Marilyn Chambers, 56, the pretty Ivory Snow soap girl who helped bring hard-core adult films into the mainstream consciousness when she starred in the explicit 1972 movie “Behind the Green Door,” has died.
A family friend, Peggy McGinn, said Chambers’ 17-year-old daughter found the actress’ body Sunday night in Los Angeles. Chambers and fellow actresses Linda Lovelace and Georgina Spelvin shot to fame at a time in the early 1970s when both American social mores and the quality of hard-core sex films were changing.
For the first time, films like “Behind the Green Door” and “Deep Throat” (also released in 1972 and starring Lovelace) had decent acting and legitimate if fairly thin plots. As the audiences for them grew to include couples, they also began to take on higher production values and to be seen in places other than sleazy theaters.
But “Behind the Green Door” brought something more in Chambers, an attractive young woman who had begun her career as a legitimate actress and model. While the film was still in theaters, the public learned that its star was the same young blonde smiling and holding a freshly diapered baby on boxes of Ivory Soap. The manufacturer quickly replaced her.
Although Chambers was quick to point out in 2000 that she had done more R-rated films that X-rated ones, she made no apologies for the latter. “I have to say that the adult films have been a total pleasure,” she said. “They were like getting paid to live out my greatest fantasies.”
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