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. 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, 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.
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.
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".
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, producers of several Hollywood films considered casting her. 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. "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!" 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 1977, she starred in
Neil Simon's
Last of the Red Hot Lovers in Vegas. 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." 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.
Insatiable and return to porn film studio party, 1999 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." 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. 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. In 2000,
Tracy Hutson played Chambers in the
biographical television film Rated X that included Chambers's strip-club career. 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". ==1985 arrests==