The Rialto Report

In the previous episode of The Complete Disappearance of Cheri Champagne:

After years of hearing mysterious stories about the 1980s adult film actor, Cheri Champagne, I was keen to see if she was still around and interested in talking about her life. The trouble was that no one seemed to have heard from her for almost forty years.

There were many reasons why she intrigued me: from the strange beginnings dancing in a cage in a Maine sex club, the bizarre adult films she’d appeared in, the aggressive persona she adopted in magazine interviews, and her dominatrix-themed stage show that toured the sex clubs of New York in the early 1980s.

Hers was a typically wild life journey from another era – but there also seemed be something different about Cheri, something that nagged at me, suggesting I wasn’t seeing the whole picture. No one had managed to get close to her back in the day, perhaps not surprising given that she claimed she kept a torture chamber in her house and that her main pleasure was inflicting pain on her partners – hardly the sexy, feminine image that so many other stars of the time cultivated.

But there was perhaps more to her than that: there were rumors from those who’d known that her hinted at a secret, something hidden in her background, something that might explain her distant attitude and seemingly hostile behavior.

And then, after years of looking, I found Cheri. I called her, excited to learn the truth from her perspective. Her reaction was hostile and angry. She obliquely referred to trauma in her past as being the reason for not wanting to talk – and, after a short conversation, she hung up. This is what happened next.

This is the concluding part of Cheri Champagne’s story.

You can listen to the first part here.

This podcast is 30 minutes long.

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Cheri Champagne

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The post The Complete Disappearance of Cheri Champagne, Part 2: Podcast 168 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

Cheri Champagne was active in adult films in New York in the early 1980s - a pretty, dark-haired performer, an unusually cool, devil-may-care manner, and a reputation for being enigmatic. What happened to her has remained a mystery. Until now.

In this era where everyone seems to be chasing follows, likes, shares, and clicks I have to admit I try not to look at which Rialto Report interviews have had the biggest audience. The reason is simple: I’ve wanted to cover all people from the golden age of adult film, regardless of their notoriety, because all stories are interesting and informative, big or small, famous or unknown.

But if you really want to know which Rialto Report podcast has been downloaded the most, there’s only one winner. I interviewed Christy Canyon back in 2019, and that podcast has been downloaded, streamed, and listened to tens of thousands of times since then. For anyone who knows her, that won’t be a surprise: Christy was one of the biggest stars of the 1980s, she’s always entertaining, and she’s still involved in the business today.

Christy turns 60 this week, and I wanted to pay tribute to her.

A few years ago, the former adult film star Rick Savage gave me an audio tape of a conversation he’d had with Christy back in 1992. Christy was touring the country with her dance act at the time, and Rick was writing porn star profiles for a Japanese men’s magazine. Their chat was more of a casual conversation, not meant to be an interview, but Rick taped it so he could mine it for information for his next article.

After their meeting, Rick stored the tape – and forgot about in for the next 30 years. When he came across it again it was unlistenable, a mass of hiss and static, but with the help of AI, I managed to clean it up. It was recorded in a noisy New York diner so it has variable sound quality – but I wanted to share it with you because it’s an interesting time capsule.

Despite the fact that this conversation took place 34 years ago, it has a surprisingly nostalgic feel: Christy had started in the X-rated film industry in 1984 as a teenager with a carefree attitude in the free-for-all, wild west days of the video explosion. She retired a few months later before returning in the late 1980s – this time as a contract girl, a little older, wiser, and now thinking about a career and a future.

Rick had done two scenes with Christy – the first was in the early days when she was a newcomer, and the second when she was a seasoned professional, almost a veteran – and he was struck by the change he noticed in her – which he wanted to ask her about. Rick also took photographs of Christy which have never been seen before – and we’re sharing these below.

Today, Christy is still going strong – connecting with her fans and providing regular content via her social media accounts and through Only Fans.

Welcome to the Christy Canyon birthday party.

With thanks to Rick Savage and Cathy Gigante-Brown.

This podcast is 41 minutes long.

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Christy Canyon – Previously Unpublished Photographs

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The post Christy Canyon – New York, 1992: Podcast 166 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

The 1980s and 90s adult film A-lister Jeanna Fine passed away 6 months ago way too young. A few weeks after that, we shared an interview I started with Jeanne but never got to finish. It was mostly about what led Jeanna to get into the adult industry – and the discussion was rounded out by a recording Patrick Kindlon of the band the Self Defense Family shared with us. If you haven’t heard that interview I recommend listening to that too.

Absent from that podcast were Jeanna’s thoughts about her time in the adult industry itself – how she felt about films she made like Cafe Flesh 2, Skin Hunger, and Flesh & Blood; the people she worked with including Bionca Seven, Sharon Kane, F.M. Bradley, and Mike Horner; and the life her participation in the business provided including relationships with Savannah and Sikki Nixx.

In fact, there was a second part to Jeanna’s discussion with Patrick. We’ve held onto it for a while because, like the first podcast we put out about Jeanna, it isn’t always an easy listen. Jeanna doesn’t pull any punches as she shares her memories of the adult business and she comes across quite raw at times. 

But in the past months I kept remembering how Jeanna urged me more than once to listen to the recordings she made with Patrick. Even when things were uncomfortable, it was clear she wanted to be heard and understood.

So here’s part two of Patrick’s recording where Jeanna is brave enough to be candid and messy and vulnerable.

With special thanks once again to Patrick Kindlon and Self Defense Family.

This podcast is 31 minutes long.

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Sharon Kane, Gloria Leonard, Jeanna Fine

Eric Edwards, Sharon Kane, Jeanna Fine, Gloria Leonard



Jeanna with Al Goldstein on Midnight Blue

Jeanne in ‘Babylon’ (1998)

Porsche Lynn, Jeanna Fine, & Angel Kelly

The Pink Ladies: Porsche Lynn, Angel Kelly, Nina Hartley, Jeanna Fine

Jeanna with Angel Kelly

The cast of Sorority Pink: Angel Kelly, Porsche Lynn, Sharon Kane, Barbara Dare, Nina Hartley

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The post Jeanna Fine: Flesh & Blood – Podcast 165 appeared first on The Rialto Report.

In the first part of my interview with Tanqueray, we heard the striking story of Tanqueray’s early life – long before she became such as viral sensation on social media as a result of her appearances on Humans of New York. She was called Stephanie and she’d had a tough upbringing, raised by a strict single mother in an all-white upstate New York area, and then a teenage pregnancy, an unfortunate relationship, and a desire to start a new life had somehow conspired to land her in jail as a teenager. When she was released, she moved to Manhattan – and worked in a clothing factory, this was back in the days when the city had a garment district, attended the Fashion Institute of Technology, and ended up appearing as a much in-demand go-go dancer in clubs such as the Peppermint Lounge. It was the 1960s, and she enjoyed a varied and exciting existence: she had a short career as an escort, became a seller of stolen goods, mixed with pimps, mobsters and The Temptations – and fell in love with an Italian called Carmine, who she married before discovering his drug addiction.

But as the 1970s dawned, the go-go bars in New York suddenly seemed rather old-fashioned, quaint, and in terms of sexual excitement, tame and unexciting. If you could now see newly-explicit sex films in theaters, well… customers were keen to see something different and more daring in a live environment too. That left Stephanie at a crossroads: there were two options – she could either accept the brave, new world and became more sexual – which she referred to as ‘working dirty’ – or she could revert to being a more old-fashioned burlesque performer, and rely on tease, with a less racy act and props. Stephanie decided to follow the burlesque route and become Tanqueray.

Stephanie and I recorded many of our conversations, and this is the second and concluding part of her story.

This podcast is 40 minutes long.

You can listen to the first part of the Tanqueray story here.

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Ronnie Bell



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