PETALUMA, CA — Revolutionary pornographer/convicted killer Jim Mitchell died in his Sonoma Valley home of a heart attack last week at the age of 63. Merle Lane, a relative of Mitchell’s wife, Lisa, said it appeared the man suffered a heart attack.
“He was sitting in his chair and doing something, I think watching TV, and he just, ‘Ehhhh.’ That was it. His heart quit him just like that,” Lane told the Contra Costa Times.
Mitchell teamed with his brother, Artie, to build a one-of-a-kind porn legacy that included San Francisco’s legendary O’Farrell Theatre — the Taj Mahal of lap dance/strip joints — and one of the most popular adult films of all time—Behind the Green Door, along with producing many other adult films such as The Autobiography of a Flea, Inside Marilyn Chambers, Sodom & Gomorrah, The Resurrection of Eve and others.
Behind the Green Door was one of the most widely available titles at the beginning of the home video revolution due to the Mitchell Brothers marketing efforts. VCRs in homes across the country whirred with millions of copies of BTGD and other Mitchell Brothers productions, all distributed by the two men who had fought numerous obscenity cases and endured numerous arrests to make that product available to the masses.
The Brothers pro-porn, cash cow rebellion against San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein was a coke-fueled orgy peppered with humor and liberty along with way. The two put the mayor’s unlisted home number on their theater’s marquee at one point and local editorial columnist Warren Hinckel mocked Feinstein for “sending thirty cops to arrest one woman [Marilyn Chambers]”.
The two also supported the alt-comics movement including Robert Crumb during his highly-influential Zap Comics tenure and they supposedly employed Hunter S. Thompson as a “night manager” at the O’Farrell while he worked on a never-completed novel.
In a statement, Hustler magazine founder Larry Flynt said of Mitchell’s passing, “He was a true pioneer in the business… He will be missed.”
Mitchell shot and killed his brother, Artie, in 1991, following an argument; ultimately serving five years in prison for the crime. Artie’s six children filed wrongful death suits against Mitchell, all of which were settled.
Mitchell retreated from public view to quietly raise horses after his time at San Quentin and refused to take any part in the making of 2000’s Rated X, the Emilio Estevez-directed Showtime bio-pic. In Rated X, Estevez plays Mitchell with brother Charlie Sheen playing the role of Artie. In an interview with thedigitalbits.com about the making of the movie, Estevez said of Mitchell’s porn-making world that it wasn’t “one [he’d] want to dwell in” and referred to the classic Mitchell Brothers’ films as “all pretty terrible.”
Luckily, the rest of the world seems to feel otherwise.
