Bill Margold’s Legends of Erotica, an annual rite of winter at Ray Pistol’s downtown Showgirls emporium, continued into 2006 as six porn greats were inducted into the Walk of Fame last night before an enthusiastic audience of adult film fans.
They were, in order of induction, Georgina Spelvin, Jody Maxwell, Paul Thomas, Tiffany Mynx, F. J. Lincoln, and Cara Lott.
Each star gets to choose the person who performs their induction. Spelvin was sponsored, by mail, by her contemporary Gloria Leonard. Her letter, read by Margold, called Spelvin “a goddess” and “the foremost [adult] actress of all time.”
The septuagenarian Spelvin, who recently made a cameo role comeback in Vivid’s remake of her signature film The Devil in Miss Jones, displayed her well-known wit, quipping, “The one advantage of having little tits is they don’t drop as fast or as far.” Then she introduced a distinguished looking gentleman, her companion of 23 years (they married two years ago), who told the crowd, “I just love the hell out of her.”
The final step of the induction ceremony is the placing of the star’s name, a message and often a body part in a square of cement, which will later be added to the walls at Showgirls (a kind of vertical, X-rated version of the forecourt at Grauman’s Chinese).
Spelvin, in the evening’s most imaginative touch, imprinted her forearm with the mark of a razor blade across the wrist, a reference to the celebrated suicide scene that opens the original Devil in Miss Jones.
Red-haired Jody Maxwell, who made her first movie in 1974, came to fame as “The Singing Cocksucker.” She demonstrated her ability to “sing and suck” by warbling “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window” with a Showgirls dildo in her mouth. She was inducted by Henri Pachard, director of her favorite movie Outlaw Ladies.
Breaking with tradition for the first and probably last time, Margold allowed actor-director Paul Thomas, whom he called “the Prince of Porn,” to induct himself. Thomas said that in the '70s when he abandoned his promising mainstream career for X-rated movies, he thought he would suffer for it. But, he said, “it turned out I was sacrificing nothing. [Porn has] provided an incredible life for me. For me it’s still the Golden Age.”
The induction of Tiffany Mynx, the youngest of the stars on stage, was also a tribute to the late historian-director Jim Holliday. Every year one of the group of actresses he called his “angels” will be inducted (next year: Jill Kelly). Mynx asked to be inducted by “one of my bestest friends,” Jimmy Mofo of Mofowear, who called her “the fucking dopest chick ever.” A former “Buttwoman,” she imprinted her ample cheeks in the cement square, along with her name.
Veteran director F. J. Lincoln was welcomed into the Pantheon by his close friend Dr. Sharon Mitchell and his Golden Age contemporary Pachard, who read an emotional tribute that concluded. “He’s arrived at a special level few of us will ever know.”
“Boy, you almost make me sound important,” said the clearly moved Lincoln, who then went into a wisecrack-filled monologue about his life and times. Summing it up: “To me it was just fun.”
Final inductee was Cara Lott, the blonde teen dream of the early 1980s, still slim and sexy. Her inductor was actor Dino Bravo who facilitated her return to action last year. She paid tribute to Thomas, her director in Vivid’s upcoming Looker —“my first film in 20 years”—in which she plays Savanna Samson’s mother (she looks more like her slightly older sister).
Before the inductions Margold announced the creation of a Jim Holliday Award to be presented each year to a distinguished adult movie historian. The first, to the late Dr. Sam Stetson, was accepted by Linda Williams, a University of California film professor and author of the landmark porn study Hardcore.
Among the guests on stage were previously inducted greats Veronica Hart, Lynn LeMay, Jeannie Pepper, plus Jon Martin, who’s slated for induction next year. Hart, referring to the wealth of new DVD releases of porn classics, exclaimed, “Oh my god, we’re back again! Isn’t it exciting!”
For fans everywhere, the Legends of Erotica ritual is living proof that it certainly is.
Pictured: F.J. Lincoln.
