At one point in the seventies Harry was arrested and charged in Memphis, Tennessee with obscenity for conspiring to take Deep Throat over state lines. All he did, really, was act in porno movies, so eventually all charges were dropped. A lot of people may not like it, but in this country it isn’t illegal to have sex in a movie with a consenting person of legal age, and Reems’ case was the first and last time, to my knowledge, a man was charged with a crime for doing so.
Reems claimed he had a “PG body.” You can see in the above photo of him he was slim and hairy. Nowadays male porn performers (I hesitate to call them actors) shave their body hair, and work out in the gym about five hours a day.
I like Reems’ mustache, and in some circles that is now known as a pornstar mustache, in memory of those guys of Reems’ era who sported disco hairdos and handlebar mustaches. I wish I could grow one of those. Not to be a pornstar, mind you, but because I like the way it looks.
Harry died yesterday at age 65. He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last summer. He died at the VA Hospital in Salt Lake City, because at one time in his life he had been a U.S. Marine.
Harry was born Herbert Streicher in the Bronx, New York, in 1947. Since I am a Utah resident, after reading a newspaper article in 1992 about Harry Reems residing in Utah I wondered what it was about our state that drew him. Then I realized that Park City, where he lived, isn’t really Utah. It’s an island in the middle of Mormon country where movie stars come to visit, and sometimes live, where CEOs and captains of industry own summer and winter ski-vacation homes. It’s the home of the Sundance Film Festival, created by Robert Redford. It’s a resort, and a nice one at that. Now along with its other distinctions it can be known as the place where Harry Reems, in pornstar retirement, lived and died.
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