, I got a buncha gigs for Linda Lovelace, but we’re not gonna be able to make them because Linda and I have gone our separate ways. Would you be interested?”

Marilyn said, “Yes.”

I said, “Can you sing and dance and take your clothes off?”

She said, “Yes.”

I said, “All right, I’ll put you on a plane.”

She said, “You don’t need to. I’ll be on a plane. Pick me up at the airport.”

I had just bought an XKE Jaguar—a brand new one, maroon.

So I drove it out to the airport.

MARILYN CHAMBERS
:
Chuck told me Linda had spent a lot of his money and that she had fallen in love with the choreographer and left him. Linda said that Chuck had hypnotized her and totally brainwashed her.

Chuck said, “She’s got absolutely no talent. She can’t sing. She can’t dance. She can’t even talk, ha, ha, ha. The only thing she can do is do deep throat. And we all know that that’s easy if you’re shown how to do it.”

CHUCK TRAYNOR
:
Marilyn had reached a plateau with the Mitchell brothers. She’d made two films with them, but they didn’t know how to promote an individual—they only knew how to promote films. They’re not really managers or agents.

So when Marilyn said, “I’ll fly right down there,” I called them because they were friends, and being the honest guy I am, I said, “Hey, your star wants me to handle her.”

And the Mitchell brothers said, “Couldn’t be a better person to handle her than you. Take her.”

MARILYN CHAMBERS
:
Chuck and I got along really well. And I’m thinking, “Why are these people saying all these horrible things about him? He’s a really nice guy.”

So we stayed up all night talking. And he didn’t try to put the moves on me at all, which was like, “Thank you, Jesus!” God, I was so tired of that, you know? He was very much a gentleman.

Were Linda and I rivals? Yes because I felt that I had more talent than she did. I was prettier. She had a big scar all the way down her middle. And I knew Chuck Traynor was behind her success.