I am Dr Kinsey from Indiana University, and I'm making a study of sex behaviour. Can I buy you a drink?

In a simple attic room, with only a mattress on the pine floor, two people would have sex in a cone of light. Sometimes the director would disappear into the shadows so that the performers would forget he was there; at other times, according to one biographer, he would observe the action 'inches removed from the couple's genitals, close enough to smell body odours and hear the squish of juices'. He would whisper instructions to his cameraman, and offer subtle direction to his actors ('If you would just come now,' he once said calmly when a camera was threatening to overheat). Often he would star in his productions himself.

LRB 6 January 2005 | PDF Download