Respectable - The Mary Millington Story [DVD]

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In 2008, an exhibition of the work of the late glamour photographer Fred Grierson was held in London, which included several little-seen pictures of Millington taken by Grierson at June Palmer's Strobe Studios in the early 1970s. [ citation needed] Millington has been described as one of the "two hottest British sex film stars of the seventies", the other being Fiona Richmond. [3] David Sullivan described her as "the only really uninhibited, natural sex symbol that Britain ever produced and who believed in what she did". [22] Between 1975 and 1982, there was always at least one of Millington's films playing in London's West End. [23] David Sullivan's magazines were often undated, as such the only way of dating them is by which Sullivan-produced films were being promoted inside the magazines, i.e. a Sullivan magazine which promotes Come Play With Me would be from 1976/1977, ones promoting The Playbirds would be circa 1978, and ones promoting Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair would be from 1979. See also [ edit ] Mary was actually a former veterinary nurse from Surrey, who stumbled into pornography quite accidentally; initially the hardcore variety and then softcore, which is not the usual career trajectory for actresses in that business. She had few inhibitions about sex and nudity, and after making some immensely successful 8mm films in Germany and The Netherlands, Mary began a relationship with publisher David Sullivan, who promoted her relentlessly in his stable of magazines, the most famous of which was Whitehouse - a cheeky sideswipe at Mary Whitehouse, the infamous pro-censorship campaigner. By the mid-1970s Mary started securing small supporting roles in British comedies like Eskimo Nell ( 1975) and Keep It Up Downstairs ( 1976). With Sullivan's help she soon elevated to more significant 'above the title' roles in Come Play With Me ( 1977) and The Playbirds ( 1978). That's how she gained a much wider audience. McGillivray, David (2017). Doing rude things: the history of the British sex film, 1957-1981 (2nded.). Wolfbait. ISBN 978-1999744151.

The documentary explores the appalling double-standards of the Establishment and the Metropolitan Police," says Sheridan, "members of which were secretly consuming the fruits of the Soho vice industry, while at the same time publicly persecuting a woman for simply working in the porn industry. Mary was pretty much a lone figure in the fight against censorship during the 1970s. Sadly, she paid the ultimate price." Hunt, Leon (1998). British Low Culture: From Safari Suits to Sexploitation. Routledge. ISBN 9780415151832. A feature-length documentary chronicling Millington's life, entitled Respectable – The Mary Millington Story, [31] [32] [33] was partly shot and produced at Pinewood Studios in 2015.

Mary

Sheridan's film features talking heads interviews from colleagues, friends and former lovers including adult magazine publisher David Sullivan, Radio 1 DJ Dave Cash, Dudley Sutton, Jess Conrad, Linzi Drew, Edward Tudor Pole, Stanley Long and Diana Dors and Alan Lake's son, Jason (his parents don't come out of this too well; Lake is described as a volatile drunk and leech, whilst Dors is something of a pimp who even asked Millington to be her son's 16th birthday present to 'break him in'). One person declined to be interviewed however, and that's Millington's husband, Bob. Given that, at the time of her death, the pair were negotiating a divorce which, it is said, Bob was unhappy with the financial arrangements of, much suspicion has landed on the man who ultimately became the sole beneficiary of his wife's will and contributors to the film who lean towards the theory that Millington's death was not as cut and dried as the coroner's inquest found air their suspicions here. Millington self-identified as bisexual and said that she preferred lesbian sex. [30] Respectable – The Mary Millington Story (2015) [ edit ]

In April 1978, Millington and fellow Come Play With Me actress Suzy Mandel took part in a publicity stunt for the anniversary of the opening of the film at the Moulin Cinema, posing in lingerie on the cinema's marquee. [15] In May 1978, Millington was photographed topless outside 10 Downing Street. While she was posing for an innocuous picture with a policeman, she decided to unzip her top and expose her breasts for the photograph. This surprised the people present, including Suzy Mandel, Whitehouse photographer George Richardson (who took the picture), and the policeman (who tried to confiscate the film). According to Simon Sheridan's biography of Millington, "For this stunt Mary was conditionally discharged and bound over to keep the peace". [1] In 2004, Millington's prominence was recognized by her inclusion in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, [27] edited by Colin Matthew and Brian Harrison. Her entry was written by Richard Davenport-Hines. Babington, Bruce (2001). British Stars and Stardom: From Alma Taylor to Sean Connery. Manchester University Press. ISBN 9780719058417. Sheridan, Simon (1999). Come Play with Me: The Life and Films of Mary Millington. FAB Press. ISBN 9780952926078. In 2014, four spoken word erotic stories recorded by Millington in 1978–9 were released as a vinyl LP. [28]In 1979, Millington died aged just 33. Her suicide followed a period of depression and a family bereavement, but her note to friend and lover David Sullivan (now owner of West Ham United) suggests she felt harassed by police and feared being framed. Millington was a member of the National Campaign for the Reform of the Obscene Publications Acts (NCROPA) [19] [20] and encouraged her readers to demand the abolition of the Acts. [12] After her death, NCROPA founder David Webb wrote: "Mary was a dear, kind person and we much admired her courage in standing up to the bigotry and repression which still so pervades the establishment of this country. She obviously had tremendous pressures put on her as a result and there is no doubt in my mind that these must have contributed to this tragedy." [21] Twenty years after her death, the author and film historian Simon Sheridan put Millington's life into context in the biography Come Play with Me: The Life and Films of Mary Millington. Further information about her career can be found in Sheridan's follow-up book Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema, the fourth edition of which was published in April 2011. [26] Soon after becoming a glamour model, she met the glamour photographer and pornographer John Jesnor Lindsay, who offered to photograph her for softcore magazines. She became one of his most popular models [4] and began appearing in 8mm hardcore pornographic film loops which sold well in Europe. [3] One of her first films was Miss Bohrloch [a] in 1970. [3] Miss Bohrloch won the Golden Phallus Award at the Wet Dream Festival held in November 1970 in Amsterdam. [8] She starred in around twenty short hardcore films for John Lindsay, [9] although only five ( Miss Bohrloch, Oral Connection, Betrayed, Oh Nurse and Special Assignment) have so far resurfaced. She then returned to modelling for British pornographic magazines such as Knave and Men Only. [9] She also appeared in softcore short films by Russell Gay ( Response, 1974), Mountain Films ( Love Games, Wild Lovers) and Harrison Marks ( Sex is My Business, c.1974). [10]