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Our friend Candida Royalle passed away this week. She was 64.
Candida was a former star of pornographic movies who became a self-styled feminist filmmaker at 30 when she started producing and directing films for her own company, Femme Productions. She defined her work as female-oriented, sensuously explicit cinema as opposed to formulaic hard-core pornographic films that she said degraded women for the pleasure of men.
Candida succumbed to ovarian cancer not long after tracking down the mother who abandoned her as a child and discovering that she had already died of the same disease. At the time of her death, she’d been working on a documentary, While You Were Gone, about the search for her mother.
We were fortunate to get to know her well in recent years, and will miss her happiness, wisdom, sense of fun, and warmth.
In 2014 The Rialto Report interviewed Candida over five separate days. The result was our podcast Candida Royalle: ‘Femme’, Feminism, and a Female Icon which we are pleased to re-present here.
This episode running time is 106 minutes.
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Candida Royalle
This is one of the best of all Rialto interviews ever, and re-listening to it now it has just become even more poignant and meaningful. Thank you SO much for conducting this detailed look at her life. She was interviewed on many occasions but never in such an insightful and sensitive way.
Candida R.I.P.
What a classy woman. I met her in New York at an industry event and she radiated class. We don’t have many people like her left.
One of the true pioneers of this pornography we have become.
From top to bottom and as brave as possible. I had my office in her Femme space on lower Broadway, produced her in Ultra Flesh wherein I had circus rigging specialist lower her down200 feet onto the erect cock of Mike Ranger. A wonderful time with wonderful moments. Just a great gal and also from the Bronx. Thank you once again, Ash, for keeping us in deep focus and with a gentle hand.
Roy Karch
this was brilliant. even the musical choices are so fitting. you guys amaze me with each podcast.
btw: candida will be missed. she was an absolute angel
…and this is why Rialto is one of the most precious and innovative and important sites covering film out there. Candida’s passing is such a tragedy. Now we have but her words recorded with wonderful sensitivity by this august site. Thank you, thank you.
A true lady always. I had the pleasure of knowing Candida in both Los Angeles and New York City. The first time I met her was in a film called Pro Ball Cheerleaders we shot together in LA. She was always gracious and extremely sensual. In NYC we were in the first porn support group called Club 90 and we did a small play called Deep Inside Porn Stars at Franklin Furnace with Annie Sprinkle, Veronica Vera, Gloria Leonard, Kelly Nichols, Veronica Hart and myself. I was not very together at that time but they never judged me and were always kind and supportive. I am so very sad to learn of her passing and that I drifted in another direction all these years ago and lost contact with a lot of people but Candice was a bright light for me in the time that I knew her and I will always remember her grace and beauty ….inside as well as out.
Much love and RIP dear Candice,
Sue Nero
The Rialto report is amazing. To have some sort of contact after all these years. We worked together on “Widespread Scandals of Lydia Lace”, Sue. As well as the New York scene.I have fond memories of you on and off the set.
Ashley West is in the process of interviews with me and I’ll be sure to tell him I had the pleasure of your mouth in The Henri Packard film.
Love and respect to all my fellow porn actors
Sean Elliot
WOW I always wondered what happened to you. So many people I knew worked with or designed wardrobe for are gone. Still doing costumes and other stuff. Wrote for a magazine for a few years, but they were crazy so I quit. It was never as good as when I wrote for High Society Tattle Tails by Tanqueray. Hope all is well with you.
Thank you for your kind thoughts and feelings Sue.. Joey
This remarkable woman was truly one of the most beautiful women to ever grace the screen! Her beauty was akin to the old movie sirens of the Golden Age of Hollywood, like Garbo and Lombard! Her death, and the death of others from the Golden Age of Porn, is all the more tragic when one looks at the dreck that passes for porn today!
Candida Royalle was truly a pioneer and she will be sorely missed.
One more thing that I have to say-it seems that porn is suffering from the same lack of imagination that mainstream entertainment/arts is coming from. It’s just violence, meanness and immaturity that is in our faces these days.
Your light shall shine on beautiful!
Never had the pleasure of working, much less knowing Ms.Royalle personally. What I do know is she was well loved and respected by all those who’s lives she touched.
R.I.P.
The Rialto Report is more than just a podcast. Your work in support of the porn stars of yesteryear is so wonderful. I’m sure Candida appreciated it.