A heartfelt and absorbing account of one of adult cinema’s first major celebrities.
Stearns presents a biography of a pioneering 1970s adult-film star.
Marilyn Chambers is best known as the star of Behind the Green Door (1972) and other explicit pornographic films. In this comprehensive story of her life, the author draws on a range of material, including his own interviews with people who knew her, innumerable press clippings, and Chambers’ own extensive autobiographical writings before her death in 2009 at the age of 56 (including her 1975 memoir My Story). Chambers was born Marilyn Briggs in 1952 to a financially comfortable Connecticut family; she had two siblings, and although she lacked for nothing, her parents were emotionally distant. Stearns covers her two marriages, giving emphasis to her disastrous second marriage to her manager, Chuck Traynor, whom the author characterizes as verbally, emotionally, and physically abusive. Naturally, the book’s primary focus is its subject’s film career, which, in many ways, reached its pinnacle with the release of Behind the Green Door, which received rapturous critical praise at the Cannes Film Festival. However, she also appeared as a wholesome mother in an Ivory Snow soap advertising campaign; her New York Times obituary described the film and the campaign as “stunningly contrasting portrayals of womanhood.” Later, Chambers struggled with addiction and went through recovery. The book describes Chambers as somewhat blindsided by her fame; she’s quoted as saying that if she had it all to do over again, she wouldn’t have signed the contract for the movie that brought her celebrity. However, it allowed her to have a long career, which ended on a melancholy note: “I don’t mean to sound so bitter,” Chambers reflected later in life. “I felt like I should have never done the last movies I’ve done.”
Stearns’ passionate enthusiasm for his subject is clear on every page of this memoir, and it makes for a kinetic, page-turning reading experience. It has a cinematic quality that often makes it a compelling read, but this is undermined at times by moments of overreach. When he mentions that one of Chambers’ ancestors fought against the British in the American Revolutionary War, and then uses it as a segue to claim that the film star also “fought for freedom and independence,” some readers may roll their eyes. He also asserts that “Marilyn Chambers wasn’t just part of the sexual revolution; she was the sexual revolution,” but the women who fought that revolution in the streets, in offices, in the home, and in courtrooms may be inclined to give the actor less credit. Such creaky moments aside, Stearns does an excellent job of re-creating the everyday life of the off-camera Chambers—a smart, savvy professional who was frustrated by a pursuit of mainstream respectability that always remained just beyond her grasp. The corresponding achievements of Chambers’ professional rival, Linda Lovelace (star of the popular 1972 adult film Deep Throat), are predictably downplayed. However, Chambers’ story has never been told this well.
A heartfelt and absorbing account of one of adult cinema’s first major celebrities.Pub Date: May 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781915316196
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Headpress
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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