Georgina Spelvin: The Mr. Skin Interview

Not to bring up your age, but your first film was the 1957 lesbian softcore classic The Twilight Girls (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3).
Yes, with Radley Metzger in 1957--or that was when I shot the insert to a film that came from, I think, France. At least the dialogue we had to learn was French. It was a sexy film, but with no bare tits in it, so Radley decided to shoot a scene with bare tits for the American market. That was a bit of a turnaround. They usually brought in European films for the nudity back then. I was still in "The Pajama Game" when that was shot. It was just one afternoon in a place on the west side of Manhattan. I remember the girl I was with was speaking gobbledygook, after I'd taken the time to learn my lines in French. She said, "What's the difference?"

When you say "The Pajama Game," you're referring to being onstage in what was a classic Broadway production.
Yes, as a dancer. I was born in 1936, so I must have been around twenty. Don't go by my memory, though. It's full of holes. I'm older than the average age now.

You'd make some other tame sexploitation, but you were pretty much retired when you starred in The Devil in Miss Jones. Were you drawn to how the film was a serious, moralistic tale?
I really do think [writer/director] Gerard Damiano set out to make some statements while writing the script. I'm currently plowing through rewrite number three of my autobiography and getting into the making of Miss Jones. Yesterday I was writing about the scene that opens the movie--and is also the last scene--and how I told Gerry that Jean-Paul Sartre would be very proud if he could see this movie. I watched the movie again just a few days ago, and I was amazed at the quality and the intensity.

The movie works because you can act, but also because you didn't look like an adult actress. You really seemed believable as a spinster trapped in Hell.
There again, I have to credit Gerry. I was just reading scenes in the office with the guy who ended up playing Mr. Abaca. I was really on the set to cook as the caterer--which, indeed, I did--and it was suggested that I take the role. Gerry said, "She's old and has no tits. Other than that, what do you think?"

But Gerry decided to go for it. People were used to seeing an animated blow-up doll onscreen. The stereotype of what was sexy was just outrageous--and even more so now, with the bubble hair and pouty lips and tits that go on forever. So few women are born like that, and people liked seeing something closer to reality like myself.

It sounds like you've noticed that couldn't happen today. Porn queens can't even look like the girl next door.
I'm not so sure that the girl next door hasn't become more like a porn queen.

Why was there such a long wait before The Devil in Miss Jones II? (Picture: 1 - 2)
There were a couple of attempts. Ron Sullivan did the sequel, and that was kind of radical, with this far-out view of Hell. It might have sunk without a trace. I remember when I got the call from [director] Paul Thomas about this remake, and my first question was, "Why?" But he had this vision, and the original is clearly a film that spoke to him at an early age. He's done an amazing job.

You couldn't have been surprised when they wanted you to be part of the remake.
Frankly I think they just wanted my name associated with the film for the promotion value--and I'm amazed that my name has promotional value. I wasn't really interested in doing it. I'm not interested in doing much of anything these days. I couldn't make heads or tails of the script they sent, and I didn't even see a role that I could've played. Anyway, Paul called me back a few months later and asked me to appear in the film and say a couple of lines--and he named a figure I couldn't say no to.

It turns out that I appear in two different scenes. One's a bathroom set in Hell, and Savanna comes along as Miss Jones. I hand her a towel and tell her that Hell's not all you think it is, so buck up. And in an earlier scene, I'm standing in a very elaborate bathroom--the executive bathroom of this huge business where, I gather, Miss Jones works. I guess I'm the lady who hands out the crying towels. I'm not even sure if I have a name.

Like Marilyn Chambers and Linda Lovelace, you also got the chance to do some mainstream films after your porn-chic success.
Hugh Wilson, the director of Police Academy, called me in to work on my first film. That was fun. I got to play a hooker, and then I reprised the role in Police Academy 3. That's it.

Actually, you do some impressive work as a female assassin in I Spit on Your Corpse!
Oh, I wouldn't call that mainstream. I lump that in with the porn films. I mainly remember how the spitting I did on the corpse was an ad-lib, because I had run out of dialogue and they wouldn't stop filming. I had hung up my toe shoes until The Devil in Miss Jones came along, and anything that came along afterward was a nice surprise. Hollywood had never come clamoring at my door when I wanted them clamoring at my door, so I wasn't expecting Hollywood to come calling anytime after that.

You showed up during the '90s in a series of indie dramas made in New York City.
I'm amazed that those have surfaced anywhere. I just got a DVD of Next Year in Jerusalem recently. Those were all films I made for the same independent filmmakers. They were really just kind of elaborate home movies, shot on video with these small tripods. I don't count those as mainstream films, either. They have your basic home-movie look.

I never sought a role in any of my films. It was really a matter of me lucking into it. I'd get calls from people who had worked with me before, or people who wanted to get in touch with me. I never auditioned for a fuck film. Maybe that should be the title of my autobiography.

Did you feel that you were making a political statement when you were making those films in the '70s?
I don't know about other actresses, but I wasn't making a political statement. Not by doing fuck films. That was just a happy little thing that came along every month when the rent was due. A hundred bucks a day? I'd be there. Meanwhile we were busy cutting films about the atrocities of Agent Orange and the babies left with partial limbs and doing whatever we could to get America out of Vietnam and Richard Nixon out of the White House. I wasn't just another cunt.

In that same spirit, you've never really capitalized on your past.
Oh, I never could sit down and charge $5 for an autographed picture. I can't do that kind of thing, or run a website about myself. I don't like running a business, whether it's selling me or anything else. I'm not very motivated. Honestly I even thought dancers grew up to be actors automatically. I didn't know it was more hard work than I was willing to do.

You went on to work in computer design, and the Devil in Miss Jones remake is your first role since a cameo with Marilyn Chambers in Still Insatiable. How's life for you nowadays?
I worked long enough in regular jobs to collect Social Security, and when I turned sixty-five I decided to do so. That, plus my pittance in retirement pay from SAG and Equity, makes it possible for me to live a very ideal life with my darling husband. Now we're just sitting here nestled in the toenail of the Hollywood foothills, still worrying about the world.