Porn Valley- On the Showtime reality series chronicling the making of the adult video Debbie Does Dallas... Again, the sloe-eyed porn actress Cassidey disparaged the ambitions of Debbie lead Stefani Morgan, whose entrée into porn had come via some relatively chaste appearances in Girls Gone Wild videos.

"She thinks she's gonna get into mainstream through porn," Cassidey scoffed. "Nobody ever gets into mainstream through porn."

Who knows just what personal bitterness Cassidey spoke from? After all, she herself was co-starring in Debbie after she had retired from, and then come back, to porn.

Like Morgan (who recently retired from porn and described herself as "scarred for life" as she did so), she has looks that say "girl next door" rather than "smut queen." But while recent advances in sexual frankness onscreen seem to be constantly bringing porn and mainstream entertainment closer and closer together, crossing over remains an elusive dream for performers who come up through the world of adult.

IS there a double standard? Given that the likes of Kerry Fox, Mark Rylance, and Chloë Sevigny, to name just a few well-regarded actors, have appeared in explicit unsimulated sex scenes and not been tagged with some sort of career stigma suggests there is. But it's a little more complicated than that.

Ironically, in the era of porno chic that began with 1972's Deep Throat, www.xxxdeepthroat.com porn films were stocked with trained performers who weren't getting enough "legit" work.

Mike Horner was an operatic tenor. Future director (he's the man behind the camera for Debbie Does Dallas... Again) Paul Thomas was in a touring company of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Ron Jeremy, not yet round enough to be called "The Hedgehog," proudly received his SAG card after doing extra work in Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (he didn't make the final cut).

It was not unusual, on a New York City porn set, to see most of the performers doing the New York Times crossword puzzle on their lunch breaks. Once the industry made its move out to California for good, the ranks of porn performers began to be filled with individuals who, we should be frank, often did not have much talent extending beyond the ability to credibly participate in sex acts in front of a camera.

While the culture has gotten to the point that porn people are more visible in mainstream media than ever (VH1 and Howard Stern have provided semi-regular outlets for the likes of, say, a Tera Patrick, while Showtime's done reality shows on both the aforementioned Debbie and the porn actor/producer known as Seymore Butts) this fact has only made a particular line of demarcation more definite.

The latest performer making a serious, or perhaps we should just say earnest, stab at post-porn mainstream fame is Jenna Jameson, possibly the world's most famous contemporary porn star. She retired from hardcore a couple of years back (not before caching a fair amount of footage for gradual release over time) and now stars in the horror satire Zombie Strippers, costarring Robert Englund of Nightmare on Elm Street fame. Before further examining her case, let's look at some of the cautionary tales of sex stars trying to get some respect.

Linda Lovelace

Aside from its innovative albeit idiotically puerile high-concept — the conceit of a woman having a clitoris where her gag reflex is usually located — there wasn't much to distinguish Deep Throat, www.xxxdeepthroat.com from much of the emerging hardcore fare that was beginning to fester in what was once the urban grindhouse circuit of the '70s. But timing and luck were on the side of this Florida-shot 1972 film, which heralded the era of porno-chic and brought mainstream celebrity to female star Lovelace.

Her mainstream celebrity did not bring much mainstream work. She and original costar Harry Reems teamed up again for director Joseph Sarno's 1974 softcore variant/sequel Deep Throat Part II, and Lovelace half-heartedly performed in a lame softcore sex farce entitled Linda Lovelace for President in 1975.

But she and then-husband/manager Chuck Traynor were, as Ron Jeremy would be decades later, semi-adopted as swinging oddities by certain fun-loving celebs, most notably Sammy Davis Jr., who unabashedly spoke about his enthusiasm for porn in general and Throat in particular in interviews.

But in the late '80s Lovelace published a harrowing memoir, Ordeal, recounting the terrifying abuse she endured at the hands of Traynor, who took on managerial duties for one Marilyn Chambers after Lovelace broke free of his clutches. She subsequently became an outspoken anti-porn activist.

But her career and finances never really stabilized, and health issues plagued her, and by the turn of the century she found herself in a peculiar position. She needed, in some way, to exploit the porn Linda Lovelace, whom she abhorred, in order to make a living. While not backing down from her anti-porn stance, she posed in lingerie for the relatively highbrow adult magazine "Leg Show" and made personal appearances at fan conventions.

This reporter met her in 2001 at the Chiller Theater Expo in New Jersey, where she was signing t-shirts and "Leg Show" issues and seeking out a buyer for what she claimed was the original macramé top that she wore in Deep Throat all those years before. The asking price? Just three hundred dollars.

In 2002 Lovelace died of injuries after a car crash.

MARILYN CHAMBERS

"Marilyn's got what Linda never had... talent." So said the ever-charming porn Svengali Chuck Traynor of his second Trilby, Marilyn Chambers.

Like many of the porn actors of the early days, Chambers started her career with mainstream ambitions, doing some modeling — for which her all-American good looks were well suited — and scoring a bit part under the name Evelyn Lang in the Barbra Streisand picture The Owl and the Pussycat.

One career disappointment led to another and she made her way to San Francisco, doing topless dancing at clubs owned by that region's notorious counterculture smut purveyors the Mitchell Brothers. They cast her in their 1972 raunch epic Behind the Green Door, not knowing she had also been the model for the Ivory Snow soap box. Put that two-and-two together and porn notoriety followed.

She hooked up with Traynor in 1975 and the couple continued to enjoy the lifestyle that Traynor and Lovelace had been swept up in after Deep Throat. Aside from doing more adult films, Chambers, following the lead of more obscure porno actress Andrea True, made a record, but it was no "More More More."

Exploitation filmmakers, always on the lookout for something to exploit, thought Chambers could bring some extra sizzle to their work. Hence, producer Ivan Reitman convinced writer/director David Cronenberg to cast Chambers as the lead in his 1977 horror picture Rabid.

Cronenberg is worth quoting at length on his encounter with Chambers and Traynor: "When I met her she was a lot harder than I had hoped. She had plucked eyebrows and her hair was very pre-Farrah Fawcett. She had been doing Las Vegas. Chuck Traynor, her husband/manager, was not my favorite kind of guy. Very tough.

They were both very into trading gold-plated revolvers with Sammy Davis, Jr., that kind of thing. It's a world totally foreign to me; not one I think I'll ever get to know too well. But Chuck was protective of Marilyn, and supportive of the movie. And Marilyn herself was very shrewd and sharp, and worked really hard. She'd obviously had some rough times since that first little movie that I saw of hers [Together, a Sean Cunningham-produced softcore film Chambers did between Pussycat and Door].

But she was a real trouper, and invented her own version of Method acting. When she had to cry it wasn't a problem, because Chuck would say, 'Remember when Fluffy died' — that was her cat — and then she'd cry. I thought she really had talent, and expected her to go on and do other straight movies. But she went back. I don't know if it was Chuck, or that the industry still wouldn't accept her."

Chambers and Traynor broke up in 1985. Chambers retired from and returned to porn on several occasions; as with Ron Jeremy, most of the work she's done in semi-mainstream material has been the result of stunt casting. Traynor passed away of a heart attack in 2002.

TRACI LORDS

Sometimes necessity is the mother of invention. Traci Lords began building a mainstream career after a particularly scandalous exit from the porn world. In 1986 it was revealed that all of Lords' adult video work, save one picture, the Paris-shot Traci, I Love You, had been made while Lords was underage — and hence, child porn, and hence, completely illegal.

The story had a huge negative impact on the adult industry, which still has not forgiven Lords. "I think Traci Lords is a disgrace," then-Wicked Girl Devinn Lane told me in an interview a few years back. "She came into this business with ID that could have passed for legit anywhere, and bamboozled everybody." As readers of Lords' 2003 memoir Underneath It All know, the feeling is mutual. The book is suffused with a seething loathing for the porn industry and she has zero good words for anybody in it. It is extremely safe to say that hell will truly freeze over before Lords makes a porn comeback.

After the scandal broke and Lords got out from under most of the legal hassles associated with it, she first went the exploitation route, appearing in an R-rated remake of the Roger Corman classic Not of This Earth, co-starring with future Blind Date host Roger Lodge. She did a couple of topless scenes in the film but has since eschewed nudity. She found a mentor in purveyor of comedic filth John Waters, who cast her in his films Cry Baby and Serial Mom. And, as is apparently de rigueur for one-time adult performers trying to go legit, she gave singing a shot, doing backing vocals on the Ramones' album Acid Eaters and releasing her own (not bad) quasi-techno album, 1,000 Fires.

She's never quite cracked the A-list, but she has kept working, mostly quite creditably, but in periods when work got a bit thinner, she did go the cheesecake calendar route, and submit to autograph signing sessions at fan conventions (although she's been known to smack down fans who present her with stills from her porn days, even non-X-rated ones). This year she'll have a supporting role in the next Kevin Smith comedy, a satire of the amateur sex-tape phenomenon titled Zack and Miri Make A Porno.

GINGER LYNN ALLEN

An of-age contemporary of Lords (she's seven years older), Lynn costarred with Traci in a number of porn flicks and they performed together in a number of sex scenes; by Lords' account, they hated each other's guts the whole time. In 1986, Lynn too announced her retirement from porn and gave mainstream a try, using full name Ginger Lynn Allen.

But while she was a game and sometimes convincing actress — her work in 1992's Bound and Gagged: A Love Story is about the only tolerable thing in the film — she became more known for dating Charlie Sheen than anything else. Travails with the IRS and varied medical issues were fodder for a particularly sobering E! True Hollywood Story episode, and Lynn has been toggling between porn and mainstream since her first adult comeback in 1999's aptly titled Torn.

Other memorable appearances include a too-convincing performance as an abused stripper/hooker and single mom in the Metallica video "Turn the Page," a sort of sex counselor in one of the direct-to-video American Pie sequels, and a woman who has sex with a clown (shades of Lynn's work with the Dark Brothers) in Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects. Her latest porn work is a reteaming with her and Lords' frequent co-star Tom Byron in the aptly titled Seasoned Players 4.

JENNA JAMESON

It is hard to say exactly when Jenna Jameson wrested the title of World's Most Famous Porn Star from Linda Lovelace. (Never even mind, then, that the fact of having been the World's Most Famous Porn Star ended up having decidedly mixed results for Lovelace.) But claim it she did, and in her own multi-format 2004 memoir (it's got comic book panels as well as prose!) How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale she recounts, in oft-excruciating detail, the story of her journey from the topless bars of the Vegas strip to her reigns as both the top Wicked and top Vivid girl. Wicked and Vivid being the two major producers/distributors of what's called "feature porn." That is, porn with plots and putative acting.

The stuff Jameson went through is very nearly as harrowing as what Lovelace recounted in Ordeal, but along with co-writer Neil Strauss, Jameson brings some welcome gallows humor to the accounts. Her description of what she terms "the suitcase pimp" (think an even lower-rent Chuck Traynor) is both terrifying and hilarious, and she's generous to non-porn figures such as Howard Stern, who helped Jameson achieve mainstream fame both via his radio show and his casting her as herself in Private Parts.

Rather oddly for a book so largely condemning of the adult industry, it was written and published while Jameson was still in it. In the book she describes her rather fraught relationship with porn performer/director Jay Grdina, aka Justin Sterling; by the book's end, the two have married, she has vowed that the only boy/girl performances in adult films she will do will be with him, and the two have gone into business together with Vivid, creating the label Club Jenna and purchasing a billboard whereupon to advertise their products right in the middle of the formerly sleazy Times Square. (The rear of the second floor of the M&M Store in Times Square gives one a perfect view of said billboard, rather to the consternation of adult tourists who have to direct their gaping kids to another section of the store.)

A battle with skin cancer in 2004 and several other factors put a strain on Jameson's marriage, and she and Grdina separated in 2006. Club Jenna was sold to Playboy that year, and the much-touted billboard reverted to Vivid Pictures. Although now it is being used to sell another Jameson porn film, Jenna Loves Diamonds, which was shot in 2002 and held in reserve for release. Jameson, whose physical appearance at a 2007 Adult Video News Awards event was alarmingly gaunt, is these days looking more like her old self; she announced her permanent retirement from porn in January of this year.

THE HEDGEHOG, STORMY AND OTHERS

Roly-poly porn actor Ron Jeremy has parlayed his schlubby demeanor and singular talent into a peculiar career as a porn mascot, playing dirty uncle to the likes of former teen stars Corey Feldman, Corey Haim and Scotty Schwartz, and introducing them to adult film actresses as they reached their as-a-result-less-painful respective puberties. A bit part in a scene full of porno stars in John Frankenheimer's 1986 thriller 52 Pick-Up led to a friendship with Frankenheimer, and the director later cast him in a bit part in Ronin, although as with Stardust Memories, Ron didn't make the final cut. He's done a little better in the films of Roger Avary, cameoing in Killing Zoe and The Rules of Attraction. The 2001 documentary Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy, is most notable for Jeremy's endless plaints about the mainstream success and respect — let's not forget respect! — that continues to elude him more than 20 years after he started making porn. He's also rather embarrassingly lacking in self-awareness, not really facing up to the fact that whatever mainstream work he is able to get is along the lines of an inside joke, one that is a least partially on him. (See also his appearances on VH1's The Surreal Life.) One imagines that his recent memoir Ron Jeremy: The Hardest (Working) Man In Show Business persists in these themes.

Stormy Daniels in The 40 Year Old Virgin

We should also point out those cases wherein a mainstream film features an adult-film subplot or some such, and directors, seeking verisimilitude, cast from the actual adult industry. Classical pianist and now-retired porn star Asia Carrera appears as Sherry in the Jackie Treehorn production Logjammin' in the Coen Brothers' 1998 The Big Lebowski. Kobe Tai, working under the name Carla Scott, was genuinely engaging as the hooker who ends up dead at the hands of Jeremy Piven in Very Bad Things, also 1998. And Wicked Girl Stormy Daniels, who has been both writing and directing for that company, had a genuine comic turn as the sex fantasy of Steve Carell in Judd Apatow's The 40 Year Old Virgin. She went on to play a lap dancer (alongside fellow adult star Nautica Thorn) in Apatow's Knocked Up. Indeed, Apatow's brand of raunch comedy offers a fair amount of employment opportunities for porn stars; Jenna Haze and Aurora Snow were the "Vagtastic Voyage" girls of the Apatow-produced Superbad. Whether any of these performers has a chance to graduate from porn window-dressing to "real" roles remains and open question. As does, to be fair, whether all porn performers actually want mainstream acceptance. There's a big part of the industry that doesn't give it a second thought.