Harry Reems

um hi

Mostly from the LATimes:

Harry Reems, who starred with Linda Lovelace

in the 1972 pornographic film “Deep Throat”

and became a cause celebre in Hollywood after he was convicted on federal obscenity charges related to the movie, has died. He was 65.

Reems died Tuesday at a Salt Lake City veterans hospital.

He arrived on the Miami set of “Deep Throat” as the lighting director but when the man hired to portray the doctor in the film failed to show up, director Gerard Damiano said: “Put on this coat; you’re acting,” Reems told The Times in 2005.

At first he enjoyed the celebrity that accompanied starring in one of the most successful pornographic films of all time.

In 1974 when he was charged along with 10 others with conspiring to distribute “Deep Throat” across state lines.

It marked the first time that the federal government had tried to charge an actor for the results of a film’s distribution.

After he was convicted in 1976, The Times ran an editorial in defense of Reems under the headline “The Anti-Freedom Conspiracy” and pointed out that noted constitutional lawyer Alan Dershowitz had volunteered to handle Reems’ legal appeal.

“If this conviction stands, no actor and no writer anywhere in the country will be safe from prosecution,” Dershowitz said, according to the editorial.

Hollywood’s A-list also took note. Celebrities such as Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and Gregory Peck helped raise funds to pay Reems’ legal bills.

Reems was granted a new trial but the charges were eventually dropped.

The damage to his personal life had been done. While waiting to go on trial, “the heavy drinking began in Memphis,” Reems said in 2005 in The Times, and he became a “2-quart-a-day vodka drinker” who at one time lived “in the back of an Albertsons’ dumpster in Malibu.”

He didn’t stop drinking until the late 1980s, when he ended up in Park City, Utah, and entered a 12-step alcohol recovery program.

Once sober, he sold real estate.

The son of a small-time bookie and a housewife, he was born Herbert Streicher on Aug. 27, 1947, in New York City. At 18, he joined the Marines but received a hardship leave when his father became terminally ill.

Returning to New York in 1967, he acted in experimental and Off-Off-Broadway productions but turned to adult films when he couldn’t pay his bills, according to a 2011 New York magazine article titled “The Afterlife of a Porn Star.”

He went on to appear in more than 100 hard-core films that included 1973’s “The Devil in Miss Jones.”

[Georgina Spelvin

&

had the starring role.]

Reems also was interviewed in the 2005 documentary “Inside Deep Throat.”

In the late 1970s, he moved to Los Angeles and secured a role as a coach in “Grease” but was let go because filmmakers feared his notoriety would jeopardize the box office in the South, according to the New York profile.

“Acting was my true love,” Reems told the magazine, “and I buried that possibility by going into adult films.”

Survivors include his wife, Jeanne, whom he married in 1990, and a brother.

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Next month’s mystery photo:

Mrs. N from the analog days

um hi

brie from the video Lola:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNu14c6KhGQ

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Reading “All Quiet on the Western Front” during the

Tet Offensive.

The book was assigned by Mrs. N.

a wonderful English teacher.

Driving with Chuck to Pasadena, around midnight, laying low after committing malicious mischief, with “I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonight?” playing on the car radio, traversing our way to the all-night coffee shop on Colorado Blvd., as cop sirens blare ineffectually back in La Crescenta from where we departed, and while B-52’s are either dropping bombs on Viet Nam or being readied to do so.

Subsequently,

Chuck came by to check on the progress of the 6 inchers and the 9 inchers (low explosives).

Since he enjoyed being sneaky, he coasted his car down the driveway with the lights off to within inches of my abode, which consisted of a detached garage converted to a two story apartment, with what used to be a kitchen, and a usable bathroom though the shower was shabby. So I took baths in the main house during the analog days.

Chuck worked various jobs and had over a thousand bucks in the bank!

He financed my explosives research and development. I would send away to Echo products of New Jersey, which used to advertise in the back of Popular Science. The materials for building bombs were delivered by U.P.S., since the post office wouldn’t handle them.I would grab the package left on the front porch before mom came home from work.

One time Chuck came over and we watched “The Smothers Brothers” on the black & white television,

while he wolfed down his KFC chicken dinner not offering me any.

After being up really late at night delivering 6 inchers and 9 inchers, I would make sure I would show up in class the next day no matter how exhausted to avert suspicion.

The “Man from Uncle” exploding pellets weren’t any good, since the iodine crystals needed ammonia from a chemical supply house rather than just household ammonia from the supermarket,

whereas the 6 inchers and 9 inchers were awesome beyond belief.

Two rolls of toilet paper fit over a 9 incher with the water proof guta percha fuse protruding from the middle. This made quite a mess when exploded:

“My yard was a disgrace!”

I would spend summers downstairs in the garage unit, and winters upstairs, while studying math, physics, and chemistry, trying to make something of myself.

Would get off wearing mom’s panties, and nylons

for additional kicks to relieve the pressure.

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Big-time bobby-soxing:


Rebecca Starr applying lipstick:


Also, Mr. eighteen inch Tony Duncan:

Lara:

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A Hoffman television, Hallicrafters radio, and a Shirley Temple pitcher

in the Arleta house located in the San Pornando Valley (Los Angeles, California), which actually had an incinerator for burning trash in the back yard, but not for long as they were banned due to the smog situation. Perhaps the radio was purchased from the Big 5, which started as 5 Army/Navy surplus stores in Los Angeles?

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brie as Shirley Temple wearing a ballerina costume: