The First Porn Star: Linda Lovelace
Before Riley Reed, Sasha Grey and Jenna Jameson there was her. 2.5 weeks in the Adult industry. One major film. $600,000,000 in ticket sales. 28 state bans. Countless biographies, memoirs, documentaries and sensationalist tv specials, not to mention a shocking 180 into anti–porn activism. This is the story of America’s first porn star: Linda Lovelace.
Your Mom Saw Linda Lovelace Give Head
Deep Throat’s original poster as shown in Inside Deep Throat (2005)
If you haven’t heard of Linda Lovelace your parents or grandparents almost definitely have. In fact, there’s a fairly high chance they’ve seen her suck cock on the silver screen. After all, she starred in the biggest film of the Sexual Revolution: Deep Throat (1972), which you can imagine the contents of. It was practically a blockbuster movie, despite being chalk full of hardcore sex scenes. If (like me) you never stepped foot in the 70s, 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. By 1972, though, it was only a logical extension of the way practically every social norm had been upturned for the previous decade. It was the Sexual Revolution, baby! Of course any self–respecting forward–thinker would go watch porn in public with their friends. Sure, there was backlash coming from conservative politicians and moralizers, but that only added fuel to the fire.
You Say I Can’t Have It, So I Want It More
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 rake 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 Linda Lovelace perform oral sex on the big screen. As feminist academic Camille Pagila commented in the documentary Inside Deep Throat (2005)
“It was the first time respectable middle–class women went to porn theaters.”
They weren’t just going, but 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.
Linda Lovelace: Overnight Success?
Deep Throat (1972) poster cropped and featured in Inside Deep Throat (2005)
The back cover of Linda’s raunchy 1974 biography The Intimate Diary Of Linda Lovelace
All the attention Deep Throat was getting resulted in its star Linda Lovelace 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 generally able to stay relatively anonymous because of the limited circulation in a pre–VHS world. Unfortunately, just because watching porn had become more socially acceptable didn’t mean performing in it had. Linda 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.
Linda on the cover of Esquire Magazine, as pictured in Inside Deep Throat (2005)
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 LA. She ran with mainstream celebrities, and, of course, she was offered roles in new films banking on her star power. She even cowrote a couple 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.
World’s First Porn Star Turns Against Adult Entertainment
Linda Lovelace on Late Night America
Linda Lovelace’s 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 handn’t been a journey of self–expression but rather a string of assaults forced on her by an abusive husband. Deep Throat (1972) was, in essence, documented rape. Even that measly $1,250 had never been hers, only the payment given to her exploitative pimp. 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, Linda Boreman was safe and comfortable enough to fight for the cause she really cared about: anti–porn legislation and justice for the industry’s victims.
Pro–Porn Defensiveness
During this period, Linda made the rounds on talk shows to speak about her abuse and advocate for an end to Adult entertainment. Here, she’s pictured debating with women in the Adult industry on Woman To Woman (March 26th 1984)
It’s easy, I think, for those of us invested in the Adult Industry to bristle with defensiveness as we reach this part of Linda’s 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. Linda’s biography wasn’t just a telling of her own personal trauma, but an argument against porn categorically. It marked the beginning of an era where Linda was teaming up with some of porn’s most vicious opponents: Adrea Dworkin, Catherine MacKinnon and other activists associated with the (from a modern perspective quite unfortunately named) WAP: Women Against Pornography. Seeing a historical sex symbol shift into an ally to censorship feels angering, maybe even like a betrayal, which makes it extra easy to doubt her experiences.
Linda’s memoir Ordeal (1980) 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, Ordeal ramps up quickly into shocking violence and gives almost no breaks. 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 for escape, only to be betrayed by coworkers and loved ones, forced to remain prisoner for years with God as her only solace. A God who, now, she was finally able to dedicate her life to as she settled into occupation as a suburban housewife. It reads more like a cautionary tale or PSA than an autobiography. It’s easy—comforting, even—to imagine Ordeal as a cynical cash–grab devoid of truth.
Porn Isn’t Evil, But Linda’s Not A Liar, Either
A still from Deep Throat (1972) showing Linda with a bruise allegedly from Chuck Traynor
The thing is, just because Linda extrapolated her abuse into a reason for fighting all porn doesn’t mean she 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 in 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. Although it’s never been strictly–speaking confirmed, it seems quite likely that organized crime played a large part in the distribution (if not the production) of 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.
Linda’s alleged abuser Chuck Traynor on NBC Tonight in 1981 (still taken from Inside Deep Throat 2005)
Plus, well, if you hear her ex–husband describe Linda and their relationship…it seems more believable than not that it was abusive. Even when speaking to the documentary crew for The Real Linda Lovelace (2002), Chuck Traynor projects the image of a deeply misogynistic and believably violent man. He calls Linda “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” but laughs that “if you don’t want me to get in an argument don’t argue with me.” The accusations of his abuse make him laugh, too. “Sounds fake, huh?” Oh, and we can’t forget the part of his interview where he mentions believing feminists should “all be bent over the London Bridge.” Yet he says her allegations were ungrounded. Sounds fake, huh?
Ordeal (1980): Just Another Way To Sell Her Assault?
The front cover of Linda’s 1980 memoir Ordeal
Linda’s abuse was likely very real, yet something still feels off about the memoir where it was first described. Possibly the most disturbing part of reading Linda’s anti–porn autobiography is how much, well, it kind of reads like porn (or, at least, what those opposed to Adult Entertainment imagine porn to be). It’s not particularly erotic or (presumably) 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 that 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 Chuck’s abuse remains almost entirely unexplored. We learn that she was intentionally raised to be sexually ignorant in an abusive religious home, but even that is framed only as a setup and explanation for her deciding to live with her abuser Chuck. It tells you what happened to Linda, but not much about Linda herself.
Journalist Mike McGrady, co–author of Ordeal (1980), posing with the sexually explicit hoax book that he masterminded a decade earlier
This absence of humanity is easily explained by the context of the memoir’s creation. Linda was desperate: desperate for money, and desperate to escape the horrific stigma of pornographic fame. 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 the journalist Mike McGrady to ‘set the record straight’ and regain her dignity in the public eye. We can only speculate on how much of Ordeal was Linda’s words, but McGrady’s biggest career moment so far had been a salacious bestseller designed to prove that sexual content can sell books with nothing else to offer. 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 Linda 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 Linda 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.
[Extremely necessary and not at all sensationalist reenactments of Linda’s alleged abuse used in The Real Linda Lovelace (2002)]
A Not—So—Happy Ending
Linda in Loose Lips: The Last Interview (2013)
The worst part of all of this might be that it didn’t work. Linda 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, either. Talk show clips from the period show Linda being asked monotone, skeptical questions like “You were gang raped?” and then fielding calls from viewers across America telling her point–blank that they don’t believe her. Later in life she even felt used by the anti–porn feminists she’d collaborated with by testifying 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. She even made a short return to soft core porn in her 50s, an unexpected turn near the end of her life: seemingly one last attempt to regain control of her image and reap benefits from her challenging public life. Seemingly, even that last attempt wasn’t particularly lucrative.
Just one example of Linda’s tragedy being profitable for everyone but her
Yet the rest of the world never stopped profiting. To this day (as evidenced by the article you’re reading now) people want to learn about 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. Clickbait thumbnails imply that Linda became Andrea Dworkin to get clicks. 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 released in 2013. It’s one 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 all the time: Britney Spears, Judy Garland, Shirley Temple, I couldn’t possibly name them all. Well, it happens in porn, too, and Linda Boreman’s proof.
