Marilyn Chambers: Behind the Green Door

Feb 3, 2011
Eric Brothers

Poster for film "Behind the Green Door(1972)" - Mitchell Brothers

This 1972 film played at the Cannes Film Festival to standing ovations. Chambers also appeared on the Ivory Snow detergent box as a mom holding a baby.

“So, you don’t mind having sex on camera?” said one of the Mitchell brothers.

“What?! No, no. I’m not that naughty,” said the 18-year-old Marilyn Briggs.

It was 1972. Briggs, an actress living in California, read a casting call in the San Francisco Chronicle for what was called a “major” motion picture. Carrying her model’s portfolio, she went to the audition and filled out a form. She wrote quickly, checking off “bowling” and not “non-bowling.”

“But you checked off ‘balling,’” Mitchell said.

Embarrassed, Marilyn said, “I thought you meant ‘bowling’!”

Marilyn asks for “ridiculous” sum of money

And the rest, they say, is history. She was about to leave when they begged her not to. Marilyn remembers that they were dressed in Oxford shirts and ties and preppy sweaters. They were at the top of the stairs and she was looking up at them. They told her the story of Behind the Green Door, which she thought was a “cool fantasy.” She asked for a “ridiculous” amount of money and a percentage of the film. She left and they called later and said OK to paying her $25,000 and 1% of the gross receipts.

Plot of Behind the Green Door

Gloria Saunders is a young woman on vacation. Abducted by strangers, she is taken to a club known as The Green Door. She is put on stage and becomes the star attraction of a live sex show with a voyeuristic audience in attendance. That is the story.

Behind the Green Door is “an impressive achievement”

What makes this film unusual for adult entertainment is that the first sexual encounter does not occur until about twenty minutes into the movie. But once it begins it doesn’t stop. A review by Matthew Doberman tells us that in the 1970s adult films “briefly achieved a level of…respectability, inasmuch as ‘regular’ people saw the films at ‘regular’ theaters.” Saying that Behind the Green Door is not a traditional film, he writes that “its cultural significance definitely outshines its artistic merits….[and] is an impressive achievement.” Artie and Jim Mitchell were two groundbreaking adult filmmakers who created their movies by employing innovative techniques and placing an emphasis upon plot and character. This film is considered a “classic,” and along with other films such as Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones ushered in what has come to be called the “Golden Age” of adult cinema.

Behind the Green Door was made for $50,000 and has grossed around $50 million to date. When it was played at the Cannes Film Festival the film received a standing ovation at the end. The film also received good reviews in mainstream publications when it was released. The film was both innovative and controversial, featuring an inter-racial encounter between Chambers and former boxer Johnnie Keyes; this was the first inter-racial scene in an adult film. Chambers had no dialogue in Behind the Green Door. That was, says Chambers, one of the most difficult things, “to let the audience know what was going on inside my head…”

There was only one “money shot”

A review by Michael Den Boer says that the only “money shot” was “one of the most elaborated ever committed to celluloid.” It was shown in slow motion and then again with “weird psychedelic-like colors…”

Marilyn Chambers: The “Ivory Snow Girl”

Chambers feels that Behind the Green Door made a lot of money and became famous because of her being on the Ivory Snow detergent box. The box with her hit store shelves the same time that the movie was released. She said, “You couldn’t buy that kind of press.” Chambers believes that the controversy surrounding her and Ivory Snow helped promote the movie into a giant smash hit.