The Legend of Henry Paris
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When a writer The goes in search of Legend the great of auteur of the golden age of porn, she gets more than she bargained for Henry paris BY TONI BENTLEY Photography by Marius Bugge 108 109 What’s next? The fourth title that kept showing up on best-of lists of the golden age was The Opening of Misty Beethoven by Henry Paris. Who? Searching my favorite porn site, Amazon.com, I found that this 1975 film was just rereleased in 2012 on DVD with all the bells and whistles of a Criterion Collection Citizen Kane reissue: two discs (re- mastered, digitized, uncut, high- definition transfer) that include AAs a professional ballerina, I barely director’s commentary, outtakes, finished high school, so my sense of intakes, original trailer, taglines inadequacy in all subjects but classi- and a 45-minute documentary cal ballet remains adequately high. on the making of the film; plus a In the years since I became a writer, magnet, flyers, postcards and a my curiosity has roamed from clas- 60-page booklet of liner notes. sic literature to sexual literature to classic sexual literature. When Misty arrived in my mailbox days later, I placed the disc A few months ago, I decided to take a much-needed break in my DVD player with considerable skepticism, but a girl has to from toiling over my never-to-be-finished study of Proust, pursue her education despite risks. I pressed play. Revelation. Tolstoy and Elmore Leonard to bone up on one of our most interesting cultural phenomena: pornography. I had heard • of this long-ago era called the “golden age,” so I thought I First off: The Opening of Misty Beethoven is an actual movie, not would start my education at the beginning, often—though an extended loop of in-and-out close-ups. In fact, the film not always—a good place to start. is so good, so funny, so sexy, that The golden age of porn has you will not be tempted to press an undisputed point of entry: pause after the usual 12-minutes- Deep Throat. It’s 1972 and Linda to-orgasm, time-for-a beer routine Lovelace—God rest her unhappy that porn reliably delivers. This soul—has her clit in her throat, may be a downside, depending on your expectations, but more likely you will be delighted as you realize In 24 months, Metzger this is hardcore like no other—the hardcore we never knew to desire, made five hardcore Howard Hawks hardcore. We are in Paris, the real one, Henry Paris films, of nighttime in a sodden Pigalle, and which Misty Beethoven a handsome chap in a trench coat— porn legend Jamie Gillis, a rich is the crown jewel. man’s Elliott Gould—is meandering around looking serious. He is giving an absurdist, and pernicious, feminist veneer to an en- renowned sexologist Dr. Seymour Love, a modern-day Kinsey, tirely chauvinist story. While the film’s premise is a frustrated his latest best-seller called The Anals of Passion. He enters a dirty- woman’s search for pleasure, it is in reality the ultimate fella- movie theater and encounters a cute, $5-hand-job gal played by tio fantasy. The film was the career-defining effort of a horny Constance Money, née Susan Jensen. This young woman’s bright hairdresser, Gerard Damiano. (Years later even he admitted, pink lipstick is painted so far beyond her lovely lips that it all but rather endearingly, “No, I don’t think it’s a good movie.”) meets the mound of blue eye shadow drowning her sparkling I proceeded to Damiano’s second hit and far more imagina- blue eyes. The good doctor is both intrigued and appalled by tive feature, The Devil in Miss Jones, starring Georgina Spelvin. this “sexual civil-service worker.” He books a session with her at Unlike Lovelace, Spelvin manages to inject considerable style a nearby maison. As they walk, Dr. Love asks her name. into her effort; she appears to actually be turned on. “Misty Beethoven.” On to Behind the Green Door, made “Is that your real name?” by the notorious flesh peddlers the “No, I changed it to make myself Mitchell brothers. (Jim eventu- seem more important.” ally murdered cokehead brother “What was it before?” Artie.) Starring Marilyn Cham- “Dolores Beethoven.” bers, who had previously modeled And so (continued on page 142) as a young mother on the famous Ivory Snow detergent box, this film Top: RADLEY METZGER IN HIS PRIME, sports the conceit of a normal and CIRCA THE LATE 1960S. Middle: A respectable young woman who be- SCENE fRoM Metzger’S 1970 MovIE comes the centerpiece of an orgy The Lickerish QuarTeT. fILMED IN (she is devoured) in front of a siz- RoME IN A stuDIo MADE fAMouS bY able audience; the Ivory Snow girl fELLINI, THIS SHoT featuRES Two is eventually coupled with an Afri- LovERS IN A LIbrary, THE fLooR A GIANT bLowuP of A DICTIonary page can American man, boxer Johnnie wITH DEfINITIoNS foR words SuCH Keyes. This film is the first notable AS fornicaTe AND ecsTasy. BoTToM: A porn flick to feature an interracial SCENE fRoM metzger’S “LovE story,” fuck— every thrust a bona fide civil Thérèse and isabeLLe. RighT: A 110 rights movement. Collage of Metzger MovIE Posters. 111 ing Gray as one of two men in an energetic deceased) went on to medical school and sexy foreign films in the U.S. In the 1960s the film. He bought it for $5,000, and on a library floor that is a giant enlarge- three-way.) The Henry Paris films consti- became an ob-gyn; as adults they joked this meant an occasional naked bosom or after his usual dubs and edits, the film ment of a dictionary page, the definitions tute an anomaly in the history of porno- about ending up in related professions. veiled body shot accompanied by a risqué was released in 1966 with the tagline “It for masturbate, fornicate, ecstasy and copulate graphic pictures. They are hardcore satires, Metzger attended Columbia Univer- story and always a beautiful ingenue. is entirely possible to make excitation a as their literary backdrop. Score, an explo- screwball porn with magnificent allusions to sity but dropped out during the Korean Audubon had a secret weapon, some- way of life.” By 1966 standards it was hot ration of bisexuality, was Metzger’s first the French and Italian New Wave masters. War to sign up for the Air Force, where thing no other distributor had: Metzger’s and edgy. It became a sensation, pulling foray into pushing-the-envelope soft-core. Each film has unexpected attributes: origi- he opted for training as a film editor for expert skills as an editor. Typically he in an unprecedented female audience to The film has real erections and is based nal music, actual scripts and stories that go military propaganda films. After the war he would buy a European film cheaply and a “dirty” picture. “It touched something on a sexy off-Broadway play (in which an from A to B to XXX. joined Janus Films, where he began edit- then rework it, editing the story for speed in women. It was probably the first femi- unknown Sylvester Stallone played a randy I became obsessed. Who was Henry ing and occasionally dubbing the Ameri- and accessibility, dubbing it into English, nist erotic film released in the 1960s, and telephone repairman). Paris? Was he dead, as are his unlikely can trailers for the A-list foreign films that occasionally shooting nude inserts to help it pushed a button with every woman in By this time, however, Deep Throat had m contemporaries Damiano and the Mitchell were at the time making cinema history— the narrative along and adding spar- America,” says Metzger. arrived, and the entire landscape for erotic brothers? Or perhaps he didn’t exist at all Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura, kling taglines for the ad campaign. It was “A door opened,” he recalls, “and I films changed virtually overnight. After THE LEGEND OF HENRY PARIS and was a stand-in for several now dead François Truffaut’s Jules and Jim and the a winning formula at just the right time: walked right through it.” weak box-office receptions for his previous people? I even thought perhaps he was a films of the great Dane Ingmar Bergman. pre-hardcore, with the pill and the age of two films, Metzger felt forced—“We tried Continued from page 111 woman, so advanced were his sexual poli- “One of the best compliments I ever Aquarius in full swing. • to resist”—by the market demand (and tics and so beautiful his aesthetic. got,” recalls Metzger, “was from Bergman, Audubon made a lot of money. Beginning in 1963, as the Audubon coffers bill collectors) to venture into the hard- begins the great ride that is The Opening Henry Paris is in fact the “nom de who liked the trailer I did for Through a The Twilight Girls (tagline: “Dangerous started to fill, Metzger started to make his core arena. And so Henry Paris was born. of Misty Beethoven. Wearing a T-shirt with fuck” of Radley Metzger— director, pro- Glass Darkly.” He also remembers sitting love!”) stars the Henry is Metzger’s American Express and MasterCard logos ducer and writer (under the moniker Jake alongside Jean Renoir in an editing room gorgeous Agnès middle name, and, on its front, Misty states her rules: “I do a Barnes, a sly nod to the castrated hero of in New York, doing the cuts and dubbing Laurent and Cath- he explains, “some- straight fuck.