DENVER, Colo.—Eddie Wedelstedt (he hated to be called "Edward"), one of the founders of the modern adult industry, died at his home earlier today of stomach cancer at age 78. He passed surrounded by his wife Vivian, his daughters Beverly and Gina, his son Vince and other family and friends who had been caring for him for the last two weeks, ever since his cancer was diagnosed.
Wedelstedt, commonly referred to simply as "Eddie W.", was a giant in the adult industry. He was the founder and owner of Goalie Entertainment Holdings, a company whose properties included distributor M&M Sales, and the Romantix chain of adult retail stores. It's barely an exaggeration to say that in the 1980s and '90s, anyone who was anyone in the adult industry either knew Wedelstedt or knew of him. Every year, Wedelstedt would gather dozens of retailers, video producers and more than a dozen First Amendment attorneys to Denver for a conference to discuss the future of the adult industry and what actions the governments, both federal and state, were doing to attempt to drive adult companies out of business.
Most of that came to a halt, however, in the Spring of 2005, when Wedelstedt, his wife Vivian (who had no involvement at all in her husband's businesses) and three others were indicted in the Northern District of Texas on federal obscenity, racketeering and conspiracy charges stemming from a 23-count indictment handed down on March 11 of that year. In fact, it was his attorneys' inability to get the charges against Vivian dismissed that impelled Wedelstedt to settle the case with the government by pleading guilty to one count of distributing obscene material and forfeiting three adult bookstores which he owned in Texas, in exchange for the Justice Department dropping all charges against Vivian and Goalie. Wedelstedt also agreed to serve a 13-month term in federal prison, and after he was released, to sell all of his adult businesses.
Steven Hirsch, founder and co-chairman of Vivid Entertainment Group, told AVN, "If there was a Mt. Rushmore of porn, Eddie would be front and center."
"A legend. A true icon. Eddie did so much for so many people it’s almost indescribable. There’s no one he wouldn’t help," Hirsch said. "Eddie’s parties were legendary. Four days of fun with work sprinkled in. An industry hero. RIP."
"Eddie was a real pioneer in the adult industry and will truly be missed," Hustler/LFP Publications founder Larry Flynt told AVN. "My condolences to his family and all those who loved him.”
Paul Fishbein, the founder of AVN, said Monday, “I think Eddie represents to me the times when the industry was the best.”
“Everyone was doing well. We went to Denver every year for his big party. The industry was at its height and Eddie kind of reveled in the excitement and the fun and the growth of the business,” Fishbein said. “Obviously we didn’t do business together because he was a big retailer, but he did a lot of promoting for AVN and he obviously was written about a lot in AVN…
“He was a very generous guy with philanthropic causes and supporting the industry on all the free speech causes. A lot of people went to jail to protect his wife and other people for a trumped-up obscenity charge. He lost a lot because of that but he put his wife and employees ahead of himself. That was Eddie.
“... He was a stand-up guy, just like [the late founder of VCA Pictures] Russ Hampshire. They put their money where their mouth was and helped the industry thrive and survive. This is very, very, very sad.”
Fishbein called Wedelstedt “one of the good guys.”
“There were a lot of bad guys over the years, but Eddie was one of the good ones,” Fishbein added. “He was crazy and colorful. Sometimes I didn’t know what he was talking about but I knew he was coming from a great place.”
Michael Warner of Great Western Litho met Wedelstedt when he was "a young kid."
“He was a larger-than-life character and had a heart of gold,” Warner told AVN. “He was a one-of-a-kind guy who loved to be around his friends—and also be the center of attention.”
Warner said Wedelstedt’s selflessness was due to his upbringing.
“I think he was brought up that way; he was a street fighter,” Warner continued. “He came from nothing and made money and he wanted to give back… He was there to fight for the First Amendment all the time and help everyone else fight.”
"What a shock to the adult world," Frank Kay, founder of IVD, said Monday.
“He was an amazing guy—a legend in our industry for so many years,” Kay told AVN. “He’d done so much to fight the fight and walk the walk. He was truly a creator and an innovator in our industry and he will be missed dearly. I wish the entire Wedelstedt family my condolences.”
Jeffrey Douglas, board chair for Free Speech Coalition, told AVN, "Eddie W. was the consummate business owner as many surely have said, but something else entirely stands out in my memory of him. He was extraordinarily caring about the individuals who worked for him and with whom he worked. He simply helped people in need as a matter of course.
"A client of mine was a former employee subpoenaed before a grand jury to testify in a case where Eddie was a likely target. My client was so frightened of saying something that could harm Eddie. The client told me of acts of extraordinary compassion and kindness which Eddie had shown him over the years. The anxiety about the upcoming testimony had become completely debilitating. He finally spoke to Eddie directly. Eddie succeeded in reassuring him that no harm could come from him telling the complete truth. It was a great gift, and the act of a unique gentleman. We are all poorer for his death."
CalExotics founder Susan Colvin told AVN Monday that Wedelstedt “was a bigger-than-life person in every single way.”
“He was a great businessman, a great friend and a generous person,” Colvin said. “He was compassionate…It wasn’t just that he was a big guy, he had a big personality and big heart to go with it.”
Colvin met Wedelstedt in the ’80s, recalling one of their early interactions in which he showed his kindness to animals.
"One of the first things that impressed me about Eddie is when I went to Tennessee to look at some stores with him and he found a stray kitten and no one in the store knew where the kitten came from,” Colvin recalled. “It was behind a dumpster and didn’t have a home.”
Wedelstedt decided he wanted to take the kitten home, so Colvin suggested they visit a pet store to get a crate for it.
“And we picked up a crate for it and when we got to the airport Eddie got a first-class seat for the kitten,” she said.
“I had met him a few times before that but I didn’t know him well and here he was worried about this little kitten’s life. And I thought, how cool is this? That tells me this man has compassion. It really said a lot about his character.”
Colvin said Wedelstedt's foundation, Eddie’s Kids, was something he was passionate about because he wanted to provide children in need with a memorable shared experience. The foundation would take kids to NHL and NBA games, among other outings they wouldn’t otherwise have been able to participate in.
“He would take them out for a night, go to Staples Center [in LA] or to the Nuggets game [in Denver]. He’d feed them, get them a jersey. He knew that an experience like that could help them change their lives," she continued.
“The heartfelt letters that he received each year from it would make you cry. Not everybody knew that about Eddie. They would see a really tough guy who ran many businesses and served time in prison. He stood up for the First Amendment. But there was a very soft side to him, too. He came from a very poor background. He never forgot that and he wanted to help other people.”
Colvin said Wedelstedt’s reputation preceded him.
“Anywhere you went with Eddie, everybody knew Eddie,” Colvin remarked. “You would go to a restaurant and they all knew Eddie. If you took a drive with Eddie—it could be going from store to store—and if he saw a Dairy Queen, he literally would whip that car around and stop at Dairy Queen...
“He was definitely a businessman; he knew what he was doing and what he wanted but when it came to children and animals, he was a big pussycat. And his family meant everything to him. He would do anything for his family and he’s always been great with his friends.
“It didn’t matter that he hadn’t owned the stores in many years; he would still send me a Petco gift card every single Christmas for my dogs.”
Al Bloom, the director of business affairs for CalExotics who retired in 2014 after 44 years of adult industry service but still helps Colvin & Co. with various projects, told AVN he first met Wedelstedt in 1971 when he worked as GM for Capitol News in Chicago.
“I met him a couple times when he came down to Capitol to pick up merchandise to take to his stores, so I knew him for a very, very long time,” Bloom said.
“We got together socially a lot. I knew his family and everybody. In the ‘90s, he was in the process of buying M&M Sales and he called me. I was working at Doc Johnson at the time and he wanted to see if I was interested in running M&M Sales. I told him I was happy working at Doc Johnson and then he said, ‘Well how about if I make you a partner?’ And that made a huge difference for me in my life.”
On the heels of the legal issues Wedelstedt endured, he later bought out Bloom’s share of M&M, paving the way for him to join Colvin at CalExotics.
“Eddie always stayed in touch after that,” Bloom continued. “… I remember he drove into LA when I had a little retirement dinner. Eddie drove in from Denver just to be there for dinner that night. I’m very proud to have called him a friend.”
Bloom said there was a palpable “energy around Eddie” that others could feel.
“He would walk in and just light up the room,” Bloom said. “It was just an amazing gift he had. Everybody knew he wasn’t just going to be a guy with a couple of bookstores.
“Eddie didn’t think small; he thought very big and that was a key to his success. He wasn’t overly educated; he didn’t have degrees. I don’t think he even finished high school. But as far as business and doing the right thing, you couldn’t find a bigger heart.”
Ron Braverman, founder of Doc Johnson, told AVN, “Eddie was a trailblazer.”
“He was as generous in business as he was in his heart with charities,” Braverman said Tuesday. “And Eddie was the kind of guy who always went all in on everything. And if there’s a legacy that I know Eddie would want canonized it would be the work that he did with Eddie’s Kids.
“… I think it was inspiring because he gave children the opportunity to see a professional sporting event who otherwise wouldn't have had that opportunity that I think many of us take for granted. I think that was very endearing to all of us, but it took somebody like Eddie W. to spearhead something like this and get it done.”
Braverman added, “Eddie was always a man of honor. He was a man who when you shook his hand, the deal was done.”
Fishbein recalled how Wedelstedt used to sit in a rocking chair during meetings, swaying back and forth; he also would drink Montrachet wine with seltzer and ice.
“He was like a James Bond character but always coming from a good place,” Fishbein said.
After his retirement from adult, Wedelstedt spent much of his time on his Eddie's Kids Foundation.
"Eddie, through his foundation, would buy hundreds of tickets for kids who couldn't afford to go see professional sporting events," Joseph stated. "There were Kings games, Laker games, Colorado Avalanche games, Denver Nugget games, the Los Angeles Rams, Denver Broncos—because he was back and forth between L.A. and Denver, Colorado where he lived, and he sponsored hundreds of kids to go to those events. What he would do every year is, he would rent out a restaurant for the Eddie's Kids Foundation in Denver and he would raise money for these kids and for the foundation, and he donated his time and everything to this foundation, and it was just really beautiful how much he cared about this and really made it a priority of his life to give back to these children."
Eddie's Kids was also a sponsor of the adult internet protection organization Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection.
Wedelstedt was also a member of the Board of the Free Speech Coalition, which honored him several times at FSC events, including giving him the Joel Warner "Good Guy" Award in 2003, an "Industry Founder" Award in 2005 and a Legacy Award in 2007, and was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame in 2016, with AVN having previously honored him with a prestigious Reuben Sturman Award. Wedelstedt had also been one of the speakers at AVN's first industry conference, held in Cancun, Mexico, where he came out in favor of the industry having a Washington lobbyist. He was also part of Free Speech Coalition's "Anti-Censorship Defense Committee" along with several other adult business owners.
The family invites guests to gather in Eddie's honor with visitation on Monday, August 24 from 4 to 8 p.m. at Olinger Chapel Hill Mortuary in Centennial, Colo. Eddie's Farewell Party will begin at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, August 25 at Olinger Chapel Hill, followed by Military Honors and Graveside services at Olinger Chapel Hill Cemetery.
Photo of Eddie Wedelstedt, at 2007 Eddie's Kids fundraiser, by Gia Jordan
