John Curtis Estes (August 8, 1944 – March 13, 1988) better known as John Holmes, John C. Holmes or Johnny Wadd (after the lead character in a series of related films), was one of the most famous male adult film stars of all time, appearing in about 2,500 adult loops, stag films, and porno feature movies in the 1970s and 1980s, including at least one gay feature film and a handful of gay loops. He was best known for his exceptionally large, uncircumcised penis, which was heavily promoted as being the longest in the porn industry; its exact dimensions are, however, uncertain and the subject of controversy. Holmes also attracted notoriety for his involvement in the brutal Wonderland Murders in 1981, and for his death from AIDS.
Holmes was the subject of a long article in Rolling Stone magazine in 1989 and a feature length documentary, and the inspiration for two Hollywood movies (Boogie Nights and Wonderland).
Additionally he has been the subject of numerous biographical films and documentaries, such as Exhausted: John C. Holmes, the Real Story, Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes, "John Holmes, Superstar", "John Holmes: The Man, The Myth, The Legend", and "XXXL: The John Holmes Story".
Holmes was the subject of a long article in Rolling Stone magazine in 1989 and a feature length documentary, and the inspiration for two Hollywood movies (Boogie Nights and Wonderland).
Additionally he has been the subject of numerous biographical films and documentaries, such as Exhausted: John C. Holmes, the Real Story, Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes, "John Holmes, Superstar", "John Holmes: The Man, The Myth, The Legend", and "XXXL: The John Holmes Story".
Penis size
Despite his lack of acting ability, what made Holmes famous was his exceptionally large, uncircumcised penis. Holmes' first wife, Sharon Gebenini, recalled him claiming to be 10 inches (25.4 cm) when he first measured himself. However, at the start of his cinematic career, he was widely publicized as having a penis ranging from 12.5 to 16 inches (32–41 cm) long when fully erect.
In 2007, it was discovered that the coroner who performed the autopsy on Holmes took "secret" measurements of Holmes' penis in a flaccid state and reported it as being approximately 8.75 inches in length. This information appeared in the form of handwritten notes (scrawled on the back of the third page of the official Holmes' autopsy report) discovered by investigative reporter John Beck who is currently working on a new book about the life of Holmes. It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that Holmes' penis—when fully enlarged—would be in the range stated in the above paragraph. The coroner also noted that the size of Holmes' gonads were approximately "the size of a pair of large hen eggs."[citation needed]. Ron Jeremy claims that Holmes was actually 11 inches and used to brag that he was 14 inches.
So celebrated was Holmes' reputed penis size that it was even used as a marketing tool for films in which he did not even appear. In the porn classic Anybody but My Husband, the promotional tag line read "Tony The Hook Perez has a dick so big that he gives even John Holmes a run for his money."[3]
Different attempts to objectively ascertain the actual length of his penis have led to varying results. An American study of video footage of Holmes' penis concluded his penis was 10–11 inches long (25–28cm), whereas another study comparing many pictures of his penis to the estimated measurements of other parts of his own body led to the conclusion of 8 3/4 inches (22cm). Holmes' longtime manager, Bill Amerson, that "I saw John measure himself several times, it was 13 and a half inches".[4] Holmes' last wife, Laurie "Misty Dawn" Rose claims that John Holmes himself claimed himself at 10 inches.
Veteran porn actress Dorothiea "Seka" Patton has claimed Holmes' penis was the biggest in the industry[1], though not all who had sex with him agree.
Filmmaker Cass Paley stated in the director's soundtrack to his Holmes biodoc, Wadd that "In the early days of his career, I saw Holmes fully erect and it was scary. He was huge."
Regardless of what the actual length of Holmes' penis was, some people question whether he ever achieved full erections on movie sets. Veteran porn actress Annette Haven, for instance, recalled in the documentary Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes that "as the joke goes, if John ever became fully erect, he'd lose consciousness from lack of blood to the brain because his dick was that big. And it's true that his cock was never hard. It [having onscreen sex] was like doing it with a big, soft kind of luffa."
[edit] Number of partners
Penis length was not the only questionable statistic used in connection with Holmes. In 1981, he began to spread the rumour that he had had sex with 20,000 women. If you assume Holmes' first experience with a woman occurred at 16 as he claimed, then he would have had to have made love to 700 different women a year—1.9 women a day—for the 20 years that had passed. More realistic estimates, such as that of Luke Ford, put the figure at around "only" 3,000. Quick estimates based on the number of loops where Holmes did in fact perform a sexual act with at least one woman, allowing for sexual encounters not performed before a camera, and further mitigated by counting a performing partner only once—again, some actresses, such as Seka, the porn star with whom he was rumored to have had a lurid affair, Connie "Little French Maid" Peterson, Eileen Welles, Victoria Waters, Linda McDowell, Juliet "Aunt Peg" Anderson, and Desireé Cousteau, made numerous loops with Holmes in the 1970s—Ford's estimate of 3,000 by 1981 is closer to being realistic.
Despite his lack of acting ability, what made Holmes famous was his exceptionally large, uncircumcised penis. Holmes' first wife, Sharon Gebenini, recalled him claiming to be 10 inches (25.4 cm) when he first measured himself. However, at the start of his cinematic career, he was widely publicized as having a penis ranging from 12.5 to 16 inches (32–41 cm) long when fully erect.
In 2007, it was discovered that the coroner who performed the autopsy on Holmes took "secret" measurements of Holmes' penis in a flaccid state and reported it as being approximately 8.75 inches in length. This information appeared in the form of handwritten notes (scrawled on the back of the third page of the official Holmes' autopsy report) discovered by investigative reporter John Beck who is currently working on a new book about the life of Holmes. It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that Holmes' penis—when fully enlarged—would be in the range stated in the above paragraph. The coroner also noted that the size of Holmes' gonads were approximately "the size of a pair of large hen eggs."[citation needed]. Ron Jeremy claims that Holmes was actually 11 inches and used to brag that he was 14 inches.
So celebrated was Holmes' reputed penis size that it was even used as a marketing tool for films in which he did not even appear. In the porn classic Anybody but My Husband, the promotional tag line read "Tony The Hook Perez has a dick so big that he gives even John Holmes a run for his money."[3]
Different attempts to objectively ascertain the actual length of his penis have led to varying results. An American study of video footage of Holmes' penis concluded his penis was 10–11 inches long (25–28cm), whereas another study comparing many pictures of his penis to the estimated measurements of other parts of his own body led to the conclusion of 8 3/4 inches (22cm). Holmes' longtime manager, Bill Amerson, that "I saw John measure himself several times, it was 13 and a half inches".[4] Holmes' last wife, Laurie "Misty Dawn" Rose claims that John Holmes himself claimed himself at 10 inches.
Veteran porn actress Dorothiea "Seka" Patton has claimed Holmes' penis was the biggest in the industry[1], though not all who had sex with him agree.
Filmmaker Cass Paley stated in the director's soundtrack to his Holmes biodoc, Wadd that "In the early days of his career, I saw Holmes fully erect and it was scary. He was huge."
Regardless of what the actual length of Holmes' penis was, some people question whether he ever achieved full erections on movie sets. Veteran porn actress Annette Haven, for instance, recalled in the documentary Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes that "as the joke goes, if John ever became fully erect, he'd lose consciousness from lack of blood to the brain because his dick was that big. And it's true that his cock was never hard. It [having onscreen sex] was like doing it with a big, soft kind of luffa."
[edit] Number of partners
Penis length was not the only questionable statistic used in connection with Holmes. In 1981, he began to spread the rumour that he had had sex with 20,000 women. If you assume Holmes' first experience with a woman occurred at 16 as he claimed, then he would have had to have made love to 700 different women a year—1.9 women a day—for the 20 years that had passed. More realistic estimates, such as that of Luke Ford, put the figure at around "only" 3,000. Quick estimates based on the number of loops where Holmes did in fact perform a sexual act with at least one woman, allowing for sexual encounters not performed before a camera, and further mitigated by counting a performing partner only once—again, some actresses, such as Seka, the porn star with whom he was rumored to have had a lurid affair, Connie "Little French Maid" Peterson, Eileen Welles, Victoria Waters, Linda McDowell, Juliet "Aunt Peg" Anderson, and Desireé Cousteau, made numerous loops with Holmes in the 1970s—Ford's estimate of 3,000 by 1981 is closer to being realistic.
According to Holmes' close friend Bill Amerson in the documentary Wadd, Holmes lost track of the exact number of women with whom he had sex. According to Amerson, Holmes became so fervent in spreading false publicity about himself that he also eventually lost track of what stories were true and which were lies; at one point in Wadd, Amerson recalls that Holmes, early in his career, told the press that a wealthy British socialite paid him to travel to England once a year and pleasure her for twenty-four hours. Later in life, Holmes fondly recalled to Amerson his adventures in England—which, of course, never occurred.
[edit] Last days
As Holmes' career started to decline, he starred in his only full-length feature gay porn movie, The Private Pleasures of John C. Holmes, in 1983. In the movie, Holmes performed anal sex with Joey Yale, who died of AIDS in 1986. Despite his appearance in this film, many of his heterosexual fans remained unaware that Holmes had had sex with men in some early loops and had worked as a male prostitute outside the porn industry.
As Holmes' career started to decline, he starred in his only full-length feature gay porn movie, The Private Pleasures of John C. Holmes, in 1983. In the movie, Holmes performed anal sex with Joey Yale, who died of AIDS in 1986. Despite his appearance in this film, many of his heterosexual fans remained unaware that Holmes had had sex with men in some early loops and had worked as a male prostitute outside the porn industry.
Around this time he met his future girlfriend and wife, Laurie Rose, a.k.a. Misty Dawn, a porn actress. In the early 1980s Rose was known by some as one of the industry's many so-called anal queens. Rose and Holmes met on the set of the film Marathon. Holmes chronicler and confidante Bill Amerson states that Rose commented that "I want to have all that up my butt" (referring to Holmes) and, in fact, off camera that did happen and Holmes and Rose became a couple from that point forward.[17]
In February 1986, Holmes was diagnosed as HIV positive. According to Laurie Rose, Holmes claimed that he never used needles and was deeply afraid of them. However, many porn historians and industry insiders from that era have heard testimony from some of Holmes' fellow performers to the contrary. Some have first-hand knowledge of his heroin abuse and also cite on-screen evidence of visible vein damage to the insides on Holmes' forearms. This damage becomes more apparent as Holmes moved from 8 mm loops to feature films, where the better quality of the 35mm film stock showed the detail that grainy 8 mm tended to mask.
Regardless of the nature of his addiction, other risk factors were present in his lifestyle, and there is no way to identify which of them led to his HIV infection. There has been speculation that experimentation with homosexuality—including the frequently mentioned rumor that he used the services of transsexual prostitutes—was the source of his infection. Other reports claim that, while in jail during the Wonderland Murders investigation, Holmes had at least one male-male sexual encounter with another prisoner who was HIV positive; the more gaudy version has jail guards bribing Holmes with better treatment, including beer, cigarettes, $10 bills, and other contraband, if he would sodomize other prisoners who either had violated prison rules or were known to be homosexuals and were the victims of sadistic games on the part of the guards. To date, however, no clear evidence of any of these assertions has ever been offered.
Holmes's first wife Sharon Gebenini and longtime porn friend Bill Amerson both dispute the rumors of intravenous drug abuse. Says Gebenini: "When I heard that he had contracted AIDS I knew that it had to have been transmitted sexually rather than from drug abuse. This man was terrified of needles, absolutely terrified. So I knew it was sexually transmitted. There is no other way". Amerson similarly states, "To those who claim to have shot drugs with John I say bullshit. John was terrified of needles." These accounts are all the more significant when one considers that while Gebenini and Amerson were both very close to Holmes, they barely knew each other as Gebenini wanted nothing to do with Holmes's porn friends and did not associate with them at all.
Some Holmes historians, including Luke Ford, Adair Carter and Amerson, have noted that evidence of Holmes' intravenous drug usage can be seen in frames from his last films. Closeups of his forearms in scenes where the lighting was suitable clearly show the type of venous discoloration associated with damage observed in heroin addicts. Frames from earlier films show the same damage, though to a lesser degree, and provide significant evidence that Gebenini's contrary claims regarding Holmes' drug problem are incorrect.
Holmes continued to have unprotected sex in the adult film industry without informing any of his partners of his status, and worked until the disease emaciated him in 1987. While a notable female performer he worked with, "Lisa DeLeeuw", died of AIDS in 1993, the last time she performed with Holmes, was apparently in 1981, which makes it unlikely that she contracted HIV from him.
Holmes married Laurie Rose in January 1987. Two months before his death, two police detectives visited him in the hospital, in another futile attempt to extract information about the Wonderland murders. John Holmes died from AIDS complications on March 13, 1988 at the age of forty three. His body was immediately cremated, and his ashes were scattered at sea off the coast of Oxnard, California. Laurie Rose took the name Laurie Holmes and later published the book Porn King: Autobiography of John C. Holmes in 1998.
[edit] Legacy
Holmes's legacy has become more renowned and publicly acceptable. A documentary on his wild life (Wadd—The Life and Times of John C. Holmes) has achieved cult status among certain late-night college campus independent film houses, and some elements of the film Boogie Nights were loosely based on Holmes' life, including the Laurel Canyon "Wonderland" murders. That aspect of his life was presented in a biographical movie called Wonderland, starring Val Kilmer and released on October 17, 2003.
Elio e le Storie Tese did homage Holmes with one of their first hits titled "John Holmes (A Life lived for Cinema)", included on their debut album Elio Samaga Hukapan Kariyana Turu published in 1989.
Finally, since the majority of Holmes' loops have gone into public domain following the collapse of Caballero Control Corporation in 1990, there are efforts underway to locate all surviving 8 mm loops starring Holmes and convert them to DVD for posterity. However, since the life expectancy of most 8 mm films is very poor (due to the nature of the film stock used at that time), it is believed that as much as 60–70% of Holmes' loops might be lost forever.
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