Constance Money (born Susan Jensen; November 30, 1956)[3] is an American former adult film actress. She played the lead role of Misty Beethoven in the 1976 adult classic The Opening of Misty Beethoven.
Constance Money | |
|---|---|
| Born | Susan Jensen[1] November 30, 1956 Lebanon, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Other names | Jennifer Baker,[2] Christina Hoover[3] |
Early life and education
editSusan Jensen[1][4][5] was born in Kenmore, Washington, where she was a cheerleader and acted at Inglemoor High School; she studied psychology and sociology at Mills College in Oakland, California.[1]
Adult film career
editAfter first appearing in pornographic films while in college, under the name Jennifer Baker,[1][2] as Constance Money she played the lead role of the lowly Parisian prostitute reshaped by a sexologist to reach the top tier of her profession in Henry Paris (Radley Metzger)'s 1976 pornographic parody of Shaw's Pygmalion, The Opening of Misty Beethoven.[5][6] She later said in an interview that she had expected it to be an R-rated movie and that the film reflected her actual sexual education during production: "Misty is a good movie because it is real."[7]
Following the film's success, she made several appearances as a porn star, including stays at the Playboy Mansion, and appeared in Playboy magazine in July 1977 in a photo feature on "The New Girls of Porn"[2] and a 1978 personal photo spread, titled "Call of the Wild", which portrayed her as leading a double life starring in adult films and running a hostelry in a remote part of Alaska.[1] Her subsequent appearances include Mary! Mary! and Obsessed (both 1977), and Taste of Money (1983),[1][3] her last pornographic film, which is about her return to porn after a hiatus.[7] Her co-star was frequently John Leslie, a friend with whom she lived for a while.[1]
During shooting of Misty Beethoven, Jensen had objected to work she considered in excess of her contract and claimed damages for stolen possessions; she subsequently sued Metzger over his reuse of material shot for that film, particularly in Barbara Broadcast and Maraschino Cherry. The parties settled out of court in 1979.[1][2][8] It has been reported that Metzger gave her the alias Constance Money because of her demands for money,[7] but Metzger denied it.[2]
She was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame in 1998[9] and into the XRCO Hall of Fame as a film pioneer in 2016.[10]
Subsequent career
editEncouraged by Hugh Hefner to try to cross over into mainstream film, she had a small part in Blake Edwards' 1979 film 10 and unsuccessfully sought the lead role in Frances (1982); the producers were unwilling to consider a star with a background in pornography.[1] She retired from acting to the Pacific Northwest.[1]
References
edit- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Ashley West (April 7, 2017). "'The Opening of Misty Beethoven' (1976): Jamie Gillis and Constance Money". The Rialto Report. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
- ^ a b c d e "Henry Paris vs. Constance Money: Chronology and Correspondence of a Conflict". The Rialto Report. July 30, 2017. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
- ^ a b c "Personal Biography – Constance Money". Internet Adult Film Database. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
- ^ Toni Bentley (June 2013). "The Legend of Henry Paris" (PDF). Playboy. pp. 110, 142.
- ^ a b Barry Forshaw (2018). Sex and Film: The Erotic in British, American and World Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137390066.
- ^ Linda Williams (1999). Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible". University of California Press. p. 136. ISBN 0-520-21943-0.
- ^ a b c Luke Ford (2010). A History of X: 100 Years of Sex in Film. Prometheus Books. p. 91. ISBN 9781615926312.
- ^ "Henry Paris vs. Constance Money: Chronology and Correspondence of a Conflict – Part 2". The Rialto Report. August 6, 2017. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
- ^ "Past Winners". AVN Awards. Archived from the original on April 15, 2009.
- ^ "2016 XRCO Award Winners Announced". AVN. June 22, 2016. Archived from the original on June 25, 2016. Retrieved June 25, 2016.
