Chambers began her career in 1970 as a model for Ivory Snow soap, and starred two years later in the porn classic "Behind the Green Door."

"She was a really nice girl," said actor Ron Jeremy, who co-starred with Chambers in adult films starting in the 1970s.

Chambers' death was a "total shock," Jeremy said, because they had been scheduled to sign a contract Monday to perform together in an off-Broadway "tongue-in-cheek" re-enactment of the porn classic "Deep Throat."

"What's strange is that she was at a stage where she was totally happy and totally content with her life," Jeremy said. "Her life was falling together, and she was doing really well."

A family member found Chambers, 56, in the mobile home where she lived in the Canyon Country area and called police Sunday evening, sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitemore said.

The death appeared to be from natural causes, although toxicology tests have not been completed, Whitemore said.

The coroner's investigation has not been completed, and no cause of death has been determined, according to a spokesman with the Los Angeles Medical Examiner's office.

Although her career was mostly in X-rated films, Chambers' fame was boosted by the irony that her face had graced the Ivory Snow box, a soap advertised as "99 and 44/100 percent pure."

Chambers eventually co-starred with all of the best-known porn actors of the 1970s and 1980s, Jeremy said.

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Marilyn Chambers, the first crossover adult star

Entertainment Weekly, 4/19/09 - It happened almost invisibly, without the overheated hype, the aren’t-you shocked/aren’t-you-titillated? tabloid media blitz that would surely have accompanied it today. In 1977, back when David Cronenberg was just an obscure Toronto-based maker of low-budget horror films (though critics were already starting to foam at the mouth at his metaphors), he wrote and directed a nasty little psychosexual shocker called Rabid, in which he cast, in the lead role, the adult-film actress Marilyn Chambers (pictured, left, in one of the film's frenzied meltdown scenes). It was the first instance of a performer rising out of the seamy swamp of hard-core pornography and crossing over, without irony, into a mainstream movie. It would also be just about the last.

In Rabid, Chambers, who died last week at 56, plays a young woman who becomes a mutant predator, with a dagger-like...thingy that emerges, bloody and vicious, from her armpit, turning everyone it stabs into a rampaging, teeth-gnashing, id-flaunting zombie demon. In an interview on the Specal Edition DVD of Rabid, Cronenberg claims that he has never, to this day, seen Behind the Green Door, the 1972 adult-film landmark that made Chambers famous. True or not, Cronenberg knew what he had: He did an extremely shrewd job of playing off her image as a willowy girl next door with a secret depraved dark side. In Rabid, Chambers, with her wide eyes, come-hither smile, and cornstalk bearing, makes a disarmingly vivid demon-vixen on the loose. Despite the faintly tinny coo of her voice, she was, at least in this role, not a bad actress, perhaps because she identified with the perversity of the movie’s sex-kitten-gone-nutzoid imagery. A performer who’d gotten famous for being defiled on screen was now getting the chance to defile back.

By starring in Rabid, Chambers effectively blazed a trail, one that, as it turned out, went cold fairly quickly. In our own time, we’ve seen adult-film stars become icons of kitsch -- like Ron Jeremy, the burly "Hedgehog" who gets cast in bit parts whenever a director wants to lend a comedy a bit of cheap “underground” cachet (e.g., Class of Nuke 'Em High 3), or Traci Lords, who has carved out a TV and movie career lampooning her earlier infamy. And, of course, the adult superstar Jenna Jameson is a one-woman self-promotion machine. Marilyn Chambers, though, enjoyed her short-lived mainstream breakthrough near the end of the porno-chic era, when it wasn’t just a cool-cred joke or a naked PR stunt. Her role in Rabid seemed to open the door to further possibilities. Seven years later, in 1984, director Brian De Palma flirted with casting another '70s adult-film star -- Annette Haven -- in the role of triple-X actress Holly Body in Body Double. But the idea fell by the wayside (there were reports that it was nixed by the studio), and the part went to Melanie Griffith instead. By that point, it was clear that these two worlds were not destined, at least in America, to do much in the way of cross-pollinating.

At the time she made Rabid, Chambers claimed that she was done with the adult-film industry. But just when she thought she was out, it pulled her back in. Of course, the scandal that launched -- and forever defined -- her career was, in its singular and bizarre way, the ultimate case of mainstream/adult film crossover. Only this was crossover in reverse. After she’d finished shooting Behind the Green Door, the film’s creators, the Mitchell brothers, got wind of the fact that she had once been “the Ivory Snow girl,” posing in dewy sanitized soap commercials as “99 and 44/100 percent pure.” The ultimate icon of American purity starring in the ultimate dirty movie became an instant publicity sensation. More than that, however, it became an enduring myth of adult films: that the squeaky-clean soap princess -- an image that hearkened back to the Mad Men early '60s -- wasn’t what she seemed. And if she wasn’t, what did that say about everyone else? The true legacy of Marilyn Chambers, who crossed over before it was fashionable, or even permitted, may be that the lines you cross will forever be defining even after you’ve demonstrated that they’re not entirely real.

An Unlikely Porn Star

Newsweek, 4/18/09 - She was always an unlikely porn star. The daughter of a Madison Avenue advertising executive, reared in tony Westport, Conn., Marilyn Chambers was a 19-year-old Ivory Soap model in 1971 when she auditioned for "Behind the Green Door," thinking it was a legitimate Hollywood movie. As it turned out, the film was hardcore pornography, and the producers—taken by her resemblance to Cybill Shepherd—talked her into accepting the part. "Behind the Green Door" was the first adult film to get a wide release in American theatres, and it catapulted Chambers to national fame. Years after her porn career, she had a child and turned to politics. In 2004 and 2008, she ran as a candidate for vice president, first on the Personal Choice Party's ticket and then as a write-in candidate. She died last week in her California home. Her friend and political running mate, Charles Jay, talked to NEWSWEEK's Jesse Ellison.

Honestly, I never thought of anyone but her as my running mate. She had a name that everyone over the age of 30 would recognize, and she was a pioneer of free speech. At the time [of "Behind the Green Door"], adult film was anything but mainstream. They gave her a screening at Cannes, but if you showed one of those films [in America], you could get shut down. The filmmakers had to go through a lot of struggle, but nobody saw the filmmakers—she was the face of the film. She experienced the resistance to it, and I think she felt persecuted by it. She was on that front line fighting for free speech—unwittingly at first—but she understood she'd become a symbol.

As far as anyone will report, she was the girl on the Ivory Soap box who ended up in the porn film. But there was a lot more to her than that. What people don't know is that she was very, very goodhearted. She and I walked into a bookstore one time in Florida. I'm looking around the stacks for some books, and after a while I wonder where she is. So I go to the children's section, and she's back there sitting on a little chair reading stories to three or four children gathered around her.

She wanted to raise her daughter normally. She really didn't want her daughter to be ridiculed as a child—she thought that was a little bit unfair. She couldn't change who she had been, and she wasn't ashamed of it, but I think she wanted her daughter to be her own person. I think she strived for normalcy, and she got it. She was normal to me.

Marilyn Chambers Death is Off-Broadway's Loss

New York Post, 4/15/09 - MARILYN Chambers' death is off-Broadway's loss. The famed porn star and Ivory Snow model, who died Sunday at age 56, had recently signed to star in "Deep Throat: The Play," in the role of Linda Love lace's "aging porn star girlfriend." Producer David Bertolino told avn.com that when the "Behind the Green Door" legend auditioned for the show, set to open at the World Theater in July, "she aced it, she was wonderful . . . We're going into rehearsals in June, and we're shocked, we're devastated."

Marilyn Chambers Dead at 56

Chicago Tribune, 4/14/09 - The 'Behind the Green Door' actress was found unconscious at her Canyon Country home Sunday night, authorities said. She was named one of the top 10 adult film stars of all time by Adult Video News.

Marilyn Chambers, the legendary adult movie queen who was the wholesome model on Ivory Snow detergent boxes in the early 1970s when she made her adult movie debut in the X-rated classic "Behind the Green Door," has died. She was 56.

Chambers was found unconscious Sunday evening at her home in Canyon Country, said Los Angeles County coroner's spokesman Ed Winter.

The cause of death is under investigation, but foul play is not suspected and an autopsy is pending.

Throughout the '70s and '80s, Chambers was one of the biggest names in the porn industry, ranked by Playboy magazine as one of the top 100 sex stars of the 20th century and named one of the top 10 adult film stars of all time by Adult Video News.

"She certainly was one of the first famous porn stars," said Mark Kernes, senior editor of Adult Video News.

"In her day, there was really Linda Lovelace, obviously for 'Deep Throat,' and Marilyn Chambers," he said.

Chambers' "Behind the Green Door," Kernes said, "was made all the more exotic, I think, for some people because she had been on that Ivory Snow box. So here's the Ivory Snow beauty queen having hard-core interracial sex."

A fledgling actress, Chambers was living in San Francisco and making ends meet working as an exotic dancer when she saw a newspaper ad seeking actresses for what was described as a "major" motion picture.

It wasn't until she filled out an application that she discovered the movie was pornographic. The producers -- Jim and Artie Mitchell -- offered her the starring role.

"I thought I'd take a shot," she explained in a 1977 interview with the Los Angeles Times. "I was intrigued by the story. I really liked the fantasy involved. And I figured it might be my last chance at something really big."

Chambers had some conditions, however: She insisted that all the actors be tested for sexually transmitted diseases, and she demanded a percentage of the movie's gross receipts.

The low-budget "Behind the Green Door" became one of the biggest adult movie hits of the '70s, having received an unexpected publicity boost shortly after it was released in 1972.

Procter & Gamble, unaware of Chambers' role in the X-rated film, used one of her photos that had been taken during her New York modeling days on its laundry detergent box -- she's shown cuddling a laughing baby.

"Timing is essential for someone's career," Chambers said in a 2007 interview with Rhode Island's Providence Journal.

"That's what did it for me. The controversy of both those things happening at the same time," she said.

Procter & Gamble, whose Ivory products were "99 44/100% pure," quickly pulled the boxes from store shelves.

"The media attention of the whole controversy was insane," Chambers said in a 2003 interview with the Philadelphia Daily News. "This was the first time attention was being paid to erotic films."

Out of that, she said in a 2004 interview with the Montreal newspaper the Gazette, "came a Marilyn Chambers clause in all modeling contracts, saying that you can never have posed topless or nude or been in any kind of adult film or Playboy or anything like that."

Chambers followed up "Behind the Green Door" with another hit produced by the Mitchell brothers, "Resurrection of Eve."

And in 1975, Artie Mitchell produced a semi-documentary, "Inside Marilyn Chambers."

Chambers reportedly longed for mainstream movie stardom, and she starred in director David Cronenberg's R-rated 1977 horror movie "Rabid."

But by 1980, after appearing in a cabaret act as a singer and dancer and cutting a disco-flavored record, she returned to adult films, including "Insatiable" and the film series "Marilyn Chambers' Private Fantasies."

"I would have loved to move on," she said in a 2004 interview. "I've been stigmatized, and it's something that's very difficult to get out of."

Chambers stopped making hard-core movies in the mid-'80s, but returned again in the late '90s with "Still Insatiable," Kernes said. "In between," he said, "she was doing soft-core late-night cable movies."

Her last screen appearance was in filmmaker Victor Franko's low-budget independent movie "Solitaire," which was filmed in Rhode Island in 2007.

In the PG-rated film, which has yet to be released, she plays a Providence police officer in pursuit of a group of teenage petty thieves.

Chambers was born Marilyn Ann Briggs on April 22, 1952, in Providence, R.I., and grew up in Westport, Conn. She became interested in acting as a teenager and began working as a model, appearing in print ads for Clairol shampoo and other products.

After retiring from adult films, Chambers remained a popular draw at memorabilia and autograph shows.

Chambers was married and divorced three times, including a marriage to Chuck Traynor, who had previously been married to Lovelace.

Chambers had a daughter, McKenna, from her marriage to Tom Taylor. A complete list of surviving family members was not immediately available.

Marilyn Chambers, Star of 'Green Door' Hard-Core Porn Movie

Washington Post, 4/14/09 - Marilyn Chambers, 56, the onetime Ivory Snow model who became the star of the pornographic film "Behind the Green Door," a salacious sensation that helped hard-core movies find a mass audience and a measure of public acceptance, was found dead April 12 at her home in Santa Clarita, Calif.

The Los Angeles County coroner's office was planning to conduct an autopsy to determine the cause of death. Foul play was not suspected.

Ms. Chambers was 19 when she appeared in "Behind the Green Door," which was one of the first films in the era of "porno chic" when it was released in 1972. Along with Linda Lovelace, the star of "Deep Throat," and Georgina Spelvin ("The Devil in Miss Jones"), she found an unlikely fame in explicit movies just as they were emerging from the shadows of back-alley peep shows.

With shaky plots and attempts at serious acting, the films aspired to artistic legitimacy and found a niche in the popular culture of the time.

Before her career in pornographic films, Ms. Chambers was an advertising model, and her girl-next-door face appeared on boxes of Ivory Snow detergent with the slogan "99 44/100 percent pure."

She was not aware that "Behind the Green Door" was to be a hard-core film when she answered a casting call in San Francisco. She was about to leave when the film's producers, brothers Jim and Artie Mitchell, persuaded her to stay. She negotiated a contract for $25,000, plus a percentage of the profits, which proved lucrative when the $60,000 film ended up earning $50 million.

The film broke many taboos, including interracial sex and orgy scenes, and Ms. Chambers won legions of fans with her enthusiastic performance and appealing beauty. Ivory quickly withdrew her image from its soapboxes.

She posed for Playboy and made two other hard-core films, "The Resurrection of Eve" and "Inside Marilyn Chambers," before announcing the first of several retirements in 1976.

After unsuccessful efforts to find work as a singer and actress, Ms. Chambers returned to making sex films in 1980 with "Insatiable," which became a huge hit in the nascent home-video market. She made countless appearances in strip clubs and was sometimes arrested for her explicit stage acts.

In recent years, Ms. Chambers occasionally worked as a nursing assistant in retirement homes, but she continued to appear sporadically in pornographic films into her late 40s.

"I'm just your basic girl next door," she told the London Independent newspaper in 1999. "I'm naughty and I'm nice. And I love sex. I hope I die having sex."

Marilyn Ann Briggs was born April 22, 1952, in Providence, R.I., and grew up in Westport, Conn. She was a diver, gymnast and cheerleader in high school and appeared in commercials for Clairol and Coca-Cola. At 18, she had a small role in the Barbra Streisand film "The Owl and the Pussycat" and was working as a bottomless dancer in San Francisco when she signed up for "Behind the Green Door," adopting the last name of Chambers.

Ms. Chambers had problems with drugs and alcohol in the 1980s but always seemed to rebound. She landed a few small parts in movies, wrote a sex column in Club, a men's magazine, and made a semi-serious stab at public office, running as the vice presidential candidate of the Personal Choice Party in 2004.

Ms. Chambers was married and divorced three times. Her second husband was "Deep Throat" producer Charles Traynor, to whom she was married for 10 years.

"It was very difficult for me to meet men who didn't have this preconceived notion about me, or else were totally intimidated and shaking," she said.

Survivors include a 17-year-old daughter from her third marriage to trucking executive Tom Taylor.

Two years ago, Ms. Chambers told the Providence Journal that the adult-film business "chews women up and spits them out. It's a business I'd never want my daughter to be in."

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