LOS ANGELES — Marilyn Chambers, the pretty Ivory Snow soap girl who helped bring hard-core adult films into the mainstream consciousness when she starred in the explicit 1972 movie “Behind the Green Door,” has died at 56.
The cause of death was not immediately known. A family friend, Peggy McGinn, said Chambers’ 17-year-old daughter found the actress’ body Sunday night. Chambers was pronounced dead at the scene, the county coroner’s office said Monday.
Chambers and fellow actresses Linda Lovelace and Georgina Spelvin shot to fame at a time in the early 1970s when American social mores and the quality of hard-core sex films were changing.
For the first time, films such as “Behind the Green Door” and “Deep Throat” (also released in 1972 and starring Lovelace) had decent acting and legitimate if fairly thin plots. As the audiences for them grew to include couples, they also began to take on higher production values and to show in places other than sleazy theaters.
While the film was still in theaters, the public learned that its star was the same young blond smiling and holding a freshly diapered baby on boxes of Ivory Soap. The manufacturer quickly replaced her, but it was later discovered that she also had a small role in the 1970 Barbra Streisand film “The Owl and the Pussycat.”
“She was the first crossover adult star. She was the Ivory Snow girl and when she decided to make an adult movie, that was big news,” Steven Hirsch, co-chief executive of adult filmmaker Vivid Entertainment Group, said Monday. “It was the first adult movie that was more than just a bunch of sex scenes.”
Chambers followed “Green Door” with “Resurrection of Eve” in 1973 and “Inside Marilyn Chambers” in 1975. Then she announced in 1976 that she was giving up adult films to pursue other interests. She starred in the 1977 horror movie “Rabid” and created a song- and- dance show that played in Las Vegas and elsewhere.
She returned to adult films in 1980 in “Insatiable” and through her career went back and forth between explicit movies and R-rated ones.
