Porn Valley- Long distance information give me Memphis Tennessee. Angel Kelly and I were playing a great game of phone tag this week. Kelly’s now living in Memphis and is not trying to make a big deal about her former career- at least as far her neighbors are concerned. But Kelly does plan to be in Las Vegas in January as part of the Porn Legends Induction- the show Ray Pistol, www.xxxdeepthroat.com conducts annually during AEE.
Kelly tells me she’s doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that. “Keeping it all together- keeping it in one piece,” said Kelly. Kelly said she first spoke to Bill Margold about a year ago regarding her induction. Margold puts the show together. “He asked me last year but they didn’t call me until a few days before the show,” Kelly says. “I wasn’t able to attend. So this year it was let’s plan on it! Now that the days, and the hours are getting nearer, I’m really excited. I can hardly wait. I haven’t seen anybody in a little awhile. Maybe the last time I saw some folks was in 1996.”
Kelly said she’s always made it a point of keeping in touch with Nina DePonca. “And periodically someone crosses your path one way or another.” Kelly was voicing hope that I’d remember her. Certainly, I told her. “I remember you from your Perry Ross days at Fantasy Home Video.”
“He died a long time ago,” says Kelly. “I think he died right before I left California.” [Ross, who was also a SAG actor whose claim to fame was that he had a two-second cameo in a Steven Seagal movie, died in a mysterious set circumstances and was found dead of a heroin overdose in an Amsterdam hotel room. He had been married to porn star Angela Baron.]
“Very mysterious,” laughs Kelly. “I was very sad and we hadn’t seen each other in a long time before that happened.” Kelly tells me she and Ross got along great until such time as he married Baron. “When he married Angela Baron his life just went upside down.”
“I think that was a two-way street. Perry was a character all unto himself, and I heard he wasn’t a prince to live with, either,” I comment.
[And very vain. To hide a growing bald spot, Ross had transplants and had his scalp surgically reduced.]
“Once he got with Angela Baron and the unusual demands that they made on each other, they just made each other sick. I didn’t want a part of it any more. It wasn’t fun,” says Kelly. “I enjoyed the business when Perry first began in the days of The Load Warrior [a porn movie] and Pumping Irene he was hungry and had that desire to do something neat and different. He just had a totally different direction.”
Kelly got into the business via porn legend and dance impresario Harry Mooney.
“Porsche Lynn and I used to dance in his circuit in Michigan and in the midwest. Hyapatia Lee would come and feature in our theater. She’d be the girl on stage and would feature for a week. It was, wow, we want to do that. We were already dancers but in order to get that type of billing we had to go a step further. There was a whole slew of people – I had no idea who they were at the time- but they were pretty strong armed in the adult industry. I shot some photos and wound up in a few magazines. Then they gave me the opportunity, you want to do this? When I got out there to California my first agent was Reb. I think I was there two weeks- this was like 1985. He sent me on a shoot to do Material Girl with Nina Hartley. And it was me and Jerry Butler. Jerry’s a very funny man. He has a very good heart.”
Asked how she got the Fantasy Home Video deal, Kelly said she met Perry Ross at a casting call. “I think it was at Jim South’s office. It was for Pumping Irene,” says Kelly. “He hired me and Lois Ayres and that Brazilian girl. I forget what her name was.
“Elle Rio,” says I.
“Elle Rio, that’s who it was,” says Kelly. “We went and shot that up in Lake Arrowhead. During that time I had shot quite a few videos.” Kelly remembers both a huge poster of her being in a vid called Hotter Chocolate and Perry Ross’ desire to own his own company.
“I wanted to get somewhere so he thought if we get together and work together we could probably achieve something and – compared to many of the black adult stars I’ve seen- I had the opportunity to work with some of the great actors like John Leslie and Paul Thomas. And Herschel Savage. I also worked with John Holmes. I worked with a lot of legends and had a wonderful opportunity. That made such a difference I think in my career.
“Then Perry and I got together,” Kelly continues. “But that didn’t mean that I wasn’t allowed to work with other companies. So that only enhanced my career as far as product. But whenever there was a show, a signing or anything, he always had me represent Fantasy Home Video. It was great when it was just me and him. But when Angela Baron came into the picture everything just got blown out of proportion. And I thought we were doing wonderfully before that.”
“Did you guys have bad blood?”
“I think for the most part we got along,” Kelly says. “But there might have been some type of rivalry because I was there before she came. And Perry knew where our relationship stood. But when I saw that he could not hold up his end and he wasn’t achieving what I needed to achieve. I was going in many different directions. He was throwing together junk at that point. It was because of her because she couldn’t act. I wanted to have good scripts and good movies. But for her it was just her looks and that’s what it was all about. He was just throwing together junk and I didn’t want to be associated with that. I had a lot of fans and they liked my movies. There came a point where I just walked away from that situation.”
At that time, Kelly remembers the growth of the Pink Ladies organization. “There was an opportunity to make the all-girl Pink Lady movie with all the legends at that time. It was exciting to produce and direct. And I was also on the road dancing as well. So I had a lot of other things going that I could keep myself involved in.”
Kelly’s also working on a website, www.angelkellylive.com. “Ive seen over the years how there’s been so many websites- not to mention so many folks that have tried to do one with me- but no one has been successful in doing what I would like to see.”
Kelly again mentions that 1996 was the last time she was in L.A. “And since then I’ve written down all my memoirs. Those were exciting times, you know. The wildest times. This is like a tell-all. That’s where I was heading in trying to make that happen. I was going to call it The Sins of Angel Kelly.”
Kelly explains that a project with Tupac Shakur brought her out to L.A. at that time “He had me in one of his music videos. And he also hired Heather [Hunter]; Nina [DePonca]; and Champagne and a few other adult video girls.”
Kelly and Tupac struck up a friendship. Officially, her last movie was around 1990. “I shot Little Miss Dangerous and Even More Dangerous,” she said.
“Is your book going to have sex stories of you and celebrities?”
“Oh yeah,” says Kelly. “Because I had that opportunity with so many celebrities.”
“Athletes?”
“Yeah,” says Kelly. “All kinds of people because you know the adult industry attracts so many people. You’ve got so many different fans that you always wind up meeting in your career at one time or another. That’s going to make the book juicy.”
Kelly says she plans on putting excerpts of the book on her website.
“Teasers?”
“Yes,” she says.
“So tease me.”
Kelly laughs. “You’ll have to wait and see.” Kelly says Rhonda Jo Petty was trying to get her involved in her new website. “She wanted to put excerpts of the book on it. And what not. I said let’s see the website! Get the website going and we’ll see what happens.”
Since being out of the business Kelly has children and has been working in the real world. “When I say the real world I mean being a nice, adult lady.”
“In other words you’re maintaining a very low profile in your community.”
“Yes,” Kelly answers. “Very low.”
“It’s not like your next door neighbors know you as the porn star.”
Over the years, says Kelly, as the clamor died down, new people finding out who she was, couldn’t believe that she was in the business. “Wow, you’re kidding. Then they’re surprised: I never knew Angel Kelly was here in Memphis. But I don’t walk around telling everybody. Especially men. When a guy gets next to you and he thinks he’s seen you before but he just can’t place it, it eventually always comes back to that. You’re Angel Kelly? God, I got you on some of my videos at home.”
Among her projects is the fact that Kelly wanted to get a hold of Chi Chi LaRue. “I haven’t talked to him in so long,” says Kelly. “He actually directed the second to the last movie I was in Little Miss Dangerous.”
Asked her favorite performer to work with, Kelly says sex-wise it would have to be Tom Byron. “I miss Tommy. I haven’t seen him in so long. He was my brother, my husband, my strange boyfriend, my doctor…we played so many different roles opposite each other and it turned into some wild sex scenes. But I never had a problem working with anybody. I think most of the guys would look at me as their little sister. And sex was fun for me. And whomever I was working with, we always made it fun. And I enjoyed it. I can’t explain it but I remember so many ladies in the business who didn’t last very long. It seems like they decided to indulge in so many drugs and drink so much alcohol just to get into a scene.”
“That hasn’t changed,” I tell Kelly.
“Really?” she says almost aghast. “See, that’s sad. If you’re not having a good time doing it, why are you doing it?”
“I’ve seen that with a large percentage of girls who come into the business and that’s because they shouldn’t be here in the first place,” I venture to say.
Kelly agrees. “It shows in your work. Because if you look at a scene, if that girl’s getting off, you know she’s having a good time. You can definitely tell.”
Kelly confesses that she’d be at a loss to identify any of the girls currently working in the industry.
“Not one. There’s so many.”