Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution: A History from Below

A portrait of an indelible twentieth-century American life―and a wholly new take on the pleasures and dangers of the so-called sexual revolution. Whether in front of the camera or behind it, Candice Vadala (1950–2015) understood herself both as an artist and entrepreneur. As Candida Royalle―underground actress, porn star, producer of adult content, and staunch feminist―she made a business of pleasure, her life and work crystalizing the broader hedonistic turn in American life in the second half of the twentieth century. Drawing extensively from never-before-studied diaries, letters, photographs, films, and art documenting Royalle’s private and professional life, historian Jane Kamensky expands and explodes the conventions of biography. Readers witness the lives of ordinary women from the inside-out during a period of seismic change, including the postwar restructuring of gender roles, the growing popularity of psychoanalysis, and the mass-marketing of pornography. Written with cinematic verve, Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution evocatively examines the rise and ambiguous successes of a heroine who broke the mold and was herself broken in turn. 51 illustrations