Marilyn, My Marilyn

Not Monroe, Chambers, the 1970s porn star. I might have missed her death at age 56 from an unknown cause (as of yesterday) except Lux reminded me.
Chambers did not have a stunning body, but rather a tight little package she worked like a snake. Her face was not really beautiful, though it famously appeared on the package for Ivory Snow. She was a mother of a newborn on the cover.
No, Chambers was just sexy as hell. A wanton dream come true, who conquered men as much as the opposite. She never really pulled off the innocent young thing thing, even with the requisite bows in her hair. You could call her a Cougar, though she was much younger than that in her films.
The contrast between her and the weird female androids who are called porn stars now couldn't be farther apart. Women with fake everything: breasts, tans, hair etc; over-exaggerated moaning and squealing and no public hair or that weird little landing strip many now have (or worse, the Hitler mustache over the vagina).
The question is, what does female passion and erotic ecstasy look like? For Chambers, it was all about her facial expressions and again the undulations of her lithe body. Plus a voice that practically undressed men, and some women, by itself.
The NYT noted that her first film, "Behind the Green Door (1972)," along with "Deep Throat" the same year, "is generally credited with helping establish a mainstream market for pornography."
The transitions from film to VCR/DVD and then the internet have made porn practically background wallpaper in today's society. Kids know everything about it by younger and younger ages. It takes away the forbidden-fruit allure of the whole thing.
Like writing fake notes from your supposedly sick father allowing you to buy a Playboy. Or buying it from a kid who sold his father's old ones. Or stealing it. (guilty of the last two, Lux and the Berg the other.)
Chambers work was mostly on film, which provides a richer texture. I know, I know, sex is sex; what's the difference? For Chambers, it was the seduction, even with the bad porn plots.
Last time I was in LA I was searching around for the Manson family's infamous home. You go up a road that rises from the northwest San Fernando Valley, and everything gets dry, silent, and weirdly spooky. But looking down into the Valley, you notice a cluster of large white low-rise buildings.
These are, pardon the expression, fuck factories. Something like 90 percent of American porn is shot in and around these buildings. At the top of the VHS/DVD boom, it churned out 11,000 full-length movies a year. Now, with the net, anybody can be a star (Belladonna legitimately should be, Rambler). Most of them seem to be 18 year olds with very strong oral fixations.
Chambers, like many at the time and probably many now, thought her porn experience would lead to legit Hollywood. "Boy was I wrong," she said in an interview.
Now, with starlets making "sex tapes," Hollywood has instead come to "Porn Valley."

PS yes the title of the blog is a takeoff on the Maryland state song.