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A tradition in the theatre assigns the name "George Spelvin" to any actor who doesn't want his real name known or who is playing a part so small that credit would be an embarrassment. "Georgina Spelvin" was an inside joke when the most famous actress to go by that name used it in Devil In Miss Jones.

Born 3/1/36, Dorothy May (Georgina Spelvin) grew up in Texas. She suffered from polio.

A dance double for Shirley MacLaine in Sweet Charity, she played the lead in the 1966 original production of The Pajama Game. Five years later she danced briefly in Hello Dolly. Her first movie was High Priestess.

Despite her apparent success, Dorothy was an alcoholic. Broke, and with her career on the skids, May, 36 at the time, accepted an offer to do The Devil in Miss Jones. Over the next ten years, she appeared in 100 adult movies doing progressively dirtier material. "The roles keep coming and so do I," said Georgina near the end of her adult career. At her retirement in 1982, at age 47, she stood 5'4", weighed 120 pounds and measured 36-25-36.

"At 62," Spelvin wrote to me in January, 1998, "my dimensions are the same, but everything is closer to the ground. Weight now at 125. Desk job. What are you gonna do?"

After leaving porn, Spelvin entered Alcoholics Anonymous and has been sober "since November 11, 1981." Divorced twice, she's spent the last 14 years with her live-in boyfriend - TV and commercial actor John Welsh, born around 1930.

Even in her prime, Georgina appeared more plain than beautiful. "I'm slightly cross-eyed and my torso is way too big for the rest of me." But she was an excellent actress. "My face is very adaptable. No one feature is accentuated. It does what it wants to, from one role to another.

"At first I wanted to be an opera singer but my voice wasn't good enough. My second choice was ballerina. After that it was a series of compromises.

"In New York in 1972, I was in dire straits financially.

"I saw a lot of ads for actresses wanted for "sexploitation films." X-rated movies had only been in for about a year.

"I called and made appointments with some of the producers, and I went around to see them, carrying my resume and my portfolio. The pitch I made to them was: "I know I'm probably not what you're looking for in the way of an actress. Yet, if you need someone to help carry cable, run sound, hold a boom, carry lights, type scripts, make coffee, or sweep the floor, I'm accomplished in all these areas.

"About the third man I went to see listened to my pitch with amusement and then told me he could use me. He wanted to do some shooting on a boat, so I found a boat for him, and I supplied a few people, friends and relatives, for some of the acting parts. I played a madam. It was softcore, low budget, low quality, but it paid the rent for a month.

"On that film I got friendly with one of the grips, and he called me a month later and asked me if I wanted to act in a sex picture he was making called Parental Guidance. This was to be hard-core, and he wanted to know how I felt about sex in front of the camera. Fornication was the word he used - would I fornicate for the camera? I told him it would depend on who my partner was. I'd have to meet the man before I could decide. Well, I met the leading man and he was nice, attractive and we got along fine. So I took the job. Soon I was fornicating like a veteran, right in front of the camera.

"While we were making this picture, I met Marc Stevens, who was coming up in the porn world at that time, and through him I met our mutual friend Harry Reems. I told Harry I needed work. He told me Gerry Damiano was making a film on location out in the country somewhere that weekend. The cast was all set - but they needed a cook. They got one. I went to see Gerry and after explaining how low his budget was, he took me on to cook for two days for $500 - which included the food. After I accepted the job, he told me there were 27 people to be fed.

"I was in the middle of figuring out my menu and where I could get the best buys, when Harry came along and asked me if I'd mind doing some script reading. I was the only woman there at the time, and they were trying out men for a part, and Harry had been reading the woman's lines. Now he had to go out on some errand, so I filled in for him.

"I did the most ordinary job of reading the woman's lines while they tried out the men, but from the comments I got you'd think I was Helen Hayes in an Oscar role. They raved about me. The infant X-rated industry had never been exposed to a woman who had any theatrical background or training. So to these people, I was a great actress.

"They rewrote the script to make the heroine, Miss Jones, not a 19-year old buxom sexpot, but a 36-year old flatchested old maid. It worked. The Devil in Miss Jones wasn't released for a year after it was shot, and in that year I acted in I can't tell you how many one-day wonders. Gerry Damiano and I became good friends, and he saw to it I got all the work I could handle. (AFW 1/87)

"I was having a ball! I was never a nympho, but I've always liked sex and I was a bit promiscuous as a youngster. So all this fornicating for the camera didn't bother me. I exercised choice of partners. I had to like the man to some degree. I was at the peak of my sexuality, about 35 or 36, and I had no qualms about capering around in front of the camera. I was a professional actress, and I was doing a job that I was good at."

While making porn films, Georgina kept working stage and did a few straight movie parts.

"The two worlds are so different. If people want to put me down for acting in porn, they have to admit they've seen a porn picture. A few people outside the industry know about my "other career", but I think they secretly admire me. Now and then someone will whisper with a leer "Made any good pictures lately, Georgina?"

"I adopted the psuedonym Georgina Spelvin when Miss Jones was released and became an instant hit. Before that I used a lot of silly names. When I played a French maid, I was Ona Tural (au natural). Then there was Clit Tores, and many others. We'd sit around laughing as we made them up. But when Miss Jones became a national monument, the name Georgina Spelvin was institutionalized along with it, so I kept that name.

"My favorite porn movie is For Richer, For Poorer, 1980. It was my last film with Gerry Damiano."

Bill Margold remembers one time he worked with Georgina, he tried having sex without wearing his glasses. "Big mistake. I stuck it accidentally up her ass instead of her pussy. She was so mad that she walked off the set afterwards. The next time I saw her, I apologized, and explained what happened. It tells you something though, doesn't it, that it'd fit so easily?"

"Fit, my ass!" says Spelvin in 1998. "Why would I get mad if it fit? I told him to cut it out three times before I went ballistic."

As Justine Jones, Spelvin became the prototype porn slut for viewers like author Anthony Petkovich. "The quintessential slut. Not only did Spelvin's sharp intuition and steadfast integrity make her role as virgin-turned-whore believable, but her lust was unquenchable. She not only f---ed men, women, snakes, and bananas, but performed anals and double penetrations with the sincere voraciousness of a starved cannibal unleashed in an over-crowded aerobics class." (The X-Factory)

"If that is true," says Georgina, "then I was a better actress than I thought I was."

Now 62, Georgina Spelvin works as a desktop publisher and graphics designer to pay the mortgage on her modest home in Hollywood Hills. Georgina says porn has its place, but she's against public displays of nudity and sex.

"Pornography has existed as long as any kind of ography and will continue to exist as long as human beings procreate. I will defend to the death the right of mature adults to create, own and view any literature or images that have not broken any laws, moral or civic, in their creation.

"Molesting children or anyone, sexually or otherwise, is against all laws… Reporting on such occurrences, even presenting a dramatic reenactment of such acts in a controlled environment, is not.

"I find most explicit sex scenes either boring or disgusting. Consequently, I do not seek them out and would not appreciate them being foisted upon me in a situation where I could not avoid seeing them. Fortunately, I can choose what movies and television programs I watch, books and articles I read and sites I visit on the internet. Why is this such a difficult concept to grasp by those who would legislate the world to their concept of heaven?"