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| This lovely house in Northridge, CA has had quite a past. |
I'm fascinated and, some might suggest, a bit obsessive with what I've termed Sacred Profane Places. These are not just random locations where early adult films were shot—although even the simplest location does still intrigue me—but places that are used so often you begin to recognize them better than the performers, and/or places that are so memorable they can outshine the actual action occurring in or around them.
Some of these locations have always been well-known to dedicated film fanatics. Others have been mysteries for as long as folks like me (and, I'd wager, like you) have been taking adult films seriously. Some might even be considered Holy Grail locations. I've been fortunate enough to sift out a handful of my personal Holy Grail Sacred Profane Places, including:
- The dive bar seen in Andy Milligan's Fleshpot on 42nd Street (1972).
- A residence that Vinegar Syndrome's Joe Rubin has termed the "Wicker House," which was used in scores of early '70s adult films. This is where the most likely mis-Ed-tributed film Bloomer Girls (1972) was shot.
- The dilapidated brothel from Ed Wood's The Only House in Town (1971).
I've found several others, too. But the elegant abode featured in director Joe Robertson's Love Feast (1969), starring Ed Wood himself as lecherous Mr. Murphy, has remained elusive, even though Love Feast gives us very clear views of both its exterior as well as interior, which is far more information than the three locations mentioned above. Well, the place has remained elusive until now. That is why you're reading this, right?
Perhaps we should start with what I think makes the Love Feast house (hereafter referred to simply as The House) so alluring. Possibly it's that amazing California Regency look, with that mansard roof over the entry, and the big, arching Pullman door, which I've learned is extremely close to being a John Elgin Woolf design. (Could it be?) I'm sure the fact that at least two adult films, Love Feast and R. Charleton Wilson's Dandy (1970), were shot there factors into my desire to find it. And, of course, there is the fact that The House itself has remained elusive for over 50 years.
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| An overhead view of The House. |
As far as I'm aware, there are no remaining documents from the filming of either Love Feast or Dandy, apart from the recollections of actress Casey Larrain, one of the few folks who was there and is still with us today. Her memories of working on Eddie's films are so melded together that she can't distinguish what was Love Feast, what was Nympho Cycler (1971), and what might be other films, which is very understandable after five decades.
Over the years, I've gone down numerous dead end threads searching for The House. The late, great Greg Javer and I spent many hours waxing over the topic and what exciting answers might come with finding it. Figuring that the film's director might have just used his own home, our obvious initial candidate was Joseph "Daddy Joe" Robertson. But any addresses I could dredge up for him were either years out of scope, and/or totally not The House.
It wasn't agent/cameraman Hal Guthu's place either. Something of this scale was most likely a bit above his pay grade. But I do wonder what Hal was pulling in a year in agency fees, studio rentals, photography gigs, etc. during this era.
When I found out that several scenes from Dandy—in fact most of the final third of the film—were also shot there, I did a deep dive into the life and career of the writer, producer, and director of that film, R(obert) Charleton Wilson. This also led to nothing but dead ends, although I did discover that Wilson's daughter once lived about a mile from my niece in Central Florida, which did me exactly zero good in my quest.
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| A view of The House from the street. |
A brief tangent on Dandy's director: Robert Charleton Wilson was originally from the Pittsburgh area and was a cameraman during the Korean War. After returning to civilian life, he did a stint as a news photographer in Philadelphia before heading to the West Coast in the late 1950s. In addition to Dandy, he also directed Turn Me On (1968), served as the on-set photographer for Steve Apostolof's Orgy of the Dead (1965) (and I believe is credited as such in the Orgy novelization), was the replacement cameraman on Apostolof's Suburbia Confidential (1966), and photographed Karla Conway for the April 1966 Playboy centerfold spread. It's possible he was also the cameraman on Whip's Women (1967), and if anyone has a copy of that they'd be willing to share give me a ring!
I'm betting there's a lot more to learn about Charleton. And, as some of you may be saying to yourself, isn't "Charleton Roberts" an alias for Daddy Joe? Well, you'd be correct. See the softcore sex comedy Lord Farthingay's Holiday (1972), featuring Casey Larrain, as an example of a film where Joe uses that pseudonym. But now I wonder. Charleton will show back up in our saga in a few minutes.
So I'd determined that The House most likely wasn't Daddy Joe's or Guthu's or Charleton's. Finding myself bereft of any additional leads, I left it at that for quite some time. Then, in early May, the subject of Dandy came up again in some online crosstalk about Charleton's on-set photography work on Orgy of the Dead. W. Paul Apel, a fellow member of the bustling Ed Wood Jr. Facebook group, pinged me on where one might be able to watch Dandy. I realized then that I had no idea where my copy was, so a quick two-day shipping wait later...
And since I had this bright shiny new DVD of Dandy, I figured it was time to give it another watch.
Three key things struck me on re-viewing the film after a few years. First, there was a lot more of it filmed at The House than I remembered. Most of the final third of the run-time is set there. Second, Granville Murphy, the same guy who did the body painting for Love Feast, is also in Dandy. (He makes a cameo painting model Candice Reed at a party at The House.)
A quick tangent about Granville Place Murphy (September 5, 1921 - July 2, 2001). Seeing him feel right at home in that scene from Dandy, I started thinking that he might also be the place's owner. Murphy is probably best/only known for doing body painting in adult films of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In addition to his colorful work on Love Feast and Dandy, he also shows up in the classic Daddy Joe/Ed Wood film Mrs. Stone's Thing (1970)—not just body painting, but also performing a brief lavender scene!
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| (top) An ad for Granville's salon; his Love Feast credit. (bottom) Granville in Dandy; a photo from his military days. |
In my research, I discovered that Murphy in fact did have a body painting salon in Hollywood: Granville Murphy Fashions (promising "award-winning cosmetic body paints") at 6605 Hollywood Blvd. However, it seems that Granville most likely wouldn't have owned a house like The House, at least not in the late 1960s. Since actress Cynthia Denny appeared in Love Feast and played the title role in Dandy, I briefly toyed with the idea of her being the homeowner. But I came to the quick conclusion that—unless it was her parents' home—The House probably wasn't hers either.
Finally, the third thing that struck me about Dandy is that, before getting to The House, the title character is sold for the evening to a gang of salesmen, one of whom was a guy I'd been searching for since finding a set of photographs of actress-model Uschi Digard earlier this year. In the pictures, we see Uschi in what appears to be a producer or agent's office, and one of the men has a familiar-but-can't-quite-place face.
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| A mysterious, mustachioed man appears in Dandy and (lower right) in a photo shoot with Uschi Digard. |
Me being me, I naturally began obsessing over this mysterious man but had no luck at all for weeks. Until there he was! Right there in vivid color in Dandy! Of course, I started combing through the cast list, trying to match him up to a name—all of which, thus far, have been dead ends. (Well, dead ends in my search for this guy anyway.) But, just as I was slapped in the face by finding him in Dandy, I was again slapped right out of my desk chair with something far more satisfying.
Another Dandy cast member that I was chasing down was a guy named Robert Lethe, who plays a rather scummy photographer, (Could his scenes have been shot in Guthu's studio?) Robert's birth name was Robert Levi, but both he and his brother changed their surname to "Lethe" sometime after WWII. By any name, Robert turned out to be a very interesting character! He not only had been in the smut magazine field since at least the early 1960s, but was also caught in a legal battle in the late 1960s with his Athena Books mail-order company, publisher and purveyor of adult paperbacks. (Did Athena ever publish any of Eddie's work?)
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| Another player in our story: Robert Lethe. |
As I looked further into Lethe, I found a newspaper article from The L.A. Evening Citizen News declaring that the publisher-turned-actor had another run-in with the authorities in October 1969 during a film shoot at a suburban house with a swimming pool. The police, who were hiding in the bushes for what seems like an extended period, viewed "activities of 16 nudes filmed in a movie star's Northridge swimming pool." Interestingly, the cops didn't raid the place or even make any arrests that night. Instead, they put a case together, had warrants issued, and then had all those named in the case voluntarily surrender a week or so later.
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| An article from October 1969 about the raid on The House. |
Lethe, identified in the Citizen News article as “an accountant of Beverly Hills," was one of those listed, as were a couple of actors and actresses, a lighting guy (Glen Rowland, aka Gene Rowland, who was both behind and in front of the camera in several sex and exploitation films), a sound man, and a "film photographer" listed as Robert C. Wilson. As in Robert Charleton Wilson. So this had to be Dandy! In fact, in a commentary track that Glen/Gene Rowland recorded for the film Pigs (1973), he actually confirms this was the Dandy house. And so, by the communicative property of smutology, that would mean this was the house where Love Feast was also filmed. So whammo! Another Sacred Profane Place gets its pin on the map!
But what of this so-called "movie star"? In hindsight it was always going to be someone in Eddie's gang. And there, in black and white, we finally had it: Ray "Crash" Corrigan.
We find in the article that Ray rented out his house for filming. But which films specifically were made there? We know of Dandy and Love Feast, and perhaps others yet to be discovered. As most of you reading this already know, Corrigan was a producer for Ed Wood's 1970 film Take it Out in Trade. (For further linkages between Wood and Corrigan, check out these previous Ed Wood Wednesdays articles.) If you've seen Trade, a softcore detective comedy, you'll know that it does not feature The House.
But wait! If Corrigan was letting out his home for sex films and served as a producer on Take It Out in Trade, why wouldn't he just use his own house for that film (if for no other reason than to save the budget) rather than someone else's? I think the obvious reason is the arrests that occurred during the filming of Dandy. We know Trade was filmed in mid-January 1970, five months after Dandy, and the court case was most likely either still ongoing, or the scene was too hot to risk again. (Or maybe Corrigan simply got tired of all the naked bodies all over the place, making a mess of things.)
In my opinion, this suggests Dandy was most likely the last film Corrigan would let use his house. Which would put Love Feast's filming before August 1969, which tends to jibe with the generally accepted time frame. But while Trade wasn't filmed at Corrigan's house, editor Michael J. Sheridan noted in the booklet included in the recently released AGFA edition of Trade that "it was at Ray Corrigan's house that we worked at, we cut the picture there, we mixed it in Hollywood at Cinesound." So as long as Corrigan didn't move between August 1969 and early 1970 that means Trade was edited in the same house where Love Feast and a third of Dandy was shot at!
And just where is this house which for a very brief moment was a very magical place where the likes of Eddie and Neola Graef and Lynn Harris and Mia Coco and Casey Larrain and Cynthia Denny and Luanne Roberts and many other unknown actors and actresses cavorted in various stages of undress and debauchery? Where Granville Murphy painted nude chicks? Where Daddy Joe and R. Charleton Wilson herded all those naked cats? And where Eddie most likely edited what I'd suggest was his last real feature film?
It's still there up in Northridge, at 9312 Shoshone Ave. One has to wonder if the current residents have any idea.
BONUS: A side-by-side comparison chart showing specific locations in the house as they appeared in Dandy and Love Feast.
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| A handy Dandy chart. |
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| Some vintage documents related to Frank Horny. |