Actress Peggy Steffans—who starred in films by her porn-meister husband, Joseph Sarno—died on Feb. 6. She was 87. Steffans studied at RADA in London, but almost immediately on her return to the US, Steffans (sometimes billed as Cleo Nova) took up with the much-older, already married Sarno (they wed in 1967 and were together till his death in 2010). In the late ’60s she apprared in his movies (I can hear Neely O’Hara crowing, “Nudies—that’s what they are—nudies!”), as The Swap and How They Make It, The Love Merchant, Infidelity American Style, Anything for Money, Death of a Nymphet, Come Ride the Wild Pink Horse, and All the Sins of Sodom. After they married, Steffans largely retired from acting and worked as an assistant director, producer, and costumer for her husband’s films. The couple were the subject of the documentary The Sarnos: A Life in Dirty Movies. Steffans told The Telegraph in 2013 that “Americans are so puritanical. Sex is so much a part of life. Joe didn’t just shoot the sex or insert the sex. He concentrated on women.”
