Her office was perpetually cluttered, full of knick-knacks and plastic bags of money, with a mustard couch and herself on the phone giving directions to one of the porn movies she ran along with gambling dens and illegal hookups. As for the office door, you’d only find it if you knew, it was hidden at the top of a staircase above the iconic porno “Eros”, which once again belonged to her.
No one cared if the place was full of smoke, newspaper clippings, or the walls echoed with the moans of the illegal gay couples who took refuge on its premises. The reason for the legendary Chelsea Wilson, the worldwide Greek-Jewish Rachel Serero, who escaped the Holocaust to conquer America as the biggest owner of pornographic cinemas and as an agent of soft porn cinema in the 70s.
“Larger than life” is the classic description most people use for her in the highly interesting documentary “Queen of New York”, filmed by the also Greek-American Valerie Kontakou, writing the script together with the acclaimed and award-winning Greek writer Christos Asteriou, the which we were lucky enough to see in Thessaloniki as part of the 25th Documentary Festival. The creators of the documentary talked to her relatives, her children from different marriages, major producers of porn films and people who lived her life closely.
In essence, this is a living document of a time when such personalities were rare, giving the characterization that described her “angel or demon” too much value. Why, how else to describe a woman who made it out of Greece at the height of the persecution and found herself on a foreign continent knowing literally no one with just $5 in her pocket? Working exhaustingly in Greek canteens that sold hot dogs and peanuts, he was looking like a demon for the opportunity to live the American dream, which even then, just a few years after the Crash, few dared. Having a back and forth with the country for illegal import and export of goods, Wilson thought that her countrymen in America need not only food, but spiritual food as well.
Therefore, he decided to bring to America the famous “Epikaira” that enlightened the Greek immigrants about what exactly is happening in the homeland. By stitching together the most characteristic of them, he made a film entitled “Greece on the March” (Greece on the March). Thus, he found a way to move into the field of film production, managing to bring, in addition to the films, even Greek works with top protagonists of the time, such as “Stis ennia tou makaritis” with the Kaloutas sisters.
Chelsea returned after the end of the war to Athens – but never to Thessaloniki, of which she said she had only painful memories – keeping the promise she had made to her daughter, who with tears in her eyes, now grown up, wearing hands rings with huge diamonds that she bought with her mother’s money from the Diamond District, confesses to the camera of the Greek filmmaker that she could not believe that her mother had left her in foreign hands at such a tender age. Possibly, however, she had no other choice as she believed that by leaving her children to someone she trusted she could save them, which eventually happened, since Polet was one of the few children of Greek-Jewish origin who were saved from the Holocaust.
Going to America, Wilson, born Serero, remarried, this time to the well-meaning Ralph Wilson, who accepted the children from her first marriage without hesitation. Together they made two more. As revealed in the film, the children, especially the half-sisters Paulette and Bondi, had a very loving relationship from the beginning. They knew, after all, that the “angel or demon” profile that their mother showed “with the Greek temperament after having the outbreaks of the Mediterranean”, as they repeatedly say, had to do with the deep trauma of the Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust.
No one else in her family escaped death in the concentration camp, with her, as her daughter confesses, forever carrying the guilt of having escaped. She knew, however, that precisely for this reason she was not allowed to put it down and proved to be the most formidable survivor of them all. From one point on, the dilemma was to survive or die. Or, rather better, to make money, an unwritten law for anyone living in New York at the time.
Porn movies and gambling
When she was presented with the opportunity to shoot not only alternative films for her compatriots – she was even a producer on “Potami” by Nikos Koundouros! -, but also more forbidden ones she did not let her go unexploited. Having the expertise and knowledge of the filmmakers’ field, she tapped everyone she knew to film the soft porn industry, with screenings necessarily taking place in one of her cinemas. Rumors wanted her to be protected from the local mafia, but also from her compatriots, as all the streets, both 8th Avenue and 42nd Street, where her cinemas were located were literally under Greek occupation: Greek restaurants, grocery stores, bouzouki, kitchens open for 24 hours.
By her side was her good husband, whom she married, as she says in the film, because “he was tender and bought her cigarettes”, her children and friends who adored her, since she never refused a help, a guarantee and the ” edges’ to all underground and above ground power systems. At the same time, she maintained thriving contacts with leading names in Greece, such as her good friend Rena Vlachopoulou, with whom they shared their love of paper and barbouti, the people of Finos Film, and even Aliki Vougiouklakis, whom she had invited for a special screening in one of its cinemas.
Gradually, however, Greek films gave way to soft porno and thus began the cycle of highly profitable work with David Friedman and with films such as “Mau Mau Sex Sex”, “Nature’s Playmates” and “Daughter of the Sun”, having hairy leads and tanned leading ladies who either wore cheap see-through underwear – very fashionable in the 70s – or were forced to show some flesh in order to somehow raise the box office. Gradually, however, due to the ever greater requirements in detail and in practice, real actors participated and thus the soft porno industry turned into hardcore.
It was then that Chelsea Wilson smelled that those who needed a refuge, most of all, were the gays: hence the emergence of the “Adonis” porn cinema as the most legendary hangout for gays of the time, apart from the docks where they took refuge chased out of the city limits as well. “Adonis” was so famous among members of the gay community that it inspired a related movie-dedication to the courtships that took place inside the hall and its different rooms entitled “A night at the “Adonis””. However, in this legendary cinema, one did not only see gay porn, but also various alternative films, even from Greece, justifying the relations that Tseli had with the Greek cinema system.
The legendary “Myconos”
At the end of the 60s, influenced by the passing of the Greek centers in the same area, the dynamic Greek Jew opens the Greek restaurant “Myconos”, which hosts all the anfan gate of the time, from Teli Savalas to musicians and actors from GREECE. Flamboyant, relentlessly uncompromising, with a strong idiosyncratic touch to Celli’s personality, the shop stayed open until the wee hours of the morning with patrons ranging from Shirley MacLaine to Jackie Kennedy and Onassis.
There were also unexpected surprises, as, as the film reveals, they even brought the Mykonos Pelican on a special flight (!) to attend the nightly events, a bird that starred amid smoke, broken dishes and fatal female singers. But at the same time, the walls of the shop were designed by the great painter and stage designer, who was awarded the Oscar for his work in the film “Alexis Zorbas”, Vassilis Fotopoulos! Everything fit into the paradoxical universe of the inventive Greek-Jew, who managed to unite under her roof top directors, stage designers, people of the night and celebrities.
The concept of “eccentric” was not unknown to the owner, who, in addition to being a tough businesswoman but at the same time giving to friends, discovered her true sexual identity in old age by living with her two mistresses. Her husband, who tolerated many of her strange preferences, then decides to leave for Puerto Rico, where he is said to have opened two pornographic cinemas, apparently in connivance with the wife with whom he has always maintained perfect relations.
The Avon production company, which was actually founded by a Greek-Jewish lesbian, something unheard of even by today’s standards, flourished precisely because the New York of the time had no prejudices, no boundaries.
Wilson passed away at the age of 90, smoking until shortly before the end, having had repeated heart attacks, but never losing her temper. Shortly before she died she had left on a piece of paper full instructions not only for her funeral, but also for the exact menu that the mourners would enjoy, where she wrote in Greek “Food for my funeral”: spinach pies, huevos haminados, i.e. the special eggs made exclusively by Sephardic Jews, and unleavened bread. Everything again, down to the smallest detail arranged, since the unknown was never her fear, even if it was her death.
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