The Other Hollywood (20 page)

FRED LINCOLN
:
For my birthday, you know what Tiffany brought me? An eighteen-year-old Amber Lynn. You’ve got to be pretty secure with your relationship to bring somebody an eighteen-year-old Amber Lynn. Because let me tell you, when Amber Lynn was eighteen, she was a fucking album cover, man.

If you didn’t do music, you would do it purposely just to put her on your cover.

KELLY NICHOLS
:
I was friends with this beautiful black model named Ingrid, who really was one of the Hollywood players. She was an actress, she was on the cover of the Ohio Players album, and she dated all these different successful guys, including Warren Beatty. Ingrid always had some rich guy she was bopping. She did the guy who directed George Hamilton in some movie. She was bopping him. Some of them were real dates—Warren Beatty was one of those. She just loved to fuck him.

TIM CONNELLY
:
Kelly Nichols and I met Bud Lee with Hyapatia Lee at Bernard’s. Bud was just a porn star husband. He was trying to push us into swinging with him. At that point Kelly and I had done some swinging and weren’t really interested. I don’t know why because boy, in retrospect, the whole concept of me fucking Hyapatia Lee and Kelly Nichols sounds pretty good.

But at the time I think I was turned off by Bud’s suitcase-pimp attitude. Kelly obviously didn’t want to sleep with him. And that’s always a big part of it, you know? No matter how much you want to get involved, if your partner doesn’t want to fuck the guy, then…

But I mean, once we told him, “Forget it—it’s not gonna happen,” then it didn’t fuckin’ matter, you know?

KELLY NICHOLS
:
Tim told me I could be the next Seka, if I wanted to be. We were all amazed with Seka, this new girl who was starting to make loops. She was the first woman who had an inkling of what a women’s career could be in pornography. The rest of us were little round pegs not fitting into square holes because we never looked at what we were doing as a job; it was just a passage to something else. We were just doing this until we figured out what we were gonna do next.

NEW YORK CITY
1976–1977

FRED LINCOLN
:
Larry Levenson was kind of a mutt. You know, he wasn’t exactly what you’d call a handsome man. He was a fat, Jewish guy who was going to school to become a manager at McDonald’s. He met this girl who happened to be a swinger, and she took him to parties. But Larry noticed that when he went to parties he didn’t get laid ’cause he was a mutt. But he also noticed that no matter how old the guy who owned the apartment was or what he looked like, he
always
got laid.

LARRY LEVENSON (OWNER OF PLATO’S RETREAT)
:
I guess I had to be with every woman who walked into my place. I was accused of that. I denied it. But sitting here and looking back, any good-looking girl that came in, I wanted to be with her.

FRED LINCOLN
:
Larry was an annoying fucking guy that was always trying to get laid, you know? Pushy and obnoxious. And the only reason I had anything to do with him at all was because of Tiffany. She had got us talking because Larry was like a groupie to porno people.

JAMIE GILLIS
:
Larry basically came from a square life. You know, a square, sex-once-a-month-with-his-wife type. And then he fell into Plato’s and started fucking like a bunny. He was already forty-five or something.

He told me he asked his doctor, “Is this okay?”

And the doctor said, “As long as you’re enjoying it, no problem.”

FRED LINCOLN
:
Anyway, Larry got some people to give him money. He rented a health club on Fifty-third Street and handed out fliers for everybody to go there. There’d be plenty of booze. And they’d get twenty bucks
per couple. It was pretty successful, but it just wasn’t comfortable—fucking on tile.

And then Larry found some other guys, and they gave him the money for Plato’s Retreat, which he opened on Fifth Avenue. Plato’s and Studio 54 were the most popular clubs in New York. And Larry’s got all kinds of celebrities, and everybody’s going, “Hi, Larry!”

So he became a celebrity.

JAMIE GILLIS
:
I was the only guy that was allowed in Plato’s without a date. I would go because Larry was a friend and a fan. He would tell me what girl I could say I was with so I’d look good, like I brought a date. He would just pick somebody out and say, “You’re with her.” And it was fine. I could practically live there.

ANNIE SPRINKLE
:
I started going to Plato’s Retreat with Peter Wolf, the publisher of
Chic,
because Peter was kind of the guy about town. I mean, we covered all the new sex clubs and all the events. I worked for him for a year-and-a-half as a sex journalist, and of course we would be having sex with everybody. We’d photograph it and write about it. And Plato’s was a hell of a place!

C. J. LAING
:
While everyone was going to Bernard’s and Show World, I was going to swing clubs. And I’m amazed—I was eighteen years old—that everybody wants to fuck me, ha, ha, ha.

But there was also a club on Seventh Avenue in the Twenties, where people met and then went to people’s houses. Someone had this amazing town house in Gramercy Park with a swimming pool on the ground floor. On the basement floor, there was this amazing play space. And I used to go party there all the time. It was a bunch of fucking suburban schnooks in some fancy town house fucking around. But—I don’t know; they liked me. For some reason it made me feel good.

I wasn’t doing stuff for drugs, and I wasn’t doing it for money; I was doing it for the attention and the sex. Yeah, definitely—them wanting me.

JOSH ALAN FRIEDMAN (WRITER)
:
I met Butchie Peraino through Candy Samples at wherever she was headlining one night on Forty-second Street, near Eighth Avenue. Butch owned the whole operation, but I didn’t realize he was the guy who made
Deep Throat
.

Butchie was really a throwback, like a street mobster—a down-and-out Lou Costello kind of a guy. You know, he looked like a guy who hung out at the racetracks all his life, big bags under his eyes. I wouldn’t say he was happy, but he was a very fun guy.

So Butchie comes up to me and introduces himself and his partner,
some other mobster. At that time I was a little bit known through
Screw
and
Midnight Blue,
and I was there to do a dressing room thing with Candy Samples. And I guess Butch wanted to meet Larry Levenson—because Al Goldstein was betting that Larry couldn’t come fifteen times in a day. Larry said he could do it easy. Fifteen times.

BUTCHIE PERAINO
:
No man can come fifteen times. I’m a gambler; I bet horse races, football games. I can’t resist a good bet. My partner and I would like to bet ten thousand dollars cash that Larry can’t do it. And if he does, I’d be honored to lose.

LARRY LEVENSON
:
Tell those fuckin’ greaseballs they’re on! Get the cash, bring it here for proof, and I’ll start coming on the spot—right in their fuckin’ face. I need the money bad.

Now I gotta go; I’m busy fuckin’.

JOSH ALAN FRIEDMAN
:
Somehow I became the intermediary in this contest. So I’m in the back room with Larry Levenson, Butchie, some of Butchie’s partners, and Al Goldstein. They were all putting money down. Butchie was joining in on a bet. And thank God, I didn’t hold the money because it got up close to ten grand.

LARRY LEVENSON
:
Tell those assholes to come down at four o’clock and watch me start fucking. Baseball players need batting practice, right? Well, I’ll be warming up all day, hours before the event. Oughta come six times before nine o’clock, and I want those assholes to come and watch me spurt. I’ll even shoot some in their face for ’em.

BUTCHIE PERAINO
:
What is he, nuts? He’s gonna fuck all day before the contest? I know a good bet when I see one!

JOSH ALAN FRIEDMAN
:
I was just sort of the insignificant guy in the back—the intermediary between everybody from my desk at
Screw
. The arguments about Larry Levenson coming fifteen times in a twenty-four-hour period went back and forth for weeks: “Well, how do we know if he came? He’s got to pull out.”

“Well, that’s a good point. Let’s make that a condition. And then how are we going to see it?”

“Well, you’ve got to have a flashlight….”

Butchie didn’t trust this guy. And Larry didn’t trust another guy. So I had to find referees that were not connected to either, to be there the moment Larry pulled out—from a mouth or a cunt.

BUTCHIE PERAINO
:
Larry may utilize fluffers, watermelons, stroke books, or harems of women to summon forth the gop. If no women show, however,
his palm must suffice. I crossed out everything but women, I told him no masturbation, no tricks—just women, that’s all I care about.

And I don’t care how many broads he uses at once, or how he fucks ’em, as long as he pulls outta their mouths or cunts before he shoots, so we can see it.

JOSH ALAN FRIEDMAN
:
Then a night was designated at Plato’s Retreat—a big Friday night or Saturday night, whatever—when the clock would start. Everyone met in Larry’s lair, with a bare lightbulb hanging down off the desk and guys counting grubby money. And low-level mobsters who were making bets over the phone, at the same time—horse bets and stuff.

It felt very much like the 1940s—nobody finding any semblance of humor in this, not even amused by it. Larry’s got a whole lineup of girls outside. And there’s like over a thousand people at Plato’s that night—which was typical for a weekend.

PATRICE TRUDEAU (SWINGER)
:
I could teach any woman how to be a great whore. I’m a born whore. Not a slut—you know? The other girls are sluts. They’re doing it because he’s the King of Swing, and they’ll fuck anything with a dick, some money, and a name.

I’ll make Larry come seven or eight times tonight, and I’m the only one getting paid for it. A whore does it for money, for power. A slut does it free. So don’t you dare think of me as a slut.

My sixteen-year-old brother had me blowing him when I was four. He taught me how to suck cock by practicing on his. And my mother was a French prostitute. So it runs in the family.

LARRY LEVENSON
:
I need a looser pussy now. Patrice is too tight. My hard-on isn’t hard enough when I penetrate, and she’s too tight for me to pull out fast. So I’ll use Vickie next.

JOSH ALAN FRIEDMAN
:
That night was unlike any other in my life. I stayed there the whole twenty-four hours, and I came out of there thinking, “Jesus Christ, did I imagine this? Did this really happen?”

JAMIE GILLIS
:
Larry did it! You try to come fifteen times—that’s a
lot
of come! I could never in my wildest dreams come fifteen times, but Larry did—and that’s great, don’t you think?

Ah, Plato’s. Hot times! For a while, it was fabulous. Just hundreds of women floating around. Men would come over and ask me to fuck their wives, you know what I’m saying?

1976
–
1977

NEW YORK CITY/LOS ANGELES
1976–1977

LAPD DETECTIVE GLEN SOUZA (ORGANIZED CRIME INTELLIGENCE DIVISION)
:
The eight-millimeter X-rated film was a multimillion-dollar business, and Norm Arno was the front man. He was a big, dumb, dirty slob. Everybody hated Norman Arno. But he had control of the eight-millimeter films, probably because he was Mickey Zaffarano’s representative out here in Los Angeles.

OPERATION “AMORE” REPORT: MICHAEL ZAFFARANO
:
Subject is an old capo in the Bonanno crime family. Information has been received that Zaffarano has been working very closely with Gambino interests in New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami. Los Angeles Police Department states that the Bonanno family through Zaffarano is the controlling porno power in California.

GLEN SOUZA
:
You couldn’t produce or manufacture or distribute porno without these people. And a lot of these guys had positions, just because of their upbringings and their families and their childhood friends. There was tremendous loyalty to the old neighborhood and the family. It was unbelievable.

RUBY GOTTESMAN (PORNOGRAPHER)
:
See, Norm Arno lived across the street from me in Coney Island. My sister would babysit for him. No, wait a minute, I think his sister babysat for me. Anyway, his mother and my mother were very good friends. They walked the Coney Island boardwalk together in the wintertime.

Norm Arno’s real name was Bobby Kraw. He changed his name to Norman Arno when he moved to Los Angeles. But Norm was my best friend in Coney Island. I was working for him, collecting bets for him.

CHUCK BERNSTENE
:
Norm Arno was partners with Ann Perry and Noel Bloom. They had a little mail-order place on La Cienega Boulevard and
Pico. And they were into eight-millimeter loops—that “Swedish Erotica” series. This was before videotape, when there were only eight-millimeter loops.

ORGANIZED CRIME CONTROL COMMISSION REPORT, STATE OF CALIFORNIA, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE: ARNO, NORM
:
From 1970 to 1974 Arno was involved in many organized crime–connected pornography operations in Southern California. In late 1974, he opened a film duplicating operation to duplicate hard-core pornography as well as legitimate motion pictures. Arno was the business partner of New York Mafia member Michael Zaffarano.

RUBY GOTTESMAN
:
Deep Throat
came in at the end of 1972, and Norm Arno got friendly with the guys who made it, the Perainos. And the Perainos’ guy on the West Coast was Joseph “Junior” Torchio, who was nuts. Completely out of his mind. They sent him out here because he was too crazy. It was either send him out here or kill him.

So Norman got to be partners with Junior for the West Coast’s distribution of
Deep Throat
. They were collecting the money, and my job was to bring the money from California to Tony and Butchie Peraino in New York.

DAVE FRIEDMAN
:
I met Norm Arno about the time
Deep Throat
surfaced. When Kurt Richter and I started our video company, TVX, Norm started his company, VCX, about two months later. And he had one thing: He seemed to have the rights to
Deep Throat
from the Perainos.

CHUCK BERNSTENE
:
Because they grew up with him, the Perainos gave Joseph “Junior” Torchio the right to distribute the picture on the West Coast. And that’s how Norm Arno got to distribute
Deep Throat
—because he was partners with Junior.

RUBY GOTTESMAN
:
I got $500 a week to deliver the money in a bag to the Perainos. I was gettin’ the money from Junior Torchio. I never looked in the bag. If I had to take a piss, I’d take the money with me. Anywhere I went. I didn’t look inside because it was like two or three hundred thousand dollars.

CHUCK BERNSTENE
:
I never practiced accounting until Norman said, “Chuck, I want you to take care of a couple of pictures that are coming out—
Deep Throat
and
The Devil in Miss Jones
. I want you to check the theaters.”

So I became Norm Arno’s accountant, and I hired some theater checkers with clickers, so we could count everyone that came through the door to see
Deep Throat
.

DAVE FRIEDMAN
:
The Perainos would have these stand over guys—checkers—go out with the picture. Worst mistake in the world. Because
he’s standing there, checking everybody in, and settling with the exhibitor every night—like we used to do back in the road show days. All the exhibitor has got to do is ask, “How much do you make?”

God knows how much money they lost because these people could be bribed easier than anybody in the world.

CHUCK BERNSTENE
:
Since the theaters were open twenty-four hours a day, I had three eight-hour shifts of guys count the people that walked in. And people were lined up for blocks and blocks to watch
Throat
and
The Devil in Miss Jones
.

I had seventeen theaters in Los Angeles that I would have to check. And after we counted how many people went in, the theater owners would pay me in cash, and I would meet with Norman Arno at Barney’s Beanery and turn the money over to him.

BILL KELLY
:
The checker would go up to the owner of the theater and say, “Five grand now, or else.”

The owners of the theater would ask, “What do you mean, or else?”

The checker would say, “You don’t pay me, you’ll find out what else.”

There were maybe four “or elses.” A couple of them had to do with the Perainos sending somebody out to take the film off the projector and giving it to the competitor across town—or burning the theater down.

DAVE FRIEDMAN
:
That’s what Bobby DeSalvo taught the Perainos—that there was nothing easier to reach than the stand over guys. Because Bobby DeSalvo was a film pirate. He was pirating
Deep Throat
, and the Perainos asked, “What are you doing?”

DeSalvo says, “I’m Italian. I’ll handle your pirates,” and they hired him. If
Deep Throat
had been handled by a somewhat legitimate distributor, without the stand over guys—the checkers—it probably would’ve doubled whatever they made.

CHUCK BERNSTENE
:
One time I delivered the cash from
Throat
to Butchie Peraino, and he says, “You’re about eighty thousand short.”

I says, “Go fuck yourself, Butchie. I’m never short. Take it up with Norman and Junior.”

It was always like that between the Perainos and Junior Torchio and Norman Arno. It would go on every week. Hearing about one of them shorting the other, or one didn’t pay the other. These guys don’t pay anybody. They were always cutting each other up instead of working together.

Everyone was always stealing, lying, and cheating from Mickey Zaffarano. I was the only one outta that bunch that didn’t. Mickey even said to me once, “You’re the only guy I can trust.”

BILL KELLY
:
Robert DiBernardo and Mickey Zaffarano were the most important people in the whole business. I was told that Robert DiBernardo was such a good moneymaker that he was given at least some measure of control over the porno industry for all the five New York Mafia families.

And Mickey Zaffarano was like DiBernardo. Everybody was afraid of him because he was a capo in the Bonanno family.

FRED LINCOLN
:
Mickey Zaffarano was The Man because he owned the Pussycat theaters. The only other theaters were jerk-off theaters, and the Pussycat was a big, beautiful theater.

Were the Gambinos and the Columbos friendly? Sure. Everybody’s friendly—unless they’re at war. I’m telling you the truth. Everything was done at sit-down meetings. Everything was above board.

RUBY GOTTESMAN
:
When Mickey was about to open the Pussycat, the owners found out it was him, so they doubled the down payment or somethin’.

Mickey wound up on the short end of it and had to give ’em two or three million dollars, so he didn’t have enough money to put up the signs. He went to Robert DiBernardo, and DiBe gave him the money for the sign. So he had a big neon sign on the Times Square building, you know?

FRED LINCOLN
:
DiBe was the boss behind the screen that you never really got to see, this secret guy that everybody talked about and everybody liked. Very smooth. Very gentle. He was the peacemaker who kept everything in place. But I avoided all of that. The only contact I wanted with anybody was, you know, “Give me a cute girl, and give me my hundred bucks!”

BILL KELLY
:
I would mention Robert DiBernardo’s name to various pornographers around the country, and they’d freeze because he had a reputation for getting you killed. It was like if you said, “Al Capone” sixty years ago.

GLEN SOUZA
:
Robert DiBernardo was a very powerful and feared man. He had no fear. My understanding is that he had killed a lot of people.

DiBernardo was not a punk; he was an enforcer who came out here for the mob guys back east. DiBernardo would beat the shit out of people. Jack Molinas told us that DiBe beat up Norm Arno in his shop because Norm was probably stealing or skimming—not giving a full account.

We tried to talk to Norm Arno after he got beat up, but he wouldn’t say anything. He was scared to death.

CHUCK BERNSTENE
:
I don’t know if Norman Arno couldn’t count or maybe he was illiterate—I’m not going to say anything—but there was always
something missing, and the Perainos were always blaming me for Norman’s missing money.

GLEN SOUZA
:
The rules were if Norm Arno was Mickey Zaffarano’s guy, then DiBe couldn’t beat him up—except if Arno was stealing for himself. In other words, Mickey Zaffarano’s supposed to get all his money, and if Norm Arno is diverting some of it, DiBe was very capable of going to Mickey and saying, “Hey, we want all of our money!”

And Mickey would say, “Fine. Gotta keep these guys honest.”

CHUCK BERNSTENE
:
Norm got better when Mickey Zaffarano came out to California in 1975—during the
Deep Throat
and
The Devil in Miss Jones
days. Thank God for Mickey: He was a collector; he knew how to handle all these slime bags. He just had that aura about him—you’d pay him.

Norman never said a word of disrespect to Mickey Zaffarano. Norman was like a child to Mickey.

GLEN SOUZA
:
We could never figure it out—Arno was such a fool, such a slob, so dumb. Why did he have such power?

In 1975, Junior Torchio got killed in Vegas. What a tragic accident, ha, ha, ha. The way I heard it, two guys chased him out into the street and threw him in front of a car.

It was written up as a traffic accident.

CORONER’S REPORT, CLARK COUNTY, NEVADA
:
Victim had no shoes or shirt on and was unable to locate any at the scene, but NHP (Nevada Highway Patrol) stated that they were there and that his shirt was torn off and he was knocked out of his shoes. NHP stated that no charges will be filed against striking vehicle.

BOBBY ELKINS (PORNOGRAPHER)
:
I knew Junior Torchio. They ran him down. There were a couple of reasons. Torchio was creating a lot of police problems. He was always in the limelight—and they told him to stay away from all the bullshit. But he won’t listen. He was getting into fights, getting into trouble, and everybody was talking about him.

Somebody told me that they killed him—they waited for him and ran him down.

RUBY GOTTESMAN
:
I was relieved when Junior Torchio got killed. It was like, you know, “Whoa, they finally got ridda him,” cause I think one way or the other, he woulda killed me, or I woulda killed him. ’Cause he was crazy. He was just not in control of himself.