Valerie Kontakos’ documentary is about a singular character, one Chelly Wilson. She was the unlikely queenpin of the 42nd St. porn emporiums that flourished for a couple decades, until home video and other factors led to their gradual demise. Entering the biz when softcore had not yet turned to hardcore — though she was unruffled when it did — this larger-than-life Greek émigré had a history even more dramatic than her associates knew. It’s all briskly chronicled in this entertaining cultural footnote, which Greenwich Entertainment releases to U.S. theaters, Amazon and Apple TV streaming on May 24.

Gruffly temperamental but also gregarious and generous, Chelly preferred to live in the moment. Few knew that she was Jewish, let alone that she’d barely escaped Europe in time, catching the “last boat out” from Athens before WW2 broke out in 1939. Most of the family left behind perished in Auschwitz, though the two children she’d already had managed to survive the war. They too crossed the Atlantic afterward, joining a mother whose entrepreneurial mojo was just warming up.

Aggressively climbing a multi-career ladder (at first to send money home), Wilson initially dipped a toe in the seventh art by importing and exhibiting films from her homeland for New York’s Greek community. By the mid-’60s, however, there was much more money to be made in showing racier stuff, and she did not hesitate. Soon she’d acquired half a dozen downtown theaters in which to titillate “the raincoat crowd,” as mild as those less-than-graphic “nudies” and “roughies” may look now. In order to meet demand (and further maximize profit), she then also went into production and distribution, bankrolling such luridly titled cheapies as “Scarf of Mist, Thigh of Satin” and “Shootout at Beaver Falls.” Clips are shown from an assortment of these, though scant attention is paid toward the talent involved, including low-budget sexploitation maestro Joe Sarno.

The home videos, photos and other memorabilia glimpsed give little indication how Wilson felt about the industry she was in, beyond that she lived life entirely on her own terms, and suffered no moral qualms, save perhaps survivor’s guilt over having outlived so much of her family. Sheer force of personality attracted kin, mobsters, gays and more to her hearth. While her explosive temper often ignited, no one else was allowed to quarrel. For some years she delegated some film-related responsibilities to others while preoccupied with Mykonos, an ethnic restaurant whose success drew myriad celebrity patrons.
Her primary trade was already on the wane by the time Mayor Giuliani’s aggressive cleanup of Times Square ended its heyday as a mecca for adult entertainment. But Chelly’s real estate holdings kept her in good stead for the rest of her life — and it seems unlike everyone else who made bank from 42nd St. sleaze, she never had the least desire to ditch the neighborhood for more upscale surroundings herself.