Marilyn Chambers

Marilyn Ann Taylor (née Briggs; April 22, 1952 – April 12, 2009), known professionally as Marilyn Chambers, was an American pornographic actress, exotic dancer, model, actress, singer and vice-presidential candidate.

She was the youngest of three children, a brother, Bill Briggs (keyboardist for 1960s Boston band The Remains), and a sister, Jann Smith.

Chambers attended Burr Farms Elementary School, Hillspoint Elementary School, Long Lots Junior High School, and Staples High School where she graduated in 1970 and was voted "Best Student Body.".

Her father tried to discourage her from pursuing a modeling career, citing brutal competition.

While in high school, she landed some modeling assignments and a small role in the film The Owl and the Pussycat (1970), in which Chambers was credited as Evelyn Lang.

During her early career as a model, her most prominent job was as the "Ivory Soap girl" on the Ivory Snow soap flake box, posing as a mother holding a baby under the tag line "99 & 44/100% pure".

Upon the release of The Owl and the Pussycat, Chambers was sent to Los Angeles and San Francisco on a promotional tour.

In 1970, she moved from Westport to San Francisco, where she held several jobs that included topless model and bottomless dancer.

"I moved to San Francisco, thinking it was the entertainment capital of the world, which indeed, it is not," she said.

Chambers sought work in theater and dance groups in San Francisco to no avail.

After that, she did not receive any roles except for a low-budget film, writer-director-producer Sean S. Cunningham's Together (1971), in which she appeared nude.

She was known for her 1972 hardcore film debut, Behind the Green Door, and her 1980 pornographic film Insatiable.

In 1972, she saw an advertisement in the San Francisco Chronicle for a casting call for what was billed as a "major motion picture".

She rushed to the audition only to find it was for a pornographic film, which was to be called Behind the Green Door.

She was about to leave when producers Artie and Jim Mitchell noticed her resemblance to Cybill Shepherd.

They invited her upstairs to their offices and told her the film's plot.

Chambers was highly dubious about accepting a role in a pornographic film, fearing it might ruin her chances at breaking into the mainstream.

But she was turned on by the fantasy of the story and decided to take a chance, under the condition that she receive a hefty salary and 10 percent of the film's gross.

She also insisted that each actor get tested for venereal disease.

The Mitchell brothers balked at her request for a percentage of the film's profits, but finally agreed, realizing the film needed a wholesome blonde actress.

The film told the story of a wealthy San Francisco socialite, Gloria Saunders (Chambers), who is taken against her will to an elite North Beach sex club and loved as she's never been loved before.

Unusually, Chambers does not have a single word of dialogue in the entire film.

After engaging in lesbian sex with a group of six women, she then has sex with actor Johnnie Keyes.

This possibly makes Behind the Green Door the first U.S. feature-length hardcore film to include an interracial sex scene.

The porn industry and viewing public were shocked by the then-taboo spectacle of a white woman having sex with a black man.

The scene with Keyes is followed by Chambers mounting a trapeze contraption suspended from the ceiling.

She then engages in vaginal intercourse with one man as she performs oral sex on another and masturbates two others.

"Each sequence was a surprise to me", she said in 1987.

"They never told me what was happening next. I just did it as it happened, and it worked. I've always been highly sexed. Oh, my God, I love it! Insatiable is the right word for me".

After filming concluded, she informed the Mitchell brothers that she was "the Ivory Snow Girl"; the Mitchells capitalized on this by billing her as the "99 and 44/100% impure" girl.

Although she said at the time the film would help "sell a lot more soap", Procter & Gamble quickly dropped her after discovering her double life as an adult-film actress, and the advertising industry was scandalized.

"Ever since I was a little kid, I've always wanted to be an actress," Chambers said in 1997.

"I was always a performer, a junior Olympic diver, a junior Olympic gymnast. My mother always told me I was a show-off".

"When I was about 16, I learned how to write my mother’s name on notes to get out of school", she said.

"And then I'd take the train into the city to go to auditions".

She ranked at No. 6 on the list of Top 50 Porn Stars of All Time by AVN, and ranked as one of Playboy's Top 100 Sex Stars of the Century in 1999.

Although she was primarily known for her adult film work, she made a successful transition to mainstream projects and has been called "porn's most famous crossover".

Born Marilyn Ann Briggs in Providence, Rhode Island, Chambers was raised in Westport, Connecticut, in a middle-class household.

It is often reported that she was born in Westport; however, in a 2007 interview, Chambers confirmed she was born in Providence but grew up in Westport.

Her father was in advertising and her mother was a nurse.