GOLDEN GODDESSES: 25 LEGENDARY WOMEN OF CLASSIC EROTIC CINEMA, 1968-1985

by Nelson, Jill C.

  San Francisco was my mother’s Hollywood. Getting the keys to the place which gave her the big “break,” must have been thrilling and a mirror image of how much she was able to influence not only people, but also, an entire city.

  Still Insatiable

  By the mid 1990s, and sporadically throughout the new millennium, Marilyn, as sexy as ever, resurrected her adult film career by appearing in special select performances. Still Insatiable (1998) directed by Jane Hamilton (Veronica Hart), paired Ron Jeremy, with Chambers, and is probably the film she is most remembered for during her comeback. Two other significant features made within the last ten years of her life are Dark Chambers (2000), and Edgeplay (2001) directed by Jane Hamilton.

  At forty-six years of age, Marilyn is a little rounder around the mid-section than in previous film projects and her face definitely shows signs of seasoning, but Chambers reaffirmed in Still Insatiable why she is hailed the paramount female star of her era. Marilyn is a California Senator on a mission to permanently ban pornographic material while covertly, in an effort to gain a better understanding of the films she is hoping to eradicate, she screens a movie, and becomes turned on. This leads to a succession of provocative coital circumstances, not only involving Marilyn, but also people under her employ who go out of their way to satiate the Senator. The well-preserved Chambers’ reemergence as a porn star is hot and magnetic as ever, both in her masturbatory scene (where she positively glowed), and with her fellow performers: Julian, Julian St. Jox, Mr. Marcus, Julie Ashton, and Kylie Ireland. Marilyn has not lost her libido as she participated excitedly in a group sex scene, joined Julian for an anal scene, and shared a double dildo with the girls. Predictably, the Senator reevaluates her stance on censorship in the film’s conclusion.

  MARILYN CHAMBERS: My parents both passed away within five months of each other in 2000. [A few years before], I was doing an appearance in Seattle or something, and I was staying with my mother and my sister was over. I was getting ready to go and my mom said, “I can’t imagine why anybody would want your autograph?” My mother was one of those kinds of people, a very independent Leo. My sister would say, “But Mom, she’s a famous porn star, are you kidding?”

  My mother was just, “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to know.” They would come and see me occasionally. I did some straight plays when I was in Las Vegas and she came and saw those. When I was doing a nightclub act, she came to see me at the Empire State building with my dad. They had tried to participate, but it was difficult for them. As a mom, and as a middle-aged person, I totally understand that.

  In accordance with most actors who work occasionally, during the years leading up to her own death, Marilyn was able to support herself through mainstream employment options and managed to juggle the two personas up until the end, as Valerie Gobos described.

  She was working at the car dealership selling cars. In fact, until recently, they still had her voice on the voice mail when you called the dealership. They all really loved her there, and I guess it was kind of hard when they had to finally take it off.

  I believe she had also gone to get her assistant nursing degree at some point. She was very much an advocate for animals. She loved dogs and cats, and animals. Until her last day, she was involved with Horror films. I think the last project she had done was the voice-over for Porndogs: The Adventures of Sadie (2009), and it went into DVD. I interviewed the director [Greg Blatman] of that film in San Francisco and they had Sadie there; Marilyn was going to play the voice of the dog. It’s a great interview. We have her in the recording studio, but she did crossover into Horror and the guys who were involved in that became very close and were devastated by her passing. She would do these conventions and show up, and sign autographs for the Horror film circuit similar to Seka and some of the others.

  It’s unfortunate, because even to this day if you Google Marilyn’s name or go online you can see so many other people making money off of Marilyn Chambers. Marilyn Chambers didn’t make near that amount of money off of herself in her later years: the compilation scenes, and photos, and the merchandising. I think that out of respect to McKenna, her daughter, this is something really to address now.

  Marilyn knew she was a star, and she would have liked to have been a different type of star, but I don’t feel that she one hundred percent regretted it. I think she knew that and that’s maybe what was frustrating for her was looking back on her life with not a lot of money, and not making a lot of good decisions because she knew who she was and what she even could have been. I think she switched gears like all women do, and again, becoming a mother became the most important thing to her in her life.

  Not many people are aware that in her later years Marilyn also donated her time counseling young people about the dangers of drug abuse. Chambers expressed her feelings on the subject of lament.

  The difference between the adult industry today and back then is we shot films; we put stuff on film. Not that many movies were made, and plus, you had to go to a movie theatre. The other thing was we had a lot of controversy. We had the church; we had the Republicans. We had the John Birchers. We had situations where people got up and they were soap boxing and denounced it. It is an entirely different era of women being funneled into the industry today. They can’t do anything else or they’ve been told by some Svengali guy, “I’ll make you a star.” They think they’re going to be the next Jenna Jameson, the chicks of today, or making millions and millions of dollars. With people like me paving the way, that’s wonderful, but if you start at eighteen, you’re done by the age of twenty. Some of these girls do approximately eighty films a year! They’re totally overexposed. It’s like “We’re done with you. Next.”

  As for me, I have to get through this life. It’s either screw the day that I got into this and be a totally bitter, resentful woman who’s just furious because everyone’s making money off of me, or I can say I have to move on. I can equate it with someone who worked for me who stole all of my jewelry; every single bit of it that I had been collecting since my early twenties — everything; items that had been given to me by Sammy Davis, and others. It took me about fifteen years to not hate these people. They were never arrested, but everybody knows they did it. It’s the kind of thing where it just engulfed me. It’s very difficult to let go. You can also parallel it to what was stolen from me by being a porn star, my adulthood. You know, from the years eighteen to forty. It was stolen from me, but I allowed it. I did it. I own up to it and I did make a lot of money. I had three husbands who also enjoyed my money.

  Life is too short to be bitter and angry and hateful. It’s not worth it. There are a lot of people who are making a lot of money off of me right now. I spent almost six years in court in Las Vegas trying to do this and that and the other thing and with the internet today, the amount of people that sell my stuff, and take little things from other films and make other films. When you call them and say, “cease and desist” they go, “Fuck you. Sue us.” I’m sorry, I don’t have half a million bucks to sue. Even then, you’re probably not going to win so the disadvantage of being an adult film star is that you better be really, really smart and have a great attorney, and own every single piece of merchandise that you do before you do it. Because if you don’t you will be screwed in the end, and you will be taken advantage of and thrown to the dogs. If you don’t care, great, but if you do care — it’s cause and effect. I mean, I have other things that I do that require my time. I have projects going, and honestly, at age fifty-five I thought I’d be retired but guess what? Not happening! When it’s over, it’s over. I had always envisioned myself saying “Thank you and good night,” when I was about thirty-two and that would be the end of it. It doesn’t work like that.

  Thank You and Good Night

  As I mentioned in my introduction, I had hoped to meet for dinner with Marilyn in Santa Monica when I visited Los Angeles in July 2007. Unfortunately, Marilyn had to cancel out last minute. I remember sitting in the cab speeding dow
n the freeway toward West Hollywood to visit family when I received her call, and afterwards, informing my astonished driver that Marilyn Chambers had been on the phone. He smiled and said. “Everybody knows Marilyn Chambers”.

  In addition to the documentary and feature film retrospective on the horizon, there is also a Marilyn Chambers biography in the works.

  VALERIE GOBOS: Right now, my company, Gobos Film & Entertainment, is producing a full-length documentary on the life of Marilyn Chambers and life after porn. I am also pitching a feature film to the studios. I’m hoping to reach not only the adult world, but also the public about Marilyn’s life. It is also about the subject of sex, a subject which I think everyone finds to be interesting. Maybe we can bring that out a little bit more into the general market. All I know is that I fell into this, and I knew that I had to do it.

  MCKENNA TAYLOR: I would like people to recognize that yes, my mother was an adult film star and was damn good at it, but she was also an amazing woman and mother. She had an amazing heart. She was a shining star, on and off the camera. I miss and love her dearly.

  MARILYN CHAMBERS: I was Marilyn Chambers seven days a week at all times. When people met me, that’s the person I was. I wasn’t just Mar. I was Marilyn Chambers, and then as I got older, I had to become me. It was real difficult to make that transition into what I really was. Everybody goes through the “Who am I?” and discovering yourself, but mine came a little bit later and after coming off of a very big run. You know, it’s difficult to be that person twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and come down off of that and be somebody else. That’s what I found very difficult.

  I really want to get it out there to the public to let them know when I was involved in my career I had a great time. It was the time of my life. You know, we had people standing for three blocks waiting for an autograph. Adoring fans who really enjoyed my work and who made me feel like a little princess. I felt it was my job to work hard and make my fans proud. I really do think that’s the true meaning of a star, if you can be a complete fantasy.

  Behind the Green Door, COURTESY OF MITCHELL BROTHERS FILM GROUP

  Marilyn Chambers and Johnny Keyes. COURTESY OF MITCHELL BROTHERS FILM GROUP

  1980s recreation of Ivory Snow promo. PHOTOGRAPHY BY KENJI

  Publicity photo for Resurrection of Eve. COURTESY OF MITCHELL BROTHERS FILM GROUP

  PHOTOGRAPHY BY KENJI

  The inscription reads “Joel (Remember the armpit?) (Love You) Love & Kisses, Marilyn Chambers, XXX” COURTESY OF JOEL SUSSMAN

  Marilyn in gauze. COURTESY OF MITCHELL BROTHERS FILM GROUP

  Marilyn with Billy and McKenna Taylor, 1990s. COURTESY OF MCKENNA TAYLOR

  Marilyn and McKenna Taylor. COURTESY OF MCKENNA TAYLOR

  Marilyn with Kay Parker. COURTESY OF WORTH MENTIONING PUBLIC RELATIONS

  Classic Marilyn. COURTESY OF MITCHELL BROTHERS FILM GROUP

  5.

  Roberta Findlay

  New York City Woman

  “I made it a rule, an absolute rule for all of the films that no women were allowed on the crew except for make-up. The technical crew: cameraman, gaffer, grip and sound — I never hired a woman. I don’t like women.”

  — Roberta Findlay

  Roberta Findlay inferred her life has consisted of a series of random acts, and that she moved whichever way the wind happened to blow without a specific direction or objective in mind. It would be a challenge to attempt to contradict the dogged and refreshingly blunt Findlay, who is the first female cinematographer in America, and maneuvered a twenty pound, thirty-five millimeter camera on her small frame to boot.

  Born to Hungarian immigrants in 1948, Findlay, also known as “the human tripod” to those in the cinema world, was raised in the Bronx and is the youngest of three children. At around age four, Roberta began to play classical piano which she continued to do exceptionally well over the next twelve years. Her father and mother presumed that their believed prodigy would surely gain fame and fortune as a world class, concert pianist, but at age sixteen, while attending New York City College in the mid-1960s, Roberta met her husband Michael Findlay. An avid vintage movie buff and budding filmmaker, Findlay was ten years Roberta’s senior. After becoming an arranger and accompanist for Michael’s silent film screenings, Roberta and Michael soon took their act to local coffee houses in the East Village. Michael also commenced to direct his own cult, sexploitation films centering upon the subjects of rape, torture, and bondage. The offerings often featured Roberta in small acting roles where she was usually billed as Anna Riva. The Findlay team explored simulated sexual extremes in several enterprises, and created a stir of controversy for too much realism when their biker-themed picture Snuff (released in 1976), shot in Argentina in the early seventies, was refurbished with a fatal five-minute ending that was not a part of the original footage.

  In the early 1970s, Roberta took the reins and proposed to write, direct, shoot, produce and compose scores for softcore ventures: The Altar of Lust (1971) featuring Harry Reems, and Rosebud (1972) starring Jamie Gillis and Darby Lloyd Rains.

  Roberta left Michael in the mid-seventies for another companion — by that time she was considered a virtuoso camera operator with a flair for lighting technique. She accepted the capital offered to produce, direct and shoot her own films. At first, Findlay continued in the trend of shooting softcore, but couldn’t resist the temptation to progress to hardcore when it became evident there was greater financial gain — even though she felt ambivalent about directing sex scenes. Findlay often used aliases (to the tune of Robert Norman) for some of her X-rated films that ranged from moody to humorous with a dash of panache. Two of the movies in which Roberta was involved were notoriously busted: Anyone But My Husband (1975) and Honeysuckle Rose (1979).

  During her hardcore film career, Findlay teamed up with recording studio owner, the late Walter Sear, and ultimately produced more than thirty titles before video arrived and the demand for adult theatrical releases diminished. Findlay and Sear transitioned to the Horror genre, which generally depicted fright/slasher premises exhibited in two of their popular titles: Tenement (1985) and Blood Sisters (1987).

  For more than fourteen years, Findlay (who is also fluent in French) has presided over Sear Sound, a prestigious Manhattan recording studio that Walter helmed over forty years ago. The studio attracts many distinguished musical greats from all over the world such as Sir Paul McCartney, Norah Jones, Eric Clapton, Sting, Bob Dylan and David Bowie. Niche artists: Scissor Sisters, Yoko Ono, Rufus Wainwright, and Deathcab for Cutie have all recorded there.

  In their latter years together, Roberta and Walter enjoyed making annual pilgrimages to Europe and were ardent opera fans. Now that Walter is gone, Roberta finds herself tuning into the Turner Network to watch some of her favorite classic directors. She is not a fan of modern technology and prefers to communicate by landline telephones and snail mail.

  Roberta Findlay rarely grants interviews, and still isn’t certain why she agreed to talk about her life and career in November 2010 for this book, but I’m glad she did.

  The Pianist

  I was born in the Bronx, which is a part of New York. I was a child in a slum and it was a war zone even when I was a kid. Actually, it was a Jewish neighborhood when I was a very small child, and as I grew older, it became a war zone.

  I have a brother and sister much older than me. We had a nuclear family. Nobody got divorced or anything. My parents were, in essence, peasants from Hungary. In those days, everybody worked including me as soon as I was able to. My mother worked as a clerk and sometimes a bookkeeper, and my father was a drycleaner. They worked very hard as people did then. It was a hardscrabble life. We were near the Bronx zoo, so that was exciting!

  I had a happy childhood and I started playing the piano when I was four or five-years-old, which became the constant in my life for about twelve years.

  When I attended public school, in those days, it was grades one through six. I skipped
the fourth grade actually, and then in junior high school, I skipped the eighth grade. I was in special classes. Unfortunately, I was about fifteen when I finished high school, so at fifteen, I entered The City College of New York [CCNY], which, at that time was a very good school — not its music department, but it was considered a fine Engineering school. I went to college and graduated from City [College] at age nineteen — nineteen and a half. At one time, you were able to go to City College or you’d go to Queens or to Hunter, but I went to City, I don’t know why.

  I was in City College during the late sixties, and then the year after I graduated, it became open enrollment. That was the end of the city colleges in New York. The system fell apart, and eventually, they became remedial schools. When I was there, it was free. There was a yearly fee of maybe fifty dollars or something, but they were free. Yet, it was very difficult to get into the city schools. You needed a high mark on the SATS [Scholastic Assessment Tests]. They had SATS then, and City College was actually the hardest to get into. I studied music, which is a totally useless occupation and pastime.

  At the age of seventeen, I had no concept of what it is to live or what one does with one’s life. My parents thought that I would be a great concert pianist. Unfortunately, I’m very dexterous and I can play very quickly, so they thought that’s what I would be: a world famous pianist that had come out of poverty or misery or whatever. The dexterity was a fake; it was a façade, actually. It didn’t make me a very great pianist, but I’m fast. I don’t play anymore. It’s not that I didn’t like it, but it came to me when I was about nine or ten that I could never be a world-class pianist. It was silly — out of the question. My parents didn’t know Liberace from Horowitz. Civilian people don’t know. They would say, “Doesn’t she play beautifully?” I continued in music. I didn’t even take education courses so I couldn’t teach anything — not that I would.