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Sexon the Hill
Erotica star talks about midwest roots
Adult film star Jody Maxell poses in an undated contributed photo. Maxwell began her career in the late 1970s and has been recognized as "The Queen of Fellatio"
Contributed Photo
BY ALEX PARKER editor@kansan.com
In 1974, Jody Maxwell was a senior at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, president of the school's Young Republicans chapter, performing in the campus production of "Death of a Salesman" and dating Kansas City Chiefs placekicker Jan Stenerud.
A year later, she was a porn star.
Maxwell was president of the UMKC communications fraternity, which hosted a conference on morality her senior year. One of the panelists was legendary adult filmmaker Gerard Damiano, who gained notoriety as the man behind the watershed film, "Deep Throat."
Damiano learned of Maxwell's acting aspirations and invited her to New York City for a screen test
"Porn sought me" she said. "I never sought it."
The journey she was about to take was a far cry from the country club life she had known as a scholarship student at St. Teresa's Academy in Kansas City, Mo., and the daughter of prominent Jackson County, Mo., prosecutors. But Maxwell took the plunge. Her father even gave his blessing.
Her meteoric rise from Kansas
City society to erotica legend is, in fact, straightforward and rather normal. There are no sordid tales of seedy sets, drugs or "Boogie Nights" falls from grace. Maxwell is, by all accounts, a talented and educated woman who decided to take a chance.
"I said to myself, 'If you don't take chances, you've never lived,'" Maxwell said in a phone interview from her home in California. In 1975, she starred in her first adult film, "Portrait," which was written for her by Damiano.
Maxwell said that for a girl from Kansas City, her new career was a departure from life in the sleepy Midwest.
But, she said, she was no prude.
"Sex-wise, I had been married and divorced already," Maxwell said. "I had gotten into swinging, which was prevalent in Kansas City at the time, so I was open to sex with other people."
Still, sex in the confines of a bedroom is different from performing in front of a camera, crew, director and a cast of actors. However, Maxwell and her co-star Jamie Gillis became quick friends before they started working together.
There was another perk.
"This guy (Gillis) is hot," she said. "He reeked of sexuality. A woman would not think twice about jumping into bed with
him."
Luckily for Maxwell, she was paid to.
But their friendship didn't make her first sex scene any easier.
"I was extremely nervous," she said. Director Damiano thought showingc a unique talent that Maxwell developed would put her at ease. Maxwell said it originated unexpectedly.
One December night, she surprised her boyfriend by putting a holiday twist on oral sex.
"I burst out into song," she remembered. She sang two verses of "Jingle Bells" to the pleasant surprise of her boyfriend.
she was still the only person Flint had interviewed for Hustler.
So was born "singing and sucking," a talent that helped earn her the title "Queen of Fellatio," bestowed by Hustler publisher Larry Flint; it later spawned a Christmas record. Maxwell said
"Portrait" debuted to solid reviews and her career escalated. From 1974 to 1983, she made fewer than 20 films; the Internet Movie Database counts 13. Today, that number pales in comparison to such industry stars as Jenna Jameson, who has more than 100 credits to her name, or Ron Jeremy, who has appeared in more
than 1,900 films. But quality, not quantity, earned Maxwell a ticket to the Erotica Hall of Fame in Las Vegas in 2006.
In 1983, Maxwell remarried, and saw a fearsome new player in the porn game: AIDS.
"It scared the hell out me," she said. "Less and less I wanted to take chances. I was getting worn
SEE MAXWELL ON PAGE 2B