How a ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ Promotional Item Prompted Carrie Fisher to Lose Her Virginity

Griffin Dunne’s memoir The Friday Afternoon Club recounts his life as an actor, director and producer. Horror fans will recognize him as Jack from An American Werewolf in London (1981) and he is also the director of the cult classic Practical Magic (1998). Dunne grew up as the son of a producer in Beverly Hills. Through his parents, he often rubbed shoulders with Hollywood royalty. Sean Connery once saved him from drowning in his backyard pool, he helped Harrison Ford build a deck for his aunt (Joan Didion!) back when Ford was working as a carpenter and he was Carrie Fisher’s roommate in New York when they were both working as actors (until after Carrie hit it big with Star Wars).

Dunne met Carrie growing up in Beverly Hills where she lived a few blocks away and attended Beverly Hills High School. While they hit it off and became close friends, Dunne says Carrie thought that “being lovers would diminish our possibilities” and the relationship was platonic. However, he also says Carrie lived for “lurid details” of his sex life and even paid for a room at the Hyatt House on the Sunset Strip (where Led Zeppelin was also staying) for him to sleep with her friend Tanya. It wasn’t until years later that Carrie and Dunne would have a sexual encounter.

In 1973 Carrie’s mother, Debbie Reynolds, starred in a Broadway musical (Irene) and got her a job in the chorus. While mother and daughter lived together at a Midtown hotel, Debbie suggested that Dunne and Carrie move in together so that Carrie could live on her own in New York City, but also with someone who Debbie trusted to look out for her. Carrie was dating an English actor named Donald at the time and was sure he was going to be her first sexual experience. However, one afternoon a prank turned into a heated moment that ended with Carrie losing her virginity to her friend instead.

Carrie and Dunne had been taking turns pranking each other with a severed hand Carrie received as a promotional item for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). One day while Dunne showered, Carrie used the prop to fondle him and Dunne became aroused. He writes:

I came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, not feeling entirely cleansed. Carrie was on her bed reading Knut Hamsun, and like our roving sight gag, my hard-on in the shower went unmentioned, but there was no denying a change had taken place. She looked different to me, or maybe I was just reminded of my impressions of when we first met. I felt a familiar rumble start to rise again beneath my towel, which I sensed was not going unnoticed. I sat beside her on the bed, took the book from her hands, and kissed her. It all made sense in the moment, and we both understood that everything we were doing to each other under those covers would not alter our friendship one iota… I knew I was only the warm-up for Donald, but didn’t mind the role one bit.

Of course, Carrie Fisher is no longer around to dispute Dunne’s claim so we have to take his word for it. Fisher died suddenly in 2016 at the age of 60 due to cardiac arrest. She isn’t the only celebrity featured in the book, The Friday Afternoon Club is an absolute treasure trove of gossip about old Hollywood.

A chapter on making An American Werewolf in London describes how upset Dunne was the first time he saw himself transformed by makeup effects artist Rick Baker (who would win an Academy Award for his work on this film) into the dead man who haunts his friend:

The violence of Rick’s handiwork was so real, it was as if I were watching my corpse laid out on a coroner’s table — details so exact that my severed jugular vein wiggled when I held my breath to keep from crying. It was my first starring role, and I should have been excited, but all I could think of was how horrified my mother would be to see me like this. I worried how the trauma of watching one of her children die such a horrible death would affect her health, and that I would be responsible for her imagining such unthinkable loss filled me with despair. Rick asked me what was wrong, but I didn’t have the words to possibly make him understand what I was feeling.

Throughout the book Dunne also talks about the loss of his sister, Dominique Dunne, who had just reached her dream of having a major role in a big movie (Dana Freeling in 1982’s Poltergeist) when her ex-boyfriend strangled her to death in her driveway in West Hollywood. The ex-boyfriend, John Sweeney, had been dumped after he choked Dominique the first time, but showed up that night with Halloween cookies he baked her and she thought it would be safe to talk in the public space of her driveway. Sweeney was sentenced to just six years for “manslaughter”.

The Friday Afternoon Club is available everywhere books are sold.

Further reading:

• Every ‘Star Wars’ Movie, Ranked
• 32 Witchy Facts About ‘Practical Magic’ (1998)
• 16 Trivia Facts About ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ (1974)