The Problematics: ‘Debbie Does Dallas’ and The Birth of a Porn Legend

The phrase “Porno Chic” is rarely uttered these days, if ever, and seems kind of inconceivable in today’s icky, PornHub-clip-driven world of adult entertainment to begin with. But believe it or not, there was a time, a brief one, during which so-called “fuck films” were subject to intense discussion in mainstream and highbrow culture. 

It was the 1972 porno Deep Throat that brought “adult entertainment” out of the closet, so to speak, and the reason was a matter of real estate. In the early ’70s, the exhibition of pornographic material in legit theaters was of dubious legality, but everything changed when a couple of enterprising entrepreneurs — real estate mogul and adult film investor Arthur Morowitz and grindhouse quickie producer Sam Lake — decided to book Throat at the World Theater in New York City. Almost immediately, the novelty picture — in which Linda Lovelace played a woman whose sexual pleasure center was located in an unusual place (see title) — took off. Johnny Carson joked about it on The Tonight Show. Nora Ephron wrote an essay on attending a screening. For a brief shining moment the World Theater was like Studio 54 — everybody who was anybody had to visit it at least once. 

As a movie, Deep Throat was ultimately one that only needed to be seen once, if at all, but it had a miniscule difference from other pornos of the time. In had a plot, humor, and performances — primarily from Lovelace and the energetic, mustachioed Harry Reems — that were a touch above the zombiefied norm of porn acting. It created the idea of aspirational smut. The wave it created was only just cresting in 1978, 45 years ago, when Debbie Does Dallas rode on it and into theaters nationwide.

This was the rare hardcore porno that actually got reviewed by Siskel and Ebert. No, really. Granted, it was one of the “Dogs of the Week” on their show in March of 1979, but that’s not nothing. Roger Ebert noted one of its primary claims to fame, that the Dallas Cowboys organization was suing the film’s makers for copyright infringement. Because the hook of the film was that the titular Debbie turned to sex work in order to earn the money to fly to Dallas and audition for a spot in the Cowboy’s famed cheerleader lineup. As sexy as the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders may have been, the organization prided itself on a wholesome, squeaky-clean image. “Copyright is the least of the things that are infringed on in this movie,” Ebert noted. But the controversy and the title, which turned into a very malleable catchphrase (there was at one point a video game called “Debbie Does Donuts,” in which the player slashes flying…donuts; someone also opened a short-lived “topless donut shop” of the same name), made it a hit. 

It did not deserve to be. I can’t actually find the quote, but in my recollection, Ebert (it could have been another mainstream critic) said that the main thing he noticed while watching the picture is that lead actress Bambi Woods could have cleaned under her fingernails before showing up to set. 

Unlike 1973’s The Devil in Miss Jones or 1976’s The Opening of Misty Beethoven, Debbie did not try for any narrative sophistication (as you may or may not recall, Miss Jones ends with a homage to Sartre’s No Exit, while Misty Beethoven is a riff on Shaw’s Pygmalion, or if you prefer, My Fair Lady, with sex work standing in for elocution and etiquette). Unlike 1981’s A Girl’s Best Friend and a bunch of other “ambitious” adult movies made before the entire industry moved to the San Fernando Valley (more or less; pockets of production activity and gonzo talent scouting persisted in Florida) (also see Boogie Nights), Debbie wasn’t shot on high-end cameras. (As a production assistant on Best Friend, which stars now-incarcerated sleazebag Ron Jeremy, the late mature-woman porn pioneer Juliet Anderson, and Veronica Hart, who cameos as a judge in Boogie Nights, I can testify that the apparatus on the movie was Panavision.) It’s just a grungy porno — largely shot in New York, as it happens — with more plot and dialogue than a loop.

However, like Deep Throat — which spawned several sequels, of a sort — Debbie proved to have porn franchise power. Studio/distributor Vivid Video got the rights to the, um, intellectual property and started churning out variants in the late ‘90s and early aughts, many of them directed by former performer Paul Thomas (who, like many late-’70s porn people, was actually a trained performer who had performed in some capacity in a professional production of Jesus Christ, Superstar). Toward the end of the ‘aughts DVD boom, Thomas specialized in self-hating porn. Pictures like Layout and a quasi-reboot of Deep Throat called Throat (starring Sasha Gray, with whom I myself have acted) were set in the worlds of porno and sex work and emphasized just how awful the people of that world became as a result of their professional activities. An interesting tack. The 2007 Debbie Does Dallas…Again stuck to the world of cheerleading and added a Heaven Can Wait style plot, in which Debbie dies right before a cheerleading competition but can come back in another cheerleader’s body to inspire her team to victory. Consider the possibilities, indeed. 

This picture is notable for a number of reasons, one being that there was a reality-TV making-of series (which initially was also titled Debbie Does Dallas…Again, then retitled Debbie Loves Dallas) produced in conjunction with it, and it’s a lulu. Or was a lulu, as it’s now pretty much impossible to see. There’s a lot of crying and a lot of sniping, with supporting player Cassidey, or maybe second lead Monique Alexander, or maybe both, openly mocking the mainstream ambitions of title star Stefani Morgan. It’s sad (not really) to see these young women who treat each other with such affectionate attention in lesbian and group sex scenes turn on each other so cattily and so quickly, practically reflexively even! 

Morgan herself had jumped out of the frying pan of Joe Francis’ Girls Gone Wild videos and into the fire of hardcore. In which enterprise she had a terrible time — I gather Cassidey wasn’t the only person who was mean to her — then retired, came back in 2015, and fell out of sight again. Penny Flame, playing Debbie’s docent through the Pearly Gates (as is customary in porno films, every locale is ideal for sex, and sure enough the heavenly astral plane is the setting for an orgy) became known in the outside world by showing up on VH1’s Sex Rehab With Doctor Drew. The addiction wasn’t just sex; her gonzo films for the studio Shane’s World showed her an avid consumption of cannabis products — Blazed and Confused was a typical title. After cleaning up she wrote a searing memoir, I Am Jennie, which, like so many porn memoirs, is generally dispiriting. But she herself seems well today, and good for her. The most intriguing post-porn story in Debbie-ville is of Sunny Leone, Canadian-born of Sikh parents, who left porn for India, where she became a television personality, endorsement model, and a film actor while making little or no reference to her porn past. (Her first movie in India has the title Jism 2, but the word means something wholly other in Hindi, you pervert.) 

Debbie Does Dallas…Again was also the first adult movie on Blu-ray. It wasn’t even 20 years ago and now Blu-rays, the idea of linear story-driven porn with “production value” (which the Paul Thomas film had, kind of, and the original sure didn’t), and more features of the past sound incredibly alien. A lost world. 

Veteran critic Glenn Kenny reviews‎ new releases at RogerEbert.com, the New York Times, and, as befits someone of his advanced age, the AARP magazine. He blogs, very occasionally, at Some Came Running and tweets, mostly in jest, at @glenn__kenny. He is the author of the acclaimed 2020 book Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas, published by Hanover Square Press.