Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story: Part 5, Deep Throat Explodes (and so does Sammy Davis Jr.)

On the previous episode of Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story:

When budding film director Gerard Damiano saw Linda Traynor/Boreman giving head, he stopped shooting the short sex loop he was planning then and there, choosing instead to make a feature-length movie around her unique talent.

Linda had her doubts, but her husband Chuck was all in on the idea, loving the $1,200 payment that came with the role, and its potential to further inject him and Linda into the heart of the sex industry. But when the movie production started, Chuck was less pleased with the generous attention Linda received on set, and with what he perceived was the disrespectful way he was treated by the movie’s crew.

While Linda never wanted to be in the film, she did find a measure of relief making the movie. The kindness she was shown by cast and crew was reassuring, even if it was accompanied by Chuck’s anger.

As filming wrapped, the crew returned to NY for post-production work on Deep Throat (1972). And Chuck and Linda began thinking about their next steps – as both manager and performer as well as husband and wife.

You can read or listen to the previous episodes here.

This episode running time is 63 minutes.

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1. ‘Deep Throat’: From Production to Premiere

When production of ‘Deep Throat’ wrapped in January 1972, Chuck was primed to return to New York and resume working in the adult film business – with the help of his wife, of course. But on the way back, Chuck told Linda he wanted to make a stop in North Carolina to visit his mother.

Chuck and Elaine

By this time, Linda knew Chuck’s backstory – or at least what he’d allowed her to know. He had shared how his mother, Elaine, had been young and unwed when she got pregnant with him, and that he was raised by his grandparents. How as a kid, contact with his mother had been almost nonexistent. It wasn’t her fault, Chuck said, she’d wanted to raise her son herself but her parents wouldn’t let her. His grandparents meant well, and Chuck loved them, but he had lost a lot of time – time that Elaine and Chuck were now determined to make up.

Linda felt a glimmer of hope at the prospect of visiting Elaine. Maybe she’d be able to understand Chuck a little more after meeting his mother, and maybe that would help her manage the relationship. Maybe she could even forge a bond with Elaine that would encourage Chuck to treat her better.

But as Linda later shared, the trip did little to help improve the couple’s dynamic:

“It didn’t take me long to realize that Elaine wouldn’t be my ally. Chuck was the apple of her eye; he could do no wrong. When he was with his mother, Chuck became the perfect gentleman. As long as we were under her roof, he was even polite to me. His mother was obviously crazy about her son. She was proud of his having been a Marine, a pilot, and a man in business for himself.

“Chuck’s mother was fifty-ish, black-haired, and heavily made up: she favored pale blue eye shadow and black drawn-on eyebrows. She told us stories going back to the time when Chuck was a little boy and she had left his father.