John Lindsay

Blue movie pioneer, full name John Jesnor Lindsay, born in Scotland in 1939. Began career as a legit fashion photographer and photojournalist, until he found sexploitation more lucrative (he was the stills photographer for Derek Ford's film The Swappers (1970) in 1969 and shot simple nudes for "Mayfair" and "Men Only"). By the early seventies, he was producing 8mm hardcore loops or "blue movies" with titles like "White Hunter" and "Jolly Hockey Sticks". Lindsay claims to have directed over 100 titles in the space of four years and 4000 in his entire career. Unlike many of the shadowy figures who produced hardcore in Britain, Lindsay wasn't about to hide and became something of a public figure, appearing on The David Frost Show (1969) and seen explaining his ideology in the sex documentary Naughty! (1974) (1971 dir: Stanley A. Long). The UK edition of the novelisation of Deep Throat (1972) is even dedicated to him. Hardcore was neither legally nor socially acceptable in early seventies Britain and, as its public face, Lindsay was frequently arrested. His first trial for obscenity occurred in Birmingham in 1974, out of the eleven of his loops "on trial"- Classroom Lover (1970) raised eyebrows the most because it had been shot at Aston manor, a secondary school in Birmingham during the holidays, and starred a 19-year-old former head boy, the school caretaker and twenty-something aged actresses dressed as schoolgirls. Like all of his 1970s trials, Lindsay was found not guilty, and used the ruling as justification to open the first hardcore "membership only" sex cinemas in London. Lindsay also produced two legit soft-core features The Love Pill (1972) (1971 - dir: Ken Turner) and The Hot Girls (1974) (1974 - dir: Lindsay & Laurence Barnett) - the latter was also shot in a hardcore version for overseas. Many of his late 1970s hardcore loops open with the written statement "I, John Lindsay was prosecuted at Birmingham crown court in 1974, and at the Old Bailey, London in 1977, under the obscene publications act 1959 and 1964 - I was acquitted in both cases and the jury found my films not to be obscene under the aforementioned act". By the 1980s, however, crackdowns on pornographers were on the increase, forcing him out of business and into hiding. For the last twenty years, John Lindsay has been living a reclusive lifestyle somewhere in Kent, running a marine broking company. Recently, he has been lured out of "retirement" to talk about the past for two documentaries - Sex and Fame: The Mary Millington Story (1996) (Channel 4 - 1996), and The History of Hardcore (2002) (Channel 4 - broadcast 2002).