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Nina Hartley

Porn star Nina Hartley wants everyone to have a piece - a piece of sex, a piece of the means of production, a piece of a warm communist community. In short, the blonde Jew wants everyone to have a piece of the promised Messianic Age, now.

She descends idealogically from the radical Jewish philosopher Herbert Marcuse who wrote that a socialist utopia would free individuals to achieve sexual satisfaction.

Nina comes from a long line of leftist Jews. Her grandfather (a physics professor) and her father (a radio announcer) were members of the Communist party. Her home celebrated Hanukkah, Christmas, Passover and Easter as holidays rather than holy days.

The future porn star received no formal religious instruction. One of her brothers and her one sister - a doctor - came to Orthodox Judaism as adults and barely relate to Nina, the family's black sheep. In the mid '80s, Nina's parents became Zen Buddhist priests.

"When my parents saw me speaking on the Phil Donahue show," says Nina Hartley, "they were shocked and upset. They are now more accepting. They know I'm happy and healthy and still the person they know. One brother thinks my work is a hoot. Doesn't bother him at all. My oldest brother can barely bring himself to say hello to me. He's very upset with what I do. He's a practicing "born again" Orthodox Jew, so we don't speak. Even before he found out what I did, we didn't have a whole lot in common, because of his religious behavior. He's the hardest case to crack."

Secular Jewish leftist Sheldon Ranz interviewed Nina for the Spring 1989 edition of the radical New York journal Shmate. "I don't understand how a family where the parents have a Communist background can raise a kid who grows up to be an Orthodox Jew," said Ranz, a child of Holocaust survivors. "How did that happen?"

Nina: "They're still asking themselves that very question. My brother turned to it the way anyone turns to religion as an adult. Insecurity, fear, a desire for community, a desire for roots, and identity. He started out being interested in the history of Jewishness and Jewish culture. He slowly got into the more religious aspects of it, buying the t'fillin and the whole bit."

Hartley received a feminist upbringing.

"My family doesn't understand exhibitionism or pornography. I'm Jewish culturally but not religiously. I'm generally less subservient than a typical WASP female. And I've discovered certain gender interactions are different between Jewish and non-Jewish couples. I grew up in Berkley, which is heavily influenced by [secular] Jewish culture. It's an intellectual town. A lot of the people who set the political agenda are Jewish.

"There are things that you learn and ways that you think that you don't understand are more Jewish than not until you go into mainstream America and realize that other people don't think this way.

"I'm proud of my heritage's intellectual history and its empathy with the persecuted. But I'm no Zionist. Politically, I'm left-wing. I want everyone to have a job, everyone to have food, clothing, shelter, medical care and education. Utopia might be communist but in the meantime we have to have socialism. I want everyone to have a piece.

"The reason my family observed Chanukah when I was growing up was a) it was a Jewish ceremony, but more importantly, b) it's an opportunity to get together and have a great meal. The most Jewish part of my culture is food... To be Jewish was to be a questioner, a seeker, to learn more about yourself and those around you. To ask questions, to talk - and to eat. And to be socially conscious.

"We had black friends before it was fashionable to have black friends, although when they did turn militant in the '60s, that confused my family. Several of those black friends moved away because they became Black Panthers and didn't want to deal with 'whitey' anymore, which I can understand. My parents and family can be well-meaning, but they can also be dipsy liberals... Their hearts are good. That's where their socialism and communism come from, from their desire to do good, to make the world a better place." (Shmate)

Nina's parents remain socialists and pacifists. "They're not comfortable with armed revolution, although they don't say that nobody has the right to it. They'd like blacks and whites in South Africa, for example, to talk things out but they're not hopeful. (1989)

"I believe strongly in the heritage of Jews as educators. I feel very proud of the fact that if it weren't for the Jews, half the world would still be illiterate. I would like to know about Jewish religion as history, but as an atheist, I see no reason to practice any religion... because it is organized superstition...the opiate of the masses.

"Israel doesn't figure in my identity, but I do think about it. As it is now - a theocracy masquerading as a democracy - I don't think it has a right to exist. Jews are not a race. Jews are not a cohesive people. There are Israeli Jews, and Polish Jews and English Jews and American Jews. Jews are all over the world, so there is not one race or nationality that is still "Jew." Therefore, there is no valid Jewish "nation-state" because there is no Jewish "people" as a race.

"That Israel denies basic civil rights to the Palestinians in the occupied territories makes me angry at Israel. If Israel does not clean up its act, it will become another graveyard for the Jews." (Shmate, Spring 1989)

Nina Hartley's husband Dave - who works as a gardener, and Nina's 'wife' Bobbie grew up as liberal Methodists. "They have strong social political consciousness due to their liberal Protestant upbringing."

David's first political identity was that of a right-wing Barry Goldwater Republican. Then he became a pacifist on the way to true belief in communism. In the '60s, Dave belonged to Students For A Democratic Society. Today he's dedicated to Marxism-Lenninism with a Trotskyist slant. Dave and Bobbi became lovers while in the New American Movement which later merged with the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee to form the Democratic Socialists of America.

Dave and Bobbi are not Jewish and this causes "muddled social interactions," says Nina. "They like my energy, my ability to be intellectual, which doesn't come easy to many WASP women because they're not taught that it is valuable. My individual will, my refusal to bow down and be subjugated by others is a Jewish trait.

"When I grew up, we had six people around the dinner table. We'd have two or three conversations going on at one time. There'd be diagonal conversations, straight-across conversations, next-to-yourself conversations... When Dave and Bobbi grew up, one person spoke at a time at the table and was finished, and then the next person spoke.... It flabberghasted me when I found this out...

"When Dave goes into a Jewish situation...he goes crazy because everyone talks all at once to everybody else. The tendency toward interruptions is infuriating to him.

"I cook differently than WASPs do. I use things like onion, garlic, spices. Dave is daring, but he doesn't like many of these things..."

In high school, Nina "was brainy and shy with no social graces to speak of. Most of the time I wore overalls and flannel shirts and didn't even shave my legs. I had plenty of sexual ideas, but I didn't date. I read a lot, though. Things like The Happy Hooker, The Joy of Sex, and Betty Dodson's Liberating Masturbation provided me with endless hours of pleasure.

"Being in the movies helps me develop parts of my personality that were stunted during adolescense: how to socialize, how to be at a party, how to interact with members of the opposite sex, how to be a social being, how to be empathetic and caring. I was a recluse throughout high school. The hassle of learning to socialize seemed too much trouble for what you got."

Skeptical "Sir Walter Raleigh" writes on RAME: "How the does someone who was born and raised in Berkely during the 60s and 70s become sexually repressed and uptight? I don't believe that she was ever repressed by anyone. And if she was, then her lifestyle seems to be an over reaction.

"I feel repressed! Instead of using my nursing degree to make a living, I'll dance at Mitchell Brothers, take a husband and a wife, and make porno for the next 20 years." OK, that makes a lot of sense. "I can do more good by providing the world with a few hundred more hours of masturbatory fodder than by treating people who are sick." The fact is that screwing for a living pays more and is a much easier way to make a buck.

"Why does she have to do porno to stop being scared of men and to accept herself sexually and not be racked with guilt and uncertainty? I don't really see the connection. However, it is typical of Berkely people. They have to have some socially conscious reason for doing anything. Now she is enlightening us all by letting Sean Micheals f--- her up the ass in Caught from Behind. Get real. It's all about making bucks. Let me go get a dirty t-shirt. Nina is going to educate and enlighten me again."

After high school, Nina attended nursing school and graduated magna cum laude. In her sophomore year she started nude-dancing. In her junior year she entered the adult-video industry. Hartley chose the 'Christian' part of her porn name - Nina - because it's easy to mouth.

"Even Japanese tourists could say it," she says, reflecting on her months stripping at the Mitchell Brother's O'Farrells theater in San Francisco. Hartley is similar to Nina's real surname "Hartman." She met Juliet Anderson at the O'Farrell in 1982 and broke her porn cherry in the first movie that Juliet wrote, directed and produced - Educating Nina.

Nina, who looks like Goldie Hawn, moved on to such videos as Amanda By Night 2, Ball Busters, and Rites of Passion as well as the mainstream flick based on the life of John Holmes - Boogie Nights. Her movies are usually low-budget hardcore rather than elegant couples fare. "Watching a Nina Hartley tape every once in a while is more an act of supportive politics than a sensual experience," write Steve and Elizabeth Brent in their 1997 book The Couples Guide To The Best Erotic Videos.

Pornographer Bill Margold says Nina Hartley is the most popular person in the industry. Nina attributes this to her open friendly attitude to her fans. "I validate their desires. Unlike many other women in the business, I don't look on fans as icky perverts. I treat them as full human beings. We celebrate sex. I tell them, "Isn't this great?" I've seen my fans through many stages of life, from bacherlorhood to marriage and children."

Nina, Dave and Bobby generally prefer to swing with other swingers because experienced swingers know the etiquette of swinging. "Swingers are ethical people. They have to be or other swingers will reject them. Dave, Bobby and I swing with people we like to hang around with...go to movies together and share dinner. We just happen to share sex at times as well as companionship."

Though monogamy may be the ideal state for some people, and an ideal state for most people part of the time, Nina believes that lifelong marital fidelity is unnatural and unnecessary.

"If a relationship is weak, swinging will destroy expose its flaws and destroy it. But if a relationship is strong, swinging done wisely will enhance it.

"People should be more open with their partners. Even if they choose to lead a completely monogamous life, it should be ok to admit to one's spouse that one desires other sexual companions.

"Sexual jealousy is a learned response from the culture. It reflects fear - such as fear of abandonment, insecurity, etc.. For couples secure in their relationship, they can share openly their desires and even act on them.

"Most swingers are middle-class with kids, dogs, mortgages, college degrees... Swingers compose a friendship group where sex is neither required or forbidden. Swinging is not well understood. One doesn't walk into a party and get grabbed.

"Monogamy is particularly difficult for men. I talk to men who don't want to hurt their wives or cheat on them, but they simply want to be able to share their sexual fantasies without being condemned. Our culture demonizes male sexuality and its objectification of women.

"Males get turned on by the eye and it's fine that they at times objectify women. At the FOXE (Fans of X-rated Entertainment) Awards, it was ok for fans to be raunchy. In other contexts, such behavior would be boorish. Objectification is an essential part of human sexual desire. It is not of itself evil or destructive."

Sex, like everything else in life, can be used for good or evil. "Pornography has saved as many lives as it has ruined," says Nina. "I and many other performers used our work to come to terms with our sexuality. Sure, many women in the business were abused as children and brought up badly. But others had wonderful upbringings. And for many, porn is a way of healing."

Nina estimates that about half of female performers are in a basically monogamous relationship outside their work while most male performers are single. About a third of performers are unattached partiers and about a tenth are swingers. About ten percent of performers have serious drug problems, about twenty percent never touch drugs, and the rest use drugs intermittently. This appears to be the norm in entertainment generally and also among beautiful secular urban young women with money. Fewer male performers take drugs because it hurts their ability to become erect.

Nina has the longest lasting relationship of any active performer, living in a threesome with her husband Dave and wife Bobbi - a plump woman in her 40s. The 14-year porn veteran says most of her friends are in the business. "I have a small core of people with whom I've stayed in touch since high school, since before I took on the name Nina Hartley. They know what I do and feel comfortable with it."

On her first day on the job at a Berkeley cafe, the 19-year old Nina met Dave. "He struck me as a friendly person. The second thing he said to me after his name was that he was non-monogamous. I was already bisexual.

"His long time girlfriend Bobbi, after a three year separation, had just moved to California from Detroit, where Dave grew up. I was looking for sexually free people. My philosophy and attitude were very advanced. My experiences at the tender age of 19 were not so positive, but I knew that it could be possible."

Nina dated Dave for a couple of months. He talked frequently about Bobbi, who back in Detroit had numerous boyfriends.

"They had an open and sexually free relationship that was not devoid of commitment, support and deep and abiding love for one another."

Nina couldn't believe that anyone could be as "unjealous" as Bobby. "It was too good to be true. When I finally met Bobbi and realized that it was true, I kicked myself for not having the courage to meet her sooner...

"Dave and I gradually fell madly, passionately, in love. It never bothered me that he had other girlfriends."

In 1983, Nina, Dave and Bobbi moved in together. "In the beginning, Dave and Nina had a relationship and Dave and Bobbi had a relationship, and Bobbi and I had to develop a relationship. That took 18 months because Bobbi is basically heterosexual.

"The relationship works because of our philosophy of fidelity of the mind and heart, but not of the crotch. What also helps is the constant, open communication about all subjects - sexual, political, personal, philosophical. This kind of relationship can not work without extreme, brutal honesty and open communication. There are no taboo subjects. Bobbi and I now have a strong relationship independent of Dave, even though he was originally the rallying point for us."

Nina says that a triad is a stable situation, just as tripods are stable and tricycles are stable. "Three points make a stable base on a plane. Whenever two of us have a disagreement, there's always a third person who can step in...

"The decision to commit to film and video was a big decision for Dave and Bobbie and I to go through. It meant giving up privacy and a lot of things that were important to us.

"One of the reasons that made me happy to get into the business was to meet and have sex with other bisexual women, other openly, happily bisexual women."

Hartley became porn's leading star after the retirement of Ginger Lynn of 1986. One of Nina's best known flicks is Debbie Duz Dishes, produced and directed by WASP Damon Christian aka Richard Aldrich. 'Debbie' is frequently the name of Jewish American Princesses (JAP) in JAP jokes. The video title Debbie Duz Dishes is based on a JAP joke: What's the name of a JAP porno? Debbie Does Dishes.Nina plays a sexually insatiable Jewish housewife who enjoys sex with anyone who rings the doorbell.

As Victoria Paris emerged in 1990, Hartley's career went into decline. "In 1986-88 I received many awards. Then for the next several years my career went flat. By 1992, I hardly made any films. I was just on the road dancing. That was frustrating because I was so invisible after being very visible that people thought I had retired.

"People still think that. There's just so much product out there that people can't find my movies. I could make a hundred titles and still not be visible.

"It's now important to me to produce as well as perform." So far Nina's made a dozen modest flicks but she can't find a quality distributor. Nina performs in a couple of movies a month but longs to change the world through the production of intelligent and healing sexvids.

"I wish for an eccentric millionaire who can wait for profits until I get my act together. But if an investor needs immediate return, I can't yet provide that."

Adam and Eve, the country's biggest adult movie mail order operation, offers several Hartley educational videos - Nina Hartley's Guide to Oral Sex, to Anal Sex and to Swinging. Porn production and distribution is an old boys club, difficult for anyone to break into, particularly women.

"Women don't get much respect in this industry, even though we're the stars. It's frustrating for me because many distributors don't think I sell when my fan club is bigger than ever and my lines of fans at shows are the longest. My fans are the happiest and the most loyal.

"If I were on the outside looking in, it would make good business sense to use me an old star in conjunction with the new girls.

"What usually happens in production and distribution is - whoever they want to f--- that month gets all the attention. I've been around so long that they figure the sexual mystery is gone.

"The powers that be decide these things on the basis of: "How new is she? How beautiful is she? How much sexual charge does she give out?

"My peers respect me and appreciate what I've done for the business, and they like me, and have nothing bad to say about me, but they know that I've been around twelve years and they believe that I've become too familiar.

"This is not something they spend time analyzing. It's what I've figured out looking at it from the other side.

"I don't know how much my avowed feminism has hurt me. When you bring my name up with people, they will say she's wonderful and nice. They don't go deeper than that. I'd love to find out this - If she's so wonderful and nice, why don't you use her more often? I'm not 40 and I'm not retired. And the last time I checked with people, I'm not unattractive either. There's no commercially viable reason not to use me.

"I'm no prude. Some say "She'll only do romance or couples films or girls." It's not true. I'll do a lot. I'll eat cum, ass-f---, allow my hair to be pulled... I work with men and women." Nina's wholesome and thoughtful image enables her to age as gracefully as a woman can who sucks and f---s in front of a camera. But in this nasty business, it also reduces her sex appeal. Hartley's become a mother figure and most of us don't want to have sex with our mother. The mystery of seeing Nina's naked body is gone and the delights of her mind are difficult to communicate through the medium of porn.

"I'll do nasty things in a nice way. I'm able to say "Lick my ass" and make analingus seem wholesome. I want to help people be easier on themselves about their fantasies. And if their dreams don't hurt anyone, and occur between consenting adults, why not experiment?"

Nina says she has rape fantasies like many women but doesn't believe that society is ready for sexvids to play with that theme. "It's not morally justifiable yet to titillate with rape. Too much of the real thing is going on."

In the 1970s and early '80s, rape and incest appeared frequently in porn but these themes have now virtually disappeared, largely thanks to the implications of a 1973 Supreme Court "community standards" ruling on obscenity. The Miller ruling allows communities to establish their own guidelines as to what constitutes obscenity. American pornographers now struggle with some of the most sexually restrictive laws in the world. They must carefully censor themselves to avoid getting prosecuted for distributing product to conservative areas such as Tennessee, for example. Liberal cities like San Francisco and New York would - and to some degree do allow rape and incest in sexually explicit videos as well as hair pulling, bondage and domination with intercourse, fisting, urination, defecation and beastiality.

Hartley says fellow performers Sahara Sands, Porsche Lynn and Ona Zee are like minds. "We all want to do harder stuff - tying up, beating, spanking, whipping, hair pulling, fisting - all with actual intercourse but we can't act out these fantasies because there is no national standard of obscenity. Because of the Miller ruling, we have these insane community laws."

After being inducted into the XRCO Hall of Fame in 1996, Hartley told the all-industry gathering of 250 people, "If I haven't already f---ed every one of you in this room, just hang on and I'll get to you."

The 14-year porn veteran says her acting has become less silly. Hartley now strives for realism while maintaining her happy image. "I perform as a self-assured sexually free autonomous female who isn't a ball buster or castrator."

Born in 1961, Hartley ranks among the oldest of porn's stars. Because she hates wrinkles, Nina does her best to stay in shape. As she ages, the busty blonde wishes to stay in porn but hopes to move steadily behind the camera over the next few years. "If I'm still dancing on the road in ten years, I won't be happy."

The brainy blonde's "nice" qualities frequently make for boring videos, such as 1994's Nina Hartley's Guide to Better Cunnilingus. AFW: "As in her other installments in this series, things start off too clinically with Ms. Hartley explaining in minute detail the precise workings of the female sex organ. She tries to be so cute and "tasteful" that she insults the viewer by suggesting through her tone of voice that we know absolutely nothing about how a vagina works."

Nina's Guide to Better Fellatio suffers from similar problems. "Once Nina gets the damn things in her mouth and shuts up, the mood changes for the better."

Nina made separate appearances on the Phil Donahue show as a stripper, swinger, and porn star. She says that Phil didn't appear to recognize her on her repeat performances.

Hartley features prominently in several books on porn, including Dr. Robert Stoller's Porn and Coming Attractions.

"Nina struck me as wholesome-pretty, bubbly, not glamorous," writes Stoller who first met her at the 1986 X-Rated Critics Organization Annual Awards ceremony. "Nina struck me as wholesome-pretty, bubbly, not glamorous, neither the Marilyn Monroe parody of sexiness nor the sullen burning-with-sex vamperoo, with a big smile and a game-trouper look about her.

"The day after, in my office, she is unrecognizable: big, thick, pink-tinted glasses held on by wires, minimal makeup, effective, practical, pleasing, no performer-exhibitionism. She is dressed in black stirrup pants and blue sweater; colorful, stylish, not garish,; no ass wiggling or breast blimping (not at all like some of the women last night). An RN off duty. Her husband, Dave - no studlike demeanor - is out getting coffee for the first part of the interview."

"For all the lip service we give to sex being holy and wonderful and spiritual," says Hartley, "we let Madison Avenue use it to sell spark plugs and dishwashing detergent - to sell anything but sex."

Nina believes that a great deal of today's porn is not only anti-woman but anti-human and reflects America's deep fear of sex. "The people who run the porn business are not sex radicals... You'd be surprised how many of the producers and manufacturers are Republicans."

Even in a communist utopia, Hartley would work as a "sex professional - either a sexual entertainer, a sexual therapist, a sexual surrogate, a sexual teacher... I believe my work is good and valid. People should support it wholeheartedly. Promote the use of explicit sexual materials for the education and benefit of all adults."

Nina does many of her hottest lesbian scenes with Alex Greco and Lilli Marlene. "Both are easily orgasmic, heavily bisexual, heavily sensual... They enjoy the scene for the pleasure and can give pleasure without any regrets... Alex Greco is liberal so I can have a relationship with her off the screen. If a woman is a right-winger, but can get into the scene sexually, I can have a good scene with her. I just won't have much of an off-camera relationship with her. But there are no other women in the business who are halfway as political as I am...

"Erica Boyer and Barbara Dare were genuine lesbians... The women in lesbian scenes imbue them with humanity... There is no erection to worry about, so they can get down into the sensations of the sex... In a heterosexual scene, the man's orgasm is the most important thing.

"Many patriarchal men's ultimate fear is that women will not need them anymore. That's why many men are uncomfortable with a lesbian scene, because it means they're superflous. They want women to need them sexually.

"For Jerry Fallwell, I'm his Jezebel, his Devil Incarnate. I'm Jewish, atheist, socialist, porno actress."

In the 5/87 Hustler Erotic Video Guide, Kimberly Carson, after explaining her Southern Baptist background, says "you find that a lot of us have been abused by our parents."

Nina: "I have not found that any greater percentage of women in the business have had unwanted sexual experiences than in the general population. I find that many of the worst child abuser are those who are highly religious. They have rigid ideas as to what men and women are supposed to be about, which opens up the whole thing about sparing the rod and spoiling the child. Many people beat up their children because the Bible tells them to beat up their children. So, while 25% of all women are abused before they reach 18, I would guess that 60-75% of all fundamentalist Christian children are abused before 18."

Sheldon Ranz: "I'm struck at how talk of your prominent posterior pervades gatherings of adult industry... It's been called the "tightest tuches in Tinseltown."

Nina: "I was born with that... There's a picture of me at seven or eight months of age standing up in my crib, and I have a big round butt and big thighs, shaped like my mothers. I have a Jewish butt. Jewish women are the only Caucasian women who have any kind of rear end... When I gain weight, it goes between my navel and my knees. I have the potential to have powerful legs. I have lots of muscle mass in my legs. I have to exercise because if I don't, I gain weight, and in front of the camera, you already look ten pounds heavier." (Shmate)

On a warm Spring day in March 1997, Nina celebrated her 36th birthday by performing in a ten person orgy for a VCA production directed by her friend Jane Hamilton aka Veronica Hart. It was Hartley's 36th birthday. Catching her breath before the next sex scene, the aging blonde stood on the lush grounds of a mansion in the Hollywood Hills which separate L.A.'s West Side from the San Fernando Valley. "I love this business more than ever," said naked Nina. Her 45-year old friend Sharon Mitchell stood topless at her right. Tom Byron, who still looks like a college sophomore, lounged at her left.

"This past year has been a time of tremendous personal growth. I've worked through many issues. Nineteen ninety six was a motherf---er. A catharsis like you wouldn't believe. An emotionally intense year. I had to face some things about myself that I didn't like - issues of morality, character, bravery..." "Let's go," yells set manager Luc Wylder, interrupting Hartley's introspection. Nina smiles, excuses herself and trots over to the gang at the pool to get her piece.

In the year 2000, Nina filed for divorce from her husband and left their wife Bobby.

In 2003, she married her longtime friend Ira Levine aka Ernest Greene.