It very recently was announced that an actress with some notoriety under her belt had just agreed to play the part of an actress who is notorious for having nothing on under her belt, in fact known in no sense of the word for her fashion sense.
In a news headline yesterday, it was pointed out to me by my friend who is a very noted local grease monkey, that the aforementioned actress, one Lindsay Lohan, was slated to portray in a biographical film, another actress, one Linda Lovelace, of pornographic film fame. I can’t help but note that the alliteration is ironic. The alliteration doesn’t last once you realize Linda Lovelace’s name is Linda Boreman.
Comparisons will no doubt be attempted. This is something we will not endeavor here, I’m not sorry to say.
Ms. Lohan, with all of her known issues, hopefully is not clutching at straws with this effort. She is not the focus of my attention however, her chosen subject is.
Linda Boreman, perhaps the most reluctant actress of the twentieth century, will undoubtedly be played with all of Ms. Lohan’s panache. Ms. Lohan though will likely be playing the character ‘Linda Lovelace’ and not Linda Boreman if Hollywood has their particular way about things.
I would hope that, Barbara Boreman, Linda Boreman’s surviving sister, if she is still among us today would agree with me in that I hope that serious attention will be given to Linda’s later years, and her return to the pornography industry in what I consider her own clutching at straws last grasp at fame that it appears she desired. What is in the historical record that tells us that Linda Boreman did not agree with her means to the end of fame perhaps makes her more infamous than the role she played in the cultural phenomenon known as “Deep Throat”.
Linda Boreman appeared at the 1986 Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography in New York City held by Edwin Meese, and testified before the Commission that she was threatened with harm, and coerced literally at gunpoint (or under threat of death) by her husband at the time, Mr. Chuck Traynor, to perform in the hardcore film feature that changed American perspective on the pornography industry. There is a feature movie entitled “Inside Deep Throat” which premiered at Sundance film festival, [Inside Deep Throat – written and produced by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, and co-produced by A Beautiful Mind producer Brian Grazer – draws on news reports and interviews with cultural icons such as Norman Mailer, Hugh Hefner, Xaviera Hollander, Dick Cavett and Barbara Boreman]. For any adult readers willing to sacrifice the running time of the feature, Running Time of 92 minutes [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Deep_Throat] in order to learn more than they could by my attempting to paraphrase a screen edit into an interesting feature article.
In essence Ms. Boreman told the Commission that what people were watching on that screen was her being raped. Those were in effect her words. She testified before the 1986 Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography in New York City, stating “When you see the movie Deep Throat, you are watching me being raped. It is a crime that movie is still showing; there was a gun to my head the entire time.”
It is much to the chagrin of family and friends, that she exhibited at the time of her “fifteen minutes of fame”, no apparent regret of her actions; nor did she for all we know attempt to press criminal charges against her husband and the parties involved. This made the apparent about-face on the entire episode appear to be a shallow and selfish bid for personal attention on her part, according to persons quoted in various media (see the documentary mentioned earlier). She testifies literally years after the making of the now infamous film, not immediately approaching anyone that we know of in a position of law enforcement authority who could have substantiated her claims. It is my belief that the eyes of public perception that were opened by the very same documented self-degradation were also jaded by her seeming to be such a willing participant in it, to the effect of blinding them and hardening the hearts of some people who believe themselves to be “above that sort of thing”. Too much time seems to have passed for her ‘libelous statements’ to be given credence, whether they were sworn to publicly and under oath, or not. Linda Lovelace returned to mainstream adult eyes in 1997 when she did a pictorial as Linda Lovelace for the magazine Leg Show
for compensation, something she claimed to have never received for filming “Deep Throat“, or after its distribution. She said she did not object to this, because “there’s nothing wrong with looking sexy as long as it’s done with taste.” Boreman maintained she received no money for “Deep Throat“, and that the $1,250 payment for her appearance was taken by Traynor. In 1979, she retained Victor Yannacone, a controversial attorney more frequently associated with environmental lawsuits, to sue for a share of the several hundred million dollars the film earned. The suit was dismissed without trial by the Nassau County Supreme Court in Mineola, New York, and was never appealed. The film “Deep Throat” brought in an estimated several hundred million dollars, an estimated two hundred twenty-seven thousand of that in cash receipts allegedly collected by ‘mafia collectors’ from independent movie theater owners. Several of the theater owners were threatened from what appears to be both sides of the law, at the same time.
Linda Lovelace had fifteen minutes of fame, and more controversy than most of us will see in our lifetimes.
By comparison, what monetary gain Linda Boreman had from the film seems to be unknown, her sister reports that Linda made $1,200.00 and drug abuse was blamed offhandedly for the loss of the rest of whatever was taken in by the couple.
Linda Boreman died tragically on April 22nd, 2002. While driving on her way to a dialysis treatment, on April 3, 2002, Boreman lost control of her car, which rolled twice. She suffered massive trauma and internal injuries. On April 22, 2002 she was taken off life support and died in Denver, Colorado at the age of 53.
Lindsay Lohan could star in an autobiographical film today, without filming this current and future project, and it could be titled “Deep Trouble“. Actress Lindsay Lohan is scheduled to star in Inferno in 2010.
I hope that they keep in mind Barbara Boreman’s answer when people say “Oh, you’re Linda Lovelace’s sister.” Barbara Boreman’s reply is “I never met Linda Lovelace”.
Linda Boreman has been the subject of five authorized biographies:
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Inside Linda Lovelace (1974) ISBN 0-902826-11-5
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The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace (1974) ISBN 0-523-00394-3
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Ordeal (1980) ISBN 0-517-42791-5
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Out of Bondage (1986) ISBN 0-425-10650-0
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The Complete Linda Lovelace (2001) ISBN 0-9705502-0-0
Other books which include Linda (Lovelace) Boreman:
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Jack Stevenson (ed): Fleshpot – Cinema’s Sexual Myth Makers & Taboo Breakers (Headpress, England 2000): Features an interview with her.
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Nicolas Barbano: Verdens 25 hotteste pornostjerner (Rosinante, Denmark 1999) ISBN 87-7357-961-0: Features a chapter on her.
Exogeny Network™ 