'Golden Age' Performer Kay Parker Passes Away at 78
Prominent “Golden Age of Porn” performer Kay Parker passed away on Friday at 78, industry sources have confirmed.
The U.K.-born brunette was active as an adult performer from 1977 until 1989, after which she appeared sporadically for a decade in non-sex roles.
Her IAFD shows over 100 credits, many of them high-profile “Golden Age” titles like the “Taboo” series, “‘V’ – The Hot One,” “Sex World,” “Dracula Sucks,” “Chorus Call,” “The Dancers” and “Firestorm.”
This past weekend, following Parker’s passing, adult industry history archive The Rialto Report a remembrance and a full recent interview with the late performer.
According to Rialto Report’s Ashley West, Parker “entered the business through a friendship with performer John Leslie, and an appreciative director, Anthony Spinelli.” Parker survived the transition from film to video and “in the 1980s, she appeared regularly in films with a new generation of much younger stars such as Traci Lords and Angel. When the video era took hold, she retired and became a metaphysical counselor.”
West described Parker as “sweet, funny, gentle and considerate — always making the person she was with feel special and valued. She appeared bemused by her success as a sex performer, but always had time to speak of everyone with great fondness.”
As XBIZ , in 2015 Parker was the recipient of of the first Golden Age Appreciation Fund (TGAAF) fundraisers to raise money for veteran performers from the Golden Age of adult films (1968-1988) in their time of need.
But the popularity of the titles she had starred in with fans never abated, even long after her retirement. “In July 2006 we put out 'The Very Best of Kay Parker' on VOD, on Hot Movies and AEBN,” a distributor told XBIZ in 2007. “They did as much on 'The Very Best of Kay Parker' the first two months as we did on the rest of our titles combined.”
Kay Parker in Taboo