Avon Films: Journeys into the Dark Heart of XXX – Part 1, The Boss – Podcast 86

The 1970s was the decade of adult films and theaters in New York City. It started out with cheap and crude black-and-white softcore films, enjoyed the breakthrough of porno-chic spearheaded by the landmark film Deep Throat (1973), and ended with big-budget films that looked like regular Hollywood films – with fully explicit sex.

At the one end of the spectrum were champagne directors like Radley Metzger, Chuck Vincent and Joe Sarno – experienced filmmakers who turned their skills to the new and commercially attractive market for pornography by making sparkling, sophisticated or humorous movies.

At the other end of the scale were the Avon films, a series associated with the chain of New York XXX theaters that included the Avon 42nd St, the Avon Love and the Avon 7. The Avon films form the sleaziest chapter of golden age adult films. These were not the mythical cross-over movies that would entice mainstream viewers into the theaters.

In fact when U.S. President Ronald Reagan ordered a comprehensive investigation into pornography in the mid 1980s, the resulting report held up examples of the most reprehensible films – and Avon films were top of the list.

So who was behind the theater chain? Where did they find people to appear in the movies? And who made these strange, violent films that still endure today?

Today The Rialto Report starts a multi-part look into the Avon empire, an untold history that stretches back almost a century.

This podcast is 62 minutes long, and is accompanied by the written article below.

With thanks to George Payne, Estelle Scheier, Elizabeth Trotta, N. Carroll Mallow, Mildred ‘Mickey’ Offen, Brian O’Hara, ‘Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville’ by David Freeland (NYU Press), byNWR.com and many others who contributed to this oral history.

The musical playlist for this episode can be found on Spotify.

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Prologue: The Ghosts of George Payne

The phone rings with an insistent tone. It’s George Payne. The phone always rings more urgently when George calls. It matches his impatient manner.

His rasping movie-trailer-voiceover-ready tone is unmistakable and, as usual, he starts without preamble: “I’ve been thinking about the Avon films. We made them at Vince Benedetti’s Adventure Studios in Queens.”

George has perfected the art of stream-of-conscious questions, and they tend to emerge in reverse order.

“Why don’t we go over there and take a look? What happened to that place? What are you doing today?”

I point out that Vince died a few years ago, and that he’d sold Adventure Studios a few years before that. There’ll be nothing left there now, I say.