sisters were exposed to the various perverts her mother shacked up with. By the time she was fourteen, she had been committed multiple times and experimented with acid, part of the chronic drug and alcohol abuse that would eventually ravage her from the inside out and lead to her untimely death.
Melinda eventually grew up into a disturbed but voluptuous, 5-foot 6-inch, 116-pound, 36D-22-32 young woman. In 1991, the sultry sixteen-year-old married a young Marine and made a go at a normal life, something that lasted about two years, until she started stripping and he filed for divorce.
Her career took off after that and she appeared in a several magazines, both nude and otherwise, including mainstream Vanity Fair, Hustler, Swank, Playboy on numerous occasions and, in April 1994, as the Penthouse “Pet of the Month.” Around this time she married again—a nightclub manager named Michael Taylor—and had three children, a girl, Chloe, in 1996 (apparently by a man other than her husband), and twin boys, Austin and Tristan, in 1997.
In 2001, the industrious Jones kicked it up a notch and moved into the pornographic film industry, where she soon became relatively well known, signed contracts with two production companies, and acquired a professional reputation for being “difficult” and a prescription drug abuser. Three years of that was all Jones could handle and—also affected, perhaps, by her waning health—in 2004 she announced her retirement from the adult entertainment industry. At that point she had performed in eighteen films.
Jones apparently continued to trade on her looks and reputation, however, and to supplement her livelihood as an “escort” for men willing and able to pay a premium for sex. According to a March 2005 interview with the National Enquirer, these included Sheen, who she claimed to have fellated for a whopping fifteen grand in January 2005.
Jones, however, did not last too long after that and died just three months later, in June 2005 at age twenty-nine, with cause of death attributed to liver failure inflicted by an addiction to Vicodin and a lifetime of heavy drug and alcohol abuse. She was interred at Woodlawn Garden of Memories in Houston.
Less than a year later, in May 2006, the supermarket tabloid the Globe published an alleged interview with Jones’s mother that quoted her as saying Sheen had made death threats against the starlet, had played a role in her death, and that she was considering filing a wrongful death suit against the actor. What is known for sure is that Donna Jones Noeller filed a lawsuit against the Globe, insisting she had never actually been interviewed and that her statements had been manufactured.
But the damage was done and some people believed the story—including, apparently, Sheen’s wife, actress Denise Richards, who cited the actor’s failure to deny any involvement in Jones’ death as her basis for obtaining a restraining order against him.
The Devil in Georgina Spelvin (March 1, 1936)
Not every Texas porn star is a train wreck waiting to happen, and some have managed to pace themselves and retire and go on to relatively normal lives after long and prosperous careers. One of these is certainly Georgina Spelvin, best known for her leading role in the 1973 classic The Devil in Miss Jones, widely considered to have significant artistic merit and be one of the best pornographic films ever made.
Born Michelle Graham in Houston on March 1, 1936, the future actress was struck by polio as a child but managed to gain enough mobility to train as a dancer and develop into a 5-foot 5-inch, 118-pound, 35-24-36, brown-haired, brown-eyed woman. She moved to New York City in the 1950s, where she started off as a chorus girl and was thereafter featured in Broadway productions of Guys and Dolls, Sweet Charity, and The Pajama Game. She made the transition to pornography in 1957 with The Twilight Girls (aka, Les Collegiennes), a soft-core lesbian movie.
“I wanted to be an opera singer but my voice wasn’t good enough…. My second choice was ballerina. After that, it was a series of compromises.”
“At first, I wanted to be an opera singer but my voice wasn’t good enough,” she is quoted as having said. “My second choice was ballerina. After that, it was a series of compromises.”
Soon after she moved exclusively into pornography, eventually adopting the screen name Georgina Spelvin, a variation on “George Spelvin,” a traditional pseudonym used by stage actors (although she is also variously credited as Shelley Abels, Claudia Clitoris, Tia Von Davis, Dorothy May, Merle Miller, Georgette Spelvin, Ona Tural, and Ruth Raymond).
Spelvin went on to become one of the most-well-known figures in the adult film industry, performing in more than seventy hard-core pornographic films by the time she retired in 1982. She also appeared in and did costume design for a handful of low-budget exploitation films, among them I Spit on Your Corpse (aka, Girls For Rent), and had minor roles in a number of mainstream films, including Police Academy and Police Academy 3: Back in Training, for which she was cast as a prostitute, as well as Bad Blood and Next Year in Jerusalem, and guest starred in a couple of television shows.
During her career as a pornographic actress, Spelvin won at least nine industry awards—including two for Best Actress, four for Best Supporting Actress, and three for pornography halls of fame—and was nominated for at least one other. Ironically, the one for which she was nominated but did not receive was for her role in The Devil in Miss Jones.
After retiring from pornography, Spelvin went into desktop publishing and worked as a designer for the L.A. Times until 2004, when she retired again. Since then, she has appeared in a number of cameo roles, interviews, and music videos, and, in 2008, published an autobiography titled The Devil Made Me Do It.
Texas Porn Stars
FOLLOWING ARE MORE THAN TWO-DOZEN pornographic actors and actresses, most identified by their stage names, who have hailed from Texas. Years of birth (and death if applicable) are provided when known, followed by the communities from which they originally hailed or lived at some point if available.
Sunrise Adams (Pickton)
Krista Allen (1971; Houston, Austin; soft-core)
Candy Barr, nee Juanita Dale Slusher (1935–2005; Edna, Victoria, Dallas)
Jessica Drake (1974; San Antonio)
Katie Gold (Dallas)
Jessie Jane, nee Cindy Taylor (1980; Fort Worth)
Sindee Jennings (1986)
Chloe Jones, nee Melinda Dee Jones (1975–2005; Silsbee, Houston)
Jana Jordan (1986; Houston)
Wendi Knight (1975; Fort Worth)
Adrianna Lynn/Adrenalynn (1985; Allen)
Meggan Mallone (1986; Houston)
Julie Meadows, nee Lydia Lee (1974; Texarkana)
Nina Mercedez (1977; Corpus Christi)
Britt Morgan (1963; Tyler)
Bree Olson, nee Rachel Marie Oberlin (1986; Houston)
Teagan Presley, nee Ashley Ann Erickson (1985; The Woodlands, Houston)
Texas Presley (1981; Austin)
Jesse Santana (1986; Houston)
Georgina
