Jill Nelson's Golden Goddesses: 25 Legendary Women Of Classic Erotic Cinema

[Robin Bougie Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Robin Bougie]

My review of the book is here:
http://bougieman.livejournal.com/589964.html

[Randy G Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Randy G]

American Ecstasy looks great too Robin, I'll have to get that sometime (also have House of Psychotic Women and it's terrific).

Another great book on classic-era xxx that's come out recently is William E. Jones (director of the docs Tearoom, Finished and Is It Really So Strange?) book on Fred Halsted: Halsted Plays Himself. This book has some much info in it it's overwhelming, for instance at one point W.S. Burroughs and Halsted met and talked about the possibility of him adapting Burrough's awesome book Wild Boys into a film, but decided they'd never get the money to do it right. Or that Fred's mother's side of the family were Doukhobors! Jones used to work for VCX back in the VHS days, editing their gay comps.

It's very well researched and historically detailed but despite the name of the publisher it never becomes dry, jargony or pseudo-academic. Nicely printed and with loads of photos, ephemera and even selections of Halsted's porn writing for gay magazines back-in-the-day! This is the kind of book I was hoping would be produced about Jamie Gillis. Maybe one day.

The story of Halsted and Burroughs reminds me of a similar story in Golden Goddesses, when Chambers talks about how she met with Nicholas Ray and Rip Torn about making a movie based on a Norman Mailer script but then Ray disappeared down a cocaine hole and died soon after. Imagine if that project had ever gotten made!