For nearly 40 years the whereabouts of the lead actress, Bambi Woods, in the seminal adult film DEBBIE DOES DALLAS (and its two sequels, her only known films) has been shrouded in mystery. There have been all sorts of theories and rumors, almost all of them wrong, and numerous documentaries, TV episodes, YouTube videos, etc trying to track her down, all ending in failure. Well this post is not one of those[1]. Instead, today we’re going to look at Bambi’s earliest known adult entertainment effort, even before the infamous DDD.
A BRIEF NOTE
But before we get started, and not to burst a too many bubbles, we’re not going into very much detail on Ms Woods’[2] background, except to confirm that she was born in late summer 1960 in Brooklyn, NY, and grew up further out on Long Island. She herself said she was from Long Island, but the birth date, which we are certain of, is not the generally accepted date, 1955, that has been batted around the internet for year[3].
BAMBI AT THE MELODY[4]
Let’s hear in her own words how she was cast as the lead in DDD[5]:
“Well it’s very funny how I got in to it: I owed somebody money, a girlfriend of mine who had done porno movies before. And, uh, she said ‘listen, you owe me the money so why don’t you just go over and see about doing this film’. So I went, and I didn’t pay her back after doing the film…”[6]
Ms Woods goes on to say that she still didn’t pay her friend back after getting paid for DDD, so the friend took her to the Melody Burlesk on 48th and Broadway where Bambi started dancing .
BEFORE DEBBIE DID DALLAS – “Laura” Did Hustler
But even before her friend supposedly roped her into doing the film (if that’s even a legitimate origin story of course), it seems that Ms Woods had already done at least one photo shoot, which actually appeared in the October 1978 Hustler Magazine, although as “Laura” (because of course she wasn’t yet Ms Woods) . And it was the keen eyes at Hustler itself that realized this, but only after DDD was released in November 1978!
Now doing a bit of quick math, given that Ms Woods was born in late summer 1960[7] and given that the magazine would have been on the stands in September 1978[8], that would make that photo shoot not long after her 18th birthday (considering it takes a month or more to shoot, develop, layout, print, and distribute a major magazine).
So without further ado, here’s what we believe is very possibly Bambi Wood’s first adult work commercially unleashed on the public:
And for those doubters, yes, that really is Ms Woods, we’ve used our Facial Comparison Engine (The Iron Eye TM) and have validated it’s definitely her!
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!!!
While we indicated that the Hustler feature was probably the first public exposure, and certainly the first with a broad commercial scope, it seems that even earlier Ms Woods had already found herself in front of the camera, and very naked. We’ve found evidence of a shoot that appears to have occurred no later than October 1977, creatively title “Truck Fuck” (see printed date stamp in picture). And if you remember her birthday was late summer of 1960…you do the math on this one…
And because, based on the now known birth date of Ms Woods, this means very likely she would have been underage when this shoot took place, we will NOT be posting any explicit pictures from that shoot here. But for those doubters out there, here’s a cropped pictures. As you can see, it’s clearly Bambi (or whatever name she was going by at that time), and each have the date stamp of Oct 1977..
The rest of the shoot was not that inspired (two people attempting to have sex in the front seat of a big rig), so aside from the historical significance you’re really not missing anything. But this, and the Hustler shoot, does dispel the myth that Ms Woods hadn’t had sex in front of a camera before DDD, as she indicated in her interview. Of course it’s not uncommon, or even unreasonable, for adult actors to fib on their origin stories, for obvious reasons of course, and we certainly won’t hold it against her!
BUT WAIT, THERE’S STILL MORE!!!
We also found a print interview with Ms Woods from the very first edition of Pornstars magazine, from May 1980. Richard Milner interviewed her while she was performing at the Melody Burlesk (remember from the top of the article), and he got pretty much the same story as Midnight Blue, BUT he also got a bit more! We find out that she ran away when she was 15 or 16, and was married and divorced by the time she was 17. She also hitchhiked cross country and was picked up by a string of helpful truck drivers (most of which, according to Ms Woods, were actually above-board kind of guys). Still, very interesting that she was being ferried across the country by truck drivers and roughly around that same time she was doing her first (known) photo shoot, in a big rig…
BAMBI AFTER DALLAS
As we’ve pointed out numerous times above we’re not going to go into any real details about her life before, or after her adult film career[9]. However we will say she did not die in the 1980s, in fact she is still alive and seemingly well and lives around 80 miles from where she grew up (and less than ten miles from where I once had an office, if I’d only knew…). Interestingly it also seems a close family member is now also in the adult entertainment business, but that’s another story for another time…
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- Even though we could reveal her whereabouts, of which we’re certain, we’re choosing to let “Bambi” live her life the way she obviously wants to, which is not as “Bambi Woods”[↑]
- Bambi Woods is obviously NOT her real name, but because we believe she wants to keep her past in the past we will refer to her as Ms Woods[↑]
- Don’t believe everything you read on the internet, unless you read it here of course![↑]
- you can see her stage performance at the Melody here[↑]
- from the LATE LATE BLUE show, the sister show of Al Goldstein’s MIDNIGHT BLUE on Manhattan Public Access Cable[↑]
- See full interview here[↑]
- Again, we know 1960 is not the standard birth date spread around the internet, but it is the one we’ve confirmed to be accurate.[↑]
- For those that aren’t familiar with printed medium, magazines tended to on the shelves the last few weeks of the month prior to their published date[↑]
- Although there is some very high drama involved, including a bayonet[↑]
