Funding for Frontline is provided by this station and other public television stations
nationwide and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Tonight on Frontline, a girl from Minnesota becomes a star of porn films.
She enjoyed the recognition.
She enjoyed the money.
An 18-year-old innocent looking for adventure and finding a world of money, drugs, and sex
in front of cameras.
Colleen Applegate did not like doing sex on film, period.
She chose to do it.
She could have stopped.
A young life ends with a gunshot and questions.
Tonight, Death of a Porn Queen.
From the network of public television stations, a presentation of KCTS Seattle, WNET New York,
WPBT Miami, WTVS Detroit, and WGBH Boston.
This is Frontline with Judy Woodruff.
Good evening.
This is the story of an ordinary young woman who wandered into a strange world and died.
It's also about dreams, values, choices, families and children, and drugs.
And it's about pornography.
Not pornography's effect on those who see or hear it, but about some of the people who
work in that industry and its effect on them.
The program contains some partial nudity and graphic scenes and language which may offend
some viewers.
It is not suitable for viewing by children.
We recommend parental discretion.
The program is called Death of a Porn Queen, produced for Frontline by Andy Greenspan,
directed by Paul Hentschel, and reported by Al Austin of WCCOTV in Minneapolis.
This is where the story ends.
Palm Springs, California, early in the evening, March 21st, 1984.
A young woman lay thrashing on her bed with a bullet wound through her temple.
A rifle lay beside her.
I went over to her, and she was laying, there was like two mattresses pushed together on
the bed, and there was like a crease, and there was a blood going all the way down the
crease, but you couldn't see any blood on her, and, um...
Her condition was, uh, hopeless.
She was comatose, and she was going to die.
Hey, Omar, could I have the gun on the up, we'll get shooting, please?
Okay, this is the weapon that was found, um, at her side.
How do you think she shot herself?
She would have been laying down on the bed with the gun on the bed, or propped on her
head, possibly with her thumb or other finger to the gun, and the bullet would have passed
through her head and into the wall where we found it.
She was known as Shawna Grant, a star of X-rated films.
Her real name was Colleen.
Colleen Applegate, from Farmington, Minnesota.
She left home when she was 18.
When she died, she was 20.
Colleen lived here for a while, an apartment house near Hollywood.
In the spring of 1983, a few months before her death, she suddenly moved out.
I wonder if she left anything here.
Yeah, I have some things that I was to send to her mother, but I never did.
You're welcome to them.
Compatibility activities.
Pictures.
And terrible books.
Just a lot of pictures.
She was very pretty.
Very pretty.
That's a beautiful picture.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Is that what you look like?
Yeah.
Yeah, her hair is long, but a little bit longer than shoulder length, blonde, like strawberry
blonde.
Very pretty.
And these are just, you know, I guess her high school things.
Diploma.
Yeah.
Diploma.
Letters.
School letters.
I guess they're for cheerleading.
High school diploma, old snapshots and valentines, her confirmation certificate from the Catholic
Church, and a copy of Hustler magazine with her picture on the cover.
These are like the belongings of two people, as though Shawna Grant had kept Colleen Applegate's
things, dragged them with her from place to place, and finally left them behind.
When did one person become the other?
How does an ordinary small-town girl like Colleen become a Hollywood porn queen?
And then what happened to her?
She shot herself.
But why?
How did she get so far from home?
Let's go, let's fight, let's fight, let's fight, let's fight, let's fight.
She was an everyday girl, just like everybody else.
She was in cheerleading, I was in cheerleading.
Teresa Sickenator was one of Colleen's closest friends from the sixth grade on.
She always appeared happier than she was.
I remember that she, she was so unpredictable, you never really knew what she was thinking.
You never knew what she was going to do next unless she shared it with you.
Colleen was, she was more private or more inside of herself, I think, than our other
kids have been.
Colleen Applegate's parents, Phil and Karen, still live in southern Minnesota.
Recently they divorced.
I was very strict with Colleen.
To me, right's right and wrong's wrong, it still is.
But as long as it doesn't go too wrong, they're going to do what they want to do anyway.
I maybe tried to run the house or I tried to run a house like you do a business and
really that isn't a good way to run a house sometimes and maybe I come off that way.
But you know, I learned over the years too, but I think when she was going to high school,
when she was in here, I expected certain things, I realized I was a tough father, I wasn't
an easy father and I don't know whether that was a mistake or not because I was just as
tough on the other kids too.
She was the oldest of five, but there was nothing strange or abnormal about her childhood.
It was very average childhood.
She loved to read.
She used to write poems.
She wasn't much of a house cleaner, but she loved to cook.
Our relationship with Colleen was fine until her junior and senior year.
Then we had a lot of arguments.
At about that time, she began to date a boy named Mike Marcel, who was two years older.
She started liking boys and showing it and she knew that she could get almost anyone
she wanted to.
I think that's when she really started liking boys.
Is this our graduation year, Colleen?
Yeah, because it's 81.
81.
Yeah, okay.
This is the year we graduated and she wrote on the back page, Brenda, it's been a long
time, hasn't it?
Two of Colleen's oldest friends live now in Southern California, Brenda Rosenau and Colleen
Heyer.
They grew up with her.
Both went to California at about the same time she did and stayed in touch with her
to the end.
No matter how far we are apart, we'll always be close at heart and we'll always keep it
touch even if one of us ends up in dumbfuck Egypt, but anyway, I think I've used up enough
space.
Be good, Brenda.
Keep smiling and don't do anything I wouldn't do, love, Lena.
God, it's been a long time since I've read that.
I think she was a little bit different, you know, she had different ideas, I think, than
everybody else.
She had these dreams of what she wanted to do and she wanted to be a model and back then
we didn't really have set dreams or goals and she did.
It was a small town, you know, a population of, what was it, 4,800 people at the time
or something.
Yeah, it was even less than it's small town.
Everybody knew what you were doing before you did it and there was never really anything
to do.
It's going to get bored, everybody.
Yeah.
Colleen stayed in Farmington a while after high school, working first as a cashier, then
as an employee of the telephone company.
There, one night in December, she swallowed a bottle of pills.
She was rushed to the hospital.
We took her to the emergency and they pumped her stomach.
It was basically that it wasn't so much that she wanted to kill herself as it was that
she wanted some attention and she thought that was a way of getting it.
Did you and Colleen ever talk about it?
To be honest, no, I don't think we did.
I don't think we really sat down and talked about it.
We went to the counselor with her as a family.
Then they had one group session with the whole family.
All of us were in there and they tried to get us to talk.
Of course, we were all sitting there looking at each other, nobody saying much.
I was very angry because I still don't feel she took that because of physical, although
maybe it was.
Maybe that was the beginning sign and I didn't know it.
Of a problem, I thought she did it for attention.
After she took the pills, living in a small town can really be the pit sometimes.
A lot of people were talking about it and a lot of people were on her case.
She wanted to get out of here.
Colleen and her boyfriend, Mike Marcel, headed west.
Why do you think she went to California?
To be somebody.
Los Angeles that first spring was no more fertile ground for Colleen's vague ambitions
than Farmington, Minnesota had been.
All I know was that I had talked to her a couple of times and neither one of them were
having very good luck finding a job.
Mike was getting real upset and he wanted her to find a job because he couldn't get
a job and he found, from what she told me, he's the one that found the ad for modeling.
It was just in the newspaper.
It's two girls, one guy, simulation.
There's no colored guys.
Hello?
Okay, he needs you at 10 a.m. Friday.
This is the man Colleen went to see in the spring of 1982.
His name is Jim South.
Can you write this early in the morning?
He runs an agency called World Modeling.
What we do is that we're licensed to get you work with professional photographers.
The majority of the work that we get is nude photographic modeling.
The pay does run from $100 a day up to $1,500 a day, depending on who's shooting you.
Now the two different type shootings we have, we have single girl you modeling alone, like
you see in Penthouse.
We also have simulation, you lucky devil.
A documentary crew led by Wendy Apple shot these scenes of South as he interviewed a
new model named Kim.
You are touching.
You do look like you're doing something, but you're not.
Jim South is indeed an agent.
Apple was making a film entitled Fallen Angels.
And he is absolutely the medium, the way in which girls who know nothing about Hollywood
or movies or pornography come into the porno industry.
They have to pass through him, they don't have to, but that's the way his business is
set up.
Give me a shot of you standing close to the stool with your right foot on the bottom ledge.
He said that he can get new girls' work very fast.
There's always a job for a new girl.
Right over there, taking a Polaroid out of you, okay?
Okay.
Thank you.
All right, now twist a little bit more around.
South showed his Polaroids of Colleen Applegate to Penthouse photographer Steve Hicks.
Up, down, up, down, okay, that's fine.
I'd like to shoot some more of that, but I want to move that cactus out because it's
got no meaning in the picture.
I don't equate what I do with X-rated films whatsoever.
Push it one foot to the left and it'll be out.
What I do is I photograph women in an attempt to create beauty out of their bodies.
Stand and let me see you just start to bring your jeans down a little bit.
Just slowly.
Keep going, I'll tell you when to stop.
Colleen was a beautiful girl and I think very unaware of it.
She was the type of girl that when she walked in, she looked in many ways like she just
came right off the farm, but in makeup, she was a very beautiful girl and she really took
to modeling quickly.
It's unfortunate that Mother Nature put 18-year-old girls on this planet with beautiful bodies
because the mind of a typical 18-year-old girl is not prepared to make the right decisions
in this town with these opportunities.
Hey Stephanie, I need you to grab those jeans, I need you to stretch, that's great, that's
great.
She advised Colleen to get out of nude modeling quickly because it leads downhill.
After all the magazines have used her, the only thing left is X-rated movies.
She ignored the advice and soon was posing for raunchier magazines.
And she invited us up so we went to her house for the weekend and that's when we saw the
pictures and all that.
What sort of pictures were they?
Shocking pictures.
We didn't expect, we didn't know when she said modeling and then she finally told us
it was nude, what do you think of maybe like Playboy, you know, and then the pictures we
saw though were like from more hardcore pictures, erotica and what is that other magazine, velvet,
stuff like that.
And then she just had the Polaroids, the instant pictures of her and some guys, they were pretty,
we both, you know, she pulled them out and started showing them to us and we just looked
at each other, you know, our mouths were like down to our knees, she didn't come right
out and say well I was doing this with this guy and I did this with this girl.
You could tell she felt bad because she wouldn't tell us the whole story, you know, and then
it even went so far as her trying to convince us to do it with her.
So it wouldn't be as bad.
What would she say to do that?
She had appointments set up with her manager for us, for us to go in and the whole bit
and we were just like, well I don't think so, it's easy, just go talk to them, you know,
see if it's good money, you know, you can just do it like on the weekends, come out
here and you don't have to take your clothes off if you don't want to and which, you know,
seeing the pictures you knew you would have to take your clothes off.
How important do you think it was to Colleen that you approve of what she was doing?
I think it was really important to her because I think she knew that nobody that was in her
life before did approve.
You know, you take a typical girl that's used to working at McDonald's or in a shoe store
making a minimum wage and suddenly she's given the opportunity to get made up and be in front
of people that tell her she's beautiful and make as much money in a day as she was making
in three weeks and they change, they change and that's sad.
Mike Marcel, Colleen's boyfriend, soon left her and returned to Minnesota where he spread
the news that Colleen was involved in pornography.
Marcel won't discuss it now, he says he just doesn't care about her.
The Applegates heard the stories about their daughter and flew at once to Los Angeles.
We knew that she was working through this world model agency so we went up to the offices
up there and saw Jim South and saw what was going on.
We asked if Colleen worked for him and he said yes and then he said well she's right
in here and he threw this book at us and he opened it up and there was nude photographs
of Colleen among other girls and I guess you could come in and pick who you wanted to model
for you and that's how they, and we said how can you let an 18 year old girl involved in
this, well she's 18 and she's of age and consent and blah blah blah.
They wanted her to come home and they were like ordering her, giving her no choice which
I think was a mistake because she didn't listen to them in high school, why would she listen
now?
Did that cause a rift between you?
Yes I didn't hear from her for I don't know if it seemed like eternity but it was probably
two months, didn't hear a word and I didn't know where to call her, I mean we left there
and then all the way home I kept saying why did we do that, we could have you know found
out where she was living, found something, I didn't know how to find her.
Okay I'm in 4523 Van Nuys Boulevard.
Now it is a small office building, it's suite 203.
By this time Colleen had posed for almost every men's magazine.
Could you come in tomorrow?
Well what's convenient for you?
Producer Wendy Apple happened to be filming in Jim South's office when Colleen dropped
in.
That's when I get back from lunch.
Okay have a good time and I'll see you tomorrow, bye bye.
Good day, well you and I are going to undress, you don't have enough money, just be nice.
World modeling, okay what's the name of the paper please, you saw the ad in.
Colleen was in South's office again when an adult film director named Bobby Hollander
came in looking for actresses for his next film.
I wanted to use new girls who were just making the turnover, I didn't want to use a first
timer and Colleen had done a piece prior to the paper dolls, just one.
We sat and talked and she was wearing jeans, no shoes and a sweatshirt and sitting on a
table top and I just got good vibes from her and she received good vibes from me and I
said this is going to be easy, it's all a matter of dollars and cents now.
She said well I don't know about that, I said well what you don't know about, don't be ashamed
to ask me because I like you, I don't want to take you to bed, let's be friends and in
this business she felt wow, there's somebody that doesn't want to grab me.
I've been in this a while, those days are past me already, you don't have to sleep with
anyone to get in the film, you have to sleep with them on the film.
Shana how old am I?
I'll be 20 in a week.
I thought you were going to be 19.
No I am 19, I'll be 20.
And how long have you been a paper doll?
Paper doll.
A model, a cover girl, a centerfold?
About two months.
Two months?
Did anybody twist your arm to get into the business?
No, not at all, it was all my idea.
This is a scene from that first film Colleen did with Bobby Hollander, he renamed her Shana
Graham, she was not 19 but 18 at the time.
Are you still a virgin?
No.
Are you kidding?
When, how old were you when you lost your virgin?
Almost 17.
Almost 17, you almost lost it or you did lose it when you were on there?
I did lose it when I was almost 17.
I said to her, you have the capability of being a star, an overnight sensation, because
one day, and it's going to happen fast, once they put a little makeup on you, put some
high heels on your feet and stockings in a garter belt like they do in the picture lands,
the public's going to fall in love with you.
Bobby could talk a nun into doing a porn movie.
Laurie Smith is a veteran adult film actress and makeup artist.
She became Colleen's closest friend.
After Colleen died, Laurie gave up acting and moved away from Los Angeles.
You know, I always look like such an elegant lady on film and I'm still like a little kid,
I'm a little tomboy in my real life and I never changed from the day I came from Huntington
Beach, I'm still a little beach bum girl.
I love it when you touch me there.
When I touch you where, Chuck?
But on movies, I was a, give me a whip and put some makeup on me and I could say lick
my boot to anybody.
Laurie transformed Colleen.
When I first met her, she was frumpy, school girlish, wore funny clothes, I thought they
were funny clothes, I called them funny clothes, and plain and didn't know about makeup, never
really wore makeup, and just never, just kind of, you know, like this kind of a person.
Production stills, here we go.
Oh, you want me to go?
Let's see a pose.
Then after I was finished with her, her shoulders were back and her back was arched and her
chin was up and she'd flip her hair around and she would just, she became sexy.
She became Shawna Grant.
She looked like peaches and cream, nude, naked peaches and cream, and there was that Minnesota
upbringing.
This is the farthest I've been away from home, on my own.
That's crazy.
I haven't been anywhere.
She got her little act down, like, you know, little girl from Minnesota and, you know,
it's up till the very end, she used to say that, like, I wonder how many more years I'm
going to get away with this Minnesota act.
We would tell her, well, you know, if you want to get out, you can come stay with us.
We'll find you a job, you know, letting her know that that wasn't the only thing that
there was for her.
We couldn't tell her what to do.
She was happy doing what she was doing.
We were her friends.
All we could do is back her up.
Well, when you invited her to come live with you and to get a good job, what did she say?
She always told me, well, what could I do?
She goes, I can't do anything.
I can't type.
I can't do this.
I can't do that.
You know, she always was.
Not really putting forth the effort.
She was picking up excuses.
Well, I can't right now have this coming up.
It pays real good.
You know, and see, that's just that nothing that she could do would compare to the money
that she was making.
And I think that was a big issue.
Before I blast off my mouth and go any further, let me introduce you to one of the stars in
the business, Ms. Shawna Grant.
Hi.
Hi, Mom.
How you doing?
Thanks for the intro.
Bobby told you that you can write to me, and I would love it if you wrote to me.
I will send you a picture, and I will autograph it.
I thought she was adorable.
I thought she was cute.
And I took a liking to her.
I wanted to see it happen, where she got what she deserved, where she wasn't abused.
Any mind tricks she used to get through those sex scenes?
No, we just get high.
We always got high before we did it.
Colleen had begun to use cocaine.
She returned to Minnesota for a visit in the fall.
Her friend Teresa met her at the Twin Cities Airport.
She got off the plane, and she wasn't really Colleen, the Colleen that I knew.
She seemed very uppity, a little jumpy.
She was a little anxious.
And the first thing she wanted to do was go into the bathroom and get a snort of coke.
Her eyes looked wild.
She wore a lot of makeup in her hair.
She always was very fussy about her hair, but it was just brushed.
It wasn't really fixed.
She just looked hard.
She just didn't look herself at all.
The subject of drugs, I guess I brought the subject up.
I said, I hope you're not involved and stay away from all this cocaine and things like
that.
I said, you really don't need that.
And she said, oh, you don't have to worry, Dad.
She says, I go to parties where that's at, but I don't do that.
And because I'm a parent, I guess, and because it's my child, I guess I wanted to believe
her.
I just didn't like what she was doing.
She was flaunting her portfolio or whatever.
And the pictures she showed me in the portfolio weren't nude pictures, but they were very
flattering pictures, but she hardly had anything on.
And she wanted to give me one.
She wanted me to pick one out, and she'd give it to me.
I told her I didn't want any of those pictures.
Magazines with Colleen's nude pictures had reached the stores in Farmington.
In the high school, Colleen's younger sister found one of those pictures taped to her locker.
Colleen had become not a celebrity, but an embarrassment.
She went back to go to a friend's wedding that was one of the girls that hung around
with us, and she was kind of worried, and the things they were saying, and the girl's
mother wouldn't even let her in.
She wouldn't let her in the church.
They didn't want her around.
Three peas.
Despite appearances, this is serious business.
The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Twice a year, these exhibitions give the porn industry a chance to show off its new films
and its stars to the nation's videotape dealers.
Triple X Kisses for your office wall.
What are the clients going to say?
Hiya.
How you doing?
Americans rented 100 million X-rated videocassettes last year.
Most of the companies that produce them are represented here.
They have a pool of 400 actors and actresses who are willing to have sex on camera.
And the winner is Blame it on Jim.
The X-rated performers have their own version of the Academy Awards.
What's this for?
This is for best shot on video sex scene.
I'm not quite sure which one it is though.
Which scene?
Well, the film is nominated.
It's up for best specialty film.
Bizarre Encounters.
You describe it, dear.
How would you describe Bizarre Encounters?
It is the world's first how-to instruction on black comedy, hardcore, bondage, and discipline
tape.
And if you think I was hot in 86, watch Bernie Sanders.
Twenty-one-year-old Barbara Dare is voted best new performer.
I went home and one day a girlfriend of mine that I've had for a long time was acting different.
And I said, why?
Because of what I'm doing?
And I just told him, I said, when I come, point blank, I said, when I come back here
in a couple of years and I have over $100,000 to do what I want with and open up a business
and you shits are still doing the same thing and sitting in this bar doing nothing, I said,
then you'll talk.
Annette Little Dove is another newcomer to adult movies.
She's 19 from Oklahoma.
It just messes with your mind.
It's addictive.
You can't quit.
Once you get the hold of the many and you know it's there and it's easy to get to, you
don't want to quit.
Just push that in.
Automatically.
Joey.
Hurry up.
Joey.
Let me get one.
Here, get this.
In 1983, Colleen Applegate attended one of these shows as the porn industry's new star.
She had been unwelcome at a friend's wedding in her hometown, but here, people lined up
to have their picture taken with her.
She had a line of a minimum of 40 people at a time.
She saw the recognition.
And she liked it?
Yeah.
She became Shawna Grant.
At that show?
Yeah.
She became Shawna Grant.
But Shawna Grant always was Colleen Applegate.
I don't know which scared her more.
She was a little girl.
She needed to be supported, you know, needed to be told that everything was okay and that,
you know, there were people there with her.
Yeah, I'm sure.
No, we got both of them in here.
Lucky me.
I didn't even like it, the real thing.
Danielle Martin and Colleen began their X-rated acting careers at about the same time.
We met on a film, Summer Camp Girls.
She was, like, really nice and we just, like, started hanging out, you know.
Best friends, you know.
Very close.
Okay, John, you're next, huh?
You know, I will always make it on my own.
And I know that, even if everyone dumps me.
But she couldn't, you know.
She was holding on.
She was frightened to make her own decisions or what to do or anything like that.
Is your sound okay in there now?
Okay, fine.
Slating centerfold celebrities, Shawna and Jamie, take one.
Why would you want me to lay down?
Well, just so you could be comfortable.
You know, I don't want you to strain.
Bobby Hollander directed Colleen in a series of hard-core tapes that required only a day
or two each to shoot.
Are you going to go aside?
Bobby is an okay person to work for.
He's not a pushy, mean, doesn't make you feel, I mean, you may look cheap in the movie,
but while you're doing it, he makes you feel like a little queen, you know.
During the time, you feel like you're doing Gone with the Wind.
So it's, like, one of those things.
It's not hard for Bobby.
He didn't talk her into it.
She wanted to do it.
Shawna was a talent.
She was a star.
There are stars in the business.
Shawna Grant made herself a star in a short period of time, the quickest I've ever seen.
Colleen's movies and modeling paid her almost $100,000 in one year.
She spent most of the money on cocaine.
She needed it like you feel like you will need it.
You know, it's a security blanket.
I mean, we just like to do it.
We did a lot, though.
She and I, I mean, in that one year, in a year and a half, actually, that I really hung
around with her a lot.
We, because we'd always go in on it together and we always would buy a lot.
I may have done cocaine with both of them, but I'm selling either one.
I wasn't selling cocaine.
I was a user.
Did you give Colleen cocaine?
I think I gave Colleen as much cocaine as she gave me.
It was the perfect thing to have.
You could go moke a joint, unwind from the first scene, and then right before you go
on, you take a dude.
So now, Shawna is going to explain.
These are outtakes from a movie Lori and Colleen did with Bobby Hollander.
She's going to dust off the fucking screen.
Okay.
So you don't miss anything.
All right.
Don't get mad at me.
I just, every time I go, I mean, once I saw Bobby start a free-basing, that was the last
time I worked for Bobby, the last time I would ever work for him, and I was really pissed
off.
Would you watch it?
You know you don't know.
You ain't listening to shit.
We are listening to everything.
You walk away.
I know exactly.
I'm listening.
I don't want you to say anything.
I want you to listen to me.
Okay, Bobby.
Lori, deep inhale.
I know, but let's get to this.
Okay, do you see what I think?
You're saying this.
You can read it right from the script.
I know exactly how you want it.
He just was crazy.
He couldn't make up his mind what he wanted to do.
He had this script that he'd written probably when he was on his third day of wake, but it
was so sadistically disgusting.
We're taking this instead of the stills that we did.
And I just said, Colleen, forget it.
Just forget Bobby.
Go off on your own.
You got your name now.
You're big enough where you can do it on your own.
I'm sorry.
You didn't tell me I was.
I told you.
I am.
Yes, we are shooting.
We are shooting.
We are rolling.
Debbie's in there getting makeup on now.
Bobby Hollander is on probation for cocaine possession.
Each weekend, he must clean up highways for the California Transportation Department.
I've been here 16 or 17 days working with this group, some of the finest guys in the
highway and freeway business.
Colleen was making as much as $1,700 a day when sex scenes were shot.
She hated it.
She just laid there and just let it happen.
Colleen Applegate did not like doing sex on film, period.
She just was so overwhelming because I knew the girl did not want to be there.
It was so shameful.
Jerry Butler, one of Colleen's co-stars, believes she did not belong in adult films, but others
kept encouraging her.
Everybody said it was okay.
Hey, put this skirt on.
You look like a million, Colleen.
Oh, you look great.
I mean, Shawnee, you look fabulous.
Oh, great.
Take the picture.
Oh, terrific.
Oh, this is great.
Oh, great sex scene.
Oh, terrific.
These are the people that are still alive.
These are the people that made money and still making money off this poor little girl,
getting to think that that's all she needed in life.
She enjoyed the recognition.
She enjoyed the money.
There's no question about that.
Okay, but she was an aimless girl.
She was vulnerable.
Don't you think that that life is harmful to a person like that?
That's a loaded question.
Yeah, it is.
It's a loaded question.
I think anyone who is in Colleen's age group, they're all in the same situation.
She chose.
She chose to do it.
She could have stopped and made less money and just been a photographer's model, but
I personally think she enjoyed doing it.
Colleen was an exhibitionist.
Okay, maybe she was.
Colleen was two different people on camera and off camera.
Two different people, Jekyll and Hyde, completely.
It was her choice, but wouldn't it have been better for her to stop?
Well talking about it today, yes, it would have been better.
In that one year, Colleen performed in 30 X-rated movies.
She had an abortion.
She contracted herpes.
She performed sex on camera with 37 men.
The thing I notice mostly about is how quiet it is here now.
There used to be noise.
There used to be life here.
Jake Ehrlich is a former cocaine dealer.
He returned to his home in Palm Springs, California this winter, after almost three years in prison.
It was just an empty feeling, you know, as if I left, you know, last week and coming
back to absolutely zero.
Basically how our bedroom was set up, you just keep the stereo over there and there's
a patch there that bothers me.
It's a patch the police pulled out.
They made a patch and someone tried to patch it up and it bothers me to sleep next to it.
What do you mean?
The bullet went through her head.
I don't know how she was lying, how she was even shot, I never even knew, but the bullet
went through her head and into the wall.
Some of her clothing is still there, not much, but I find a piece here and a piece there.
Jake met Colleen in the spring of 1983, after he saw pictures of her in Penthouse magazine.
I opened it up and I saw the section she was in, I said this girl is gorgeous, this girl
is for me.
Bobby Hollander is her agent and he'll come around.
He learned that Colleen's manager was Bobby Hollander, one of his cocaine customers.
And he brought her over and this little girl with like this washed hair, you know, curling
up and a little Gumby t-shirt and a pair of jeans and I said no, this couldn't be the
girl, this girl is 14, 15, 16 years old, but it was her, you know, not what I expected,
not the fantasy.
It wasn't the fantasy from the magazine.
She came here and she never left.
She just stayed.
She stayed.
She found home.
And she quit doing pornography.
She just stopped it.
She was very happy in the very beginning, very super happy person.
She called up everyone.
I'm in love.
I love Jake.
You know, people would tell me Jake, this girl really loves you.
And she started building up.
She would call home for recipes to her parents.
I'm not in the business no more and give me the recipe for that.
I'm cooking for Jake.
Sometimes late at night with the stereo on, Colleen tape recorded her thoughts.
You amaze me, here I am 20 years old and in love with a man twice my age.
You let me be Colleen and you don't expect me to be anybody else.
You respect me and you care about me and you at least like me.
She was basically happy living here.
She was safe from the outside world.
Colleen stopped making adult films, but the people she'd met in that business often came
to visit her at Jake's.
There was always drugs around.
It was like a non-stop party.
Her friend Theresa came from Minnesota to see her once.
I remember a bad experience at one of these parties that I was offered, something I thought
was a joint and it was something called Jerry Lewis's Kids.
It made you feel retarded.
And that was the point that I decided I shouldn't be there.
It scared the heck out of me.
I believe Colleen was dependent on Jake for her habit, her drug habit, and because she
had a beautiful house.
She was very dependent on people.
We just started drifting a little bit apart, you know.
I couldn't supply her with the amount of attention she needed.
She would follow me from one room to another.
It was something I couldn't take, you know, I just couldn't take it.
So I just constantly pushed her off.
Jake didn't know it, but Colleen had become involved with a college student during a trip
back to Minnesota.
He doesn't want to be identified.
She just seemed like someone who had made a mistake and she didn't want to be doing
it anymore, according to her.
And I mean, she was friendly and intelligent and pretty and fun to be with.
We had a great time.
Now she told me that she was going to marry him, and I don't know if he, if they'd actually
talked about that, but in her heart, that was her dream, to marry him, to come back,
go to school, be a regular college student, use her mind, because she had a good mind,
and marry him.
And yet Colleen stayed with Jake and her cocaine addiction worsened.
It's hard for a cocaine dealer to control someone that's close to you, especially if
you're selling it.
How can you say, you shouldn't do it, it's no good for you, meanwhile I'm doing it myself
and I'm selling it?
She got real thin, she was real pale, she wasn't eaten.
She just looked sick, you know, and I would always ask her, I would say, why do you keep
doing it?
Why don't you just stop for a while, you know, and she's like, oh, I'm okay, I don't
do it that much, you know, and I say, well, look at you, you're, you know, you're 90 pounds.
Jake urged her to get psychiatric help.
She refused, and one night he told her she'd have to move out.
She said, if that's the end, I'll show you.
She runs in my bedroom, and I hear her pick up my rifle and go click, click, and I run
in there real fast.
I didn't take her serious, I figured she just wants attention, she wants something.
I ran in there quick enough that she had the rifle cocked.
She hadn't pulled the trigger?
No, no.
She cocked the rifle?
She cocked it.
And it was loaded?
It was loaded.
I kept the rifle, it's a.22 rifle, the same rifle she took a life with, but I didn't take
her serious, you know, I figured she just wants attention, she's mad, you know, and
I couldn't handle the situation either, and I, you know, we sat down in the bed, we talked,
and I says, all right, you don't have to move, you stay here, and when you're ready you'll
go.
I was scared.
A few days later, in February 1984, police arrested Jake for drug dealing.
He was taken to jail, and faced several years in prison.
The Adult Film Association of America proudly presents the eighth annual Erotic Film Awards,
Adult Movies Have Come of Age.
Colleen had not made a hard-core film in the ten months she lived in Palm Springs, but
three of her earlier performances were nominated for awards.
Shawna Grant for Flesh and Laces Parts 1 and 2.
I'm ready for $100 an hour.
Are you worth that?
Of course I'm worth that.
You asked for a top model?
You're gonna get it.
Mr. John Leslie and Ms. Shawna Grant.
She didn't win, but it must have been an exciting evening for Colleen.
Frances Ford Coppola was seated at the same table.
The best part and second decoration are Eddie Heath for The Devil and Miss Jones Part 2.
Colleen found she was still very much in demand.
That night, she agreed to make another adult film, and was to begin shooting it in eight
days.
It was seven days before her death.
A few days after the awards show, Colleen's Minnesota boyfriend arrived in Los Angeles
to see her.
She never showed up at the airport.
Oh, there's a mix up, the fact that Colleen just totally disregarded the fact he was flying
in, forgot.
She forgot he was coming in.
She made plans for like two months to have him come out from Minnesota, and he finally
got the time to come out, and she knew about it for two weeks, she knew, but then when
it came down to that day, we'd gone to the awards and we got wasted, and then we were
hanging out at my house, we slept for two days.
We didn't know how we were going to get there because we didn't have a car.
So we had to figure out a way to get there, and that's when, that's what she was doing
all that day, is figure out a way to get there, and that's when Jake called and all the shit
came down.
Jake phoned Colleen from jail, told her their relationship was over, she would have to move
out.
I got the seed plant, my boyfriend's coming in town, she didn't pay none of the bills,
she destroyed the $2,000 on mostly drugs and limousines and partying.
All these things are built in my head, and I'm saying, hey man, stop her now.
Colleen called her friend Brenda and asked her to come over and keep her company while
she packed.
She was like real depressed, and she wasn't talking much, she was just kind of sitting
around.
She was, you know, you could tell she wasn't happy at all.
She had run out of money and cocaine.
In two days she'd be performing sex on camera again.
Now she had to pack and get out.
When the stereo was on, and she went back into her bedroom.
I remember the first time I really, really was lonely and depressed and down, and I wasn't
doing so well.
I was stuck and had no one to depend on but me.
That was the first time I really felt bad, and that was my new compared to what's coming
and what's happened since then.
And I heard a pop, like a loud pop, and I look, and she was laying, there was like two
mattresses pushed together on the bed, and there was like a crease, and there was a blight
going all the way down the crease, but you couldn't see any blood on her.
So I like tilted her head up, and I was just trying to see, you know, I was just trying
to look at her.
I was like Colleen, Colleen, because she was still breathing.
A girl named Lori called here at midnight, our time, and was crying on the phone and
asked if we knew about Colleen, and we didn't.
And she said that she was in LA, but Brenda had called her and told her that Colleen shot
herself, and she just was wondering if I knew, and I didn't hear from anybody.
At the hospital, machines kept Colleen alive for 24 hours.
Her mother and friends were there.
And I had had this ring that was a little heart with some diamonds on it.
I wore it on my wedding finger, and I had asked Colleen's mom if I could give it to
her, and she's like, are you sure?
You know, I gave it to her, you know, I was afraid to even touch her, I was like reaching
on her, I asked, you know, can I?
Can I touch her?
You know, she just looked so frail and everything, and it just was so different to see someone
with a bullet through their head, you can imagine.
And so I took it off my wedding finger, and it wouldn't even fit on hers, her body was
being kept alive by machines, and circulation when it goes, your body swells up.
And I just knew that she wasn't there.
It wasn't her, it wasn't Colleen.
Her eyes were donated, I got two different letters about her eyes, and her kidneys were
supposed to be, but I never heard from them, so I don't know if it worked or didn't work,
I never heard back, but that's what I signed for them to take.
Colleen Applegate went to California in March 1982.
She died there in March 1984.
She went in search of something, not knowing what, and with only her beauty to offer in
return, and she got lost.
She left home incomplete, unequipped for the adventure she'd have, lacking an inner compass.
Like Dorothy from Kansas, Colleen found herself in a dangerous forest, but there was no scarecrow
along to help her find the way out.
Maybe adults learn too much, maybe we should all go back to being kids.
Wouldn't it be wonderful to be a kid and keep the honesty, be totally ignorant to hate and
loneliness and disgust?
A final thought.
The story of Colleen's life is singular, unique, unlike any other.
But it's also part of a larger, more troubling story.
Each year the number of young people in trouble seems to be increasing.
Some run away, some get in trouble with the law, some, like Colleen, attempt suicide.
Last year an estimated 400,000 attempted suicide, 6,000 succeeded.
Is all this a way of telling us that we need to pay more attention to our young people?
Thank you for joining us.
I'm Judy Woodruff, good night.
Coming up on Frontline, the prayer, pride and power of the black church.
The church is what we have had all the time, all the way back to slavery.
Young successful blacks are returning to their church in record numbers, seeking the racial,
political and spiritual core of life in black America.
Church Keeping the Faith, next time on Frontline.
Thank you.
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