For today's Throwback Thursday we are going to take a deep dive into the life and career of Laura Gemser, the Indonesian model, and actress who became Emanuelle in the iconic sexploitation Emanuelle films.
Laurette Marcia Gemser was born in Indonesia in 1950 to Indonesian and Dutch parents. The Eurasian beauty left Indonesia at age five and grew up mostly in the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands. She went on to study fashion in college, but would up finding herself on magazine covers rather than working behind the scenes. She modeled for numerous magazines in Belgium and Holland and then moved to Italy in 1974 where she was cast to act in the sexploitation flick Amore libero - Free Love. This erotic feature film was actually a box office smash hit and it wound up leading her down the path that would be her career trajectory from then on.
In 1975 she was cast in Emmanuelle 2 in which she played a masseuse. She stood out SO much that she wound up being asked to star that same year in Black Emanuelle directed by Bitto Albertini. (Note that the name Emanuelle is spelled in various different ways throughout this franchise). Then she starred in 5 Black Emanuelle films in just three consecutive years. Who exactly was Emanuelle? Great question! Emanuelle was the pen name for an erotic journalist named Mae Jordan who was traveling the world and gathering research through her many sexy adventures. She spends her time "investigating" the lives of wealthy white men through any depraved means necessary to get her stories. The first Emmanuelle movie was about the wife of a French diplomat in Bangkok who begins a journey of sexual self-discovery while her powerful husband is busy. This story is based on a novel of the same name that was written by Emmanuelle Arsan, also known by her Thai name Marayat. Emmanuelle's entire franchise which included books and magazines ended up being a joint project between Marayat and her husband Louis Jacques Rollet-Andriane. Those are the origins of Emmanuelle's journey, but Marayat did not have much to do with Laura Gemser's Emmanuelle journey. This franchise took on a life of its own!
Interestingly, when Laura was originally cast by the director who had happened to see a photo of hers, her agent tried to dissuade the director. He claimed that she "could barely pose for a photo, yet alone act". The director insisted that he needed her and after a few days on set, she loosened up. She certainly did! You can tell she got a lot more comfortable on camera as her career went on. One of the Emanuelle movies that I find particularly hot is 1976's Emanuelle in Bangkok. She had lesbian lovemaking scenes, massages, lesbian sponge baths, straight sex scenes, and so many more in this movie that gave countless unfettered looks at Laura's body like never before.
Her films were filled with sex with both men and women and had a lot of pornographic material. See Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals and Divine Emanuelle: Love Cult for examples of some of her highly horny work. Whether she is playing a queen or a slave, Emanuelle always shone on screen for her poised and beautiful face as well as her long and lean body.
Laura was sometimes credited as Moira Chen in made-for-TV movies like 1983's Love is Forever in which she brought to life the story of Laotian actress Keo Sirisomphone. Her nude work started slowing down in the 1980s. That being said she still did do nude work like the prison flick Caged Women and Caligula: The Untold Story, both in 1982.
In the 1990s, however, she decided to retire from acting and focus on her original love: designing. Fun fact: Laura Gemser was the costume designer for the infamous B movie Troll 2 - known for being one of the worst films of all time, but it certainly had nothing to do with her costume design work. I support her costuming career, but her body never needed a costume. It is sort of ironic that she rarely wore clothes on screen herself even though fashion was a lifelong interest for her.
She officially retired in 1992 after a long and sexy career of making people horny for decades. We are so happy that there is so much to remember her work by. Check out her beautiful outdoor nude scenes those of many others in this hot playlist:
