Désirée Cousteau

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| name = Désirée Cousteau

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| birth_date = {{birth based on age as of date|24|1981|Sep|11}}{{r|Emmons 1981}}

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| occupation = Pornographic actress and striptease artist

| years_active = 1978–1981

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Désirée Cousteau (born 1956 or 1957{{r|Emmons 1981}}) is a pornographic actress and striptease artist who was active in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She is best known for her role in the 1978 film Pretty Peaches.

Career

=Early career=

Cousteau aspired to model for Vogue, but was told she was not tall or thin enough.{{cite news |last1=Emmons |first1=Becky |title=Star of X-rated films wants to upgrade 'art' |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/31731132/the_south_bend_tribune/ |access-date=24 September 2024 |newspaper=The South Bend Tribune |date=11 September 1981 |issn=1051-7367 |page=14 |via=Newspapers.com}} After a period modeling lingerie, she appeared in Jonathan Demme's 1974 debut Caged Heat (also known as Renegade Girls).{{cite book |last1=Rabkin |first1=Leslie Y. |title=The Celluloid Couch: An Annotated International Filmography of the Mental Health Professional in the Movies and Television, from the Beginning to 1990 |date=1998 |publisher=Scarecrow Press |location=Lanham, Md. |isbn=978-0-8108-3462-0 |page=283}}{{cite book |last1=Parish |first1=James Robert |title=Prison Pictures from Hollywood: Plots, Critiques, Casts, and Credits for 293 Theatrical and Made-for-television Releases |date=1991 |publisher=McFarland & Co. |location=Jefferson, N.C. |isbn=978-0-89950-563-3 |page=356}}{{cite book |last1=Young |first1=R. G. |title=The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film: Ali Baba to Zombies |date=2000 |publisher=Applause Books |location=New York |isbn=978-1-55783-269-6 |page=81}} She also posed for Penthouse, appearing in the June 1974 issue as Deborah Clearbranch.{{cite web |title=Penthouse Magazine June 1974 |url=https://penthousegold.com/magazine/penthouse-magazine-june-1974.html |website=Penthouse Gold |access-date=24 September 2024}}{{Original research inline|date=September 2024}}

=Pornographic films=

Cousteau's porn career began in 1978, when she did sex scenes in four films, initially with the hybrid stage name of Désirée Clearbranch, before taking a more substantial role in Bob Chinn's Hot and Saucy Pizza Girls, in which she has three sex scenes and something of a narrative arc. Pizza Girls was followed a couple months later by Alex de Renzy's Pretty Peaches, a film constructed entirely around Cousteau.{{cite news |last1=Ettinger |first1=Stewart |title=Desiree Cousteau is one of the best paid erotic stars |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/29895821/ |access-date=24 September 2024 |newspaper=Courier-Post |date=7 November 1980 |via=Newspapers.com |location=Camden, N.J. |page=8D |issn=1050-432X}} It instantly established her as a porn star, a status confirmed when she won the Adult Film Association of America Best Actress Award for her performance the following year.[https://www.therialtoreport.com/2018/08/19/afaa-awards/ "AFAA Award Ceremonies: A Pictorial History, Part 1 (1977–1980)"], The Rialto Report. Retrieved 3 November 2023.

Other roles quickly followed, most trading on the dizzy naïf persona Cousteau created for Pretty Peaches (whose storyline was distantly derived from Voltaire's Candide). She made around twenty features and loops in 1979, as well as doing photo shoots for magazines such as Hustler and High Society. Cousteau's 1979 credits include scenes in three movies by French director Gérard Kikoïne. One was in the ambitious French-American co-production Aphrodesia's Diary, shot mostly in New York and not released until 1983, but the other two were shot in France (Cousteau's dialogue was dubbed).{{Citation needed|date=September 2024}}

Cousteau announced her retirement from porn films in an interview for the TV series Midnight Blue at an event to promote Deep Rub in the latter part of 1979.{{cite episode |title=Goodbye Desiree Cousteau |series=Midnight Blue |series-link=Midnight Blue (TV series) |date=1980 |network=Manhattan Cable Television |time=}}[https://www.therialtoreport.com/2016/07/17/desiree-cousteau/ "Desiree Cousteau: Deep Rub (1979) event"], The Rialto Report. Retrieved 3 November 2023. She appears, however, to have undertaken a few projects after that date, with a handful of loops and features in 1980 and 1981. All later films purporting to involve Cousteau use archival footage.{{Citation needed|date=September 2024}}

Cinematographer David Jennings considered her psychologically unsuited for pornographic work.David Jennings, Skinflicks: The Inside Story of the X-Rated Video Industry (Bloomington, Indiana: First Book Library, 2000), Chapter 5. In her Midnight Blue interview, Cousteau says she prefers striptease, "Because you're on a stage and you never have physical contact with anyone. I never leave the stage. So there's an isolation and a security there that I don't feel with films."

=After pornography=

At the time of the Midnight Blue interview, Cousteau was appearing at the Melody Burlesk in New York, which regularly featured porn stars in addition to its house dancers.[https://www.therialtoreport.com/2014/07/13/the-melody-burlesk-and-the-harmony-dominiques-story/ "The Melody Burlesk and the Harmony: Dominique’s story"], The Rialto Report. Retrieved 3 November 2023. She performed a one-woman show consisting of dance and striptease followed by audience questions, which also included posing nude for photographs while seated on patrons' laps.{{cite news |title=X-film star snapped in police lap |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/517772540 |access-date=24 September 2024 |newspaper=South Bend Tribune |agency=Associated Press |date=September 18, 1981 |via=Newspapers.com |page=18 |issn=1051-7367 |url-access=subscription}} By 1981, Cousteau was traveling for three weeks every month to perform at burlesque theaters. During a performance at the Parkway Theater in Milwaukee, Cousteau "was covered with a coat and led off stage" by police, but the district attorney's office declined to prosecute.{{cite news |id={{ProQuest|333273733}} |last1=Tianen |first1=Dave |title=City's dealings with 'obscenity' have changed |newspaper=Milwaukee Sentinel |date=22 October 1990 |pages=1–5 |issn=1052-4479}} She later danced topless on New York cable television's The Robin Byrd Show to promote her stage work.{{cite news |id={{ProQuest|294020417}} |last1=Cobb |first1=Nathan |title=In the Big Apple, you, too, can be a television star |newspaper=The Boston Globe |date=21 December 1980 |page=1 |issn=0743-1791}} After more than a year of physically gruelling live performance and at least two brushes with the law, she appears to have quit the adult entertainment industry by the end of 1981.{{Citation needed|date=September 2024}}

Cousteau's films remained staples of the shrinking X-rated cinema circuit in the 1980s and of cable television in the 1990s, as well as of X-rated home video.{{Citation needed|date=September 2024}} She was inducted into the XRCO Hall of Fame in 1993,"The XRCO Hall of Fame", Jeremy Stone (editor), Adam Film World Guide Directory of Adult Films 1994 (Los Angeles: Knight Publishing, 1994), p. 57. and into the AVN Hall of Fame in 1997.[https://web.archive.org/web/20090415212412/http://www.avnawards.com/halloffame.php "AVN Awards Hall of Fame"], archived from the original at avnawards.com on 15 April 2009. Retrieved 3 November 2003.

Filmography

=1974=

Caged Heat (1974), by Jonathan Demme (Cousteau is credited as Deborah Clearbranch)

=1978=

The China Cat (1978), by Bob Chinn (Cousteau is credited mononymically as Clearbranch)
Easy (1978), by Anthony Spinelli (Cousteau is credited as Désirée Clearbranch)
A Formal Faucett (1978), by Fred J. Lincoln (Cousteau is credited as Désirée Clearbranch)
Telefantasy (1978), by Bob Chinn
Hot and Saucy Pizza Girls (1978), by Bob Chinn
Pretty Peaches (1978), by Alex de Renzy

=1979=

800 Fantasy Lane (1979), by Svetlana Mischoff
Candy Goes to Hollywood (1979), by Gail Palmer
Aphrodesia's Diary (shot in 1979, released in 1983), by Gérard Kikoïne
Enquêtes (1979), by Gérard Kikoïne
Initiation au collège (1979), aka French Finishing School, by Gérard Kikoïne (as Loic Chalmain)
The Tale of Tiffany Lust (released in France as Dolly l'initiatrice in 1979, released in the U.S. in 1981), by Radley Metzger (credited to Gérard Kikoïne)
Deep Rub (1979), by Leonard Kirtman (as Leon Gucci)
Female Athletes (1979), by Leonard Kirtman (as Leon Gucci)
Getting Off (1979), by Ed De Priest
Hot Lunch (1979), by John Hayes (as Harold Perkins)
Hot Rackets (1979), by Gary Graver (as Robert McCallum) (Cousteau is credited as Désirée Clearbranch)
Inside Désirée Cousteau (1979), by Leonard Kirtman (as Leon Gucci)
Intimate Illusions (1979), aka Boiling Point, by Gary Graver (as Paul Levis) (Cousteau is credited as Danielle Hunnee)
Ms. Magnificent (1979), aka Superwoman, by Joe Sherman
Summer Heat (1979), by Christy McCabe and Charles Webb
The Ecstasy Girls (1979), by Gary Graver (as Robert Mc Callum)

=1980=

Randy (1980), aka Randy the Electric Lady, by Phillip Schuman and Zachary Strong

=1981=

Center Spread Girls (shot in 1981, released in 1982), by Gary Graver (as Robert McCulum)
Delicious (1981), by Bill Milling (as Philip Drexler Jr.)

=Loops=

Cousteau also appeared in loop collections such as Swedish Erotica (Caballero) and Electric Blue (Scripglow). Some of this material may have been recycled.