Erotic Icon of the 1970s: Georgina Spelvin - Pornography's Pioneering Actress

Georgina Spelvin is a living legend in the X-rated erotica industry: as the subtitle to her book puts it – “erotic icon of the seventies”.

An experienced and independent woman in her late thirties when she freely chose to make adult “porn” movies, Spelvin rapidly shot to fame in the early days of the narrative adult film era after a starring role in one of the most acclaimed adult films of all time, The Devil in Miss Jones directed by Gerard Damiano. This film, and Spelvin’s subsequent work, emerged at a time when porn, although still only quasi-legitimate, was beginning to be reviewed by mainstream presses such as Variety and the New York Times. The legitimization of porn as adult erotic entertainment developed in tandem with Spelvin’s career in what she describes as “fuck films”. This makes her memoir an important social document of the immediate post sexual-revolution era.

The sexual-social-cultural revolution of the 1960s had birthed the adult film genre and it was in the process of becoming an accepted part of the movie landscape in the early 1970s due to the restriction of censorship law. From the initial one-day wonders of such directors as Eduardo Cemano to the burgeoning features of such as Gerard Damiano, Alex DeRenzy and Henry Paris, “porn” was a revolution in screen erotica, freed from all Judeo-Christian moral restraint regarding sexuality and the so-called proper status of women. In these early porn films, though skewed through the lens of male fantasy, women had the same freedom to express themselves sexually and a number of performers found tremendous personal and sexual satisfaction in the making of “fuck films”. Spelvin was one such performer and recounts her experiences with the mature intelligence of a woman who found reward and fulfilment in what she did.

The Devil Made Me Do It is Spelvin’s recollection of her entry into the porn world, the making of the film The Devil in Miss Jones, her subsequent life as theatrical performer and stripper through to her writing of the memoir and her cameo appearance in the Paul Thomas directed recent remake of her seminal film.

As such, the book falls into a category of what might be termed the “porn star memoir”. Linda Lovelace, star of Deep Throat, initiated this trend with the book Inside Linda Lovelace in which she enthused about the adult industry as giving her an immense personal and sexual fulfilment. Shortly after the publication of that book, however, Lovelace came into the manipulative clutches of anti-porn radical feminists Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon and wrote another book, Ordeal, in which she denounced the porn industry and her experience as rape.

Ever since Lovelace’s Ordeal any confession, biography or memoir of an adult actress has been filtered through the radical feminist perspective of victimology. Recently Traci Lords and even Jenna Jameson to a degree have maintained that sense of the adult star as being abused and even shameful of the work done in the adult field. Spelvin as author, to her credit, refuses outright to kowtow to the victimology argument – in fact in the caveat that begins The Devil Made Me Do It, she rejects this radical feminist judgment altogether. Spelvin assumes all the responsibility for her choices, actions and consequences. Never once was she victimized, coerced into doing something against her will or forced to perform. The experiences of the adult industry in her book – which range in description from the extraordinarily vivid and candid to the anecdotal and objective in detail – reveal the triumph and fulfilment this woman found in such experience.

But the joyous read that is Spelvin’s book comes not from the positivist recollection of making porn and stripping but from the cleverly constructed sense of narrative through this memoir, in which her sexual experience and fulfilment reveals her not as a sexual object but as a sexual subject.

Although porn is now a billion dollar a year industry, it is still considered taboo for women to find fulfilment, let alone sexual self-actualization in such a “bad-girl” role. The stereotypical view of porn, inherited from the radical anti-feminists is that porn represents the degrading sexual objectification of women. The victimology argument so popular enhances this, making porn despite its widespread acceptability a morally problematic art form for women.

The majesty of Spelvin’s The Devil Made Me Do It is that her perspective as a woman who found sexual fulfilment in what has traditionally been considered an objectified role (porn star and stripper) transforms her from object to subject. Although Spelvin describes in detail what she did (from her first facial cum shot to her last gig as a stripper dancing with a snake) never can she be considered an object. The porn world seen through her eyes makes her a sexual subject, an active, willing and equal participant in the screen realization of sexual fantasy. Although porn may still be a domain catering to male fantasy, Spelvin clearly shows that porn itself far from objectifying her within that fantasy allowed her the opportunity to act (literally perform) as a sexual subject.

That fine line between performance and sexual self-actualization was always the beauty of Spelvin as a performer. Not only could she act well enough to carry a feature, but her figure, with the shape of a tradition that dates to the Broadway chorine, carried with it in her films the grace of sexual discovery and expression.

And, unlike the young girls so often attracted to porn, Spelvin was a mature woman: that was beautiful to see. In Spelvin, one could see the interplay of performance and pleasure, the sexual intelligence that finds fulfilment in the work not as sexual abandon but as performance art. When in The Devil Made Me Do It, Spelvin describes the sex in The Devil in Miss Jones and her stripper routine she does so with a passionate intensity that states the daring religious allegory of the former (with allusions to Jean-Paul Sartre) and the artistry of the latter.

The Devil Made Me Do It although concerning the porn trade for its initial third, slowly widens in focus to include more of the details of Spelvin’s life – from her romantic attractions to her personal sexual experiences to her relations with her parents, particularly her mother who was with her backstage during some of her stripper appearances.

Spelvin is also most revealing about the limitations placed on such performers – specifically that such women are not expected to be educated, intelligent or literate, which Spelvin undoubtedly is. As Spelvin recounts the details of audience interaction, it is clear that her male audience see only one tiny aspect of this woman’s achievement. But that too is the culture of objectification, the refusal to see the porn star / stripper as a thinking, feeling sexual subject.

In skilfully, shamelessly breaking through that barrier between sexual objectification and sexual subjectification, Spelvin has written a bold and distinctive memoir.

Reading about her sexual self-actualization in tandem with her experiences in adult film, its repercussions on her private, public and personal life and a brief hint of the legalistic and moralistic obstacles she faced is a rewarding demystification of porn. Spelvin in the caveat to the book states that it is not a reference work. Indeed, it is not. However, it does fill in and personalize the details found in reference books from the narrative perspective of the participating woman as sexual subject. That makes the book not only honest, but defiant and assertive, the triumph of an erotic life lived not in regret but to the fullest.

By personalizing a type of filmmaking and sex culture that while accepted is still greeted with moral condemnation, Spelvin in The Devil Made Me Do It makes it accessible. Elegantly, fluidly written in a manner which combines anecdote and recollection with the detail of a well-sustained and well-characterized narrative, Spelvin provides a valuable addition to the growing material now covering “porno chic”. Spelvin can be honest, erotic and personable. She was a genuine pioneer in the transformation of porn from objectifying women to subjectifying them, carried on in the work of Candida Royalle who did what the circumstances of the time could not yet offer Spelvin as a woman – take creative control of the behind the scenes process - and her memoir is a revealing and entertaining read.