Word: damianos
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...made Deep Throat and the man who was Deep Throat - Gerard Damiano and Mark Felt - both died last year. So did one half of the Kingston Trio (explanation to come). So, seven weeks apart, did the two stars of an Oscar-winning movie from a half-century ago. All were part of the passing parade of 2008: the entertainers whom New York cable-access guru Ed Grant refers to as "deceased artistes...
...Farewell package, TIME paid homage to the top tier of notables, all sorely missed. Other, longer tributes - to actors Richard Widmark and Suzanne Pleshette, film directors Damiano, Jules Dassin, Youssef Chahine and Robert Mulligan, playwright Harold Pinter, actress-chanteuse Eartha Kitt, FX wizard Stan Winston and movie critics Gary Carey and Manny Farber, as well as the uncategorizable Forrest J Ackerman - were published upon the deaths of these worthies and can be found through Google or on TIME's search engine...
...Gerard Damiano, who went by the name Jerry Gerard, effectively launched the 1970s porn-movie craze with his first feature, Deep Throat, in which the leading lady had a special talent all her own. Despite producer worries that the term was too obscure, Damiano replied, "Deep Throat will become a household word." With a budget of about $25,000 (provided by the son of a mobster) and a six-day shooting schedule, the film went on to earn tens of millions of dollars and a notorious spot in film history...
...made a couple more ambitious porn films: the psychodrama ghost story Memories Within Miss Aggie (1974) and the dreamy, Marienbadesque The Story of Joanna (1975). But by then, porno was an industry, and it relied less on artistic pretension than on grinding out product. In the next 20 years, Damiano put his name on another three dozen or so hardcore movies, none of which made much of an impact. Like silent-film director D.W. Griffith in the talkie era, Damiano was a pioneer whom new trends left behind. According to the local News-Press, he "lived out his final years...
...This maker of indecent films was, by all accounts, a decent man. "He was...always very charming and dapper and suave," writes News-Press columnist Stephanie Davis, "always there with a kiss and a 'Hello, Gorgeous.'" In a 2005 interview, Damiano described himself as "just a nice guy, which is why I think I did pretty well. I mean, I'd meet an actress and have to say, 'Sit down, take your clothes off - I'm going to ask you to do some nasty things.' You have to be pretty nice." On his 80th birthday, adult-film stars flew...