THE JACK WRANGLER STORY: Or What's A Nice Boy Like You DOING?

by Jack & Carl Johnes Wrangler ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 6, 1984

Adopting a tone that's part-earnest, part-cutesy, Wrangler--identified as ""America's leading male porn star""--tells his uncommonly tacky, X-rated story. In a 1975 prologue Jack (nÉ Stillman) is performing as a live stripper at a gay-porn movie house. ""Why? Why would I prefer to sink into this kind of filth in a depraved toilet rather than accepting a job offering certain future success among the people and trappings that were my birthright?"" Why indeed? Son of an aloof movie-producer and a beautiful/fluttery ex-actress, Jack appeared on TV as a child, went to Northwestern, did a lot of theater. But, from an early age, skinny, insecure Jack ""wanted to be a heterosexual gay jock. I still do, and it's not easy."" So, while his gay love-life escalated in lust and heartbreak, Jack revamped his body, changed his name, and broke into gay pornography. (His parents are only faintly stunned; his sister, in the book's one funny moment, is thrilled: ""I'm home free! They won't knock me for anything any more!"") But: ""I didn't want to be thought of as a cock, or worse, a freak. . .That's why I had to screw a woman. Right away."" Hence the shift into heterosexual porn--a shift that Jack tried (without success) to keep permanent after meeting his true love, the matronly pop singer Margaret Whiting. (""We kissed a lot, touched a lot, and discovered an innocence that most people would never suspect in two such supposedly worldly people. . ."") Margaret was less than thrilled about Jack's gay movies; likewise Jack's continuing gay affairs. But somehow they're still together--with Margaret giving Jack the confidence to acquire a little self-respect at last. An unlovely mixture of the puerile (X-rated filmmaking slapstick) and the pseudo-psychological: for porn devotees only--though Whiting fans may be curious too.

Pub Date: Aug. 6, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1984

Categories: NONFICTION