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Home , 55th Street Playhouse, Andy Warhol, Blue Movie, Boys in the Sand, Fred Halsted, Garrick Cinema

Matt Connolly Solidification and Flux on the “ White Way”: Gay Porn Theaters in Post-Stonewall City Abstract This paper traces the exhibition strategies of two gay porn theaters in from 1969-1973: the Playhouse and the Eros I. It draws upon contemporaneous and trade press to reconstruct these histories, and does so in the pursuit of two interconnected goals. First, by analyzing two venues whose exhibition protocols shifted over the course of this time period, this paper seeks a more nuanced understanding of how gay porn theaters established, maintained, and augmented their market identities. Second, it attempts to use these shifts to consider more broadly what role exhibition practices played in the shaping of ’s experiences within the porn theater itself – a key site of spectatorial, erotic, and social engagement.

The saw the proliferation of theaters in major my conclusions in some ways, but that will also urban centers specializing in the exhibition of gay provide the opportunity to investigate exhibition .1 Buoyed by both seismic shifts in spaces within a city that is central to histories of both LGBT visibility in the wake of the 1969 Stonewall LGBT culture and pornographic exhibition.3 I will riots and larger trends in industry, law, and culture track two theaters across this time period that increasingly brought pornography of all stripes to observe what films they screened and how they into the mainstream, these theaters provided a public advertised their releases: the venue for audiences of primarily gay men to view gay and the Eros I. While the Playhouse offers an pornography, as well as have various erotic and social example of how an established venue negotiates encounters with one another.2 These possibilities the transition from its previous market identity as for sexual exploration and subcultural community an -house theater to that of a gay porn theater, building dovetailed with the economic opportunities the Eros I troubles the very solidity of the term “gay that such theaters brought to their owners and porn theater,” as new economic opportunities led the managers, for whom the exhibition of gay porn offered venue to sudden shifts in its exhibition protocols. a means to specialize within an ever-more crowded Attending to both the continuities and fluctuations market for pornography of all kinds. At the same in both venues’ exhibition strategies expands our time, these theaters’ identities within the theatrical historical understanding of how gay porn venues marketplace proved far from homogenous or stable operated in the 1970s: what they screened, when –whether they were attempting to transition from they shifted policies, and how they attempted to earlier, more heterogeneous exhibition strategies forge an identity and customer base within a highly to the regular screening of or profitable yet increasingly competitive marketplace. weighing the benefits and drawbacks of exclusively Additionally, I hope to offer some further committing to gay porn. methodological tools by which to consider how, primarily from trade press and where, and under what circumstances gay men advertisements in contemporaneous publications, consumed gay pornography during this time. this paper seeks to address how exhibition policies Previous scholarly accounts of gay porn theaters – or, and strategies for gay porn theaters shifted over the more broadly, public sites of pornographic exhibition course of the early 1970s. I will be concentrating on within which men of various sexual identities and the market in New York City from 1969 to 1973: predilections found physical and social connection – geographic and temporal parameters that will limit have varied in their appraisal of how necessary it is

32 On the Fringe Eszter Zimanyi and Emma Ben Ayoun, editors, Spectator 37:1 (Spring 2017): 32-39. CONNOLLY to consider what was playing on the screen as erotic the space of the gay porn theater itself—not only as encounters occurred. Interweaving sociopolitical the location of varying subcultural practices, but as a commentary and essayistic reflection on personal site whose very legibility as a space of queer world- experience, Samuel R. Delany recounts public sex making remained, if not dependent upon, at least between men attending New York City porn theaters highly imbricated within interconnected logics of from the 1970s through the 1990s, but situates the economic strategy and industrial practice. majority of those encounters within theaters that th exclusively screened heterosexual pornography.4 John 55 Street Playhouse Champagne goes further, arguing in his analysis of Midwestern pornographic arcades that focusing The 55th Street Playhouse had no history of upon the films shown within these spaces offer little exhibiting pornography going into the 1970s. insight into (and may actually obscure) the types of Under the management of Frank Lee Sr. (a notable practices and connections that occur within their distributor and exhibitor of Chinese-language films walls.5 In their accounts of pornographic peep shows in North America), the theater was known in the and gay porn theaters, respectively, Amy Herzog and mid- for screening films from , before José B. Capino differ from these earlier analyses by shifting its exhibition policy in 1967 to focus more linking the textual properties of the films exhibited on Japanese cinema.8 This art house business model to the embodied spectatorial experience, albeit in became increasingly fraught by the late 1960s as somewhat different ways.6 Capino, in particular, shifts in popular taste and censorship standards argues that spectators in the gay porn theater “cannot began to undercut the profitability of international and do not totally disengage from the text even when cinema in major urban markets.9 they seem preoccupied with sexual pursuits,” pointing The Playhouse’s move towards an exhibition to how “the pornographic text exists ubiquitously on strategy dedicated exclusively to gay pornography the screen and in the soundscape of the theater and can be traced to May 1969. While previous films is embedded in its spatial configurations as well as in shown that year included Akira Kurosawa’s Red those practices of bodily engagement that spectators Beard (1965),10 the Toshiro Mifune-starring samurai perform.”7 film Daredevil in the Castle (1961),11 and the Israeli Certainly, examining the space of the drama Not Mine to Love (1967),12 the Playhouse pornographic theater itself – its architectural design, began the month by screening Andy ’s legal status, and subcultural practices – offers crucial sexploitation hit, (1968).13 insights into gay men’s interactions with both the Though the film had been playing within New York and one another. I also readily since the previous year, its run at the Playhouse lasted concede that a full account of gay men’s use of roughly three months.14 This was followed by Paul various pornographic exhibition sites for public sex Morrissey’s Flesh (1968), which played exclusively requires examining more than just theaters, arcades, at the Playhouse (initially as a solo feature and later and peep shows that screened only gay pornography. in a double bill with Lonesome Cowboys) from late- Nevertheless, I agree with Capino that particular July to mid-October 1969.15 These lengthy runs for types of erotic and spectatorial possibilities can occur films that dealt frankly if non-pornographically with when specifically gay pornography screens within a various types of queer sexuality did not permanently public exhibition space. How theaters constructed, alter the Playhouse’s scheduling, which continued publicized, and sometimes dismantled such spaces throughout the remainder of 1969 and into 1970 seems relevant to where gay men congregated for the with a mixture of international art-house fare and viewing of gay porn, the pursuit of public sex, and the titles focusing on contemporary politics and youth establishment of social bonds that grew within and culture. However, the Playhouse returned to films beyond the space of the theater proper. By attempting dealing with dissident sexuality in March 1970, to track in detail how select gay porn theaters made when it screened Meat/Rack, a soft-core porn film themselves known to potential customers within described by Jeffrey Escoffier as portraying “a the wider pornographic market, I seek to further series of sexual encounters between a bisexual San nuance how film studies and queer scholars consider Francisco-based called J.C. and his male

ON THE FRINGE 33 SOLIDIFICATION AND FLUX ON THE “GAY WHITE WAY” clients and girlfriends.”16 Paired with The Charles Pierce Revue – which starred the famed titular female impersonator – Meat/Rack ran from at least mid- March to mid-May 1970.17 Consistently over the previous eighteen months, then, the theater’s most popular and long-running films had been those that foregrounded queer sexuality. The Playhouse then pivoted to an emphasis on heterosexual pornography, screening Censorship in : A New Approach (a.k.a. Pornography in Denmark: A New Approach) (1970), a film that used the pretense of documentary investigation to show nudity and explicit sexuality, for somewhere between three and four months.18 Advertisements become somewhat fragmentary throughout the remainder of 1970 and 1971, so determining a detailed exhibition schedule for the Playhouse proves difficult. However, amongst the films advertised and mentioned in trade press, one consistently finds a reliance on either heterosexual porn or sexploitation fare: The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo & Juliet (1969),19 The Notorious Cleopatra (1970), and The Notorious Concubines (1969).20 Modest-to-lengthy runs of A History of with a non-pornographic short entitled Andy, a ten- the (1970)21 and Love, Yolanda (1971)22 minute documentary that Poole made on the Andy solidified the Playhouse’s focus upon pornographic Warhol retrospective at the Whitney Museum of and sexploitation fare primarily aimed at heterosexual American Art. “I wanted the audience to think they audiences. were going to see a solo jerk-off short featuring a This seemingly paved the way for the Playhouse’s young stud named Andy,” Poole writes, only to get “a transition into gay pornography. The theater became short subject that could be shown at Cinema One.”25 the initial home to two of the most critically noted Such a move spoke to Poole’s larger intentions in gay porn titles of the 1970s: Wakefield Poole’sBoys choosing the Playhouse as an exhibition venue: in the Sand (1971) and ’s L.A. Plays “Most of the gay theaters at the time were depressing Itself (1972). Much has been written about both of and dirty and located in out-of-the-way places… these films’ production histories, reception, and place Marvin and I wanted something else; we didn’t want within the pornographic and queer cinema canons.23 to feel like second-class citizens.”26 Through interior I will focus on the ways in which both Poole and renovations, programming choices, and reliance upon Halsted were able to use the specificities of the the theater’s geographic and reputational distance Playhouse as an exhibition space to position their from other venues, Poole could differentiate his film films differently in the market for gay porn. (and, by extension, the Playhouse) within the market After rejecting what they felt was a meager offer for gay pornography. by the owner of the Park-Miller (a noted gay porn It is not clear whether Halsted received the same theater in New York operated by “the porno king of four-wall deal that Poole did for L.A. Plays Itself, but the West Coast,” Shan Sayles), Poole and producer he seemed to exercise a similar level of discretion Marvin Shulman agreed to a four-wall deal with when the film began screening at the Playhouse in Lee at the Playhouse.24 This gave them an increased April 1972. Two issues, in particular, spoke to the level of control over the exhibition space itself, which ways in which Halsted viewed his film’s exhibition Poole recalls that he and Shulman worked to improve through a more explicitly political lens than many through re-painting, cleaning, etc. It also allowed might associate with gay pornography. First, Halsted Poole to augment the premiere screening of the film set the admission fee for his film at $3 instead of

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$5 (an increasingly common rate in 1972), as he titles. In the last three months of 1973, the Playhouse found “the latter an exploitation of the homosexual offered four separate double features, many of which community.”27 Second, all of Halsted’s “distributor’s recycled titles that had already screened at the share” for screenings of the film on April 23, 1972 theater.36 Such a strategy allowed a greater range of went toward the legal bills incurred by protestors films (mostly from Hand in Hand) to be exhibited associated with the Gay Activists Alliance. Seven and advertised for private consumption via their of the members had filed assault charges against the purchase on 8mm – an indication of how even head of the New York City firemen’s union and six seemingly successful strategies of differentiation other assailants after being attacked while protesting shift within the complex movements of the market at a dinner for political writers held at the New York for gay pornography. Hilton Hotel.28 In both cases, a seemingly greater control over the exhibition venue allowed Halsted to Eros I connect the screening of his film to wider issues in contemporary gay politics—a move that also made In contrast to the Playhouse, the Eros I (located on the Playhouse distinct from other gay porn theaters. 8th Avenue between 45th and 46th Streets) was part of Both and L.A. Plays Itself had a two-theater pornographic complex. Husband-and- substantial runs at the Playhouse: the former from wife team Rex and Chelly Wilson owned the theater, late-December 1971 to early-April 1972,29 and the as well as part of the Cameo and Tivoli theaters, two latter from early-April to late-May 1972.30 While other adult houses in New York City.37 With the the perceived quality and originality of both films Eros I and II, the Wilsons established what Variety buoyed their success, the sheer length of both films’ deemed the city’s first “mini-sex complex, with engagements at the Playhouse proved a marker of one theatre devoted to the straight trade [Eros II, distinction in its own right. In comparison to the with 154 seats and a $3 ticket price] and the other relatively quick turnover that one saw in many of to the homosexual crowd [Eros I, with 100 seats the city’s gay porn theaters, the Playhouse’s films and a $5 ticket price].” The Eros I also stood as ran for weeks, if not months, at a time. In 1972 (the the then-highest ticket price in the city for a non- first full year that the theater screened exclusively roadshow theater: a decision that, as Variety noted, gay pornography), the Playhouse exhibited only five “naturally brings up the question of exploiting the films: Boys in the Sand, L.A. Plays Itself, Left-Handed homosexual audience.”38 This simultaneous sense of (1972);31 First Time Round (1972);32 and Bijou business savvy and willingness to sacrifice potential (1972), which was also directed by Poole.33 This not goodwill for profits offers some insight into the only provided an opportunity for individual titles to transformations undertaken by the Eros I over the build word-of-mouth over time – a strategy long course of the early-to-mid 1970s.39 utilized by art houses – but implied that the films The Eros I entered the 1970s exclusively screening at the Playhouse were of a less disposable screening gay pornography. Indeed, one of the first- nature than those that rapidly arrived and exited ever screenings of a gay hardcore in other gay porn theaters in New York City. New York City (Stud Farm, 1969) occurred at the While this strategy would remain in effect Eros I.40 (Stud Farm opened simultaneously at the throughout much of 1973, at some point during this Metropolitan on East 14th Street between 2nd and period, the theater began to be used by Jack Deveau, 3rd Avenues.) While some films would screen for the director of such films as Left-Handed and the semi-extended runs of three-to-five weeks, most 34 head of the gay porn company Hand in Hand Films. films shown at the theater ran for one-to-two Hand in Hand became more prominently attached weeks, and often accompanied by other features. The to the theater throughout the second half of 1973, offerings seen throughout November 1969 offer a with information regarding the purchase of 8mm good snapshot of the theater’s exhibition strategies. versions of “our feature films” listed at the bottom The month began with a quadruple feature of Gay 35 of the Playhouse’s advertisements. This coincided Matador, The Raunchy Hitchhiker, The Big Popcorn, with a shift away from lengthy runs of single releases and Dial-A-Model,41 followed the next week by and toward double features and quicker turnover of a second foursome of Nude Bug in ,

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Rogue Robot, The Wildest, and Working the Way Thru for them. This even resulted in moments of playful College.42 The third week of the month reduced the self-reflexivity within the theater’s advertising. For line-up to three films (, A Beautiful Nu-Nu, and instance, ads for Stud Farm that ran in the New York What is a Man?43) and November ended with an Times had to re-name the film Study Farm, as the entirely different set of films: Wax Museum, Picnic, newspaper did not allow the printing of the original The Rack, and Forward Lance.44 In distinct contrast to title.47 When the satirical gay porn Nelly Galore in the the lengthy runs utilized at the Playhouse, then, the K.Y. Caper ran at the Eros I later in 1969, the film’s Eros I employed the tactics used by several other gay ad contained a tagline that read, “Bears more facts porn theaters of the time, with any individual title than study farm” – a frankly inscrutable joke unless proving less important than a wide range of ever- you were a knowing follower of the theater and its changing options. films.48 Such a move can be read as an attempt to While their selections of titles made the theaters’ foster a sense of viewer engagement and insider identity as a venue for gay pornography clear, the knowledge that would encourage repeat trips to the Eros I made additional efforts through advertising Eros I, especially at a moment when patrons had an that explicitly underscored the Eros I as a gay space. ever-increasing number of gay porn venues to choose Besides the obviously homoerotic imagery within the from. theater’s ads, two recurring slogans emphasized the This makes Eros I’s change in October 1970 to Eros I as a venue the catered particularly to gay men. an all-heterosexual exhibition strategy a tad jarring “Exclusively at the theatre for selective audiences,” at first, although not when examined within the promised a September 11, 1969 advertisement in the broader context of the period.49 Eros I made the Village Voice,45 while a December 18, 1969 ad billed switch to straight porn as a means of diversifying that week’s offerings as playing “at the only theater the theaters’ heterosexual output, given that Eros exclusively built and designed for its audience.”46 II had committed to a long-term run of the highly Though the precise nature of the “audience” in lucrative straight porn Sexual Freedom in Denmark question is not specified, these taglines used (1970). Within weeks, other gay theaters like the connotative language in a way that nods knowingly Mermaid (which previously hosted male strip shows at gay men, a group whose “selective” tastes would in addition to gay porn) and the Masque (“one of be met by a space “exclusively built and designed” the first gay pix houses in the city,” according to Variety) both switched to screening heterosexual porn.50 Such changes in exhibition strategy revealed that, for all the Eros I’s labor in identifying itself as a venue synonymous with gay pornography and the “selective audience” that viewed it, that identity could and did change to fit the economic opportunities of the moment. Such a moment seemingly came again in May 1972, when Eros I announced that it would return to screening homosexual pornography after roughly a year-and-a-half hiatus.51 To underscore this point, the full-page advertisement for Bob & Daryl & Ted & Alex (1972), the theater’s first gay porn film in roughly eighteen months, in the Village Voice earnestly beckoned customers back to the Eros I: “The first theatre in New York to provide the homosexual community with quality, 1st run films discounted its policy because there was only mediocre product available. Now the Eros I Cinema returns to its original policy because, after a lengthy search, the theatre has finally found the film worthy

36 SPRING 2017 CONNOLLY of its audience.”52 The advertisement marks a rather shifts in exhibition strategies within the gay porn extreme example of how theaters needed to position theaters of the 1970s not only provides a richer themselves forcefully within the market, especially account of a key period in the histories of both when they engaged in altering their screening American pornography and film exhibition, but also policies and potentially confusing or even upsetting opens up new questions regarding the role of the gay patrons expecting gay pornography. If the flexibility porn theater in the everyday practices of 1970s-era of the market allowed pivots for financial gain, it gay men. How might the distinctions in run lengths, also required more effort to get the initial clientele advertising, and extrafilmic attractions have affected to return. where gay men went to watch porn and engage with The Eros I more or less picked up its earlier one another? To what extent does the potentially exhibition strategies following its return to exhibiting greater flexibility and freedom provided by a four- gay pornography. Adjustments continued to be walling strategy open up the space of the gay porn made to react to the changing market for gay porn theater to different types of audiences, intermingling and erotic experience, as when the theater added a of and styles, and political action? two-week run of live performances by Mr. Joel, “the While the nature and orientation of the sexual of Burlesk,” in an effort to compete with male acts on screen might make little difference to some burlesque houses opening on 8th Avenue in the mid- men in the theater, did shifts in exhibition 1970s.53 Still, the theater seemingly remained in the policies and screening strategies affect the sexual, business of screening gay porn from 1972 on. Samuel spectatorial, and social possibilities for other Delany notes that the theater remained one of the men? These and other questions become more only standing porn theaters, gay or otherwise, in the legible when one connects the individual area in the mid 1990s, though it was and collective experiences of LGBT/queer slated for demolition in October 1996.54 Its relative populations to the systems of industrial structures, longevity and consistency underscores all the more economic incentives, and cultural practices that the fluidity of the gay porn exhibition market in both shape and were shaped by them. I hope that the early-to-mid 1970s, in which gay pornographic the above case studies have provided some strategies theaters at once strove to solidify their reputations for considering the role that exhibitors played within an evermore competitive business and within the circulation and consumption of shifted strategies suddenly to take advantage of new pornography by urban gay men at a specific opportunities. historical moment, and might prompt others to further consider the 1970s gay pornographic Conclusion theater as a space whose complexities offer the possibility of productive engagement in the here and Considering the logics of screening policies and now.

Matt Connolly is a Ph.D. student in film studies in the Department of Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He studies the aesthetics and industrial history of LGBT and queer cinema, particularly in the mid-20th century . He is currently writing a dissertation on the distribution, marketing, and exhibition strategies that John Waters utilized in the first half of his career. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Michele Hilmes, for encouraging me to pursue this project; the Gerber/Hart Library and Archives, for their assistance in research; and to all of the participants in ZdC’s 2015 Graduate Student Conference at USC, for such an invigorating and wonderful gathering. Notes

1Variety referred to the preponderance of theaters around Times Square that screened gay porn as “the Gay White Way” in a 1972 article, which is where this paper’s title comes from. “8th Ave. Site Back to Homo Porno Pix,” Variety, May 31, 1972, 5. 2 This, of course, is not to imply that gay pornography and visual had not been produced, circulated, and viewed in the

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United States before the late 1960s; see Thomas Waugh, Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film from Their Beginnings to Stonewall (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). 3 The importance of New York City to 70s-era LGBT life almost goes without saying. For a succinct history of the rise of porn theaters and peep shows around Times Square in New York City, see Anthony Bianco, Ghosts of : A History of America’s Most Infamous Block (New York: William Morrow, 2004), 157–180. 4 Samuel R. Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (New York: New York University Press, 1999). 5 John Champagne, “‘Stop Reading Films!’: Film Studies, Close Analysis, and Gay Pornography,” Cinema Journal 36.4 (Summer 1997): 76–97 6 Amy Herzog, “In the Flesh: Space and Embodiment in the Pornographic Arcade,” The Velvet Light Trap 62 (Fall 2008): 29–43; and José B. Capino, “Homologies of Space: Text and Spectatorship in All-Made Adult Theaters,” Cinema Journal 45.1 (Fall 2005): 50–65. 7 Capino, “Homologies of Space…”, 57. 8 For more information on Frank Lee Sr. and the 55th Street Playhouse’s connections to Chinese cinema, see Ramona Curry, “Bridging the Pacific with Love Eterne,” in China Forever: The Shaw Brothers and Diasporic Cinema, ed. Poshek Fu (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 174–198. 9 For more on how the status of foreign films shifted in the U.S. at this time, see Tino Balio, The Foreign Film Renaissance on American Screens, 1946-1973 (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), 227–249, 279–300. 10 Advertisement, The Village Voice, January 2, 1969, 42. 11 Advertisement, The Village Voice, February 27, 1969, 48. 12 Advertisement, The Village Voice, April 3, 1969, 52. 13 The film screened simultaneously at the New Garrick Theater throughout its run at the Playhouse. 14 For any film in which I reference the overall length of its run at a particular theater, I will include the first and final time that advertisements for said film’s engagement at that theater appeared in print. Advertisement, The Village Voice, May 1, 1969, 50; Advertisement, The Village Voice, July 17, 1969, 47. 15 The switch to the double feature occurred in early-to-mid September 1969. Advertisement, The Village Voice, July 31, 1969, 41; Advertisement, The Village Voice, October 16, 1969, 60. 16 Jeffrey Escoffier, Bigger than Life: The History of Gay Porn Cinema from Beefcake to Hardcore (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2009), 127. 17 There is a gap in advertisement between this film and the next feature shown at the Playhouse, so it is difficult to determine the precise end-date of Meat/Rack’s run. Advertisement, The Village Voice, March 19, 1970, 51; Advertisement, The Village Voice, May 14, 1970, 59. 18 Advertisements for the film that I have found end in late August-early September 1970. Advertisement, The Village Voice, June 11, 1970, 56; Advertisement, The Village Voice, September 3, 1970, 43. However, a box-office report in Variety mentions the confiscation of the film print, implying that perhaps the run extended into September before being cut short by the seizure. See: “Bway’s Paranoid Boxoffice…”, Variety, October 7, 1970, 9, 22. 19 The advertisement refers to the film as The Secret Lives of Romeo and Juliet. Advertisement, The Village Voice, December 10, 1970, 74. 20 The final two films are referenced in a brief notice on the Playhouse’s seeming decision “to have gone the sex film route” after being previously known as “an art house.” “,” Boxoffice, January 18, 1971, E4. 21 “B’way Blackout Mars Sunday Nite…”, Variety, February 10, 1971, 9, 18; “B’way Shaky…”, Variety, March 10, 1971, 9, 14. 22 Advertisement, The Village Voice, October 7, 1971, 69; Advertisement, The Village Voice, December 23, 1971, 71. 23 Information on both films within the contexts of their respective directors’ careers can be found in Wakefield Poole, Dirty Poole: The Autobiography of a Gay Porn Pioneer (: Alyson Books, 2000), and William E. Jones, Halsted Plays Himself (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2011). A critical examination of both films within the larger contexts of cinematic and queer history can be found in Cindy Patton, L.A. Plays Itself/Boys in the Sand (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2014). 24 “Four-walling” meant that Poole and Shulman would rent out the theater and, after deducting a fee and percentage of the profits to Lee, would keep the film grossed. Poole, Dirty Poole, 162–163. 25 Ibid. 6. 26 Ibid. 4. 27 “‘Aggressively Naïve’ Gay Pic Sell For Incoming ‘L.A. Plays Itself,’” Variety, April 5, 1972, 7. 28 Advertisement, The Village Voice, April 27, 1972, 82. Contemporaneous coverage of the charges and protests can be found in Les Ledbetter, “Homosexuals File Assault Charges Against Maye and 6 Others,” , April 19, 1972, 23. 29 Advertisement, The Village Voice, December 30, 1971, 55; Advertisement, The Village Voice, April 6, 1972, 75. 30 Advertisement, The Village Voice, April 6, 1972, 72; Advertisement, The Village Voice, May 25, 1972, 70. 31 Advertisement, The Village Voice, June 1, 1972, 67; Advertisement, The Village Voice, July 13, 1972, 56. 32 Advertisement, The Village Voice, July 27, 1972, 59; Advertisement, The Village Voice, October 12, 1972, 80. 33 Advertisement, The Village Voice, October 12, 1972, 83; Advertisement, The Village Voice, February 1, 1973, 74. Bijou would begin playing in a double feature with Boys in the Sand beginning in mid-December 1972. 34 The precise nature of Deveau’s relationship with the theater and when exactly it began remain a bit ambiguous A 1973 article in Variety mentioned that Deveau “had gone to other sites including the 55th St. Playhouse with Erotikus” after the venue that he originally leased to screen his films, the Lincoln Art theatre, switched to exhibiting heterosexual porn. “Return to 8th Avenue,”

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Variety, August 8, 1973, 4. In a 1993 interview, director Tom DeSimone recalls Erotikus (which he directed) being booked by Deveau at the Playhouse, which would mean that Deveau’s tenure at the theater began in mid-1973. Jerry Douglas, “Tom DeSimone, Part II,” Manshots, August 1993, 11. 35 The first advertisement to feature this additional information was: Advertisement, The Village Voice, October 4, 1973, 65. 36 The following note the starting dates of each double feature: Advertisement, The Village Voice, October 18, 1973, 90; Advertisement, The Village Voice, November 1, 1973, 74; Advertisement, The Village Voice, November 15, 1973: 92; Advertisement, The Village Voice, December 6, 1973: 85. 37 Addison Verrill, “Sexpix Simplified: They Pay,” Variety, April 1, 1970, 3, 27. 38 Ibid. 27. 39 Further information on the Wilsons, particularly Chelley, can be found here: “Chelley Wilson, Queen of N.Y. Porno Exhibs, Into National Distribution,” Variety, February 17, 1971, 5. 40 The film ran from late-June to early-August 1969, one of the lengthier runs of any film at the Eros I during the time period under consideration. Advertisement, The Village Voice, June 26, 1969, 48; Advertisement, The Village Voice, August 7, 1969, 43. 41 I have not been able to find reliable years of release for many of the films screened at the Eros I. Advertisement, The Village Voice, November 6, 1969, 52. 42 Advertisement, The Village Voice, November 13, 1969, 56. 43 Advertisement, The Village Voice, November 20, 1969, 58. 44 Advertisement, The Village Voice, November 27, 1969, 60. 45 Advertisement, The Village Voice, September 11, 1969, 54. 46 Advertisement, The Village Voice, December 18, 1969, 58. 47 Advertisement, The New York Times, June 27, 1969, 21. This ad also invited patrons to meet the film’s star, Gary Yuma (“the freshest, most devastating find in years”) during a personal appearance at Eros I. 48 Advertisement, The Village Voice, August 21, 1969, 40. 49 “Sex House Changes Sex,” Variety, October 21, 1970, 18. 50 “‘Gay’ Sex Houses Switch to Hetero Porno Operation,” Variety, December 9, 1970, 3. 51 “8th Ave. Site…” 52 Advertisement, The Village Voice, May 25, 1972: 76. 53 Addison Verrill, “‘Not Massage Parlor, But Rap Studio’; Cheapies Makes 8th Ave. Sodom West,” Variety, May 16, 1973, 113. Delany recalls live dancers at the Eros I on a regular basis who, after performing, “came out to walk the aisles and hustle the audience,” though he may be referring to the theater’s practices later in the 1970s and 1980s. Delany, Times Square Red, 57–58. 54 Delany, Times Square Red, 91.

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