The Adult Industry (And Beyond) Remembers Samantha Fox

NEW YORK CITY—Following AVN's short obituary of Golden Age adult star Samantha Fox, more information and comments from friends and people who knew of Samantha have been flooding in—much of it from Rialto Report honcho Ashley West, publicist/director/producer Steven Banan (no, not the Breitbart guy) and Howie "Richard Pacheco" Gordon—making easily enough for a ten-page article, but we'll be editing judiciously to give our readers the important details of her life, starting with the early days. "Samantha was born into a good family," West recounted. "Her father was a diplomat in New York; her mother was a bookkeeper, and they actually traveled extensively overseas for United Nations missions, so she had quite a cosmopolitan upbringing. She actually had four brothers and sisters. She was the oldest, and interestingly enough, she had a twin sister—so different from the run-of-the-mill family background that you might come across. "She went to a private school, the United Nations private school," he added. "She certainly had artistic aspirations in terms of, she wanted to dance, she wanted to act; when she left school, she went to Sarah Lawrence College for artistic degrees, so she was clearly someone who had an artistic bent. She married quite young, a man named John Block. It was him who persuaded her to start modeling, and the modeling soon turned to nude modeling and that soon turned to adult film. She was on the cover of Cheri magazine in 1976 with a bunch of other girls, and shortly after that, she made her first film." There remains a bit of controversy over just what that first film was. Banan believes that her first was Here Comes the Bride in 1977 (the Internet Adult Film Database lists it as 1978) followed by Odyssey with director Gerard Damiano, but as West points out, "Sometimes these movies might take six months or a year to actually come out, so I don't know if we'll ever know which was actually the first one she made." That said, West added, "She always referred to Here Comes the Bride in interviews—one in High Society—as the first movie that she did. The guy who made Here Comes the Bride was John Christopher, and in her interviews, she always said that she walked into his office one day and he said, 'You're gonna be a star in the industry; I want you to be the star of my next movie, Here Comes the Bride.'" One thing about which there is no doubt is that one of the most important men in her life was director Chuck Vincent. "When she met Chuck Vincent, that's when she really came into her own as an actress," West opined. "At first, Chuck didn't think much of her. He thought that she was sort of scruffy and not particularly attractive and so on, but that soon changed, and they became good friends, and she became a bit of a muse to him. Their first film was a film called Bad Penny, which I think was 1978, and she did her best work for Chuck, a lot of her best work for Chuck. She won several awards, AFAA awards as Best Female Performer of the Year for Chuck films... but she made a whole string of films for him, and he really was an actor's director, so they were a great combination, and that's when her career hit full stride." By the 1980s, according to Banan, "Fox was living in New York City, rooming with fellow actress Kelly Nichols. In 1979, Fox co-starred with Jack Wrangler in the Vincent-directed porn Jack 'n' Jill. It was their first film together. When Fox met Wrangler, she 'tingled all over' and they had 'instant magnetism.' They lived together for a week 'playing husband and wife' to prepare for the domestic-themed swinging film." The other important man in Fox's life, however, was her "romantic partner" Bobby Astyr. "Samantha and Bobby met in '78 on an adult film set," West recalled. "She wasn't very impressed with him, but he pursued her, pursued her, and in the end, they got together, and from '78 until he died of cancer in 2002, they were together. She nursed him through the cancer and they actually had adjoining apartments in the same brownstone building on East Third Street in New York. He was a big part of her life. He was a stand-up comedian, he was an artist, he was an all-around nice guy and the two of them were nearly inseparable for many years." Fox is also well-remembered by one of her leading men, Richard Pacheco, who has since "outed" himself as Howie Gordon. In Gordon's autobiography Hindsight, he wrote about his on-set relationship with Fox during the filming of Edwin Brown's Irresistible. "She was a talented, delicious woman," Gordon wrote. "Every day on the set with her became foreplay. I enjoyed watching her work. She was clearly a top-of-the-line professional.... Backstage, Samantha and I spoke a lot about relationships. She was trying to figure out how to get Bobby to propose marriage. I enjoyed the scheming with her. Hell, I was happy just to know her. "When our sex scene finally did come around, it was spectacular," he continued. "I couldn’t have written a better script for it than the way it unfolded. Late in the afternoon, we were doing some dialogue in bed. There had been no sex yet, just a lot of talk. During a break, Samantha had to leave the set to take a phone call from her Bobby. He was at the New York Adult Film Critic’s Awards Show. When she got back in bed with me, she told me that I had just been given their Best Actor and their Best Supporting Actor Awards for that year. Wow, that was a stunning bit of foreplay! The reigning Queen had just crawled into my bed and told me I’d been chosen King. Her eyes revealed a happiness and a respect. My spirits soared. I felt that I had earned my place to be next to her." There's plenty more about his interactions with Fox in Hindsight, which is available from Amazon among other places. Fox made 97 adult films between 1976 and 1985 (though her two 1985 titles, Super Seka and Ticked Pink, might easily have been shot the year before), and following her XXX career, Fox starred in the Doris Wishman mainstream horror film A Night To Dismember, released in 1989. Fox also appeared in other Hollywood films, including Warrior Queen (opposite Sybil Danning) (1987), Slammer Girls (1987) and Violated (1988). "Her idea was, [mainstream acting] was what she would transition into, but as was the case with so many adult stars leaving the industry, that didn't happen," West detailed. "So she went back to Hunter College and studied physical therapy, and she got work for many years as a fitness instructor. She had private clients and she taught aerobics classes in and around New York, and that's what she did for most of the time. I don't know if she retired from that, but she did have health issues, cardio-vascular issues in more recent years that meant she couldn't be as active as a fitness therapist as she had been." While Fox was busted just once for obscenity (see below) thought never for prostitution (in which she dabbled for a short while at the beginning of her career), Banan reports that Fox was indicted in 1985 in Utah on charges that she had contributed sexually explicit recordings to a phone sex line that children had been able to access, but that later, the charges were dropped. Fox did stray from her reclusiveness just twice in her later years: Once to give AVN an interview on having been inducted into AVN's Hall of Fame in 2002, and once to give an interview for a documentary about Jack Wrangler, her semi-frequent co-star in several of her Chuck Vincent films. "The two were great friends," West noted, "and when that documentary was made, she agreed to appear on screen in an interview, and she looked great; she didn't look a day older and she spoke well and was fantastic. To my knowledge, that was her last public appearance, about 12 years ago." The news of Fox's death has brought several of her old friends and acquaintances out of the woodwork. "Not sure how this would fit in anything you might want to write about her, but if I had hooked up with her for an evening that we had both planned, I probably would have been arrested," recalled actor/director Carter Stevens. "We were both working (as actors) on Candi Girl in southern NJ ( I think it might have been the first time we really met) and she invited me to spend the night with her, but I had an appointment the next day in NYC and had to catch a ride back to the city. We agreed to a rain check because I was due to come back to the shoot the day after that for another scene. However, while I was in NYC, the entire cast and crew got busted at a beauty parlor I believe. I had left my suitcase at the shoot and somehow the police thought I was the producer or the director of the film.  So I narrowly avoided getting arrested, and Stash and I never did get together." Joyce Snyder, now of Scarlet Productions, also has fond memories of Fox. "Sad to hear of Samantha Fox’s passing," she told AVN. "I knew her well in the early-mid '80s when she was publisher of a magazine I created (for the Swank magazine group) titled Samantha Fox’s X-Rated Cinema. She was the magazine's figurehead/publisher for years until one of the guys at the office convinced owner Chip Goodman to remove her (licensed) name from the magazine; Samantha was considered too old (still in her mid-30s). I fought against that decision, arguing that without her name above the title, no one would recognize the magazine… but to no avail. Of course sales fell off a cliff; the publisher then asked me to renew Samantha’s licensing contract at an even higher fee. She refused as she wanted no more X-rated association. Instead, she became gym class instructor. Years later, one of her workout attendees tittered to me how ladies in her class learned they were led by a former a porn star. I remember remarking how she should be respected as an extremely talented actress, porn’s Bette Davis." Samantha Fox has been nominated for several adult film industry honors, and attained her first win for Best Actress in 1980 from the Adult Film Association of America for her starring role in Jack 'n' Jill, then won that same title the next year for her work in The Lady Is A Tramp—a role which also garnered her the Critics Adult Film Association's Best Actress trophy for that same film in the same year. Fox was also nominated for an Erotica award in 1983 for her work in Undercovers. Banan also collected several more remembrances and accolades for Fox, including Ron Jeremy's recollection that, "She was a very funny porn star. When we were together, she always made me laugh. I did my first sex scene in the industry with Samantha Fox in Tigresses and Other Man-Eaters. Samantha and her boyfriend at the time Bobby Astyr and I would go on the road together." Director Ed Powers said, "Samantha Fox, will be missed! She was the loveliest of ladies. I met her and Bobby Astyr in Show World on 8th Ave in 1978 and took some Polaroids with her. A year later I worked in Les Gals on 42nd and 6th and met her again. I was a big fan, and meeting Samantha was a highlight in my life." Mara Epstein-Saidner, a veteran industry member who owned Laserdisc Entertainment, an adult laserdisc company that specialized in reissuing classic adult films, said, "May she RIP and forever in our hearts!" And finally, there's modern star Sunny Lane, who offered, "From one creator to another, Thank You for paving the path for me to dance my dance. God Rest Her Soul ❤️" Pictured: Samantha Fox and Bobby Astyr, courtesy of The Rialto Report