(Credit Time Magazine) – A simple way to achieve fame is to become known for two contrasting things. Good example: Ivory Snow model and porn actress. Those were the tickets Marilyn Chambers punched in 1972, when the XXX-rated dream drama Behind the Green Door was released. The press immediately noted that its star had been photographed on the box of a detergent whose motto was “99 and 44/100 Pure.” This ironic factette made the blond, willowy Chambers the porn industry’s pinup princess. The notoriety helped sustain her sex-film career until this past April 12, when she was found dead in her Santa Clarita, Calif., home from a cerebral hemorrhage.
Born Marilyn Ann Briggs, the daughter of an ad man and a nurse, and raised in Westport, Conn., Chambers was rare among early sex-film actors for her Waspy good looks, girl-next-door appeal and refusal to use a jokey pseudonym as her nom de porn. She was also a smart businesswoman. When directors Jim and Artie Mitchell asked her to star in Green Door, she demanded the then astronomical sum of $25,000 and a percentage of the gross. She got both.
She also got on talk shows and bookshelves (with the autobiography Marilyn Chambers: My Story) and appeared in Rabid, a 1977 scare film about the human body as the ultimate toxic agent by David Cronenberg, who was then near the start of an exemplary career making meta-horror movies (Scanners, The Fly, Naked Lunch). But Chambers never realized her dream of starring in mainstream movies; for the next three decades she anchored dozens of hard- and soft-core movies. Spanning the entire era of above-ground erotic films, Chambers was the queen mum of porn.
(Various Sources) Behind the Green Door
Upon the release of The Owl and the Pussycat, Chambers was sent to Los Angeles and San Francisco on a promotional tour. After that, she did not receive any roles except for a low-budget film, writer-director-producer Sean S. Cunningham’s Together (1971), in which she appeared nude. In 1970, she moved from Westport to San Francisco, where she held several jobs that included topless model and bottomless dancer. “I moved to San Francisco, thinking it was the entertainment capital of the world, which indeed, it is not,” she said.
Chambers sought work in theater and dance groups in San Francisco to no avail. In 1972, she saw an advertisement in the San Francisco Chronicle for a casting call for what was billed as a “major motion picture”. She rushed to the audition only to find it was for a pornographic film, which was to be called Behind the Green Door. She was about to leave when producers Artie and Jim Mitchell noticed her resemblance to Cybill Shepherd. They invited her upstairs to their offices and told her the film’s plot. Chambers was highly dubious about accepting a role in a pornographic film, fearing it might ruin her chances at breaking into the mainstream. But she was turned on by the fantasy of the story and decided to take a chance, under the condition that she receive a hefty salary and 10 percent of the film’s gross. She also insisted that each actor get tested for venereal disease. The Mitchell Brothers balked at her request for a percentage of the film’s profits, but finally agreed, realizing the film needed a wholesome blonde actress.
The film told the story of a wealthy San Francisco socialite, Gloria Saunders (Chambers), who is taken against her will to an elite North Beach sex club and loved as she’s never been loved before. Unusually, Chambers does not have a single word of dialogue in the entire film. After engaging in lesbian sex with a group of six women, she then has sex with actor Johnnie Keyes. This possibly makes Behind the Green Door the first U.S. feature-length hardcore film to include an interracial sex scene.The porn industry and viewing public were shocked by the then-taboo spectacle of a white woman having sex with a black man. The scene with Keyes is followed by Chambers mounting a trapeze contraption suspended from the ceiling. She then engages in vaginal intercourse with one man as she performs oral sex on another and masturbates two others.
“Each sequence was a surprise to me”, she said in 1987. “They never told me what was happening next. I just did it as it happened, and it worked. I’ve always been highly sexed. Oh, my God, I love it! Insatiable is the right word for me.”
After filming concluded, she informed the Mitchell Brothers that she was “the Ivory Snow Girl”; the Mitchells capitalized on this by billing her as the “99 and 44/100% impure” girl. Although she said at the time the film would help “sell a lot more soap”, Procter & Gamble quickly dropped her after discovering her double life as an adult-film actress, and the advertising industry was scandalized. The fact that Chambers’ image was so well known from Ivory Snow boosted the film’s ticket sales, and led to several jokes on television talk shows. Nearly every adult film she made following this incident featured a cameo of her Ivory Snow box.
Chambers was relatively unknown prior to Behind the Green Door; however, the film made her a star. Green Door, along with Deep Throat, released the same year, and The Devil in Miss Jones, ushered in what is commonly known as the porno chic era. Critics have since debated whether she was really having orgasms in her scenes or just acting.
Resurrection of Eve and Inside Marilyn Chambers
Following Behind the Green Door, the Mitchell Brothers and Chambers teamed up for Resurrection of Eve, released in September 1973. Although not the runaway blockbuster that Green Door was, Eve was a hit and a well-received entry into the porno chic market. It also helped set Chambers apart from her contemporaries Linda Lovelace and Georgina Spelvin as the wholesome, all-American girl next door. Following Eve, Chambers was anxious to transition her fame into other areas of entertainment. At the time, the Mitchell Brothers were still her managers. “They were always talking about some half-assed idea I knew wouldn’t come off”, Chambers said in 1992. “‘Flakes’ is a terrible word but they were, in a cute sort of way”. Chambers had always considered the brothers as her own brothers but when she abruptly announced that she was leaving them to take up with Chuck Traynor, they were appalled and had a falling out with Chambers.
In retaliation, the brothers created a documentary in 1976 called Inside Marilyn Chambers, which was composed of alternate shots and outtakes from Green Door and Eve, as well as interviews with some of her co-stars. This was done without Chambers’s knowledge or approval but when she learned of it just prior to its release, she negotiated a deal that would offer her 10% of the gross as long as she would contribute interviews to the film and promote it nationally. “I hated the film and I still do”, she said later. “It’s supposed to be the story of my life, and it’s not true. Jim and Art ripped me off. They felt I’d betrayed them… I felt they’d betrayed me, and for many years, we didn’t speak. Only when money was to be made did we start talking again.” Chambers reunited with the Mitchell Brothers in 1979 for two 30-minute features called Beyond de Sade and Never a Tender Moment, which explored BDSM. The films, which were shot at the Mitchell Brothers Theatre, co-starred Erica Boyer.
Mainstream crossover
Hollywood
Chambers dreamed of having a career in mainstream films and believed her celebrity as the star of Behind the Green Door and the Ivory Snow girl would be a stepping stone to other endeavors. “The paradox was that, as a result of Green Door, Hollywood blackballed me,” she said later. “[Green Door] became a very high-grossing film … But, to a lot of people, it was still a dirty movie; for me to do anything else, as an actress, was totally out of the question. I became known as a porno star, and that type of labeling really hurt me. It hurt my chances of doing anything else.”
Throughout the 1970s, she was up for roles in several Hollywood films. Her biggest opportunity came in 1976 when it was announced in Variety that she was to star alongside Rip Torn in City Blues, a film about a young hooker defended by a seedy lawyer. The film was to be directed by Nicholas Ray. Ray had never seen Behind the Green Door or even screen-tested Chambers. Instead, the two met and Ray was impressed. “I have a camera in my head,” he said, adding that Chambers would “eventually be able to handle anything that the young Katie Hepburn or Bette Davis could.” However, the project never came to fruition, in large part due to Ray’s alcohol and drug abuse. Ray died in 1979.
Chambers claimed that Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel brought her in to talk about a role in the 1978 film Goin’ South, then asked her for cocaine and grilled her about whether her orgasms in Behind the Green Door were real; she was angered to the point where she stormed out of the interview. She was going to be cast in the film Hardcore, opposite George C. Scott, but the casting director took one look at her and said she was too wholesome to be cast as a porn queen. “The Hardcore people wanted a woman with orange hair who chews gum, swings a big purse, and wears stiletto heels. That’s such a cliche,” Chambers said years later. Season Hubley was cast instead.
Rabid
Chambers won the starring role in film director David Cronenberg’s low-budget Canadian movie, Rabid, which was released in 1977. Cronenberg stated that he wanted to cast Sissy Spacek in the film lead, but the studio vetoed his choice because of her accent.[citation needed] The director says that the idea of casting Chambers came from producer Ivan Reitman, who had heard that Chambers was looking for a mainstream role. Reitman felt that it would be easier to market the film in different territories if the well-known porn star portrayed the main character. Cronenberg stated that Chambers put in a lot of hard work on the film and that he was impressed with her. Cronenberg further states he had not seen Behind the Green Door prior to casting her.
“It was great working with David,” Chambers said in a 1997 interview. “He taught me a lot of things that were very valuable as an actress, especially in horror films. I found it useful in sex films, too!”
Theater work
In 1974, she starred in the dinner theater production of The Mind With the Dirty Man in Las Vegas and received favorable reviews for her work. The play ran for 52 weeks which, at the time, was the longest-running play in Vegas history, and the mayor gave Chambers the key to the city. In 1976, she starred in a short-lived musical revue off-Broadway called Le Bellybutton. In 1977, she starred in Neil Simon’s Last of the Red Hot Lovers in Vegas.[29] The one-woman show Sex Surrogate, in 1979, caused controversy in Las Vegas as it featured full-frontal nudity, which was banned from all major hotel casino showrooms. In 1983, the play was spun off into a 26-part syndicated soap opera called Love Ya, Florence Nightingale. It was broadcast on cable television channels such as the Playboy Channel.
Singing career
Chambers had some chart success with the disco single “Benihana” in 1976, produced by Michael Zager on the Roulette Records label. Billboard magazine said, “She… sings quite nicely in a sexy little voice in this catchy disco tribute to an oriental lover man.”[35] The song is played in the background of one scene in the film Rabid. In Insatiable, she sang the theme song, “Shame On You,” which plays over the opening credits. She did the same for the song, “Still Insatiable”, which was used in her comeback in the 1999 adult film of the same name. She also sang vocals in the 1983 X-rated film, Up ‘n’ Coming, in which she plays a rising country music star. In the early 1980s, she was the lead singer of a country and western band called Haywire.
Published works
Chambers wrote an autobiography, My Story, in 1975, and co-authored Xaviera Meets Marilyn Chambers with Xaviera Hollander in 1977. Both were published by Warner Communications. She also wrote a sex advice column in the mid-to-late 1970’s for Genesis magazine called “Private Chambers”, and one for Club magazine throughout the 1980s called “State of the Nation”. In 1981, she released a book of sex positions and tips called Sensual Secrets. One of the male models featured in the photos with Marilyn was a young Ron Jeremy. The same year, she released another sex manual called The Illustrated Kama Sutra.
Insatiable and return to porn
Although she had tried for several years to shed her image as a porn star, Chambers returned to the adult film industry with 1980’s Insatiable. In the film, she played actress, model, and heiress Sandra Chase, whose appetite for sex is, as the title suggests, insatiable. Sandra is getting ready to make a movie and her manager, played by Jessie St. James, is working on getting some big names to appear alongside Sandra. The story is told in a series of flashbacks which detail Sandra’s sexual encounters.
“My manager had never really wanted me to do X-rated film[s],” she said in 1997. “He tried to move me out of that, but—seeing as things didn’t go that way, and I wasn’t getting any legitimate projects—it was something that we needed to do. I was known in the X-rated business, and it was the right time. It was a cool story and the budget was going to be a lot higher; there were going to be helicopters and Ferraris. It was going to be very classy. There were some names in it that would be good for the box office, [including John Holmes] and that was at a time when X-films were still playing in theaters.”
The bet paid off. Insatiable was the top-selling adult video in the U.S. from 1980 to 1982 and it was inducted in the XRCO Hall of Fame. It was followed by a sequel, Insatiable II in 1984. Another X-rated film, Up ‘n’ Coming, was released in 1983. She also released six direct-to-video features in the early 1980s called Marilyn Chambers’ Private Fantasies, in which she acted out her own sexual fantasies alongside some of the biggest names in the industry. The scenarios and dialogue for the series were written by Chambers. Despite her return to the adult-film world, Chambers dreamed of launching a successful mainstream acting career, but was unable to do so.
Chambers left the pornography business because of the increasing fear of AIDS. In 1999, Chambers returned to San Francisco to perform at the Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theatre. Mayor Willie Brown proclaimed a “Marilyn Chambers Day” for her unique place in San Francisco history, and praised her for her “artistic presence”, her “vision”, and her “energy”. That same year Chambers returned to adult features with a trio of films made for VCA Pictures called Still Insatiable (1999), Dark Chambers (2000), and Edge Play (2000), each directed by Veronica Hart.
Near the end of her career, Chambers appeared primarily in independent films, including her last role in Solitaire. Chambers claimed that the more laid-back pace of these roles suited her as “there’s a lot less pressure on you to perform [and] you don’t have to be young and skinny”. Among these were Bikini Bistro, Angel of H.E.A.T. (with Mary Woronov), Party Incorporated, and Breakfast in Bed.
In a 2004 interview, Chambers said, “My advice to somebody who wants to go into adult films is: absolutely not! It’s heart-breaking. It leaves you kind of empty. So have a day job and don’t quit it”.
On April 12, 2009, Chambers was found dead in her home near Santa Clarita, California. She was discovered by her 17-year-old daughter. The LA County Coroner’s autopsy revealed Chambers died of a cerebral hemorrhage caused by an aneurysm related to heart disease. Chambers was ten days short of her 57th birthday. The Associated Press reported she was survived by her daughter, sister, and brother. Her ashes were scattered at sea.