Shauna Grant

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Shauna Grant

Shauna Grant (born May 30, 1963 in Bellflower , California, as Colleen Marie Applegate , † March 21, 1984 in Palm Springs (California) ) was an American porn actress who appeared in about 30 films between 1982 and 1984. She is considered to be the first porn industry star to take her own life.

Life

youth

Colleen Applegate first grew up in Bellflower. Her parents had a boy and three more girls after her and raised their five children relatively strictly according to their own account. In 1973 the family moved to Farmington, Minnesota , a small community 25 miles south of Minneapolis with a father's change of job . Applegate appeared as a cheerleader for Farmington High School . In her senior year at school, she transformed from a good girl into a moody, unruly teenager. She met 19-year-old Mike Marcell and started drinking and smoking marijuana . After graduating from school, she first worked as a cashier, then as an office clerk for the telephone company in which her father worked. In 1981, she made an unsuccessful suicide attempt. She then went to a psychological counseling center at least once with her mother, Karen, and her father. After the news of her suicide attempt got around the town, she left her family in March 1982 and moved to Los Angeles with Marcell .

Porn career

After an initial month of doing odd jobs, Marcell came across a classified ad for the World Modeling Agency in Van Nuys , a borough of Los Angeles. This was looking for attractive new models for "figure modeling". Accompanied by Marcell, Applegate visited the agency owner Jim South, who immediately organized a photo session with the well-known photographer J. Stephen Hicks , who worked for Penthouse among others .

Looking back on Applegate's appearance and character, Hicks said: “I work with a lot of young girls, including those from the country and those who are new to the business. But Colleen was so incredibly young and naive. It was completely un-hip and atypical for L.A. “Applegate was initially rather skeptical about nude photography. However, she and her boyfriend were in need of money because Marcell had also not yet found a permanent job, so she accepted, given the good pay of $ 100 a day. This resulted in a first publication in the Magazin Club .

Applegate's relationship with Marcell broke up when he joined the US Army two months after her arrival in California. Prior to his draft, he spread word of her pornographic activities in Farmington, which embarrassed her family.

Applegate's unused " girl next door " broadcast quickly gave her further appearances in magazines such as Hustler and Penthouse . After his portrayal, Hicks advised Applegate to quickly stop nude modeling because he saw the danger that after a short period of success it would be left by the magazines and then slip into the hardcore film industry. Only shortly after, however, Applegate began hardcore photo shoots for Suze Randall . Despite Hick's advice, she continued to work for the World Modeling Agency, where she met veteran porn producer Bobby Hollander . Hollander started a short relationship with Applegate, suggested what he felt was the "classic" stage name Shauna Grant and got her film career rolling.

Applegate quickly rose to become a star of the scene, now making $ 1,500 to $ 2,000 a day. She often starred in films that had a relatively complex plot for a porn strip. A highlight of her career is the film Suzie Superstar , where she plays the lead singer in a rock band.

After that, their everyday life took place mainly in large limousines and first-class hotels. She got herpes. She broke off an unwanted pregnancy. She had her own make-up artist, then 25-year-old Laurie Smith, who also appeared in several of her films ( Suzie Superstar , The Young Like It Hot and Bad Girls 4 ) and in a photo set by Suze Randall as a porn actress. Smith became Applegate's closest friend - and companion at cocaine parties.

Withdrawal from the porn business

Applegate was dependent on the money from their porn productions because of their lavish lifestyle and cocaine use, but at the same time loathed the business and the performances they required. She therefore had a reputation for acting with little enthusiasm in sex scenes.

Through Hollander, Applegate came into contact with the then 44-year-old Jack "Jake" Ehrlich, who became her new boyfriend. Ehrlich made a living selling cocaine to upscale condominium residents near his Palm Springs home. He has served a sizeable number of prison terms, including drug trafficking and possession of stolen property.

Ehrlich led Applegate to get out of the porn business in 1983 and the two settled in Palm Springs. In an interview, she gave the reason for her withdrawal that she was not ready for anal sex. She also rejected lesbian scenes (which she had already shot). Ehrlich owned the Pelle leather goods store in downtown Palm Springs, and Applegate began running the business there.

According to research by the television show Frontline , which shed light on the case several years after Applegate's death, while she was still living with Ehrlich, she had a relationship with a political student at the University of Minnesota and wanted him, according to statements made to her friends from high school days also get married.

In February 1984 Ehrlich, who was still on parole, was arrested and sentenced to five years' imprisonment for possession of several pounds of cocaine, which he began serving at the State Institution for Men in Chino, California . Applegate was desperate because with Ehrlich she lost easy access to money and drugs. She was nominated in three categories at the AFAA's 8th Annual Adult Film Association Awards Show at the Cocoanut Grove Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on March 14th. Although her wish to appear in mainstream films was not fulfilled, she was so well known that the director Francis Ford Coppola was seated at her table that evening . It was also on this evening that, given her foreseeable financial problems, she agreed to star in a porn film again for the first time in 10 months. Filming of Matinee Idol was scheduled to begin on March 22nd in San Francisco .

A few days later, her friend from Minnesota was visiting California. However, Applegate and Laurie Smith almost forgot him after a two-day drug party and could not pick him up from Los Angeles airport due to a lack of transportation. That same day, Ehrlich called her from prison and told her that their relationship was over and that she should move out of his apartment.

Applegate persuaded her friend and longtime porn actress Kelly Nichols to take on the role that was intended for her in Matinee Idol . Her parents tried to convince her to attend college in Minnesota at their own expense, but she feared that her parents' home would no longer be comfortable and so she finally declined.

death

On March 21, 1984, shortly after 7:00 p.m. local time, Applegate locked himself in the bedroom of Ehrlich's apartment in Palm Springs and shot himself in the head with his rifle kept under his bed. Her friend Brenda Rosenow, who was playing pool with Ehrlich's friend Cal Ardigo in another room in the house, immediately alerted the ambulance, and Applegate was taken to Desert Hospital. There it was found, however, that she was already brain dead. Applegate's remaining body functions were artificially maintained until her mother's visit, who first had to fly from Farmington to California, before the devices were switched off on March 23 at 7:05 pm. Applegate was buried according to the Catholic rite on March 28th in St. Michael's Cemetery in Empire near Farmington.

Award

Mentions in other media

  • Applegate's career and death were the basis of the fictional television film Shattered Innocence , which, however, had little to do with her real life. Her parents financed Applegate's tombstone with the proceeds from the rights sale, but criticized the portrayal of the porn industry as a business like any other in the film.
  • The musician Klaus Flouride dedicated the song Dancing with Shauna Grant to Applegate from his 1991 album The Light Is Flickering . The song also mentions the Grant films Virginia and Suzie Superstar .
  • The death metal band Ripping Corpse dedicated the song Deeper Demons to Applegate from their 1991 album Dreaming with the Dead .
  • The Christian metal band Mastedon dedicated Applegate to their debut album It's a Jungle Out There! the song Innocent Girl . The text for this comes from John Elefante (former singer in Kansas ) and his brother Dino.

Television documentaries

  • Hard Copy , Follow Shauna Grant , June 18, 1990
  • Frontline , episode Death of a Porn Queen , August 6, 1987 (originally produced as a local report for WCCO-TV in Minneapolis - St. Paul ), reporter Al Austin, producer Andy Greenspan

Filmography (selection)

  • 1982: Personal Touch 1
  • 1983: glitter
  • 1983: Dreams Of Pleasure
  • 1983: All American Girls 2: In Heat
  • 1983: Private Schoolgirls
  • 1983: Suburban Lust
  • 1983: Suzie Superstar 1st
  • 1983: Valley Vixens
  • 1984: Shauna Grant Superstar
  • 1985: Shauna Every Man's Fantasy

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Shauna Grant in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  2. ↑ Compilation of adult scenes from Suzie Superstar . 31-minute YouTube video in English
  3. ↑ XRCO Awards - Previous Winners and Noms - 2002 and before
personal data
SURNAME Grant, Shauna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Aimes, Callie (pseudonym); Ladd, Jillian (pseudonym); Grant, Shana (pen name); Applegate, Colleen Marie (maiden name); Lena (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American erotic and porn actress
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Bellflower , California
DATE OF DEATH March 21, 1984
Place of death Palm Springs (California)