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On Conductor John Wilson’s Full Dress and The First Porn Movie I Ever Did, 1

From 2019: For those of you who know that, as well as being a retired porn actress, I also write porn for pleasure (actually genteel erotica but you know and I know it’s porn, lady porn, but PORN), Full Dress being a riff on my old boss Rouben Mamoulian’s classic The Song of Songs—you know, the one where Marlene Dietrich has a rich would-be composer for a husband and a young, sensitive, bespectacled conductor for a lover, inspiring them both to artistic heights through her Mighty Marlene Power. Oh, baby. This is the movie that inspired me to emulate you in my youth.

But just so you don’t go on thinking this is some kind of fanblog (really, I’m not a fan*, just crazy in love with the bloke below) I thought I’d spend a posting to tell you all how I got my first gig in pictures.

John ExposedAbove John’s arousingly exposed suspender: Nina Simone sings Cole Porter’s “All of You” just for my wild Geordie lad.

This happened in San Francisco—in the 70s a paradise for the sexually adventurous—and coming after the time I worked as classic film director Rouben Mamoulian‘s amanuensis, which was after the time I posed nude for a blind sculptor in St-Paul-de-Vence, which was after the time I danced topless in a mob-run bar in Red Hook, which was after the time I was the night solfeggist at ASCAP…

So anyway. One lovely summer evening about six weeks after I hit the city I went with a (legit) actress friend to a house party up on Potrero Hill, mostly because she enticed me with the information that the party would be featuring a hot tub. (Am such a pushover for hot tubs.) Well, at the party there was this cute but obvious older guy from London (trimmed ginger beard, open shirt, bead bracelet—no one goes California like the English) named Paul, who owned the house and who invited me seulement for a session of coke+quaaludes and a nice soak later, after all the other guests have left. Then he gave me his card. (This was only the second time a man ever gave me his business card before we had sex, and it wouldn’t be the last)…

Part 2 “Zombie Love Slave” here.
Part 3 “Sausalito Hot Tub” here.
Part 4 “Lovelace” here.

*No, really, I’m in love with John but he plows through Gershwin like a bull moose and treats Bernstein like Bernstein’s Saruman and he’s Frodo. How could any red-blooded American woman countenance such effrontery to our national treasures?**

**He does, however, conduct Elgar and Vaughan Williams like an angel.

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

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Pre-Code Thrillers and The First Porn Movie I Ever Did, 2

I booked my first acting gig as a result of getting into a bondage game with that producer from England with the hot tub. Pau—sorry, think I’ll call him Basingstoke* from now on—and I were fooling around in his sex dungeon when he asked me if the place was giving me any story ideas. This is how movies are born.

I told him it reminded me of one of my favorite flicks from the golden pre-Code days, The Mask of Fu Manchu (MGM, 1932) [VN], starring Boris Karloff as Fu Manchu and Myrna Loy as his “ugly and insignificant” daughter, Fah Lo See. With Karen Morley, Charles Starrett, etc etc and a cast of literally hundreds of male extras of various types. Was especially partial to the oiled and muscular mamelukes.

“Torturing Terence” from THE MASK OF FU MANCHU is available on my YT channel here / The entire film is available to watch here

mask of fu manchuFah Lo See watches with lust-crazed eyes as her dad turns the handsome English adventurer into her zombie love slave. She promises to be gentle, John.

Part 1 “Full Dress” here.
Part 3 “Sausalito Hot Tub” here.
Part 4 “Lovelace” here.

*All in affection, Paul.

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

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Lovelace the Film, Or How to Give Penilingism a Bad Name and The First Porn Movie I Ever Did, 4

I only caught this flick on Prime because Peter was in it, and Peter’s the only Gyllenhaal I think I’d actually enjoy having a beer with even now. The last time we met in New York he had just done Jarhead. Maggie was six months pregnant and being fussed over by her mother, Stephen was in the men’s room on his Blackberry talking to his analyst, and Jake was skulking outside the restaurant—we were at Balthazar—wearing a hoodie and hiding in the shadows. It was that kind of family.

Peter Sarsgaard in LovelaceYes, teenage Cantara made out in early 70s Minneapolis with males who looked and dressed exactly like this. Peter Sarsgaard in Lovelace (2013).

One of the first things Peter did, after we were introduced and he gave first Mister Grumble then me a firm friendly handshake, was try to engage us in a conversation about Melungeons. “You know,” he told us mock-confidentially, “Elvis was a Melungeon.” I evinced surprise and interest—I’d never heard the term before, ever—and Peter obviously was about to launch into a carefully-considered patter about Melungeons, when Maggie came over to fetch him. He smiled at us a dazzling smile, excused himself and trotted off with her.

So for now, enough of Peter and on to the movie he was in: Lovelace, a 2013 indie based on the book Ordeal by Linda Boreman aka Linda Lovelace, which is chiefly about her experience making the influential porn classic Deep Throat (1972). As a movie it doesn’t play too badly; some hack wrote the script, but the same politically savvy gay filmmakers who produced/directed The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, Howl, The Celluloid Closet, etc evidently had a lot of artistic control over this project. So there’s quite a lot of fooling around with the narrative structure and other arty bullshit like that, but it’s not enough to hide the fact that there’s really no core idea or message. Not to mention there’s not a lot of entertainment value, either… Nope, in this package there’s absolutely nothing clever, insightful, sensitive, or aesthetically satisfying—all screen values, incidentally, which would NOT be out of place in a porn movie.

Peter was good, but Peter’s always good at playing soft-spoken villains. What really interested me was Hank Azaria’s portrayal of one of my directors, Gerard Damiano. A small role but well-executed. Mr Damiano himself was soft spoken, I remember, and very patient. His was the last word on the set. Everyone respected him. He also paid me a compliment I immediately put into my mental jewelry box, and there it’s stayed ever since…

Part 1 “Full Dress” here.
Part 2 “Zombie Love Slave” here.
Part 3 “Hot Tub” here.
Part 5 to come…

EXTRA! Here’s Peter in the miniseries Wormwood, with a free link to HP Albarelli’s fascinating, terrifying book about Dr Frank Olson and the CIA

EXTRA EXTRA! Here’s my rendering “Penilingism” on DeviantArt

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

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Cantara Christopher in Sadie (Bob Chinn director, Mitam Productions, 1980) as Indexed in the Database of the British Film Institute; and “Pictures of Lily” by Pete Townshend

This isn’t the picture of me at the BFI Database. It was sent to me by “John Fairfax”, who saw my posting on Twitter about my last feature film and my irritated comment about how I thought the British Film Institute had mixed me up with another (probably Asian) actress. And the dear chap actually went through the grueling task (in the name of research, of course) to find proof positive that the girl in the sarong in the other screenshot is not me, mostly because of the arms, hair, and height. And he sent it to me! So here I am in Sadie, a softcore version of Maugham’s story “Rain”, entertaining two men on the island, presumably Borneo. The bloke in the cap is my husband Doc, the only one on the island allowed to touch my goodies.

Sadie, 1981

Above: The Who and Pete Townshend’s love song to sex workers everywhere, “Pictures of Lily”.

This was not only my last feature, but the last film of any length (including loops, shorts etc) I did during my screen days in San Francisco, before I got pregnant and eloped with the father of my child to New York’s East Village.

For years I’ve talked about my porn career like it was a lark—a daredevil stunt I pulled and lived to tell the tale. I certainly was never more physically beautiful than when I was in my early 20s, and really, I’ve got to tell you, it is a kick in the first flowering of old age to know that somewhere, somehow, even now yet still, someone is probably doing the stroke dance with one of your pictures. Because as long as a buck can be made from it, porn will never disappear.

Now here comes the freakin’ British Film Institute to spoil my fun. Now I have to consider myself a lousy but legitimate actress rather than a pretty good porn one? Do you Brits have to put a damper on everything?

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

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Cantara Christopher as Simona Wing in the Porn Classic, Beyond Your Wildest Dreams (1981, Gerard Damiano director), Just for the Man I Love, BBC Conductor John Wilson

From 2020. Yesterday, Thanksgiving, a fan (thanks, Brian!) sent me a screenshot from one of my later movies, Beyond Your Wildest Dreams.

I’m looking at you, John Wilson.

Beyond Your Wildest Dreams 940x512For Dream Girl #1: Carlos Santana’s hit “Oye como va” which I danced topless to in the 70s.

Lead in this feature was a fascinating woman named Juliet Anderson (here’s her interview in The Rialto Report), a classroom teacher who, in early middle age (39), started in porn and quickly became a star due to her talent in enthusiastic penilingism, plus she photographed well doing it. I was a little more delicate going about it but I think no less effective as an Oriental love doll. Fan Brian likens this pose to the one in “Cantara, 1973” except in 1973 I was 18 and this flick was shot 8 years later on a proper set.

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

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John Wilson and Orchestra at the Royal Albert and Holly Does Hollywood in Body Double, Written and Directed by Brian De Palma (Columbia, 1984)

The flick Holly Does Hollywood is fictional, of course, a fictional movie in the world of a real movie called Body Double, which was conceived and executed by the man who in an ideal world would be king of Hollywood, Brian De Palma.

De Palma’s affectionately knowing, utterly non-patronizing visit to pornland is a bit of a fantasy, of course. No flick I ever did or saw had a budget big enough to afford a mirror ball, let alone an MGM-sized dance floor (though Damiano’s later movies came close). But scale aside, De Palma understood the thing that kept nearly all of us, cast and crew, jazzed while we were being pushed to get out product, and that is: When you are making a porn movie, you are making a movie.

Now, every so often I’d remember this. I’d be in the middle of a take, and like a klieg wash switching on I’d suddenly become very aware of everything around me: the lights, the mikes, the crew, the director, the luxuriously gorgeous surroundings (half my films were done in those sumptuous private homes in Marin County), the smooth-skinned, sweet-smelling people touching me, the amused audience (most of the homeowners would hang around watching us film)—and the realization would thrill me so perceptibly I would be open to the moment and I’d like to think it showed up in my performance.

Which is the same jazzed-up open-to-the-momentness I thought I saw in John Wilson one evening when I was trawling online for classic show tunes and stumbled onto my bonny in a 2012 BBC-TV clip, commanding the podium in the middle of the Royal Albert, surrounded by an orchestra of eighty and an audience of 6,000, conducting a hot piece of Jule Styne and shimmying like a brazen hussy. And when I say shimmying like a brazen hussy, understand: I’m the brazen hussy he was shimmying like. I fell in love with him because I recognized him. I got his number. Or so it felt like…

Brian De PalmaAbove Melanie Griffith and Craig Wasson: The Liverpool group Frankie Goes to Hollywood, who made their initial splash in 1984 (dig it) with the best stroke song ever written, “Relax”. Of course it was banned by the BBC.

And so for over three years I’ve been following my Tyneside lad’s career and person, not as a fan, really, but as an…interested party. So you know I’m going to sit up and take notice like I did when John, conducting in 2019 possibly the last John Wilson Orchestra concert ever at the Royal Albert for the BBC Proms, looked deadly serious, almost toothache-grim, at first when he commanded the stage. Especially when you compare him to that cocky whippersnapper who took the podium back in 2011…

I don’t mean to read a lot into this, maybe he did have a migraine or a toothache at the start. But I think more probably he’s thinking differently (that is, more “seriously”) about things nowadays. Eight years have passed between those two appearances, after all, and I’m sure he’s gone through scads of internal changes during that time and made some interesting decisions we’ll all find out about, sooner or later. It’d be sad if it’s John himself who thinks it’s now “unseemly” for him to shimmy in public anymore (I’m way not the only one to have noticed his gorgeous limey shimmy); but it would be a sadder thing if John’s taking the nudge-nudge hints and advice of others to heart.

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

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Kiss Me Kate, Another Cole Porter Musical with Dirty Lyrics, Played by The John Wilson Orchestra and Conducted by John Wilson, BBC Proms 2014, Complete

John and O don’t always perform semi-staged fully-voiced musicals badly at their BBC Proms appearances at the Royal Albert Hall—their 2012 My Fair Lady was pretty much all right, no shenanigans there (pronounced The Guardian, “John Wilson’s adapted score—which borrows from Andre Previn’s movie arrangement—adds a sparkle to even the most drearily expository songs: the flutes somehow sound cheekier, the brass ruder, the strings zingier”). And in fact their 2014 Kiss Me Kate was as it was meant to be: big, sexy and playful. Winsome John even gets a speaking part!

Kiss Me Kate
Above John and the hilarious Louise Dearman as singer/sexworld adventuress Lois Lane (Yes I swear to God, that’s the name the writers of this classic 1948 Broadway musical gave her—get it?): The entire audio recording of BBC Proms 2014’s Kiss Me Kate.

Now, we all know about “Too Darn Hot” with its descriptions of nice normal congress (“I’d like to sup with my baby tonight / Play the pup with my baby tonight”) and “Tom, Dick or Harry” with its lyrics “I’m a maid mad to marry and would take double quick / Any Tom, Dick or Harry, any Tom, Harry or Dick” and the lilting refrain “A-dick-a-dick dick dick, a-dick-a-dick dick dick”…

But did you ever stop to think about the song “Always True to You in My Fashion”? Which was one of my party pieces years and years ago (alternating with “I Cain’t Say No” from Oklahoma). I’ve given it some thought and what I worked out is this: Lois isn’t just your ordinary sex supplier—no, she specializes in those extra-special somethings that make a man (well, certain men) happy and willing to pay top dollar for them. Not to mention that in every verse she pretty much announces her rates for rough stuff, plus a type of sex play I could never get into:

  • There’s a madman known as Mac
    Who is planning to attack
    If his mad attack means a Cadillac, okay!…
  • I would never curl my lip
    To a dazzling diamond clip
    If a clip meant “Let ‘er rip!”
    I’d not say nay…
  • There’s an oilman known as Tex
    Who is keen to give me checks
    And his checks I fear
    Means that sex is here to stay…

…ending always with the last line, “But I’m always true to you darling in my fashion / Yes I’m always true to you darling in my way.” Which to me is the number-one indication she keeps it hot with her boyfriend because with him it’s, like I said, nice normal congress. You know, vanilla. But with her clients? As you may recall I was in The Business, where scenarios abound. (Remember Basingstoke?) All this to say it amuses me to no end to watch Lois size up within two seconds The Conductor, cunningly portrayed by my beloved John Wilson. Because I know exactly what’s going on in her head, in descending order:

  • How much do orchestra conductors make, anyway?
  • Tell mama what your kinks are.
  • Hey, he’s kinda cute. Skinny, but cute.

But don’t blame me, take it up with Cole Porter.

The entire 2014 BBC Proms concert Kiss Me, Kate with The John Wilson Orchestra is available here

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

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On Conductor John Wilson’s Orchestral Arrangement of “Now, Voyager” at the BBC Proms 2019 and The First Porn Movie I Ever Did, 3

Dearest John Wilson, Conductor, it makes me happy to be in your audience and I don’t require you at all to be in mine—mostly because, as Mister Grumble just pointed out, my flicks would probably give you a heart attack. It also makes me happy that you’re going to be concentrating more on the Classic Repertoire this season, although it means leaving your faithful John Wilson Orchestra fans for a time—and only because when you’re not playing American film music, you’re not on the podium making the kind of quasi-witty comments that would make even me wince, and I used to be Arthur Godfrey’s gag man back in the fifties.

Now VoyagerNow, Voyager (1942): Bette Davis as brave Charlotte Vale and Paul Henreid as her handsome weenie of a lover in this BBC2 Saturday Afternoon Movie I’ll bet John saw once upon a rainy day when he was a kid and couldn’t make head nor tail of, except for the music. Above: That’s my beloved John conducting the Sinfonia of London in this Max Steiner score, including the Warners Bros studio theme, which Steiner also wrote. Orchestration by Hugo Wilhelm Friedhofer.

By the way John my sweet Geordie lad, I’m getting a kick out of imagining you form the word “porn”. Pohhhrnnn.

On that note, I just want to let all of you know that I realize it’s not hard to find me. Really. I’m in the IMDb. I don’t even have to fill you in on what my screen name is because IMDb seems to have switched pretty much every one of my credits back to my legal name anyway, so it would be kind of pointless… All right. It’s Simona Wing. My castmates in my first movie, Dork & Sindy aka Playthings, gave it to me, and I consider it quite a lagniappe. Mister Grumble used it for my character’s name in his first novel (Tales from the Last Resort, Brave New Books, 2002) and no one has been able to get better use out of it since.

I have pleasant memories of that shoot. For one thing, it was shot in Marin County. In Sausalito! In a house overlooking the Bay. Do you see in that pic those houses up in the hills? The white house above the red roof, that’s where we shot.

For another thing, Craft Services was fantastic. You could graze all day.

And it was a friendly, clean shoot. Does anyone here who saw the flick remember what I was wearing before the guy in sunglasses stripped me naked, threw me into the hot tub and started chewing on my behind? That white blouse, that long black skirt, those pumps? That was my secretarial outfit, the one I wore a few months earlier in Beverly Hills when I worked for Rouben Mamoulian. Practically every day, I was that poor (took Sunset bus to foot of Schuyler Road, got off, wearing sneakers climbed hill, at Mamoulian’s door removed sneakers, put on pumps which I carried in my handbag). I remember I had one line which has since been coming back to me regularly, because whenever I run into an occasional fan, he (and it’s always a he) tends to quote it to me:

“Marin County been bery, bery good to me.”

Now, you have to be a real Saturday Night Live geek to recognize that line, and I’m not going to decipher it for you. But I suppose this showed people I could do voices, because I got a lot of work from this film, almost all of it involving fakey foreign-sounding accents. Like Fatima, woman of Borneo, in the softcore version of Sadie Thompson aka Rain by Somerset Maugham. I’m not kidding.

The entire film RAIN with Joan Crawford is available on my YT channel here

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

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For the Fourth: “What could be more American than Santana closing the live lesbian love act at the Screening Room in San Francisco, circa 1979?” ~Simona Wing

Just like—oh, say—my beloved John Wilson conducting “Knightsbridge” in Salford being the most English thing in the world…

Screening Room, SF 1979Above my old workplace, “Evil Ways” from the album Santana, 1969. Find Tito Puente’s “Oye Como Va?” played by Santana (from the album Abraxas, 1971) in my posting “Cantara Christopher as Simona Wing in the Porn Classic, Beyond Your Wildest Dreams (1981, Gerard Damiano director), Just for the Man I Love, BBC Conductor John Wilson” here.

Here’re my two connections to musician-composer Carlos Santana and his music. One, The Kid attended Santana’s alma mater, Mission High, in our neighborhood the Mission across from gorgeous Dolores Park, where he used to cut classes and take his girlfriend of the moment, wouldn’t you? And two, Santana’s “Evil Ways” was the last number in the live lesbian love act I used to do years earlier with the other girls employed by Katherine (wife of “History of the Blue Movie” Alex) de Renzy, bless her rapacious little heart. Eight shows a day. Tickets ten dollars, and this was 1979. We got visitors from everywhere, sailors and Japanese businessmen and tourists from the hotels. Katherine pushed the Screening Room as a classy joint, classier even than the better-known O’Farrell Theatre up the street, but apples and oranges. I guess naked pillow fights are better suited to some tastes.

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

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My Own Favorite Porn Movies: He May Have Been English, But He Knew What He Was Doing

Before I did porn movies, I actually went to porn movies in the 1970s a lot, on 42nd Street usually, and always with a (male) date. Chic porn made for great dates in those days. Below is a still from The Naughty Victorians (1975), which is based on the enormously influential 1908(?)  novel, The Way of a Man with a Maid, which I’d already read as a teenager; by Anonymous, who I’m convinced was a woman.

The Naughty Victorians

Never worked with star Beerbohn Tree—he filmed on the East Coast and I filmed exclusively in California—but after reading his thoughtful interview in The Rialto Report I’m sure I would have enjoyed working with him. Once again thanks, Ashley!

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

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Cantara, 1980

The producer of my first movie took this on his patio near the hot tub. Sorry, but he kept the nude shots.

Cantara, 1980.jpgMy youthful attempt to emulate Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus

PS – If you’re looking for my id, here it is.

PATREON

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Give a Girl a Break (MGM, 1952): The Movie That Clinches My 3-Degrees Connection to English Conductor John Wilson

From Simona Wing to Gerard Damiano to Helen Wood to Andre Previn to John Wilson—Cantara’s three degrees from her beloved conductor.

Give a Girl a Break (trailer here) is a US 1953 musical comedy film starring Debbie Reynolds and the dance team of Marge and Gower Champion. Helen Wood, Richard Anderson, Kurt Kaszner and a young Bob Fosse have featured roles. At only 88 minutes, Give a Girl a Break shows residual elements of the big project it started out to be, with a passable score by Burton Lane and Ira Gershwin, direction by Stanley Donen, and musical direction by Andre Previn.

Degree rule: You have to’ve personally worked with the person in the next degree. I worked with Damiano in his 1981 porn classic Beyond Your Wildest Dreams as Simona Wing; Damiano wrote and directed 1972’s Deep Throat, which Helen Wood (as Dolly Sharp) was in; Helen Wood co-starred in the musical Give a Girl a Break, on which the musical director was Andre Previn; Previn worked on the 2012 Proms My Fair Lady with my beloved John Wilson.

Above Marge, Debbie and Helen: The overture to the 2012 Proms My Fair Lady, with John conducting The John Wilson Orchestra in his own arrangement of Andre Previn’s orchestration of the film score.

GIVE A GIRL A BREAK is available in its entirety here

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON