The True Life of Marilyn Chambers, the ‘Other’ Queen of Porn

Just before the credits roll on Lovelace, the $10 million biopic of Deep Throat star Linda Lovelace and her allegedly abusive first husband—whom the film portrays as a hot-headed, manipulative Svengali who nearly drives Lovelace into ruin until she leaves him—a brief postscript appears: “Chuck Traynor went on to marry Marilyn Chambers, the second most famous porn star of the era.”

After so many scenes of Traynor beating Lovelace, forcing her into prostitution, and even shooting a blow-up doll in her likeness during a fit of rage, the sentence lands like a morbid punchline. Poor Marilyn Chambers, whoever she was.

In fact, Chambers was the second-most famous porn star of the era. A leggy, athletic blond, she broke out in 1972, just months after the release of Deep Throat, as the star of the similarly spectacular Behind the Green Door, in which she played the silent role of a woman kidnapped and forced to perform sexual acts in front of a sex theater full of rowdy men. Nearly as shocking: before filming, Chambers had posed as a mother with child on a ubiquitous package of Ivory Snow laundry detergent—the picture of wholesomeness—and the new label was just hitting shelves.