John Holmes

The first biography of John Curtis Holmes – The King of Porn!

 ”Sugar and Nelson have researched their subject considerably and it is evident on every page. John Holmes: A Life Measured in Inches is the distinctive Holmes biography.” — Robert Cettl. Read More Testimonials

Most people might, understandably, predict that the world’s first porn star was a woman, but they would be wrong.

John Curtis Holmes was just a simple country boy from Ohio when he moved to California in 1964.  It was the infancy of hardcore, so in Holmes’ wildest dreams, he could not have predicted the turbulent ride on which he had embarked by publicizing his private parts.

With the fame he achieved by playing his most famous character – a gun toting detective named Johnny Wadd – came money.  Holmes was pleased to spend it on his wife and mistresses, but soon was in over his head after he became addicted to cocaine.  Unfortunately for Holmes, in the years that followed, his addiction led him into several desperate choices – including setting up a robbery at the home of Ed Nash, a powerful L.A. nightclub owner.  The robbery resulted in one of the most gruesome, unsolved, multiple-murders in Hollywood history.  Amazingly, before his untimely death in 1988, John Holmes regained his momentum, remarried and rebuilt his life and career.  However, the grave consequences of his addiction, his association with the Wonderland murders, and his AIDS-related death made him an infamous figure in pop culture.

Digging past the stigmas, John Holmes: A Life Measured in Inches – the first biography about John C. Holmes – unearths the human being behind the penis and proves that there was more to him than could be measured in inches.  This biography includes material from the authors’ new interviews with: Laurie Holmes, Bill Amerson, Bob Chinn, Julia St. Vincent, Detective Tom Lange, Detective Frank Tomlinson, Paul Thomas, Ron Jeremy, Seka, Marilyn Chambers, Candida Royalle, Rhonda Jo Petty, Dr. Sharon Mitchell, Bill Margold, and many others!  Also included is additional source material containing extensive  interviews with:  Sharon Holmes, Dawn Schiller, Dr. Vonda Pelto, Ph. D., and L.A. Times film critic, Kenneth Turan.

John Holmes: A Life Measured in Inches encompasses 114 reviews of John’s most notable feature films, 86 loops synopses, 3 photos sections with rare nudes, and a comprehensive filmography.

“The tree of life represents the roots of man.  The branches are the different directions a man can take, live or exist.  When you’re dead, those that you leave behind will put you in a part of that tree.  It represents what was, what is and what will be.  It’s eternal.” — John Holmes

The first biography of John Curtis Holmes, The King of Porn!

Published by BearManor Media — Winner of 2010 Independent Publisher Book Awards

John Holmes Biography on Kindle

Authors Jennifer Sugar and Jill C. Nelson are pleased to announce that John Holmes: A Life Measured in Inches has been published by BearManor Media as a kindle e-reader book on June 10, 2010.  The kindle version of “Inches” is immediately available at Amazon.com for $11.95.  Please visit this link for purchasing information and free chapter samples:  Inches on Kindle 

Note:  The audio format of John Holmes: A Life Measured in Inches will be available later this year.

Recent Book Review – May/2010

Rob Hardy is a book reviewer for The Commercial Dispatch in Columbus, Mississippi, and a practicing psychiatrist for Community Counseling Services in Columbus.  Mr. Hardy is also a top reviewer for Amazon.com, where a condensed version of this bio review can be found.  The following review is for The Dispatch.

Size Matters by Rob Hardy

“John Holmes had an enormous penis. It would be unfair to say that this fact is the only interesting thing about him, but it really was the only remarkable thing. It was also the thing that determined how his life was going to go. It was what got him into pornography and made him a nationally-recognized star, and that in turn got him involved in drugs and crime and AIDS. If there were nothing to his life besides his record-breaking anatomy, Jennifer Sugar and Jill C. Nelson would not have had much to compile in their book _John Holmes: A Life Measured in Inches_ (BearManor Media). They have, however, dug so deeply into what was written about the man during his career and what people remembered afterwards that this surely will be the definitive biography. It is almost 600 pages long, although that includes 150 pages of filmography at the end of the book, a list of all the known loops and films Holmes was in, along with a list of reviews of his more famous movies. The text of the book is not a traditional biography. It consists of quotations from many articles, books, and documentary films, as well as from interviews the authors conducted themselves. These are arranged chronologically, and if there is a lack of analysis in this biography, it is made up by the immediacy of the words from Holmes himself, his costars, directors, business partners, prosecutors, wives, and godchildren. Read the rest of this entry »