Linda Susan Boreman (January 10, 1949 — April 22, 2002), better known by her stage name Linda Lovelace, was an American pornographic actress who was famous for her performance of deep throat fellatio in the enormously successful 1972 hardcore porn film Deep Throat. She later denounced her pornography career, claimed that she had been forced into it by her sadistic first husband, and for a while became a spokeswoman for the anti-pornography movement.
Boreman was born in The Bronx, New York City, the daughter of a policeman and a mother she claimed was very strict. Her parents were Roman Catholic, and Boreman attended Catholic schools, including St. John the Baptist in Yonkers, New York, and Maria Regina High School, in Hartsdale, New York. She was nicknamed "Miss Holy Holy" in high school because she kept her dates at a safe distance. When Boreman was 16, her family moved to Florida.
In her 1980 autobiography, Ordeal, she said she gave birth to a son in 1969 when she was 20, and her mother put the child up for adoption. Boreman said she had been told the child was only being put in foster care until she was ready to care for him, and was heartbroken to learn she would never see him again. Boreman moved back to New York in 1970. She was involved in a violent car crash, requiring her to undergo a blood transfusion which would lead to later health problems. She returned home to recover.
While recovering at her parents' home, Boreman became involved with Chuck Traynor. According to Boreman, Traynor was violent and controlling. She said he forced her to move to New York, where he became her manager, pimp and husband.
Boreman was soon performing as Linda Lovelace in hardcore "loops", short 8mm silent films made for peep shows. She starred in a 1971 bestiality film titled Dog Fucker or alternately Dogarama. She later denied appearing in the film, until several of the original loops proved otherwise.
In 1972, Boreman starred in Deep Throat, which achieved surprising and unprecedented popularity among mainstream audiences, even a review in The New York Times. In Deep Throat she famously performed the act for which the film was named; additionally, all of her pubic hair was shaved off and she engaged in anal sex. None of these were common in pornographic films of the early-1970s.
Media career after Deep Throat
After Deep Throat, Boreman appeared in only two films, both of which were softcore: Deep Throat II (1974), an R-rated sequel to the hardcore original, and an erotic comedy, Linda Lovelace for President (1975). In her 1980 autobiography, Ordeal, Lovelace maintained that those films used leftover footage from Deep Throat; however, she frequently contradicted this statement. She also appeared in Playboy, Bachelor and Esquire between 1973 and 1974.
In January 1974, Boreman was arrested for possession of cocaine and amphetamines. During that same year, she published two "pro-porn" biographies, Inside Linda Lovelace and The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace.
In 1976, she was chosen to play the title role in a big-budget erotic movie, Laure. However, according to the producer Ovidio G. Assonitis, Lovelace was, "very much on drugs" at the time. She had already signed for the part when she decided that "God had changed her life," refused to do any nudity, and even objected to a statue of the Venus de Milo on the set because of its exposed breasts. She was replaced by French actress Annie Belle.
In her suit to divorce Traynor, she claimed that he forced her into pornography at gunpoint, and that in Deep Throat itself, bruises from his beatings can be seen on her legs. She made the assertion that her husband "would force her to do these things by pointing an M-16 rifle at her head." Boreman wrote in her autobiography that her marriage had been plagued by violence, rape, forced prostitution and private pornography. Some of her assertions have been challenged, but many have been verified by witnesses (as well as by lie detector testing). Traynor would later marry and guide the career of Marilyn Chambers, another major porn star. Traynor himself told Vanity Fair magazine (in Marilyn Chambers' interview, with Chambers on the cover) that he thought nothing of slapping "his woman" if she said something he did not like. Lovelace wrote:
On the second commentator's DVD track of the documentary Inside Deep Throat, Deep Throat 2 co-star Andrea True said that Chuck Traynor was a sadist and was disliked by the Deep Throat 2 cast. Similarly, a Deep Throat staff member who roomed next door to Boreman and Traynor during the filming of Deep Throat said Traynor beat Boreman viciously after hours, and sexually tortured her into obeying him in public.
In The Other Hollywood, by Legs McNeil, witnesses, including Gerard Damiano, the film's director, state that Traynor beat Boreman behind closed doors, but they also question her credibility. Adult film actress Gloria Leonard is quoted as saying, "This was a woman who never took responsibility for her own [...] choices made; but instead blamed everything that happened to her in her life on porn."
Eric Danville, a journalist who covered the porn industry for nearly 20 years and wrote The Complete Linda Lovelace in 2001, said Boreman never changed her version of events that occurred 30 years earlier with Traynor. When Danville told Boreman of his book proposal, he said she was overcome with emotion and saddened he had uncovered the bestiality film, which she had initially denied making and later maintained she had been forced to star in at gunpoint. In The Other Hollywood, Eric Edwards, Boreman's co-star in the bestiality film, disputes this claim. Many of her claims of coercion have been contradicted.
Boreman maintained she received no money for Deep Throat, and that the $1,250 payment for her appearance was taken by Traynor. In 1979, she retained Victor Yannacone, a controversial attorney more frequently associated with environmental lawsuits, to sue for a share of the several hundred million dollars the film earned. The suit was dismissed without trial by the Nassau County Supreme Court in Mineola, New York, and was never appealed.
In 1974, Boreman married Larry Marchiano. They had two children: Dominic, in 1977, and Lindsay, in 1980. In The Other Hollywood, Boreman painted an unflattering picture of Marchiano, claiming he drank to excess, verbally abused her children, and was violent with her. They divorced in 1996.
With the publication of Ordeal in 1980, Boreman joined the feminist anti-pornography movement. At a press conference announcing Ordeal, she leveled many accusations against Traynor in public for the first time. She was joined by supporters Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, Gloria Steinem, and members of Women Against Pornography. She spoke out against pornography, stating that she had been abused and coerced. She spoke before feminist groups, at colleges, and before government hearings on pornography.
There was controversy over her allegations, and her objections to the pornography industry as a whole. Pornographer and writer Hart Williams coined the term "Linda Syndrome" to refer to women who leave pornography and repudiate their past career by condemning the industry.
In 1986, Boreman published Out of Bondage, a memoir focusing on her life after 1974. She testified before the 1986 Attorney General's Commission on Pornography in New York City, stating “When you see the movie Deep Throat, you are watching me being raped. It is a crime that movie is still showing; there was a gun to my head the entire time.” Following Boreman's testimony for the Meese Commission, she gave lectures on college campuses, decrying what she described as callous and exploitative practices in the pornography industry.
In The Other Hollywood, Boreman said she felt "used" by the anti-pornography movement. "Between Andrea Dworkin and Kitty MacKinnon, they've written so many books, and they mention my name and all that, but financially they've never helped me out. [...] They made a few bucks off me, just like everybody else."
Boreman contracted hepatitis from the blood transfusion she received after her 1970 car accident. She underwent a liver transplant in 1987. In 1996, Boreman divorced Larry Marchiano. In 2000, she was featured on the E! Entertainment Network's E! True Hollywood Story. The following year, she did a pictorial as Linda Lovelace for the magazine Leg Show. She said she did not object to this, because "there's nothing wrong with looking sexy as long as it's done with taste."
On April 3, 2002, Boreman suffered massive trauma and internal injuries in a car accident. On April 22, 2002 she was taken off life support and died in Denver, Colorado at the age of 53. Her ex-husband, Larry Marchiano, and their two children were present when she died. Boreman was interred at Parker Cemetery in Parker, Colorado.
Boreman was the focus of a 2005 documentary, Inside Deep Throat.
Plans for a biopic titled Lovelace and starring Courtney Love were never completed. Comedian Anna Faris was rumored to have been involved in a similar movie titled Inferno in 2007, but this has failed to materialize.Actress Lindsay Lohan is scheduled to star in Inferno in 2011 and has dyed her hair blonde again for the part.
In 2008, A Rock Musical, based on two of Boreman's four autobiographies, debuted at the Hayworth Theater in Los Angeles. The score and libretto were written by Anna Waronker of the 1990s rock group that dog. and Charlotte Caffey of the '80s girl group, the Go-Go's.
Tina Yothers, better known as Michael J. Fox's sister on Family Ties, was cast as Lovelace on a Broadway musical Lovelace: The Musical.
In April 2010, producers announced that Lindsay Lohan was cast as Linda Lovelace in the film Inferno, scheduled to be directed by Matthew Wilder and produced by Chris Hanley and to begin filming in Fall 2010.
