Two days ago, nobody knew Cherry Poppins from Mary Poppins or poppin' fresh dough. Now she's the most talked-about girl in the adult business. Poppins is in the middle of a brouhaha involving Luke Ford, agent Reb Sawitz and producer Rob Spallone. It's a tawdry tale of alleged squalor, sexual servitude and wild accusations on Ford's site that Sawitz was requiring Poppins to do sex scenes in exchange for lurid living conditions. Read on. The tale begins to sound like Citizen Poppins.
Here's Rob Spallone's account of what was supposed to have happened.
Spallone: "Ron Sullivan is a very nice guy. He calls me up and says, 'Rob, I have this young girl. She has nowhere to stay. She's been fucked around by Brian Williams and Reb. Can you help her out? I said bring her by. He brings this girl by. I swear to you she's..18. I said give me I.D. I said, 'You want to stay here? I'll give you a bedroom. Keep it clean. Give me a hundred dollars a week. You're in a million dollar house. Nobody will bother you. Fine. She goes on to tell us what happened. They found her in Florida. She was dancing in a club and met some guy who turned her on to Brian "Cheeks" Williams. They bring her to Brian Williams' house in Orange County. After a week, he throws her out and brings her over to this Reb guy. She's there for one-night. 18 people, sleeping on the floor with cock-a-roaches. This is the girl's words. And one bathroom. She had one laundry bag of stuff she brought. That's everything she owns.
"She's crying. I tell her she can stay here. Reb told her that, for that, she had to do one scene a week for free. Okay. A boy-girl scene. A cheap one for $500. Right or wrong? That's $2000 to sleep on the floor? I say, 'What are you doing this for? What does your family say.' She came from Florida. Her father fucked her, this and that. I feel bad for her. I told her if you come to me and I don't know you and you need help, if I can help, I'll help you. I'm not going to fucking destroy you. This guy's supposed to be an agent. He's supposed to help the talent. Not fucking abuse them. I was so fucking mad, I was steaming. I couldn't believe it. It was horrible. Reb and this Luke Ford are buddies. Luke don't print nothing about Reb, as much as I wanted him to, he never did. Luke put this up the other day. It was a little tiny thing. I must have called five times that night screaming. He calls me up Wednesday, 'Rob my site's going crazy. Reb called me up. He's having his lawyers...he's going to shut me down.' Luke is going off on this guy. I was going to send the cops over there. You don't do that to a little girl. Is that horrible?"
All of this information is based, presumably, on an account supposedly hand delivered by Poppins to Rob Spallone. Spallone, among other things, is quoted on Ford's site as having said pretty much most of the above in addition to accusing Sawitz of being a "fucking child molesting cocksucker."
Sawitz: "Can you believe this shit? None of this is true. It started with Rob Spallone, and the girl in question [Cherry Poppins] talked to Bill Margold [Wednesday night] and then called Ford. She didn't say that stuff. She didn't say any of it. Rob Spallone is concocting this shit, and Margold will tell you the girl talked to him. Here's what happened. You guys [AVN] printed what Rob Spallone had to say about me [March, 1999]. It goes back to when he was shooting and ripping South and I both off.
"Pretty much of what he had to say, not all of it, but pretty much was true. I did something I shouldn't have done. I said something I shouldn't have done. I could have backed it all up, but what for? It was stupid on my part to even say it. I was being ripped off and I didn't like it. But I don't bring anybody else into it. I bit the bullet on your article [the article was written by Mark Logan], I bit the bullet on what I had to say to him and left it alone. Spallone kept it up. I used to shoot for his dad. He [Rob] just doesn't like me. I don't like him because he's a New York thug. He carries a gun and he'll tell you right off he carries a gun. We were at one of the meetings over at the Sportsman's Lodge. He drops his beeper. Somebody says, 'Rob you dropped something.' He turns around and says, 'Oh, I thought I dropped my gun. It's just my beeper.'
"To get on to Mr. Ford. I called him up, and I blasted him. This was before this article. I said, 'Don't you ever bother to check on what anybody has to SAY to you, that you go ahead and print - to see if there's any validity in it? 'Oh no,' he says. 'I just go ahead and put it on there. It doesn't matter to me.' I called him up and told him I was bringing a lawsuit against him. I'm waiting for a call from my lawyer, now. I've got my daughter. She just moved out here from Kansas and is staying with us. Her husband's here too. She'll tell you, there's no shooting done at my house, which if you check Ford's site, you'll find that he says I'm involved with child pornography. And the police have already been to the house to see if there were any shooting permits. Well, there was no shooting going on. One daughter was in the backyard cutting hair. Jerry was in the house cooking dinner, and that was it."
Sawitz dismisses, as absurd, the notion that 18 people are sharing living quarters at his house along with cockroaches. According to what Spallone's been saying, Ford's been "covering" for Sawitz for some time.
Sawitz: "Luke's in bed with Spallone. Does it look like Luke and I are buddies? What Luke's been writing is degrading to the character. There's a definite lawsuit there. Cherry Poppins was at my house [Wednesday night] picking up her stuff. Her stuff's been at my house for over a week. She was dumped on me by Brian Williams. I didn't know what the girl looked like. She went to a job we got for her with Zane and never came back! So last night she called Margold up and Luke Ford and she denied everything. She said she never said any of it [to Spallone]. She said it was all Spallone, that she was giving Spallone $120 a week rent. She had no use of television, telephone, anything. Just sleeping space. Luke Ford put on there that I had the girl do a video a week. That's not true. Not true at all. I had nothing with her. This whole thing is unbelievable, concocted by Spallone."
Rob Spallone answers the charges about concocted stories.
Spallone: "It wasn't just me. Ron Sullivan came walking in here with her. He told us the story. She sat right here and agreed to the whole story. She jumped in there with her comments. If the girl would have come up here and just tell me it, I would have felt something for it, but I wouldn't have been 100% positive. Ron Sullivan's no bullshit artist. He's been around for a long time. What would he have to gain from it? So he was here. His wife, Dolores, knows all about it. They kept her three days in their house after she left Reb's. They asked me if I would help them out by getting her a place. That's how I got involved with it all. Then, when I was steaming that night I must have called Luke like five times because I know Luke's buddy-buddy with Reb. Closer than anybody with that fucking idiot, including Russ Hampshire. Luke was closer with Reb. Every time I tell him to print shit about Reb, he never did. That night I yelled into his [Ford's] machine five times. The girl was getting a little nervous like she was going to get in trouble. Maybe that's why she's denying it now. But I told her nobody's gonna bother you. Don't worry about a thing. We'll help you get work. And then, three nights ago, when I came here to drop something off late at night, she was here with some guy. She said she found some new place to stay. I guess it was with this guy.
"I'm going to tell you exactly how it works here. I rent this house for $4500 a month. It's a million dollar home. I pay electric and gas. There's a telephone in the kitchen that goes ten miles. I pay $11 a month for that. My phone in my office goes everywhere. In the kitchen, I told her she could use the phone anytime she wants. It goes only 10 miles. She can give the phone number out. She can use the whole house. She picked out a bedroom in the back that had its own bathroom. That's the only bathroom in the house that, when people shoot, are not allowed to use. Why should I have to clean four bathrooms? She didn't have to bring furniture. I told her if she wanted to, she could go to K-Mart buy some cheap sheets. In the morning she could put her sheets in the closet, so that when we're shooting, nobody uses her sheets. All she needed was a TV which she told me her father was sending her. There's no TV's in the house. That was the whole deal. I gave her keys to the house. She's ordered food. Nobody bothered her. Maybe 7 to 8 times I told her, there'd be shoots in the house. [Spallone told her he'd give her plenty of advance notice.]
"She told us this Brian Williams threw her out after a week. He dropped her off at Reb's. She said there was 18 people there [at Reb's]. She had to sleep on the floor. There was cockroaches, only one bathroom, and she couldn't stay there. That's why she ended up at Ron Sullivan's."
Reb Sawitz: "I had some of the biggest people who were ever in the business like Seka and Amber Lynn. I made them. I've been in the business 32 years. I'm the only one XRCO's put in their hall of fame twice. I don't go on the talk shows. I don't go do gossiping to the newspapers. I don't get into the gossip stuff. Maybe I ought to. You don't know how mad I was when I saw that. Ford called me back. If he had been in front of me, God help him. For printing that stuff. Whatever Rob says you got to take with a grain of salt. Most of it's not true anyway, but Luke should know. Or he doesn't care."
Bill Margold had this to offer about his Wednesday night conversation with Cherry Poppins.
Margold: "The girl was incoherent. She didn't remember what she had said in front of [Jim] South's office. She was just unhappy because she felt the industry was overwhelming her at that point in time."
Until Wednesday night, Margold had never met Poppins and had only heard about her through the fact that Poppins had visited the PAW office, unhappy. Margold wasn't there, but a counselor supposedly calmed Poppins down.
Margold: "That was the last I ever heard of the woman until Wednesday [when Margold talked to Poppins on the phone about 8pm]. Everything Luke's doing right now is simply competition with you, Gene. With the Spallone-South war out of the way, he's desperately in need of creating more trouble and finding new targets. I'm not altogether sure that Spallone feeds him a lot of that information. I think he makes it up on his own, and Spallone basically can handle the bullshit because he doesn't care. She [Poppins] called me during the second Simpson's episode. One I had already seen, so I didn't have to pay attention to it. It wasn't a particularly good Simpsons.
"I haven't read any of this stuff that Luke was putting up about supposed cockroaches. Quite frankly I don't care. The only time I deal with Luke is at Las Vegas. Neutral territory. My people tell me to stay away from him. I helped create the sonofabitch, and I wish I hadn't. But the problem is, in the giant analogy, he's too big to kill. Once upon a time, we could have crushed him. Now it's way too late. He'd have to destroy himself. The thing is the more attention you pay to him, the better off he gets. The only way he dries up and goes away is if you don't water him with insults.
Reb's wife Jerry also talked to Poppins. "My questioning to her was, 'What was the problem. What's happening here?' Jerry remembers. 'Who are you talking to about whatever the problem is.' She told me that she hadn't talked to anyone. She did go stay out Ron Sullivan's for awhile. She also stayed at Rob Spallone's. Rob Spallone was going to charge her for staying there, but at least she would have a bedroom. She was going to be able to meet lots of producers and lots of people because there was lots of shoots going on at this particular house. She thought that that would be a better place for her, but it turned out not to be.
"She has met some young man, and she's living at his house now. He's not in the business. She said she still needs help getting work because all of it dried up just like I told her it would. In the beginning there's lots of work, and then you have to pace yourself. You just can't take every job that's offered to you right at the moment. Now she understands that but still needs help getting work. She said she never said any of those things [about Reb] and doesn't understand why any of this has been misconstrued. The only reason why she couldn't stay here was because we have two kids who get up so early in the morning. She never said anything about whether my house was clean or not clean. She said she never said anything to anybody.
Jerry continues: "I don't care what anyone has to say about Reb. We both know what the truth is. But don't attack my children. Don't attack my grandchildren. And for God's sake, don't attack my house where they live. It's not so much Luke Ford I'm angry with. I realize that he's a piece of scum that's always going to be there. What I do care about is why would Rob Spallone go to him with this type of information. If he and my husband have a problem, then that problem is between the two of them. That has nothing to do with me, or my house or my children or my grandchildren. We're [Jerry and Reb] are not in this business for the almighty dollar. If we were, we'd live in the million dollar home. We care about these kids [performers] and protect them to the best of our ability from SOME of the bullshit that goes on out there. It's taken a lot of years for me to realize that I cannot save the world. At the same time, if there's one kid who doesn't belong in this business, and I can help her out of it, then I've done my job."
Margold: "Then she [Poppins] called Ford Wednesday night and started blasting him. But that's feeding Ford's fever, basically. He'll twist it around. He has nothing to lose. He's absolutely unsueable. The thing is let him destroy himself. Hell, he's turned against himself already, anyway. He hates himself more than anyone else in this whole business. I give him nothing at this point because there's no reason to. He's a fad. He will burn out because he's going to run out of things to attack. If we're going to complain about how this industry is operated - we live in a gutter; everyone of us floats in a gutter. We shouldn't take on airs of pretension. When you let Luke know he's touched a nerve, he'll drill all of your teeth without novocaine.
"Ford likes hurting people. He thrives on it. Indicative of that was that show on Fox Files. He doesn't like this business. He has no use for this industry. The body bags statement alone, God knows where that came from. It may have been something I gave him a long time ago. Sure we have people who die, but if you look on his website, you have people that he doesn't know how they died; and he has people who he thinks are dead that aren't even dead. He has anyone he wants, dead, because who's going to challenge him? Who's going to take him on? If you take him on, you climb down to his level. Frankly, Gene, you're now in competition with him, and you know that. You're simply putting your mud through a strainer. As long as you spell my name right, I don't care what you write. I've always enjoyed being attacked. I have skin that's made up of unusual amounts of leather. I've been bitten by the best. I have scars on my dick to prove it."
Ron Sullivan's recollections of l'affaire Poppins are these:
Sullivan: "Cherry Poppins stayed here a couple of nights. My wife Dolores is always bringing home strays and puppies. She was on a Mitch Spinelli shoot [both Poppins and Sullivan's wife]. She [Poppins] got herself a little drunk at this location where they were shooting. She was scheduled to shoot for Mitch the next day. Dolores brought her home and put her up for the night. I talked to her [Poppins] for about 15 minutes before we all went to bed. The next day Dolores called and said she was trying to get her set up at Rob Spallone's place where he leases out rooms but that she had to bring her home again that evening. I said fine. Then I took her with me to a casting call at Jim South's office. She went ahead and registered with South...yadda, yadda, yadda. Didn't get a chance to speak to Rob Spallone, so she stayed over a third night in our spare room. The next day I took her directly to Rob Spallone's, dropped her off with my wife's bike so she could get around. That day she rented a room. She was very happy. She took a comforter my wife loaned her. Later that day she came back with a cell phone and a pager. I've been trying to page her or use her cell phone to no effect. Wednesday she left a message. She called me on my cell phone and wanted to talk to me. I did not call her. I had finally written her off as a flake. I'm not attached to this. She seems very intelligent, semi-pretty, a bad nose that's been broken too many times. Typically abused as a child. She fits the profile that's typical to the industry of girls who get in at that age. Luke Ford has reared his ugly head to once again stir up unwanted, unnecessary shit. Three years ago he interviewed me. He understood and heard that I was very much involved with organized crime. A member of the Mafia. I looked at him and said, 'Do you think I'm in the Mafia?' [Sullivan has a belly laugh.] I'm not, obviously.
"That's all I can tell you. I forgot when she took the room...Tuesday, Wednesday? She was staying with Reb for a couple of days but said she wanted to leave because there was dog shit all over her bed. Before that she was with some skinny little kid who makes movies of girls getting d.p.'d on tops of cars. Skinny little guy who sort of geeks around and fucks girls. I can't think of his name. Kind of sleazy. He's one of those sleazy guys."
Mitch Spinelli shot Poppins Thursday of last week.
Spinelli: "It was the first time we shot her. She's a lost soul, a bomb waiting to explode. Pat Myne literally dropped her off. I think she was in from Florida and didn't know anybody. She was a terrified little kitten. If she gets into the wrong hands...I knew Brian Williams did a number on her. She ended up here. Pat introduced her, then he left and she had nowhere to go. She thought she was going back with him or something. She was crying, the whole thing. One of the P.A.'s [Sullivan's wife Dolores] was really nice, took her home because she was shooting for me the next day. She was hanging around just wasted. She was really messed up. She wandered around here stoned. She showed up the next day, she was sober and looking real good. She did a great scene. I don't know what happened to her after that. My advice is to get her out of the business. Something's going to happen to her. She doesn't have the right head."
The missing ingredient in all of this insanity, of course, is Poppins herself. Agent Jim South said he got a call on his answering machine yesterday morning from Poppins stating that she wanted to be removed from the files.
South: "I got a call from someone who asked me to do him a favor that she [Poppins] was literally out in the street. I got her a job or two very quickly. I knew nothing about any of this other stuff until yesterday afternoon. Spallone sort of explained it to me."
Luke Ford, who now has a voice mail system collecting his messages, did not return calls.
