Marilyn Chambers was the first porn star I knew by name. My mom’s boyfriend had an autographed copy of “My Story,” her ‘erotobiography,’ which wasn’t shielded from my young eyes, and I recall being told that she lived in my neighborhood. The latter part was probably false (and/or remembered incorrectly), though she was apparently born in my hometown, so who knows?

In any event, I never did see any of her films (I swear!), not even her early non-porn titles, which include Herbert Ross’ The Owl and the Pussycat and David Cronenberg’s Rabid. According to her Wikipedia page, she might have pursued more of a mainstream acting career if Hollywood hadn’t been so nervous, and she had even recently appeared in some more non-pornographic films, such as 2008’s Solitaire. Now, on the day after her death, I’m wondering if she could have had another life in the movies had she not been convinced to star in Behind the Green Door.

I also wonder if today it’s any easier for a woman to find a balance between the two film industries. For instance, will it be possible for Sasha Grey to continue finding dramatic roles after starring in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience?

Here are some quotes from the blogs that are paying respect — or at least some sort of notice — today:

• Capone at Aint it Cool News does the best job of relating the real talent and sweetness of Chambers, who he met through a horror convention Q&A:
  

  Chambers was maybe the first adult film performer who taught the world that porn stars could also be decent actors. She wasn’t about to win any awards, but the simple truth is that she was a fairly solid B-movie actress, and I in no way mean that as an insult.

• On the subject of her career turn after starting out in regular films, Associated Press‘ John Rogers quotes Chambers from a 2000 interview (via The Huffington Post):
  

  “Back then in my naive brain I was thinking that something like ‘Behind the Green Door’ had never been done before and the way our sexual revolution was traveling I really thought it was going to be a stepping stone which would further my acting career,” she said.

  She learned afterward, she said, that wasn’t the case.

  “There will always be a stigma on people who do adult films,” she said. “It’s unfortunate that that’s the way society has made it.”

• S.T. Vanairsdale at the very new Movieline continues the acknowledgment of her mainstream potential:
  

  Alas, such talents never settled totally well with Hollywood, and Chambers returned to adult films full-time in the ’80s. Another, shorter-lived comeback (this time both in front of and behind the camera) followed in 1998, reclaiming little of her ’70s-era prestige. But as the belle of her day — the “99-and-44/100%-pure girl,” as her Green Door producers pitched her — she was a marvel. Moment of silence, folks.

• Glenn Kenny at Some Came Running quotes from an interview with Cronenberg about the casting of Chambers in Rabid and compares her to Sasha Grey, with whom he acts in The Girlfriend Experience. Here’s a bit about Chambers’ talent:
  

  The annals of porn fairly teem with hardcore performers who pursue mainstream fame with at best mixed results; a sufficient number, at least, to provide “straight” magazines with enough fodder for a list-y feature every few years or so. Until Traci Lords hooked up with John Waters—and in Lords’ case, it was after she had abandoned porn for good—Chambers had the distinction of being the only porn performer to work with what we call an auteur.

• Phil Nugent at The Screengrab also makes the Sasha Grey comparison and shares a YouTube interview from 1977:
  

  In 1977, Chambers became perhaps the only hardcore star to play the leading role in a film by a major North American director (at least, until Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience opens) when David Cronenberg cast her in his second feature, Rabid

• “In memory of better times than being found dead in a trailer park in Santa Clarita,” writes Tina at Fisbowl LA, “go read about Chambers’ arrest during strip club raids in SF…on the sheriff’s own website. Serious.”
• Finally, Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere wonders about her cause of death:
  

  The death of Marilyn Chambers at age 56 is obviously suspect. Barring an accident or unlucky genes, healthy people don’t die in their mid ’50s unless they’ve hastened it along in some way. I’m just guessing, but I’ll bet anyone that Chambers’ lifestyle was in some way a factor. I’m referring, of course, to the people she hung with and the influences she encountered as a result of her porn-star career. The Mitchell Brothers, Linda Lovelace, John Holmes…who else?