Doris Wishman

Indie Filmmaker, 1912-2002

by David Rosen

Doris Wishman once said, “After I die I host of pseudonyms like Louis will be making movies in Hell!” And Silverman, Dawn Whitman, Doris she probable is. Chasnik, Dee Ess, Luigi Manicottale, O. O. Miller, Lazarus Volkyl and Doris Wishman is the mother of modern Wisher. filmed pornography. Born on July 23, 1912, in Manhattan, she died on The Queen of Sexploitation grew-up in August 10, 2002, in Miami, living a Forest Hills, Queens, attended Hunter most adventurous life. She was a self- College, studying acting. She hoped taught independent filmmaker who to become an actress and, in time, wrote, produced (and found the found roles in her own movies. Later money!), directed, cast, edited and in life, she reflected: “I’m a frustrated acted in nearly all of her 30 actress — very frustrated. I films. went to dramatic school with Shelley Winters, and I was Her films ranged from far better than she. I know "nudies" to "roughies" to that doesn’t sound right, but "chesties" and, finally, to it’s so.” Through her cousin, "slashers," her works who was a partner with the expressing the movie producer, Joseph E. underground, cult porn Levine, she got her first job scene of the ’60 and ‘70s. in the “business,” a A film critic once opined, secretary in a film “Doris Wishman is not distribution company. She merely the Grand Dame of married Jack Abrahms, an bargain basement advertising industry sexploitation films, she is executive, and moved to the Godard of low-budget genre films.” Florida. Shortly after relocating, Abrahms suffered a heart attack at Wishman stood all of 4’, 11” and, for age 31 and Wishman was left a widow. half-a-century, was a woman making films in an overwhelmingly male- “One minute we were together, and dominated sex-exploitation movie the next he was dead,” Wishman business. Not only were men the mourned. “And really, I just wanted primary audience, but they made the to do something that would take my movies and ran the grindhouse circuit mind off this tragedy.” Moving back to of small theaters that showed them. New York, she looked for “something While rejecting calling herself a to fill my hours with." In 1954, Walter feminist, she ran her own business, Bibo had released Garden of Eden, the made her own movies and cut her own first nudist picture. The movie deals. Ever resourceful, she was not screened in 36 cities across the U.S., above using her husband’s name if but was found obscene by New York’s faced with the need to appear more SUNY Regents, which then had traditional. Her film credits include a authority over such matters. Sex Matters Wishman

behinds on the big screen.” The At the time of the movie’s release, Supreme Court’s 1957 landmark Roth pressure from an activist nudist decision helped foster a new porn movement championing nakedness as aesthetics. According to one estimate, part of a healthy lifestyle was gaining between 1957 and 1963 “dozens of traction. Bibo fought back and, in July nudist camp movies played across 1957, Judge Charles Desmond of the America.” In these movies, “viewers Court of Appeals ruled: “There is were treated to endless scenes of nothing sexy or suggestive about it … nudists playing volleyball, nudists nudists are shown as wholesome, practicing archery, nudists performing happy people in family groups on the accordion and nudists doing practicing their sincere but misguided pretty much everything except what theory that clothing … is deleterious to you want to see nudists doing - having mental health … .” sex.”

Wishman saw an opportunity and took Nude on the Moon is an early example it. “I thought, well, I know of Wishman’s sly, subversive distribution, I’m going to produce a sensibility. The movie shows two male film,” she recalled. She took an astronauts building a rocket, flying it introductory filmmaking course and, in to the moon and discovering a planet 1959, made her first movie, Hideout in inhabited by nearly nude bathing the Sun. To finance its costs, she beauties. Damsels decked out in bikini borrowed $10,000 from her sister, bottoms and sporting makeshift pipe- Pearl. With no experience but plenty cleaner antennae poking from their of gumption, she shot her first flick. bouffant hairstyles welcome the “When I saw what I had — oh brother, explorers. Half-naked men and it was horrible,” Wishman recalls. “I’d women populate the extra-terrestrial just go to bed at night saying, well, if I nudist colony and as they frolic, spend the rest of my life paying my dancing and tossing a ball around, the sister back ten dollars a week … but space-suited astronauts, in true ‘50s that was healthy thinking, because I scientist style, diligently take notes. used to go to bed pretending I had a The movie was banned in New York date with Jack, which is sick thinking.” State where the court insisted that showing nudists in a nudist colony was This is classic indie filmmaking 101, permissible, but showing them on the “friends and family” financing, and she moon in a sex-exploitation film was would go back to this well many times obscene. in her long and prolific carrier. Her more mature films are reported to “After a while, nudist pictures were have costs only between $50,000 and passé,” Wishman later admitted. “So $70,000 and many still generate there was calm sex, you know, very royalties. slight sex, not too hot. I went along with that. And then sex became … During the late-’50s and early-’60s, hotter, shall we say? But I couldn’t she made eight “nudie cuties,” bring myself to do hard core, not that including Hideout in the Sun (1960), it’s anybody’s business if people want Nude on the Moon (1961) and Blaze to see it, but I couldn’t do it. So I just Starr Goes Nudist (1962). Under post- kept making films.” Her works of this World War II obscenity laws, a form of period were known as “roughies,” “skin-censorship” had been in force suggestively hardcore, and included that, as one source put it, “stopped Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965) and The people from showing floppy, bouncing Sex Perils of Paulette (1965). The Sex breasts or juicy, mouth-watering Perils of Paulette is a porn-melodrama.

A country bumpkin moves to Gotham genitals, but changes him from a mild- and finds herself participating in a wild manned youth into wild rapist and, in orgy; unable to find a job, she turns to sequence after sequence, he attacks prostitution; finally, she rejects the one woman after another. Such was nice guy who falls for her. Wishman’s judgment of male sexuality. Where nudie movies were innocent, roughies marked more extreme In the ‘70s, Wishman “discovered” the representations of both women and Polish stripper known as Chesty men. Women were cast in stark Morgan, a woman with an (allegedly) terms, either good or bad, and, quite all-natural 73-inch chest, who often, good women gone bad. Men characterized a new aesthetic phase, were more misogynistic, depicting the “chesties.” As obscenity standards increased violence against women. further relaxed, porn makers began to These characterizations are found in actively depict scenes of sexual Bad Girls Go to Hell in which women intercourse. This led to a flood of kill their rapists; Another Day, Another more hardcore movies, many lacking Man (1966) in which wives are forced story lines. into prostitution; Indecent Desires (1967) that depicts weird voodoo dolls Wishman did not go in for the that have strange sexual powers; and depiction of hardcore porn and The Amazing Transplant (1970) that released two more softcore spy spoofs, shows how male sexual fantasy can Deadly Weapons (1973) and Double get out of control. Agent 73 (1974). Among Deadly Weapons co-stars was Harry Reems Two of Wishman’s movies exemplify who had gained celebrity status in the the roughie phase. In Bad Girls Go to 1972 classic, Deep Throat. In Double Hell, which some critics consider her Agent 73, after Chesty’s bust size, she best work, the main character, Meg, is plays a secret agent who has a camera assaulted in her apartment stairwell by implanted in her breasts and goes the building’s maintenance. Failing to after a ring of Commies selling heroin. rape her, he slips a note under her apartment door insisting that she have By the late-70s, the sex-ploitation sex with him or he’ll lie to her husband market was changing, offering ever- that she consented to have sex. more hardcore movies. It was not Peggy Ahwesh, a filmmaker who Wishman’s sensibility. In rejection of teaches film at Bard College, considers this development, she made Let Me Bad Girls to be Wishman’s finest work. Die a Woman (1978), a dramatized “Bad Girls is about a woman who is pseudo-documentary about literally lost, wandering around on the transsexuals. Most stunning, the film run, sort of a lost soul,” Ahwesh includes candid, disturbing, scenes of explains. “It has all the classic actual sex-change operations. Her era Wishman devices: sexual tension, men eclipsed, she went into semi- anxious about women’s power, women retirement only to reemerge, brassier anxious about their sexuality and what then ever, with Satan Was a Lady in they want to do with their lives.” 2001 and Dildo Heaven (also known as Desperate Desires) in 2002. At the The Amazing Transplant, a color film, time of her death, she was doing post- chronicles the saga of a young man, production on Each Time I Kill. Arthur, who undergoes a unique medical procedure; he has the penis of a dead man grafted onto his groin. The surgery transforms not only his

For more information: Videos

Eddie Muller and Daniel Faris, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of 8QcOe8I-kI "Adults Only" Cinema (Charlotte, NC: Baker & Taylor, 1996). https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list =PLu3Na2nPWaYkAMEahv9x7P6DNNn- jeBZj