LOS ANGELES, CA — The Los Angeles County Coroner’s initial autopsy results indicated no foul play was involved in the death of legendary porn star Marilyn Chambers, but investigation continues into what natural causes may have taken her life.Chambers, 56, was found dead in her home on Easter Sunday. The body was discovered by Chambers’ daughter, McKenna.
Born Marilyn Ann Briggs April 22, 1952, Chambers was an aspiring mainstream model and actress when, at age 20, she was cast in the Mitchell brothers’ Behind the Green Door. Her appearance in the XXX-rated film cost Chambers the biggest mainstream break she had received to date: the role of the Ivory Snow girl in Proctor & Gamble’s advertising campaign for the laundry detergent. Proctor & Gamble felt the notorious blue movie was inconsistent with its slogan of “99 and 44/100ths percent pure.”
Between 1972 and 1986, Chambers made 15 more adult films, primarily for the Mitchell brothers and Caballero Home Video. Along the way she married her manager, Chuck Traynor, whom she divorced in 1985.
In 1998, Chambers attempted a comeback with Still Insatiable (VCA). Eight more adult roles followed, some of them non-sexual. Chambers also founded her own studio, Damaged Productions, under whose auspices she produced Nantucket Housewives, the first title in what she hoped would be a series.
Despite her early banishment from mainstream Hollywood, Chambers recently found some success in her dream occupation when she provided the voice for one of the characters in the upcoming Greg Blatman feature, Porndogs: The Adventures of Sadie. In addition to Chambers, the film’s live-action canine stars are voiced by such sex-industry luminaries as Ron Jeremy, Tera Patrick, Evan Seinfeld and Heidi Fleiss.
Chambers also had been signed to appear in an off-Broadway production chronicling the life of Chambers contemporary and fellow Traynor ex-wife Linda Lovelace. The role of Lovelace’s “aging porn-star girlfriend” was written especially for Chambers, according to Robert Interlandi, who handled the rights to Deep Throat the Play for Arrow Productions.
The play is scheduled to open in mid-July at the World Theater in New York, Interlandi told AVN.
AVN’s exhaustive retrospective of Chambers’ career — including comments from past and current porn icons — is here: http://tinyurl.com/d44amg.
