Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 33: Under the Green Grass

Marilyn Chambers (born Marilyn Briggs) wanted to be an actress. In New York she landed some modeling gigs (her first job came when she was much younger, as a baby on boxes of Ivory soap), and a small role in The Owl and the Pussycat. She went to the west coast on a promotional tour for the film, and wound up moving to San Francisco, which she thought was much more of a location for the entertainment industry than it actually was.

In 1972 she answered a newspaper ad that touted a "major motion picture" in need of actors. It turns out that the movie was porn. Chambers was concerned that making porn would prevent her from crossing over into mainstream movies, but her resemblance to Cybill Shepherd led the film's producers to give into her salary demands (which included a percentage of the film).

That film, Behind the Green Door, was a hit. Chambers would stick with porn, making Resurrection of Eve the following year. It was also successful, but rather than continue with porn Chambers wanted to make the transition to mainstream roles. The only problem was the no one in Hollywood wanted to cast a well-known porn star in their movies. 

Chambers did land a part in David Cronenberg's Rabid, but spent most of her post-porn '70s doing a variety of things, from stage acts to a memoir to singing on a disco song. Not surprisingly, she decided to return to porn, in 1980's Insatiable. Chambers would continue to make porn movies throughout the 1980s and 1990s, though she took some time off during the AIDS crisis.

She did land some roles in independent films in the 2000s, and was a vice-presidential candidate for fringe libertarian parties in 2004 and 2008. On April 12, 2009, Chambers died of a cerebral hemorrhage.