I know I've posted this somewhere before but, here it is again. A short "Bio" on John Holmes (Its a long read, longer than DLD's Penis):
�naked people movies�'s biggest male star, John Holmes, died of AIDS March 13th, 1988. He claimed to have screwed 14,000 women on and off-screen (the real number was no more than 3000).
Holmes also had sex with men though he didn't boast about that. "John considered it as satisfying to stick his dick into a guy as into a pussy," says �naked people movies� historian Jim Holliday.
No one has claimed to have caught AIDS from Holmes, even though he kept performing long after he knew that he was HIV positive. (Not such a role model is he??)
Starring in 2500 flicks, John Holmes performed sex with two generations of �naked people movies� stars - from Seka and Marilyn Chambers to Ginger Lynn and the Italian member of Parliament Ciccolina (Little Chubby). He's the only man to rank among �naked people movies�'s biggest stars.
"John Holmes was the king," says Bill Margold, whose own dick measures ten inches. "He was living proof that not all men are created equal.
"I worked in a scene where John Holmes was being blown by four women and I was sitting underneath, being blown by Lesllie Bovee. All of a sudden his dick popped out over my head like the opening shot of Star Wars. I was terrified. I had this horrible vision of it falling on my head and cracking my skull open."
John's private life also revolved around his penis. Rich men and women paid handsomely to play with him.
Though �naked people movies� may have seen longer dicks (Dick Rambone supposedly measured 15 inches), none are as famous as John's organ, which his friend Bill Amerson swears measured 13 inches when fully errect.
Bob Chinn produced and directed John's most successful series Johnny Wadd, where he played a hard-boiled detective. Holmes "was a thin bony trench-coated shamus, outrageously horny, beding down with client and quarry alike," says Al Goldstein of Screw.
It was a goofy, crudely-made series, �naked people movies�'s first movie series. "Holmes was everyman's gigolo," writes Mike Sager, "a polyester smoothy with a sparse moustache, a flying collar and lots of buttons undone. He took a lounge singer's approach to sex, deliberately gentle, ostentatiously artful, a homely guy with a pinkie ring and a big dick who was convinced he was every woman's dream." (Rolling Stone 6/15/89)
John loved his work. "A happy gardener is with one dirty fingernails, and a happy cook is a fat cook. I never get tired of what I do because I'm a sex fiend. I'm very lusty."
In a 1973 interview that appeared in the book Sinema, Holmes appeared hyper:
"I just can't sit still," he says, and he really can't. He fidgets, licks his lips, rolls his eyes, chews his gum, runs his long fingernails down the side of the chair he seems constantly on the verge of leaping out of. He is so exuberant that "everybody says, 'Are you on uppers, are you on speed?' And I say, 'No, man, I've just got this natural kick-in-the-ass energy level."
Constantly searching for new outlets for his energy, Holmes does all the stunt work for his films - "scuba diving, flying, sky diving, jumping from building to building, crashing motorcycles."
Born John Curtis Estes on August 8, 1944, in Pickaway County, Ohio, John never knew his father Carl Estes, a railroad laborer. A few years later, his mother Mary changed his last name to that of her husband, the alcoholic Edward Holmes, a carpenter. John was the youngest of three boys and a girl. The future stud remembers his dad puking over the kids. Mary was a Bible-thumping Baptist always yelling at her husband.
John's mom married Harold when he was eight, and they moved to a small house in Pataskala, Ohio. A shy boy, John had a perfect attendance record at Baptist Bible classes and a tense relationship with his manic-depressive stepfather who occasionally became violent.
John got his mother's permission to join the army at age 16 and spent three years in Germany with the Signal Corps.
After leaving the service, he hitchhiked to Los Angeles where he worked odd jobs.
While driving an ambulance, John met a nurse, Sharon Gebenini, who worked at USC County General on a team pioneering open-heart surgery. In August 1965, he married Sharon, still a virgin, at Fort Ord, California.
While driving a forklift truck in and out of a freezer, John suffered (three times over nine months) a collapsed lung. While recovering, he hung out at a
poker club in Gardena. One day in the bathroom he met a man who talked him into doing �naked people movies�.
John began hanging out at Crossroads of the World, a Hollywood landmark on Sunset Blvd. Miniature sound stages frequently used for �naked people movies� lay behind the storefront facades. Most of John's early assignments were for magazine works, according to �naked people movies� King. "I even had to keep my underwear on since showing a man's ass was illegal… Then they began to get really chancy and off came the underwear. For a series of shots, I had to dry hump a girl model. Everything was simulated…"
As American became increasingly permissive during the 1960s, John specialized in 8mm loops of hardcore sex.
One afternoon in 1968,
according to the 6/15/89 Rolling Stone article, Sharon came home early from work and found John measuring his penis. She went into her bedroom and laid down. Twenty minutes later John appeared. He had a full erection.
"It's incredible," said John.
"What?"
"It goes from five inches all the way to ten. Ten inches long! Four inches around!" (Think he meant wide, as 4 inches around would be VERY SKINNY)
"That's great," said Sharon, turning a page of her magazine. "You want me to call the press?"
John stared at her for a long time before he spoke. "I've got to tell you that I've been doing something else, and I think I want to make it my life's work."
"I was appalled," remembers Sharon, who's never seen a �naked people movies� film.
That encounter in the bathroom marked the beginning of the end of their relationship, though it stumbled on for twelve more years. Sharon bought the food and provided for John, while he spent his �naked people movies� earnings on himself. They slept in the same bed for the next decade but soon quit having sex.
"I loved the scHydromaxuck," said Sharon. "I just didn't like what he was doing." (RS)
In 1969, John answered an ad for �naked people movies� performers placed by William Amerson who'd just entered �naked people movies�. "My wife at the time - I've had a few - knew a couple of girls in the nudie business. They were making movies - all simulated stuff - and I went to work for them to learn how to do it. Back then you could shoot an X-rated movie for $4000 and make $60,000." (Playboy 3/98)
Amerson first met John in 1969 while casting for magazine work at The Crossroads of the World on Sunset Blvd. Holmes was skinny with an afro haircut, unimpressive. But when he dropped his clothes for a Polaroid, Amerson knew he had a star.
"In 1971 some friends and I decided to start showing actual penetration. We took $14,000 and a handful of bennies, and in one weekend, we made five films. We sold them in New York and Chicago, made back our investment in a week and went on to make a lot of money off those movies." (Playboy 3-98)
The profits attracted the attention of several New York organized crime families. One family (Colombo?) sent an underboss (Joseph Torchio?) to get some of the money. "I told him I didn't want any partners," Amerson told Playboy. "Said I'd teach him the business but that I liked to work alone. He basically told me, 'If you don't work with us, you don't work.' I wanted to work."
With the success of 1972's Deep Throat, The Devil In Miss Jones and Behind the Green Door, �naked people movies� was chic but still illegal.
"There was a tremendously tyrannical power that came down on the performers," Bill Margold told the 3-98 Playboy. "Everything we did back then was illegal. I was in 300 movies - 500 sex scenes - wondering through much of it if I was going to be arrested. And I was, many times."
In 1973, to avoid serving time for pimping and pandering, John started informing to Sergeant Tom Blake, an LA Vice detective.
"He liked playing the role of Dick Tracy," Blake told the documentary Wadd. "He'd tell us who'd be shooting the �naked people movies� films, who'd be producing, who'd be directing... Who the money people were backing the films. When the film was being shot."
Also in 1973, John met �naked people movies�ographer Bob Chinn. A slight Hawaiian who grew up in New Mexico, Robert Husong aka Bob Chinn began making amateur films at age 12. After semesters at the University of Miami and Santa Monica City College, he graduated from UCLA's film school in 1966. He built sets for commercials, and worked behind the scenes on �naked people movies� productions until churning out his own sex loops and selling them to theaters.
"In those days you could hire a girl for $25 and shoot ten or fifteen minutes of film, one reel. It was a strange period, when you could get away with hardcore if you did just a little, sort of slipped it in. There wasn't a lot of money in it then, but it was a living, and it led to my crewing on features and then to directing them. I was making films for Italian businessmen [Mafia]." (Playboy 3-98)
Chinn remembers the day in 1973 that John Holmes walked into his office next to the Pussycat Theater on Western Avenue. "I'd heard about him from an actress I worked with," Chinn told Playboy's Craig Vetter (3/98). "And when I saw him with his clothes off, I thought, I could make an interesting movie with this man."
Bob wrote a script for a �naked people movies� starring Holmes as private detective Johnny Wadd. They shot the first film, Johnny Wadd, in a day. The 60-minute production cost $750. Holmes and Chinn made nine more Wadd films. It was the first �naked people movies� movie series.
Amerson says John began smoking marijuana in 1972. He progressed to mushrooms, pills and cocaine, a drug he never kicked.
In 1975, to supplement his earnings, John Holmes became a carrier for the mob. He also flipped tricks with men and women who bought him cars and jewelry.
In 1976, John began courting 15-year old Dawn Schiller (Oooh, look a Penis EnlargementDOPHILE TOO!). He bought her stuffed animals, roses and a ring. One night, he drove her to the beach in his van. "I didn't know what was going to happen, but I knew what might," says Dawn. "We sat on the rocks, the moon was just right. We sat for a long time and he was very, very quiet. He just stared. I played in the water. When I got out, he said, 'Let's go,' and we drove toward home. And then, just as we got to this intersection, he slammed on the brakes. It was dark, and there wasn't any traffic. He said, 'Would you make love to me? I literally shook to death. I said yes. I loved him. We did it in the van. After that I was his." (RS 6/15/89)
At the height of his career in 1978, John Curtis Holmes earned three thousand dollars a day from fuck films.
He traveled with Gloria Leonard to Paris in 1978 to make Johnny Does Paris.
"The day we met," she relates, "he had this diva attitude, so I said, 'I'm sorry, my dear, but this set isn't large enough for two prima donnas.' He was a baby, really, and an egomaniac." (Playboy 3/98)
John became increasingly addicted to drugs. Every ten to fifteen minutes he needed a hit of coke and then 40-50 Valium a day to cut the edge.
"When he did coke," Schiller told Rolling Stone reporter Mike Sager, "He'd do it until it was all gone, and then he'd scrape the pipe and smoke all the resin he could find, then he'd take a bunch of Valium. He'd have me make these peanut-butter chocolate-chip brown-sugar butter cookies. All the sugar helped him come down. He'd have a big glass of milk, and we'd turn on the cartoons and then he'd go to bed in Sharon's room. I'd usually fall asleep on the couch."
John got Schiller on drugs and eventually turning tricks (sex for money) to support his bad habits.
Sharon befriended Dawn and looked after her as best she could. "The poor girl was emaciated. I knew the whole picture," says Sharon. "He was picking on a kid that didn't know any better. I had to let her know there was another world out there, that John was not God Almighty.
"John was terrified that I was going to confront her. But I had no reason to confront her. Why? Why would I confront her? He meant nothing to me that way." (RS)
Holmes was gone much of the time, making films in Europe, San Francisco and Hawaii.
Because of his drug use, he became difficult to work with. Persons on set joked that you had to leave a trail of freebase from the bathroom to the bedroom to get Holmes to perform.
Soon drugs killed John's abilities to get erect. (Most likely why theres such broad speculation of his size being between 10 and 13"...poor erections most of the time)
The man who had claimed to earn half-a-million dollars a year from his sexual talents became a drug delivery boy for the gang of outlaws and junkie who lived on Wonderland Avenue in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles.
John and Dawn lived for months out of Sharon's Chevy Malibu. Eventually, John got Schiller into an apartment in the San Fernando Valley with �naked people movies� actress and high-priced hooker Michelle.
In his 1998 autobiography, edited by his widow Laurie, John portrays his friend and manager of 20 years, Bill Amerson, as an evil man. Bill supposedly introduced John to cocaine.
John Holmes became the godfather to two of Amerson's children. "He lived with us in the big house we had in Sherman Oaks," Bill told Playboy, "and the two of us became like brothers. He liked to garden, did handyman stuff. We went hunting and fishing together, partied around town. He had a heart as big as the fucking world, but as he got more and more fucked up on drugs it became impossible to make movies with him. He started hanging out with his suppliers, real assholes, people like Eddie Nash and Ron Launius."
John spent hours at Bill's big home on the hill, "the perfect party pad," according to �naked people movies� King. "With Bill, the producer, and me, Mr. �naked people movies� Stud, girls were drawn to us like bees to honey. His wild nudist romps, especially in the heat of summer around his pool, were the raging ticket in town. The girls didn't mind who they fucked, just as long as we wanted them or they thought it would get them in movies."
To support his drug habit, John committed felony crimes most every day. He stole luggage off conveyor belts at LAX, bought appliances with his wife's credit cards and traded them for cash. Police finally caught him January 14th, 1981 stealing a computer out of a car.
Gloria Leonard remembers the day in 1981 that John visited her at her home in Los Angeles. He looked skinny and seemed "all cock." By 9 AM, he'd already freebased three grams of coke. When the �naked people movies� actress returned from an errand, she found Holmes gone, along with $25,000 worth of jewelry, electronics and guns.
Nightclub owner and drug kingpin Eddie Nash bailed John and Dawn out of jail. Schiller fled. John chased her to the bus station but Dawn had convinced the clerk to give John the wrong information, saying her life was at stake.
John followed the wrong bus all the way to San Francisco. He then returned to Sharon and beat her up.
A 22-year old ex-girlfriend of John's, Suzanne Atamian aka Julia St. Innocent, produced a 1981 �naked people movies� "documentary" about John's life called Exhausted.
During 1980-81, John became closer to Nash whose real name is Adel Nasrallah. Born and raised in Lebanon, he came to Los Angeles around 1950, and opened a hot dog stand on Hollywood Boulevard. Thirty years later, in his 50s, Nasrallah owned the Seven Seas, a restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard, the strip joint Kit Kat, several clubs for homosexuals and a rock n'roll hangout Starwood.
A heavy coke addict similar to the character in Boogie Nights that Dirk Diggler and company attempt to rob, Nash rarely left his large home in the San Fernando Valley. He sold coke, heroin and other drugs. Gaunt with dark wavy hair and a vicious temper, he threw wild parties that lasted for days.
"He was an awful man," says Laurie Holmes. "John told me he used to leave the bathrooms without toilet paper, then offer the young women cocaine if they'd lick his ass clean." (Playboy 3/98)
Nash's huge bodyguard Greg Diles slept in a back bedroom with a shotgun under his blanket.
Holmes became a star attraction at Nash's parties and eventually began running drugs to repay his drug debt.
On Nash's 1980 birthday, John presented him with Dawn Schiller as a sexual present. Eddie was so pleased he gave John a quarter pound of hard cocaine.
John thought Nash the most evil man he'd ever met but couldn't figure him out. So John just hung around.
While delivering drugs, John became intimate with the criminal underground. "From the outside, their homes or apartments looked perfectly respectable. On the inside, however, they were armed camps containing entire rooms filled with crates of automatic weapons, shrapnel grenades and ammunition, suitcases packed with counterfeit money, boxes and bags crammed with jewelry and narcotics." (�naked people movies� King)
At home in Oregon in early 1981, Dawn refused for months to answer John's phone calls. Eventually she relented.
In June, 1981, five months after fleeing him, Schiller reunited with John in West Los Angeles. It was just two days before the most frightening week of John's life.
In late June, Holmes was in a bad position. He'd smoked a couple of drug deliveries for the Wonderland Gang, a group of drug dealers (Joy Miller, William Ray Deverell and Ron Launius) who lived in a stucco house (formerly belonging to the rock group Paul Revere and the Raiders) at 8763 Wonderland Avenue on a steep, winding road in the hills above Hollywood.
The name on the lease of the house was Joy Miller, a 46-year old junkie with an arrest record for dealing. She lived with her heroin addict lover Billy De Verell, 42, who'd been arrested 42 times. They lived with 37-year old drug smuggler Ron Launius who, one day, beat up John with a walking stick when the �naked people movies� star smoked a coke delivery. Then Ron asked Holmes how he was going to make good.