Mitchell brothers

Brothers James Lloyd "Jim" Mitchell (November 30, 1943 in Stockton, California – July 12, 2007 in Petaluma, California) and Artie Jay Mitchell (December 17, 1945 in Lodi, California – February 27, 1991 in Marin County, California) were American entrepreneurs.

Jim, a part-time filmmaking student at San Francisco State University in the mid-1960s, aspired to become an "important" director like Roman Polanski and headed a clique of classmates with similar ambitions.

While in school, he worked at the Follies, a cinema showing brief, plotless films featuring naked performers, and observed that each night the theater was filled with masturbators who arrived simply for the onscreen nudity.

He therefore perceived pornography as a potentially lucrative career opportunity for himself and Artie, who had been discharged from the United States Army.

They operated in the pornography and striptease club business in San Francisco and other parts of California from 1969 until 1991 when Jim was convicted of killing Artie.

They opened the O'Farrell Theatre in 1969 as an adult cinema and at one time operated 11 such businesses.

In 1969, with the help of Artie's Ivy League-educated wife Meredith Bradford, the brothers fulfilled their ambitions by leasing and renovating a dilapidated two-story building at 895 O'Farrell Street, which they converted into the O'Farrell Theatre, a movie theater with a makeshift film studio upstairs.

They also rented a larger facility at 991 Tennessee Street in which to shoot some of their films; nevertheless, even their fans conceded that the Mitchells' movies ranged in quality from mediocre to atrocious.

Jim Mitchell once quipped, "The only Art in [porn] is my brother."

The Mitchells opened the O'Farrell Theatre on July 4, 1969, and were confronted almost immediately by the authorities.

They would open other X-rated movie houses in California over the years, spending much time in court and money on lawyers to stay open as indignant locals and officials repeatedly tried to shut them down.

In the mid 1970s, low-level organized crime began making unauthorized copies of the Mitchells' movies, and the brothers retaliated in the courts.

When one judge ruled that obscene material could not receive copyright protection, the brothers eventually prevailed in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, leading to the FBI copyright warnings now found at the start of videos.

The O'Farrell Theatre was frequently raided on obscenity and related charges, leading to over 200 cases against its proprietors.

According to Artie's daughter Liberty Bradford Mitchell, the brothers were arrested and jailed more than 180 times each; the family euphemistically referred to those episodes as "business trips".

They were defended by attorneys who included Michael Kennedy and civil rights specialist, Joseph Rhine.

The Mitchells were popular on the fringes of San Francisco's diverse society.

Their friends included a who's-who of pornography plus San Francisco personalities and celebrities from outside the city: Warren Hinckle, Herb Gold, Aerosmith, Black Panther Huey "Doc" Newton, and Jack Palladino.

They produced and directed many adult films, including Behind the Green Door in 1972.

They were also successful as defendants in many obscenity cases.

Their notoriety significantly increased with Jim's fratricide and they became the subject of three books, X-Rated, Bottom Feeders, and 9½ Years Behind the Mitchell Brothers' Green Door and the movie Rated X.

The Mitchells' father Robert (known as Bob), from Oklahoma, was a professional gambler.

He and his wife Georgia Mae settled in Antioch, California, near San Francisco.

According to the Mitchell brothers' biographers, they had a relatively stable childhood; the boys were popular, and some of their childhood friends became important members of their porn empire.

Both attended public schools and graduated from Antioch High School.

They became incorporated as Cinema 7 (headquartered in the managers' offices at the O'Farrell Theatre), and in 1972 produced one of the world's first famous feature-length pornographic movies, Behind the Green Door, starring an unknown Ivory Snow girl Marilyn Chambers in her porn debut.

The movie, produced for $60,000, grossed over $25 million.

The Mitchells rode the porno chic wave, using some of their Green Door profits to produce fairly lavish hardcore movies including Resurrection of Eve in 1973, Sodom and Gomorrah: The Last Seven Days in 1975, C.B. Mamas (1976), The Autobiography of a Flea (1976), Never a Tender Moment (1979), and Beyond De Sade (1979).

One of their last big-budget movies was The Grafenberg Spot (1985), featuring Traci Lords, who had entered the adult-video industry underaged using fake identification.

The Mitchell brothers were the first to transfer film titles to videotape and market them via ads in national sex magazines.

The brothers were inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame.

In 1985, the brothers made the sequel to Behind the Green Door that had been long-awaited—and often postponed.

They hired Sharon McNight, a cabaret singer and frequent movie collaborator, to direct the picture and, uncharacteristically, chose to cast the film exclusively with amateur performers, despite the availability of such adult-industry stars as Lady Ashley Liberty, who had just concluded an engagement at New York City's Show World Center.

The Mitchell brothers auditioned virtually every newcomer who responded to their advertisements (which appeared in Variety and Bay Area sex tabloids).

A handful of O'Farrell dancers accepted small roles; one of them asked to be cast as Gloria, the female lead, reprising the role originally played by Chambers, who did not participate in the sequel.

While McNight considered the house dancer for that part, Artie Mitchell's girlfriend, who then called herself Missy Manners, cast herself as Gloria.

Filming of the sequel occurred mainly in the O'Farrell Theatre, and took only one day.

Missy, inexperienced at acting and public sex, reportedly had much difficulty performing in front of the film crew; the set was so tense that at one point Jim Mitchell harangued one of his O'Farrell managers in front of everyone because their catered lunch was inadequate.

The Green Door sequel was also the world's first safe-sex film, in which all the men wore condoms, and self-protection advice was given to the audience by one of the characters.

Highly over-budgeted at $250,000, Behind the Green Door: the Sequel, according to adult magazines, was one of the worst porn pictures ever made, mainly due to the absence of a professional cast.