Actors - Linda Lovelace

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	Actors - Linda Lovelace

Linda Susan Boreman, better known by her stage name Linda Lovelace (January 10, 1949 to April 22, 2002), was a pornographic actress in the 1972 film Deep Throat, who went on to leave the pornography industry and became a spokeswoman for the anti-pornography movement.

Deep Throat was notable for popularizing oral sex and beginning a brief fad of porn chic; it was also the inspiration for Bob Woodward's name of his secret Watergate source, W. Mark Felt. Lovelace later stated that she regretted her pornographic career and had been violently coerced into pornography by her then-husband, Chuck Traynor; she also repudiated her stage name and reverted to using her real name in public. The popularity of the film, however, made her a cultural icon against her will, appearing in archive footage in many other films.

Although she later became an advocate against pornography, Lovelace is still famous for her depictions of deep throat fellatio. While she continued to use the Lovelace name for commercial purposes, the first sentence of Lovelace's book, Ordeal, and a statement she repeated for the rest of her life, was "My name is not Linda Lovelace."

Biography

Childhood and teenage years

Boreman attended Catholic schools, including St. John the Baptist in Yonkers, New York, and Maria Regina High School in Hartsdale, New York. Her father was a policeman. Since an early age, she was subject to strict discipline from her mother, a devout Roman Catholic who punished Boreman for any act of misbehavior. When Boreman was 16, the family moved to Florida.

Pornography career

While in Florida, Boreman met Chuck Traynor, and became involved with him in 1969. The couple moved back to New York that same year, where Traynor became by turns her manager, pimp, and husband. (Boreman later wrote that Traynor had decided to get married so that spousal privilege would prevent her from being compelled to testify against him in court.)

Before achieving fame, Boreman starred in a number of hardcore "stag" short features, including bestiality film in 1969 film called Dogarama. She later attempted to deny this fact, only to have several of the 8 mm "loops" become available to prove otherwise.

In 1972, Boreman appeared in Deep Throat, perhaps the most financially successful pornographic movie in history. Boreman maintained that she received no money for appearing in Deep Throat, and that the $1,250 for her appearance was taken by Chuck Traynor. In Deep Throat all of her pubic hair was shaved off and she engaged in anal sex - neither act was considered common until at least fifteen years later.

After the success of Deep Throat she starred in several softcore movies, which were financial flops. She also appeared in Playboy, Bachelor, and Esquire between 1973 and 1974.

In January 1974, Boreman was arrested for drug possession, specifically for cocaine and amphetamines.

In 1974, Boreman published two pro-pornography biographies. In her later suit to divorce Traynor, she claimed that Traynor had forced her into pornography at gunpoint and that in Deep Throat itself, bruises from his beatings can be seen on her legs. Traynor would go on to marry and guide the career of Marilyn Chambers, another major porn star. According to Boreman's controversial 1980 autobiography Ordeal, the couple's relationship was plagued by violence, rape, forced prostitution and private pornography. Assertions made in the book have been contested, particularly ones of rape and threats of violence at gunpoint.

In 1974, Boreman married Larry Marchiano and they had two children, Dominic in 1977 and Lindsay in 1980.

Anti-pornography activism

With the publication of Ordeal in 1980, Boreman joined the feminist anti-pornography movement; at the press conference announcing Ordeal and making her charges against Chuck Traynor public, she was joined by supporters Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, Gloria Steinem, and members of Women Against Pornography. She spoke out against pornography, drawing from her own experiences of coercion and abuse, for feminist groups, at colleges, and before government hearings on pornography, provoking an intense controversy over both her charges and her objections to the pornography industry as a whole. Pornographer and writer Hart Williams coined the term “Linda Syndrome” to refer to women who leave pornography and repudiate their past career by condemning the industry.

In 1986, Boreman published Out of Bondage, another memoir focusing on her life after 1974. She testified before the 1986 Attorney General's Commission on Pornography in New York City, stating that “When you see the movie Deep Throat, you are watching me being raped. It is a crime that movie is still showing; there was a gun to my head the entire time.” Following Boreman's testimony for the Meese Commission, Boreman gave lectures on college campuses and elsewhere, decrying what she described as callous and exploitative practices of the pornography industry.

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