Autographed Marilyn Chambers Live at the O’Farrell Theater Vintage T-Shirt

	LENGTH (inches)	WIDTH (inches)	SLEEVE LENGTH (inches)
S	28	18	15 ⅝
M	29	20	17
L	30	22	18 ½
XL	31	24	20
2XL	32	26	21 ½
3XL	33	28	22 ¾
4XL	34	30	24 ¼
5XL	35	32	25 ¼

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

 

Early life

 

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. 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. "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". 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 tagline "99 & 44/100% pure".

 

Career

Behind the Green Door

 

Upon the release of The Owl and the Pussycat, Chambers was sent to Los Angeles and San Francisco on a promotional tour. 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. 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. 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. The fact that Chambers's image was so well known from Ivory Snow boosted the film's ticket sales, and led to several jokes on television talk shows. Nearly every adult film she made following this incident featured a cameo of her Ivory Snow box.: 213–216 

 

Chambers was relatively unknown prior to Behind the Green Door; however, the film made her a star. Green Door, along with Deep Throat, released the same year, and The Devil in Miss Jones, ushered in what is commonly known as the porno chic era. Critics have since debated whether she was really having orgasms in her scenes or just acting.

Resurrection of Eve and Inside Marilyn Chambers

 

Following Behind the Green Door, the Mitchell Brothers and Chambers teamed up for Resurrection of Eve, released in September 1973. Although not the runaway blockbuster that Green Door was, Eve was a hit and a well-received entry into the porno chic market. It also helped set Chambers apart from her contemporaries Linda Lovelace and Georgina Spelvin as the wholesome, all-American girl next door. Following Eve, Chambers was anxious to transition her fame into other areas of entertainment. At the time, the Mitchell Brothers were still her managers. "They were always talking about some half-assed idea I knew wouldn't come off", Chambers said in 1992. "'Flakes' is a terrible word but they were, in a cute sort of way". Chambers had always considered the brothers as her own brothers but when she abruptly announced that she was leaving them to take up with Chuck Traynor, they were appalled and had a falling out with Chambers.

 

In retaliation, the brothers created a documentary in 1976 called Inside Marilyn Chambers, which was composed of alternate shots and outtakes from Green Door and Eve, as well as interviews with some of her co-stars. This was done without Chambers's knowledge or approval but when she learned of it just prior to its release, she negotiated a deal that would offer her 10% of the gross as long as she would contribute interviews to the film and promote it nationally. "I hated the film and I still do", she said later. "It's supposed to be the story of my life, and it's not true. Jim and Art ripped me off. They felt I'd betrayed them... I felt they'd betrayed me, and for many years, we didn't speak. Only when money was to be made did we start talking again." Chambers reunited with the Mitchell Brothers in 1979 for two 30-minute features called Beyond de Sade and Never a Tender Moment, which explored BDSM. The films, which were shot at the Mitchell Brothers Theatre, co-starred Erica Boyer.

 

Mainstream crossover

Hollywood

 

Chambers dreamed of having a career in mainstream films and believed her celebrity as the star of Behind the Green Door and the Ivory Snow girl would be a stepping stone to other endeavors. "The paradox was that, as a result of Green Door, Hollywood blackballed me," she said later. " became a very high-grossing film ... But, to a lot of people, it was still a dirty movie; for me to do anything else, as an actress, was totally out of the question. I became known as a porno star, and that type of labeling really hurt me. It hurt my chances of doing anything else".

 

Throughout the 1970s, she was up for roles in several Hollywood films. Her biggest opportunity came in 1976 when it was announced in Variety that she was to star alongside Rip Torn in City Blues, a film about a young hooker defended by a seedy lawyer. The film was to be directed by Nicholas Ray. Ray had never seen Behind the Green Door or even screen-tested Chambers. Instead, the two met and Ray was impressed. "I have a camera in my head," he said, adding that Chambers would "eventually be able to handle anything that the young Katie Hepburn or Bette Davis could." However, the project never came to fruition, in large part due to Ray's alcohol and drug abuse. Ray died in 1979.

 

Chambers claimed that Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel brought her in to talk about a role in the 1978 film Goin' South, then asked her for cocaine and grilled her about whether her orgasms in Behind the Green Door were real; she was angered to the point where she stormed out of the interview. She was going to be cast in the film Hardcore, opposite George C. Scott, but the casting director took one look at her and said she was too wholesome to be cast as a porn queen. "The Hardcore people wanted a woman with orange hair who chews gum, swings a big purse, and wears stiletto heels. That's such a cliche," Chambers said years later. Season Hubley was cast instead.

 

Rabid

 

Chambers won the starring role in film director David Cronenberg's low-budget Canadian movie, Rabid, which was released in 1977. Cronenberg stated that he wanted to cast Sissy Spacek in the film lead, but the studio vetoed his choice because of her accent. The director says that the idea of casting Chambers came from producer Ivan Reitman, who had heard that Chambers was looking for a mainstream role. Reitman felt that it would be easier to market the film in different territories if the well-known porn star portrayed the main character. Cronenberg stated that Chambers put in a lot of hard work on the film and that he was impressed with her. Cronenberg further states he had not seen Behind the Green Door prior to casting her.

 

"It was great working with David", Chambers said in a 1997 interview. "He taught me a lot of things that were very valuable as an actress, especially in horror films. I found it useful in sex films, too!"

Theater work

 

In 1974, she starred in the dinner theater production of The Mind With the Dirty Man in Las Vegas and received favorable reviews for her work. The play ran for 52 weeks which, at the time, was the longest-running play in Vegas history, and the mayor gave Chambers the key to the city. In 1976, she starred in a short-lived musical revue off-Broadway called Le Bellybutton. In 1977, she starred in Neil Simon's Last of the Red Hot Lovers in Vegas. The one-woman show Sex Surrogate, in 1979, caused controversy in Las Vegas as it featured full-frontal nudity, which was banned from all major hotel casino showrooms. In 1983, the play was spun off into a 26-part syndicated soap opera called Love Ya, Florence Nightingale. It was broadcast on cable television channels such as the Playboy Channel.

 

Singing career

 

Chambers had some chart success with the disco single "Benihana" in 1976, produced by Michael Zager on the Roulette Records label. Billboard magazine said, "She... sings quite nicely in a sexy little voice in this catchy disco tribute to an oriental lover man." The song is played in the background of one scene in the film Rabid. In Insatiable, she sang the theme song, "Shame On You," which plays over the opening credits. She did the same for the song, "Still Insatiable", which was used in her comeback in the 1999 adult film of the same name. She also sang vocals in the 1983 X-rated film, Up 'n' Coming, in which she plays a rising country music star. In the early 1980s, she was the lead singer of a country and western band called Haywire.

 

Published works

 

Chambers wrote an autobiography, My Story, in 1975, and co-authored Xaviera Meets Marilyn Chambers with Xaviera Hollander in 1977. Both were published by Warner Communications. She also wrote a sex advice column in the mid-to-late 1970's for Genesis magazine called "Private Chambers", and one for Club magazine throughout the 1980s called "State of the Nation". In 1981, she released a book of sex positions and tips called Sensual Secrets. One of the male models featured in the photos with Marilyn was a young Ron Jeremy. The same year, she released another sex manual called The Illustrated Kama Sutra.

 

Insatiable and return to porn

 

Although she had tried for several years to shed her image as a porn star, Chambers returned to the adult film industry with 1980's Insatiable. In the film, she played actress, model, and heiress Sandra Chase, whose appetite for sex is, as the title suggests, insatiable. Sandra is getting ready to make a movie and her manager, played by Jessie St. James, is working on getting some big names to appear alongside Sandra. The story is told in a series of flashbacks which detail Sandra's sexual encounters.

 

"My manager had never really wanted me to do X-rated film," she said in 1997. "He tried to move me out of that, but—seeing as things didn't go that way, and I wasn't getting any legitimate projects—it was something that we needed to do. I was known in the X-rated business, and it was the right time. It was a cool story and the budget was going to be a lot higher; there were going to be helicopters and Ferraris. It was going to be very classy. There were some names in it that would be good for the box office,  and that was at a time when X-films were still playing in theaters."

 

The bet paid off. Insatiable was the top-selling adult video in the U.S. from 1980 to 1982 and it was inducted in the XRCO Hall of Fame. It was followed by a sequel, Insatiable II in 1984. Another X-rated film, Up 'n' Coming, was released in 1983. She also released six direct-to-video features in the early 1980s called Marilyn Chambers' Private Fantasies, in which she acted out her own sexual fantasies alongside some of the biggest names in the industry. The scenarios and dialogue for the series were written by Chambers. Despite her return to the adult-film world, Chambers dreamed of launching a successful mainstream acting career, but was unable to do so.

 

Chambers left the pornography business because of the increasing fear of AIDS. In 1999, Chambers returned to San Francisco to perform at the Mitchell Brothers' O'Farrell Theatre. Mayor Willie Brown proclaimed a "Marilyn Chambers Day" for her unique place in San Francisco history, and praised her for her "artistic presence", her "vision", and her "energy". That same year Chambers returned to adult features with a trio of films made for VCA Pictures called Still Insatiable (1999), Dark Chambers (2000), and Edge Play (2000), each directed by Veronica Hart.

 

Near the end of her career, Chambers appeared primarily in independent films, including her last role in Solitaire. Chambers claimed that the more laid-back pace of these roles suited her as "there's a lot less pressure on you to perform  you don't have to be young and skinny". Among these were Bikini Bistro, Angel of H.E.A.T. (with Mary Woronov), Party Incorporated, and Breakfast in Bed.

 

In a 2004 interview, Chambers said, "My advice to somebody who wants to go into adult films is: absolutely not! It's heart-breaking. It leaves you kind of empty. So have a day job and don't quit it".

 

1985 arrests

 

On February 1, 1985, while performing her nude act at the "Cine-Stage" within the Mitchell Brothers' O'Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, Chambers was arrested by a vice squad and charged with committing a lewd act in a public place and soliciting prostitution. It was alleged by plainclothes policemen who were in the audience that Chambers allowed audience members to touch her with their hands and mouths during her show called "Feel the Magic". She was released on $2,000 bail and the charges were later dropped. "I've never been arrested in my life for anything, ever, so this is kind of a big shock to me, not only as a performer but as a human being", Chambers said at the time. "It's a heartbreaker. This is supposed to be a hip city. I really love—make that LOVED—this city. These people have been my fans for years, and it's a thrill for them to touch me up close. There's nothing illegal if I'm not taking money."

 

Chambers' attorney claimed that Chambers was used "as a pawn in a struggle over control of adult businesses." Chambers' arrest came three days before the Board of Supervisors were to vote on a proposed ordinance to eliminate police permits for adult bookstores and theaters. In the wake of her arrest, the Board stripped police of their power to license the city's adult theaters. "The O'Farrell was packed the day after we were arrested," Chambers said later. "And they put the mayor's phone number up on the marquee—'Call Mayor Dianne Feinstein'... I'm in jail with my fur coat and nothing else on, and  want to take pictures. I took a mug shot with every cop in the place, and they're going, 'I'm really sorry we had to do this.' And the next night they were all back enjoying the show".

 

Later that year on December 13, 1985, she was arrested during a performance at Stage Door Johnny's, a strip club in Cleveland. Police said she was nude except for her shoes and was having sexual contact with an audience member. She was charged with promoting prostitution and was held in jail until she was freed on a $1,000 bond. Chambers denied the charge, saying, "I did the same show I've been doing for the last six years. Police just happened to be in the audience." In November 2012, the mugshots from Chambers's Cleveland arrest sold on eBay for $202.50.

Efforts in politics

 

In the 2004 United States presidential election, Chambers ran for vice president on the Personal Choice Party ticket, a libertarian political party. She received a total of 946 votes. In the 2008 United States presidential election, she was again Charles Jay's running mate, this time as an alternate write-in candidate to his primary national Boston Tea Party running mate Thomas L. Knapp in the states of Arkansas, Hawaii, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah.

Personal life

 

Chambers was married three times. Her first marriage was to Doug Chapin, whom she met while he was playing bagpipes for money on the streets of San Francisco. They married in 1971. She divorced Chapin in 1974 and married Chuck Traynor, who was recently divorced from Linda Lovelace. He also became her manager and they were together for 10 years.

 

In the mid-1980s, Chambers was "on her way to an early grave, consuming massive amounts of alcohol and cocaine daily when she met her husband-to-be", William Taylor, Jr., a truck driver, on a blind date. After their first date, he called her to say that he could not see her because he was a recovering heroin addict. Chambers got so angry that she kicked a wall and broke her leg. Taylor came to visit Chambers in the hospital and, upon her release, they began a romance and Chambers entered Narcotics Anonymous. The couple married around 1991 or 1992 and had one child, McKenna Marie Taylor, in 1992 before divorcing in 1994. When Chambers became clean and sober during the early 1990s, her Lexus had a vanity plate that read "LUV NA".

 

Death

 

On April 12, 2009, Chambers was found dead in her home near Santa Clarita, California. She was discovered by her 17-year-old daughter. The LA County Coroner's autopsy revealed Chambers died of a cerebral hemorrhage caused by an aneurysm related to heart disease. Chambers was ten days short of her 57th birthday. The Associated Press reported she was survived by her daughter, sister, and brother. Her ashes were scattered at sea.

 

Fictional portrayal

 

In 2000, Tracy Hutson played Chambers in the cable television biographical film Rated X, about the Mitchell brothers' film and Chambers's strip-club career.

 

Chambers is the subject of a biography written by Jared Stearns titled Pure: The Sexual Revolutions of Marilyn Chambers to be published in early 2024 by Headpress Books.

 

Partial filmography

 

    1970 The Owl and the Pussycat as Barney's Girl (credited as Evelyn Lang)

    1971 Together as Herself (credited as Marilyn Briggs)

    1972 Behind the Green Door as Gloria Saunders

    1973 Resurrection of Eve as Eve

    1976 Inside Marilyn Chambers as Herself

    1977 Rabid as Rose

    1980 Insatiable as Sandra Chase

    1982 Electric Blue - The Movie as Herself

    1982 My Therapist as Kelly Carson

    1983 Up 'n' Coming as Cassie Harland

    1983 Angel of H.E.A.T. as Angel Harmony

    1984 Insatiable II as Sandra Chase

    1994 Bedtime Fantasies as Herself

    1999 Marilyn Chambers' All Nude Peep Show as Herself

    1999 Still Insatiable as Senator Charlotte Ballworth

    2000 Dark Chambers as Dr. Ivory Hasmore

    2000 Edge Play as Lauren Tanner

    2007 Stash as Mrs. Bookenlacher

    2008 Solitaire as Cop

    2009 Porndogs: The Adventures of Sadie as Sadie (voice)

 

Awards

 

    AVN Hall of Fame

    XRCO Hall of Fame

    1985 XRCO Award – Best Kinky Scene -Insatiable II (with Jamie Gillis)

    1992 Adult Film Association of America – Lifetime Achievement Award

    2005 FOXE Award – Lifetime Achievement

    2008 XBIZ Award – Lifetime Achievement for a Female Performer

 

 

Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theater San Francisco Vintage T-Shirt

 

 The Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre was a strip club at 895 O'Farrell Street near San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood. Having opened as an X-rated movie theater by Jim and Artie Mitchell on July 4, 1969, the O'Farrell was one of America's most notorious adult entertainment establishments. By 1980, the nightspot had popularized close-contact lap dancing, which would become the norm in strip clubs nationwide. Journalist Hunter S. Thompson, a longtime friend of the Mitchells and frequent visitor at the club went there frequently during the summer of 1985 as part of his research for a possible book on pornography. Thompson called the O'Farrell "the Carnegie Hall of public sex in America" and Playboy magazine praised it as "the place to go in San Francisco!"

 The club closed permanently in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, after a few years of struggling financially.

 

History

 

The O'Farrell Theatre went through two major phases which reflected a major transition in the Mitchell brothers' business model: first as a movie house to feature their adult films, and later as a cutting-edge strip club that offered customer-contact shows with strippers. Over decades, the events at the O'Farrell Theatre have been as much about the brothers' stubborn persistence in applying legal resources to avoid prosecution by San Francisco's vice squad and district attorney, as they were about their unique innovations for the erotic entertainment industry.

 

Adult Movie Theater

 

Brothers Jim and Artie Mitchell began showing hardcore pornographic films at the O'Farrell Theater in July 1969. Before they decided to open for business, the brothers had been making and selling short 15-minute pornographic films called loops, which patrons could watch for 25 cents a minute in small arcades. But the brothers wanted to go beyond the production of short loops and move on to making longer features whose distribution and presentation they could also control. With the conversion of an old Pontiac automobile dealership on O'Farrell and Polk streets, they built a makeshift soundstage for filming and seating for a movie theater to provide them with that opportunity. At a rate of one per month, they churned out featurettes, which were 30 to 60-minute films that could be advertised and then shown at the O'Farrell.

 

But just three weeks after the theater opened, plain-clothed police officers walked in and arrested 25-year-old James Mitchell – still a film student at San Francisco State University – for production and exhibition of obscene material. Not easily deterred, the brothers vowed during a press conference to fight back and hired a young but fierce lawyer named Michael John Kennedy to defend them against the obscenity charges. Kennedy had already started to build a national reputation as a resourceful political activist, and would later represent Timothy Leary, Bernardine Dohrn, Cesar Chavez, and Huey Newton. With Kennedy and the First Amendment behind them, the Mitchells tenaciously defied authorities by continuing to show their films while being arrested dozens of times over the coming year.

 

A little more than a year later when the first case made its way to court, the trial became a local media circus as a flamboyant and wisecracking Kennedy irritated the district attorney while he challenged the legal definition of obscenity. After a long trial, the jury became hopelessly deadlocked, and the brothers escaped without conviction. Kennedy believed that the social value of pornography was that it served as a shield for the rest of art and literature – meaning that if pornography could not be censored, then other forms of art would be protected as well.

 

With the adult film Behind the Green Door and its premier at the O'Farrell in 1972, the Mitchell brothers made their first attempt at creating a feature-length adult film for mainstream audiences. The stigma of sex in mainstream movies had been breaking down with films like Last Tango in Paris, and the Mitchells decided to invest extra time and expense into the film's making. Behind the Green Door enjoyed a national marketing coup when it was revealed that its wholesome 19-year-old star, Marilyn Chambers, was the same model who appeared holding a baby on Ivory Snow detergent boxes. The film was made for $60,000, grossed $2 million in its first year, and later became the second highest-grossing adult film of all time when it made more than $50 million. With it the Mitchells became millionaires, opened another ten adult theaters, and had plenty of funds for later experiments at the O'Farrell when it transitioned into a cutting-edge strip club.

 

In the early 1970s, the theater would stop its adult features at midnight on a couple nights a week, and then re-open as The People's Nickelodeon, along with a five-cent admission charge and free popcorn. The midnight shows were a montage of old films, and live vaudeville-style entertainment provided by the Nickelettes, a chorus line of outrageously funny women who would do spunky song-and-dance routines. The audience of young hippies and a few oldsters would see movies such as Marx Brothers, Abbott, and Costello, Yellow Submarine or other counter-culture favorites, while occasionally engaging in drinking, marijuana, and general carousing. Inspections and disruptions by the fire department and police were common, but the shows usually continued until three in the morning or later.

Strip club

 

Everything changed for the Mitchell brothers during the second half of the 1970s, when the invention of the videocassette recorder brought about a proliferation of video rental shops. First videocassette profits of the brothers' movies began to drop, and then demand for public adult movie screenings began to plummet because customers could now rent movies for one dollar a night. Realizing that they needed a new business model for the O'Farrell Theatre, the Mitchell brothers sent manager Vincent Stanich around the country to explore "customer-contact" shows in bars and strip clubs.

 

After Stanich reported back, the Mitchell brothers responded by opening three new rooms in quick succession which featured live shows by strippers: The Ultra Room, The Kopenhagen, and New York Live. In 1977 they opened the Ultra Room which featured live shows of lesbian bondage. It had a floor-level stage which was surrounded by thirty narrow booths that had glass to separate performers from patrons. Some months later the booths' glass was taken down and enabled customer-contact shows. The Ultra Room's shows were very popular, cost $10, lasted for a half-hour, and were sold out on the very first day. Next to open was The Kopenhagen which was a small room with perimeter seating that had live shows in front of, and sometimes upon, a small audience by a pair of naked women.

 

However, the club's most profitable new venue was New York Live! which was a strip club act that had a square stage and theater seating on three sides. Strippers performed three song sets while usually being totally nude for the final song. Most of the other strippers who were not performing on stage were sitting naked on customers' laps for tips. The amount of tipping rapidly increased, employees coined the term 'lap dancing', and the lap dance's popularity caused lines of men to regularly appear outside the theater's doors. The Mitchells hired new dancers as fast as they could to keep up with demand, and with the lap dance, they pioneered a strip club innovation which gained them international notoriety and generated more money than their current film business.

 

Though the O'Farrell Theatre had successfully fought prosecution in the 1970s concerning obscenity in its films, during the 1980s it would face a new kind of threat from the courts about whether customer contact could be legal during live shows, and if strippers had the right to give lap dances. A new mood came to city hall when Dianne Feinstein became mayor following the assassination of George Moscone. As a city supervisor, Feinstein had been a strident anti-porn voice, and then as mayor, she made it clear to her district attorney that he should be aggressive on obscenity and porn cases. In July 1980, less than a year after Feinstein had been elected mayor, fifteen police officers raided the O'Farrell Theatre and arrested fourteen patrons, six performers, and seven employees for charges related to prostitution. During a press conference, Jim Mitchell vowed to fight the charges and stated, "We believe we have a legally protected show under California laws. Fondling a girl's breast is not prostitution." In the first trial originating from that bust, three strippers faced charges of committing lewd acts in public. The trial resulted in mistrial decisions for two dancers and a single conviction for one dancer – she would become the only dancer in history to ever get a r ap sheet while working at the O'Farrell, but she did not receive jail time or a fine.

 

For the next trial of the 1980 bust, the Mitchells went back to the law office of Michael Kennedy and secured his former partner, Dennis Roberts, to represent them. Roberts cleverly found a solution that would derail all the other cases against dancers, by using a little-known statute called the First Offender Diversion Program. Under that diversion program, first-time offenders could at any time before conviction plead guilty, go into the program, and emerge without a criminal record. When Roberts first mentioned the diversion program in court, a frustrated prosecutor exclaimed: "You can't do that!" However, the judge corrected the prosecutor in stating: "Not only can he do that, but it seems to me that what you're going to have if you keep prosecuting these women is a series of cases that are going to drag on for years toward trial, and as soon as you get into trial Mr. Roberts is going to divert these people." That trial was the last time any performers from the 1980 bust would face prosecution.

 

In the beginning, the dancers of New York Live were nude when they sat on customers' laps, but later in the mid-eighties, an agreement was reached between the Mitchell brothers' attorneys and the district attorney which instructed the O'Farrell to ensure that the girls wear some minimal amount of clothing while in the New York Live audience.

 

The Mitchell brothers supported various cartoon artists, and when the 1984 Democratic National Convention was held in San Francisco, they opened the second floor of the O'Farrell to a group of underground cartoonists covering the convention for the San Francisco Chronicle.

 

A final attempt was made to prosecute the O'Farrell under the Feinstein administration in February 1985, when the Cine-Stage was raided by a dozen police officers during a headlining appearance by adult film star Marilyn Chambers. However, the district attorney declined to press charges against Chambers, and a judge refused to issue a critical injunction against the brothers themselves. Also at that time, the police department had been receiving protests from the media, public, and politicians concerning multiple scandals, like when a police academy graduate received fellatio from a prostitute at a police academy graduation party. Furthering their problems, police officers arrested a local journalist for walking his dog without a leash after the journalist wrote critically of the police department following the Chambers raid. In the wake of the Chambers raid and scandals by the police, the Board of Supervisors voted to strip the police department of its power to license strip clubs, and that the Mitchell Brothers should be paid $14,000 for damages resulting from the Chambers raid.

 

Over the years, the Mitchells were the defendants in over 200 court cases involving obscenity or related charges. Mostly victorious, they were represented by aggressive counsel.

 

In February 1991 the theater entered the news after Jim Mitchell fatally shot Artie. Michael Kennedy defended Jim Mitchell and convinced the jury that Jim killed Artie because the latter was psychotic from drugs and had become dangerous. Later in 1996, Jim established the "Artie Fund" to raise money for drug abuse prevention. Jim Mitchell was sentenced to six years in prison for voluntary manslaughter and released from San Quentin in 1997, after having served half his sentence.

 

During the celebrations for O’Farrell’s 30th anniversary in 1999, burlesque star Tempest Storm, by then in her 70s, danced on stage. Mayor Willie Brown declared a "Tempest Storm Day" in her honor. Marilyn Chambers returned to perform in the theater on July 28, 1999, in what Willie Brown dubbed "Marilyn Chambers Day."

 

When San Francisco's Commission on the Status of Women proposed in 2006 to ban private booths and rooms at adult clubs because of concerns about sexual assaults taking place there, several O'Farrell dancers spoke out against the ban.

 

As of 2006, Jeff Armstrong, its longtime business manager, continued running the O'Farrell; legal representation is provided by former San Francisco Supervisor and two-term District Attorney Terence Hallinan.

 

In June 2010, Jim's daughter Meta Mitchell Johnson took control of the O'Farrell as manager.

 

Operation

 

The O'Farrell Theatre was open seven days a week and nearly every evening of the year. A general admission fee gave access to various themed rooms' live shows within the building, and no alcoholic beverages were served. The O'Farrell's main showroom was New York Live, a continuous striptease show with two song sets on a stage having theater seating on three sides. The Cine-Stage was a 200-seat movie theater with a large raised stage that also presented live shows, comedy skits, and musical performances. There were several themed rooms, such as the Ultra Room, a peep show-type room where patrons would stand in private booths while watching women perform with various props, such as dildos. The Green Door Room was named for the Mitchells' classic film Behind the Green Door and served as the principal set for some movies. In the darkened Kopenhagen Lounge, customers used flashlights to watch performances by two nude dancers. All O'Farrell's male employees, including managers, adhered to a strict dress code of black bow-tie, white shirt, black slacks, and black shoes.

 

Labor disputes

 

Originally, the O'Farrell Theatre's management company, Cinema 7, paid their dancers a flat rate per shift and allowed them to accept tips, but in the 1980s they replaced that payment with the federal minimum wage while still allowing the dancers to accept tips.

 

In 1988, the O'Farrell's management (Cinema 7) created a separate company, Dancers Guild International (DGI), that would be run by Vince Stanich, and changed the dancers' status from paid employees to unpaid independent contractors who had to pay DGI "stage fees" of up to $300 per eight-hour shift.

 

Many of the O'Farrell's dancers considered the O'Farrell's new policy unfair and possibly illegal. Two of them, Ellen Vickery and Jennifer Bryce, filed a class-action lawsuit against DGI (the plaintiffs would ultimately number more than 500), arguing that the O'Farrell's reclassification of the dancers as independent contractors was unlawful, and that they were owed back wages as well as a refund of the stage fees. The case was settled in 1998, and the dancers were awarded $2.85 million. Similar suits challenging independent contractor status have since been filed against numerous other strip clubs, and labor commissions as well as courts have mostly ruled in favor of dancers and awarded past wages and stage fee reimbursements. O'Farrell's management remained opposed to all attempts of their dancers to unionize.

 

After the 1998 settlement, the O'Farrell changed the performers' payment structure again: they posted a "suggested" fee of $20 per lap dance and $40 per private performance and set a quota of $360 per woman per night; the women were allowed to keep half the quota plus all tips. However, it was recorded that lap dances cost as much as $240 on some occasions. Dancers claimed feeling pressured into paying $180 per night even if they had earned less than that amount, and another 370-plaintiff class-action suit began in 2002. In 2007, a judge ruled in favor of the dancers, declaring the quota system illegal and requiring the O'Farrell to pay any amounts employees could show they paid to fill their quotas, minus any amounts the employer could show the dancers had collected but failed to report. The O'Farrell was also ordered to reimburse dancers for required theme-oriented costumes.

 

Sometime after the settlement of 2008, the club changed its workers' status from independent contractors back to being paid employees who receive a minimum wage, workers comp, and some healthcare coverage.

 

Location and murals

 

The theatre is located in the northwest part of the Tenderloin District, at the corner of Polk and O'Farrell Street, a few doors down from the Great American Music Hall. The entire exterior west and south faces of the theater are covered with two large murals. The west wall depicts a fantasy aquatic scene with flying fish, turtles, and whales with a silhouette of the San Francisco Bay in the background, and on the south wall is an underwater scene featuring a life-sized pod of whales and dolphins. These murals were painted in 1977 (Lou Silva with Ed Monroe, Daniel Burgevin, Todd Stanton, and Gary William Graham), 1983 (Lou Silva-solo), 1990 by Lou Silva with the assistance of Joanne Maxwell Wittenbrook, Ed Monroe, Mark Nathan Clark, and Juan "Blackwolf" Karlos, and 2011 by the Academy of Art University. Notable visitors, while the murals were in progress, included: Melvin Belli, Marilyn Chambers, Paul Kantner, Toshiro Mifune, Huey P. Newton, Hunter S. Thompson, and Edy Williams. The murals were sponsored in their entirety by Jim and Artie Mitchell.