Part 5: 1980

By 1980 she had become one of the biggest names in the adult industry. She was marketed as the Platinum Princess of Porn, Penthouse called her the Marilyn Monroe of Porn, and her name on the box-cover meant increased sales. Years before Ginger Lynn popularised the notion of star vehicles, Seka was appearing in movies such as Inside Seka, Confessions of Seka and Princess Seka. With the exception of Marilyn Chambers she was also the highest paid actress in porn. “The career was going very nicely. Between films I would travel the country making personal appearances. I travelled to Europe. I was having the time of my life.”

William Margold later described Seka as “a quarterback in an industry of linesmen.” She approached porn as a business and knew how to achieve what she wanted. If you want something bad enough you’ve got to work your buns off for it… Sometimes you have to smile at people you don’t want to smile at, and sometimes you have to be nice to people you don’t want to be nice to. Sometimes you have to give when you don’t want to, but in the end it’s for your own benefit.”

Seka’s position meant that she was able to dictate terms. “Nobody ever forced me to do anything in the business. As a matter of fact, they’d probably tell you I forced them to do a few things, either what I wanted to do or wouldn’t do. They abided by my rules and my time schedule or I wasn’t gonna do it.”

Her attitude, however, led to friction with other female stars and members of the film crew. Seka was acquiring the reputation of someone that was ‘hard to work with’. Shaun Costello, director of Waterpower (1975), was scathing about her in a 2005 interview: “At some point I was asked by the guys I worked for to use this new girl named Seka. She was a pain in the ass from day one. She refused to come to my office or apartment for an interview. But the guys were pestering me so I made arrangements to visit a film set where she was working. This was normally taboo, but I knew the director, and he agreed to it. When I got there I was sickened by what I saw. The lights were on, the crew was standing around. Seka, who looked like a tired stripper, was sitting in the middle of it all barely touching the genitals of the guy she was working with, while some pimp/boyfriend type (he never left her side) was yelling at the poor guy who was trying to get hard. This was pitiful. The deal was that when you hired Seka you had to hire the boyfriend, who would direct her sex scene. I took one look at this and told the boys downtown what the drill was, and that I passed on Seka forever. To their credit they said OK. My sets were the only ones without hard on problems because my sets were happy sets.”

According to legendary director and producer Svetlana Marsh, “Working with someone like Seka was really a pain in the ass. She’s a star. If you’re working with a star, you have a problem, but once they're into the scene, they do well. The trick is to get them into it. You have to treat them carefully… During the filming of ‘F...’ (1980), the whole thing fell apart because John Leslie asked Rhonda Jo Petty to suck his cock before a scene started. She said, ‘How dare you talk like that to me. I’m a star. I’m not going to suck your cock. Fuck you. Why don’t you suck me?’ The whole thing exploded. Seka took Rhonda’s side, and they walked off the set. I had to go back and calm them down. If you see that scene in ‘F...’, you’ll notice tension between them.”

Although Annette Haven never appeared in a scene with Seka, they did work together in films such as Dracula Sucks (1978), ‘F...’ (1980) and Between the Sheets (1981). She was even more direct: “I have no real love for Seka. I was finishing a shoot, an explicit scene, and came into my own dressing room. I am very precise about my make-up and usually do it all myself. Seka had come in earlier and pushed my stuff off my table and starts doing her make-up. She wasn’t even in my film. I saw what she had done and she said something ugly and very rude to me for no reason at all. I was calm, but seething under the surface.”

Seka’s feelings for Annette were mutual. “Annette Haven was a bitch,” she would later say. “She thought she was all that and a bag of chips, and quite frankly I thought she was looney tunes. She was absolutely neurotic about everything… I never did a sex scene with her and I didn’t even like being around her on the set, so it was just as well.”

Johnny Keyes, star of Behind the Green Door (1972) and Resurrection of Eve (1973), worked with Seka in Heavenly Desires. According to him there were more than just ego-issues at stake. “She and her husband came from the South – her husband didn’t want me to fuck her. So they wrote our scene out. But I didn’t give a fuck about fucking Seka. She’s just another pussy to me.” Keyes, who refers to himself as “the African Giant”, went on to claim: “If she had never made that movie with me, she would have been shit; she would just have been another big tit bitch!”

Seka would later say that race had nothing to do with it. “I turned down certain guys of all colours and ethnicities. I was an equal-opportunity picky woman… I never really liked him [Johnny Keyes]. I didn’t find him attractive and I didn’t like his personality… When I didn’t do scenes with him, he started in on me that I was racist, which he harped on about because I was a Southern girl. That pissed me off. He kept on it and on it and finally I snapped, ‘Johnny, I don’t care if you’re black, white or green. I think you’re ugly on the outside and ugly on the inside, and that’s why I don’t want to fuck you.’”

Other porn stars, such as Veronica Hart, have nothing but fond memories of Seka. In her first ever movie, the director Lenny Kurtmann suggested they speed up a scene when her co-star was having trouble maintaining an erection. “So I assume the doggy style position, and Lenny whips his dick out, pumps three or four strokes in my ass, then comes all over my butt. I didn’t know much about the business, but I knew that wasn’t right. I felt like a piece of shit. I cried on the way home. I came back to the shoot the next day and told Seka that Lenny made me feel cheap… she was just really great. She said, ‘Oh that’s bullshit. You didn’t have to do that darling. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to’… Seka was just great… Seka was the first woman I ever did on screen. I felt kind of a sisterhood with her. I just loved her – as long as I have a face, Seka will always have a place to sit.”

As always there are two sides to every argument. Bobby Hollander recalled how he “did an awful lot of work with Seka in the early days... And she was great to work with.” Jerry Butler, who often argued with her, was also enthralled, admitting in his biography: “I’ve always loved Seka… Seka still turns me on… I’ve always dreamed of working with her but never did.” As far as Jamie Gillis was concerned: “I loved Seka. She was my little boy fantasy.” Bobby Astyr, who at the time was involved with fellow porn star Samantha Fox, and worked with Seka in films such as Tara (1980), was also positive in his recollections. “Seka’s a luscious lady and gives a dynamite blowjob. She’s an austere blonde goddess. She’s very sophisticated and she has a great sense of humour. Sometimes when I look at her I think she’s about to laugh. Seka is everyman’s fantasy – I know I had a terrific time!”

Regardless of what her character was like, the fact remained that on screen she was a beautiful sexually charged woman that captivated her male co-stars and audience alike. Veteran porn actor Eric Edwards had been in the industry since the late 1960s, and yet one of his most vivid memories of his time in films was working with Seka. “The thing I like most about working with Seka is looking at her while I’m fucking her. I really like to watch what I’m doing, and Seka has so many goodies I almost got whiplash when we were doing a scene. Coming on those beautiful tits was definitely a moment to remember!”

Don Walters [aka Howard A. Howard], producer of films such as Inside Jennifer Welles (1977) and All About Gloria Leonard (1978), would later recall meeting Seka for the first time. “I was having a great time at a party and I saw Seka and Ken talking with some people a few feet away from me. The minute I saw her I knew she had potential as a star for one of my pictures. I go for personalities. One fabulous female that the audience can really get into.”

Walters cast her in his movie, Inside Seka (1980), claiming she received more than ten times the going rate for any porn star. “She gave a real star performance. She was worth every penny, and it comes across in the film.” According to Howard, Richard Bolla got so carried away in his scene with Seka that he then forgot to ask for his pay. “It looked like he was having such a good time balling Seka, he should probably pay me.”

Inside Seka (1980) became her most popular movie. Although the credits claim it was directed and written by Seka and her husband Ken, the truth was very different. “Ken and I are credited with directing it. What?! Neither he nor I could direct traffic at that point in our lives, let alone a film. Joe Sarno directed that film… The storyline was supposed to be about my life with Ken.”

Perhaps the film’s most memorable scene included Seka with three men. “There was one scene where I was giving oral sex to three or four different guys at the same time… In the scene, Ron Jeremy came in and asked if he could do me, too, and I said he should go do himself. Which he did… That was the highlight for me because it was hysterical. I had a guy in each hand and one starring me in the face, and I actually made the director stop filming because I had to see Ron in action. I was too distracted to continue.”

Ron Jeremy: “The first time that I kissed myself on camera was for a film called Inside Seka… This is the only film in which I have ever – and I mean ever – had an erection while doing this.”

George Payne was one of the three men Seka was sucking off.  “It was a strange scene, with four other guys, and you know if I say it was strange, it was pretty strange. Her husband was there taking stills. Ron Jeremy blew himself. There were too many people in that scene. Everyone was pulling in her, so it was tough to get near her.”

Seka would later remember the movie, saying, “I loved it and I hated it. I loved being the star, the girl whose name was in the title. My ego is no different than anyone else’s. Before the movie, no one really knew me or Ken. Now we were celebrities.”

Yet despite the films closing statement emphasising how devoted her and Ken were to each other, their relationship was in fact reaching breaking point.

Fred Lincoln: “She had this suitcase pimp husband, Ken, who thought he was Elvis, who had no idea what he was doing with her. And she was soooo good, this girl. So I called Freddie over at the Melody and said, ‘Boy, you gotta hire this girl. She’s gonna be really on top in our business. Seka finally saw what an asshole her husband really was. He was fucking every girl at the Melody. I mean, she’d work, and he’d take the money, and then get her more work. Ken got her to work for Lenny Kurtmann; she did ten movies in a week. That’s what this fucking moron was doing to her, instead of making her a high-end girl. Ken sold Seka too cheap. If you get overexposed in theatres, it fucks you up terrible. Seka knew it. So she finally broke up with Ken.”

According to Seka, “Everybody thought we were married at the time, but we weren’t. Ken told everybody we were married because it kept the hound dogs away from me. I went along with it like everything else this domineering man told me.”

By 1980 she had had enough. “He wanted to be there during all the sex scenes, which made me uncomfortable. I enjoyed what I was doing, but he was real strange, very obsessive. High Society, a quality skin publication, wanted me to fly to New York for a photo-spread… We were getting ready to leave for the shoot when Ken locked my poodle in his red and white Eldorado. We had been arguing all the time and there had been physical abuse. I just couldn't take it anymore… I just wanted my dog. He refused, so I grabbed a hammer and destroyed the car, his pride and joy. I started on the hood, went for the headlights, and was going for the windshield when he decided he’d better open up the car and give me my dog.”