The two authors of A Life Measured in Inches viewed and reviewed a significant selection of John Holmes’ vast loop and film work that is unrivaled today by any adult star.  In addition to being the definitive biography on the adult film world’s biggest icon, the book’s 21 page filmography has widely been credited as an excellent reference guide.  Holmes is one of the very few actors to have worked over three decades performing in all facets of adult entertainment including: nude modeling, nudist shorts, black and white loops, mail order, simulated sex, softcore and hardcore erotic scenes and feature movies.

He is the first actor to have portrayed a recurring character in an adult series (spanning almost 10 years) as private detective Johnny Wadd.  John Holmes is the very first X-Rated performer to have been inducted in the XRCO (X-Rated Critics Organization) Hall of Fame in 1985, and he is the profession’s first International star. 

Due to continued avid interest in Holmes’ legend and superstar status, a substantial portion of Holmes’ film library has been carefully restored, digitalized and transferred from the masters, making some of his work available for purveyers for the first time. 

The best selection of John Holmes early loops and feature films reviewed by Sugar and Nelson can be immediately accessed and enjoyed through VOD at:  John Holmes.com

In the years leading to John Holmes’ death from AIDS-related complications, John began to document various elements of his life on audiotape.  While contemplating the trials and tribulations of living, John expressed his conception that the life of a human being could be judged simply by using the analogy of a tree.   He called his idea “The Monkey Tree” and he imagined that one day it would become the title of his memoir.  It was John’s belief that the strength and endurance of a tree and its relationship to a monkey residing on its branches, is indicative of our own place in the history of the world after we are gone. 

John described a variation of his idea this way:  “Where we are in the trees is where we are in our society.  Form a tree in your mind.  A beautiful, magnificently curved oak.  Think of the lower branches and think of the upper branches as what a person has achieved.  Those that are now dead, that we write about, or we think about, in an aspect, we think about what lifestyle they had.  Without even knowing it, subconsciously, we place them somewhere in that tree.  The further you are out on each limb, the more dangerously you live.”  

It has been said that John lived life hard and fast like rock stars do; passionately and dangerously, and with casualities along the way.  Twenty two years after his death, it causes one to ponder where one might place John Holmes in The Monkey Tree.  More importantly, perhaps, where might we place ourselves? - RIP John

Authors, Jennifer Sugar and Jill C. Nelson would like to welcome everyone to their new official website for John Holmes: A Life Measured in Inches.  Please feel free to navigate the site to read biography excerpts, about the authors, critic reviews, press articles, about John Holmes and much more.  Be sure to peruse the three photo galleries, complete with slide show options for better viewing.  Additional photos are interspersed throughout the pages of the site.  Clicking on the links to posts that appear on the home page will connect visitors to older posts.  Respectful comments and/or questions under all categories, where applicable, are appreciated.  Website updates will be made regularly.

John Holmes: A Life Measured is available for purchase at this location, in addition to all major online book retailers.  Signed copies will be available upon request.  For members of the public and/or media interested in contacting the authors, please address all questions to: info@johnholmesinches.com  

Special thanks to mybizdesigner.com for providing excellent expertise and service.  Enjoy!

 ”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

Widerscreenings.com Essay on INCHES

Australian writer and critic, Robert Cettl, recently reviewed A Life Measured in Inches for his website, widerscreenings.com.  The complete essay is now available at widerscreenings.  Below is a generous excerpt!

John Holmes: a Life Measured in Inches

(a book review by Robert Cettl)

John Holmes: A Life Measured in Inches is the first book by authors Jennifer Sugar and Jill C. Nelson and is a work of considerable scope, ambition and importance in its chosen field.  Indeed Sugar and Nelson have taken a subject inherently problematic – the history and scholarship of the adult film – and rendered it lucidly accessible to all, whether fans of adult material or not and whether male or female.

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, sorting through Holmes’ tendency to fabricate the truth in his own accounts of his life with actual biographical fact and first-hand accounts of the man and his life presented uncut in the actual words of those who knew and interacted with him – from Sharon Holmes (the wife he kept secret to his adult industry business partners) to Bob Chinn (the Chinese-American UCLA graduate turned pornographer who in tandem with Holmes would birth West Coast US porn in the Johnny Wadd series of films, meticulously described in the comprehensive filmography which closes this remarkable book).

Nelson and Sugar arrange their book chronologically in the manner of a traditional biography but with unedited interview extracts punctuating the factual account to give a portrayal of both Holmes the man himself, his developing legend and the way in which he was seen, considered and judged by those who knew him best.  This demythologizing journey through the life of porndom’s most famous male star (with apologies to Ron “the Hedgehog” Jeremy it is Holmes who will be forever known as “the King”) begins with Holmes’ troubled childhood (he was neglected and brutalized).  Here, authors Nelson and Sugar devote just enough time and targeted interview extracts to suggest the psychological pressures – including the need for attention – which would shape the adult Holmes’ dealings with and attitude to women.  However, the authors do not attempt a full psycho-analytical portrait of Holmes – their intent is fact-based oral history and they present both the necessary information and a variety of first-hand accounts to enable the reader to assess the behavioural factors that shaped the humanity of porn’s biggest (literally in terms of penis size – how big was it?) icon.

Holmes’ early relationships, friendships and business contracts soon segue into an account of his life with wife Sharon Holmes (a frequent contributor to the extracted interview material) and his developing working relationship with Bob Chinn.  Indeed, Nelson & Sugar have here done the astonishing (and even taboo) thing – interviewing a pornographer and rendering his perspective with both the authority and intelligence it deserves.  What emerges is a fully detailed account of the birth of the porn industry, the methods, distribution and business structure of the industry and Holmes’ relationship to it.  Importantly, this exploration of the industry that he helped popularize and establish is balanced with the continuing and evolving biographical account of Holmes as a person.  Thus, the book frankly describes his relationships with his co-workers, with his wife (whom he tried to keep as separate from his work as possible) and his relationships with younger women – from Dawn Schiller through to Laurie Holmes in the latter stages of his life.  Contributions from such adult industry veterans as Candida Royalle, Bill Margold, reporter Jim Holliday and Paul Thomas coalesce for a distinctive picture of the man, fully representative of the adult industry that grew up around him.  As such, John Holmes: a Life Measured in Inches is both a biography and a valid social document exploring an epoch which has never gotten its full attention due to the hypocritical moral quagmire that still surrounds any objective account of the adult film industry and the people who live it.

Continuing through his porno movie career Nelson and Sugar next chronicle Holmes’ increasing drug use and the toll – physical and emotional – that it took on him.  The authors make no attempt to glamorize this drug use but nor do they condemn it on either legal or moral grounds.  Indeed, as a work shorn of moralistic judgment, John Holmes: a Life Measured in Inches is exemplary, transgressive even.  But the reality of drug use in the 1970s is covered and the disastrous effect on Holmes’ personality (turning a gentle lover into a violent pimp) is commented upon by – most importantly – the women in his life directly affected by his behaviour.  Yet, in this too Holmes emerges as something of an enigma: as a Godfather to his friend Bill Amerson’s children Holmes was incredibly protective and as devoted as if he were their father yet was quite prepared to pimp out his girlfriend when the need for drugs arose.  This humanist moral relativism distinguishes Holmes’ life making it impossible to judge him in terms of moral absolutism – his life and the industry he helped establish remain unaccountable to absolutist good or bad judgement.  There is no good and evil here, just humanity – which is not to say that Holmes was not spiritual: as one astonishing revelation contained in the book explores, Holmes indeed developed a special relationship with a Christian police officer with whom Holmes jointly prayed and refused to let be cross-examined by his defense attorney when he was on trial for murder / conspiracy.

Rounding out the book’s chronological development are Holmes’ fugitive from justice period and his re-entry (so to speak) into the adult industry, through to the facts surrounding his death from AIDS after knowingly having sex on film when HIV positive and risking infecting his partners (who included Italian porn star later turned politician Cicciolina).  Speculation abounds as to where and when Holmes contracted the fatal disease (linked to his one appearance in a gay film) but Nelson and Sugar balance this with a clever look at how the adult industry in general responded to the AIDS crisis (thanks in no small part to Sharon Mitchell) as much as an account of the disease’s toll on Holmes.  Significantly, the book does not shy away from the debate surrounding Holmes’ decision to continue working (revealed in the book) even at the risk of infecting his on-screen sexual partners.  To many, this point alone is enough to demonize and dismiss Holmes forever as a mere immoral “lowlife”: however, Sugar and Nelson clearly explain Holmes’ reasoning and, again without judgment, explain and account for the situation (again through expertly juxtaposed interview testimony) so as to if not excuse Holmes’ actions then at least explain them within the biographical account of his life.

Nelson and Sugar are the first biographers / oral historians to compile a work shorn of the (either Patriarchal Christian or radical feminist) morality which automatically discredits any and all adult film as “pornography”.  In stripping away any accountability to the imposed morality of those who demonize pornography and its participants what emerges is, as the book slowly segues from the vice squad anti-porn activities to the Wonderland investigation, a simultaneous exploration of the moral hypocrisy of those American authorities who have traditionally demonized pornography and sought to have it deemed illegal and suppressed as a form of either fantasy or generic discourse, both of which it inherently is.  The ramifications of the investigation into Holmes’ possible involvement in murder (or conspiracy to commit murder) reveal a cross-section of legal implications ranging from sloppy investigation to – in the decision to hold Holmes in contempt of court when he refused to testify (for fear of his life) against Eddie Nash for involvement in the Wonderland murders – the outright violation of both the US constitution and essential human rights guaranteed by the UN (to which the US Constitution is accountable).  In this, John Holmes: a Life Measured in Inches carries the broader frame of moral hypocrisy towards the suppression of the adult industry so well documented in The Other Hollywood and re-locates it from the macrocosm of the porn genre in total to the microcosm by focusing specifically on Holmes.

As mentioned at the outset, John Holmes: a Life Measured in Inches is the debut work for authors Sugar and Nelson.  It is a responsible balance of objective historical scholarship, biography and oral history which not only demystifies the adult industry and the legend surrounding Holmes but raises ethical and moral questions regarding American culture’s legal and moral treatment of pornography as a genre.  Although Nelson and Sugar keep their own voices and insight constrained to historical and journalistic accountability, they speak with an authority that should bode them well for subsequent books should they continue to explore adult industry related material.  In that, the filmography that rounds out this book (feature films, loops, compilations) is astonishing for the research involved, the detail and – most interestingly – a film by film account of Holmes’ career from the perspective of two talented, intelligent women able to see through the smoke of anti-porn feminism to acknowledge the genre’s appeal for both men and women.  The filmography alone, with synopsis, critical comment and credits, is enough to make John Holmes: a Life Measured in Inches the definitive Holmes biography and encyclopaedic Holmes reference book.  The back cover to the book boasts a review from critic Dick Freeman who describes the book as “undoubtedly the best porn bio ever written, and will set standards”.  This is one case where the book well and truly does live up to the hype: outstanding by any measure of the term.  wider screenings essay