Georgina Spelvin: From Broadway Dancer to The Devil in Miss Jones

Q: Was Georgina Spelvin on Broadway?

Yes. Working as Chele Graham, she danced in the chorus of The Pajama Game, understudied Shirley MacLaine and took over that role in the last months of the run, according to her own published biography (Greater Los Angeles Writers Society, Wikipedia, IBDB).

Q: What did Georgina Spelvin do after adult films?

She retired from adult film in 1982, got sober in 1981, made cameos in Police Academy films, learned desktop publishing and worked at the Los Angeles Times until 2004, then self-published her memoir The Devil Made Me Do It in 2008 (Wikipedia, GLAWS).

Key facts

Who: Georgina Spelvin, born Shelley Bob Graham, March 1, 1936, Houston, Texas (Wikipedia; GLAWS)
Before film: Broadway chorus dancer as “Chele Graham,” including The Pajama Game (IBDB; TIME)
Famous for: Starring in Gerard Damiano’s The Devil in Miss Jones (1973) at age 36, after being hired as the set’s cook (The Rialto Report)
Sober: Since November 11, 1981; retired from adult film in 1982 (GLAWS; Wikipedia)
Second career: Desktop publishing at the Los Angeles Times until 2004; memoir The Devil Made Me Do It (2008) (Wikipedia; New Texture)
Honors: XRCO and Free Speech Coalition Lifetime Achievement Awards (1991); AVN and XRCO Halls of Fame (Wikipedia)

There’s a version of the porn-star story that everybody thinks they know: a very young woman, no other options, a quick rise and a hard fall. Georgina Spelvin’s story is nothing like that. When she starred in The Devil in Miss Jones in 1973, she was 36 years old. She had spent two decades as a professional dancer, including on Broadway. She had been hired on that set to cook. And when she finally left the business, she didn’t disappear. She got sober, learned a new trade, worked for years at one of America’s biggest newspapers, and wrote her own book.

I’ve been in this industry for 14 years. I’m one of the most-searched male performers in the world, and I’ve worked with most of the top actresses of my generation. Georgina’s era is half a century before mine and I never met her. But I’ve always believed that the performers from the Golden Age deserve to be remembered as people, not just as titles on an old poster. So here’s her story, from the sources, and then my take.

A geophysicist’s daughter and fourteen schools

She was born Shelley Bob Graham in Houston, Texas, on March 1, 1936. Her father was a geophysicist and the family moved constantly. In the biography she published with the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society, she wrote that her “toddler years were spent ‘on the road’ with Geophysicist Dad,” that her mother “managed to find a dancing school in just about every small town in Texas,” and that her “twelve years of public education were spent in fourteen different schools” (GLAWS).

She graduated in 1954 as a member of the National Honor Society (GLAWS). Her Wikipedia biography quotes her on her early ambitions: “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” (Wikipedia).

Broadway, the Latin Quarter and Shirley MacLaine

After school she danced in the chorus of the Dallas State Fair Musicals. Then she went to New York, where she worked as principal dancer at the Latin Quarter supper club in Times Square, and then joined the chorus of the Broadway musical The Pajama Game. She became understudy to Shirley MacLaine and took over that role “for the last months of the show’s run,” she wrote (GLAWS).

On Broadway she worked as “Chele Graham,” a respelling of her name that kept the same pronunciation (Wikipedia; IBDB). Her Wikipedia biography also lists Broadway productions of Cabaret, Guys and Dolls and Sweet Charity, and TIME’s film critic Richard Corliss noted that she “says she appeared on Broadway in The Pajama Game and Cabaret” (Wikipedia; TIME). The Rialto Report, which recorded a long interview with her in 2013, says she also toured the world with musical productions through the 1950s and 1960s (The Rialto Report).

When dancing offers dwindled, she moved behind the scenes, working as a choreographer, director and lighting technician on musicals. That production work led her into film production and the underground film scene in New York (Wikipedia; GLAWS). Her own summary of that period is typically dry: “From there it was all downhill - as far as staring in musicals was concerned” (GLAWS).

Hired as the cook, cast as the star

This is my favorite part of her story. According to The Rialto Report, she had originally been hired only as the cook on the set of The Devil in Miss Jones. She had applied for the job because the anti-war film collective she had started needed money to pay the rent on its editing space (The Rialto Report). Her friend, the actor Marc Stevens, had introduced her to the director Gerard Damiano (Wikipedia). She ended up playing the lead.

Damiano had just made Deep Throat, and his next film, with her in the lead, made her one of the best-known figures of the so-called “porno chic” years (Wikipedia). In 1973, Robert Berkvist wrote in The New York Times that “‘Miss Jones’ is as familiar in Scarsdale as she is on Broadway,” as quoted in her Wikipedia biography (Wikipedia).

The name: George Spelvin

The name she chose was a theater joke. “George Spelvin” is the traditional pseudonym for a stage actor doubling a role, and “Georgette” the female version, as Richard Corliss explained in TIME’s 2005 essay on the era, “When Porno Was Chic.” In that piece he lists her among the performers of the period who used pseudonyms, alongside Deep Throat’s Linda Lovelace (TIME).

For a woman who had spent her life in theater, it was also a statement. She thought of herself as an actress, and she said so. TIME quoted her memory of Miss Jones: “I took the role very seriously. I was doing Hedda Gabler here! The fact that there was hard-core sex involved was incidental as far as I was concerned. I was totally deluded. I had made myself believe that I was an actress. I was showing true life as it really was —including actual sex as it really happened —instead of the phony stuff that you got from Hollywood. That was my raison d’etre throughout the whole thing. It was okay; I was okay; I wasn’t a slut” (TIME).

Obscenity charges and a long way down

Fame came with legal risk. In 1974 she was charged with transporting obscene materials across state lines over The Devil in Miss Jones in Tennessee. The charges were eventually dropped in 1977 (Wikipedia). She moved to California in the mid-1970s (The Rialto Report), and appeared in more than 70 adult films before retiring from the industry in 1982 (Wikipedia). She won several awards from the Adult Film Association of America in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Best Actress twice (Wikipedia).

She has never pretended those years were glamorous. In her own words, the birth of Georgina Spelvin was followed by a descent that “spiraled into the pits of sleaze-bag strip joints and alcoholism. Sobriety came November 11, 1981” (GLAWS).

Police Academy, the Los Angeles Times and “Mr. Right”

Her second life is the reason I wanted to write about her. After she got sober, “a day job followed, affording an opportunity to learn desktop publishing,” she wrote (GLAWS). She worked for the Los Angeles Times until retiring from its staff in 2004 (Wikipedia).

She kept acting in small mainstream roles too. Many people have seen her without knowing it: she made cameo appearances in Police Academy (1984) and Police Academy 3: Back in Training (1986), and later appeared in films including Bad Blood (1989), credited as “Ruth Raymond,” and on television shows such as Dream On (Wikipedia).

She met the actor John Welsh in 1983. “Mr. Right came along in 1983 and marriage followed January 16, 2000,” she wrote (GLAWS; Wikipedia).

The Devil Made Me Do It

Retirement from the Times, she wrote, “afforded the leisure to FINALLY write THE BOOK” (GLAWS). Her autobiography, The Devil Made Me Do It, came out in May 2008 as a self-published book, using the same desktop-publishing skills she’d learned at her day job (Wikipedia; GLAWS). The independent publishing collective New Texture, which helped her get it out, wrote at the time: “make no mistake: The Devil Made Me Do It is 100% her book, from the first page to the last. Fiercely independent, she wouldn’t have it any other way” (New Texture).

She also kept turning up in culture. She made a non-sex cameo in Vivid’s 2004 remake of Miss Jones, was interviewed for the documentary Inside Deep Throat (2005), appeared as herself in Massive Attack’s 2009 music video for “Paradise Circus,” joined Dave Attell on Showtime’s Dave’s Old Porn in 2011 and was interviewed for After Porn Ends 2 in 2017 (Wikipedia). In 1991 she received Lifetime Achievement Awards from both the XRCO and the Free Speech Coalition, and she is in the AVN and XRCO Halls of Fame (Wikipedia).

What every performer can learn from Georgina Spelvin

Training never goes to waste. Her dance and stage years are why she could carry a feature film.
Age is not the end. She became a star at 36, in an industry obsessed with youth.
Get help early. She named her alcoholism plainly and dated her sobriety to the day.
Learn a second skill. Desktop publishing gave her a career and later her own book.
Tell your own story. She published her memoir herself, on her terms.

My Take (opinion — Maximo Garcia)

What I love about Georgina Spelvin is that she never let the industry decide who she was. She was a dancer first. She was a stage professional who could choreograph, direct and light a show. She came to that set to cook, to pay rent for an anti-war film group. That’s not the profile of a victim, and it’s not the profile of a party girl either. It’s the profile of a working artist in New York who took a job that changed her life.

Her “Hedda Gabler” quote is one of the most honest things I’ve ever read from a performer. She says she took the role seriously, that she believed she was showing real life instead of Hollywood’s fake version, and then she says, “I was totally deluded.” I don’t fully agree with her. I think there is acting in what we do, and the best performers bring real craft to it. But I respect that she can look back at her younger self with that much honesty and humor. Most people in this business can’t.

The part that every young performer should read twice is the second half. She hit bottom, she said so publicly, and she got sober in 1981. Then she did the most unglamorous thing possible: she got a day job, learned a technical skill and stayed at the Los Angeles Times for years. That’s how you build a life after porn. Not with one big comeback, but with a skill, a routine and the right partner. I write about building that kind of exit plan at maximogarciaworld.com.

If the Golden Age interests you, read my columns on Linda Lovelace, who starred in Damiano’s Deep Throat; Marilyn Chambers, the Ivory Snow girl; Seka, the Platinum Princess; and Vanessa del Rio, who also wrote her own book.

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FAQ

Who is Georgina Spelvin?

Georgina Spelvin, born Shelley Bob Graham in Houston, Texas, on March 1, 1936, is a former Broadway dancer and actress best known as the star of Gerard Damiano’s 1973 film The Devil in Miss Jones, one of the defining films of the Golden Age of adult cinema (Wikipedia; TIME).

Where does the name Georgina Spelvin come from?

It is a variation on George Spelvin, the traditional pseudonym used by stage actors when they play a second role in the same production (TIME; Wikipedia).

Was Georgina Spelvin on Broadway?

Yes. Working as Chele Graham, she danced in the chorus of The Pajama Game, understudied Shirley MacLaine and took over that role in the last months of the run, according to her own published biography (GLAWS; IBDB).

What did Georgina Spelvin do after adult films?

She got sober in 1981, retired from adult film in 1982, made cameos in Police Academy films, learned desktop publishing and worked at the Los Angeles Times until 2004, then self-published her memoir The Devil Made Me Do It in 2008 (Wikipedia; GLAWS).

How we fact-checked this

Every fact and quote was checked against the sources below and is reproduced as published, including original spelling. Where sources differ (The Rialto Report gives 2006 for her memoir; Wikipedia and a May 2008 post by the collective that helped publish it give 2008), we use the date supported by more sources. Explicit film titles and scene details were left out to keep this page SFW. Opinions are Maximo Garcia’s own and are labeled as such.