As you know, I am interested in minor male stars of the 50s and 60s (especially) and their career adjustments (such as Craig Hill decamping to Europe to become a major figure in spaghetti Westerns). So I am definitely amused by this wholesome-looking fellow Chris Warfield becoming a pornographer. His first related credit was as producer on exploitation director William Rotsler’s * hippie / nudie documentary Like It Is (1968), and he continued in the demimonde as an actor (although perhaps not a “performer”), writer, director, and producer, with the material getting increasingly hardcore as he went along. As with many such marginal figures **, I would be interested in having more biographical information on Warfield than seems to be readily accessible.

* Rotsler had become a force in noirish roughies such as Mantis in Lace (1968).

** For example, I am lately taken with the identical twin brother actors William and John Hudson, who did bit roles in a lot of things, but leads in Fifties horror such as The Man Who Turned to Stone (William) and The Screaming Skull (John). There are not many pairs of twin actors, and the Hudsons worked together once in an episode of Adam-12 that utilized their identicality in a mistaken identity plot.

William Hudson, perhaps discouraged by a career that never really took off, drank himself to death by age 55, and I notice that John stopped appearing on screen that same year, 1974. I imagine those facts might be related. ***

*** Life on the fringes of Hollywood could be pretty disheartening **** even without going full Ed Wood. This emerges very clearly in bios of marginal figures who have been lucky enough to GET bios, such as Grant Williams, and near-miss pop star Craig Smith.

**** American noir cinema is inherently reflexive because Hollywood / Los Angeles were themselves noir at that time. There is a definite feedback loop.