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WHy is Traci Lords an Infamous Hottie?
From Wikipedia.com: Nora Louise Kuzma was born in Steubenville, Ohio to Ukrainian-descended Louis and Patricia Kuzma (née Briceland). Her stage name is said to be in tribute to Katharine Hepburn's character Tracy Lord from The Philadelphia Story [3] or from the first name of her high school best friend Traci; and the last name of her favorite actor from Hawaii Five-O, Jack Lord. At twelve she fled from her abusive, alcoholic father to Lawndale, California, with her mother and three sisters.[4] In 1983 she began Redondo Union High School; had an abortion which she paid for by herself; underwent a nervous breakdown; and ran away from home. While living with her mother's ex-boyfriend, who posed as her stepfather, she used a friend's birth certificate to obtain a driver's license indicating that she was twenty-two years of age, and faked her way into the porn industry at the age of fifteen. She started in the porn industry with Jim South at the World Modeling Agency in Sherman Oaks, while assuming the name Kristie Elizabeth Nussman.[4] Shortly after, she was modeling for widely distributed adult magazines, most notably Penthouse, in the same September 1984 issue that exposed Miss America 1984, Vanessa Williams. She quickly ventured into adult movies. Her first movie was "What Gets Me Hot!" followed by "Those Young Girls" and "Talk Dirty To Me Part III", all made in the first half of 1984. Lords' youthful appearance and enthusiastic sexual performances propelled her to stardom. By the time she was 18, Lords had appeared in 100 adult films. Lords argued in her autobiography, however, that approximately 80 of those films were composed from leftover and re-edited footage from the original 20 films that were shot.[5] In May 1986, authorities discovered she was underage while making movies and they arrested her, as well as the owners of her movie agency and X-citement Video, Inc. (See United States v. X-Citement Video.) The ensuing prosecution against the agencies cost the pornographic film and distribution industry millions of dollars as they were obliged by law to remove hundreds of thousands of her videotapes, films and magazines from store shelves to avoid the risk of prosecution for trafficking child pornography. In her book, Lords suggested hypocrisy on the part of the movie producers and the news media, arguing that the porn industry actually got richer from the publicity of the scandal, even as they complained of losing a lot of money after destroying her illegal movies. Lords felt she was also exploited by the reporters, who used censored stills from her unlawful films. Lords herself was never charged with a crime, since as a minor she was unable to give informed consent to perform sex acts on film for money. Instead, the agents and producers who accepted her fake IDs were charged and people affiliated with the films in question experienced legal troubles for years. Eventually, the Justice Department was forced to drop all charges when it was revealed that the fake ID which Lords had used to dupe the pornographic film industry was a U.S. passport in the name of Traci Lords. Like most starlets of the time, for Lords' appearances in X-rated movies she was paid a salary, and didn't own the rights of those films. According to her autobiography, she made $35,000 as total salary for all of those movies, including the $5,000 she received for her appearance in Penthouse. Most of this money was spent on rent and drugs. It also paid for a black Corvette that her boyfriend later totaled. But for her last few films she and another much older boyfriend, Stewart Dell, formed the Traci Lords Company where he co-produced and directed the movies. Lords received a smaller salary but received also part of the rights of these movies. Only one of these films, Traci, I Love You, was produced after her eighteenth birthday, making it the only one legally available in the United States. (However, in non-US jurisdictions where the age of consent is lower, as well as over the Internet, her earlier films continue to be distributed.) Later, after her arrest Lords sold her rights to this film for $100,000. This has led to claims that it was Lords herself who tipped off the authorities to gain immunity from prosecution while profiting from the movie. No proof has ever surfaced to substantiate this claim.[5] Lords denies this notion in her autobiography, and claims that she was reluctant to sell the rights, since at that time she was trying to become a real actress and didn't want any older movie still available. Also, she wrote she knew nothing of people's real names or who produced which film and did not provide such information to the FBI. The FBI agents, "appeared annoyed" when she could not provide the information they wanted. She said that the agents claimed to have monitored her for three years.[5] Government prosecutors declared that Lords was a victim of a manipulative industry, maintaining she was drugged and made to do non-consensual acts. But industry insiders, like Ron Jeremy, Ginger Lynn and Tom Byron, say they never saw her use drugs and that she was fully aware of her actions even if, as a minor, she could not legally consent. One of her co-workers from that time, Christy Canyon, has gone so far as to say about Lords' autobiography: "I think her book could have been fabulous except that she was lying throughout the whole thing."[6] While Lords decries the pornographic film industry, she continues to use the stage name she gave herself as a minor, and ultimately made it her legal name. She wrote, "I chose to stop running from it. Instead, I won it, legally changing my name to Traci Elizabeth Lords. That's who I was, and that's who I was going to be."[5] Lords stated that she is not trying to deny her past, telling Oprah Winfrey: "I found you can run but you cannot hide".[7] |
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