By Spurtz
I lived in a little town called Chatsworth. It’s part of the greater community of Los Angeles and located in the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley. Near the Spahn Movie Ranch where Charles Manson made his home.
But that’s not what Chatsworth is famous for. It happens to be, or was when I lived there, the world capital of XXX video production. Every major porn production company was located there. Companies like Vivid Video, Devil’s Film, Diabolic Video, and many others.
I lived in a fairly exclusive gated community of 285 acres, known as Monteria Estates in Chatsworth. When I was there in the ‘70’s, 80’s, and early ‘90’s, there were maybe 40 or 50 homes. It was very rural with no curbs or sidewalks on any of the streets. The homes ranged from small ranch houses built in the ‘40’s and ‘50’s to more recent large homes of 4,000 to 5,000 square feet on five or more acres. My home was new but only about 2,500 square feet on a one-acre lot, the smallest lot in Monteria Estates at that time.
A number of celebrities lived there, most of whom may not be that well known today. Jerry Van Dyke, Chad Everett, Redd Foxx, Christine Lund (a very popular news anchor for ABC), Dan Blocker who played Hoss Cartwright in Bonanza, along with many others. One family who lived there had two really beautiful daughters, one of whom married Hulk Hogan. The other was a minor actress named Christie Claridge. I met Christie at a small party at her parent’s house. She was only 17 or 18 at the time and super hot but a bit of a snot. She knew she was hot. Looking at photos of her now on the internet, she doesn’t look as good.
Hogan spent a lot time at Monteria riding his Harley around the area along with his buddy Brian Bosworth, a famous college football player who only lasted three seasons in the pro’s.
Another minor celebrity was Tony Butala who owned a popular musical group known as The Lettermen. I never met Tony as he was on tour most of the time but I knew his wife Judy fairly well as we were both officers in the homeowner’s association that met once a month. However Judy got fed up with Tony being gone all the time and split. Tragically she was killed in a car accident.
But after she split from Tony she had a great job with a Hollywood P.R. agency. She threw a lavish house warming party and my wife and I were invited. It was mostly celebs she worked with and some personal friends, like us. In attendance was Connie Stevens from ‘Hawaiian Eye.’ Also Richard Roundtree from ‘Shaft’ and Judie Landers from ‘The Love Boat.’ And several others who I can’t remember.
Somehow Judy Landers and I really hit it off. She was there with her new husband I was with my wife, but Judy and I literally spent the entire evening together. She suggested that the four of us get together for dinner or something but for whatever reason it never happened.
I’m probably dreaming but I thought there might be a very strong mutual attraction. But her being fairly newly married, I doubt if anything was really there. She’s still married to the same guy 38 years later.
I mentioned the Monteria Estates homeowner’s association where I was a member. At one of our meetings just as we were breaking up there was another woman board member who I barely knew who whispered in my ear, “Let’s go someplace and fuck.” Although this shocked the shit out of me, she was pretty good looking so I wasn’t about to turn her down. I only banged her twice.
Monteria Estates was widely used for legit TV and movie production. It was popular with production companies because there was almost no traffic, relatively quiet, and there were plenty of large open fields where production company cars, trucks, and mobile dressing rooms could be parked.
It was also great for everybody who lived there because the Monteria Estates CC&R’s required that Monteria would get 50% of all money paid to homeowners for the use of their home or property in a TV or movie production. A huge amount of money was brought in annually to the extent that homeowner’s only paid annual dues of a few hundred bucks. The money was used for street maintenance, some landscaping and gate guard salaries.
In the middle of Monteria was a fairly large lake and I think maybe ten homes were on the lake. I became pretty good friends with a guy who lived on the lake. He had a nice home but it was old. I never knew exactly what he did for a living but I know he made good money renting his place out for TV and movies. He had something going on there almost all the time. One production company had a scene in the TV show called ‘Knight Rider’ where a car crashed through a fence and landed on a tennis court. I guess they couldn’t find anybody who would let them do that so they built a court on this guy’s property just to get that shot. He ended up with a beautiful lighted tennis court for his trouble.
His house later burned to the ground and I would bet my life that he did it. He had a classic Rolls Royce that just happened to be out on loan for a movie shoot and he was visiting friends when the house burned. This happened just before I moved away and I lost touch so I never did see what the new house looked like.
I was approached to have my house used in a TV shoot. It was for ‘Hart to Hart’ with Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers. They wanted to have the pair roar up my driveway in a car, jump out and run to the front door. From there the internal shots would be on a sound stage. They offered me $1,200 which was big money in the ‘80’s. But I had a beautiful dichondra lawn (look it up) and to get the shot they wanted, cameras would be set up on the lawn and probably tons of people would be trampling it. So I regrettably turned them down although I would have loved to have met Stephanie Powers. I was a huge fan.
In the ‘80’s pornography had moved into the big time with the advent of VCR’s and XXX video tapes. Every community had a video store where movies of all types, including XXX movies, were readily available. Chatsworth’s video store was run by a very normal appearing middle aged couple with a teen daughter. The store had a separate room with XXX tapes and you had to be 18 to enter. I frequented the store and rented XXX tapes on a regular basis. I was always extremely embarrassed when I was checked out by the teen daughter who was only 15 or 16 years old. The tapes were in full color sleeves with very explicit scenes on them. Giant cocks being sucked or worse. The teen was totally unfazed by any of the video illustrations. It was just a job to her.
I would get home with my rented tapes and my wife and I would watch them. One tape in particular really caught our interest. It was titled ‘Hot Dallas Nights.’ It started off with a pickup truck driving down a rural street. My wife and I were totally shocked when the truck drove right by our house which was clearly visible in the background.
The truck drove to the end of our street that dead-ended at a huge house of about 12,000 square feet. Most of the film’s action took place in the house and around the pool in back. I recognized the settings because a year or so earlier I had toured the house when it was for sale.
I later learned that the house had been purchased by two lesbians from Las Vegas and was used extensively for porn production. However, the home’s two owners were arrested and convicted for producing child porn. The house went back on the market and was purchased by the owner/president of a computer hard drive manufacturing company that was, at the time, the largest employer in Chatsworth.
I remember one time I visited a local printer to look at proofs for a new catalog my company was having printed. As I walked through the shop there were stacks and stacks of XXX printed material that had very explicit sex scenes depicted.
If you are into sex toys, you’ve probably heard of Doc Johnson. They are currently located in North Hollywood and employ 500 people. A former employee of mine named Larry went to work for them and he offered to give me a tour. This was a number of years ago when they only had about a hundred employees, almost all of whom were Mexican women. It was a crazy sight to see all these women handling huge rubber dongs and dildoes of every imaginable type. The company would have both male and female porn stars show up and have casts made of their genitalia which were then made into rubber or latex duplicates. My former employee Larry is gay and really got off on helping make casts of the porn star’s erect cocks.
There was a local shop that we bought type from that was used in pasting up catalogs and flyers. That type of business no longer exists due to desk top publishing with computers. Anyway, I used to stop by the shop and pick up type. The receptionist and I became very friendly. She was extremely pretty. One day she showed up with a new set of tits and invited me to feel them to confirm they felt real. They did. She invited me to stop by her apartment after work for a drink. Somehow the subject of sex came up and she volunteered that she didn’t want to fuck me but would jerk me off. She gave a really good handjob.
About a year later after we had stopped buying type, I was flying out of Burbank to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The plane was mostly filled with a large group who were all flying together. In the group were two recognizable porn stars along with the former type shop receptionist. She spotted me and came and sat with me for the entire flight to Vegas.
She told me she now worked for Vivid Video and everybody in her group also worked there. They would all be working the Vivid Video booth. The CES Show used to have a huge section devoted to porn producers who had display booths, many of which were staffed with porn stars. Some of the booths had private rooms as part of the display and supposedly prime customers could get a free blowjob from a porn star in one of the private rooms.
Eventually there were so many complaints about the porno booths that CES set up a completely separate show in another venue, but it was still considered part of CES. Your CES badge would get you in either show. I did browse the porn section while it was still in the Vegas Convention Center but never made it to the new separate venue. Which I now regret because it was likely by then a total free-for-all with naked porn stars on display.
Back to my time in Monteria Estates. One thing that the community did was host an annual progressive party. If you are not familiar with how this works, one homeowner would host a pre-dinner cocktail party. After a few drinks the entire group would move to a second home where appetizers were served. Then move to a third home for an entrée, then a fourth for dessert, and lastly a fifth for after dinner drinks.
The interesting thing was quite a few of the celebs who lived there took part. One very appealing host was Christine Lund, a very popular news anchor for ABC in L.A. Lund was from Sweden and was a classic Scandinavian blonde and was about six feet tall. And very pretty. And extremely nice.
My favorite host was Jerry Van Dyke. He was a super gracious host and had a beautiful wife who was extremely friendly. Even though my wife and I were nobodies, we fit in fairly well, mostly due to my wife. She was very attractive, super stylish, personable, intelligent, and very outgoing. She was also British with an appealing accent. Everybody loved her and I was along for the ride.
Let me tell you a bit about Redd Foxx. I never met him but did meet his wife who was Asian. One of two different Asian wives he was married to. She lived at the home in Monteria Estates but Redd spent most of his time in Vegas since he had an ongoing gig at one of the showrooms. He did come home from time to time. His home was up for sale at one point and Hulk Hogan was rumored as a possible buyer. I think the house did eventually burn down after I moved away. Likely another insurance scam.
Another couple who participated in the progressive party wrote songs and lyrics, mostly for big name singers. Although they also did some offbeat stuff for themselves. Like a Christmas album that was a huge seller. They had a giant art collection, probably worth several million bucks. I recognized one artist whose paintings sell for $40,000 to $50,000 and they had three of them. The huge living room had a very high ceiling and every wall was covered in framed original art all the way to the ceiling. There had to be sixty pieces in that one room. Another room had one wall covered in gold and platinum records. At least forty of them.
One loser neighbor was Chad Everett, the former star of a major TV show called ‘Medical Center.’ He pissed and moaned about everything. He didn’t like me, not me personally, but the fact that I lived on a one-acre lot which he objected to. He thought one acre lots cheapened the whole community.
One time my wife had several of her friends over. All of a sudden somebody loudly banged on my door. It was Everett, half in the bag, loudly complaining that one of our visitor’s cars was ‘blocking the street.” I walked out to see and one car had about a foot of the rear bumper over the street. Now this was a street that at that time only had three homes past my house. So traffic was non-existent.
Everett was raving on about how this could cause an accident. I told him that the only time anybody could possibly have an issue with that car would be if they were driving drunk… like he was. He gave me a dirty look and stomped off to his car. I saw him at a couple of annual community meetings where he also made an ass of himself. He was the only person who lived there who wasn’t a very nice person.
One time there was a car parked in front of my house with a guy in it. He sat there for several hours. This was most unusual so I went out and asked him what he was doing. He didn’t want to answer so I threatened to call the cops. He finally admitted he was a private investigator but refused to elaborate. I’m sure he was watching Everett’s place which he could see from where he was parked. In fact it was the only house he could see. I knew Everett was having marital issues. This happened around 1987 but Everett and his wife didn’t split until 2011 and he died of lung cancer a year later at age 75.
One other family that participated in the progressive party had a very costly carved wooden sign in their front yard. It had two film movie reels with the words XXX Ranch. I didn’t know exactly what the guy did but assumed he was in the porn industry.
I was on the homeowner’s association board of directors. The XXX Ranch guy was doing something for us and I was asked to stop by his place of business and pick up some papers. When I got there it was a fairly large building but no company name. Just a street number. I went to the door and rang the bell and a small window in the door slid open and a guy asked who I was. I gave him my name and the door buzzed open.
Once inside the building I saw it was filled with rows and rows of multi-layer racks. On the racks were hundreds of VCR’s. There had to have been at least 500 of them. It was a duplication business. One VCR would have a master tape while maybe a hundred more had blank tapes in them. The video on the master was being copied onto all the blank tapes. The guy’s business produced finished tapes for all the XXX production companies in Chatsworth.
He later got into big trouble as part of an investigation into mafia involvement in porn. Which I guess was fairly big. Anyway, he was called to testify in some trial against a mafia figure. He refused to testify, the word being he was a dead man if he opened his mouth. They had him on some other charges and offered immunity for his testimony. He refused and was sentenced to prison on the original charge.
I felt sorry for him. He seemed like an ok guy with a nice wife and three little kids.
I haven’t been back to Monteria Estates since I moved out in 1991. I looked at an aerial map today and there about twice as many homes there now, but still a lot of open space. The house I bought in Monteria back in 1976 for $170,000 is now on Zillow for $2.2 million.