ROCHESTER, N.Y.—Tom Byron has more than 2,500 adult movies and web scenes to his credit, and he's directed more than 300 features himself—and as far as he's concerned, "super agent" Jim South started it all for him. Byron recently spoke to AVN to give his remembrances of the man he called a "real friend."
South, the founder of World Modeling and the industry's first full-time talent agent, passed away Friday at 80.
"My whole memories of the business started with Jim," Byron said. "I remember I found out that there was an agency that booked porn talent when I was working at the Le Sex Shoppe up the street from Jim South, so I called him, and at first, he didn't want to see me because he brushes off all the guys that call, you know—'We're really not accepting guys right now, bla-bla-bla'—and actually, I was referred by somebody in the bookstore, and he thought it was somebody else who had referred me, so he actually booked me for an appointment, and I was like, 'Okay!'
"As soon as I walked into his office, I knew I was in the right place," he continued, "because as soon as I walked in the front door, I saw a picture to the right of me of Nancy Suiter, a gorgeous blonde—so I leapt into the office and I'm looking at all the pictures on the wall and I'm going, 'These are all the girls that in all my loops; I'm in the right place; this is the porn Easy Street.' And Jim gave the standard spiel, you know—still photography and this and that, and he started to give me a list of photographers to go see, and I kind of mentioned, 'You know, I want to do movies,' and he kind of gave me this weird little, 'Ugh, who's this guy?' So he kind of evaded it a little bit, and then Bobby Hollander walked in, and I recognized him, too, because, like I said, I was a student of the business before I ever walked into Jim South's office, so I knew who everybody was. I started talking to Bobby, and Jim sent me back to take a Polaroid, and Bobby ended up hiring me for my very first video job.
"Jim kind of loosened up and figured out I was of age, because I looked really young, and he kind of warmed up to me, and I did that first thing for Bobby, and it took me a couple of months to get the hang of it, but Jim was always very supportive and encouraging and I even went to my first AFAA award show in '82 with Jim and another girl and this other girl that I had worked with for Mike Carpenter; her name was Donna. Anyway, I was able to go to my first award show with Jim South. So we developed not just an agent/client relationship, but a real friendship."
Of course, 1982 wasn't exactly the heyday of porn; few of what we currently think of as the big studios like Vivid or Wicked had yet opened for business, and even VCA had yet to hit its stride, though Caballero, CDI, Gourmet Video and AVC certainly gave Byron his share of work—but nevertheless, Byron found he had a lot of free time on his hands.
"I soon figured out that the best way to meet people and get work was to hang out in Jim's office," Byron revealed. "The office was the safe harbor; it was this place where everybody felt comfortable, so I hung out there, not just to pick up work because chances are, if you were sitting in the office and Jim got a call and they needed male talent, he would suggest whoever was in sight. And I wound up doing a lot of things for him, because hanging out in his office, if he needed an errand run or needed to go pick up somebody, take them to a shoot or whatever, I was available to do that. I liked hanging out with him and I liked helping him out; it was just kind of like the thing to do if you weren't working, weren't on a job. He had a couple of very comfortable couches in there, and he would change them out every couple of years, too."
About those couches...
"Every year, Jim would take a break between Christmas and New Year's, a week-long break; that was his one week of vacation," Byron recounted, "and during that week, he would clean out all his old Polaroids—you know, do a spring cleaning in December, and every couple of years, he would go out and buy a new couch. And I remember one time he went to pick up a couch, and me and Marc Wallice went with him to help him carry it upstairs. But while he was in the furniture store doing business or whatever, Marc and I stepped outside and smoked a joint, and some of it wafted into his van, because we had the door open, and when he came back outside, he goes, 'You guys smell a skunk?' And he started searching for this skunk like he thought a skunk had gotten in his van. He was convinced that a skunk had either crawled into his van or sprayed in his van or something like that, and Marc and I were just laughing our asses off, it was so funny.
"Jim was a straight arrow," Byron added. "I never even saw him drink. He didn't do drugs, and he was a Republican, you know. He supported President Reagan, because I used to get into conversations with him, and I was like, 'The guy's trying to shut us down,' and he was like, 'Yeah but you know...' He was definitely a Republican; he loved Ronald Reagan for some reason.
Nevertheless, "'84 was a little crazy," Byron observed. "'The Boys' [Byron's euphemism for the mob] still ran the business, you know, so it wasn't all clean and corporate like it is now; there was a lot of crazy stuff; cocaine, that whole thing, and I remember one time, I think Bobby Hollander was at one of Jim's infamous poker games and Bobby sneezed and Jim said something like, 'Hey, man, don't throw that tissue away; we'll scrape it up and sell it.' Because Bobby did so much coke."
But getting him work was hardly the only thing South did for Byron.
"At one time, it was early in my career and I wasn't getting a lot of work and I had a car, a Cordoba that had gotten repossessed, and he had a motorcycle that he sold me and he let me make payments on it," Byron said. "I drove that around for like a year before I got another car. I actually got into an accident with it; somebody turned in front of me on Ventura Boulevard and I ended up laying it down, and I busted my head a little bit, and Jim came down to the ER and took me home. So it was that kind of relationship; he was a guy I could count on if I needed something; he would loan me money; he was like a dad, to me and a lot of other people. Just a gem of a guy."
Not only was South there for Byron, but Byron was there for South as well.
"I actually stayed at Jim's house a couple of times just to kind of hang out with him, because he was going through a rough time there for a while, and I was there when this guy attacked him in his garage with a baseball bat that left him with two broken arms, and he started carrying a gun and had a bodyguard at the office. And a couple of weeks after he got attacked in his home and got the two broken arms, he was walking across the street from his office to the parking lot where he parked his van, and Max Baer Jr. was with him. Max Baer Jr. was a good friend of Jim's; you know, he was Jethro on The Beverly Hillbillies. So Jim was across the street, starting to get into his van, and Max was walking towards his car, and the same guy that attacked Jim in the garage started rolling up and he had a baseball bat in a shopping cart, and then he fucking grabbed the bat and started wailing on Jim again; broke his little finger. Max Baer had a gun in his car, so Max chased the guy away with his gun. So Jim South was actually attacked twice by the same guy."
But Jim South was hardly the only member of the South family with whom Byron came in contact.
"There was this German photographer named Berndt Mueller who used to come over here from Europe and do still shoots, hardcore still shoots and stuff, and—this was early in my career—I would help him," Byron recalled. "Berndt kind of hired me as an assistant to help him carry equipment, set up lights, whatever, and one time, during one of his outings out here, he had a makeup artist, and the makeup artist was actually Jim South's wife. I didn't know it was his wife at the time, and there was one shoot where I had to have body makeup applied to me, and South's wife applied the makeup to my nude body, and it was just weird, and I think later, I said, 'Y'know, that makeup artist, that was kind of hot because she was kind of cute and everything,' and I told Jim; he goes, 'That's my wife.' I went, 'Oh.'"
Whatever embarrassment that exchange may have caused, Byron got over it quickly enough, and his final thoughts for AVN were, "Most of my memories are of what a nice guy he was. I mean, that whole era, hanging out in his office; he always kept me busy, just a nice guy; just a great focal point of morality for the entire business was Jim South in his office."
Byron also mentioned that he was about to begin work on his autobiography, in which South will have a prominent place—and to whom Byron plans to dedicate the volume.
