A Belated Happy Birthday to the First Lady of Erotic Cinema

On March 1, 2026, Georgina Spelvin, the titular Miss Jones in The Devil in Miss Jones turned 90 years of age, an occasion ignored by the media, which quietly gutted me, especially as her longevity seemed miraculous, with Linda Lovelace dead due to a fatal car accident at age 53, Marilyn Chambers gone after a cerebral hemorrhage at 56, neither death solid proof of my lingering hunch that dicks take a lot out of a woman, though certainly bad luck for both of them, with Linda, Marilyn and Georgina’s x-rated films having been subjects of my research all those years ago when my then husband suggested we try porn to spice things up, with me insisting, as the one with taste, on making the selection, choosing The Devil in Miss Jones, soothed by Georgina Spelvin having been a 36-year-old woman and not a naïve young girl when making the film, which was shot on film, out of a script inspired by a Jean-Paul Sartre play (though not exactly based on it, as ‘No Exit’ had none of the movie’s spinster-commits-suicide-and-is-briefly-sent-back-to-earth-so-she-can-add-lust-to-her-sins-as-she’s-disqualified-from-Heaven-already plot line), where Georgina Spelvin’s nuanced performance was especially effective in the ending—Holy Hell, that ending—where, having struggled with her Catholic shame and finally tasted pleasure from realizing her erotic cravings, Justine Jones was damned to an eternity with someone incapable of bringing her sexual fulfillment, Georgina Spelvin’s acting talent and Broadway training driving home the pathos as Miss Jones’ rage and sorrow invaded every crevice of my being, with me sniffling and dodging my then husband’s needy hands and him repeating, all annoyed, that these movies aren’t meant to be watched the whole way through.

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