The Late Shauna Grant

Shauna Grant: The First Porn Star

Shauna Grant was that sweet innocent 19 year old slice of apple pie from Minnesota that set the porn world on fire in the early eighties. She came to Hollywood, CA as all young girls do of that age seeking some sort of limelight for their frail egos. These girls seeking their fortune in the Hollywood meat grinder scanning the want ads for the most appealing promises for quick fame or fortune. I am sure she looked at most of the ads for modeling and extra work, made the calls and got the scam artists who wanted to sell her some sort of portfolio shots for $600.00 which was necessary for her to get work. The acting schools or various phony employment agencies that charge you a fee to get you work in the Industry.

She continued to answer the ads in the hope that with her natural beauty looks she could find some modeling work. One day she must have come across the ad in the San Fernando Valley’s Daily News under modeling that said figure modeling $150.00 to $2500.00 paid daily. They always see the $2500 a day and never the $150.00. Its enough to get them into the office of World Modeling Agency in Van Nuys, CA for a brief interview and a get naked Polaroid to show photographers.

Jim South is the owner of world modeling and was the best at interviewing prospective new models. He sold insurance for a living and ran a modeling school where he sold modeling courses. I met him back in the early 70’s and used to get models from him from a modeling school he used to run. He would talk some of the girls who had spent $600.00 for the course into making some of the money back by modeling for a few Hollywood magazine photographers who shot for all of the major girlie magazines at the time. We are talking about 15 or 20 guys and a few women who shot layouts for all of the major men’s magazines in USA and Europe. A girl could make a good living from these steady shooters of nude layouts. A career for a top model could last several years at that time, but would eventually burn out.

This burn out was caused by the demand for new faces for the magazines and once a model made all the rounds and was shot at least once by each photographer, her career was over. If a girl only did single girl nudes and would not do a boy/girl layouts or girl/girl layouts it was over.

Jim new that some models would only work a few times for a few photographers who had markets for that type of model.

I can’t actually remember the first time I saw Colleen, but she was a young looking Briarwood type and I was going to shoot her for them when someone beat me to it. I passed on her for a month or two and in that time she became a star. How do you know she is a star? When everyone wants her and she gets so much work she stops showing up on time because she is just too overworked to get up in the morning. Then the modeling rates start to go up, Penthouse wants her and so does Hustler, she has not done any films up to this point. There were three guys who shot loops in LA at that time and they all paid $600.00 per day which was about 6 times the normal rate for a nude shoot. Most of the top models could keep doing stills and never do the hard core movies, but could work in one that was going directly to Europe. I think she did a few loops and a couple of hard European shoots before she got to the Video market which was just beginning to sprout up around the San Fernando Valley in the early 80’s The loop market was about ready to die. Those 10 minute films that sold for $100.00 in the shops. Were going south when the VCR hit around 1980.

All kinds of shooters started to get the big video cameras and start to shoot video instead of film. What did all of this technology mean to the still guy, it meant that the girls could now have careers in porn after they finished there rounds of still photographers. It meant us photographers were going through a change. We had to compete with the video shooters and they paid more. Girls would drop a shoot with you to take a shoot with someone who was paying $350 or $500.00 per day instead of the usual $100 or $125.00 or $150.00

This was the start of the porn star. Colleen Applegate was on the cusp of this new career direction. No burn out of the career after the still guys got done with you. There was a whole new thing to do now. Video….. The three loop shooters now had 100 guys and 100 new markets to compete with rates went down a bit and competition for the models was fierce. The still guys felt the effect, but it created the PORN STAR. Girls who make a lot on money and who last job may have been at Mickie D’s for $3.00 bucks an hour. She was now trapped into this new career where people threw money at you to get you. The Mitchel brothers offered Ginger Lynn $5000.00 to do an anal scene with a black guy; she turned it down because it was just too far out for her at that time. They Paid Tracy L about $5000, 00 to do a movie for them. I only know about this through stories one would hear at lunch time when all of the photographers would get together and chat about models and rumors.

It was about this time That Colleen met Bobby Hollander and he renamed her Shauna Grant. He was always good at coming up with porn names. She was the first porn star. What was before her Linda Lovelace? An ugly 35year old, the best they could find to work a movie in 1971.