Roberta Pedon
Roberta Pedon (born Rosma Grantoviskis in Ohio in 1954) was a big-bust American glamour model who gained popularity in the 1970s.
While it was once popularly believed that Pedon was Either of Italian or Argentinian heritage, Roberta's parents were actually Latvian refugees1. The Italian/Argentinean rumors originate from the fact that she plays a foreign character in the film Delinquent Schoolgirls and misinformation propigated by two photographers who wished to dissociate themselves from her.
Roberta’s mother regarded her early developing daughter as a freak due to her huge breasts. Parodying her mother’s voice in her breakthrough role in Delinquent Schoolgirls was Roberta’s revenge. According to people who met her, Roberta spoke with a normal American accent. In addition she was also fluent in Portuguese. She went by the stage names of Roberta Pedon, Melody O'Hare, Roberta Baird and Roberta Weaver. The Melody O'Hare moniker supposedly came from the name of one of her best friends in Junior High. Pedon's nickname was "Mooschi". Roberta Pedon was the name she had fully adopted by 1973, during which time she was living in San Francisco after a stint at UCLA. The name is possibly a play on that of her father, sometimes identified as “Robert” or “Robert Apedon”. While she seldom spoke to friends about her background and sometimes claimed to be an “only child”, it is now known she had both a brother and a half sister.
The earliest verifiable publication of her photos was in a magazine called "The Swinger" in the February, 1974, edition which would have gone to press the prior November. Roberta’s appearance in Delinquent Schoolgirls was due to several people who were involved in the production also being behind American Art Enterprises (AAE) a Los Angeles company that specialized in pornographic shoots and loops, giving the filmmakers the opportunity to use bust models like Roberta and Nika Movenka as actresses. After appearing in Delinquent Schoolgirls, Roberta caught the acting bug and auditioned for the lead female role in the Jan-Michael Vincent film Buster and Billie, personal problems and poor management however meant she would only ever be a one film wonder.
Roberta’s relationships with men were of a brief and turbulent nature, following repeat patterns of Roberta seeking deep emotional attachment with men who merely used and discarded her. She claimed to have had affairs with an actor from the film Planet of the Apes and a faded television star who was to later die in mysterious circumstances in 1978. While few of her relationships lasted more than a couple of months, she did enjoy a longer one with the writer Gustav Hasford, author of The Short Timers and inspiration for the film Full Metal Jacket.
She invariably dressed (and then undressed) as a hippie during most of her photo shoots. Her popularity was, however, rather short-lived; in September 1975 she was imprisoned in San Francisco for [...] and prostitution offenses. Upon her release she was ostracized by many of her previous employers, including the AAE people behind the Delinquent Schoolgirls film. Homeless and with drugs and her lifelong struggle against bulimia taking its toll, her last photo shoot took place in 1976.
For years Roberta’s fate remained a mystery, however in 2007 the site of her Biographer Charles Smith revealed she died “in pretty sad circumstances” in Oakland California in the summer of 1982 aged just 28.
Two books about Roberta are currently being written, one a traditional biography written by Charles L Smith (due in 2009), the other a fictional narrative in which one of the main characters is heavily based on Roberta.