Memoirs Of An Ex-Porno Queen

Memoirs Of An Ex-Porno Queen, by Sheila Brady
March, 1975  Pocket Books

My friends, it’s my pleasure to present to you another ‘70s sleaze masterpiece, one that comes off like a combo of Massage Parlor and Mafia: Operation Porno. And like that latter book, Memoirs Of An Ex-Porno Queen is yet another production of Lyle Kenyon Engel’s BCI outfit, one of those standalone mystery/crime paperback novels he produced during the early-mid 1970s and published through various imprints. 

Purporting to be the “memoirs” of a young woman who is now hiding from the Mafia, thus using the “Sheila Brady” pseudonym, Memoirs Of An Ex-Porno Queen is clearly a work of fiction, which is how it’s labeled on the spine and the copyright page. No idea yet who wrote it, as the Catalog Of Copyright Entries just states “Lyle Kenyon Engel, employer for hire,” and “Sheila Brady” isn't listed in Hawk's Author's Pseudonyms. It could’ve actually been written by a woman, who knows, but if I had to guess from the pool of Engel’s “regulars” I’d say it was either Allan Nixon or Robert E. Turner, who together co-wrote three of the Mafia: Operation novels for Engel and separately wrote a few standalones for him under their own names and pseudonyms.

Coming in at 238 pages of small print, Memoirs isn’t just a bunch of sleaze, though to be sure there’s tons of that. In fact “Sheila” opens the tale right on the action, so to speak, as she’s shooting her first hardcore scene. Her “co-star” is Jeff Burgess, Sheila’s seven foot tall and massively-endowed boyfriend. It’s Jeff who has led Sheila to this predicament, as Sheila never had any designs on becoming a “porno queen.” But rather than just settle for outright exploitation the author develops a nicely-done storyline in which our heroine gets mixed up with the Mafia – not to mention picking up a healthy heroin habit.

Sheila’s narration reminds me very much of that of “Jennifer Sills” in the aforementioned Massage Parlor, with that same sort of wide-eyed naivety. But Sheila’s no prudish shut-in, having slept around with her share of men in college. In her early 20s, Sheila has found love with Jeff, a star basketball player in college who will be a sure thing in the professional circuit. Sheila has had a rough life; in a darkly humorous sequence we learn that her father, a “famous industrialist,” lusted after Sheila, and in an outrageous cap-off to this sequence we are presented with the image of a father masturbating to the nude image of his teenaged daughter.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, friends; before Memoirs is finished we’ll have multiple scenes of hardcore sex, porno filming, lesbian interludes, and even a dash of besitality as our narrator gets it on with her Mafia boss’s doberman pinscher. Every single base one could think of is covered here, and none of it is shrouded in the purple prose or Burt Hirschfeld-style analogies and metaphors typical of some ‘70s trash fiction. It’s all clearly detailed and leaves nothing to the imagination, and is, as I wrote above, a goddamn masterpiece of sleaze.

It develops that Jeff’s brother, Roger, a handicapped ‘Nam vet, is the culprit behind Sheila and Jeff’s entry into the world of porn. The novel opens in January 1973, and then flashes back to the month before. Roger, having gotten hooked on heroin, inadvertently sets Jeff up with the Mafia, who has denied Roger his heroin due to lack of payment. If Jeff skims off a few points of an upcoming game, the Mafia will give Roger his dope. But it turns out that the Mafia is actually more interested in Sheila.

Roger, in addition to being a star basketball player, wants to be a director, and several months before sent out to Hollywood producers an arty film of a nude Sheila walking around the woods. This film ended up in the hands of Brendan O’Mahoney, a once-famous Hollywood director who is now a boozer reduced to directing porn under various pseudonyms. O’Mahoney himself is in deep with the Mafia, and as part of a convoluted scheme he’s told them that this busty redhead Sheila Brady would make for perfect porno queendom, especially given the fact that she has bombshell measurements combined with the face of a little girl.

So, long story short, the Mafia, as represented by Frank Cavaleri, leader of a California branch of the mob, forces Sheila and Jeff to have on-screen sex in a new O’Mahoney film, or else. The movie is titled Jackie The Giant Layer and plays off Jeff’s large size – and I don’t just mean his height. But Sheila finds that she begins to really enjoy shooting porn, and soon enough is secretly filming “loops” with O’Mahoney, ie having sex with various men for little films that will be shown in peepshows and porn theaters. She hides all this from Jeff, who has made it clear that he’ll only cater to the Mafia’s demands if he and Sheila “act” with only each other.

Sheila’s doing this not just because she enjoys the on-screen screwing, but because of the “vitamin shots” she’s been given her first day on set, courtesy Dr. Segadelli, Cavaleri’s heroin man. Sheila has an addictive personality and within days becomes a heroin freak, going secretly to Jeff’s brother Roger for her heroin fix. The author builds up a lot of good material with Sheila hiding her twin pursuits – loop-filming and heroin-shooting – without Jeff finding out. And it’s to the author’s credit that he (or she) is still able to make us root for Sheila, who despite it all comes off as a likable protagonist.

Our heroine gets more and more involved, even after leaving Hollywood to go back to the unspecified home state in which she lives with Jeff. Here the Mafia has more production facilities, and she not only does more loop material but also stars in more films helmed by O’Mahoney. In particular there’s Down On The Farm, which features the bestiality mentioned above, Cavaleri showing up on the set with his guard dog and informing O’Mahoney of his desire to have it screw Sheila in the film!

And Sheila herself, you won’t be surprised to learn, gets off on it all. She finds that she doesn’t need heroin when she’s screwing on camera, but once she’s between projects she needs a fix. This leads her into trouble; after getting caught shooting up in the restroom of a restaurant, Sheila’s put in a women’s detention center where she awaits trial. Jeff never visits her (she finds out later it’s because Cavaleri wouldn’t let him – the Mafia has been clear that Sheila is not to use heroin, so she’s been hiding this from them as well, and they’re pissed royally), so Sheila ends up cozying up with her pretty cellmate, Cindy.

More explicit lesbiana ensues when Sheila is escorted into the presence of the “head mistress” of the place, a foxy chick who wears lingerie and has her own private room. After Sheila pleasures her with a big dildo the two go at it full-tilt, with the outcome that Sheila now becomes the lady’s favorite. And meanwhile she’s kicked heroin, or has she? Because as soon as she’s free on bail, her Mafia-appointed lawyer getting her out scott free, Sheila’s already trying to score from O’Mahoney. She’s become a true whore, now, something she admits to us, as she begins to trade sex with the director for the heroin he can get her.

We get more porno material, like this weird-sounding project of O’Mahoney’s which is a “porno comedy” that involves cranked-up film speeds and a massive gang-bang where Sheila takes on several dudes at once (with some of the dudes going at it with each other, O’Mahoney somehow believing that this hetero mixed with homo material will go over well with his audience). But things get out of hand when Jackie The Giant Layer is released and in the ensuing backlash Jeff is kicked off his team and loses his scholarship. Now our couple is in dire straights, penniless, and it gets worse when Jeff, outraged when he discovers all the pornos Sheila has secretly filmed, burns down the Mafia’s porn warehouse.

Clearly, this is not a smart idea, and Jeff pays for it – his hands shoved into a meat grinder, lopping off his thumbs! We go into the homestretch with O’Mahoney aligned with Sheila and Jeff in a desperate attempt to escape Cavaleri’s clutches. The director has stashed money by skimming the profits of his films, and he has a ghost town in the Nevada desert that he bought years ago which no one knows about. The three ditch the Mafia and make a hellish trip across the desert. The director’s ghost town is almost idyllic, with a water supply and stashes of canned food. But O’Mahoney himself proves untrustworthy, wanting to kill Jeff and make off with Sheila alone…

Eventually Sheila and Jeff, on the run and in disguise, end up in “Sudden Falls, Iowa,” which Sheila informs us is her fictional name for the real Midwestern town they now live in. Running the only hotel in town under assumed names, they’ve found happiness. Sheila has finally kicked heroin after a nightmarish withdrawal process; when she comes out she learns from Jeff that her famous father has died, which Jeff learned on the news. Sheila realizes that her addictive drive for heroin and on-screen sex was all fueled by her daddy issues, and now that the bastard is gone she can live free and normally.

Sheila ends her tale on a note of worry – will Cavaleri’s stooges ever track her and Jeff down? She has an extra reason to be concerned now, especially given that she’s about to have a child as the novel ends. There’s more dark humor in this as she’s not even sure who the father is – it could’ve been Jeff, O’Mahoney, or any of the untold number of dudes she had sex with during her porno filming; in her heroin addiction, Sheila forgot to take her birth control. But Jeff, who may get back his dexterity with prosthetic thumbs, is super understanding and excited to raise a child with her. The end!

Friends, I had a helluva fun time reading this novel; besides the sleaze factor it has great dialog, believable characters, and a well-crafted, entertaining storyline. Also, it proves once again that Lyle Kenyon Engel was a master “producer” of ‘70s paperback originals. Not to take credit away from whoever actually wrote it, but Memoirs Of An Ex-Porno Queen demonstrates how Engel excelled at divining what was hot in the fiction marketplace and turning out a product that not only was in line with it but surpassed it.

Like The Nursery, this is one of those sleaze masterpieces that begs to be quoted:

I was in front of a camera, before a small movie crew and financially interested spectators, performing film-recorded sex for the eventual satisfaction of movie-house masturbators, voyeurs, and other assorted come-freaks. -- pg. 11

“Keep ‘em rolling,” O’Mahoney ordered. “We can use some of this extraneous action in loops. All right, Jeff. When you come, be sure and let Sheila pull away. Our customers want to see that the actors are really making it. We want to see the semen spurt. Got it?” -- pg. 12

O’Mahoney smiled a smile that didn’t match the closed door of his eyes. “They should stop rerunning The Untouchables. There’s no such thing as the Mafia, silly baby, you know that, eh?” 

“Cavaleri, he seems to be the head one. And Segadelli, and that tough one, Santarpio. Italian names.” 

“So what? You anti-wop?” he said off-handedly, so off-handedly I knew he was lying. “I’m as Irish as you are. What about Sy Borofsky, the chief cameraman? A heeb. Ellisopulous, the sound man. As Greek as a cock up the ass.” -- pg. 33

“That’s when I started having lesbian sex.” -- pg. 46

“All right, you cooze-teaser, I beg you.  I beg you. Eat me!” -- pg. 68

When I awakened Jeff was gone; unfortunately the humiliation wasn’t. I was lying on a pee-soaked mattress and my stomach was fermenting with nausea. -- pg. 111

He insisted we meet in a downtown coffee shop. When I called, suggesting I come to his hotel, he was as nervous as a pregnant whore. -- pg. 113

When suddenly, of his own volition, the big dog mounted me, I was ready, willing, and able to take him! My original feeling of degradation had long since been washed away by the periodic tongue baths he gave me those three days. -- pg. 143

“When I’m not sucking cocks, I keep my mouth closed pretty good.” -- pg. 154