Erica Gavin
- Actress
Born and raised in Hollywood--her father was veteran character actor
Fred Graff--Erica Gavin spent her
teenage years as, she says, "a stoned-out hippie", and at 19 was
dancing at a topless bar called Losers (with future colleagues
Haji and
Tura Satana). One day while waiting at her
dentist's office she saw an ad in "Variety" for girls to audition for a
new Russ Meyer movie. She applied,
and found herself cast in the title role in the soft core classic
Vixen! (1968), the first mainstream
(non-porn) X-rated film. Audiences had never seen anything quite like
the film, or Erica, and the movie was a financial (and, surprisingly
enough, critical) smash and propelled her into virtually instant
stardom. However, after only two more films--Meyer's
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
and Caged Heat (1974), a
Roger Corman women-in-prison picture--she
abruptly left Hollywood and stayed away for almost 30 years. She has
only recently taken some tentative steps at re-entering the movie
business, attending a retrospective of "Vixen", setting up her own
website and being scheduled to attend fan conventions.
