40 Years Of Marilyn Chambers

Marilyn Chambers 1952-2009

A true icon of the adult film business has died.  Marilyn Chambers was found dead in her mobile home Sunday by her daughter McKenna.  She was a pioneer in adult entertainment and was one of the first adult film stars to become a household name.  Before there was Ginger or Jenna, there was Marilyn.  The cause of death is not known at this time.  I will post more as soon as I know.

Meanwhile here is a report I found about her death…

In 1972, a movie called Behind the Green Door proved that ordinary Americans would sit through a feature-length experimental art film with vague intimations of the occult, if it meant they got to watch Marilyn Chambers having sex. This was back when the porn industry was in effect cross-subsidizing the avant-garde film community, thus demonstrating its redeeming artistic merit and staying—sometimes—on the tolerant side of the law. In this case, the results were memorably strange: Chambers’ picture was based on a piece of folklore, but—as with the street poem that inspired another classic of lowbrow ’70s surrealism, Dolemite—it wasn’t the sort of folktale that ordinarily appeared on a movie screen.

Before that career-defining role, Chambers was best known as the model on the Ivory Snow soap box (advertised as “99 & 44/100 percent pure”). She went on to appear in David Cronenberg’s cult horror picture Rabid and a host of X-rated movies, and in 2004 she ran for vice president on the Personal Choice ticket, a spinoff of sorts from the Libertarian Party. She was later involved in the Boston Tea Party, another Libertarian offshoot, and in some states she served last year as the BTP’s vice-presidential candidate.

This past weekend she died of causes unknown, a week shy of her 57th birthday. She was, in her way, one of the cultural icons of 1970s America, and I hope she rests in peace.

Marilyn Chambers on the infamous Ivory Snow box

http://reason.com/blog/show/132873.html

Marilyn Chambers (born Marilyn Ann Briggs, April 22, 1952, in Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.) is a former American pornographic actress and stripteaser perhaps best known for her 1972 hardcore debut Behind the Green Door.

Early life

According to John Hubner’s book Bottom Feeders, (1994), Chambers came from a middle-class household. Her father was in advertising and her mother was a nurse. She was the youngest of three children. Her father tried to discourage her from pursuing a modeling career, citing brutal competition. Chambers landed some modeling gigs and a small role in the Barbra Streisand starred The Owl and the Pussycat (1970), where she was credited as “Evelyn Lang”. Her parents were not impressed, so she moved to Los Angeles for more work. But she didn’t get any roles, except for a low-budget film Together (1971), in which she appeared nude. Depressed, she left Los Angeles for San Francisco where she held several jobs, including work as a topless model and a bottomless dancer. She also married a hippie named Doug (whose surname she did not provide to writer-researcher John Hubner).

Adult film career

Chambers happened to see an advertisement for a casting call, and rushed to the audition only to find out that it was for a porno film. She was about to leave when the Mitchell brothers stopped her, because of her resemblance to Cybill Shepherd, and feeling that a wholesome blond actress was needed for their film. (At this point, they did not realize that she was the “cover girl” on the Ivory Snow soap box; she posed as the woman holding the baby. According to some urban legends, Chambers was the baby; this turned out to be false, as was the claim that the baby was Brooke Shields). The product’s manufacturer, Procter & Gamble quickly dropped her after discovering her double life as an adult film actress. Chambers, who was initially ambivalent about starring in Behind the Green Door, asked the Mitchell brothers, Artie and Jim, for a $25,000 salary and a percentage of the gross, never expecting that they would agree. After filming concluded, she dropped the Ivory Snow bombshell, which resulted in her being billed as the “99 and 44/100% pure” girl.

In the film, Chambers had sex with the well-endowed African-American actor Johnny Keyes. She also fainted at the end of one scene lasting over 45 minutes. The porno industry and viewing public were shocked by the then-taboo spectacle of a white woman having sex with a black man. (Chambers’ parents refused to talk to her for several years after the film’s release, but eventually reconciled with her). In subsequent porno films with John Holmes, who was noted for his extremely large penis, Chambers “talked dirty” to him off-camera to give him an erection. Eventually, mainstream films noticed Chambers, who in 1977, nabbed a major role in David Cronenberg’s Rabid. However, her adult film career made Hollywood studios nervous, and hence she was unable to transition to mainstream films.

She was noted for her enthusiastic performances of deep throat, anal, lesbian, interracial, extreme bukkake, and double or triple penetration scenes. She was one of the first female stars to shave her pubic hair, a practice now routine for porn actresses. Chambers continues to appear in porn films for such companies as Naughty America and MILF Hunter. Later in her career, she had a series of breast augmentations raising her from a B-cup to at least a D. She is reputedly one of the first porn actresses to have her genitals pierced.

Her first marriage ended after the release of Behind the Green Door. During her 1975-1985 marriage to porn producer/director/manager Chuck Traynor, Chambers continued in both mainstream and porn films. After that marriage ended, Chambers married for the third time to truck driver Tom Taylor. She gave birth to their daughter, McKenna Marie Taylor, in 1991, before that marriage also ended in divorce. Chambers has admitted to writer John Hubner and other interviewers that she has battled drug and alcohol addiction in the past.

In recent years, Chambers has appeared primarily in independent films, claiming that their more laid back pace suits her as “there’s a lot less pressure on you to perform (and) you don’t have to be young and skinny.”

Other work

* Marilyn Chambers also had some chart success with the Disco single “Benihana” in 1976, produced by Michael Zager on the Roulette Records label. In the 2004 United States presidential election, Marilyn Chambers ran for Vice President on the Personal Choice Party ticket, a quasi-libertarian party. She received a total of 946 votes.

Fictional portrayals

* In 2000, Tracy Hutson played Chambers in the made-for-cable biopic about the Mitchell Brothers, Rated X.

Literature

* Nicolas Barbano: Verdens 25 hotteste pornostjerner (Rosinante, Denmark 1999) ISBN 87-7357-961-0: Features a chapter on her.

Taken from Wikipedia

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