Imagine a lapse in judgment in your youth so profound that it follows you the rest of your life.
Linda Boreman knew such a life. A young 20something, she starred in one of the first feature-length pornographic movies, "Deep Throat." The motion picture, which starred Boreman as "Linda Lovelace," earned more than $600 million by some estimates. Boreman has said she was paid nothing for appearing in the film. She has maintained that she was forced at gunpoint to participate in its filming.
By some accounts, Boreman thought she was going to become a legitimate movie star with help from her husband, Chuck Traynor. She escaped the marriage when Traynor took up with Marilyn Chambers, another pornography star.
Boreman's Hollywood dreams never materialized. Instead of striking it rich and famous, Boreman paid dearly for a short-lived career. She had so little money when she died that her family wasn't sure how it would pay for her funeral.
Boreman understood that she had made mistakes. In the 1980s, she became a high-profile figure in the fight against pornography. She testified about its dangers before Congress, courts and city councils, and became a poster child for feminists. Those efforts were but a footnote in news accounts of Boreman's recent death following a traffic accident.
Her second husband, Larry Marchiano, whom Boreman divorced in 1996 after 22 years of marriage, considered Boreman his best friend. "Everyone might know her as something else, but we knew her as mom and Linda."
It's probably not realistic that Boreman would be known for the second act of her life. The "Linda Lovelace" persona was a household word in the 1970s. The character and movie title figured into three dozen books and 18 published songs. It was, as we say in the news business "her claim to fame."
I'm not trying to justify Boreman's part in a porn movie. I doubt, though, she had a full appreciation that it would result in a lifelong stigma. Outside her family and close circle of friends, she would never be known as a caring mother or loving spouse who at times lived on welfare and was in poor health even before the traumatic car crash that resulted in fatal injuries, ending her life at age 53.
When I read about Boreman's death, I felt badly. I felt badly that she had such lousy judgment to trust a husband who was more interested in making a popular-release porn movie than treating his own wife with any dignity.
Boreman, in her 1980 autobiography, "Ordeal," claimed that she had made the movie only because her husband threatened her with violence. "I knew the feeling of a gun to my back and hearing the click, never knowing when there was going to be a real bullet," she wrote.
I felt badly because she was so far flung from her upbringing. Her dad was a police officer in Yonkers, N.Y. Her mother hosted Tupperware parties.
There would be no second chance for Boreman. That was partially her fault because, in recent years, she would take part in memorabilia shows. "People would tell her how much they loved her 100 times a day," said Eric Danville, author of "The Complete Linda Lovelace."
Part of it is a culture that is quick to brand people and reluctant to give them second chances. I find this strange because our society has legal processes and mechanism that permit people to dig themselves out of financial ruin, hold in abeyance pleas to criminal charges and in some cases, expunge their records.
The cautionary tale, I suppose, is that there are no do-overs for some mistakes, so we'd better think carefully about our life decisions. Seemingly, the daughter of a police officer would have known any conduct demanded at gunpoint would have negative consequences. Then again, her desire to be a star likely clouded her judgment. If she had the proverbial crystal ball, she may have made different choices. She may have made the same choices. It's hard to say.
Yes, Linda Boreman was Linda Lovelace. But she was also Larry Marchiano's long-time spouse. She was a mother to her children, Lindsay and Dominic. She was a breast cancer survivor who was awaiting a kidney transplant at the time of the accident, which resulted in a brain injury, 37 broken bones and collapsed lungs. She lingered three weeks before her family decided to remove her from life-support machines.
Is this the tawdry tale of a porn star or a modern-day tragedy? Possibly both. The best we can do is appreciate that people's lives are far more complex than the news tidbits that shape our opinion of them and contemplate why we are so reluctant to extend second chances to people who need them most.
Marjorie Cortez is a Deseret News editorial writer. E-mail her at marjorie@desnews.com