HOLLYWOOD, Fla.—Morty Gordon, the founder of Bizarre Video, passed away last Friday morning at age 76. Gordon, who was born May 2, 1936, was retired and living in Florida, and had in recent years been plagued with health problems. According to Gordon's former office manager, Paula Rein, he suffered a heart attack and died quickly on April 12.
Gordon started Bizarre Video in 1985 in his native New York, and it remained there until 2004. Rein recalled working for Gordon in early 1992, when Bizarre Video was based in the same building on Jay Street in Brooklyn, New York, with Teddy Rothstein's Star Distribution and the novelty company Nasstoys of New York. The three companies spend about 15 years in the same building.
Rein recalled that when she first applied for the job, she had no idea about the position or the company. Despite her unfamiliarity with the adult business, she took the job. When she showed up, the office was empty save for one employee: Keith Gordon, Morty's son. They split up the work, with Rein serving as office manager and Keith Gordon handling sales and computers support.
The 1990s were a time of prosperity for the adult industry, when Beta and VHS cassettes retailed for $39.95. Rein recalled with relish that era, before low-cost DVDs and piracy made the business far less profitable. "Everybody had the goose that laid the golden egg," she recalled, but eventually some companies "killed the goose."
Keith Gordon reminisced about his father’s role in the history of the adult industry. A lot of people, he said, do not understand the challenges that faced pioneers like Morty Gordon. “They don't realize what people had to go through,” Keith said, explaining that his father was often accused of releasing material that was "immoral and obscene." And his father would ask, "Why is it obscene?"
“We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending these movies,” the younger Gordon recalled, saying that his father would also say, “I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm not breaking the law." At the time, most fetish movies didn't even involve explicit sexual activity.
Keith Gordon got involved in the family business around 1991. First his father taught him how to sell. “Then he taught me how to film a movie and edit a movie. And then he taught me foreign rights and cable rights. … He sent to me to Europe, Australia, Africa—I have friends all over the world because of this business.”
At one point, Gordon recalled, he convinced Playboy to put Bizarre Video movies on TV. “My father was so excited,” Gordon said. “We made an impact. … We were the largest fetish company in the world. We had over 1,200.”
In 2004, Keith, who was running the business at that point, relocated operations to Los Angeles for a short-lived marriage with the now defunct Jill Kelly Productions. Bizarre continued on, though, steadily churning out its core fare from the beginning of foot fetish, BDSM, enema, transvestite and other specialty productions. The Bizarre Video catalogue contains titles featuring performers from such industry legends as Debi Diamond, Sharon Mitchell and Nina Hartley to current generation stars like Julie Simone, Anastasia Pierce and Adrianna Nicole.
"Nobody in the entire adult industry disliked my dad. He was a little wild, eccentric reclusive at times," Keith said, but he was a man of his word. “He had a phenomenal reputation."
One filmmaker who heartily agrees with that assessment is director Ernest Greene, who shot more than 100 movies for Bizarre, though after the elder Gordon had retired from company operations.
"I didn't know Morty well," Greene said. "I never worked directly for Morty; he was already kind of out of the picture. I would say overall, though, that as a company, as a group of people, as a family, they were fun to work for. I miss them. I liked them. Morty and I met on a number of occasions, socially and professionally. I would say he was a colorful character, very much of the 'old school,' and his passing is yet another marker of generational change.
"Morty sort of represents a world from way before the business came out to California, when it was back in New York," he continued. "He was very much a product of that time and place; very much an iconic figure of that era in many ways."
Another adult industry leader who knew the Bizarre Vivdeo founder well was Elliott Schwartz of Nasstoys. In addition to being located in the same building for years, Schwartz grew up with Gordon. “I knew Morty from Nasswalk, a street in Coney Island,” Schwartz recalled. “Morty knew me when I was born. … He had such a good heart. He was very unique. He was a good friend for a long time.”
Schwartz said, “I shared an office with him for five years. He was the craziest and most generous person I ever knew. He was one of a kind—there will never be another Morty Gordon again.”
These days, Keith Gordon runs the online retail business Joy Hollywood, and it’s also a family affair. Daughter Kimberly Gordon works at the office as well. Keith said that he had told Kimberly to make sure to let colleagues know that she was Morty’s granddaughter. His daughter exclaimed, “It's unbelievable the respect they have for the family.”
Morty Gordon leaves behind his girlfriend of five years, Naomi; his two children, Keith and sister Ellen Fiore, who also worked for Bizarre Video; grandchildren Joseph Fiore, Tara Fiore, Kimberly Gordon and Brittany Gordon. His daughter, Ellen is handling the arrangements.
