13 originals, this is a documentary series about Traci Lords who entered the porn industry at age 15 and left at age 18. There are some who view this as the story of a young girl who has taken advantage of by a brutal industry. There are others who view this as the story of a smart and resourceful young woman who, armed with a legitimate ID, nearly took down said industry as well as the people in it. There are still others who view this as the story of the unlikeliest of feminist icons, all views will be discussed.

These are real life events. These are real people being interviewed. This podcast contains adult themes and graphic language. Listener discretion is advised. Previously on Once Upon a Time in the Valley. Tracy goes from adult model to adult actress, when Tracy came in, there was such a fury around her arrival and this new girl and she was just knocking down fences everywhere she turned.

And from adult actress to adult star, she was very well aware of how she came across to people. And she played it. She played it to the nth degree. You know, if you walked up to her and you had lost in your eyes, she would not look at you right away and not answer you if you talk to her right away. Everybody had to wait.

And from adult star to adult superstar, even when she sort of was playing a character who was supposed to be demure, you never bought it for a moment. Everything about her was a kind of snarl, you know. I mean, not just her lips, you know, but but her whole body was kind of pouty and silky. You felt like these guys really wanted to, like, dominate her. But no matter how much they tried, they couldn't do it.

She was stronger than all of them.

I'm Ileana Black and this is Once Upon a Time in the Valley featuring Ashley West.

In the last episode, we paid a lot of attention to Tracy's orgasm scream, but a scream can be faked, an orgasm can be faked. There are some things, however, that can't be faked. Here's adult photographer Seus Randol and her husband, ADAA, director Humphrey Kneipe.

Some girls are extraordinary social animals, you can tell because they don't get dry and they don't get sore.

I mean, they are sordid details, but there's the girls who are putting Kawajiri on all the time and there's the girls who do around treating sex scenes. She was a remarkable sexual. Well, it's like the Olympics, isn't it?

These people are really good at it. I mean, sometimes I put my camera down and just what quite amazing. I could never get the hang of it.

And when the shooting stops, Tracy doesn't. Adult actor Tom Biron is Tracy, sometimes boyfriend and her co-star and sister dearest incest themed. As you might have gathered from the title and set on a college campus, real life college boys are hired as background players. Here's Tom.

She took on like 12 guys and like on the diving board of the swimming pool.

Adult actress Christy Cannon isn't on set to see this go down, but she sure hears about it.

I remember the story always was that there were like 12 USC or UCLA college students that were hired to be an extra.

She screwed them all during the lunch break like she was very highly sexual.

Just a reminder, wiseness, Tracy, in her memoir, claims that she got her reputation for wildness among her adult peers for having a threesome.

This is the passage from underneath it all. And the story of my poolside threesome spread through the porn worlds like wildfire, making me even more sought after in porn films. Is having a threesome in a pool really going to send shockwaves through the porn industry, having sex with a dozen guys on a diving board? On the other hand, that might get attention even in the porn industry. Christy continues. She loved sex.

I remember walking in and she was having sex with a makeup artist who was kind of in the 80s, like a transgender of sorts. I don't know what they've got, like going from a guy to a girl. And I remember thinking, oh, my God, I remember walking. And she was screwing the owner of the house and his friend somewhere. And I mean, you hardly ever saw her because she was always having sex. And the funny thing is, she never invited anyone.

She was like, hey, Christy, let's go tag team.

She didn't want to share that dick, you know, but Tracy's also holding porn people at arm's length. Christy, again, I met her on the set that first four day to film Tandem set for Paradice Visuals, Night of Living Dangerously and on Golden Blonde. And I'll never forget, everyone was like, Oh, my God, Traci Lords is coming today.

She don't say this to any other girls. Tracy was like, you know, the queen. She was a little colder. What would the word be more like? Unattainable.

She was nice. She was friendly. She was great sexually in the scenes, but very to herself on set. And even though we'd sit around and giggle, I never knew anything really personal about her. This is a funny thing to say about a porn actress, because you think of porn actress as this blunt, carnal, raw, totally without subtlety. But Tracy has a Greta Garbo quality to her, an air of reclusiveness, a psychological unavailability, and it gives her a mystique, which is what attracts Christy really attracts Christy.

Here's Christy talking about Tracy to T Boy, an adult performer of more recent vintage on his YouTube show, T Boy TV.

She was hot, so she was hot. I mean, that girl was with Ginger. Those were my two favorite girls in totally different ways. Ginger and I were like that playful, sexy partnership together, whereas Tracy was like, do whatever you want, Tracy, your fucking bitch. I love you. Whatever you want. For her alleged age of 15 16, she knew more about sex than I may even know at this age and stage of my life.

She was wild, crazy, in charge. She was so in control, very, like, seductive and, you know, kind of calm and cool.

Like Roy caj once I remember on a set said, OK, we're having deli for lunch, I'm going to order food.

I don't want deli. And I said, yeah, OK, neither do I. She's like, I want Thai food. So everything had to be shit canned because she wanted Thai food. I thought I would not like I'd be like, oh, he'll take deli even if I didn't want, because I was always the people pleaser, you know. But so I loved your attitude. She was like and she said to me later, I don't really like Thai food.

I just didn't want him to think he could get me whatever he wanted. You know, like you said, you were like so conniving in so many ways.

So that Tracey is the opposite of warm or open, that she's the furthest thing from the girl next door is what turns Kristy on. I mean, truth is a plum is sort of breathtaking.

And that regal, confident attitude is a big reason why no one suspects who have been on the edge. It's not just a fully developed body.

No, it's the immaculate self-possession. That's why people don't even think to question her age. This is David Blendr, who back then was going by David Jenning's. Unlike Christie, a teenager at the time, Blendr was a full adult and his company, Superior Video Inc, produced three of Tracy's titles, including Physical Two and Dirty Pictures, both featuring Mark Wallace.

If someone had told me she was 16, I tell them to stay out of their stash of Mark Wallace. He smoked a lot of dope and couldn't remember his lines. I was very impressed with her. She had this sequined red dress that she loved, but the sequence would come off. And so I assigned myself the task of picking the sequence out of her pubic hairs. And while doing that, she went into her biography that she was twenty two years old and all that.

So it seemed like that was a rehearsed thing. But then everything about her was rehearsed. It's like everything she. Did she wanted to do perfectly, she was a perfectionist. She was one of the most professional actresses I've ever seen.

Cultural critic James Wolcott didn't have an up close view as David Blendr, but he did observe Tracey closely on screen.

There wasn't a moment we felt like, oh, she was a teenager who was taken advantage of. You felt like almost like she was not going to let her rage stop her from taking advantage of the situation. I think she really wanted to be a star.

Even Tom Byron is completely false. Here's Tom. We actually did a movie.

It was supposed a 20 second birthday. And I gave her like 22 red roses and one white rose or something like that. We actually did a scene where I gave her a birthday spanking know in a Swedish erotica look just like the perfect one saw. Not all the girls were like that, you know. So did we get involved in the drugs and sudden they're not showing up or just showing up. All messed up and they're not looking good, you know, because after a while, that takes a toll on you.

But Tracy always looked good and she always showed up and was professional. And sometimes we would joke about some of the other girls, how immature they were, which in in hindsight is kind of funny because she was younger than all the perfect porn star.

And yet there are cracks in her perfection, something Christy Canyon picks up on.

I would catch on little lies on set. She was a virgin before she got in the business. She fucked all football team. And I'd look at her and go, wait a minute, I thought you were a virgin. I noticed the inconsistencies happened a lot. Yet at 18, I thought, I don't really care if she was a virgin. I don't care if she fuck the whole football. Who cares? I get to fuck her. That's all I care about.

I get a fucking have sex with her in about ten minutes.

Christie isn't going to dig too deep on this one. You're getting the best sex ever. You're inclined to look the other way on minor offenses, but there are other cracks. For example, Tracy has failed to entirely erase her real identity as Nora Koosman Kerry's time. Birhan would pick her up in Redondo Beach is falling like a male or something. That said, Nora, like you said, her real name, Nora Koosman or whatever. I don't think I even ask.

I think she volunteered like you had Nora. Yeah, she's a friend of mine. You know, I just, you know, I pick up her mail or something like that and anything anything about it.

But obviously he did think about it and he's continued to think about it like there are things Tracey said or did these little disparities or oddities that have stuck in his brain, stuck in his brain the way a piece of food might stick in his teeth. For example, this we had a conversation on the set of Talk Dirty to Me, Part three. She said, one day I'm going to be working for Paramount and this is going to matter where to that effect I didn't think anything about.

I just like whatever it is. These are all the things that I thought about once the story broke. Oh, that was a clue. Oh, that was a clue. Oh, that was a clue. Clues, but at the time, he didn't know to what. What's the one thing worth pausing your favorite podcast for when the doorbell rings and your favorite phone box appears on your doorstep, you stop everything and for a limited time, you can get a free 200 dollar mega gift bundle from Thabit fund.

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OK, Ashleigh, most of the people we've heard from this episode so far have been infatuated with Tracy Byron, Christy Canyon, David Landau, even James Walker, the order of the fan. But there were people out there who did not like Tracy, who passionately did not like Tracy, and nobody disliked Tracy more passionately than Ginger Lynn. We've named as the top four female performers of the era, Tracy, Kristy, Kanyon, Ginger Lynn and Ambulante, our 80s porn, Mount Rushmore.

So, yes, these are the top four, but some are more top than others. Tracy and Ginger are the top of the top. Here's Tom Byron on Tracy and Ginger.

Ginger came before Tracy, OK? She was a girl. She was you know, she was a little doll, you know, had a perfect little body, beautiful face, great performer. And she was on all the box covers and was getting the good money and going and all the movies going howay, going in New York, doing the whole, you know, doing the whole thing.

And Ginger isn't just one of the most popular adult performers of the era. She's one of the most popular adult performers of all time. Here's veteran adult performer Sharon Mitchell and Ginger.

She's very authentic, wonderful sexual being. My nickname for her was Kinky because she had such a very vibrant pink clit.

Here's Ginger. And what made her so good? The thing about me is, is I. I look like the girl next door. I don't look like the kind of girl that would be in porn. Sex for me is something I get lost in. I had to get lost in what I was doing. So I had a role with directors. Don't stop me, don't talk to me. Don't tell me what to do when I'm fucking. My goal was to turn on the crew members because they make movies all the time.

While I was fucking I was totally getting my partner off. That was, you know, no one. But to take it to that next level, if I could be so good and so into you and what we're doing right now right here that I'm lost. You're lost. And people watching are in there, too. And it's like we're all in this this wonderful lake. You can smell and taste and touch and it's all right there.

And it's just amazing. Ashleigh, I've got to break the fourth wall here. We were all sitting together that day, you, me, Ginger, a lovely sound guy, rich in the kitchen at Susan Humphris Ranch in Calabasas. And when Ginger stopped talking, you and I looked at each other, our eyes touched briefly just for a second, and acknowledgement of the thrilling thing that had happened because this was an answer. It was verbal. Of course, we were having a conversation, but it was also visceral and OK.

Ginger's in her mid 50s now, hasn't been in movies for a while. But in that moment, you could feel what made her such a dynamite performer. So exciting to watch. Oh, absolutely. She articulated something there that I would have thought it was possible to articulate.

It's inevitable that she and Tracy will cross paths and their first meeting has the feel of a showdown at the OK Corral.

The Valley definitely wasn't big enough for the two of them. Here's Ginger. It wasn't long after she was in the industry that I met her. She and I were cast in the film. I said this was beautiful. You know, fuck it, I'll do her. She showed up with a curlers and hair and those dolphin shorts that we wore back in those days, little tiny, tiny shorts.

And they usually had accents that were added anyway. But when she opened her mouth, she was like a fucking truck driver. And she you know, I love Florida and I have a lot of energy and I'm pretty confident this woman this just made me I was like, oh, holy fuck, she was scary.

There's different types of women in the industry. And for me, Tracy, was this this sleek Black Panther, she was just she just had this this ooze about her this way, about her. And she was just I mean, she owned it, fucking owned everything.

Tracy and Ginger are instant and instinctive rivals Tom Birhan again. Ginger was the top dog, and then when Tracy came along, all of a sudden Tracy started getting the Baskervilles. So actually, what you have is two primo girls duking it out for the primo spot. Naturally, they aren't going to get along yet. The antipathy runs deeper than that, though, his ginger. You know, I came in at the top not really realizing that I was there, but the girls that were in my situation, you were always in the box cover, but we all kind of sucked and hung out together before, during and after.

So the hierarchy or the you know, who did A, B, C and D films didn't really matter. We were all friends. It was this little gang of outlaws that got paid to do something they love to do.

Tracy and I don't think we ever had I don't think I've ever spoken in an entire sentence to each other other than while we were filming dialogue. I mean, my apartment had a sunken living room and it was known as the pit.

And after filming a lot of my movies, there'd be a three day party in Ginger's pit.

It would just be everybody all over fucking in every room, in the kitchen, in the bedroom and in the pit. And just the four days. And she was never I everybody was invited, but she never came to any of those.

I don't know anybody that really hung out with her. To the best of my knowledge, nobody knew fuck all about her.

Ginger is using the word gang, but I think what she really means is family. And my sense is that she took it almost as a personal affront that Tracy wasn't buying into the whole pawn family thing. And for many poor people like Ginger, it is a family. Not for Tracy, though. For Tracy, it's the porn industry.

Tracy and Ginger's views in the business are opposing almost contradictory. We're talking attitudinal differences so extreme as to amount to ideological differences, philosophical differences, as is revealed by this little gem of an anecdote courtesy of Christy Cannon. Let me set the scene a bit. It's Ginger and Christie there on a set and it's late.

OK, Christie can take it from here.

It was the end of the night for Gourmet. We were exhausted. We had a girl girl seem to do or they're twelve, thirteen hours. And we had to do a scene in a bathtub in the water was freezing. There was no hot water. And ginger and I were troopers and we said, oh, it's freezing. And the guy said, let me put the bathmat down. At least, you know, it won't be like cold porcelain or whatever.

And he puts the bathmat in and ginger and I look and all this dirt from the bathmat just comes rising to the top of the tub. And Ginger looked at me. She's like, get in, let's get this over with. And I'm like, you got it. She's like, just keep your feet on top of the tub. Will do a lot of that, you know, just try not to go down and get dirt on you. We took one for the team was midnight.

We're tired. We want to get out of there, make it work, make it work. But that's what I mean by we took one for the team. Tracy, I don't think ever took one for the team. She'd be like, are you fucking kidding me? You think I'm going to get in that dirty fucking tub? You get you fucking fart on that water bottle to make it hot if you have to. I'm not getting in unless it's hot, like that kind of thing.

Ginger is a porn star, but she's also a pure heart, she fucks people because she loves to fuck and she fucks people because she loves people.

Traci fucks, too, but Ginger feels that she never fucks without an ulterior motive and that the fucking she does with her body is nothing compared to the fucking she does with her mind. Here's Ginger.

Tasty, fucked anybody and everybody. But I didn't ever see her have any connection. Like, you know, he had girlfriends, like for me, a lot of times I've slept with pretty much everyone I know.

And the reason that is what happens is, is I get to know you and I get to like you. And it just it it seems like the natural next step for me. That's what I do. And Tracy didn't have any camaraderie, any any girlfriends, any hang out buddies. And he she was just weird enough on her own.

Ginger feels Tracy is a man's woman, though. Really what Ginger feels is that Tracy is a spider woman weaving a web to entrap any creature, male or female, who passes by Ginger again responded with every man that there was.

I mean, she would do girls like if you were a couple, she'd be all on top of it.

I think it was a challenge to her to see if she who she could get with Tracy.

You know, there was always like she was competing with everybody when she was she was their partner was the person she was using for her competition to show everybody.

Tracy was always showing how great she was and how wonderful she was.

Ginger isn't the only one who finds Tracy Cut-throat. The other Lynne Anberlin recall shooting a movie built around Vanessa Del Rio, a porn star from the previous era.

And actually, before we let Ava rip, a quick refresher, a DP is double penetration, the simultaneous penetration of one or more orifices by two objects.

Here's Anberlin telling me and Ashley, the DP story to end all DP stories. Tracy was on a film. Vanessa Del Rio was the that. Then it was me, Ginger Tracy Lords, and there was a huge amount of competition. We all watched each other's scenes. What happened was I shot a scene with two guys, Tom Byron and Mark Wallace, and I wound up doing a double vaginal penetration. It had never been done. It happened by accident.

And Vanessa was like me on the whole time. So I was trying to impress this great porn legend at the time. I was an up and coming girl in the industry and Vanessa was like Vanessa del Rio. I think that all three of us were trying to, like, gain her respect. So Ginger did a deep ginger was famous early on for doing double penetration and stuff like that. And I did do anal at all, which is why I did double vaginalis on that side.

And then Traci Lords jumped in and either did a DP after seeing it to say, like, you're going to do that, I'm going to do this. She said, I'm not doing my scene until after they get done. So we had to do both of our scenes so that she could see what we were doing so that she could be the rest. She wanted to be more than what anybody else had done. Now, granted, what ended up happening was they took her scene and they cut it out.

Hold on one second. I just need to check.

And I got sidetracked by a cell phone and we were never able to get it back on track as far as that story is concerned. But I think I can finish it for her since she was just about their choices. DP scene did indeed get excited, making it the stuff of myth and legend. It exists only in the memories of those who were there. Deep faith aside, though, it's fair to say that Tracy and Amber didn't have a problem with each other.

Right, right. In general, Tracy and Amber got along.

The real enduring tension is between Tracy and Ginger.

And as tensions erupt at the nineteen eighty five X rated Critics Organization Awards season, Brandon Humphrey.

I remember there was a two year old girl you must have seen The Exorcist, which appeared on anyway, they were fighting in the dressing room and then Tracy, through a funk with Ingenuously, was known to be the winner and Girl of the Year or whatever. It was so very conconi, very competitive, and she's made the go girl in this fashion.

It isn't just impish, Suze, who turns these real life enemies into on screen lovers. Ginger does it herself.

Those Young Girls is a film that I wrote, starred in and cast and. What a great fuck you, Tracy, I'm casting you to be in my movie, you know, as it so happens, Tracy is giving Ginger a fuck you right back only. And I'll take a good long while for Ginger to realize that she's been fucked and hard.

Yes, those young girls seems a title designed to attract the dirty old man contingent, but it will prove just as enticing to the government a year or two down the road if Tracy's most significant rival is Ginger Lynn, her most significant director is Gregory Dark.

Ashley, I'm going to ask you to give us the skinny on Gregory, but before I do, I'd like to read the opening paragraph of Tom Juneau's 2001 profile of Gregory for Esquire.

I like the guy. He's funny for one thing, often at his own expense. He's very polite. He even seems kind, although I know he is capable of extravagant cruelty. Most of all, though, he so desperately and transparently wants to be like that. I can't help myself. I like him because I want to be decent, because I want to do the right thing. I just wish in my heart of hearts that I didn't think he Gregory Dark might be the devil.

That is to prepare our listeners a bit so they can gird their loins accordingly. OK, Ashley, take it away. Greg Dark was born Gregory Hippolyte Brown. He grew up in Las Vegas with a mother who was at least briefly, a stripper. His academic credentials are impressive, a degree from NYU Film School and a master's in fine art from Stanford. In fact, he considered himself a conceptual artist when, in 1983, he got involved in a project called Fallen Angels, a Fly on the Wall documentary about Jim s and the World's Modeling Agency, for which we quoted in Episode two.

This is Greg on how he went from artist and documentarian to porn director without falling angels.

That wouldn't have happened subsequently. I said I can make better films in these people, in the adult industry. And so I started doing them. I had met Walter and he was a very bright guy. And I said, look, I really like to do these things that I'm really not interested in doing in the way they're done. I don't necessarily want them to be persay, sexy or is kind of a soap opera kind of storyline's. I want to do kind of conceptual art.

I'll put the sex scenes in the conceptual art.

Walter is Walter Greenert, a founder of VCA Pictures, one of the biggest adult film companies of the 1980s. And I'm assuming Walter is responsive to the pitch.

Oh, yeah. Walter went all in and that's how the legendary duck brothers are born. Greg the director, Walter the producer, he's James Wolcott.

The Dark Brothers created a persona of white pimps at a point where, like pimps were sort of passé. So it made it it made it sort of a double caricature. And then the idea was that the actresses in the film were part of their stable, you know, like these are stable of girls. And of course, the deuce were looks down on us a great deal.

It's sort of like how demeaning this is to the actresses. But I think it was a way of saying, you know, this is how we're going to market ourselves. They understood the nature of branding before a lot of other people did. You had porn actors who became directors, but they wanted to be take it more seriously. You like Paul Thomas. These guys were like, we're not taking any of this that seriously.

So the dark brothers are something new, something wild in the porn world.

James Wolcott, again, their movies had a kind of nihilistic, sort of mocking, transgressive quality. They were not trying to imitate. Hollywood films are European films. They were just doing their own crazy thing. And it was like a kind of bargain-basement surrealist aspect. I mean, one of the films you had a rubber raft that was like talking all the time.

There are some in the adult industry who appreciate what Gregory Dark has to offer, and there are some who don't like Paul Thomas, one of those highly serious actor turned directors that Walker just mentioned.

Here's Gregory Dark's work, very colorful Warhol ish sort of stuff that I didn't and don't find sexy at all. You know, for me, I wanted to connect my audience with a story, get a feeling that these are real people and she's really fucking around. And her husband. How does that feel? Dude, I'm not dressing them like a clown. This is real stuff. You know, Greg might do the same thing as I would find the absurd comic angles for it.

He probably thought his style created the best orgasms. And that's. That my style creates the best orgasms while going to the same thing the porn movie Tracy is most associated with is one of Gregory Dark's. Yeah, New Wave Hookers, arguably the most famous adult film of the 80s.

And when you are consulting for the do stage show that James Wolcott just alluded to, it's the movie that you recommend they reference, right? Yeah, it is.

That was for season three, which takes place in the 80s when the business is moving out of New York to L.A. from film to video, all the things we've talked about, a new wave. Hookers for me is the movie that embodies those changes. It represents a seismic shift for the adult industry in terms of look style and sensibility. This is Greg on coming up with the concept.

I thought to myself, you know, you drove down Melrose Avenue, you see these girls and they're really hot. And, you know, people that are 35 years old, they're not picking up on these club girls. Right. So I thought to myself, if you if you have a movie with these kinds of club girls, you have some ridiculous concept to it, which is kind of funny and idealistic. I would if I could run this agency and had all these girls and control them by using the wave music.

Right.

James Wolcott, sand wave hookers. When I came out here, he is on Tracy's performance.

The scene that, of course, was later cut was, you know, it was one of the Traci Lords greatest scenes where she is in little devil horns and thigh high boots and she looks just fabulous. And it was sort of done on a bed that's almost like a platform and it's sort of all by itself. So it's done very much like a showcase. Like we're going to show you what great sex looks like on camera. I remember one thing that happens is during the sex, she's sort of, you know, bobbing up and down.

Her head is back on the side and her earring falls out. And it's almost like her earrings falling out. What else is going to fall out?

In late 1985, Suze Randall takes Tracy with her to England to do Press for the Lambs Navy run calendar. She shot here, Randall and Humphrey Kneipe Lambs Navy is a big English company that hired us.

We shot it in Cabo, but then they took us to England to promote it. And I tried to introduce her to my I did introduce her to my fashion model agency that I'd worked with when I was there. I thought she was such a great model that she would become a fashion model into the modeling world.

I just was a big fan of hers. I thought she was so talented. I thought that she could move above, but she wasn't interested. All she did was give the agent some blowjobs in the darkroom.

This would be just another story of Tracy acting incredible up to her usual high libido, high jinks, except for one thing to take Tracy to England. Susan needs to get Tracy a passport. Pierce is an adult actress, Veronica Hart discussing the circumstances behind that passport. She had a government issued passport that she got her that passport. Oh, you did? To take her to London. Oh, yeah.

And how did it how did it. So she had to have good I.D.. You stolen friends ID? Did you bet you didn't know that. No. This passport is an important detail key. It would be fair to say so. Put it away for now. But keep it handy. You'll need to pull it out sooner than you think. Now we want to talk about how purposeful Tracy is, how resolute, how clear in her intentions, Jim Self was her agent, but soon she didn't need him, was perfectly capable of hustling for herself.

Tracy didn't hang out in the office like a lot of the girls did. Someone would hang out because they'd run into people that were friends of theirs that were with the agency.

Some of them would hang out to come in for work and she didn't need either. She became distant pretty quick because she kind of used to promoting on her own.

In other words, she's not someone who seems to knocked out on drugs. Ginger is adamant that Tracy didn't take them, never saw Tracy do Coke. We all did the Coke we like is it? We hang out together before and after. And there were people who always did on the set.

I don't know how is very hard to perform in that way, but I've never once told Tracy, do a drug as is adult actor.

Blood is you to ask me, did she do drugs back then? I would have told you no, because I never seen her head or I never did drugs with. I mean, we all started a little coke back then, you know, and I can't imagine what she was fired because that doesn't register at all, as my mom would say, Atholl. Obviously, with Ginger and Billy are saying directly contradicts what Tracey has said in her memoir, it underneath it all.

She, of course, has Jim South pushing drugs on her during their first meeting and then she claims she stayed in porn to essentially finance her addiction. And don't forget, Coke is also why she claims her memory of those years is so severely impaired.

And yet the clear consensus in the industry is that Tracy was not an addict, was in fact abstemious as far as controlled substances were concerned, and that Tracy wasn't a habitual user makes her stand out in this crowd.

It's the 80s, after all. Coke is around, but in the porn industry, it's absolutely pervasive. Here's Tom Byron, everyone. I mean, that's what you did.

Everyone had a little vial in their pocket, you know, as a courtesy with a very social thing, or it's kind of like cigarettes. The guy Tracy calls Sunny in her memoir, Real Name Tommy, is out of the picture, by the way. Eighty five in the picture is the guy Tracy call Scott Schapelle in her memoir, real name Stewart Dell. That was Tracy's business partner and boyfriend, Tom Byron on Stuart Dell is a good looking guy in a kind of a, you know, a sharp talker.

Childhelp kind of wary of him. I mean, like he didn't trust Jim.

JMS is wary and distrustful of Stuart Dell for good reason. Tommy was an outsider and a deadbeat. I was no threat. Stuart, on the other hand, is an insider has been kicking around Hollywood for years. And the distinct impression Ashley and I got from adult industry people is that he's an operator. Here's a actor, Tim Connolly. Stuart Taylor was the kind of guy that looked like he'd be hanging out at a nightclub, not quite a lounge lizard, looked more like, you know, like he was an action movie director, had long hair, stylishly long hair, but not rock and roll long like Hollywood long, and had that slick sort of Malibu beach guy look to him, seemed tanned and, you know, like he didn't look like he worked really hard to make a living.

And he had some angle on everything.

In January of 1986, Tracy forms TLC, the Tracy Lawrence Company with Stuart DOWL. And we've actually found footage of Tracy making the announcement of some sort of industry function. It's hard to hear through the party chatter. So you've really got to cock an ear. I close my eyes on TLC and producing, I swear it has something to say. Tracy was sick of taking orders she preferred to give them. Sometimes we get a lot of dirty director. People get upset and they tell you how to fight.

They tell you to scream. And I don't think that's right. I think for the best of all. They just go with what you feel and act how you want to act.

The move does not go unnoticed by Tracy's peers. Here's Tom Byron.

Kind of like a big deal. She was building this little p.l.c. empire kind of thing. And here's Anberlin.

OK, so Traci Lords company, the TLC company. My recollection of that was that Tracy at that time was big, huge. You know, she was as big as anybody could be in the industry and she was making films under her own company. And she was like one of the first, if not the first porn star. I remember to have her own company because Ginger went with Vivid, but Tracy had her own company.

I want to pause here to emphasize just how monumental it is that Tracy did this and Barsotti emphasized it. But I want to re-emphasize it. What she did was unprecedented in the business. Ginger Tsampa said, became a contract girl for Vivid, and that was big. But Tracy was striking out on her own and that was even bigger until she was grandiose in his vision, Tracy and Stewart agreed to a three picture deal and two of those pictures were to be shot overseas, one in Japan, one in France.

No one else was thinking on that scale at the time. And her ambitions are broadening beyond even having her own porn production company beyond the porn industry altogether in the February 1986 issue of Hustler. Tracey discusses her plans to conquer Hollywood. She says, I have enough money to do it. Sylvester Stallone did. I'll make myself a star. Why not? If no one else will let me be one. Maybe people do still think it's somehow more OK for a man to have done an adult film than for a woman to have done them.

But I don't really care. I don't give a damn. Ashley, can you explain the Stallone reference?

Yes. Stallone appeared in a softcore sex film called The Party of kidI and stood several years before Rocky and his breakthrough. But Sly was the exception, not the rule. It was virtually impossible at that time to cross over.

Yeah, and for a woman, actually impossible. And for a woman in hardcore, a step beyond impossible. Here's what I wonder. Is it starting to dawn on Tracy, that reasoning it out in the mainstream world? Yeah, I'm a porn star. So what isn't going to work? That Hollywood is the most hypocritical place on Earth. And if she wants to make it there, she's going to have to cater to that hypocrisy. Maybe.

In any case, that spring, Tracy and Stewart head to France to film the TLC produced Tracy I Love You Should. It begins on May 8th, one day after Tracy's 18th birthday.

She's only been back home a few weeks when the Meese commission drops its report. Here's the attorney general and commission's namesake, Edwin Meese, receiving the report at a press conference on July 9th, 1986.

Henry Hudson, I would like to thank you and the members of the commission for the hard work that you have undergone in the course of the past year. And we will review these recommendations with a great deal of interest. I will assure you that the hard work of the commission will receive very careful scrutiny by the Department of Justice.

Three days later, the FBI comes knocking on his door, next time on Once upon a Time in the Valley, I think it was cleaning or doing something watching like Entertainment Tonight or one of those kind of gossipy shows. And they said, Traci Lords, you know, under it, whatever the news thing was, and there was no TiVo or DVR, you couldn't rewind it. And I just remember thinking, oh, my God, I was in shock.

Absolutely blindsided.

Shocked. This has been a presentation of C 13 originals, a division of Caden's 13 executive produced by Chris Corcoran and me, Lily Anderlecht, directed by Zach Levitt, created and written by me, produced by Ashley West, edited and mastered by Chris Bazil, Bill Schulz, Harry Kraul and Ian Mount.

Theme Music and Original Score by John Goodman. Production Engineering Incoordination by Sean Cherry and Terrence Mallon. Phone Field Recording by Rich Burner Artwork Marketing and PR by Kurt, Courtney, Josephine and Francis and Hillary Duff.

Once upon a Time in the Valley is hosted by me and Ashley West.

Thanks for listening.