R.I.P. Howard Ziehm: Mona… (and marijuana, music, and M.I.T.) – Podcast Reprise

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Howard Ziehm, the pioneering adult film director, theater owner, author, polymath, and friend of The Rialto Report died last week in California.

Over the years, I visited Howard on several occasions at his beautiful hill-top house in Malibu in California – “It’s the home that porn built”, he would joke. And he was right: Howard had enjoyed a long career making and exhibiting adult films, and in his last years, he enjoyed a happy, comfortable, and well-deserved retirement.

Ten years ago, he even wrote a lengthy autobiography, ‘Take Your Shame and Shove It: My Wild Journey Through the Mysterious Sexual Cosmos’ in which he told the eventful and entertaining story of his life.

The irony was that when I met up with him, we ended up talking about everything except his adult film past: he always wanted to show me his collection of classic cartoons depicting golf scenes – he’d published a book of favorites which featured a foreword by Bob Hope, and I wanted to talk about his experience playing music and managing folk clubs in heyday of the 1960s. Not that Howard was stuck in the past – quite the opposite: he was keen to talk about politics, culture, and technology innovations.

On one of the last times that I saw him, I asked him what he thought about the state of the adult film industry today, and the new developments in AI,   streaming porn, webcams, cam girls, and live interactive sites like Chaturbate. He was enthusiastic: “These instant, intimate interactions are like going back to the beginning of the sex film business,” he said. “Except that now you can enjoy it all in your own home.”

I asked him if he ever logged on to any of these sites.

“Of course, I do!” he laughed. “Every day! Except I don’t like to pay. After everything I’ve done to help create this adult film industry over many decades, after all the risks I took and the court cases I had to fight, I figure… I should get some things for free, right?”

This episode’s running time is 102 minutes.

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Original introduction to the Howard Ziehm podcast

Make no mistakes about it, Howard Ziehm is one of the people who invented the adult film industry.

He was there taking still photos for adult bookstores in the 1960s – when the most you could reveal was a girl in her underwear. He made some of the first color loops – when all you could show was the subject writhing on a mattress by herself.

And then in 1970, as the market finally demanded hardcore, he made the groundbreaking ‘Mona: The Virgin Nymph’.

Time magazine called it the ‘The Jazz Singer’ (1927) of fuck films. Variety called it “the long-awaited link between the stag loops and conventional theatrical fare” and it was listed it their annual Top 50 grossing films – the first pornographic film to feature. And it was the first nationally released 35mm adult feature film to play in actual movie theaters.

In short, it was the blueprint for the 1970s porno chic hits that followed.

Howard went onto make many more adult films over the next decade, including ‘Flesh Gordon’ (1974), a science fiction adventure comedy erotic spoof of the Flash Gordon serials from the 1930s.

So who was the mysterious Howard Ziehm behind these films?

Fortunately he’s finally completed his autobiography which The Rialto Report is assisting Howard to publish shortly. And it’s a hell of read. It’s a huge, entertaining, and riveting book that names names, settles scores, and tells truths. It’s also one of the best biographies you’ll read about anyone in the film industry.

And it turns out here was someone who was going to be a theoretical physicist, owned one of the most successful clubs of the 1960s folk scene, worked as a nude model, had a drug running scheme importing marijuana across the border into the US, played guitar in a Los Angeles band called Father Plotsky and the Umbilical Cord – and all that before he ever even thought of making a porn film.

Today we’re joined by Howard Ziehm to talk about his surprising life leading up to the film ‘Flesh Gordon’. It’s quite a ride.

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‘The Virgin Runaway’ (1970) (directed by Howard Ziehm)

‘Hollywood Blue’ (1970)

Japanese one sheet for ‘Hollywood Blue’ (1970)

 ‘Mona’ (1970)

 ‘Harlot’ (1971)

Newspaper ad for ‘Harlot’ (1971) (using an alternative name)

Newspaper ad for ‘Harlot’ (1971) (using an alternative name)

 Beverley Cinema