Vanessa del Rio: From Harlem to a Taschen Book, the First Latina Star

Q: What is the Vanessa del Rio book?

Vanessa del Rio: Fifty Years of Slightly Slutty Behavior, an illustrated biography edited by Dian Hanson and published by Taschen in 2007. Its Art Edition, limited to 200 signed copies with a Robert Crumb lithograph, was listed at $1,000 (Taschen, Wikipedia).

Q: When did Vanessa del Rio retire?

She made her first adult film in 1974 and retired from adult films in 1986, in part because of fears about AIDS (Wikipedia, HuffPost, KING).

Key facts

Who: Vanessa del Rio (born Ana María Sánchez, March 31, 1952), Harlem-born retired adult film star (Wikipedia)
Roots: Only child of a Puerto Rican mother and an Afro-Cuban father (Wikipedia; PAPER)
Before film: Became a computer programmer at 18 (Wikipedia; HuffPost)
Career: First adult film in 1974, paid $150; retired in 1986 (PAPER; Wikipedia)
Book: Vanessa del Rio: Fifty Years of Slightly Slutty Behavior, Taschen, 2007 (Taschen)
Biopic: The Latin From Manhattan, with Vivian Lamolli as del Rio (Variety)

If you search “Vanessa del Rio book,” you’ll find a 396-page luxury art book from one of the most respected art publishers in the world, with a collector’s edition signed by her and sold with a Robert Crumb lithograph. That alone tells you she is not a normal case. Very few performers from the 1970s are remembered at all. Vanessa del Rio is remembered, quoted in rap songs, published by Taschen and turned into a movie character, more than 35 years after her last adult film.

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. I started decades after she retired, so I never met or worked with her. But every Latin performer in this business, man or woman, walks on a road she opened. Here’s her sourced story, and then my take.

A Harlem childhood with the door closed

Ana María Sánchez was born on March 31, 1952, and raised in Harlem, the only child of a Puerto Rican mother and an Afro-Cuban father (Wikipedia). Her parents were protective. “I grew up in Harlem, which was considered a bad neighborhood, so they didn’t want me to go out and play,” she told KING magazine. “That meant I didn’t have any friends, and with no brothers and sisters, I had to create my own playground” (KING).

She told HuffPost that she “was born with a rebellious free spirit, firmed up by Catholic school and growing up an isolated only child,” which led her “to live in my head” (HuffPost). She described her father as “very domineering,” and said: “Right then and there, I knew nobody would ever have control over me” (KING).

Isabel Sarli and the idea of power

Her first role model came from the cinema. Her mother, whom she described as “so pious and shy,” took her to see the films of Isabel Sarli, the Argentine screen sex symbol (KING; Wikipedia). “[Sarli] was a big influence in my life,” del Rio told KING. “I saw right then and there how much power she had” (KING).

And she gave KING some advice for parents that, from what I’ve seen, is true: “Don’t try to keep your kids away from things, because they are going to make a beeline for it!” (KING).

Computer programmer, then the streets

Here’s the part people don’t expect. Before she was a star, Vanessa del Rio studied coding and became a computer programmer at 18 (Wikipedia). I find that remarkable for a young woman from Harlem at the start of the 1970s.

It didn’t last. “Being raised so strict made me want to experience everything I was warned against,” she told HuffPost. “I left home at an early age because of these restrictions, and walked right into the wild life of the streets.” She summed up the next years in one famous sentence: “The quick progression after I left home at 16 was keypunch operator to computer programmer to waitress to barmaid to go-go dancer to streetwalker to call girl to PORN STAR! Woohoooo!” (HuffPost).

She has never hidden that part of her life. Wikipedia notes she told Dian Hanson for the Taschen book that she worked as a streetwalker and call girl before films (Wikipedia). She also told HuffPost that she danced as Vanessa del Rio at Show World, the famous Times Square venue (HuffPost).

1974: $150 and a trip to Europe

She made her first adult film in 1974 (Wikipedia). She explained to PAPER magazine how it happened: a madam she had worked for asked her if she wanted to do a film. “I was like ‘Sure, how much does it pay?’ It paid $150 — exactly what I needed to pay the rent and go to Europe with a friend of mine who had invited me. I had so much fun I just had to keep doing it” (PAPER).

The business then had nothing in common with today’s. “It was very underground in those days,” she said. “You would give your number out and then the number would be passed around whenever there was a movie being made and you would get a phone call” (PAPER). There was no wardrobe budget either. “My wardrobe in the film was my everyday wardrobe,” she said (PAPER).

She picked her own name. “Vanessa” came from a kindergarten friend, and a movie-buff best friend suggested “del Rio,” after the Mexican film star Dolores del Río (PAPER).

She realized it was a real business when a magazine called Cinema X started naming performers and reviewing their films. “So that’s when you start to realize: ‘Ok, this is a business,’” she said (PAPER).

“The black Marilyn” and the first Latina star

Over about 12 years she made roughly 120 films, according to KING (KING). HuffPost described her as a top box-office draw through the 1970s (HuffPost).

Her place in history is about identity as much as fame. “I was the first ‘woman of color’ to become famous in the porn biz, often referred to as the ‘black Marilyn’, so it was natural for me to be noticed,” she told HuffPost (HuffPost). Asked whether the Taschen title “America’s first Latina star” was accurate, she said: “I was the first identified Latina — I don’t know if there were any before me in the porn biz, but yes, I’ll take it!” (HuffPost).

She was honest that those years were wild, including drugs. “I can’t be a porn apologist. You can’t undo the fun,” she told KING. On consent, she was clear: “In the porn business, if you didn’t want to do something, you didn’t do it” (KING).

1986: walking away

She retired from adult films in 1986, in part because of the AIDS scare (Wikipedia). Asked by KING why she stopped, she said: “Well, AIDS. A whole bunch of different things happened, and it was time to move on” (KING).

In 1999, G21 reported that she hadn’t made a sex film since 1986 and had turned down offers of big paychecks to return. At one point she trained for a possible switch to competitive bodybuilding, and later worked as a feature dancer and then a club hostess (G21).

There was also a time she struggled with the persona itself. “There was actually a time when I was doing psycho-therapy. I had to analyze my life because I was tearing myself down,” she told PAPER. “I got to a point where I didn’t want to be Vanessa del Rio. But, as I was working on changing myself I came full-circle and realized I love this [part of my life]. There was nothing wrong with it” (PAPER).

The programmer builds her own website

This is the part of her story I love most as a businessman. After retiring, she used her coding skills to build her own website and produce original content (Wikipedia). In 1999, G21 noted she already ran vanessadelrio.com and had a monthly sex-advice column in BELLE magazine (G21). In 2010 she told PAPER she was still selling her films through her site, and that new fans kept arriving: “Some of them are fans that weren’t even born when I quit!” (PAPER).

She kept appearing on mainstream screens too, including a 1996 episode of NYPD Blue and a cameo opposite Bernie Mac in the 2008 film Soul Men (Wikipedia).

Hip-hop’s favourite name

Her name has been dropped in songs by Chubb Rock, Ice Cube, Digital Underground, The Game and Junior M.A.F.I.A., and she appeared in the video for Junior M.A.F.I.A.’s “Get Money” (Wikipedia; HuffPost).

Her reaction to being in rap lyrics is perfect. When she first heard Chubb Rock mention her, she told PAPER, a lawyer asked if she wanted to sue him. “And I said ‘Hell no! I want to thank him! What are you kidding me?’” (PAPER). To HuffPost she said: “no matter what the lyrics I always think, ‘What a compliment!’” (HuffPost).

2007: the Taschen book

In 2007 Taschen, the German art-book publisher, released Vanessa del Rio: Fifty Years of Slightly Slutty Behavior, a heavily illustrated biography edited by her long-time friend Dian Hanson (Wikipedia). Taschen’s Art Edition — 396 pages, November 2007 — was limited to 200 numbered copies signed by del Rio, each with a signed and numbered Robert Crumb lithograph, at $1,000 (Taschen).

Hanson’s introduction gives the best one-paragraph summary of her life: “Vanessa has beaten the system. She rose out of poverty, took life on her own terms, never apologized, never expressed regret, only briefly renounced her hedonistic lifestyle, and by staying true to the path she created has become a celebrated cultural icon” (Taschen).

For del Rio, it was the peak. “This book is like the biggest ‘wow’ ever,” she told PAPER. “The fact that Taschen did the book.. it just takes my career to a level that I have never dreamed” (PAPER). She also said she was “waiting for someone to film my life story” and hoped Rosario Dawson would play her (HuffPost).

The biopic and the Halls of Fame

Someone did film it. In 2019 Variety reported that The Latin From Manhattan, an independent biopic written and directed by Thomas Mignone, would star Vivian Lamolli as “the world’s first Latina adult star,” with Esai Morales, Drea De Matteo, Taryn Manning and Jesse Metcalfe in the cast (Variety).

She is in the AVN, XRCO and Urban X Halls of Fame and received the Free Speech Coalition’s Lifetime Achievement Award (Wikipedia).

What every performer should learn from Vanessa del Rio

Your background is a strength. She owned being Afro-Latina when the industry had almost no women of color in starring roles.
Learn a real skill. The coding she learned at 18 built her business after retirement.
Know when to leave. She quit in 1986 for her health and refused big offers to come back.
Own your archive. She sold her own films on her own site for decades.
Make peace with your past. She went to therapy, questioned everything, and came out at peace with it.

My Take (opinion — Maximo Garcia)

As a Spanish-speaking performer, I know what it’s like to get the “exotic” label stuck on you before anyone knows your name. Vanessa del Rio got that label in the 1970s, in a business that, in her words, was “very underground,” run on phone numbers passed around, with no wardrobe budget. And she didn’t just survive it. She turned it into an identity she controlled, from choosing her own name to building her own website back in the 1990s.

What I respect most is the order of events. Programmer at 18, then the streets, then stardom, then retirement, then she went back to the first skill and used it to own her own work. That’s the full circle every performer should plan for. Fame is the middle of the story, not the end. And when she left, she left for her health, at the right time, and said no to the money afterwards. Very few people in any industry can do that.

I also appreciate that she never pretended. She talked about drugs, about therapy, about the moment she didn’t want to be Vanessa del Rio anymore. That honesty is why a serious art publisher wanted her story, and why new fans who “weren’t even born” when she quit still find her. I write about the Latin side of this industry, and about building something that lasts, at maximogarciaworld.com.

If you love the Golden Age, read my columns on Seka, the “Platinum Princess” of the same era, and Marilyn Chambers, the original crossover star. For another legend who turned her life into books and art, see Annie Sprinkle.

👉 More from me at maximogarciaworld.com · Want the full collection? Subscribe at fuckingpornstars.net

FAQ

What is the Vanessa del Rio book?

Vanessa del Rio: Fifty Years of Slightly Slutty Behavior, an illustrated biography edited by Dian Hanson and published by Taschen in 2007. Its Art Edition, limited to 200 signed copies with a Robert Crumb lithograph, was listed at $1,000 (Taschen; Wikipedia).

Was Vanessa del Rio the first Latina porn star?

She is widely described as America’s first Latina adult star. She told HuffPost: “I was the first identified Latina — I don’t know if there were any before me in the porn biz, but yes, I’ll take it!” (HuffPost; Variety).

What is Vanessa del Rio’s real name and background?

She was born Ana María Sánchez on March 31, 1952, and raised in Harlem, New York, the only child of a Puerto Rican mother and an Afro-Cuban father (Wikipedia).

When did Vanessa del Rio retire?

She made her first adult film in 1974 and retired in 1986, in part because of fears about AIDS (Wikipedia; KING).

How we fact-checked this

Every fact and quote was checked against the sources below and is reproduced as published; several outlets are cited through archived copies because the original pages are offline. Explicit content, film titles and scene details were left out to keep this page SFW, including from interviews that discuss them. Opinions are Maximo Garcia’s own and are labeled as such.