Annie Sprinkle was still a teen when she rolled into Tucson and got a job as a popcorn girl and ticket taker at the Cine Plaza, as the Rialto was then known.
It was 1973, and "Deep Throat" was drawing big crowds on its way to becoming the most successful (and scandalous) film ever to play at the historic theater.
Dubbed "porno chic" by the New York Times and reviewed favorably by Variety when it opened in Times Square a year earlier, "Deep Throat" attracted New York's elite, including socialites and actors such as Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson. It even inspired the naming of the Washington Post's secret informant during the Watergate coverage.
"The movie was running 24 hours a day," Sprinkle said in a phone interview last week.
"In the evenings the theater was packed. I remember a wholesome crowd, a lot of university people. It was the first time a lot of them had seen a porn movie in a theater."
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Her time at the Rialto would set Sprinkle, now 54, on the path to becoming an internationally known performance artist, sex educator, porn star and filmmaker.
Back then she was Ellen F. Steinberg, a self-proclaimed hippie and free spirit. After spending time at a commune in Oracle, she worked in Tucson as a hotel maid and wallpaper hanger until landing at the Cine Plaza.
"It was amazing to have such a beautiful theater to go to see porn in," Sprinkle recalled. "That was part of the draw. It was elegant, clean and shiny and really beautifully painted. There were nice, comfy seats."
And "Deep Throat" was lucrative.
"I remember spending a lot of time at my desk counting large amounts of money," John Jacobs, Cine Plaza's manager, said in a DVD feature on the 2005 documentary "Inside Deep Throat."
Sprinkle left Cine Plaza a few months into the film's run and was working as a prostitute when she was served with a subpoena to testify about the inner workings of the theater.
Authorities were cracking down on venues showing "Deep Throat," relying on federal regulations against the interstate transportation of obscene materials.
FBI agents raided Cine Plaza in May 1973 and confiscated papers, shipping boxes, air freight tags and "Deep Throat" posters, according to online archives.
Jacobs was arrested in July after picking up a new copy of the film at the airport.
"We had gotten to the point where the print was simply wore out," Jacobs said in the documentary. "It never occurred to me that there would be any legal ramifications from getting involved with this film."
Jacobs was convicted, fined $5,000 and sentenced to six months in prison. His sentence was overturned in appeals court.
Sprinkle met the film's creator, Gerard Damiano, and its star, Linda Lovelace, at the Tucson trial.
Sprinkle formed a personal and professional relationship with Damiano, a hairdresser turned filmmaker, that led her to New York and a porn career. He died last month at age 80.
Sprinkle, now living in California, returned to the Rialto for the first time in 2003 to headline the third annual Sex Worker Arts Festival.
"It was profound to go back there," she said. "To walk through that door some 30 years later, for me, was very moving. The Rialto was life-changing, a pivotal doorway. I got that job and was on the path I needed to be on."
