Michael Tavis: the bloody story of the life of a porn millionaire
'08.07.2017'
Source: The Daily Beast
A native of the town of Raleigh (North Carolina), Michael Tavis was born in a poor family, but he built a successful porn business thanks to the passion of Puritan America for forbidden entertainment. A businessman made millions of dollars before it became a real industry. But the explosion, arson, murder and escape from prison put an end to his empire. The story of the rise and fall of porn millionaire shared edition The Daily Beast.
In the city of Atlanta, full of ambition and opportunity, there was everything Tavis could only dream of. Young, thin, with thick black hair, he went to school, and at night he worked at a newsstand for 50 dollars a week. In 19 for years, he fell in love with 16-year-old Joan, who worked in a shop next door. Later she gave him five children.
In the 1950s, America held old-fashioned views on sex and behaved shyly: on television, married couples slept in separate beds. Since the Civil War, frank publications have been outlawed, but when Tavis bought risky magazines like The Dude or Ghent, they changed his income.
“I once took an inventory and found that 90% of my income came from 10% of my product range — magazines with girls,” he wrote. - I was arrested several times for indecency, the first arrest was for a magazine Playboy. Now it seems ridiculous, but I assure the reader that this was a serious crime for the southern states of the 50s. ”
Tavis bet on the insatiable thirst of Americans to the thrill. In 60's, he published a guide to the American nudist colonies. “I must have sold a quadrillion copies,” he recalled. “But they didn't even have pictures in them.” He founded the company Peachtree News and filled it with writers who were constantly knocking on typewriters. The company produced cheap pamphlets with sex scenes on every page and stories like "The teacher confessed to sex in the school office." Tavis spent the income on an extended family: he and Joan had two children, Mike Jr. and Christina.
Michael Tavis promised his young wife that he would become a millionaire before he turned 30, and she believed him. In archival letters, a family friend named Arlene Tate writes: "Tavis had a hypnotic effect on people ... They were literally attracted to him ... There was a devilish gleam in his eyes." Soon, Tavis persuaded his boss to install another newsstand under his leadership. By 1955, he had three of his own kiosks.
The company of a balding businessman with a neat goat beard occupied an entire block on historic Marietta Street in Atlanta and earned 25 million dollars annually — more than Hewlett-Packard or Hershey. But Tavis did not do computers or chocolates. He sold the hottest new product on the American market - pornography.
At his factory, Tavis created a car to conquer the sex industry. She looked like a jukebox, only instead of music was porn, and the 8-mm projector lost 15 second videos of erotic films.
Tavis leased these machines to owners of adult shops, where curious and excited customers locked themselves in private booths and fed their quarters to the machine, if only the video did not end.
“In those days it was like the discovery of the New World,” recalls Tavis. He told bookstore owners: “I’ll put eight of your machines in you, and you’ll earn at least 1000 dollars a week, divide your income equally, 50 / 50”. Soon the demand for machines exceeded the supply. “It was a goldmine,” he recalls.
Tavis became a millionaire by 37 years.
His two corporations Automatic Enterprises and Cine-maticsproduced on 50 machines per week. He repaid his companion Roger Underhill by making him a junior business partner.
Tavis and Underhill often spent their free time together, going in for climbing, riding bicycles and going on picnics with their families. By this time, Tavis had five children, including twins Tony and Stephanie, and the youngest, Jason.
By the end of 60, more than 6000 machines from Cine-matics. Tavis purchased the building on Marietta Street, and Underhill equipped the machines with a device to track down and prevent fraud by book store owners.
While the 70's sexual revolution marched through the streets, machine guns earned almost 2 a billion dollars. In the conservative South, mafia fighters fought for these fabulous profits, and Atlanta became the capital of the US killings.
As money arrived, problems with the law began to arise. Tavis was regularly arrested for distributing pornography, but his lawyers, armed with the First Amendment to the Constitution (allowing freedom of speech and the press) and the ambiguity of the law regarding the status of pornography, helped him avoid prison.
Known as “Mr. T” among employees, Tavis became the head of the church community and wrote generous checks to local charities. He invested his income in 200 "normal" corporations, including gift shops, bookstores, candy shops, cheese and fruit delivery. Tavis cut the ribbon at the opening of his restaurant Saddle and stirrupand also launched a furniture and transportation company, invested in real estate.
The young man who married Joan disappeared. Joan, a modest housewife, began to hate her extravagant husband and ordered him to leave, but they both knew that financially she was completely dependent on him. In public, they behaved like a couple and even attended dance lessons under the guidance of Janet Evans, a deeply religious and spectacular brunette whom he fell in love with. The king of pornography showered his girlfriend Janet with money, Greek figurines, she wore a diamond necklace and dreamed of becoming Mrs. Tavis.
The billionaire has never had enough women or money. As a millionaire, he wanted to gain complete control over the entire pornography industry and become its sole owner. He literally destroyed his competitors.
Soon a third woman appeared in his life. Joan hired for a restaurant Saddle and stirrup 18-year-old waitress Patricia Macklin. And yet Tavis was attracted by not a stunning figure and not long red hair, but her business acumen. He later appointed her president in his largest company. Global Industries.
In 1971, Tavis was charged with transporting obscene material and sentenced to five years with a fine of 1000 dollars. Thanks to legal tricks, he was able to replace the term with a conditional one. Tavis realized that he needed to move away from the porn business to remain a free man. Announcing his “resignation”, he wrote: “I rode the wave of success to the very top and earned a lot of money. I do not regret it. ”
At the end of 1971, he handed the reins to Bernard and Noel Bloom in Los Angeles and Mel Friedman in Atlanta. He made Patricia Macklin an authorized representative and manager of a business worth 12 million dollars.
“I don’t want to be remembered as the porn authority of Atlanta,” he wrote.
Tavis achieved the wealth and fame he desired. Every week, filmed up to 75 new videos exclusively for the market of pornautomat. Making films for adults has become a profession, the first porn stars have appeared - America has entered the Golden Age of pornography. In the 1972 year, Deep Throat set a record, collecting 25 millions of dollars at the box office, but the incomes of adult cinemas still amounted to less than a quarter compared to the revenues of pornautomattes.
Tavis planned to build his 30-room manor called Lion's gate estatedesigned in the Tudor style.
Tavis invited orphans from the orphanage to his territory and pool, wrote checks to young athletes, paid for performances of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera. “I could be the best goodwill ambassador of this city if only the townspeople knew about it,” he told reporters. He began to produce musicians and boasted that he had a “sixth sense” behind the sound engineering console.
In addition, he was engaged in financing and producing low-cost kung fu movies. And although he never attended the filming of porn, he often appeared on the set of his militants.
In the first week of August in 1973, Michael Tavis’s adjusted life for the first time got out of control. On Sunday afternoon, Joan sat visiting Underhill and chatted with his wife. Their husbands rode motorcycles, and when they returned by the appointed time, Joan went to look for them. At Riverside Drive, she discovered that a terrible accident had happened: a car clipped a Tavis motorcycle, it flew off the road and fell from the 15-meter high promenade. All the way, Joan drove after the ambulance. He spent two and a half months in the hospital recovering from internal injuries and a damaged spine. Time in a hospital bed served him as a good alibi for planning a new murder.
Shortly before midnight 13 September 1973, Jimmy Meyes left his adult bookstore. Meyes used to work for Tavis, where he spotted how to make pornautomatics. Now he has opened his shop three miles from Tavis and set up his own automatons there. Meyes walked around the red-light district by prostitutes, drug dealers and hippies. He got into his truck and turned the ignition key - an explosion of dynamite lit the street, and his body pierced the roof of the car and fell on the asphalt.
Even sitting in a wheelchair, "retired" Tavis continued to expand his network of porn machines and vowed to deal with everyone who stands in his way.
In December, the FBI 1974 charged Tevis with arson and distributing pornography. The businessman called a press conference at his estate, put Jason's little son on his knees and said: "I want people to have a better opinion of Mike Tavis."
He proposed to transfer his estate to the mayor of Atlanta so that a school could be opened within its walls. He promised to give 3,3 a million dollars to restore the famous Peachtree Street theater. But it did not work. He was accused of carrying obscene material and conspiring to set fire to the Bailen warehouse.
In the very arson, Clifford Wilson confessed, and the judge replaced Michael with a prison on 8 for years in a prison medical center. His beloved Janet, a convinced Christian, decided that she could not continue relations with a man accused of such crimes.
10 June 1976 of the year Paul King descended on the warehouse Cine-matics. FBI agents seized thousands of porn films and in the safe they found Tavis's to-do list.
The first on the list was “Kill Roger.”
2 April 1978, Tavis appeared in court in Louisville for setting fire to Bailen’s property. Tavis came to support Patricia Macklin. The trial lasted seven days. The jury ordered the defendant to pay 687 thousand dollars in damages.
Later, Tavis escaped from prison with his mistress. Michael killed Robert Underhill. Then the couple was delayed. Patricia Macklin was arrested and charged with complicity in escaping and supplying the prisoner with money.
Tavis denied all charges, all incidents of violence, even after neighbor of Underhill confirmed that he had seen Tavis while committing a double murder.
21 October 1979 juries have rendered their verdict. Tavis, Janet Evans and Bart Hood were convicted of conspiring to kill Roger Underhill to prevent the latter from testifying against Tavis.
A few years ago, his nephew Mann Chandler came to Tavis prison. A former engineer told me that Uncle Mike gave him advice last. “Son, make as much money as you can, but never cross the line,” he said. - I stepped over.
Before he died of heart attack and breathing in 2013, Tavis often looked out of barbed wire to look at the house with a wretched apartment where he once lived with Joan when he was poor. When he dreamed of making millions of dollars. When he was not familiar with Roger Underhill. When he was happy.
