Huff Po: Phil Gramm May Be Gone, But His Porn Lives On

[mod mom]

Phil Gramm May Be Gone, But His Porn Lives On

Posted July 15, 2008 | 05:42 AM (EST)

-snip

While the destruction Gramm has caused is felt across the country, little is known about the seedy business schemes that preceded his political career. Before Gramm joined the Christian Coalition's Ralph Reed to call for the defunding of the NEA, before he attacked an opponent for taking money from a gay rights group, and before he was interviewed by the white supremacist Southern Partisan magazine, Gramm was an avidly active investor in soft-core pornography movies.

Gramm's journey into porn began in 1973, when his brother-in-law, George Caton, rushed to tell him about an exciting low-budget soft-core production called Truck Stop Women. A promo poster for the film boasted of its buxom stars: "No Rig Was Too Big For Them To Handle." Caton, who was in charge of fundraising for the production, asked Gramm to become an investor. To entice his brother-in-law, Caton showed him scenes of Playboy Playmate of the year Claudia Jennings displaying her bare essentials (she is naked throughout much of the film).

These scenes "really got Phil titillated," Caton told journalist John Judis in 1995. Gramm enthusiastically cut Caton a check for $15,000. Because the film was oversold, however, Caton returned his brother-in-law's money, offering him an investment opportunity in an upcoming feature.

The following year, Gramm sent Caton a check for $15,000, this time to finance the production of Beauty Queens, a soft-core flick about pageant judges having sex with contestants. But at the last moment, the director of Beauty Queens, Mark Lester, decided to shelve his production to make the sequel to his Tricia's Wedding, a comedy starring the drag queen troupe, The Cockettes.

-snip

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/phil-gramm-may-be-gone-bu_b_112781.html

THE PARTY OF FAMILY VALUES!

[tanyev]

1. I'm torn.

I was going to say thank goodness he wasn't in front of the camera, because no one wants to see that, but on the other hand, something like that would have completely squelched his advancement in the Religious Right Republican Party.