Two new releases from Philadelphia-based Running Press happen to be biographies of popular porn stars with Blake as their surname, and they’re quite opposite in writing style and literary feel.
Known as the “most famous African-American gay adult film superstar,” Bobby Blake’s biography interweaves his tumultuous personal history and subsequent life in the adult-film industry. Blake was raised by his foster mother in Tennessee, and enjoyed a happy, albeit relatively fatherless, childhood until his biological mother reappeared to stir things up when he was 10 by moving him into her rented South Memphis apartment. In school, he enjoyed sex with a female sociology teacher and a variety of other local girls, which spawned a livelihood consisting of stripping and erotic dancing using names like Mister Wonderful and The Black Stallion. A few failed relationships prompted a move to Oakland, CA in the early 1990s, then on to Los Angeles, where he was discovered at a dance club and “hit the ground running” in the porn industry by making movies like his debut feature Ebony Knights and his final bow Niggas’ Revenge.
Blake g
ets serious when discussing what he feels is rampant racial discrimination within the film world, and the “painful and difficult” issue of performer rivalry. His story is entertaining, but it’s an exploration that takes itself too seriously, too often. In cheerless, tightly-wound language, Blake continually points out that even though he rose to fame as a porn star, his faith in God never wavered. The author is currently a “counselor” in his local church.
It would seem that Bobby Blake could use a big hug from Blue Blake, who boasts a popular, flashy, musclebound-friendly website and shares his personal memoirs in a more relaxed, convivial fashion. In other words, he’s had and continues to have fun in the adult-film industry, and tells us why. Finally, an adult-film superstar’s success story!
Credited with being an “unlikely porn star,” the British adult actor turned director/producer, who has starred in over 60 films, opens his story with hulking co-star Caesar getting his balls licked mid-thrust � by a Doberman who wandered onto the set of Cowboy, a film Blake directed. Stories from that swelteringly hot California-based set (and many others) are hilarious, and provide an intimate, eye-opening look at what it takes to star in as well as create an adult film.
Blake’s personal history (real name Glenn Marsh, born in Nottingham, England) provides several amusing, by-the-numbers chapters of a plucky boy who developed an early fetish for bodybuilders and reveled in his drama-school classes in central London. Later years would bring much mischief in New York, New Orleans, and in the Castro (Blake once lived at Casa Sanchez), hustling for cash back in London and discovering the results of regular gym workouts. Affairs with musclemen multiplied as the steroids he took ballooned his body out. After a successful stint with his own escort agency and associations with Al Parker and Jack Fritscher, along came the porn career, and the final third of the book is gloriously overstuffed with beefy boys, big dicks, and big drama.
Wanting to write a tell-all book about the industry while he was “still smack bang in the middle of it,” Blake succeeds by consistently infusing all of the dirty dishing with personality, wit, and an infectious, campy sense of humor. Readers will also become educated on what a “reverse cowgirl” and a “limber showgirl” are!
On the final page, Blake concedes that “a life in porn had been good to me.” Thank you, Blue, for showing that, yeah, it’s porn, an often exploitative industry, but that it doesn’t have to be a killjoy for every actor.