1973: georgina spelvin and judith hamilton in “the devil in miss jones”

title: the devil in miss jones, scene 2

performers: georgina spelvin, judith hamilton
production credits: gerard damiano (dir., scr.)
studio: mb productions | running time: 9:48
release date: 1973 | purchase

georgina spelvin, judith hamilton

one of the reasons that the golden age of theatrical porn is remembered so fondly is that actors of the caliber of georgina spelvin were active in it, and never were again no matter what the press releases said. spelvin was in her late thirties by the time she starred in the devil in miss jones for director gerard damiano, whose deep throat had been a succès de scandale the previous year, and she'd been knocking around the new york theater and underground film scene for ten years, first as a chorus girl and eventually as a technician as she had aged out of the roles managers and agents wanted fresh young things for.

but the x-rated industry was more forgiving: she was willing to do the hardcore scenes in miss jones, which she thought of as secondary to the psychological portrayal of a dead woman grasping at her one last chance at living on as the incarnation of lust, so she got the role. however, she also did the craft services for the set, because porn budgets have always been miserly; her then-lover, credited in the film as claire lumiere but in subsequent x-rated work as judith hamilton, was also working crafty and was offered $100 to do the girl/girl scene.

the obvious connection between the two, their comfort with each other and clear experience with female pleasure makes this perhaps the first authentic lesbian scene in porn history, even though it's wordless: hamilton simply comes down some stairs in a robe with massage oils to a waiting, nude spelvin, disrobes, rubs spelvin down, and begins to finger her. the subsequent lovemaking is mostly too tastefully shot for a modern girl/girl audience to approve of, but the passion is unmistakable. the brief follow-up scene (included in the runtime above), in which spelvin masturbates in a bathtub while giving herself an enema, is less effective, and demonstrates the limits of damiano's budget: the whole movie was shot in an industrial plant outside of new york.

it's a shame that none of the movie's story made it in to the girl/girl scene, which could be (and very likely was) snipped out of the film, printed as an 8mm loop and sold to the peep-show market, where the subtlety of damiano's camera work and the actors' performances would be entirely lost. although the title is a play on the devil and miss jones (a 1941 labor-organizing comedy), the plot is an inversion of heaven can wait, ernst lubitsch's 1943 philosophical comedy about a self-proclaimed rake who did nothing bad enough to earn hell. spelvin is a repressed woman who has committed suicide, and despite her spotless record is doomed to limbo; so she strikes a devil's bargain, to return to earth to become the embodiment of lust in order to earn a place in hell. by which terms the girl/girl and masturbation scenes could be supposed to represent increasing depravity, but in isolation they're merely tender and vivid.

spelvin and hamilton would continue to be paired in films through the next few years before they went their separate ways, although their chemistry would rarely be captured as well. spelvin credits the the devil in miss jones for her subsequent descent into alcoholism, which lasted until 1981, when she quit both the bottle and the industry, which had rarely made as effective use of her talents as it could have, too often casting her in shrewish older-woman roles on the occasions when a script called for any personality at all. but her honest, intelligent work made the industry better by its presence, and once she was gone the whole proceeding was significantly cheapened.

but the vhs era is still some years off. let's enjoy the golden age while we have it.

1973 runners up:

cyndee summers and tricia opal in sex in the comics, scenes 2 & 4

sex in the comics co. (dir. eric von letch), 7:32

cyndee, tricia

the absolute lunacy of this premise rocketed it to the top of my must-see list as soon as i learned it existed: a filmed version of the "tijuana bibles" from the 1920s through the 50s that featured popular characters from comic strips (back when comic strips were among the most read fiction on the planet) in as filthy scenarios as the anonymous artists could conceive. (they call the same thing doujinshi now.) there are two girl/girl sequences in the collection, both of them performed by cyndee summers and tricia opal: in the first, a parody of 20s flapper strip dixie dugan, the naive title character is introduced to fucking by her friend; in the second, dick tracy follows a flaming gay man's wife and observes her cheating with another woman; in both, tricia refers to cyndee's character as trixie. the stop-start pacing of the film is apparently meant to mimic the panel rhythms of the original comics, and the dialogue, faithful to the original tijuana bibles, is bone-stupid, but i found it immensely entertaining and even inventive, if only because of the hand-drawn sets.

darby lloyd rains and jennifer welles in the virgin and the lover, scenes 4 & 8

kemal enterprises (dir. kemal honrulu), 15:08

jennifer, darby

kemal horulu (probably not the turkish sprinter, but you never know) was a solid second-rate director during the golden age of theatrical porn; his cinematographers did great work, and his prints have mostly survived to be beautifully digitized. the virgin and the lover is a bit of a riff on fellini's 8½, about a film director's sexual hangups; but the two linked girl/girl interludes which the star (eric edwards) watches back forms its own pat little story-within-a-story about a sexually frustrated woman (welles) coming home to her liberated roommate (rains), who offers to relieve her stress. the action is essentially softcore until rains masturbates for her own relief, but the filmmaking, and jennifer welles' remarkable body, make it memorable regardless.

andrea true, cindy west and darby lloyd rains in devil's due, scene 5

bacchus (dir. ernest danna), 12:02

darby, andrea, cindy

the grindhouse exploitation end of 70s porn is one i won't be noticing very often, in large part because it included much less girl/girl than the classier high-end fare, but devil's due, which features cindy west as a young woman who only communicates by writing notes as a result of sexual trauma finding her place in a satan-worshiping cult in new york city, manages to rise above its schlocky premise with this scene, in which fellow cult members darby and andrea have prettily-soundtracked sex with her before agreeing to take down the male hierarchy of the cult from the inside. the faded colors and patently insincere lovemaking are of a piece with the era: the kind-of sort-of feminism lives on.

also noteworthy:

scenes

• jutta david, mireille renaud, and tamie trevor in high rise, scene 2 | maturepix (danny stone)
• lilly foster and penny king in liz: momma's little girl, scene 6 | something weird (anthony spinelli)
• molly seagrim and wanda backdoor in more ways than one, scene 3 | backdoor (zachary strong)
• cyndee summers and nancy martin in mother's wishes, scene 1 | gourmet (franklin anthony)
• carmel monterey and charlotte holstein in oh fanny!, scene 1 | aba (morton fishbein)
• erica eaton and georgina spelvin in teachers and cream, scene 3 | b.s. (warren evans)