John Curtis Holmes (né Estes; August 8, 1944 – March 13, 1988), better known as John C. Holmes or Johnny Wadd (after the lead character he portrayed in a series of related films), was an American pornographic film actor. He ranks among the most prolific adult film performers, with documented credits for at least 573 films.^[2]

Near the end of his life, Holmes attained notoriety for his reputed involvement in the Wonderland murders of July 1981 and eventually for his death from complications caused by AIDS in March 1988. He was the subject of several books, a lengthy essay in Rolling Stone and two feature-length documentaries, and was the inspiration for two Hollywood movies (Boogie Nights and Wonderland).

John Holmes was born John Curtis Estes on August 8, 1944, in the small rural town of Ashville, Ohio, about 11 miles (18 km) south of Columbus. He was the youngest of four children born to 26-year-old Mary June (née Barton) Holmes, but the name of his father, railroad worker Carl Estes, was left blank on his birth certificate. Mary had married Edgar Harvey Holmes, who was the father of her three older children – Dale, Edward and Anne. She and Edgar were married and divorced three times, as is documented by wedding certificates dated April 13, 1936; August 13, 1945; and September 12, 1947.^[3] At the time of their first marriage in 1936, Edgar was 35 years old and divorced, while Mary was aged 17.^[4] After divorcing for the third and final time, Edgar and Mary each got married one more time.^[5]

Mary changed John's surname from Estes to Holmes when he was a child. In 1986, when Holmes applied for a passport for the first time prior to a trip to Italy, his mother reportedly provided him with the handwritten copy of his original birth certificate, which led Holmes to learn that his biological father was Carl Estes.^{[citation needed]}

Holmes' mother was said to be a devout Southern Baptist and with her children regularly attended church in Millport, Ohio. By contrast, his stepfather Edgar was an alcoholic who would come home inebriated, stumble about the house and even vomit on the children. As a child, Holmes enjoyed a reprieve from his turbulent home life when he visited his maternal grandparents, John W. and Bessie (née Gillenwater) Barton.^[4] Mary divorced Edgar when Holmes was a toddler and moved with her children to Columbus, where they lived in a low-income housing project with a friend of Mary's and her own two children. The two women worked as clerks and waitresses in order to support their children.^{[citation needed]}

On December 31, 1951, when Holmes was aged 7, his mother married Harold Bowman. Shortly afterward, Holmes and his family moved to the small town of Pataskala, Ohio, about seventeen miles east of Columbus. Holmes recalled that Bowman was a good father until his younger half-brother David was born, at which point Bowman reportedly lost interest in his stepchildren and began neglecting them.^[6][7]

Holmes left home at age 15 and enlisted in the United States Army, with his mother's written permission. He spent most of the three years of his military service in West Germany in the Signal Corps.^[7] Upon his honorable discharge in 1963, Holmes moved to Los Angeles, California, where he worked in a variety of jobs, including selling goods door-to-door and tending the vats at a Coffee Nips factory. During his stint as an ambulance driver, Holmes met a nurse named Sharon Gebenini in December 1964. They married on August 21, 1965, in Fort Ord, California,^[8] after Holmes turned 21.^[9]

In April 1965, Holmes found work as a forklift driver at a meatpacking warehouse in Cudahy. However, repeated exposure to the freezing air in the large walk-in freezer after being outside inhaling the desert-hot air caused him severe health problems, leading a collapsed lung on three separate occasions during the two years he worked there.^[9] Sharon also had health problems, as during the first seventeen months of her marriage to Holmes, she miscarried three times.^[10]

Holmes' signature asset in the adult film business was his exceptionally large penis. No definitive measurement or documentation verifying his penis' length or girth exists, leaving its exact size unknown. Holmes was uncircumcised.

"When an actress did her first scene with John Holmes, this was the moment where she learned if bigger was better or not. There was no other test."

— Actor/raconteur Richard Pacheco in the documentary Wadd: The Life & Times of John C. Holmes.

Veteran porn actress Dorothiea "Seka" Patton has said that Holmes' penis was the biggest in the industry.^[22] In the documentary film Exhausted, she described oral sex with Holmes as similar to fellating a telephone pole.^[23] Holmes' first wife recalled his claiming to be 10 inches (25.4 cm) when he first measured himself in her presence.^[24] On another occasion, Holmes claimed his penis was 16 inches (40.6 cm) long and 13 inches (33.0 cm) in circumference.^[24] Holmes' long-time friend and industry associate, Bill Amerson, said, "I saw John measure himself several times; it was thirteen-and-a-half inches [34.3 cm]. The head was the size of an apple."^[6] In contrast, medical studies of human penis size have consistently found erections average between about five and six inches,^[25][26][27] with fewer than 0.2% of penises 9.5 inches (24 cm) or more.^[28]

"We're talking about a dick from my elbow down" (gesturing to his outstretched arm)

— Adult industry historian Bill Margold in the documentary Wadd: The Life & Times of John C. Holmes.

So celebrated was the size of Holmes' penis that it was used as a promotional tool for films in which he did not even appear. The film Anyone But My Husband ran a promotional tag line of: "Tony 'The Hook' Perez has a dick so big he gives John Holmes a run for his money."^[29] At the height of his career, Holmes had his penis insured by Lloyd's of London for US$14 million. Holmes reveled in claiming he was insured "for $1 million an inch".^[30]

"To think that he walked among us with that massive tool, like a dinosaur with that thump, thump, thump! But it wasn't his feet hitting the floor. It was his balls hitting the floor, it was his DICK hitting the floor!"

— Adult industry publisher and commentator Al Goldstein in the documentary Wadd: The Life & Times of John C. Holmes.

Another controversy was regarding whether Holmes ever achieved a full erection, although much of his early work clearly revealed he was able to achieve a substantial erection. A popular joke in the 1970s porn industry held that Holmes was incapable of achieving a full erection because the blood flow from his head into his penis would cause him to pass out.^[31] Fellow film actress Annette Haven stated that his penis was never particularly hard during intercourse, likening it to "doing it with a big, soft kind-of loofah".^[31]

"'How big is it?' My fans would scream. 'Bigger than a payphone, smaller than a Cadillac' was my reply."

— Actor John C. Holmes in his posthumously-released autobiography, Porn King.

After Holmes' death, the length of his penis continued to be used to market Holmes-related material. For example, at the premiere of the film Wonderland (2003), patrons were given 131⁄2-inch rulers as gag gifts.^[32] When Los Angeles-based S&M Bikes debuted its first extra-long bicycle frame for BMX racing in 1989, the new model was dubbed the "Holmes" as a tribute to the actor.^[33]

After his release from Los Angeles County Jail for contempt of court in November 1982, Holmes quickly resumed his film career with a new generation of porn stars. His drug addiction continued off-and-on, and although work was still plentiful, it was no longer as lucrative as it had been with the advent of cheaply made videotapes that saturated the porn market. Most of the adult films and videos he made during the 1980s were little more than cameo appearances.

In February 1986, five or six months after initially testing negative, Holmes was diagnosed as HIV-positive. According to his second wife, Holmes claimed that he never used hypodermic needles and that he was deathly afraid of them. Both his first wife and friend Bill Amerson separately confirmed later that Holmes could not have contracted HIV from intravenous drug use as he never used needles.^[6]

During the summer of 1986, Holmes was offered a lucrative deal from Paradise Visuals, who were unaware he was HIV-positive, to travel to Italy to film what were to be his last two pornographic films. Holmes' penultimate film was The Rise of the Roman Empress (originally released in Italy as Carne bollente) for director Riccardo Schicchi. The film starred Holmes, the later Italian Parliament member Ilona "Cicciolina" Staller, Tracey Adams, Christoph Clark and Amber Lynn.^[41] His final film was The Devil In Mr. Holmes, starring Adams, Lynn, Karin Schubert and Marina Hedman.^[42] These last films created a furor when it was revealed later that Holmes had deliberately concealed his HIV status to his co-stars before engaging in unprotected sex for the production.^{[41][43][44][45]} Not wanting to reveal the true nature of his failing health, Holmes claimed to the press that he was suffering from colon cancer.^[19]

Holmes married Laurie Rose on January 23, 1987, in Las Vegas, Nevada, after confiding to her that he had AIDS.^[46] During the last five months of his life, from November 1987 to March 1988, Holmes received treatment and stayed at the VA hospital on Plummer Street in Sepulveda. On March 13, 1988, at age 43, Holmes died from AIDS-related complications, which per his death certificate, were described as cardiorespiratory arrest and encephalitis due to AIDS, associated with lymphadenopathy and esophageal candidiasis.^[17] Holmes' body was cremated, and his widow Laurie and mother Mary scattered his ashes at sea off the coast of Oxnard, California.^[47]

In 1979, along with his younger half-brother David Bowman, Holmes opened a Los Angeles locksmith shop managed by Bowman and an attached used goods store called The Just Looking Emporium, named by Gebinini and managed by Schiller. However, because of Holmes' escalating drug addiction, which distracted him from buying inventory for the Emporium and siphoned its working capital, the Emporium "close[d] its doors forever by the end of September 1980".^[39][50] According to Schiller, "David [kept] his part of the business open while John remove[d] our inventory and [sold] it all for coke."^[51]

Later, after Holmes' acquittal, he and Amerson founded and operated Penguin Productions, where Holmes could be a triple-threat: writing, directing and performing.^[39] Holmes appeared in seven of Penguin's twenty productions between 1985 and 1988. After requesting permission to use the name "Johnny Wadd" from his old director and friend Bob Chinn, Holmes reprised the role for Penguin's The Return of Johnny Wadd (1986) – one of his last films.

Holmes' career was promoted with a series of outrageous claims that he made over the years (many made up on the spur of the moment by Holmes himself). The most dubious ones include:

• Holmes had degrees in physical therapy, medicine, and political science from UCLA.^[52] Holmes was in fact a high school dropout who never returned to school and, according to Bill Amerson, "the closest John ever got to UCLA was breaking into cars in the school's parking lot".^[6]
• Holmes' penis was so big that he had to stop wearing underwear because: "I was getting erections and snapping the elastic waist band four or five times a month".^[53]
• During the filming of a gay feature film, Holmes inadvertently killed two male performers and was tried for manslaughter. The judge in the case sentenced Holmes to abstain from performing anal sex in any future films. However, this is likely an urban myth.^[54]
• Holmes and Ken Osmond, who played Eddie Haskell in the TV series Leave It to Beaver, were the same person. In reality, the two men simply shared a passing resemblance.^[55]

Productions in the Johnny Wadd series:

• Johnny Wadd (1971)
• Flesh of the Lotus (1971, credited as John Duval)
• The Blonde in Black Lace (1972, credited as John Duval)
• Tropic of Passion (1973)
• The Danish Connection (1974)
• Around the World with Johnny Wadd (1975)
• Here Comes Johnny Wadd (1975)
• Liquid Lips (1976)
• Tell Them Johnny Wadd is Here (1976)
• Tapestry of Passion (1976)
• The Jade Pussycat (1977)
• The China Cat (1978)
• Blonde Fire (1978)
• The Return of Johnny Wadd (1986)

Other significant performances:

• Zodiac Rapist (1971)
• Confessions of a Teenage Peanut Butter Freak (1975)
• Cream Rinse (1976)
• Fantasm Comes Again (1977)
• Dracula Sucks (1978)
• Summertime Blue (1978)
• California Gigolo (1979)
• Insatiable (1980)
• Prisoner of Paradise (1980)
• Deep Thoughts (1980)
• Up n Coming (1983)
• The Private Pleasures of John C. Holmes (1983)
• Young & Hung (1985)
• The Good, the Bad, and the Horny (1985)
• Looking for Mr. Goodsex (1985)
• Puss O Rama (1986)
• Saturday Night Beaver (1986)

• February 14, 1985 – First inductee into the X-Rated Critic's Organization (XRCO) Hall of Fame
• 2008 XBIZ Award – Lifetime Achievement – Male Performer^[56]

• Golden Age of Porn