On porn and Jewishness - Tzach Yoked in Haaretz:

‘Anyone running into Chelly Wilson on Eighth Avenue near 42nd Street in Manhattan in the 1960s or ‘70s would have assumed she was a demure, bourgeois woman. Her appearance certainly didn’t give away her business or lifestyle.
Short, with a full roundish face, oversized glasses, and speaking broken English, Wilson – a Jewish immigrant of Greek origin who lost her two brothers in the Holocaust – looked like a doting auntie.’

(…)

‘Wilson was a main character there – one of the most powerful women in the adult film industry in New York, then in its “golden age.” She was a lone woman in a world of men, maneuvering between directors, actors, distributors and quite a few underworld characters. She owned a porn theater empire that at the height of its success included six theaters screening adult films 24 hours a day.’

(…)

‘Wilson was born into an Orthodox Jewish family and rebelled against its strictures. She was a mother of two who left her children behind in Greece on the eve of World War II and immigrated by herself to the United States. She was a woman who married for a second time, and the mother of another daughter who regularly hosted men in her apartment and shared her life with two female lovers.
She was also a businesswoman who named her movie theaters Eros, the Venus, the Capri, the Adonis, the Lido and the Cameo – names that prove even though she lived the capitalist dream in her own way, she saw herself as much more Greek than American.’

(…)

‘Chelly Wilson was born Rachel Serrero in 1908, in Thessaloniki, to a family that was part of the city’s large Jewish community. Prior to World War II, this community was made up of close to 60,000 Jews. But very few survived the Holocaust.
Judeo-Spanish was spoken at home, but Wilson learned Greek from daily life, and French at school. She played the violin and dreamed of becoming a doctor. When she was in her early 20s, her father arranged for her to marry Moise Bourla, a young Jewish man from the local community.
Wilson was forcefully opposed to the idea, as seen in the home movie footage taken by her daughter. “He was so repulsive, the bastard,” she says to her daughter in the footage. Nevertheless, apparently out of respect for her father, she ultimately gave in. But she vowed to her father: “When you die, I’ll get divorced.”’

(…)

‘As time went by, though, Wilson found that even in the world’s most cosmopolitan city, the potential audience for Greek films was limited. What began as a daily screening gradually dwindled to weekend screenings, and then just to Sunday screenings. What to do with the other days? Acting on a bit of advice she’d received, in 1965 she screened a pornography film at the Cameo for the first time. From there, things took off quickly. Wilson’s business flourished, and she bought one movie theater after another.’

(…)

‘It was all happening on a tiny stretch of Manhattan, on 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Porn, prostitution, crack, and a hefty dose of violent crime, all mixed together and contributing mightily to New York’s image as one of America’s most violent and dangerous cities.
“It was a dangerous place. There was serious violence then. People were walking around with knives and stabbing other people,” Kontakos says. “But for me, it was mostly an exciting place. I remember getting off at the subway station in Times Square to walk to the movie theater, and someone would always come up to me and want to sell me drugs or all kinds of other things. But I never really felt threatened. It wasn’t directed at people like me.”’

(…)

‘She also moved into an apartment on the top floor of the building above the Eros Theater. There, behind a door secured with multiple locks, she turned her life into a nonstop party, and the homey-looking apartment into a favorite meeting place of porn industry workers, from actors to directors, as well as several underworld figures – who apparently provided her with protection, her granddaughter surmises, though the director of the documentary does not expand on this.’

(…)

‘But while everyone in the family knew all about Grandma Chelly’s businesses, another side of her life stayed almost hidden: her Jewishness. “She grew up in Thessaloniki, in an Orthodox religious family. They kept Shabbat and kept kosher, of course,” her daughter Bondi says. “But that life wasn’t for Chelly, and at the first chance she got, she left that all behind. The only thing my mother was strict about in terms of religion was fasting on Yom Kippur, and she kept that to herself too.” After a moment’s reflection, Bondi adds that she thinks they once had a Passover seder at home too. Her father, Rex Wilson, was okay with all this. His Jewish parents had sent him to a Christian school.’

(…)

‘While she only learned of her mother’s religious identity at age seven, she only truly became aware of her mother’s sexual identity after Chelly passed away. Although Wilson never tried to hide her lack of interest in things like sexual definitions, her daughter basically kept the knowledge hidden from herself.
“Nothing about my mother’s lifestyle seemed that strange to me, but I never thought that she was essentially a lesbian,” Bondi says. “Until at her funeral, a friend of mine, who apparently picked up on what I had repressed, said to me, ‘I didn’t know your mother was a lesbian.’ At that moment, I realized for the first time that it made a lot of sense.”’

(…)

‘Wilson didn’t have much time to grieve the loss. She passed away in 1994, at age 86, and her will stipulated in great detail just how she wished her farewell to look. Fittingly, she requested that a party be held in her memory. She specified the menu to be served – made up entirely of Greek cuisine, the music to be played, and the toasts to be made.
Though Wilson seems to have chosen to ignore her Judaism, in her death too, her daughter feels this wasn’t exactly the case. “I think that Judaism was something she always felt deep inside her, until her last day, even if she didn’t let anyone see it,” Bondi says.’

Read the article here.

The Greek-Jewish dream came true near Times Square.

Porn and Yom Kippur go well together.

I once spoke to a Jewish driver who told me that the first thing after Yom Kippur was over was going to a brothel.

A doting auntie as the empress of porn in NY. It’s fitting.

And also, there is a case to be made for discretion. Who you are is a secret and should remain a secret.