Golden Age of Porn

Blue Movie by Andy Warhol, released in June 1969,[3][4][5] and, more freely, Mona, by Bill Osco, released afterwards in August 1970,[6] were the first films depicting explicit sex to receive wide theatrical distribution in the United States.[3][4][6] Although Blue Movie involved sexual intercourse, the film, starring Viva and Louis Waldon, included substantial dialogue about the Vietnam War and various mundane tasks.[3][4] In comparison, the film Mona differed from Blue Movie by presenting more of a story plot: Mona (played by Fifi Watson) had promised her mother that she would remain a virgin until her impending marriage.[24] Nonetheless, Blue Movie, besides being a seminal film in the 'Golden Age of Porn', was a major influence, according to Warhol, in the making of Last Tango in Paris (1972), an internationally controversial erotic drama film, starring Marlon Brando, and released a few years after Blue Movie was made.[5][25]

Also around this time, in June 1970, the 55th Street Playhouse began showing Censorship in Denmark: A New Approach, a film documentary study of pornography, directed by Alex de Renzy.[26] According to Vincent Canby, a New York Times film reviewer, the narrator of the documentary noted that “pornography is more stimulating and cheaper than hormone injections” and "stresses the fact that since the legalization of pornography in Denmark, sex crimes have decreased."[26] Nonetheless, on September 30, 1970, Assistant District Attorney, Richard Beckler, had the theater manager, Chung Louis, arrested on an obscenity charge, and the film seized as appealing to a prurient interest in sex. The presiding judge, Jack Rosenberg, stated, “[The film] is patently offensive to most Americans because it affronts contemporary community standards relating to the description or representation of sexual matters.”[27]

Nevertheless, afterwards, in October 1970, the History of the Blue Movie, another film documentary study of pornography directed by Alex de Renzy, was released and featured a compilation of early blue movie shorts dating from 1915 to 1970. Film critic Roger Ebert reviewed the film, rated it two-stars (of four), and noted that the narrator tells us "solemnly about the comic artistry of early stag movies".[28]

Somewhat later, in December 1971, the film Boys in the Sand, one of the first adult erotic films, after Blue Movie in 1969,[29][30] to be reviewed by Variety magazine,[31] was released and opened in theaters across the United States and around the world.[32] The film's title is a parodic reference to the 1968 play by Mart Crowley, and the related 1970 film adaptation, The Boys in the Band.[33]

The 'Golden Age of Porn' continued in 1972 with Deep Throat. It officially premiered at the World Theater[34] in New York City on June 12, 1972 and was advertised in The New York Times under the bowdlerized title Throat. After Johnny Carson talked about the film on his nationally top-rated TV show[11][35][36][37][38] and Bob Hope, as well, mentioned it on TV,[7] Deep Throat became very profitable and a box-office success, according to one of the figures behind the film. In its second year of release, Deep Throat just missed Variety's top 10. However, by then, it was often being shown in a double bill with the most successful of the top three adult erotic films released in the 1972–1973 era, The Devil in Miss Jones, which easily outperformed Deep Throat, while leaving Behind the Green Door trailing in third place.[39]

The 1973 film The Devil in Miss Jones was ranked number seven in the Variety list of the top ten highest-grossing pictures of 1973, despite lacking the wide release and professional marketing of Hollywood and having been virtually banned across the country for half the year (see Miller v. California, below).[39] Some critics have described the film as, along with Deep Throat, one of the "two best erotic motion pictures ever made".[40] William Friedkin called The Devil in Miss Jones a "great film", partly because it was one of the few adult erotic films with a proper storyline.[41] Roger Ebert referred to The Devil in Miss Jones as the "best" of the genre he had seen and gave it three-stars (of four).[10] Ebert also suggested the film's box office receipts were inflated as a way of laundering the profits from illegal activities, although such a method would have required organised crime to be paying taxes on their illegally obtained income.[42][43]

The Devil in Miss Jones was one of the first films to be inducted into the XRCO Hall of Fame.[44] The sound-recording, cinematography, and story-line of The Devil in Miss Jones were of a considerably higher quality than any previous porn film. The lead, Georgina Spelvin, who had been in the original Broadway run of The Pajama Game, combined vigorous sex with an acting performance some thought as convincing as anything to be seen in a good mainstream production. She had been hired as a caterer, but Gerard Damiano, the film director, was impressed with her reading of Miss Jones's dialogue, while auditioning an actor for the non-sex role of 'Abaca'. According to Variety's review, "With The Devil in Miss Jones, the hard-core porno feature approaches an art form, one that critics may have a tough time ignoring in the future". The review also described the plot as comparable to Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit,[45] and went on to describe the opening scene as, "a sequence so effective it would stand out in any legit theatrical feature."[45] It finished by stating, "Booking a film of this technical quality into a standard sex house is tantamount to throwing it on the trash heap of most current hard-core fare." [35][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]

An influential five-page article in The New York Times Magazine in 1973 described the phenomenon of porn being publicly discussed by celebrities, and taken seriously by critics, a development referred to, by Ralph Blumenthal of The New York Times, as "porno chic".[7][11][52] Some expressed the opinion that pornographic films would continue to extend their access to US theaters, and the mainstream film industry would gravitate toward the influence of porn.[12][13]

Supreme Court's 1973 Miller v. California decision redefined obscenity from "utterly without socially redeeming value" to lacks "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value". Crucially, it made 'contemporary community standards' the criterion, holding that obscenity was not protected by the First Amendment; the ruling gave leeway to local judges to seize and destroy prints of films adjudged to violate local community standards. The Miller decision stymied porn distribution.[35] The Devil in Miss Jones, as well as Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door, was prosecuted successfully during the latter half of 1973; the Supreme Court's Miller decision closed much of America to the exhibition of adult erotic films, and often led to it being banned outright. Porn films would not feature as prominently in the mainstream movie business as they did in the Golden Age,[53] until the emergence of the internet in the 1990s.[54]

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decision to have put mass box office returns beyond the reach of pornographic films, the leaps in the films' quality that had occurred between 1972 and 1973 were not sustained. With their relatively modest financial means, a predicted move of organized crime into Hollywood failed to materialize.[13] Pornographic films continued to be a highly profitable business, and thrived throughout the rest of the 1970s, leading to the concept of porn "stars" gaining currency. Ostracism of porn performers meant they almost invariably used pseudonyms. Being outed as having appeared in porn usually put an end to an actor's hope of a mainstream career.[55] An indication of the returns still possible was that a 1976 release, Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Comedy, favorably reviewed by film critic Roger Ebert in 1976,[56] reportedly grossed over $90 million globally.[35][57] Some historians assess The Opening of Misty Beethoven, based on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (and its derivative, My Fair Lady), and directed by Radley Metzger, as attaining a mainstream level in storyline and sets.[58] Author Toni Bentley called the film the "crown jewel" of the Golden Age.[59][60]

In general, after 1973, adult erotic films emulated mainstream filmmaking storylines and conventions, merely to frame the depictions of sexual activity to prepare an 'artistic merit' defense against possible obscenity charges. The adult film industry remained stuck at the level of 'one day wonders', finished by participants hired for only a single day. The ponderous technology of the time meant filming a simple scene would often take hours due to the need for the camera to be laboriously set up for each shot.[61] Repeated sustained performances might be required on cue at any time over the course of a day, which was an issue for men without the recourse to modern Viagra-type drugs.[55][61] Production was concentrated in New York City where organized crime was widely believed to have control over all aspects of the business, and to prevent entry of competitors. Although their budgets were usually very low, a subcultural level of appreciation exists for films of this era, which were produced by a core group of around thirty performers, some of whom had other jobs. Several were actors who could handle dialogue when required. However, some participants scoffed at the idea that what they did qualified as "acting".[7][35][55] By the early 1980s, the rise of home video had led to the end of the era when people went to movie theaters to see sex shot on 35mm film with production values, ultimately culminating with the rise of the internet in the 1990s and beyond.[55]