Marc Stevens

Marc Stevens (born Mark Kuttner on September 2, 1943), the adult film star, memoirist, and erotic dance performer, was one of the pioneers of the adult film industry in the 1970s, the so-called "Golden Age of Porn." His 1975 biography, which some claim was ghost-written by his mother, was called "10 1/2" in an homage not only to Federico Fellini but to his male member. It was his ticket to the big time. According to his memoir, Stevens joined the Army circa 1960, and it was during the time he was stationed in Germany, while using a urinal, he came face to face with one of his idols: Elvis Presley. Stevens, who was unabashedly bi-sexual, says that he stared at Presley's penis for an inordinately long time as he was shocked that the King wasn't endowed like, well -- a King! Elvis, on his part, was used to being stared at, even at urinals. He took a gander at Marc Stevens' crown jewel, non-chalantly muttered "Ya'll better take care of that thang," zipped up and departed, leaving the shocked and disappointed Stevens with his future still in his hand. With the loosening of censorship in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the adult movie industry mushroomed: blue movies rapidly evolved from something glimpsed by men in smokers at workmen's clubs on stag night to couples patronizing "Deep Throat" (1972), which racked up tens of millions of B.O. dollars, made Variety's list of the top grossing films of 1972 AND 1973, and threatened to revolutionize the movie industry as a whole before the Supreme Court's 1973 "Miller" decision put a plug back in the bottle. (Meanwhile, the genie had escaped, shortly finding a new home outside the old, rotten-smelling grind-houses, on videotape, insulated from the vicissitudes of community standards.) Stevens became a stalwart presence on the New York City (as opposed to West Coast) porn scene in the 1970s, appearing in over four score hard-core films during his career. At the height of his notoriety, he published his 288-page memoir. He later fronted an erotic dance troupe that performed at live sex shows. His associates in the New York porn scene included Annie Sprinkle and Gloria Leonard. He even had the honor of having his greatest asset as a performer photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe. Though appearing primarily in heterosexual films, the openly bisexual Stevens proselytized about the joys of swinging both ways and made some gay movies. It was the era of bisexual chic, when even an uber-straight-man like Hugh Hefner experimented, taking a stab at enjoying "the best of both worlds." (From the evidence of the past 30 some-odd years, Hefner's experiment was not a success.) Stevens now is largely forgotten, despite nostalgia about the Golden Age of Porn that can be seen in the success of the film "Boogie Nights" and "The Hedge Hog" Ron Jeremy's sudden emergence as a pop culture idol. Like many of his generation in the Golden Age of Porn (including male porn star extraordinaire John Holmes), he developed a serious drug problem. Like the increasingly unreliable Holmes, Stevens dropped out of the porn industry and, to support his habit, became involved in drug trafficking. Porn industry veteran Sharon Mitchell, a leading figure in the industry's fight to combat AIDS and promote safe sex practices for on-camera performers, reports that Stevens degenerated into a drug pusher and a pimp before dying a lonely death from AIDS, a broken and forgotten man..