Whatever Happened to Mary Stuart? – Podcast 97

Have you ever had that experience when you’re watching a film – and you become fascinated with one particular actor?

You’re seeing them play a part in the movie, and you know it’s just a performance. It’s fiction. Acting is just acting, right? But then you wonder how much of their real self might be coming through the screen.

A few years ago, I saw an unusual piece of film that featured an actor called Mary Stuart. Mary was a reasonably well-known X-rated performer in 1970s New York. She featured in a number of successful adult films, like like The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976), Naked Came the Stranger (1975), Wet Rainbow (1974), Memories Within Miss Aggie (1974). She was a sweet-looking and spontaneous presence, always engaging and interesting. But outside of her films, hardly anything was known about her. And when she eventually disappeared from the screen around 1977, she seemed to disappear from the world too.

Now this film I watched was actually an old sex loop. It was a silent and primitive thing that I doubt anyone else has ever even seen. It was similar to hundreds of others that were made around that time: it was a plotless, pretty pointless exercise. And it had bad camerawork too.

But then something in the loop happened that surprised me. And that one moment captured on film made me wonder what I was seeing. Was this an intentional part of the movie, or was this a real moment and something else was actually going on?

That moment sent me on a journey that lasted for several years, as I set out to piece together Mary Stuart’s eventful life – in and out of film – and see if she could be found to tell her story, and answer my question: Whatever happened to Mary Stuart?

Mary Stuart

This episode is 37 minutes long.

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

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I carefully pick the reel of 8mm film out of the tin in which it has sat for decades. Inside the metal container, there’s also a piece of paper on which a handwritten note has been scribbled: “Mary and Levi and other – 9/23/1973.” I wonder if anyone has seen this film since it was first made.

I spool the film reel onto a projector, and switch it on. Images from the fragile strip start to flicker across a white-washed wall that acts as a makeshift screen. There’s no title card or credits or clue as to what’s about to unfold.

Two figures materialize in primary colors, sitting on an unpleasantly brown couch. They seem to be talking to each other, though there’s no sound except for the flicker of the projector. The film zooms in, clumsily and without warning, on the face of the male. He is recognizable as adult film performer Levi Richards. He smirks gently at his female companion, flirting shyly with her.

The camera jerks sideways to study his partner, clumsily re-focusing so we can linger on her features. She has a lean ballet-dancer body, cropped dark hair, and wears round Billie Jean King glasses that are comically large on her puckish, boyish features. Her mouth pouts in an asymmetrical and asexual way and, when she smiles, her teeth protrude unevenly like a white zipper.