I was born smack in the middle of the "Me decade," the 1970s, so I missed 1972's sociocultural atom bomb, Deep Throat. Still, the most famous porn film in history sent shockwaves through the culture, the reverberations of which were felt long after the film left theaters. In the early 1980s, kids were still whispering its name, and the name of its legendary—and legendarily talented—star, Linda Lovelace. So, while it was several more years before some of us actually witnessed Lovelace's, um, talents, she was certainly a known commodity to kids my age.
Born Linda Susan Boreman in the Bronx in 1949, Lovelace first starred in a series of hardcore "loops" at the behest of her husband/manager/pimp Chuck Traynor. She went on to do a small clutch of films, both porn and otherwise, none more famous than Deep Throat. Traynor had discovered Boreman's astonishing talent for "deep-throating," and thus was born the fantastical character of Lovelace, a sexually frustrated woman who discovers her clitorus is actually located in her throat (you didn't know Deep Throat was science fiction too, did you?). You can imagine what happens next: in her job as a "therapist," Lovelace fellates one gent after another, climaxing herself each time. The film ends on a conservative note, with Lovelace falling in love and marrying one such "client."
The ubiquity of porn and other salacious online content in the internet age makes Deep Throat's popularity seem downright quaint now. Yet at the time, porn had only been legal for a few years. Deep Throat's startling mainstream success suddenly made porn chic. Your friend's mom was likely talking about it with your mom, possibly even joining their husbands at date-night screenings. The film was reviewed in The New York Times. Star-studded screenings were held in Hollywood and New York. It was among the first, and highest grossing, X-rated films ever released on videotape. Its name will always be synonymous with that dirty little word, "porn."
Lovelace's success was short-lived, however. After starring in a less well received R-rated sequel, she went public with accusations against Traynor of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. She claimed to have filmed Deep Throat under duress, at gunpoint, and to have never made a dime off the film. Traynor denied it. At times her stories contradicted themselves. Her bestselling autobiography, Inside Linda Lovelace is widely rumored to have been ghost-written by Traynor, which might explain those contradictions. Others in the porn industry said she was a pathological liar and made it all up. Her name was dragged through the mud. She joined the anti-pornography movement and eventually felt used and abused by them as well.
We may never know the full story—the frustratingly mediocre Lovelace (2013) starring Amanda Seyfried certainly portrays Lovelace as a victim. One thing is certain, though: Lovelace spent much of her life being used by some incredibly shady people and an audience of people that gawked at her like she was a circus freak performer. That she eventually died in 2002 at only 53 years old, from injuries sustained in a car crash, only compounds the sadness of her story.
We may never know the full story—the frustratingly mediocre Lovelace (2013) starring Amanda Seyfried certainly portrays Lovelace as a victim. One thing is certain, though: Lovelace spent much of her life being used by some incredibly shady people and an audience of people that gawked at her like she was a circus freak performer. That she eventually died in 2002 at only 53 years old, from injuries sustained in a car crash, only compounds the sadness of her story.
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