Gerardo Rocco "Gerard" Damiano (August 4, 1928[1] – October 25, 2008[2]) was an American director of adult films. He wrote and directed the 1972 pornographic film Deep Throat, which starred Linda Susan Boreman aka Linda Lovelace. He also directed The Devil in Miss Jones, which ranked #7 in Variety's list of the top-grossing pictures of 1973. (Deep Throat came in at #11 that year, its second consecutive year on the list.)[3] Damiano is one of the seminal directors of what is known as The Golden Age of Porn (1969–1984).[4][5]
Gerard Damiano was born Gerardo Rocco Damiano to an Italian American Catholic family in the Bronx, New York City.[2] When he was 6, his father died; his mother never remarried. He was a shoeshine boy in Times Square and worked in an automat.[5] The day he turned 17, he enlisted in the United States Navy, and served for 4 years. After his discharge, at the age of 21 years, Damiano studied X-ray technology on the G.I. Bill, and was an X-ray technician at Jamaica Hospital, in Queens, New York.[5] He then opened a hairdressing salon with a friend in New York City.[2] Frequently overhearing sexual gossip, at the salon, it convinced him that pornographic films, made to appeal to couples, would be a commercial success.[6]
Damiano took an interest in film-making after his accountant introduced him to a producer who was making a low-budget horror film. Intrigued, Damiano began helping out as he could on the set,[2] and went on to work as a crew member on numerous New York sexploitation films in the late 1960s.[7]
He directed the famous film Deep Throat, which was released in 1972 and starred Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems. The film is regarded as pioneering, and its success, plus that of The Devil In Miss Jones, which starred Georgina Spelvin, the following year, is credited with helping to launch the modern adult-entertainment industry.[8][9] Damiano was surprised that the film attracted such attention.[8] The film was financed by organized crime, and Damiano did not benefit from the film's substantial commercial success.[7]
In 1973, The Devil in Miss Jones made the Variety list of the top ten highest-grossing pictures of the year; Deep Throat, then in its second year of release (and second year on the list), just missed the top 10, coming in at #11 for the year. The Devil in Miss Jones racked up box office receipts of $7.7 million for the year, coming in just below the James Bond-franchise entry Live and Let Die and Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon.Deep Throat grossed $4.6 million for the year, placing it ahead of the prestige picture Sleuth,[3] which featured Oscar-nominated performances by Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. In 1975, Inish Kae, the film's distributor, launched an ad campaign touting the movie for Academy Award nominations. The ads in the entertainment industry trade press touted Miss Aggie for Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director (Damiano) and Best Actress (Deborah Ashira).[3]
Damiano often appeared in his own films in small non-sexual side roles, and used the names "Albert Gork," "Al Gork," "Jerry Gerard," under which name he had actually produced and directed Deep Throat, or "D. Furred."[10] He directed more than 50 adult films during his career.[4]
He married three times; with his second wife, Barbara Walton, he had two children, Christar and Gerard, Jr.[1][5]
At eighteen, Annie Sprinkle (born Ellen F. Steinberg) began working at the ticket booth at the Cine-Plaza Theatre in Tucson, Arizona, when Deep Throat (1972) was playing.[11] The film was busted, and when Steinberg had to appear in court as a witness, she met and began a relationship with Damiano, becoming his mistress. She followed him to New York City.[11]
Damiano died on October 25, 2008, in a Fort Myers, Florida hospital, at the age of 80 years, following complications from a stroke[1][8] he had suffered in September.[12]
