Cheli Wilson: The Thessalonian who became the queen of pink cinemas in New York (video)

For nearly three decades, from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s, one woman dominated adult entertainment in Manhattan: Mrs. Chellie Wilson, A Greek-Jewish immigrant born in 1908 in Thessaloniki, she left to escape the Holocaust and arrived in New York in 1939, finally embodying the American dream.

Although her first job was selling hot dogs from a cart on Dyckman Pier, Celli became an adult film producer and eventually ended up running a porn empire, complete with a chain of pink movie theaters.

By the mid-1960s, during America’s so-called Golden Age of Porn, Wilson had become one of Times Square’s adult movie moguls, still running five theaters along Eighth Avenue.

The secret life of Times Square’s notorious porn queen https://t.co/MjncBewRfi pic.twitter.com/YUCPTevZfk

— New York Post (@nypost) November 10, 2022

For example, Wilson was the host of the cine Cameo, which premiered one of the first hardcore films to be screened in Times Square, “Sexual Freedom in Denmark”, in 1970.

She then – along with her husband, filmmaker Rex Wilson – acquired Eros and Venus while they bought the Tivoli Theater which they renamed Adonis.

This cinema became the setting of a legendary 1978 gay porn film, “A Night at the Adonis”.

Chelly Wilson’s stormy life and personality are featured in a documentary – Queen of the Deuce – which chronicles Wilson’s journey from childhood, teenage years and an unhappy marriage in Thessaloniki, to the German occupation and her escape to America (she hid her two children from friends and left them behind) and her success in a male-dominated (and slightly dangerous) space.

According to Wilson’s daughter, Bodie Walters, the living room of her house above Eros was her office. Businesswoman Cheli was sitting on her sofa and the glass table in front of her was full of bags of dirty dollars coming out of her tills, papers and newspapers. Celli also hosted poker nights with other porn purveyors, adult film stars and “probably a mobster or two” as guests. But she commanded.

In 1968, the Wilson couple opened the now legendary Greek restaurant “Mykonos”, where all the Greek actors visited New York, as well as foreign stars of the time.

Times were changing and Gothilson began to gradually leave the porn movie business from the late 1970s.

Today, the former “Eros” has become a Rub, but there are still the Greek statues that Wilson had installed to adorn the theater.

Two doors down at 728 Eighth Ave., “Venus” is now a Trattoria.

Wilson died in 1994 at the age of 85. However, before she died, in a letter to her daughters, she wrote the shopping list for the food to be served at her memorial service and gave instructions on what to do: “She said people should come to my apartment and give her toast,” said her daughter.

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