Porn legend John C. Holmes tells his own story in new book, ‘PORN KING’

PORN KING, the long-unavailable autobiography of legendary porn star John C. Holmes, has been released by publishing house BearManor Media, with a new epilogue by Holmes’ widow Laurie Holmes.

“John was a fascinating, yet simple man. He had a heart of gold, but there were many times when John was lost somewhere between reality, fantasy, and the sexual revolution,” Laurie Holmes said. “He often spun wild tales of grandeur and elaborated on the truth. Like most of his peers, he found it difficult to live up to someone else’s fantasy.”

Revered as “The King” by legions of ’70s porn fans, John C. Holmes was the iconic porn stud whose massive endowment riveted the attention of adult filmgoers worldwide. His amiable detective character “Johnny Wadd,” which he first performed in 1971, helped establish him as a popular personality when most porn performers were anonymous bodies in 8mm loops. Holmes’ troubled life included legal and drug problems before his comeback to adult film in 1983 and his eventual death from AIDS-related complications in 1988.

The bigger-than-life Holmes has been a part of mainstream feature films including “Boogie Nights,” where the fictional Dirk Diggler bears a resemblance to Holmes, and “Wonderland,” where Val Kilmer plays Holmes himself.

In PORN KING, Holmes talks freely about his childhood, his time as a swinger and paid gigolo, his on-set experiences as he shot 8mm loops in small offices and Johnny Wadd films on location, the rise and fall of his struggles with cocaine addiction which led to the notorious 1981 robbery of L.A. nightclub owner Eddie Nash and the retaliation murders on Wonderland
Avenue, his arrest, trial and acquittal before his return to adult filmmaking with performer Misty Dawn, who he married and is now known as Laurie Holmes.

PORN KING was compiled from audio tapes that John Holmes recorded during the last five years of his life. The book was originally privately published in 1998 and copies of the heirloom edition have been seen on the used-book market for prices ranging up to $1000.

The newly revised edition, including an updated, heartfelt, no-holds-barred epilogue written by Laurie Holmes, is an incredible story. The 160-page book is illustrated with family photos, production stills and news photographs of Holmes at adult conventions and putting his hands in cement outside of the famous Pussycat Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard in Southern California.

Porn King: The Autobiography of John C. Holmes is available at Amazon as a paperback or as a Kindle download

I’m flipping channels the other day and I come to the E! network.  It was a show on the most gruesome crimes in history.  Just so happens that at the time I start watching they come to what has become known as The Wonderland murders.   At the start of the story they mention that porn star John Holmes during his time in the adult industry appeared in some 2500 movies.  Wait … what??  2500??? SERIOUSLY???????

Then someone tells me, oh well Ron Jeremy has been in over 2,000 himself.  Wow.  I really had never sat and thought about it.  Those two really are porn legends.  That I always knew but until today I never really sat and thought about how many more movies they had been in compared to stars of our day.

To give you some sense of comparison in terms of today’s stars IAFD tells us that Jesse Jane has been in about 62 movies.  Briana Banks has been in about 249 movies.    Christy Canyon was in about 243 movies.  Racquel Darrian was in 101, Chasey Lain was in 96 movies, Jenna Jameson was in 150, Tera Patrick 105, Belladonna 277, and Eva Angelina with 412.  The only one I could think of who has came close to something like their numbers is Jenna Haze is 502.

But back to John Holmes.

John Holmes was a performer from 1969-1988.   19 years in this business is pretty much unheard of.  The only other two I know of still making movies 19 years later even if just here and there would be Ron Jeremy and Christy Canyon.  She started in 1984 and made her last appearance in a movie in 2005.

He performed under a ton of different names such as Long John Wodd, Mr. John Holmes, John C. Holms, Johnny Holmes, John Duval, John C. Holmes, John Curtis Holmes, Johnny Wadd, Big Jon Fallus, Big John, John Rey, Mark Lloyd.

John Holmes had been with a lot of woman in his time, both on camera and off.  One can’t help but wonder if he ever had any offspring from his numerous affairs.

One of his affairs was with a 16 year old child.  During the height of his popularity in porn he took on a secret lover with a 16 year old little girl who lived in a complex he and his wife managed.  She would later say she looked up to John Holmes like a father figure and would remain his lover for 5 years.  After which time she ran to the police and turned him in.

During the course of their relationship she claimed he beat her, pimped her out and make her prostitute herself for drug money, raped her repeatedly, got her involved in what would become known as the Wonderland murders, got her chased across country by drug lords and the feds.

I didn’t read the book but I read her biography and her summary of what she said took place, as well as about 5 different reviews and interviews and the one thing that stuck out to me is how still, even to this day, she doesn’t seem to want to take responsibility for her own actions.  She continues to want to play the victim role.  And maybe she is a victim of rape and domestic violence.  It wouldn’t be to far of a leap to assume a porn star who did drugs and was involved in a horrid murder would also beat up his girlfriend but somewhere, sometime in your life you have to say in the 5 years she was in this relationship, did she never once think for herself?  Did she never once say I don’t need this shit and just leave?  No.  But when she did finally leave, the first thing she did was run to the police to get him arrested for sleeping with her when she was underage, for revenge.

I have been through my own bad relationships and I can probably say that with a strong level of confidence that John Holmes probably did beat her up a few times.  He probably did do a lot of the douche bag things in her book but you can’t play the victim card forever.  There has to come a point in your life when you say, I was the dumb ass for staying with him and I take full responsibility for my actions.

She about 21 when she left him.  That was more than old enough to know right from wrong.  Blame it on the drugs, blame it on his all powerful presence, fine whatever … but in the end, the only person you can really blame is yourself.

So what John Holmes a porn legend or a pedophile?  In the end I guess you’ll have to read her book and judge for yourself.

I know that I’m usually the nice one that posts here but today I just had to take a stand because this just really hasn’t been sitting right with me since I first got the press release about her book.  Then when I seen the story on E! I just knew this post was screaming out for me to write.  John Holmes is dead so he can’t exactly defend himself so really anyone can say anything they want and there isn’t anyone who can dispute it.

I hope that all these bad things really didn’t happen to her.  I would hate to think that anyone would be stupid enough to fall in love with someone who would beat them up, make them become a hooker and they would stay with them for year after year after year.  But I guess that happens every day in our society.  And it really is sad.  Did it happen this time?  That’s really up to you to decide but in the mean time her book is getting  a lot of great reviews so if nothing else it’s a good read I hear.

The Road Through Wonderland is the haunting memoir of a young girl sucked into the gritty world of drugs, abuse and John Holmes

The Road Through Wonderland: Surviving John Holmes

(August 10, 2010 – CHICAGO): By age 20, Dawn Schiller had been prostituted, raped and nearly kidnapped; linked to the 1981 gruesome Wonderland murders; and chased cross country by federal officials and drug lords. She had also been the girlfriend of the legendary porn star John Holmes for nearly five years—a disturbing relationship centered on her yearning for love and eventual fear, and his desire for power and drugs.

In her disquieting memoir, The Road Through Wonderland: Surviving John Holmes (Medallion Press, August 2010) with forewords by Val Kilmer and Kate Bosworth, Schiller offers a candid and shocking account of the troubling childhood that led her to Holmes and how her fragile emotions and his addictive persona thrust her into an unsettling and brutal world of abuse, cocaine, prostitution and murder.

A child of the ‘70s, Schiller recalls her youth spent in a broken home in a rough neighborhood of Carol City, Florida, “listening to heavy metal, getting high and hating life.” With the return of her hippie-pot-smoking father, 15-year-old Schiller hoped for a better life and followed her father to Southern California—an ensuing marijuana-fueled journey that ultimately ended at a home managed by the “king of porn,” John Holmes.

As Schiller recalls in The Road to Wonderland, Holmes—then a 32-year-old married man who, as Schiller embarrassingly remembers, was immediately disappointed in her young age—quickly became an odd but caring father figure to her. Writing with a blend of adolescent perspective and regretful hindsight, Schiller divulges how her feelings for Holmes shifted from a protective friend—initially helping him and his wife with their garden for extra money—to a dominant lover, recalling their first sexual encounter in which she “remained deathly still, pinned immobile under John’s strength.”

In The Road Through Wonderland, Schiller heartbreakingly reveals how John’s “presence, words, and actions filled every lonely, dejected void [she] harbored inside,” ultimately leading her down a path of seedy motels, the drug underworld and perpetual fear. With heartrending and frightening detail, she exposes how John’s raging temper and addiction to freebase cocaine transformed him into a paranoid maniac, who—after beating her up and forcing her to prostitute herself—would viciously scrub her clean in the bathtub while sobbing with apologies.

By turns salacious, by turns tender, this honest account also lends insight to the dynamic of Schiller’s bizarre but touching relationship with Holmes’ wife, candidly detailing their Christmases spent together and how she taught Schiller how to cook John’s favorite meals and fold his clothes to his preferences. The Road Through Wonderland also traces Schiller’s time on the run after the famed Wonderland Murders and her journey to self-acceptance, forgiveness and clarity that birthed Throwaway Teens, a program that brings awareness to kids who are targeted and influenced by predators, and E.S.T.E.A.M., a nonprofit organization dedicated to assisting teens who are struggling to find a safe and successful path to adulthood.

A harrowing and surrealistic story of power, control, love and false hope, The Road Through Wonderland lends startling insight into the mind of a teenage girl whose desire for affection, meaning and love fueled her trust in a man that would haunt and scar her life forever.

Dawn Schiller was an associate producer and consultant on the 2003 movie Wonderland, which depicted the life of John Holmes in and around 1981. She is a member of a variety of committees—including the President’s Commission on the Status of Women and the National Center of Victims of Crime—and she has developed a program called Throwaway Teens: Who Are They and How Can We Help?, which brings awareness to the experiences of kids targeted and groomed by predators. Schiller is also the founder of E.S.T.E.A.M. (Empowering Successful Teens through Education, Awareness and Mentoring), a nonprofit organization dedicated to assisting teens who are struggling to find a safe and successful path to adulthood.

For more information on Dawn Schiller, please visit www.dawn-schiller.com.

Dawn’s book “The Road Through Wonderland: Surviving John Holmes” can be purchased at:

http://www.amazon.com/Road-Through-Wonderland-Surviving-Holmes/dp/1605420832