Porn/Mafia by Luke Ford
LUZDEDOS
Fredric Dannen's book Hit Men details the Mafia's domination of the rock
music industry since the 1950s through crooks such as disc jockey Alan
Freed and record company owners and executives like Morris Levy, Syd
Nathan and Walter Yetnikoff. The music industry, like porn and the rest of
entertainment, is largely run by Jews who work with the Mafia.
Among Morris Levy's partners was the originator of the child porn industry
- Tommy Eboli who became head of New York's Genovese family. Tommy died by
gunfire in 1972. Morris Levy's friend from childhood Vincent Gigante now
heads the Genovese family.
Organized crime began its domination of the porn industry in the 1960s.
Two grand juries - New York and Bexar County, Texas - found in the early
'70s that organized crime controls 90% of America's hardcore pornography
business. In 1978, a group of law enforcement officers, coordinated
through the Investigative Services Division of the Washington D.C. Police
Department studied the level of organized crime in porn because of its
knowledge "that organized crime generally involves itself in situations
where the gain far outreaches the risk. The pornography industry fits this
description."
The project found a high level of criminal control of the sex industry
because of the billions of dollars involved and the low priority obscenity
enforcement had within police departments and prosecutors' offices. The
imposition of minimal fines and no jail time upon random convictions
resulted in a low risk high profit endeavor for criminals in porn.
A police captain in Fayetville, North Carolina told the Meese Commission,
"Left unchecked, organized crime, in a traditional sense, can suck the
lifeblood out of a community. Many times, their enterprises have been
viewed as "service" oriented or victimless crimes. However, it teasrs at
the moral fiber of society and through unbridled corruption, it can weaken
the government."
The 1978 Federal Bureau of Investigation Report Regarding the Extent of
Organized Crime Involvement in Pornography concluded: "...Organized crime
involvement in pornography...is significant, and there is an obvious
national control directly, and indirectly by organized crime figures of
that industry in the United States. Few pornographers can operate in the
United States without involvement with organized crime.... The huge
profits gathered by organized crime in this area and redirected to other
lucrative forms of crime, such as narcotics and investment in legitimate
business enterprises, are cause for national concern, even if there is
community apathy toward pornography."
The most organized part of organized crime is La Cosa Nostra - this thing
of ours - better known as the Mafia. This group of thugs is best known to
the public through The Godfather movies, made with the cooperation of La
Cosa Nostra, portray the Mob sympathetically. The truth is much harsher.
Over the past 60 years, the Mafia has murdered thousands of people, many
of them innocent, in its pursuit of money and power.
The American Mafia remains the most dangerous and resilient
criminal organization in the world, able to withstand until recently every
legal assault, competition from new forms of organized crime, and social
change.
"In the past few decades, when every other social institution in America
has either been shattered or changed forever, the Mafia has continued to
thrive... Like a virulent parasite, it has adapted to the host body,
fastening on whatever the law or social convention allowed: organized
kidnapping was abandoned for rum-running during the Prohibition,
bootlegging was replaced by the black market during
World War II, which was replaced by illegal gambling and narcotics
trafficking, and so on.
"The Mafia is a big-city phenomenon, because the right conditions
exist there for it: unholy alliances between politics, business and
crime; police corruption..." (Goombata, 1993, p.2,3)
The American Mafia is a coalition of 24 separate groups of
organized criminals throughout the nation, with formal membership
restricted to men of Italian-American descent. Each group is known
as a "family," and the overall organization is usually called La
Cosa Nostra (this thing of ours). Law enforcement estimates its annual
take at over $100 billion a year.
The boss of the Gambino family is America's most notorious
organized crime figure - John Gotti. Few leading mafiosi die naturally.
Most are knocked off. La Cosa Nostra has the world's worst retirement
program. (Fredric Dannen)
New York hosts more than two-thirds of the Mafia membership (about
3000 men) and the five ruling families collect most of the
approximately thirty billion dollars earned by organized crime each
year in this country. (Goombata, p.4) The Gambino family is the
richest of all the families, taking that name in honor of its
progenitor, the late Carlo Gambino who was the mafia's preeminent
figure in the pornography trade. Carlo is also the model for Mario Puzo's
godfataher.
Gambino operated his porno business via his lieutenant, Ettore (Terry)
Zappi and Zappi's son Anthony.
When the video cassette revolution arrived, Carlo set up companies that
handled the new business, which his family soon dominated. (Goombata, p.
77)
"Gambino was much more circumspect about his connection to the
extremely profitable field of child pornography. His family
dominated that trade, despite the reluctance of some Gambino
chieftains; their normally quiescent wives were raising hell about
being involved in a "filthy" business.
"Gambino, a premier criminal capitalist, plowed profits from crime
into cash-transaction businesses in which the proceeds of illegal
activities could be hidden. Favorites included garbage collection,
vending machines, trucking, construction, garment manufacture,
restaurants, and assorted restaurant supply companies. All of these
specialized businesses were suited perfectly for Gambino's
favorite ploy, the "vertical monoply," in which he controlled the
business, it's workers and largest customers. The potential for
profit under such an arrangement, a monopolist's dream, were
breathtaking." (Goombata, p. 77-78)
The Gambino family earns its millions through drugs, extortion,
illegal gambling, pornography, union racketeering, robbery,
business swindles, hijacking, auto theft, loansharking and murder.
Competition can be deadly when the Mob enters the game. Fighting between
mobsters over the sex industry killed at least 25 persons in the last half
of the 1970s in New York City, Long Island, upper New York state and
northern New Jersey. At stake were Mob-dominated printing, distribution
and sales of X-rated books, magazines, toys, and movies in addition to
control of massage parlors and other forms of prostitution.
The book Murder Machine details the exploits of the DeMeo gang who worked
for the Gambino family. Roy DeMeo and his boss Anthony "Nino" Gaggi were
made members of the Gambinos. Nino was particularly close with Carlo
Gambino and his successor as godfather, Paul Castellano.
In the late 1960s and early '70s, Paul Rothenberg, with his partner
Anthony Argilla, dominated the processing of porno films in New York. Roy
DeMeo muscled in on the business and on July 27, 1973, murdered Paul.
"For 32-year old Roy, the murder was an epiphenous moment. He tried
explaining it to his young followers. "Ya know somethin'? After you kill
someone, anything is possible." (Murder Machine)
After his initial killing, Roy and his followers mowed down about 100
persons in the next 15 years. As well as dealing in extortion, car theft,
drugs and murder, Roy DeMeo bought and sold pornography in the millions of
dollars. He specialized in child pornography and bestiality. (Murder
Machine)
One evening Roy came by Nino's house and was drawn into an argument
between Nino and his newphew Dominick.
"Nino, a guy can't live on two-fifty a week with two kids and a wife. Tell
you what: Let's let Dom take care of our New Jersey porno thing - that'll
get him some more money."
The suggestion set Nino off. "No way! If his grandmother ever saw him
arrested with porno, it would kill her."
"What would she say," Dominick said, "if she saw me arrested for helping
shoot someone down in the street?"
Nino: "It's not the same thing. End of discussion!" (Murder Machine)
Go West Young Man
In early 1970, elements of the Colombo, Bonanno, Gambino and DeCavalcante
crime families moved from the East Coast and established porn operations
in California. As money from Deep Throat poured into organized crime
through the Perainos, the mob increased its infiltration of the porno
business. During the mid - 1970s, they engaged in extortion and violence
to gain control over independent pornographers.
A report by the Administrative Vice Division of the Los Angeles Police
Department estimated that by 1976 organized crime controlled 80% of the
Los Angeles-based porno movie production and distribution business.
"Organized crime families from Chicago, New York, New Jersey, and Florida
are openly controlling and directing the major pornography operations in
Los Angeles."
An investigative report submitted to the California Legislature by
the Attorney General of California discussed organized crime
infiltration into the pornography industry: "In the early
1970s...four organized crime groups moved in on pornography
operations in California. They met relatively little resistance
because the weak-structured organized crime group of Southern
California lacked the strength to deter the infiltration of organized
crime from the East.
"Organized crime figures first focused on production and retail
operations in California. In this effort, they established national
distribution networks and effectively resorted to illegal and unfair
business tactics. The newly arrived organized crime groups formed film
duplication companies which illegally duplicated the films of independent
producers and displayed them at nationwide organized crime controlled
theaters. Faced with continued piracy and lost profits, many legitimate
producers were forced to deal with organized crime controlled distribution
companies and film processing labs.
"After gaining control of many wholesale and retail companies,
organized crime forced other independent retailers out of business
through price manipulation. Wholesale prices to independent
retailers were raised while prices to organized crime cdontrolled
outlets were lowered. Independents were undersold by organized
crime controlled outlets until lost profits forced them out of
business. Many competitors were bought out which allowed the
subsequent raising of prices in other parts of the market."
In April, 1975, Los Angeles boss Dominic Brooklier met with Jimmy
Fratianno before Brooklier went off to prison for a couple of years on
federal conspiracy charges.
Fratianno remembers the meeting this way (Vengeance p. 255).
I says, "How come you let all this pornography get away from you?"
And he told me that Nick Licata thought it was por carilla - that's
Italian meaning dirt. He didn't want to fool with it. And he says, "From
now on we're going to fool with it."
He says, "I want you to go to Cleveland. I want you to talk to Leo Moceri
and Tony DelSanter and tell them to grab Reuben Sturman. Tell them he
can't operate in California unless we have a piece of it.
Also...grab...Teddy Gaswirth.
Dominic told me that Sturman [would] run to [the] New York [Family] and
New York would contact Los Angeles and we would split it three ways. He
said, Cleveland a third, New York a third, and Los Angeles a third.
When Dominic Brooklier and the hierarchy of his Los Angeles Mafia went to
prison in June 1975 on a federal conspiracy charge, Brooklier authorized
Fratianno, who lived in San Francisco, to become acting underboss for Los
Angeles.
According to former California Attorney General John Van De Kamp,
the arrival of home video cassette recorders on the market in 1979
stimulated the Gambino, DeCavalcante, Luchese and Columbo
crime families to enter the porn market through companies that
produced, duplicated, distributed and sold adult video tapes.
Because porn profits are usually in cash, no one knows exactly
how large the porn business is. Also, cash can be more easily
hidden from the IRS. Cash businesses such as porn allow the Mob to
introduce money earned from drugs and other illegal schemes into the
general economy.
"...Meyer Lansky developed, refined, and nearly perfected the techniques
now used by the Mob to protect and disguise their ill-gotten revenues.
Lansky's larcenous genius must also be credited with developing hte use of
tax havens, such as The Bahamas, as a shelter against IRS scrutiny."
(Rachel Ehrenfeld, Evil Money, p.5)
Mafiosi Joseph, Anthony and Louis Peraino became millionaires after making
and distributing Deep Throat. "They used profits from the film to build a
vast financial empire in the 1970s that included ownership of garment
companies in New York and Miami, investment companies... The Perainos also
used profits from Deep Throat to finance drug smuggling operation in the
Caribbean." (FBI)
Aladena Fratianno, a made member of a La Cosa Nostra organized
crime family and a former Capo and later acting boss of the Los
Angeles crime family, told the Meese Commission that large profits
keep organized crime in porn.
The 1986 Meese Commission concluded that "organized crime in its
traditional LCN forms and in other forms exerts substantial
influence and control over the obscenity industry. Though a significant
number of producers and distributors are not members of LCN families, all
major producers and distributors of obscene material are highly organized
and carry out illegal activities with a great deal of sophistication."
A 1975 LAPD memo claimed that the success of Deep Throat prompted a large
migration of major New York mob figures to Los Angeles. The report warned
that, once established in porn, the mob's next logical move would be into
the legitimate Hollywood movie business. And that's what happened.
In September of 1973, a Hollywood showbiz paper announced that
"two New York businessmen" named Louis and Joseph Peraino
had established "a major new film production and distribution
company" called Bryanston, with plans for making "at least 10
feature motion pictures within the next year."
The Perainos established Bryanston in July, 1971, shortly after
creating Damiano Film Productions. The two were "twin companies
engaged in the financing, acquisition, production and distribution of
motion picture film products of every kind, nature and gauge,"
according to a joint company prospectus that Louis Peraino
prepared for a New York bank. Damiano did porn while Bryanston
went legitimate.
One of the first legitimate movies that Bryanston financed and
produced inhouse - for $600,000 - was The Last Porno Flick which
was released in August, 1974 as The Mad, Mad Moviemakers. It
tells the story of two cab-driving buddies who, to raise $22,000 to
make a porno, con their Italian Roman Catholic family and friends
into investing in the projecting, telling the ladies it's a religious
movie. Complications arise when the porno becomes a hit.
The film, which bombed, also features a Brando-esque mafia boss.
The story pokes fun at the Perainos experience with Deep
Throat, which cost them $22,000 to make. According to a Bryanston
press release, the film was "based on a story and concept by
Joseph Torchio."
As Louis Peraino took his share of Deep Throat profits and turned
his attention to mainstream movies in 1973, father Anthony and
uncle Joseph took over the distribution of Deep Throat, shifting the
base of operations from New York to a network of companies in
Miami.
But Louis oversaw L.A. area distribution of Deep Throat even as he
pursued respectibility in Hollywood. Playing 13 times a day for ten years
at the Pussycat Theater in Hollywood, Throat earned $6.4 million at that
one location according to the theater owner.
One of Louis Peraino's key Throat reps was former Brooklynite Joseph
(Junior) Torchio, described by one LAPD investigator as "the best-known
trunk-buster (auto break-in artist) in New York." In 1973, Joseph became
Bryanston's director of finance.
Torchio first came to the attention of police in 1969, when on March
14, he set up the shooting of mafia associate Alfred Adorno.
Junior Torchio moved to LA later that year and set up a porn
production company with Jacob (Jack) Molinas, described in a
California Department of Justice report as a "con man, swindler,
disbarred attorney and former pro basketball player [Fort Wayne Pistons]."
An All American at Columbia University in the 1950s, Molinas was
convicted in 1963 as the "master fixer" in a point shaving scandal
that rocked college backetball in 1961.
After his release from prison in 1968, Molinas moved to Los
Angeles and entered the porn business. He delt with several known
figures in organized crime including Michael Zaffarano.
Torchio and Molinas received loans of $250,000 from Louis Peraino
in 1973 and 1974, which they defaulted on. With partner Bernard Gussoff,
Molinas used his money to set up a fur importing company called Berjac as
a front for distributing porn.
In September of 1974, Bryanston filed a lawsuit against Molinas for
non-payment of the loan. Two months later, Gussoff was beaten to
death in his Los Angeles apartment. The murder was never solved.
Less than a year later, in August, 1975, Molinas was shot and killed
as he stood with a female friend in the backyard of his Hollywood
Hills home. Three weeks later, Torchio was struck by a car and
killed on the Las Vegas strip. All the murders appear like mob hits.
Bryanston
Back in 1974, Louis Peraino's Bryanston was heralded as the
hottest independent distribution company in the motion picture
industry. The Perainos participation in organized crime was ignored by the
West Coast media as well as their past in pornography.
In October, 1974, the company rode a crest of hits - Andy
Warhol's Frankenstein, Return of the Dragon and The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre. With Chainsaw and Throat, Louis Peraino
gave the world the sex and violence trendsetters of the 1970s.
A prominent movie producer recalled a business meeting he once
had with Louis Peraino and company, saying "I didn't know if I was
negotiating for my picture or my life." (LA Times 6/13/82)
During a disagreement with Louis, "There were threats made
against me... My nose was threatened, my ears..."
One respected studio executive was unnerved when an LA Times
reporter called to ask him about an experience he had with
Perainos. "No way," the executive said. "As far as I'm concerned,
this phone call never happened." Then he hung up.
Director Tom Hooper, who made The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
and Poltergeist, begged off an LA Times interview about the
Perainos and Bryanston.
"All I know is that about two months after CHain Saw was released, I
heard a rumor that Bryanston was a mafia operation... If these guys
are behind door No. 1, then who's behind door No. 2 or door No. 3?"
Other movie makers describe Louis Peraino - who was arrested in Brooklyn
in 1971 for chasing his wife down the street with a gun - as a warm family
man.
Al Ruddy, who produced The Godfather, also produced a 1975
animation feature Coonskin that was distributed by Bryanston.
"I knew Lou had done Deep Throat and I know that pornography is
generally controlled by certain people. It didn't matter to me."
It didn't to most persons in Hollywood who did business
with the mafia front company. Rumors ran rampant in Hollywood
from the beginning of Louis Perainos sojourn there, but few persons
cared.
Ruddy's Coonskin was financed by Paramount, but the Barry Diller
run company, in an unusual move that smells like a payoff to the mafia for
their cooperation with the filming of The Godfather, gave the picture to
Bryanston to distribute.
The California Department of Justice, in a 1976 confidential memo, placed
Bryanston at the top of a list of "key corporations," believed to be
"controlled" by the Mob. "It appears that Bryanston coordinates the
nationwide distribution of full-length films for organized crime."
Even though brothers Louis and Joseph Peraino held the titles of Bryanston
president and vice president, law enforcement officials believed that
Anthony "Big Tony" Peraino was the real power behind his son's company.
Several inteligence reports from the New York City Police Department and
the California Department of Justice describe Anthony Peraino as the
"owner" of Bryanston.
Bryanston was the parent company of a string of corporate facades set up
by Louis Peraino and his father to handle the distribution and cash income
of Deep Throat.
Not only does Hollywood like the Mafia, but the Mafia likes Hollywood. Not
only is show-biz a fun and glamorous life, movie investments are a great
way for organized crime to launder money. Because banks are required by
law to report to the IRS all cash transactions in excess of $10,000, the
immense profits of organized crime cannot be deposited in the bank.
When the legendary Al Capone went to prison for eleven years, it was not
for bootlegging or murder, but for tax evasions. He stashed away huge sums
of money and ran out of ways to hide it.
The principal way that organized crime cleans up its money is by passing
it through legitimate businesses, preferably cash businesses.
An FBI agent told the LA Times in its June, 1982 series on the Perainos
that Hollywood doesn't care about dirty money.
"If you find that, in general, the people who should be your witnesses are
not willing to give you the sweat off their brow, then you realize that
you are faced with a situation where there is a community acceptance of a
set of standards that might be offensive in some areas, but not here.
"And we have to look at it that way, justlike we look at pornography,
based on community standards. Unfortunately, we have a set of standards
about how to finance motion pictures in Hollywood that is incredibly lax.
"In the last ten years or so, we've made six or seven efforts to try to
ferret our allegations of organized crime in the movie business. And we
got zero support from the industry. They don't view it as a threat. It's
good money to them. It's a way of life, condoned, even embraced. Nobody
wants to expose it."
Luke Ford
Author of forthcoming book "X-Rated: 101 Years of Sex in Film"
from NY Publisher Barclay House. Please write my publisher and
tell him to release my book! David Zinn @ Zinn Communications 35-19 215 Place, Bayside, NY, 11361.
LUZDEDOS
Deep Throat Distribution
Between 1973 and 1976, the distribution of Deep Throat was a
covert operation, carried out by a small army of workers known as
"checkers" and "sweepers" who traveled the country "constantly
changing aliases and meeting clandestinely in hotel rooms and
public restrooms to exchange information and large sums of cash."
(LA Times 6/13/82)
All the while they were shadowed by federal agents.
Since 1969, the Perainos' porn operation was under constant
surveillance by the FBI and company. In August, 1974, a federal
grand jury in Memphis indicted Louis Peraino, along with his father
Anthony and uncle Joseph on charges of transporting obscene
materials (Deep Throat) across state lines. Damiano Film
Productions also was indicted but not Damiano for he no longer
held an interest in either Deep Throat or the production company.
"With a gun at this head" as one porn distributor put it, Damiano
sold his interest in the movie to Louis Peraino in July, 1972, for
$25,000.
When a reporter said to Damiano that he seemed to have
received lousy terms in the Deep Throat deal, Damiano
replied, 'I can't talk about it.'
When the reporter persisted, Damiano said, 'You want me to get
both my legs broken?'" (New York Times 10/75)
A few years later, when mainstream director John Landis - of Kentucky
Fried Movie, Animal House and Blues Brothers fame - became interested in
shooting a porno, even hiring Terri Hall whose emergency
apendectomy postponed the shooting, he received a visit from two goons who
told him to stay away from the biz if he knew what was good for him.
The New York Times ran a front page article on the mob's
infiltration of the porn industry in October, 1975. Journalist Nicholas
Gage described brothers Anthony and Joseph S. Peraino as the
"most successful of all Mafia figures involved in the production and
distribution of hardcore films.
"Moreover, the great success of these pornographic films has given several
porno movie makers with Mafia connections the money to go into the
production and distribution of legitimate motion pictures.
"Louis Peraino has used profits from Deep Throat to help establish a
company called Bryanston Distributors, which has become a major
distributor of legitimate motion pictures.
"A spokesman for Louis Peraino insisted that neither his father Anthony
nor his uncle Joseph is in any way involved in Bryanston."
A day later, a similar report published in the New York Post, headlined
"How the Mob Moved Into Times Squre" linked Louis Peraino to the Mafia,
identifying him as a "reputed" member of the Colombo crime family.
Former Bryanstn publicist Patty Zimmerman says that the company's Beverly
Hills Office didn't receive a single inquiry from the West Coast media
following the New York articles. Nor did the articles cause much of a stir
among Bryanston employees. (LA Times 6/13/82)
Two months after the New York reports, Variety published a long and upbeat
report on Bryanston, making no mention of Deep Throat, the coming Memphis
trial or the NY newspaper allegations. The trades gushing coverage of
Bryanston peaked in January 1976 in a Variety article headlined "Bryanston
Expanding Its Operations." The article said the company had launched a
London production operation called Swadevale Inc., with an initial
investment of about $250,000.
"The Bryanston operation is seeking out producers and talent who may have
the idea but lack either the capital or the deal," the article said.
"Company appears willing to look at anything beyond the fringe and take
chances accordingly."
Along with Harry Reems and eight other defendents, Anthony,
Joseph and Louis Peraino went on trial in Memphis on March 1,
1976.
Prosecutor Larry Parrish, an assistant District Attorney, put together his
case with help from the FBI, the IRS, and the U.S. Justice Department
organized-crime strike forces in Brooklyn and Miami.
The government spent a million dollars to protect the moral
standards of the citizens of Memphis. Or so it seemed. But Bruce Kahmer,
the attorney who represented Harry Reems in the case, says that "it wasn't
an obcenity trial at all - it was a rackateering and tax evasion trial."
This view is supported by Parrish's actions after the case - he took
over the Brooklyn Strike Force which only investigates organized
crime. The prosecutor spent most of his time trying to make the jury
understand how Deep Throat's distribution system worked. He called
more than 50 witnesses who'd worked for the Perainos. Parrish
supplemented the testimony with charts and graphs of the
operation, leading the jury thorugh the maze step by step.
Defense attorneys offered little opposition to the government's
description. Instead, they concentrated on the issue of Deep Throat's
supposed obscenity.
As described in the more than 15,000 page transcript of the nine-week
trial, this is what happened.
After its New York debut in June, 1972, the Perainos distributed
Deep Throat in the regular fashion through shipping prints to
theaters by U.S. Mail and Parcel Post. Even though it was a federal
crime to transport an obscene movie across state lines, the risk of
prosecution seemed slight because the law contained no precise
definition of obscenity. But this changed dramatically in June, 1973,
when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its landmark
"community standards" decision on pornography.
Sex is a Crime
"Sex is a crime," writes William Rostler in his 1974 book
Contemporary Erotic Cinema. "It is literally a crime in some states
and it is certainly a crime in the eyes of the churches, the police,
the courts, and the uptight. Any sort of sex, even including certain
activities between married couples."
There are so many loony sex laws that Robert Wayne Pelton
compiled a book Loony Sex Laws.
In Willowdale, Oregon, it's illegal for a husband to swear during
sex. In Clinton, Oklahoma, men may not masturbate while
observing a couple having sex in the back seat of a parked car in a
drive-in theater.
In California, you can get 15 years for comitting oral sex though
adultery only brings a maximum $1000 fine and a year in prison.
Adultery in Arkansas can bring a $20-$100 fine.
Since sex is a crime, anything concerning sex is a crime. RObert Williams
wrote the 1973 book Vice Squad. "Almost
every police scandal of the past fifty years has had its roots in the
squads and divisions directly concerned with enforcing
unenforceable laws - laws against gambling, prostitution, liquor,
narcotics, pornography - laws intended to eliminate immoral
behavior. It is American society, which wants to indulge itself
but keep its morality intact, that must bear the ultimate
responsibility for police corruption."
Pornographers have always had trouble with the law. Girls feared
being photographed, not because of public or social pressures but
because of the law-enforcement attitude. Laboratories refused to
process film and the filmmaker had to use outlaw labs, or go
through some individual who would process film at night in some
lab where he was employed. In the Dark Ages of filmed
pornography this was always the way those grainy, scratchy print-
of-a-print-of-a-print were made, hurriedly and cheaply and secretly.
People never used their right names but instead got cute - U.P.
Yurn, Jewel Box, Peter Long, Connie Lingus. (Rostler)
This began changing in the 1960s. Russ Meyer and others who
made simulation pics used their own names.
Pornographer Lowell Picket says that he and his contemporaries
like Alex deRenzy and the Mitchell brothers, found it helped them in
court to put their own names on their films for it showed that they
were not hiding, that they "stood behind their product," and they
thought it was nothing to be ashamed of.
One reason for the heavy police busts in Los Angeles and
elsewhere prior to the 1989 Freeman decision is that they were
easy busts. "You get to break in on naked girls, to be around pretty
girls, girls they think are easy lays. There's no danger of a
shootout or even any kind of physical hassle," notes an early LA
pornographer. "It's a kind of show biz and everyone likes show biz.
They keep hoping some young chick will talk them out of a bust with
her bust, plus the rest of her."
This perspective is backed up in Norma Jean Almodovar's book
Cop to Call Girl. The red-headed beauty - raised a fundamentalist
Baptist - grew so disillusioned with the Los Angeles Police
Department, particularly the Vice Squad, that she quit to become a
high-priced Beverly Hills Call Girl. The L.A.P.D. got back at her,
making her life miserable for years. They made up pandering
charges and with the help of an inept judge, sent her to prison for
three years. They also confiscated her early manuscript and did
everything they could short of murder to punish her for "squealing"
about their evils.
LAPD busts are politics say many pornographers. "Easy
headlines," notes one producer. "It doesn't matter that it gets
thrown out in court. It looks good, all those arrests, those
headlines.
'Porno Ring Broken'! Bullshit! There's no ring, no conspiracy, just a
bunch of folks trying to hustle a buck."
"In Los Angeles," said Lowell Picket in the early '70s, "they attempt
to make the bust while the film-making is going on, charging the
camera operators, the producer-directors with conspiracy to commit
oral copulation, or any ridiculous charge like that. The San
Francisco Police Department is more civilized."
Police frequently busted female performers for prostitution to get
them to testify against pornographers.
The most important national ruling on obscenity came in the 1973
Supreme Court case of Marvin Miller v. California. As in 1957, this
case arose from the obscenity prosecution of a radical Jewish
pornographer.
Reversing a 16 year trend towards tolerating sexually explicit
material, the Court altered its definition of obscenity. In
a surprising five-to-four decision largely dictated by the four Nixon
appointees, the High Court removed from the language of the law
the "utterly without redeeming social value" phrase that had long been the
favorite loophole for pornographers. As a result of the new law, any
prosecutor wishing to ban a sexual work no longer had to prove that it was
"utterly without" value; it merely had to be lacking in "serious literary,
artistic, political or scientific value" to be considered obscene. Chief
Justice Warren Burger wrote the opinion that superseded all the liberal
trends of previous years.
The Marvin Miller case gave the Court conservatives the chance to
express their outrage about sexual openness in America, and to
exorcise the spirit of permissiveness that had been creted by their
judicial predecessors during the 1960s. The days were gone when
pornographers could justify their obscene works by reprinting on
the flyleaf of their tawdry books a "quotation from Voltaire," Burger
declared. "Conduct or depictions of conduct that the state police
power can prohibit on a public street doe snot become
automatically protected by the Constitution merely because the
conduct is moved to a bar or a 'live' theatre stage, any more than a
'live' performance of a man and woman locked in a sexual embrace
at high noon in Times Square is protected by the Constitution
because they simultaneously engage in a valid political dialogue."
Burger wrote that the new law also meant that what still might be
legal in Times Square and Sunset Boulevard need no longer shape
the way censorship laws were interpreted by the magistrates on
Main Street or the sheriffs in the Bible belt - for now "community
standards," instead of "national standards" would predominate in
all FIrst Amendment Obscenity cases. This meant that magazines
like Playboy and Penthouse or major erotic films like Last Tango in
Paris might be banned in towns with conservative sexual values.
A few days after the Miller ruling, police in Salt Lake City closed a
theater showing Last Tango in Paris. Jack Valenti, president of the Motion
Picture Association of America, said that it was now impossible to
determine in advance whether a film violated obscenity law because the
Supreme Court's ruling created "50 or more
fragmented opinions as to what constituted obscenity."
The New York Times wrote that Miller gave "license to local
censors. In the long run it will make every local community and
every state the arbiter of acceptability, thereby adjusting all sex-
related literary, artistic and entertainment production to the lowest
common denominator of toleration. Police-court morality will have a
heyday."
In Hollywood, two studios negotiating to film Hubert Selby's book
about working-class homosexuals, Last Exit to Brooklyn,
abandoned the project. Art directors for Playboy, Screw and other
sex publications quickly modified their front covers. Customers at
adult bookstores across the country stood in line to buy
merchandise because they feared it would soon be banished from
the shelves. (Gay Talese, Thy Neighbor's Wife)
"The immediate effect of this decision," said Bob Guccione of
Penthouse, "will be to drive a multibillion-dollar industry
underground - and that means graft and crime in the real sense. It's
the same thing as a return to prohibition."
Linda Lovelace: "The last person that started censorship was
Adolf Hitler, and the next thing they'll be doing is knocking on your
door and taking away your TV and your radio." Novelist Joyce Carol
Oates said the ruling was a symptom of a militant society frustrated
because it could no longer release its aggression in Vietnam.
"When America is not fighting a war," she said, "the puritanical
desire to punish people has to be let out at home."
After Miller, pornographers who lacked the money to pay attorneys
got out of the business.
"Miller made it all but impossible to distribute a film across state
lines," says Arlene Elster, who now runs a commercial plant
nursery in Northern California. "I knew the films would never get
better if you couldn't distribute them, so I gave up and got out."
Deep Throat
The Miller decision was bad news for the distributors of Deep
Throat for it meant that they were vulnerable to federal prosecution
based "on the most blue-nosed views of any Bible belt township."
(LA Times) So the Perainos developed a new distribution system to confound
the feds.
No longer shipped openly, Deep Throat was transported across
state lines by "checkers" who delivered the prints to the theaters.
The checkers stayed on to count the customers and then collect at
the end of the day's showings the Peraino's share of the take -
usually half. Sweepers moved from checker to checker collecting
money and shipping it or carrying it back to company offices in New
Jersey and Florida. Those who didn't cooperate were threatened
with physical harm.
In August, 1973 Anthony Peraino formed a Florida company AMMA
in partnership with a Florida porno distributor and theater owner
Robert DeSalvo - an ex-convict from New Jersey who settled in Fort
Lauderdale after serving time for counterfeiting.
After Anthony Peraino and Robert DeSalvo fled to Europe to escape
the Memphis trial, Robert's brother Mario DeSalvo ran the Florida
office for a few weeks until Anthony's brother Joseph S. Peraino
took over and fired both DeSalvo brothers.
Mitchell Brothers
Jim and Artie Mitchell originally confined Behind the Green Door to
three Bay Area theaters they owned and a few carefully selected
theaters across the country because they feared harassment from
the FBI and the Justice Department.
Getting busted for obscenity in a city like San Francisco was a
hassle but it was only a misdemeanor. What producers feared was
the feds. If a California pornographer got convicted of showing an
obscene film in a place like Cincinnatti - which, after Miller, was
more likely to happen - and if the feds could prove the person
shipped the film over state lines, the pornographer was in trouble.
Defending yourself in federal court is more time-consuming and
expensive and the penalties are more severe.
With people standing in line to see Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss
Jones and Behind the Green Door, the mob recognized an
opportunity. Through their organization they could distribute films
under the table, taking the heat off producers, or they could copy
the film and distribute it themselves.
In 1973, representative for mafia godfather Carlo Gambino, Robert
De Salvo and James Bochis, tried for the rights to Behind the Green Door.
They told Jim and Artie Mitchell that they could share the profits of
national distribution of Green Door 50/50 or he would simply steal the
prints to the movie and cut them out of the money altogether. The brothers
refused his offer. A few weeks later they discovered that Gambino had made
hundreds of pirated versions of the movie, creaming the market,
particularly in Miami, Dallas and Las Vegas.
"Green Door was popping up all over the place," remembers Bob
Cecchini. "We'd find it being shown in storefront theaters in places
like Phoenix. We tried to stay ahead of it. I used to get on red-eyes
and hand-deliver prints all over the country."
Belated help for the Mitchell Brothers came from an unlikely source - the
F.B.I.. Agents visited the O'Farrell and told Jim that they had
evidence that mobster Robert DeSalvo distributed bootleg copies
of Green Door. If the Mitchells would testify, the government would
bring charges of copyright law violation against DeSalvo.
"The F.B.I. didn't get in because they wanted to protect anyone,"
says Bob Cecchini. "They might do that for Universal Studios, but
they weren't going to do it for pornographers. It was just a way to
get to organized crime."
Jim and Artie testified and the court ruled that copyright law
applied to pornography.
After losing to the Mitchell Brothers and the F.B.I. in federal court
in Houston, Robert DeSalvo agreed to cooperate with the feds in
their fight against interstate trafficking of porn. He provided
evidence in the Peraino trial arising from the distribution of Deep
Throat.
In January, 1976, Robert DeSalvo went missing. He's presumed
murdered. Later in the year, Carlo Gambino died in his sleep.
In 1974, major mob figure Michael "Mickey" Zaffarano bought
the distribution rights to the Mitchell Brothers' Autobiography of a
Flea before the film even started shooting. Zaffarano was an old
time mobster who served as captain in the Carmine Galante organization in
New York City. He owned adult theaters across the
nation and came to represent the Galante family on the West Coast.
"Mickey brought too much heat," Artie said later. The brothers
however enjoyed their time rubbing shoulders with a real mobster,
listening wide-eyed to his stories.
One day Jim Mitchell got a call from a heavy in Chicago who'd been
stealing Mitchell Brothers films for years.
"I think his name was Murray," O'Farrells handyman Jack Harvey
recalls. "He came out to San Francisco to shoot a porn film. He had
an asian story and an asian porn star lined up and then she left. So
he calls Jim and says, 'I need an asian porn star.' And Jim says,
'Wait a minute. Why should we help you out? You thievin' bastard,
you're stealing films from us."
"The guy says 'Look, I'm in a bind right now. You send me a porn
queen and I'll never steal from you again.'
"That sounded fair. They sent [a porn star named] Jana over and
made the movie. And I understand he never stole from us again.
They made hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits off the sales
of films to this guy." (Bottom Feeders)
Perainos
On April 30, 1976, the Perainos and all other defendents in the Memphis
trial were found guilty on conspiring to distribute obscenity across state
lines. Louis and his uncle Joseph S. Peraino received one-year prison
sentences and fined $10,000. The judge delayed sentencing of Anthony
Peraino until his capture. The three Peraino owned companies - Bryanston,
Damiano and Plymouth - also received $10,000 fines each.
"Who did the government really hurt?" asked Louis Peraino. "They prosecute
me because I'm Italian, because they wanted to get back at my father, and
the people who suffered are the people I had to let go."
A month after the trial, Bryanston closed up its West Coast office and
disappeared as quickly as it had come, leaving behind a score of puzzled
employees and a trail of debt. In addition to nearly $750,000 in taxes,
the company owed undetermined millions throughout the movie marketplace.
In August, 1976, Louis Peraino made his last public statement to the movie
industry, in the pages of Variety. "Don't worry about it. I can't say more
now...but I'll be back in business."
With two 22-year old accomplices, Joseph Carmine Peraino, the son of
Joseph S. Peraino, set fire to the Tilton Theater in Northfield, New
Jersey, a suburb of Atlantic City, on July 15, 1977. At the time, 27-year
old Joseph Jr. worked for his father's porno film distribution company,
Plymouth Distributors and had just become a member of the Colombo family.
Because Joseph Jr. apparently acted without permission, he was told that
he'd screwed up and would have to bite the bullet. Waiving their right to
a jury trial, all three men pleaded guilty to four counts of arson and
accepted their sentences of not less than four and not more than seven
years in prison.
Said the prosecutor Jeffrey Blitz, "The strange thing about this case is
that there was no plea bargaining at all. They just threw up their hands.
They didn't fight. It was almost as if, though I don't know this, somebody
didn't want a trial."
Louis Peraino returned to legitimate entertainment in September, 1977,
loaning $50,000 to the owner of a Los Angeles-based music company in
return for a 40% interest.
According to the LAPD, Peraino showed up at the music company office
carrying an envelope which contained a revolver and a document naming
Peraino sole owner of the company. Louis put the envelope on the desk.
Upon seeing the revolver, a partner signed the document and went into
hiding.
Peraino's $50,000 loan was in the form of a check drawn on a bank in
Panama which eventually bounced.
The music company was milked for its cash before going under.
In 1978, Louis and Joseph Peraino established Arrow Film & Video with
offices in New York City and Van Nuys. An LAPD officer, Sgt. Joseph
Ganley, testified in the FBI's MIPORN case that Louis Peraino on two
occassions in 1979 threatened the owners of Los Angeles-area porn film
companies with "bodily harm" if the owners continued to reporduce and sell
prints of Deep Throat without paying the royalties demanded by Peraino.
(LA Times 6/13/82)
Roberto DiBernardo
Known as "Dee-Bee" in the Gambino family, DiBernardo presided over the
pornography racket. He had made the family millions in the trade and, at
one point, controlled a network of Times Square booktores that sold
pornographic material at immense markup.
Robert lived a hidden life. His suburban neighbors on Long Island knew
only that this "real estate investor" who worked in Manhattan could afford
a sprawling ranch home and white Mercedes. DiBernardo seemed a family man
and a friendly man - he even coached Little League baseball. (Goombata)
After the death of Carlo Gambino, "DeeBee" became the world's biggest
child pornographer.
Mike Thevis
During his heyday in the 1970s, Michael Thevis owned about 40%
of the nation's smut business with an annual take of $100 million.
He owned over 400 porn bookstores and theaters, mainly in the
southeastern U.S. as well as the largest manufacturing facility of
"peep-show" booths in the world. The porn king once described
himself as "the GM of pornography." Thevis controlled his empire
through bombings, arson, extortion and murder.
Though bothered by the occassional bust, Mike's lawyers were
superb at getting him out of trouble. Thevis lived in a mansion in
Atlanta. He had a wife and two sons who headed holding companies
and dummy corporations for his porn operation.
Mike sought more power, and he blew up the only other
manufacturer of peep-show booths in the US. Thevis was indicted
after several competitors notified the FBI that he had threatened
them with violence.
Thevis was tried and convicted under the RICO act of racketeering,
murder, terrorism, etc... The feds seized several of his
warehouses in the South and destroyed over 40,000 pounds of his
pornography. Thevis' wife divorced him and sold their mansion to
professional football player Andre Rison who played wide receiver
for the Atlanta Falcons and the Indianapolis Colts. The mansion was
burned to the ground by Rison's psychotic rap-star girlfriend Lisa
"Left-Eye" Lopes after she and Andre had a fight.
Today, if you find any porn in the southeast, it probably comes from
a Thevis-related company. Mike's ex-wife and his sons own a
variety of sex shops. Pornographer Mike South regularly plays ice
hockey with Mike's oldest son. (Thevis story thanks to Brad
Williams)
Born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1932, Thevis was raised by strict
immigrant grandparents in the Greek Orthodox Church. When other
bosy played games, Mike worked for he was taught that work,
education and success were a natural order of life.
Lack of money forced Thevis to drop out of Georgia Tech where he
planned to become a textile engineer. He took a job in downtown
Atlanta as a $50-a-week employee in a newsstand. Eventually, in
the 1960s, Thevis owned a string of newsstands. He was also
married and the father of three children. They lived in a modest
apartment, and when the rent was raised to $57.50 month, he had
to move out.
Frustrated by his inability to properly provide for his family, Thevis
made a fateful decision. At the time, porn accounted for only 10% of his
magazine stock, but it brought in 90% of his profits. Mike
expanded from publications such as Playboy and Oui to magazines
and films featuring bondage, sadism and masochism, bestiality and
child porn.
Thevis rode the crest of the porn boom, reinvesting his profits in
more newsstands and bookstores in Atlanta and other Southern
cities.
Career criminal Roger Dean Underhill met Thevis in the fall of 1967
and became his employee. Together they developed a profitable
peep show machine that was manufactured and distributed by two
Thevis-controlled corporations, Automatic Enterprises and
Cinematics.
Kenneth "Jap" Hanna owned several competing adult book stores in
Atlanta and Michael Thevis did not like competition.
On November 13, 1970, Thevis called Underhill at 8:30 AM and told
him to come to work immediately. When Underhill arrived, Thevis
said he'd shot Ken Hanna and left the body in the trunk of Hanna's
car in Thevis' warehouse. In his rush to dispose of the body, Thevis
had left the car keys in Hanna's pocket, located in the trunk. Mike
asked Roger, a trained locksmith, to open the trunk and retrieve the
keys. Thevis and Underhill then drove the car containing Hanna's
body to the Atlanta airport parking lot and left it. Afterwards,
Underhill took various steps to dispose of incriminating evidence,
including burning the moving pad on which Hanna's body had lain
and replacing several bloody floor boards in the warehouse. Roger
also bought a welding torch and melted the gun, Hanna's car keys,
some Mexican coins which had been in Hanna's possession, and a
screwdriver. That night Underhill dumped the melted objects and
the bloody boards in the Chattahoochee River. (See US v Thevis,
665 F.2d 616 (1982))
One competitor that Thevis could not buy or force out was Urban
Industries, Inc., a Louisville, Kentucky, firm that made peepshow
machines.
Urban Industries belonged to Nat Bailen who invented the peep
show machine. In the early '60s, he turned out machines to show
children's cartons at arcades, amusement parks and shopping
centers. But after the porn boom, some of Bailen's machines were
sold to the mafia in New York who put them in shops in the Times
Square area and fitted them with loops of topless women and
eventually nude men, women and children having sex.
Nat Bailen knew how to put the film on continuous cartridges that
did not have to be rewound. Roger Underhill used his experience
as a locksmith to improve security for coin collection and automatic
auditing.
"Bailen was not the businessman that Thevis was. Bailen sold his
machines. Thevis leased his and insisted on a high percentage of
the income. Bailen's more generous business practices cut into
Thevis' profits." (Children in Chains, pg. 198)
Thevis ordered Underhill to go to Louisville to burn Bailen's
warehouse. On the weekend of April 27, 1970, Underhill drove to
Louisville and, with two Thevis employees, Clifford Wilson and
Robert Mitchum, set fire to the warehouse.
After threats from Thevis, Underhill sold his interest in Cinematics
to Mike in 1971, but remained on Thevis' payroll for another three
years.
In 1972, Thevis told Underhill to burn down a competing adult book
store in Fayetville, North Carolina owned by Herman Womack. On
September 19, 1972, Roger Dean Underhill and William Ross
Mahar drove to Fayetville, drilled a hole in the roof of the competing
book store, poured gasoline inside, and ignited it with a water pistol
used as a flame thrower. Afterwards Mike gave Roger $1500 with which he
paid William for the successful arson.
Mike Thevis and Roger Underhill employed Jimmy Mayes to build
peep shows by giving him a percentage of his stock in the peep
show operation. When Thevis took away half of Underhill's and
Mayes' shares, Mayes became enraged and threatened to kill
Thevis. In December of 1972, Thevis ordered Underhill to kill
Mayes and gave him a gun for that purpose. Underhill had a chance
to kill Mayes one night, but could not pull the trigger. At Thevis'
instruction, Underhill hired Bill Mahar to do the job. Mahar told
Underhill that he was going to kill Mayes by putting a pipe bomb in
his truck. The bomb went off just before midnight, and blew Mayes
to pieces.
At this time, Thevis was in the hospital recovering from injuries he
sustained in an accident on Underhill's motorcycle. On the day of the
murder, Underhill told Thevis that the explosion would take place that
night.
After the explosion, Underhill went to the scene and found a piece of
bone and a gold pin. He showed this evidence to Thevis in the
hospital who said he planned to make the bone into a paperweight.
The day after the murder, Thevis instructed his nephew, Mann
Chandler, to give Underhill money from Thevis' safe to pay Mahar.
During the 1978 trial of Thevis, Mahar died.
After getting paroled in January, 1977, Underhill turned FBI
informant in exchange for immunity for his crimes. Thevis sent two
men to knock off his former lieutenant but the contract killing was
foiled by a federal marshall.
In June, 1977, Underhill visisted Thevis in the federal prison in
Springfield, Missouri. Roger wore a shoe mike provided by the FBI
and recorded his conversation with Thevis. Roger told Mike of his
interviews with the FBI.
Due in large part to Underhill's assistance, prosecutors put together
an airtight case of racketeering against Thevis. But before the
information could be given to a federal grand jury, on April 28, 1978,
Thevis escaped from the New Albany, Indiana jail where he was
confined during the trial of a civil case arising from the Lousiville
arson. Mike got in touch with several friends - Jeannette Evans and
Alton Bart Hood, Jeannette's cousin who was a detective in the
Summerville, South Carolina police department. Evans and Hood
helped Thevis establish several false names, get an apartment, a
VISA credit card and safe-deposit boxes.
Roger Underhill intended to enter the Federal Witness Protection
Program but first wanted to sell an undeveloped tract of land on
Riverside Drive in Atlanta. It had an unpaved driveway, blocked by
a gate, which carried visitors quickly out of sight of the main road.
On October 21, 1978, Underhill's fiancee Irene Williams joined
Roger at an Atlanta motel. They spent two days cleaning up the
property.
On Wednesday, October 25, Underhill left his fiancee at 11:30 AM to
show the property to Isaac N. Galanti. Thevis shot and murdered
Underhill and Galanti, who he thought was Roger's bodyguard.
Thevis was arrested and confined to a federal prison in Danbury,
Connecticut where he confessed his crime to cellmate Bernard
McCarthy.
A jury convicted Mike Thevis and his Global Industries of violating
the Rackateer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations ACT (RICO).
Thevis, Evans and Hood were convicted of conspiracy to violate the
civil rights of Roger Underhill by preventing him from testifying at
trial by murdering him.
The FBI and the Justice Department busted up most of the Mike
Thevis porn empire which he controlled for the mob, particularly
Carlo Gambino, the Gambino family and Roberto DiBernado. But if
you buy porn in the southeast today, you're probably still buying
from Mike Thevis. Though he remains in prison, he's thought to
retain control of the remains of his porn empire through his ex-wife,
his sons and his former secretary Laverne Bowden.