\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-hollywoodreporter-2021\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
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\t\t\t\t\tPeggy Steffans and husband Joseph W. Sarno in a scene from the 2013 documentary \u2018The Sarnos: A Life in Dirty Movies.\u2019<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFilm Movement\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n
\n\tPeggy Silverman was born in New York on Oct. 11, 1938. Her mother, Phyllis, was an artist and her father, Matthew, a labor lawyer.<\/p>\n
\n\tAfter she graduated from Bayside High School in Queens, she attended Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, and another college in Edinburgh, then studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.<\/p>\n
\n\tBack in the U.S., Steffans and Shelia Finn played two versions of the same woman in the Adolfas Mekas-directed Hallelujah the Hills (1963) \u2014 she went to the Cannes Film Festival in support of the drama \u2014 before making it to Broadway in 1964 in The Passion of Josef D., written and directed by Paddy Chayefsky.<\/p>\n
\n\tAlong the way, she became great friends with future Oscar-nominated production designer Polly Platt<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tSteffans was working as a waitress when a producer asked her to audition for Sarno; she said she knew he made sex films, but that didn\u2019t bother her. \u201cBecause I had this feeling that sex and love did not have anything to do with each other,\u201d she told The Telegraph. \u201cYou could have sex without love, and there are many different kinds of sex.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSteffans then appeared in black and white Sarno films including The Swap and How They Make it (1966), The Love Merchant (1966), The Bed and How to Make It! (1966), The Sex Cycle (1967), Come Ride the Wild Pink Horse (1967), Anything for Money (1967), Bed of Violence (1967), The Love Rebellion (1967), Skin Deep in Love (1967), Scarf of Mist Thigh of Satin (1967) and Deep Inside (1968).<\/p>\n \n\tShe also acted in movies without him, among them A Taste of Flesh, The Touch of Her Flesh, Infidelity American Style and Justine, all released in 1967.<\/p>\n \n\tSarno, who was 17 years her senior, was still married to his second wife when they started living together, she told The Telegraph.<\/p>\n \n\tSteffans had begun her behind-the-scenes career as second assistant director on Sarno\u2019s biggest hit, Inga (1964), a Swedish sexploitation film that drew international attention and got him the nickname \u201cthe Ingmar Bergman of 42nd Street,\u201d as Stephen Dalton noted in his THR review<\/a> of A Life in Dirty Movies.<\/p>\n \n\tThe documentary \u201cpaints an affectionate and touchingly romantic picture of Sarno and his wife\u201d as they attempt without success to make one last film.<\/p>\n \n\tDalton described Sarno, who directed more than 100 films, as \u201can art house auteur of soft-core erotic melodramas, typically written from an emotionally complex female perspective and often addressing the darker side of psycho-sexual neurosis.\u201d Retrospectives of his work played at prestigious European film festivals and cinematheques. He turned to hardcore porn later in his career, often directing under other names.<\/p>\n \n\tIn addition to her son, survivors include her grandchildren, Tom and Jane; her brother, Steve, and her daughter-in-law, Laura.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Peggy Steffans, who appeared in such 1960s soft-porn movies as The Bed and How to Make It!, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[458,146,85,46,5033],"class_list":["post-282042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-obituaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}