Former porn star found dead has Vegas connections

Staff and wire reports

Tuesday, April 14, 2009 | 4:22 p.m.

Marilyn Chambers, the pretty Ivory Snow girl who helped bring hardcore adult films into the mainstream consciousness when she starred in the explicit 1972 movie "Behind the Green Door," has been found dead at the age of 56. Chambers is a former Las Vegas resident and had performed in shows in the Strip.

The cause of death was not immediately known. A family friend, Peggy McGinn, said Chambers' 17-year-old daughter found the actress' body Sunday at her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Canyon Country. Chambers was pronounced dead at the scene, the county coroner's office said.

Chambers and fellow actresses Linda Lovelace and Georgina Spelvin shot to fame in the early 1970s when both American social mores and the quality of hardcore sex films were changing.

For the first time, films like "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 be seen in places other than sleazy theaters.

But "Behind the Green Door" brought something more in Chambers, an attractive young woman who had begun her career as a legitimate actress and model.

While the film was still in theaters, the public learned that its star was the same young blonde smiling and holding a freshly diapered baby on boxes of Ivory Snow laundry soap (which the company touted as "99 and 44/100 percent pure"). 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."

Chambers followed "Green Door" with the hardcore films "Resurrection of Eve," in 1973 and "Inside Marilyn Chambers" in 1975.

With the sexual revolution of the 1960s spilling over into later decades, Chambers said once that she thought the films would be a stepping stone to further her acting career. She learned that wasn’t the case.

“There will always be a stigma on people who do adult films,” she said. “It’s unfortunate that that’s the way society has made it.” Then she tried to give up hardcore films for awhile.

In October 1974 Chambers appeared in downtown Las Vegas at the Union Plaza as she tried to reach beyond her porn roots in the dinner-theater comedy, “Mind With the Dirty Man.” She again performed at the Union Plaza in 1978 in “Last of the Red Hot Lovers.”

Donald W. Pettit did not come to Las Vegas to become a gaming legend, but in 1979 he brought Chambers to the Las Vegas Strip in the first totally nude show at the Jolly Trolley in her one-woman play, “The Sex Surrogate.” When Chambers refused to wear a G-string because she said it would compromise the artistic integrity of her performance, Pettit supported her to the point of standing up to outraged politicians who tried to shut down the show. Full nudity is banned in casinos with unrestricted gaming licenses.

By 1981 Chambers lived in Clark County and her residency brought a jury summons that brought media coverage to her duties at the Clark County Courthouse. The judge dismissed her after she explained she had a performance in Cleveland.

Chambers, also known as Marilyn Ann Taylor, along with her then-husband Charles “Chuck” Traynor, invested in 1982 in a gun store and shooting range known as The Survival Store at Interstate 15 and Spring Mountain Road with partner Bob Irwin. Chambers helped promote the store with her image as a bikini-clad, gun-toting symbol.

After separating from Traynor, who died in 2002, Chambers remained in Las Vegas through the 1980s. She dated Bobby D’Apice, who became her bodyguard. D’Apice made headlines as the shift manager of Crazy Horse Too, when he was sentenced to prison for breaking the neck of a customer. D’Apice had been convicted of a felony in 1985 for carrying a concealed weapon while working for Chambers. He also was convicted of domestic battery involving an ex-wife dating back to 1995.