NEW YORK CITY—Tributes to the late Robert Kerman, better known to the adult entertainment world as "R. Bolla," keep flooding in; hence, AVN is presenting this addendum to our recently published obituary of the actor.
Certainly, one of the best memorials to Kerman is the interview and podcast published by the Rialto Report, from whom the above photo of Kerman in the original Spider-Man is taken. But Rialto Report webmaster/historian Ashley West isn't the only industry-adjacent commentator to have researched Kerman's/Bolla's career. There's also James Sullivan, whom Angelenos may remember as an acolyte of the late Bill Margold and who worked in various capacities for several video companies in the 1990s and early 2000s, including VCX and Coast to Coast.
"WELL WHAT CAN I SAY? BOB KERMAN IS GONE," Sullivan shared on actress Jeanne "Long Jeanne" Silver's Facebook page. "... He was always generous (in some cases TOO generous ) and his acting ability was never excelled by anyone in either Hollywood or the adult entertainment industry. He was very knowlegeable in History and left a huge collection of books. ... He loved animals and was always kind to them. When he lived in California, he liked to go camping with his girlfriend Lorraine. ... Before he became homebound, he always liked to dine out. He once gave a homeless woman named Latisha $300. He grew up in Brooklyn and was one of 3 children. He graduated with excellent marks from Brooklyn College. He was NOT a polished diplomat (name me a Sagittarius who is) and could get very tempermental, though he never held grudges. He loved coffee and cake, but was not much for alcohol and he did not smoke anything after 1998. Crippled with severe diabetes and major depression, he did not venture outdoors much after 2010. ... For the last 40 years, he lived in his small apartment in Manhattan Plaza, but he also, until 2004, had a home in LA. He had legions of fans. He also had a pretty good singing voice, though he never tried to sing professionally. When his eyesight started to fail, I would read to him..."
As a long-time friend of Kerman's, Sullivan was tasked with cleaning out Kerman's apartment after his death, and he was generous enough to share some of his other memories and impressions of the actor with AVN—not to mention the time Kerman was almost recruited by the Mob.
"What happened was, he grew up as one of the few Jews in the Italian section of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and just after he graduated from Brooklyn College and because he had a brilliant mind, both with legal angles and a mathematical savvy an accountant would envy, they really wanted him," Sullivan told AVN. "I'm not sure which family it was, but they wanted him. He was also very charming, but he demurred their offer, which is just as well because given his temperament—I'm not trying to speak ill of the dead—it would not have done him any good because he was not someone known for being tactful.
"Bob was an extremely generous person; he would be overly generous," Sullivan opined. "He gave a lot of money to homeless people at one time in his life because he had saved a lot of money. He gave $100,000 to a rabbi so he could build a synagogue in Israel. Bob did not go to synagogue very often, but other than that, he was a very devout Jew and kept a very kosher household. He was extremely well-versed in history and military history, and he loved all the old Hollywood movies of the '30s, '40s and '50s. He told me once, because he usually got along with most producers, that he had a terrible argument on the set of The Satisfyers of Alpha Blue because [director] Gerard Damiano wanted him to have sex with that bicycle contraption in an impossible position, and Vince Benedetti of Gotham Gold Video had to come between the two of them."
Kerman wasn't the only one involved in XXX production; seems his dad got a taste of it as well.
"Bob's father's house was used once as a movie set, because his father was a loner and also had a slight gambling habit—craps—and what happened was, his father rented the house out because he could use the money, for VCX's movie The Trouble With Young Stuff, which had Marlene Willoughby and Sonny Landham in it, along with Bob and a few others. ... Bob was also in For Richer for Poorer, released in 1979 and directed by Gerard Damiano. Georgina Spelvin wrote the script for it, but after he read it, Damiano told her that it was too mainstream, but he later adapted it for XXX and used some of Georgina's scenes as dream sequences. ... Of the films that he made, his favorite was Amanda By Night."
Sullivan also related this interesting bit of legal news: "There's something on the statute books in New York City now called 'Kerman's Law,' because under that, the police can no longer, as they tried to do to him, enter a person's dwelling place and take them away in handcuffs merely on the strength of an anonymous phone call."
According to Sullivan, some of Kerman's favorite co-stars included Veronica Hart, Sharon Kane (who "let him cuddle up with her once when he was sleepy"), Tish Ambrose, Laura Lazar and Susan McBain. "He also had a brief affair with Lysa Thatcher, because allegedly she was being abused by Jamie Gillis and Bob had to threaten Jamie to leave her alone."
But Kerman definitely had his quirks, besides not liking to wear socks with his shoes: "Bob didn't like the video era," Sullivan noted. "In a speech at the Free Speech Coalition's Night of the Stars on August 7, 1998, he said, 'I retired when film retired.' He wasn't tactful about his personal opinions. For example, when we flew out for him to accept his Lifetime Achievement Award, the plane was grounded due to mechanical difficulties in St. Louis, and he went to pick something up in the airport candy store, and he casually said to the woman, 'What good is the St. Louis Arch? I never thought it was much good for anything,' and she got livid and said, 'Well, sir, it must have been good for something or they wouldn't have built it!' And I was thinking, 'Oh, God, he's insulting the St. Louis Arch in St. Louis. He's gonna get us lynched.' ... But Bob was not a polished diplomat. On the other hand, he never held grudges. He could be mad at somebody on Monday and be best friends with them on Tuesday."
So many actors who worked with R. Bolla had only complimentary things to say of the late star.
"I first met Robert Kerman aka R. Bolla on the set of Casino of Lust back in the early '80s," recalled Tom Byron. "A consummate professional, you could tell he loved being on a set and acting. (We were in an orgy scene together later in the day and he dug that, too.)
"Along with John Seeman, Robert was absolutely one of my favorite character actors from the Golden Age," he continued. "Amazing screen presence and ability. I always got a kick out of seeing him pop up in a cameo on a film or TV show. I wish we had the opportunity to do more work together, but Robert was phasing out of the biz as I was coming up. I’m glad I got to share a little screen time with him."
"I was so sorry to hear Bobby passed," said Sharon Mitchell. "I remember the first film I did with him, Joy, and we shot on location in an alley in the financial district. I worked with him in several other films; always a wonderful man, and a great actor, I learned a lot from him. We did some summer stock in Connecticut in '82 as well. He and I saw each other for the last time several years ago when I was flown to NYC for a special screening of Joy after 40 years!! He looked wonderful, and was as jovial as ever. I know he lived in the actors complex for many years in NYC. He loved his cats and his whores. RIP, my friend. We can always press 'PLAY' to see you again."
Directors, on the other hand, had different reactions to R. Bolla:
"Robert starred in my favorite of all my dad's movies, American Desire," noted Axel Braun, referring to his father, the late Lasse Braun. "He was a tremendous actor, had an 'everyman' quality that made him very relatable, and was incredibly believable in every role. He was an absolute inspiration for me early on, so much that I wrote my very first movie, Fantasy Nights (1990), with him in mind for the lead, but by then he had already been pursuing a mainstream career and very politely turned it down, although he did read the script, and called me to compliment me on it. I remember thinking 'Wow! Now R. Bolla knows who I am!!!' Him and my dad shared a passion for movies, a wicked sense of humor, and a lifelong battle with diabetes, the disease that eventually took both their lives. I'm very sad to know he's gone, but very happy to have known him."
On the other hand...
"Robert was a great actor, and like most good actors, he was totally paranoid about his talent," recalled director Carter Stevens. "He had to be babied to get the best out of him. While making House of Sin, he drove my production manager insane with his constant need for assurance. My PM was highly trained in the martial arts and had several black belts. He wanted to take Robert out in to the back yard and beat him senseless. I used the oldest line in the movie business, 'If you do, you will never work in this business again,' and that old chestnut saved Robert from a beating everybody on the set (including me) wanted him to get. But his talent was real and so was his friendship and I will miss him.
"One more thing. A script writer named E. M. Kennedy remembers sitting in the green room of my studio (the kitchen actually) with Robert seriously discussing Stanislavsky."
Finally, actor Eric Edwards told AVN about the time he and Kerman had a close run-in with police while filming a scene—interestingly enough, in a Carter Stevens production.
"I've been in many films with Rob, but there were two where we were in the same sex scene together: Indecent Exposure, where we had a fourway scene going with four girls, and a great camaraderie in that one, as we did in every film, and Pleasures of Innocence. But the one I want to talk about is The Pleasure Palace, which was a Carter Stevens film, and Carter, Bolla and myself, we made a great team, that's all there is to it. The movie opens where Bolla and I are in the front seat of a car. I'm driving, and we were traveling down what I believe was the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey, and the one thing that impressed me was that I was actually driving the car and saying my lines at the same time. Nowadays, of course, they put the car on a flatbed and you don't have to worry about driving, so I thought it was pretty cool that I was able to handle the car and still say all this dialog—and it was a long dialog scene.
"As we are saying our lines back and forth, I noticed in my rearview mirror that a police car was coming up on us from behind, and I started to get a little freaked out, because we had camera mounts on the outside of the car, one on the hood and one on each door, but we just kept doing our dialog back and forth, talking about how we have cash on us and we're off to buy this massage parlor that's up for sale. ... Anyway, we do all this dialog as we're traveling at 60 miles an hour down the road and the cop comes up on our ass, studying us while trying to figure out what we're doing, and finally the lights come on and he wants to pull us over. Just as we finished our last line, which was Bolla's, I think, and I'm getting freaked out because I'm just slowing down a little bit. Anyway, Bolla says his line and then reaches up for the clapboard and does an upside down slating to one of the cameras, and that is good because otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to sync up the film. It's called a tail slate, and his quick thinking saved the editor a lot of pain in the ass. But as we pull over, the cop looks in our window and at all the machinery hanging off of the car and everything, and says, 'What are you guys doing here?' And I said, 'Oh, we're making a movie and bla-bla-bla,' and he asked if we had a permit, and I said 'I think we do but the producer has it probably down in town where the location is. We're just shooting some exteriors, officer.' I was being really nice, and we didn't have to get out of the car and get frisked or anything; he said, 'Well, just drive carefully and keep it at a slower speed,' and he let us go, and both Bob and I just wiped our brows and said 'Whew' and drove on and finished the scene."
It some ways, that's a fitting conclusion to the saga of R. Bolla, adult (and mainstream) actor extraordinaire.
