BBefore Riley Reid, Sasha Grey, and Jenna Jameson, there was Linda Lovelace. After only two and a half weeks in the industry and one film that grossed $600 million at the box office and faced 28 state bans, her cultural impact has outlasted every performer who came after her. The biographies, the memoirs, the documentaries, the TV specials, and the spectacular pivot to anti-porn activism– all of it emerged from a single performance in a single movie that simultaneously shocked and fascinated mainstream movie goers, leading many to try to prosecute it even when they couldn’t stop watching. This is the story of the first porn star.
If you haven’t heard of Linda Lovelace (real name Linda Boreman), your parents or grandparents almost definitely have. In fact, there’s a fairly high chance they’ve seen her work. After all, she starred in the biggest film of the sexual revolution: Deep Throat (1972).
It was practically a blockbuster movie, despite its premise —her character discovers that her clitoris is in her throat— and its hardcore sex scenes. If you never stepped foot in the 1970s, it might be strange to picture getting together with a bunch of pals, buying popcorn, and sitting down to watch an hour long fellatio film. Just a generation prior, playful group outings to porno theaters were relatively unheard of for wider audiences. But by 1972, it was a logical extension of the way practically every social norm had been upturned from the previous decade. Of course any self–respecting forward–thinker would go watch porn in public with their friends. There was backlash coming from conservative politicians and moralizers, but that only added to the allure.
What might have been a nameless little blow job film drew public attention when multiple police raids targeted screenings in New York City. Just like the corny “banned SuperBowl ads” that rack up YouTube views every year, Deep Throat was only made more intriguing and taboo by its persecution. Soon, everyone from Truman Capote to Jackie Kennedy (yes, really) was spotted lining up to see the hitherto unknown star Lovelace perform oral sex on the big screen. As feminist academic Camille Paglia commented in the documentary Inside Deep Throat (2005): “It was the first time respectable middle–class women went to porn theaters.”
They were going, but they were also leaving half way through, proclaiming the fellatio too “boring” to hold their attention. Hardcore porn was suddenly a funny, edgy “slumming” activity for those in high society, not just a way to get off. The more cities banned the film, the more viewers flocked to theaters, eager to take part in the cultural moment before it was taken away.
(Credit: Movie still courtesy of Vanguard Films/Arrow Productions Ltd.)
A Deep Dive
All the attention Deep Throat was getting resulted in its star rapidly becoming a household name, a possibility she could have never expected when shooting the now–historical film. Unlike today, adult video performers in the ‘70s were able to stay relatively anonymous because of limited circulation in a pre-VHS world.
Unfortunately, just because watching porn had become more socially acceptable didn’t mean performing in it had. Lovelace was lauded for her socially unsavory talent, but any respectable reputation she may have garnered as a middle–class NYC cop’s daughter had flown right out the window in just about the most far–reaching way possible.
Still, the young woman seemed, at the time, to be enjoying her newfound fame. She’d only made $1,250 for the film that was raking in hundreds of millions but, as she told an interviewer at the time “you know, now I’m known, so it’s okay.” She was on magazine covers, in newspapers, and asked to leave her handprints in front of the Pussycat Theater in L.A.
She ran with mainstream celebrities, and, of course, she was offered roles in new films banking on her star power, including an R-rated parody of porn and politics by sexploitation auteur Joseph W. Sarno called Deep Throat Part II (1974). She even co-wrote a couple of salacious biographies detailing her journey from a devout Catholic schoolgirl to the most famous cocksucker in the world. She was the face of what New York Times writer Ralph Blumenthal called “Porno Chic” and advocated publicly against censorship. Surely, she was doing alright for herself despite the low initial pay.
Her fame took an unforeseen and dramatic shift with the publication of her third book Ordeal (1980). While the earlier biographies had branded her as a “beautiful personification of totally free and unbridled sexuality,” this one told a very different story. Her path into sex work hadn’t been a journey of self–expression, but rather a string of assaults forced on her by an abusive husband.
Even that measly $1,250 had never been hers, only the payment given to her exploitative spouse. All those interviews advocating for sexual freedom and fighting censorship were just a traumatized “robot” obeying her captor to stay out of trouble. To add insult to injury, she’d been left financially insecure despite the publicity. Now, finally, after a decade of struggle, Lovelace was safe and comfortable enough to fight for the cause she really cared about: anti–porn legislation and justice for the industry’s victims.
It’s easy for those of us invested in the adult industry to bristle with defensiveness as we reach this part of her story. We know that porn isn’t the cause of rape or assault, only a type of media made to arouse. That was already established by 1970 when the government Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography found that porn “doesn’t seem to cause much harm to the adult mind.” We know that sex work is a type of job people pursue, not just some terrible fate unfortunate women fall into at the hand of abusive pimps. And we know that sex workers deserve protections and safe working environments like all workers, not punitive bans and moralist screeds.
The biography wasn’t just a telling of Lovelace’s own personal trauma, but an argument against porn categorically. It marked the beginning of an era where the author teamed up with some of porn’s most vicious opponents: Andrea Dworkin, Catherine MacKinnon and other activists associated with the WAP: Women Against Pornography (which of course, means something else entirely these days). Seeing a historical sex symbol shift into an ally for censorship feels angering, maybe even like a betrayal, which makes it extra easy to doubt her experience.
Ordeal is extreme to a point where it almost feels fictional, especially if you’re predisposed to defend freedom of erotic expression at all costs. Her narration feels doggedly intent on portraying herself as the perfect victim: uncomplicated and innocent of any sexual misdeeds. Instead of narrating an insidiously entrancing cycle of abuse, the book ramps up quickly into shocking, non-stop violence. Her (later ex) husband Chuck Traynor isn’t a manipulative man convincing her to stay, but a tireless tyrant keeping her hostage at gunpoint for years. The way she tells it, she was virginal when they met: an innocent girl with almost no knowledge of sex or intimacy. Sex work and promiscuity disgusted her. She would have never even considered making dirty movies if she hadn’t been continually threatened with firearms. There was no real connection or bond for the couple.
She made every possible run to escape, only to be betrayed by co-workers and loved ones, forced to remain prisoner for years with God as her only solace. She shares that she was finally able to dedicate her life to God as she settled into occupation as a suburban housewife. It reads more like a cautionary tale or PSA than an autobiography, so it’s easy—comforting, even—to imagine her words as a cynical cash–grab devoid of truth.
(Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)
Her ‘Ordeal’ was Real
She may have extrapolated her abuse into a reason to fight against all porn, but that doesn’t mean that Lovelace wasn’t horrifically traumatized. The unfortunate truth is that people (women especially) face domestic abuse all the time, a fact which was even more dramatically true in the ‘70s. Forced labor exists in many sectors of the economy and sex work is no exception.
Especially at a time where even more forms of sex work were criminalized and harshly prosecuted, it makes sense that adult performers would have significantly less safety from exploitation. According to the New York Times, organized crime played a large part in the distribution (if not the production) of X-rated films including Deep Throat, a fact which doesn’t lend much credence to the idea that Linda’s experience must have been entirely consensual and above–board.
Traynor’s description of their relationship only made her accusations of abuse more believable. Even when speaking to the documentary crew for The Real Linda Lovelace (2002), he projects the image of a deeply misogynistic and aggressive man. He calls his then-wife “pretty dumb” and describes her as “needing” someone to tell her what to do. While continually emphasizing her sexual promiscuity and lack of intelligence, he admits he “wasn’t a pleasant guy to be around when [he] got angry.” The accusations of his abuse make him laugh, too. “Sounds fake, huh?” He also mentions that feminists should “all be bent over the London Bridge.”
Linda’s abuse was likely very real, but something still feels off about the memoir. For one, it kind of reads like porn (or, at least, what those opposed to adult entertainment imagine porn to be). It’s not designed to arouse, but a large percentage of its pages are spent on graphic sex scenes. The reader is treated to a play–by–play of movements, positions, and bodily fluids for each scene of sexual abuse while remaining uncomfortably devoid of internal experience. It’s really astonishing how little insight the text gives us into the personhood of the woman who co-wrote it. We know that she’s scared and disgusted. We know that she prays and wants to leave. Beyond this, and some depictions of dissociation, the reader is left with very little connection to the woman whose assaults they’re consuming.
Similarly, her life before and after her ex remains almost entirely unexplored. We learn that she was intentionally raised to be sexually ignorant in an abusive religious home, but even this is framed only as a setup and explanation for her acceptance of Traynor’s treatment. It tells you what happened to her, but not much about her.
This absence of humanity is easily explained by the context of the memoir’s creation. Lovelace was desperate for money and to escape the stigma of pornographic associations. As she healed from her abuse, she found solace in religion and family life. She wanted to put her old image behind her and make money to support herself. So, she teamed up with journalist Mike McGrady to ‘set the record straight’ and regain her dignity in the public eye.
(Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)
Looking for Love
We can only speculate on how much of Ordeal was Lovelace’s words, but McGrady’s biggest career moment before the memoir was a salacious 1969 bestseller called Naked Came The Stranger, designed to prove that sexual content can sell books with nothing else to offer. He and several fellow journalists contributed bad erotic prose in what is considered by many to be “the greatest literary hoax” ever.
It makes sense, then, that Ordeal would serve more as an exploitative collection of detailed sexual assaults than as an actual personal retelling of trauma. Yet, as Lovelace surely knew, so much of the deep pain that comes from abuse is rooted in its intimacy: having your sense of self, self worth, life story taken from you. It’s frankly sickening to imagine going through all that she survived only to have it reworked by a journalist and packaged into an easily digestible rape montage with salacious red lips showing off a disembodied pout on the cover.
The worst part of all of this might be that it didn’t work. Lovelace never became financially successful, struggling through all of her tragically short life despite being massively famous. She worked tirelessly against pornography, yet her reputation wasn’t saved. Talk show clips from the period show her being asked skeptical questions like, “You were gang raped?” and then fielding calls from viewers across America telling her point–blank that they didn’t believe her. Later in life she also felt used by the anti–porn feminists she’d testified with for the Meese Commission, resentfully mentioning in her last interview that she’d been used as a talking point in all their books but didn’t get anything from it.
Yet the rest of the world never stopped profiting. To this day, people remain fascinated with the life of the world’s first pornstar turned anti–porn activist. Made–for–TV documentaries create graphic reenactments of her assault and invite her alleged abuser on to talk about how hot and dumb she was. She gets brought up in Gender Studies classes as an argument against the adult industry as a whole. She even had a wide release feature film about her life starring Amanda Seyfried in 2013.
It’s another example of a pattern we see all the time: first, someone’s exploited for profit in the entertainment industry. Then, once their name is big, their trauma is uncovered to inspire a new round of media coverage and gawking. It happens in the mainstream world as well: Britney Spears, Judy Garland, Shirley Temple… And this is a story the adult industry knows all too well. As Linda Lovelace’s legacy reveals, when people are already convinced your career was a mistake, your suffering becomes very easy to sell.
