John Holmes (pornographic Actor) - Porn Career

Porn Career

"John Holmes was to the adult film industry what Elvis Presley was to rock 'n' roll. He simply was The King." —Cinematographer Bob Vosse in the 1998 documentary Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes.

The time when Holmes began his career in porn is difficult to determine because of several different and conflicting stories that he later gave due to the illegal nature of it at the time. The story that is the most well known is that he claimed that in 1966 he met a young woman who offered him $100 to have sex with her on camera in a seedy apartment in Los Angeles which he made his first silent 8mm loop. The most plausible story is what his wife, Sharon, later told interviewers is that in 1967, while currently unemployed and recovering from his collapsed lung ailment, Holmes would attend a men's card playing club which was called the Poker Palace, located in Gardena, California, a few evenings a week to play cards with a few friends where a photographer, standing next to Holmes at a men's room urinal, saw his unusually large penis size and then gave him his business card with an offer to pose in still photographs. According to adult film director Kirdy Stevens (documented in John Holmes: A Life Measured in Inches), Holmes had actually started adult work in 1965 when he and his girlfriend (starlet) Sandy Dempsey were hired by Stevens and his spouse Helene Terrie to appear in nudist films along with several other unknowns. Stevens said that two years later in 1967 he hired Holmes and Dempsey to appear in one of the first series of hardcore loops for mail order in the United States produced by Stevens and Terrie. The loop can be seen in Stevens' 1979 hardcore film Little Me and Marla Strangelove. Holmes would also pose in various underground porn magazines as well as appearing in additional 8mm loops or stag films, while keeping his profession a secret from his wife until 1968.

Determining the number of films he made during the early part of his career is difficult because the ad copy rarely named him. Those that did usually used entirely inconsistent names. For example, one early "Swedish Erotica" brochure from 1973 has five loops featuring Holmes, each with a different name. In the early years of his porn career, Holmes was nicknamed "The Sultan of Smut", a pun on Babe Ruth's nickname, The Sultan of Swat.

In 1971, Holmes' career began to take off with a porn series built around a private investigator named Johnny Wadd most of which were written and directed by Bob Chinn. The success of the first film of the series, Johnny Wadd, created an immediate demand for more Johnny Wadd films so Chinn followed up with Flesh of the Lotus (1971). A steady stream of Johnny Wadd films followed which included Tell Them Johnny Wadd is Here (1976), Liquid Lips (1976), The Jade Pussycat (1977), The China Cat (1978), and Blond Fire (1978), all of which were huge box office successes.

With the success of Deep Throat (1972), Behind the Green Door (1972), and The Devil in Miss Jones (1973), porn became chic, although its legality was still hotly contested. In 1973, Holmes was arrested during this time for pimping and pandering, but he avoided prison time by becoming an informant for the LAPD. Using his status as an informer, it is alleged Holmes systematically had his competition in the porn industry arrested, although there is no substantiated evidence to support the claim that anyone in the adult industry was arrested as a result of Holmes' efforts. Retired LAPD Detective, Tom Lang, later talked about becoming Holmes' undercover contact and handler while Lang was working as a vice squad officer during the 1970s and explained in the 1998 documentary Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes about working with Holmes and how Holmes would contact him with information about the underground porn industry as well as give him the names of various actors, actresses, directors and the financiers of the porn films and when they would be filmed.

By 1978, Holmes was reputed to be earning as much as $3,000 a day as a porn actor. He starred at a time when personality could compensate for a lack of other aesthetic characteristics, and a certain amount of acting ability was still demanded of porn stars.

By the late 1970s, his consumption of cocaine and freebasing was becoming a serious problem. Professionally, it affected his ability to maintain an erection, as is apparent from his flaccid performance in the 1980 film Insatiable. To support himself and his drug habit, Holmes ventured into crime, selling drugs for gangs, prostituting himself to both men and women, and committing credit card fraud and petty theft. In 1976, he met a 16-year-old girl, named Dawn Schiller, who became his girlfriend. After Holmes fell on hard times, he prostituted both her and himself, as well as beating her in public.