Sue Flaken’s Sliding Doors – The Mystery of the Original Miss Jones – Podcast 151

Who was the original actor cast in the lead role of the golden age blockbuster, The Devil in Miss Jones (1973)?

Not Georgina Spelvin, the talented doyenne of adult films who starred in many pre-video era features, first in New York then in California, and who was the eventual star of the film as ‘Miss Jones.’

No, Gerard Damiano first chose another actress, Sue Flaken, to fill the role, only to change his mind at the last minute. The movie went on to become one of the biggest hits of the era, making Spelvin one of the most famous of the first generation of porn stars.

The sliding doors moment changed Georgina Spelvin’s life forever. But what of Sue Flaken, who was instead relegated to a minor, non-speaking part in the film? Who was she, why did she miss out on the life-changing role, and what happened to her afterwards?

The answer includes supporting involvement for Allen Ginsberg, Tommy Lee Jones, Georgina Spelvin, Harry Everett Smith, Al Gore, the Chelsea Hotel, Joe Sarno, Terry Southern, industrial quantities of hallucinogenic drugs, and much more.

This is the untold story of ‘Sue Flaken.’

This podcast is 35 minutes long.

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sliding doors

/ˈslīdiNG dôrs/

plural noun

definition: a seemingly insignificant moment that has a profound and lasting impact on a person’s life or the trajectory of a relationship. These moments, while often unnoticed, can dramatically alter the course of events and significantly affect future outcomes.

*

What if Franz Ferdinand hadn’t been shot, and the event that triggered World War I hadn’t happened?

What if young Adolf Hitler hadn’t been rejected twice from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and instead had gone on to became an artist instead of pursuing politics?

Butterfly-effect inflection points which, if they had turned out differently, might have caused a different world.

Or another example, only less consequential perhaps: what if Gerard Damiano hadn’t decided at the last moment to promote Georgina Spelvin from her role as the cook for the cast and crew on The Devil in Miss Jones (1973) and instead given her the starring role?

The story is oft-told: Damiano was shooting the follow-up to Deep Throat (1972) in a converted apple-packing plant in Milanville, Pennsylvania, and needed someone to provide craft services for the long-weekend location shoot. He offered the job to Chele Graham, an ex-Broadway chorus girl who’d featured in stage productions such as ‘Cabaret’, ‘Guys and Dolls’, and ‘Sweet Charity’ before being timed-out by her age – she was a near-ancient 36 by the time of ‘Miss Jones’. Chele accepted the catering job, needing the money for a film collective that she and her lover were setting up in lower Manhattan.

Damiano had already hired someone for the all-important lead role of Miss Jones – a newcomer named Ronnie, an actress he was raving about – but by the time production started, Chele had become Georgina Spelvin and assumed the role of Miss Jones, instantly creating one of the more memorable characters in adult film history – as was borne out by the contemporary critics.

Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, “‘The Devil in Miss Jones’ is good primarily because of the performance of Georgina Spelvin in the title role. Miss Spelvin, who has become the Linda Lovelace of the literate, is something of a legend. There burns in her soul the spark of an artist, and she is not only the best, but possibly the only actress in the hardcore field.”

Addison Verrill writing in Variety wondered, “If Marlon Brando can be praised for giving his almost-all in ‘Last Tango in Paris,’ one wonders what the reaction will be to ‘Miss Jones’ lead Georgina Spelvin? Though she lacks the specific sexpertise of Linda Lovelace and she’s no conventional beauty, her performance is so naked it seems a massive invasion of privacy.”

So the sliding doors of history closed shut, Georgina was unexpectedly immortalized as an improbable sex star, and Damiano had another sex film hit.

History is often written by the protagonists, but truth is most often found in silence and the quiet places. Everyone else has told their story about the film, so what about Ronnie, the original Miss Jones? When Georgina was catapulted into A-lister sex-film stardom for the next decade, Ronnie disappeared without a trace. She became a parenthesis in a footnote to the appendix of adult film history.

Who was she, and what happened to the original Miss Jones?

*

Gerry Damiano had rated Ronnie highly: “She’s really a dynamo,” he said to Harry Reems, the movie’s male lead, who wrote about her in his autobiography, ‘Here Comes Harry Reems’ (1975). Gerry continued, “She’s voluptuous, she’s got a wild afro-cut, and an ass that just won’t quit.

Ronnie was enthusiastic about being given the Miss Jones role too: “I can fuck and suck better than any woman doing this shit,” Harry said that she told everybody.

But the reason that Georgina took her place has been a mystery for decades. In fact, there are three versions on record.

Firstly, in her autobiography, Georgina claimed that her getting the part was all a happy accident: she’d been meeting with Damiano to discuss the food: “We discuss how to feed 17 people for three days on $500. An actor arrives to read for the part of Abaca. Gerry asks if I would mind reading the part of Miss Jones with him since I’m just sitting there.” She remembered that Damiano was so impressed with her read-through, that he offered her the part.

Harry Reems’ recollection was different, claiming Georgina was only given the lead role when Ronnie was diagnosed with a dental issue two days before the production started: ‘“How’s Ronnie going to do blow jobs with an impacted wisdom tooth?” I asked Gerry. Good question. Gerry threw in the dental floss. Ronnie was out and Georgina Spelvin was in.”

The last version comes from fellow ‘Miss Jones’ actor, Marc Stevens – aka Mr. 10½ on account of the supposed length of his furious fescue. Marc remembers the last-minute change the most prosaically in his memoir: “(The film’s production had) the usual whining, ego-tripping, and petulance endemic to film. Ronnie decided, all of a sudden, she didn’t want the starring role. (Instead) she wound up blowing me in another scene.”

It’s true. Whatever issues Ronnie had with motivation – or her teeth – she did in fact appear in ‘Miss Jones’, in a smaller, sex-only role, partnering with Georgina Spelvin to give head to Marc Stevens. She appeared in the credits as ‘Sue Flaken.’

It remains perhaps the only feature film footage of Ronnie, and she’s an electric presence. (She supposedly made brief appearances in two other X-rated films: Lloyd Kaufman’s The New Comers (1973) (tagline: “The First X-rated Musical!”) and the one-day wonder, Sweet and Sour (1974), but both are virtually unfindable today.)

In ‘Miss Jones’, she’s filmed in a single spaghetti-western-style close-up. Her face is framed by a thicket of coal-black curls, and punctuated by roundly incredulous eyes to which an immaculately-applied smokey-eye contrasts with Georgina’s 1970s porno-blue eye shadow. Ronnie smiles a lot, showing off detergent-white teeth like a suburban neighborhood picket fence.

Sexually, Ronnie steals the scene, performing enthusiastically, selfishly even. Her sequence exists within the film to show Miss Jones making up for having been a virgin for too long – but, just like Ronnie’s unknown life, the scene exists in its own microcosm, unconnected to anything that precedes or follows it.

And then Ronnie disappears behind the sliding doors, and is never seen again.

Sue Flaken (left), and Georgina Spelvin, in ‘The Devil in Miss Jones’ (1973)

*

Whenever I met people who’d been present on set with Ronnie for those few short days – people like Gerry Damiano, Georgina Spelvin, Harry Reems, Levi Richards, and others – I always made a point of asking about her. Remarkably, given that they’d all known her for such a short period several decades earlier, everyone still had a memory or two concerning her. And many of their memories were the same: Ronnie was beautiful, exciting, but unpredictable, wild, feral even. She wasn’t part of their usual repertory group of performers, but rather teetered around the edge, maverick and unpredictable. No one had any idea what her second name was.

Then I met Jason Russell, former husband of New York’s first porno star, Tina Russell, and sometime adult film actor himself. I interviewed him in his Florida home towards the end of his life, when his world-weary, tobacco-stained cynicism betrayed his every statement.

“Ever hear about ‘Rabid Ronnie’?” he non-sequitured with a jaded sigh at the end of the day.

I perked up. You mean the Ronnie who was in ‘The Devil in Miss Jones’?

Jason mumbled back, “Yep, that one. She was a trip. Whacko. Insane. I wrote about her in Tina’s book. Only worked with her once. It was on the set of Joe Sarno’s Sleepyhead (1973). Crazy chick. Fierce. Almost killed the whole film.”

I pulled out a copy of ‘Porno Star’ (1973), Tina Russell’s autobiography that Jason had ghost-written, and found the description of events.

“Halfway through the first day, one female member (Ronnie) of the cast announced, “I’m tripping my brains out!” She proceeded to flip out to the point where she caused herself and many others a lot of pain, and cost the budget at least $2,500 to $3,000. We had to find a replacement for her role overnight, and re-shoot with the new girl all that we had managed to shoot the first day. This was only the second time that such a situation had occurred in the three years that we have been working in the business. We all went home with grueling tension headaches.”

What happened exactly, I asked?

“Acid, I’m guessing. She dropped a tab, and she was gone. She lost her mind. She was like a wild horse. Flared nostrils and violent eyes.”

Did you ever come across her after that?

“Nooo. She vanished. She’ll be long dead now, I’m sure. She was an acid casualty, you know? People were experimenting with drugs a lot back then. They’ve always done that. But we didn’t knew the limits, so we were guinea pigs for some of the newer drugs. And some people paid the price. I guess Ronnie was one. I still think about her some times, and wonder about how she ended her days.”

*

The film that Jason mentioned, ‘Sleepyhead’, was Joe Sarno’s first as an explicit sex film director after a prolific decade making films that managed to insert tense erotica into humdrum black and white existential kitchen-sink dramas. When I heard Jason’s story, Joe was still alive and we were friendly. I called him, and he remembered Ronnie and the ‘Sleepyhead’ incident well.

Joe recalled he’d been wary of the newly-formed X-rated acting fraternity, and decided he needed to hear them all read before casting any of them. So he held an old-fashioned open-call audition in his apartment, and Ronnie turned up. Good actors in porn in the early 1970s were as scarce as a polyester suit without a wide collar, and Ronnie immediately stood out to him as a talent. She was attractive too, firecracker small, with an impish grin. Joe was impressed and took Ronnie aside. They hit it off, and she distractedly told him she’d attended all the prestigious acting schools in the city, and was now fielding a number of promising theater offers. Joe was skeptical of her claims but offered her a principal role in his plot-driven narrative, and Ronnie accepted gratefully.

Two weeks later, the Ronnie who turned up for the first day on set was a different character: “She seemed drunk, stumbling around and acting unsteady. Her make-up was a mess and she clearly wasn’t prepared for the day’s shoot. So I sat her down and waited to see if she got any better – but it just got worst. I’ve never understood drug-taking so I was bewildered when she started hallucinating and arguing angrily with invisible people who weren’t there. I was worried about her sanity. We tried shooting a few scenes with her and made some progress, but then she got out of control and I had to let her go. We started again next day – this time without her.”

A few months after I spoke to Joe, he was clearing out cabinets in his apartment and came across a collection of old paperwork and ephemera relating to his career: scripts, actor resumes, and stills. In amongst the ancient history was a familiar face. It was Ronnie’s headshot – with her full name and performing experience.

Her address, albeit several decades old, was also shown: The Chelsea Hotel, New York City.

Sue Flaken’s headshot

*

My first call to Ronnie wasn’t a positive one.

At first, I couldn’t even figure out why I should call her. There were plenty of other people whose film experiences were more significant and meaningful, so why Ronnie? Then one day, her headshot fell out of a file in front of me and so I decided to act on impulse. Another sliding door moment perhaps.

I found a phone number for her online. She was no longer living at the Chelsea, having seemingly married and moved down to Florida many years before. I called and introduced myself, and gave a reason for my interest. You know: the usual waffle we’ve all approached complete strangers with – you start by asking about acting in a famous pornographic film decades earlier, you throw in a reference to a potentially mind-altering mushroom-mind-trip that people still remember, and close by telling them about a recently-discovered headshot lying long-forgotten in a drawer. In other words, a pretty standard opener.

I heard a sigh at the other end of the line before a tired voice: “And so… the call I’ve always expected but forever feared is happening right now,” she said with resignation.

Silence, followed by more waffle from the caller, this time the predominant theme being backtracking, reversal, and retraction.

Ronnie sighed again. “I like your English accent,” she offered eventually.

I explained I was intrigued with knowing more about her early life and her brief involvement in adult film.

“And what is going to happen to the information?” she asked.

It didn’t have to go anywhere, I said. This was a just curious inquiry about a small part of her life.

“I don’t want it told,” Ronnie said. “It’s not something I share with people. Even with those who are close to me.”

I left my email address in case she changed her mind – and the conversation ended.

A few months later, I received an email from her: “I’ve wrestled with the idea of sharing details from my life. I felt that they were too private to share with you. Hence, the hesitation and late response. But I have come to realize that your heart and spirit are in the right place, and therefore I wish to help you.

“But know this: the only reason I’m telling you is that you are anonymous and therefore I don’t feel it will have any effect on my life. You’ll be like a canyon that I whisper into. The sounds will disappear with the wind and leave no trace.”

So we started talking.

“What is it you want to know?” she asked.

The Chelsea Hotel, New York City

*

Ronnie’s life started in 1947 – born in a Manhattan hospital, raised in East Rockaway on Long Island, and by her teen years becoming a self-described Jewish American Princess.

Her father was heavily involved in community theatre, and occasionally ventured into film, once appearing in a movie with Kim Novak. Ronnie caught the performing bug from an early age and joined every stage production she could find. For as long as she could remember, she wanted to be a famous movie star. Dad took note and enrolled her in elocution lessons followed by acting schools in the city throughout her high school years.

Ronnie showed talent, and was granted a place at the Stella Adler Studio where she studied for several years. Opportunities started to spring up that were as exciting as they were varied: she modeled for Spiegel’s Catalogue, she was hired as a singer in a Harry Belafonte show that premiered at a Brooklyn night club, she did skits on stage with Bette Midler, took acrobatic dance lessons with Joe Price, the legendary director of the Dance Master Association, she did voiceover work with Chuck McCann, and found time to briefly date both preeminent teen idols of the time, Paul Anka and Frankie Avalon. As some of the work was in Hollywood, she got a local manager in California, attorney Jimmy Talbort, who also managed Redd Foxx, but Ronnie’s main interest was in live theatre, preferring drama plus the occasional comedy.

In 1966, she embarked on a Theater Studies degree at Queen’s College, at the same time she was attending the Herbert Berghof Acting Studio. She started dating her high school boyfriend, a smart Long Island kid named Jimmy who got accepted into Harvard. Ronnie visited him often and hung out with his two roommates, Al and Tommy Lee. They’d later become future politico, Al Gore, and ‘Fugitive’ actor, Tommy Lee Jones. The four of them formed an inseparable group for a short while.

Ronnie spoke proudly about her young life, still amazed that the people she mixed with would become such successful professionals in various roles.

“We had the world at our feet,” she smiled.

*

And then the craziness began. To quote Ronnie quoting Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”.

It started in 1969, after graduating Queens College, when she moved to Manhattan to pursue an acting career. I asked how serious she’d been about acting?

It was always my intention and interest to act. In retrospect, I realized later that it was more of an interest than an intention.

I’d been fortunate. Up until then, everything had been handed to me on a plate. I had a lot of acting offers and I thought life was easy. But I started to let people down.

What does that mean?

I wasn’t a serious person. I was a wild child.

Your teen years don’t strike me as having been crazy. So… was there a turning point?

Yeah. I met Harry Smith.

Harry Everett Smith, the artist and poet?

(laughs) Yes, though he was more than just an artist-poet. He was crazy, an eccentric, larger-than-life persona who’d been one of the most prominent figures of the Beat Generation scene in New York. He made underground films, was an early hippie and a spiritual guru, he put out records, collected esoteric objects… and he collected people too.

Harry Everett Smith

Drugs were important for him as well, weren’t they?

He was heavily into anything mind-expanding, and he loved the creative possibilities of hallucinations.

And you knew him well?

Very. At first, I was a member of Harry’s ‘tribe’. Then we became close and we spent a lot of time together. He lived in the Chelsea Hotel, and after a while I moved in with him. We lived together in the legendary Room 731.

I got caught up in all the craziness that surrounded him. And that included the drugs and the mind-trips.

What was the Chelsea like at the time?

People romanticize it now because so many famous artists, singers, and writers lived there. And it’s true, people like Patti Smith, Mapplethorpe, Hendrix, and Bob Dylan were there when I was there, so that was exciting.

But in reality, it was also an insane asylum for incorrigible drug addicts. Sadly, I fit right in. I became a big druggie. A major drug user…

How so?

I spent all my time experimenting with drugs. Hallucinogenics: LSD, mushrooms, acid, peyote. I did it all. All the time, too. I think I must have dropped about 500 tabs of LSD that first year.

As I say, I never make the same mistake twice: I make it six or seven times, just to be sure.

How were you supporting yourself?

I survived off very little. Harry didn’t have much money, but he was so well-known that even when he couldn’t pay his rent, the Chelsea management couldn’t touch him or throw him out. His notoriety also meant that the best drugs came our way too.

Did you mix with the other Beats?

Oh sure, it was a close group. Harry’s best friend was Allen Ginsberg, so we spent a lot of time with him. Through them both, I got to know Gregory Corso, the poet. Gregory lived in the Chelsea too, so I’d sometimes take refuge in his place when it got too much with Harry. The problem was that Greg struggled with alcohol and drugs as well – because he was so lonely and damaged.

It was a loving, talented, but strange and dysfunctional gang.

Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso

What was it like being on the inside of their group?

On the one hand, I was excited. These were men whose works I had read and whose philosophy and thought I had admired. And all of sudden, I was there, listening to them, learning, and being part of their lives.

But then there was a melancholic desperation to them as well.

Why so?

They were older than people I’d hang out with – Harry was about 25 years older than me, Gregory was, maybe, 15 years older. By the late 1960s, they were men without a time. They’d preceded the whole hippie thing: in fact, their philosophy had, in part, led to the hippies, and they were revered by the young counter-culture – but now they also felt old and marginalized. So they doubled down, and became more into drugs and drink.

Were you doing much theater during these years?

As much as my drugged-out state would allow….

I did plays all over town, many of them small, experimental productions for no money, and I continued my acting training at the La Mama Plexus workshop. That was a notoriously difficult, taxing, emotional process… even if you were in control of your faculties.

And I was spiraling…

How long did you live at the Chelsea?

I got my own room there after a while. I became involved with another writer, Terry Southern. He’d written a racy book, Candy (1958), and then became a screenwriter of a bunch of counter-culture films…   Dr Strangelove (1964), Barbarella (1968), Easy Rider (1969), and others.

What was he like when you knew him?

He was basically an alcoholic and an amphetamine user, and was becoming less reliable as a result… which meant he was less in-demand with filmmakers and so he had money problems.

We partied hard.

In 1970, Southern wrote a novel, Blue Movie, about the production of a high-budget pornographic film which starred major movie actors.

Yeah, he was fascinated with sex films. Obsessed. He talked about them all the time. When the first sex films started appearing in theaters – I mean real sex – he took me off to a Times Square cinema, and we went to see one. He watched them all the time. I dunno, perhaps he normalized the whole idea for me.

‘Blue Movie’ was the result of his interest, but it was a flop and didn’t sell well.

It was a shame, because he was an incredible talent. Stanley Kubrick loved his work.

Terry Southern (left), with Rip Torn

*

If Ronnie spoke about being a casualty of the 1960s drug culture, the 1970s were the brutal hangover where life really went downhill for her. I asked her about whether ‘The Devil in Miss Jones’ was her first direct experience of working in the adult film industry. At first, she brushed off the questions blaming drugs and a poor memory.

I have a very scant recollection of my days in the porn industry. At that time, I was still using LSD heavily, and that creates these large black… blank periods in my memory.

Do you remember if it was your first sex film experience?

I have a feeling that it was not. Whether I had made a feature, or two, or whether I just some of those individual scenes that were shot on a hand-held portable camera, I’m not sure. I think I did something before ‘Miss Jones.’

What do you remember about the ‘Miss Jones’ shoot?

I recall Gerard Damiano, the director. He was kindly and paternal – and serious too.

I think that I was supposed to play the lead, but something changed at the last minute. I don’t recall what it was.

One story was that a problem with a wisdom tooth?

I have no recollection of that.

Do you remember the scene that you did with Georgina Spelvin?

Hardly. I do know that on set we improvised a lot, and I remember helping Gerry set up a scene or two by sketching out detailed improv scenarios. I was used to doing that at the Stella Adler Studio so that was straight forward.

Do you remember anyone else from the production?

I recall Georgina as being an older, matter-of-fact, no-nonsense broad.

I remember Harry, the lead in the film. I think I worked with him in a few films. It’s a blur.

I also recall a beautiful petite French girl that I acted with. Who would that be?

Did you remember being aware of the commercial success of ‘Miss Jones’?

Only much later. A few years later in fact. I had no idea what the name of the movie was when I made it, but it dawned on me much later.  I was horrified when I realized. I’ve still never seen it.

Did anyone ever recognize you from your appearance in it?

Not that I’m aware of…

Do remember appearing in any other adult films?

I vividly recall a director named Joe Sarno who I worked for. He lured me in by insisting that his films were soft porn, not hard porn. He liked me, so he gave me a prominent acting role. I liked him too.

On the first day, we were shooting a scene and I was wearing a white fur coat with black spots. I was tripping on LSD. A really heavy trip.

Long story short, I cost Joe at least a full day’s shoot because of something I did.

What was that?

It’s painful to remember. I did the sex scene, and I had fur all over my face. Then I took some of the white substance… use your imagination… and I smeared it all over the camera lens. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was hysterical. That didn’t go down well…

Do you remember Joe’s reaction?

Joe was the nicest, most down-to-earth person. I had great fondness for him. He took me aside and told me that I did not belong on a porno set. He said that I was a nice Jewish girl, and had too much class to be in this environment. He told me to go home and think seriously about what he said.

And what was your reaction?

I did what he told me to. And I don’t believe that I ever graced a porn set again.

*

The most painful part of Ronnie’s life came after the X-rated films.

As she tells it, she was still living at the Chelsea Hotel, struggling to find work, and dealing with increasingly severe addictions. With dwindling options, she was kicked out of the residence, and resorted to couch-surfing at the apartments of people she barely knew. Eventually she turned to escorting and dealing drugs. It was a dangerous combination. If she wasn’t risking her life being beaten up by johns or drug gangs, she was getting into trouble with the law. She suffered physically, was arrested on a semi-regular basis, and was banged up for weeks in prison, but somehow managed to avoid lengthy jail sentences.

Ronnie’s discomfort talking about it was plain: “Short story, I turned to sugar daddies and more dealing. I still have a hard time sharing many of the shady experiences from my past. They’re both shameful and immoral. I was raising holy hell. Those were the bad old days for sure.”

Remarkably she still acted on occasion, mainly in theatrical productions but sometimes in bit parts in movies such as ‘Lords of Flatbush,’ (1974) notable for early starring roles for Sylvester Stallone and Henry Winkler. The film earned her SAG membership, but it was too late: “Much to my regret, I had to accept it just wasn’t in the cards for me. The promise I had shown had evaporated – and together with it, all the opportunities, hope, and dreams. I was lost.”

It came to a head when Ronnie experienced a complete breakdown, both physical and emotional, followed by period of mental illness. Recognizing that she needed a complete change to save her life, she moved to Florida and trained as a teacher, gaining a doctorate from the Union Institute & University, an organization was based out of Cincinnati, Ohio. She married, and resumed a limited acting career finding work in commercials and training videos for bodies like the Miami Police Force. Her resume’ at the time described her as being available for look-a-like work too – for anyone wanting a Sophia Loren, Marlo Thomas, Isabel Allende, Judge Judy, Bobby Gentry, Barbra Streisand, and Marsha Clark.

She became a Certified Drama Teacher, school counselor, and motivational speaker who spoke about her first-hand experience with drug addiction, mental illness, and recovery: “I truly have gone through a complete transformation in my life. It was a time that I was not proud of,” she repeated to me.

*

I kept in touch with Ronnie ever since our first calls. We’d exchange emails, holiday cards, and invitations to visit each other.  Mostly we’d talk about what was going on in the world or in our lives. Sometimes she asked random questions about people in the adult film industry: “How is Harry Reems? How does he feel about the films he made?” She’d ask about Joe Sarno. “Where does Joe live now? Is he happy? Please give him my love if you speak with him again. And, most of all, thank him for getting me out of the porn business.”

Occasionally, we returned to talking about the details of her early life, and we pondered the vagaries of existence. The various sliding door moments that could have completely changed the way her life turned out. And she still couldn’t fathom just how her life would’ve been different if she had been ‘Miss Jones.’

Once she called me and asked me about the plot of ‘The Devil in Miss Jones’: “It’s about a woman who lived her life as an innocent virgin, but she wants to have a second go-round before she goes to hell – is that right?”

Yes, I replied. The tagline of the film was ‘If you have to go to hell, go for a reason.’

Ronnie replied: “I’m the opposite of her then. I’d like a do-over where I don’t do all the crazy things.”

*

Every so often, I asked her if she’d be interested in talking more publicly about her life experience in adult film? Could I write an article about her life, for example?

The answer was always the same: “I am so ashamed of it all. It’s embarrassing. And no one would be interested anyway.”

I assured her she had nothing to feel guilty about, and that she’d lived more interesting lives than a room full of other people.

“Wait until I die,” she’d laugh. “Then I really don’t care what you do.”

Are you serious, I asked?

“Yes,” she said. “Wait until then. After that… well… my life has to have counted for something, it has to have had some meaning. It wasn’t just a serious of sliding door moments, right?”

And then she’d sign off her emails in the same way she always did: “Life is good. You must take care. Ronnie.”

*

Ronnie passed away in February 2025.

*

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