Her overnight notoriety is one of the phenomena of the twentieth century, and a prime example of what has been called 'porn chic.' Suddenly groups of New York Times editors were rushing to see DEEP THROAT during lunch, with anecdotes flying about the details. Grace Lichtenstein covered some of it in Times Talk: When we got to the theatre, Arthur (Geib) ruled that no one could put the $5 ticket on an expense account except Grace (Glueck); she, after all, is the culture editor. Since we were a bit late, we missed the foreplay, because as we slipped into our seats the screen was showing an excruciating close-up of a copulating couple. 'Don't worry,' someone in hack of us said, 'You didn't miss any of the plot!' A couple of days later, the first Times visit was followed by a second one from the staff on the Times Book Revietv. Before THROAT-going was ended by the courts, the Times would add still more names to the list of celebrities who'd given a certain cachet:

Sandy Dennis, Ben Gazzara, Leonard Bernstein, Johnny Carson, Jack Nicholson, and Mike Nichols among others. Truman Capote was quoted as saying, 'Mike Nichols told me I just had to see it. . . . I thought the girl was charming.'

All this talk of Times staffers and celebrities of various ilk attending the film soon made other critics and members of the public feel compelled to pay their respects as well, and predictably, DEEP THROAT and Linda Lovelace became the cocktail party circuits's favorite topic. Wild stories abounded: Was it true that Frank Sinatra had shown his private print of DEEP THROAT to a visiting Vice President of the United States (Spiro Agnew) in Palm Springs? Have you heard what they're saying about Linda Lovelace making it with a dog? And when there were dentists present, there was always one whose friend was the oral surgeon who had anesthetized Linda's throat to inhibit the normal gag reflex.

Linda Lovelace seems to be emerging from all this as a sort of culture heroine of the Seventies - a pioneer of sorts for personal and sexual freedom. Publishers innudated her with offers, culminating in her book Inside Linda Lovelace; she has made a best-selling recording, ~nd DEEP THROAT PART TWO is now ready to be released to an eager public, in (would you believe) an R rated version.

According to a piece by Nora Ephron in Esquire, 'Everything that has happened to Linda Lovelace since then is kind of a goof. Making the film was kind of a goof. Its success is kind of a goof. Being recognized in public is kind of a goof. 'I totally enjoyed myself making the movie and all of a sudden I'm what they call a superstar,' she says. 'It's kind of a goof.'

'I don't have any inhibitions about sex,' says Linda. 'I just hope that everybody who goes to see the film enjoys it and maybe learns something from it.' Like what? 'I don't know. Enjoys their sex life better. Maybe loses some of their inhibitions.'

When asked if she wants to make regular films as well as pornographic films, she says, 'Look, you make a separation between movies and this kind of movie. To me, it's just a movie, like all other movies. Only it has some much better things in it.'

Like what?

'Like me,' says Linda Lovelace.







*ANNUAL WILDE OSCAR for actress most willing to flout convention and risk worldly damnation in the pursuit of artistic fulfillment. She also accepted for the makers of "DEEP THROAT" the Putdown Mandible Award for "filmdoms most obviously and unabashedly spurious scientific phenomenon."


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