Linda Lovelace

Linda Lovelace (born Linda Susan Boreman; January 10, 1949 – April 22, 2002) was an American actress who became famous for her performance in the 1972 hardcore film Deep Throat. She later spoke out about the fact that her abusive husband, Chuck Traynor, had threatened and coerced her into participation, saying that "if you watch the movie, you are watching me get raped." In her autobiography Ordeal, she described what took place behind the scenes. She later became a born-again Christian and a spokeswoman for the anti-pornography movement.

Early life Boreman was born on January 10, 1949, in The Bronx, New York, into a working-class family. She described her upbringing in an unhappy family, as the daughter of John Boreman, a police officer who was seldom home, and Dorothy Boreman (née Tragney), a waitress who was harsh, unloving, and domineering. She attended private Catholic schools, including Saint John the Baptist (Yonkers, New York) and Maria Regina High School. Linda was nicknamed "Miss Holy Holy" in high school because she kept her dates at a safe distance to avoid sexual activity. When Boreman was 16, her family moved to Davie, Florida, after her father retired from the New York City Police Department.

At the age of 20, she gave birth to her first child born out of wedlock, whom her mother tricked her into putting up for adoption. Boreman was soon performing as Linda Lovelace in hardcore "loops", short 8 mm silent films made for peep shows.

Boreman starred in a 1969 bestiality film titled Dogarama (also known as Dog 1, Dog Fucker and Dog-a-Rama). She later denied having appeared in the film until several of the original loops proved otherwise. In 2013, Larry Revene, the cameraman who actually shot the film, spoke about it for the first time, during which he asserted that Boreman was a willing participant and that no coercion took place.

In 1971, Boreman also starred in the golden shower film titled Piss Orgy.

In 1972, Boreman starred in Deep Throat, in which she performed deep-throating. The film achieved surprising and unprecedented popularity among mainstream audiences and even a review in the New York Times. It played several times daily for over ten years at theaters in the Pussycat Theater chain, where Boreman did promotions, including leaving her hand and footprints in the concrete sidewalk outside the Hollywood Pussycat. The movie later became one of the first, and highest-grossing, X-rated videotape releases. While Deep Throat grossed over $600 million, Boreman was paid only $1,250, which was later confiscated by her husband Traynor.

On December 20, 1973, she was inducted into the Golden Age of Porn Walk of Fame.

Media career after Deep Throat In December 1973, Boreman made her theater debut in Pajama Tops at the Locust Theatre in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The production suffered disappointing box office performance, which led it to close early, and Boreman's performance was panned.

In 1974, Boreman starred in the R-rated sequel, Deep Throat II, which was not as well received as the original had been; one critic, writing in Variety, described it as "the shoddiest of exploitation film traditions, a depressing fast buck attempt to milk a naïve public."

During the mid-1970s, she took to smoking large quantities of marijuana combined with painkillers, and after her second marriage and the birth of her two children, she left the pornographic film business.

In January 1977, she briefly returned to theater acting in a Las Vegas production of My Daughter's Rated X, but the show closed early and her acting performance was criticized.

Charges against Chuck Traynor In her suit to divorce Traynor, she alleged that he forced her into pornography at gunpoint and that in Deep Throat bruises from his beatings can be seen on her legs. She alleged that her husband "would force her to do these things by pointing a rifle at her head." Boreman said in her autobiography that her marriage had been plagued by violence, rape, forced prostitution and private pornography. She wrote in Ordeal:

Boreman's accusations provoked mixed responses. Traynor admitted to striking Lovelace but said it was part of a voluntary sex game. Moreover, psychiatrist Judith Lewis Herman notes that many details in Lovelace's memoir Ordeal are consistent with a diagnosis of complex PTSD, such as Lovelace's description of a fragmented personality in the aftermath of alleged abuse.

Eric Danville, a journalist who covered the porn industry for nearly 20 years and wrote The Complete Linda Lovelace in 2001, said Boreman never changed her version of events that had occurred 30 years earlier with Traynor. When Danville told Boreman of his book proposal, he said she was overcome with emotion and saddened he had uncovered the bestiality film, which she had initially denied making and later maintained she had been forced to star in at gunpoint.

Boreman maintained that she received no money for Deep Throat and that the $1,250 payment for her appearance was taken by Traynor.

Marriage with Marchiano

In 1976, Boreman married Larry Marchiano, a cable installer who later owned a drywall business. They had two children. They lived in Center Moriches, a small town on Long Island. Boreman was then going through the liver transplant that her injuries from the automobile accident had necessitated, owing to the poorly screened blood she received in the transfusions. For a while, marriage and particularly motherhood brought her some stability and happiness. 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, she gave lectures on college campuses, decrying what she described as callous and exploitative practices in the pornography industry. and underwent a liver transplant in 1987. In 2001, she was featured on E! True Hollywood Story and did a lingerie pictorial as Linda Lovelace for the magazine Leg Show.

On April 3, 2002, Boreman was involved in another automobile wreck, suffering massive trauma and internal injuries. On April 22, she was taken off life support and died at the age of 53. Marchiano and their two children were present when she died. Boreman was interred at Parker Cemetery in Parker, Colorado.

Legacy The computer processing coordination system Linda was named after Linda Lovelace. This name choice was inspired by the programming language Ada, which was named after computer pioneer Ada Lovelace.

Boreman's participation in Deep Throat was among the topics explored in the 2005 documentary Inside Deep Throat.

Indie pop singer and songwriter Marc with a C released a 2008 album titled Linda Lovelace for President, which contained a song of the same name.

The country songwriter and singer David Allan Coe wrote a song called "Linda Lovelace" which is featured on his 1978 album Nothing Sacred. The same song appears on his 1990 album 18 X-Rated Hits under the title "I Made Linda Lovelace Gag".

In 2008, Lovelace: A Rock Musical, based on two of Boreman's four autobiographies, debuted at the Hayworth Theatre in Los Angeles. The score and libretto were written by Anna Waronker of the 1990s rock group That Dog, and Charlotte Caffey of the 1980s group the Go-Go's.

Lovelace is one of the main characters of the 2010 stage play The Deep Throat Sex Scandal by David Bertolino. The play follows the life and early career of Harry Reems as he enters the pornography industry, eventually filming Deep Throat and its resultant infamy and obscenity trial in Memphis, Tennessee, and Lovelace is a central figure. In July 2013, an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to make a film version of the play raised over $25,000.

As of 2011, two biographical films on Boreman were scheduled to begin production. One, titled Lovelace, went into general release on August 9, 2013, with Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman directing, Amanda Seyfried as Lovelace, and Peter Sarsgaard as Chuck Traynor. Lovelace received a limited release in 2013, but ultimately, despite drawing many positive reviews, it was a box-office failure. The other, titled Inferno: A Linda Lovelace Story, starring Malin Åkerman, was to be directed by Matthew Wilder and produced by Chris Hanley and was scheduled to begin filming in early 2011. Due to a lack of financing it never went into production.

Tina Yothers, who was a child actress on Family Ties, was cast as Lovelace in Lovelace: The Musical.

Filmography Dogarama (1969) Piss Orgy (1971) Deep Throat (1972) The Confessions of Linda Lovelace (1974) Deep Throat Part II (1974) as Nurse Lovelace Linda Lovelace for President (1975)