Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story: Part 6, The Marilyn Chambers Years, Podcast 136

On the previous episode of Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story:

To everyone’s surprise, the sex film Deep Throat (1972) had become a financial hit and a cultural phenomenon. And everybody involved was determined to capitalize on the film’s success – and that included Chuck Traynor, husband and manager of Linda Lovelace, the movie’s leading lady.

When the film blew up, Chuck put Linda through his self-styled media training, positioning her as a small-town, sex-fueled hippie who’d hit the jackpot in the Big Apple. And he got busy putting together deals: he negotiated a lucrative contract for her in the sequel Deep Throat II (1974). He secured a healthy advance for Inside Linda Lovelace, a pseudo-autobiography. He convinced Linda to move to California with him where they ingratiated themselves with high profile figures like Sammy Davis Jr. and Hugh Hefner. And keen to expand Linda’s profile beyond the adult world, Chuck landed her a stage show at Miami’s Paramount Theater.

But as Linda’s star rose, so did her self-confidence. She began to realize that she was drawing the attention and money, not Chuck. And as Linda’s esteem grew, Chuck’s attempts to control her weren’t quite as powerful as they had been.

Finally, in September 1973, after almost three years under Chuck’s thumb, Linda decided to stand up for herself. She filed for divorce, citing abuse and irreconcilable differences. She had a new man at her side too: she was dating David Winters, an English-born dancer and choreographer.

She was free from Chuck and could start a new life. Chuck was ancient history, and would now disappear into the rear-view mirror, right?

Wrong.

Welcome to Episode Six in our series ‘Svengali – The Chuck Traynor Story’.

You can hear the last episode of the Svengali series here.

This episode running time is 66 minutes.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————–

1. An(other) Autobiography

In early 1974, a second autobiography of Linda Lovelace hit the shelves. It was called ‘The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace’. This is how it begins:

“I am taking my life in my hands by writing this. That may sound like a dramatic way to start a book, or just a joke, but it is true. If my arms are broken or I end up in a ditch somewhere, if acid is thrown in my face or I am shot, I want it in black and white.

Once and for all, I have got to be free. Maybe if I tell the whole story, the true story, I will finally get if off my chest and out of my system, and I will be able to forget it forever.

“I have been threatened by a man who is very sick. He is full of violence. He has threatened the lives of my brilliant attorney, my business manager, the man in my life, David Winters; my secretary Dolores and her daughter; and, of course, myself.

“Sometimes I think I will go live in a different country and just never be heard from again. But that would be giving up my life in another way and I am not going to do that either. I am a star now. Here I am, the sex symbol of the seventies, the woman who really believes in giving love and enjoying it, and who is “really free.” The truth is that there was a time when I wasn’t allowed to go for a hamburger by myself. Now I am working to become really free. Free in every way.

“If you noticed the black and blue marks on my body in the movie ‘Deep Throat’, you might have wondered where they came from. I’ll tell you. My husband. Little souvenirs, reminders that he was the colonel and I was the private. From the time I met him, I never did anything, said anything, or went anywhere that was not his idea. That might have been okay if I had been willing. But I was doing terrible things that I didn’t want to do. Not ‘Deep Throat’. I enjoyed doing what I did in ‘Deep Throat’ – it’s what happened sexually with Chuck that I hated.

“The reason I married Chuck wasn’t because of moonlight and violins and love; I married him because he swore to beat the shit out of me if I didn’t. When I refused, he threw me to the ground and kicked me. Somehow, I was persuaded.

“You might wonder how I finally put it all together to get away from Chuck. When I became a big name, everybody wanted to meet me. I began to be myself again. I was around people who were sensitive and kind and treated me like a person. Before I met Chuck, I had been carefree and happy.

“Let me say one final word to my ex-husband. I don’t have any hard feelings anymore. As a matter of fact, I wish you only what you wish yourself: Shit.”

Linda Lovelace

*

2. Chuck Responds

‘The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace’ was written in three days by a ghost writer, Mel Mandel. Mel had got to know Linda and her new boyfriend, David Winters, and spent hours with her listening to her account of years of abuse suffered at Chuck’s hands. The resulting book was part manifesto, part financial gambit.

When the book was published, Chuck was predictably livid that Linda had gone public with her story. When contacted by reporters, he alleged that the book was paid for with money that was actually his. As Chuck said to one reporter:

“All I know is that I gave David Winters $10,000 to teach her to dance for Linda’s big show. Next thing I know, all of a sudden, Linda, David, and my $10,000 disappear.

“Anybody in his right mind is not going to take that sitting down. Suddenly my creation walks out with some schmuck because she thinks he’s the biggest hustler in Hollywood.

“But none of them realized that I was Linda Lovelace. That body, that throat, and those silicone tits walking around were bullshit, you know? Linda was nothing. But David thought she was a gold mine.

“And Linda bought it, you know? She just listened to everybody telling her what a big star she was and how I was handling her all wrong. That was her mistake.”

When asked about Linda’s claims that he’d started harassing her after she left, Chuck pretty much admitted it:

“I heard from her attorneys that she was filing for divorce and that she wouldn’t honor any of the contracts – she said she considered them illegal because she’d been forced to sign them.

“So I was left in a real bad position by Linda because we were doing pretty good. We’d made about $100,000 in a little less than a year. So, yeah, I was flabbergasted because not only had somebody stolen my old lady, but because I was president of our corporation too.

“So of course, I reacted. I wanted her back. In fact, we have a commitment in Miami that a friend of mine has put up a $10,000 bond on. As you know, somebody is going to suffer if these contracts are broken.”

Linda and David Winters

*

3. D-I-V-O-R-C-E

And so Chuck kept on pursuing Linda, using every trick in the book. Linda wrote about Chuck’s pleas in her autobiography:

“Look, I love you and you are my wife,” he said. “I do not think you have sufficient reason to stay separated from me. I was kind enough – and am kind enough – to put up with it for a little bit. I have not given you grounds to stop loving me. And you better not fucking act like I fucking have. I have done nothing wrong. If you go to court with me, you’re going to look like a complete asshole. I haven’t fucking run out on you. I don’t drink. I supported you well. And I’ve taken care of you.”

Linda was adamant however, and when she made clear that there was no way she would remain Chuck’s wife, he changed tactics, trying to appeal to her business sense. Now he’d say: “If you don’t want nothing else, just fake it, babe. If you hate my guts, fine, sleep in the next room. But don’t fucking blow the whole business. That’s all I ask.”

Whatever Chuck said, Linda wasn’t listening any more. In fact, she wanted nothing to do with him. But Chuck retained an ability to surprise. And just as she was bracing herself for a long, drawn-out divorce battle, all of a sudden, Chuck seemed to have a change of heart. He stopped fighting the divorce and said he was willing to let her go. There was one catch: he just wanted what he was entitled to. He filed papers stating that he alone had made ‘Linda Lovelace’ and thus was about to lose out on substantial contractual agreements like their upcoming Paramount theater show in Miami. He argued that he deserved most everything they had as a couple. Yearning to be free of Chuck, Linda relented and gave it all to him.

So Chuck and Linda met at the lawyer’s office and played out the dynamics of their relationship one last time. Chuck recalled: “Linda kept coming on like I was the enemy. I was going to give her a check and started to make it out to Linda Traynor, and she said, “My name’s Linda Lovelace.” I said, “Hey, you’re still my wife, and your name’s Linda Traynor.” But she insisted the check be made out to Linda Lovelace. So I said, ‘Fuck you. It’s going to be Linda Traynor or no check.’”

After finalizing the divorce, Linda recalled Chuck turning to her, and for one brief moment, Linda thought she saw a flash of vulnerability: “He said, ‘Just remember that I love you. And if you ever change your mind, I’ll always be there.’

For Linda, it was too little, too late. All that mattered to her was that she was finally going to be free of Chuck Traynor. To celebrate the divorce, Linda went down to the Los Angeles Superior Court, and legally changed her name to Linda Lovelace, finally claiming the only part of her that Chuck wanted to hold on to.

Linda, photographed by Milton Greene

*

4. Moving On

The Traynor divorce may have been final but the legal battles were far from over. Linda’s scheduled show at the Paramount Theater in Miami was under threat – largely because Linda was spending all her time with David Winters. When it was obvious that the rehearsals were going to be delayed, the show’s producer agreed to push back the opening date by a month. But even with the added time, Linda wasn’t ready – or perhaps willing – to go ahead with the performance. So in the end, she decided to break the contract. David suggested that they use illness as the reason, but the organizers weren’t buying it, and they sued Linda Lovelace Enterprises for breach of contract. Rumor was that it was Chuck behind the scenes who was pushing for Linda to be sued.

That was only the start of her legal problems. Remember Phil Mandina from the first part of our Svengali series? He was the lawyer who represented Chuck in his 1971 drug smuggling case. The same lawyer Linda said was actually Chuck’s partner in the drug smuggling operation.

Well, he’d stuck around. In fact, he’d helped Chuck and Linda set up Linda Lovelace Enterprises and acted as their representative for almost all legal matters. When Linda and Chuck divorced, Chuck encouraged Mandina to sue Linda for nonpayment of legal fees for services rendered in 1973.

Linda tried to fight back by revealing sleazy details she knew about Mandina’s past – which didn’t just include being a possible accomplice to drug smuggling. She declared:

“The story of Philip J. Mandina is particularly juicy, as intricate as any espionage novel. In fact, his background is an open cesspool. It involves grand larceny, tax dodges, a wealthy heiress, a call girl, and a cast of sleazy secondary characters that would make any TV writer drool.”

Linda’s lawyers tried to use the information to discredit Mandina’s legal case against Linda but to no avail. Linda ultimately was ordered to pay $32,000 to settle the case.

Linda needed new income streams to pay her bills. She no longer had Chuck making deals for her, so she turned to her boyfriend David Winters. In December 1973, Winters signed a contract for Linda to appear in a touring production of a bedroom farce called ‘Pajama Tops.’ Linda was nervous about signing a long theatrical commitment as she had little acting experience, but she needn’t have been worried: the play closed after just a week due to dismal ticket sales.

Next Winters signed Linda up for a tour of college campuses. Linda spoke at 25 schools in the first six months of 1974 for a fee of around $4,000 a pop. In reality, while Linda did the talking, it was actually Winter’s words she was speaking. He’d written a script for her which was essentially a defense of sex films, and included statements like: “We show action and dying in movies, so why can’t we show love? And sex is a part of love, so why can’t we show sex and why can’t we show love? Why is that banned?”

While Linda worked the university circuit, Winters was also keen to maintain a profile in Hollywood that they could exploit – and sure enough, Linda was invited to attend the Academy Awards. Linda wanted to make a splashy entrance, so they hired a coach drawn by white horses and accompanied by footmen to take her there. When Linda stepped out onto the red carpet, she was wearing a leopard-skin bikini walking a great Dane. Later that evening they partied at the Playboy mansion – a place they visited regularly, often staying for several nights.

But while Winters was working hard to exploit Linda’s name, things weren’t moving fast enough for his liking. So in early 1974, he decided they should make an extended visit to his home country of England. Linda would be a huge hit across the pond, Winters reckoned. Sex comedy films had grown in popularity there, and Brits were hungry for more. ‘Deep Throat’ had been banned from theaters in England, but bootleg copies of the film were still circulating and stories of the film’s popularity in the U.S. were legendary.

Linda in London

Winters started the trip by contacting the English tabloid, the News of the World, and made a deal for front page coverage of Linda. He invested in a campaign that featured photos of Linda on the back of a London double-decker bus. He even rented two Rolls Royce cars for them to drive around and be seen in – one with a license plate that read ‘penis’, the other emblazoned with ‘womb.’ Tasteful, no? Unfortunately, the PR blitz didn’t make much of an impression, and before long they returned to the States, tails between their legs.

Back in California, David tried to secure funding for a production of a comedy about a young inn keeper in the Midwest who murdered her guests and buried them in the backyard. It was a bust – and the play went nowhere. So he came up with another idea: a film called Linda Lovelace for President (1975).

The movie’s plot would be simple and fun. Linda would run for president on a platform of free love, touring the country along a route shaped like an erect penis. Er, and that was it. Remarkably, Winters raised $800,000 for the movie and assembled a respectable cast and crew: the screenplay was by a regular writer for ‘Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In.’ The director was well known for his work on ‘I Dream of Jeanie.’ And the supporting cast included comic Chuck McCann, actor and musician Scatman Crothers, and Micky Dolenz of the Monkees.

Winters arranged for Linda to get a salary of $125,000 and 15% of the film’s profits. And after convincing Hugh Hefner to devote ten pages in Playboy magazine to the movie, Winters was confident those profits would be sizable. But then the film was released.

Reviews appeared quickly and they weren’t kind. Here’s an example from The Boston Globe in early 1975:

“’Linda Lovelace for President’ is rated X, presumably for Xcrutiating. This is, without question, the most witless piece of trash ever made, so bad, in word and deed, that its blistering ineptitude outranks any movie I’ve ever seen. And, Miss Lovelace is best when she keeps her mouth shut.”

The film didn’t fare better at the box office either, and was a complete financial failure. Winters quickly turned his attention to the next vehicle for Linda. He’d recently met a highly prolific Italian film producer named Ovidio Assonitis who was making a name for himself in B-movies. Ovidio thought Linda would make an ideal leading lady for his next picture, an unofficial sequel to the box-office smash, Emmanuelle (1974). The new softcore film was to be called Forever Emmanuelle (1976) (aka Laure), and Linda Lovelace was cast in the lead role earning a salary of $120,000 while Winters would get a healthy sum as co-executive producer. When the film was released in 1976 however, Linda didn’t feature. Ovidio was contacted in recent years to find out what happened, and he claimed he’d had to fire Linda because of her drug use and for refusing to do any nudity.

By now Linda’s relationship with Winters was starting to fall apart. Cracks had started to show as early as January 1974 when Linda and Winters were arrested for cocaine possession in Las Vegas and Linda strongly suspected Winters had set it up for publicity.

Linda noticed how easily David spent their money, lavishly rewarding himself for every project he helped put together – whether it was a success or not. She was surprised one day when Winters came home having bought two Bentleys without even consulting her. And then she learned that while his car was purchased, hers was just leased.

What made it even worse was that Winters had started to exhibit the same type of controlling behavior that she’d endured so painfully in her previous relationship. Winters started demanding that she do exactly what he wanted. This was obviously a sensitive area for Linda, and so she accused Winters of acting just like Chuck. Winters flatly denied this, but at times his words did sound suspiciously like Chuck. See what you think. This is what Winters said to a friend:

“Chuck controlled her in a nasty and terrible way. I controlled her because we had a joint vision – which was to create this incredible movie star and be happy together. She was the product, and I molded her as I wanted her to be.”

But in truth, Linda wasn’t the only one growing weary of the relationship. Winters was tired of what he felt was Linda’s childish and petty behavior. He said she never stopped complaining about Chuck, or lamenting that her fame was still tied to ‘Deep Throat’, a cheap pornographic film.

Even Sammy Davis, Jr., Linda’s ex-lover, pulled Winters aside one day and put it bluntly: “You’re killing your career, kid. What are you doing? Don’t base your life around her.”

The writing was on the wall: Linda’s and Winters’ relationship was on its last legs.

Linda, Keith Moon – drummer from The Who, Micky Dolenz from the The Monkees

*

5. Trying Again: Chuck Meets Marilyn Chambers

So, while Linda was trying to make her own way in life and figure out her relationship with David Winters, where was Chuck? Was he waiting in the wings, pining for Linda, and hoping she’d have a change of heart and come running back to him?

Not so much.

As soon as Linda grew close to David Winters, Chuck realized that his grip over his former ingénue was slipping. So what was a guy, who’d dedicated years of his life shaping the persona and professional path of his protégé, supposed to do?

Publisher and provocateur Al Goldstein interviewed Chuck at this time. and asked this very question. Chuck laid out his views:

“I was Linda’s, of course, manager and agent, and sort of over-looker. So I had to keep an eye out on the horizon for who was coming up in the business. And the only person that I could see, that looked like they were gonna come on pretty strong, was Marilyn.”

Marilyn Chambers

The ‘Marilyn’ Chuck is referring to is Marilyn Chambers. She’d become a break-out adult star thanks to the film Behind the Green Door (1972), produced by Jim and Artie Mitchell. The Mitchell Brothers had jumped into the porn business head-first in the late 1960s, opening the infamous O’Farrell Theatre in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. Marilyn became the personification of their success and a nationally famous figure.

Artie and Jim Mitchell

Back to Chuck:

“This was about the time Linda met David Winters and decided she was gonna be a big legitimate actress, dancer, and whatnot. And I could see things happening, so I was talking to Marilyn on the phone, Marilyn knew who I was by reputation. And Linda walked out one day about noon time and I called Marilyn about 1 o’clock and she arrived in Los Angeles… 24 hours later. And I just said, “This is the situation. This is the way I operate.” she said, ‘Fine.’”

Marilyn Chambers had started life as Marilyn Briggs, a 19-year-old aspiring actress originally from a middle-class family. As Marilyn later shared in an interview with journalist Geraldo Rivera, she’d always wanted to perform:

Marilyn: “Well I first started in this business when I was about 15 years old. I started communicating into New York from Westport Connecticut.”

Geraldo: “A very staid, respectable community in Connecticut – a suburb of New York really.”

Marilyn: “Right. And I was with about four modeling agencies. And I did a lot of print work – the Ivory Snow box – when I was about 18 I did that. I did a Clairol commercial, Pepsi generation, that kind of thing. I did a lot of television…television work. And I was in a film called ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ (1970).”

Geraldo: “With Barbara Streisand…”

Marilyn: “Yeah. And at that time I was going to acting school in New York for about a year and a half. And uh Columbia Pictures sent me out to California to do a publicity tour for ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’. And I really fell in love with California. And I decided to move out there – San Francisco. But to my dismay, San Francisco was kind of a… It was a very hip place but it certainly wasn’t the place for an entertainer to be looking for work. So I read an ad in the newspaper one day, hoping I could find a movie part…

Geraldo: “What did the ad say? This I have to hear.”

Marilyn: “’Now casting for a major motion picture.’ Oh, this is my… this is my spot. So I went down and met the Mitchell Brothers. They explained the whole story to me. And I really like the story. About that time in my life, I really decided that instead of being another starlet around Hollywood, you know, who gets lost in the stampede, I thought this is going to be the ‘in thing’ – you know I really had that feeling that this is the way that films were turning.”

Marilyn Chambers

‘Behind the Green Door’ became one of the highest grossing adult movies of the era and Marilyn, motivated and ambitious, was keen to capitalize on the film’s success. Together with Linda Lovelace, Marilyn Chambers was the most famous adult film star of the era.

But whether Chuck approached Marilyn or Marilyn approached Chuck is unclear. Author John Hubner, who profiled the Mitchell Brothers, claimed it was Chuck who pursued Marilyn, reinforcing Chuck’s alpha-male persona. Hubner wrote: “Chuck had approached Marilyn Chambers while he and Linda were still married. After he and Linda split up, Chuck began pursuing Marilyn in earnest. Marilyn finally agreed to meet Chuck while on a trip to New York, and Chuck had a limo waiting for her at the airport. Basically, Chuck convinced Marilyn Chambers that he, better than anyone else in the business, knew how to appeal to the eternal twenty-one-year-old lurking within all men.”

But Marilyn later declared it was actually the other way around, and that it was she who was the one who set her sights on Chuck:

“It was my mission to find Chuck Traynor. I had to find him, had to get this guy. And I wanted him to become my manager because I wanted him to do for me what he did for Linda. My whole life I wanted to be Ann-Margaret, that’s all. I love Ann-Margaret. And that’s who I wanted to be. And I figured Linda was going to get there first. I thought, I’ll be darned if I’m going to let that happen. So I said to Chuck, ‘I really want to meet you.’”

Whomever initiated contact, at this point, as we know, Linda had already started publicly sharing troubling details of her life with Chuck, painting him as cruel and sadistic, a master manipulator. That didn’t deter Marilyn however – she still wanted to meet him, driven by a youthful naiveté that was a combination of ambition and curiosity. During her first meeting with Chuck though, she did look for signs of the abuser that Linda described. This is how she remembered their first encounter:

“Chuck and I got along really well. And I’m thinking, ‘Why are these people saying these horrible things about him? He’s a really nice guy. He’s one of the most intelligent, soft people I’ve ever met in my life. He’s really on the ball. We stayed up all night talking. And he didn’t try to put the move on me at all, which was like “Thank you, Jesus!” He was very much a gentleman.”

So Chuck and Marilyn hit it off from the start, and it didn’t take long for them to agree to form a partnership. Chuck asked his long-time lawyer Phil Mandina to draw up paperwork formalizing the collaboration, and brought it to Marilyn with the expectation that she’d sign then and there. But while Marilyn may have been young, she was no easy mark. She looked it over, made a bunch of red-line edits, and renegotiated her stake in the partnership. Chuck – equal parts irritated and impressed – wasn’t used to this independence from his days with Linda. Nevertheless he signed, and Chambers-Traynor Enterprises was launched.

Just as quickly as Marilyn and Chuck formed a working relationship, they started a romantic one as well. In truth they were both seeing other people at the time: Marilyn was still married to a bag-pipe playing street musician back in San Francisco, and Chuck had started dating Jayne Mansfield’s daughter, Jayne Marie. No matter, from the night they signed their agreement, Marilyn went back to Chuck’s place and moved in.

Now that they had both a business partnership and a romantic relationship, Marilyn made her goals explicit:

“I told Chuck I didn’t want to do erotic films my whole life. I wanted to do a couple of them – and then get out of it. Like I said, I wanted to be Ann-Margaret. I want to be able to make my own decisions, to know exactly where the money’s going, where to put it, how not to get ripped off in taxes by the government. In short, I didn’t want to be a star – I wanted to be a superstar.”

By this time, Marilyn already had another adult feature film under her belt – Resurrection of Eve (1973), another Mitchell Brother’s production.

Chuck agreed with Marilyn: if they wanted her to break into the mainstream, they needed to start diversifying away from the adult industry. And because of his experience with Linda, Chuck had the perfect vehicle in mind: Marilyn should star in her own variety stage show.

To set this up, Chuck needed to secure financing, and for that, he turned to one of his old contacts, Lou Perry aka Lou Peraino – the producer of ‘Deep Throat’ and son of Colombo crime family member Anthony Peraino. Lou was skeptical at first: he wondered if Chuck had another Linda Lovelace on his hands – a woman with a sexual gimmick, sure, but light on talent. But then Marilyn auditioned for Lou by performing a song and dance routine, and he was genuinely impressed, exclaiming “Would you believe that the girl has never had formal training in her life?! This girl has talent!”

Chuck also introduced Marilyn to Sammy Davis Jr., eager to show off Marilyn’s abilities, and see how Sammy could help. Marilyn was understandably nervous about performing in front of such a legendary talent as Sammy, but she needn’t have worried. As she remembered when they went to see him after a performance:

“Sammy came down from a show by cooking and having sex. He was kinky. Sexually, he was into everything. He’d call and say, ‘Come up to the suite after the show, I’m cooking chili.’” The night would inevitably end in an orgy.

Sammy was rumored to have put Marilyn’s latest show together, but when Chuck was later asked by a reporter how much Sammy had been involved, he predictably took credit for it himself. Chuck said:

“My dear friend Sammy Davis Jr. gave me a few pointers, but I was the guy who put this act together.”

Marilyn, with Rip Torn (left)

Just as he’d done with Linda, Chuck told Marilyn exactly what projects she should take on to increase her marketability. In fact, Chuck went further and told her how she should behave. She remembered his instructions in the following way:

“Chuck wanted to create a fantasy where I was untouchable to the people that I was around, but on screen, he wanted me to be very touchable. He said that any star should be a mystery and a fantasy. That’s why guys want her – because they don’t know that she farts and that she is a regular person. Chuck told me, ‘Always give people what they don’t expect.’”

One example of this was that Chuck insisted that any time Marilyn ordered room service at a hotel, she answer the door naked and offer the attendant oral sex in place of a tip. Chuck said he wanted to “create an image of a totally uninhibited sexual creature who would be happy being anything you wanted her to be.”

By December 1973, Marilyn’s stage show – which Chuck titled ‘Skin ‘n’ Grin’ – was ready for a trial run. With Lou Perry’s help, Chuck landed a three-week engagement at the Capital Theater in Passaic, New Jersey. The show opened with Marilyn, clad in a rhinestone-studded costume, singing covers, including “Satisfaction,” “Let the Good Times Roll,” “Green Door,” “Light My Fire,” and “Johnny B. Goode.” The show also included appearances by adult stars Harry Reems and Marc Stevens.

Marilyn on stage

Unlike Linda’s shows with David Winters, the reviews for Marilyn’s were pretty good. One reviewer wrote:

“Marilyn did not disappoint in her valiant job of singing and dancing. Stepping out of a huge mock-up of an Ivory Snow carton dressed in purity white, she gradually stripped down to bra and tights for the finale, when singing and swinging like an old man’s vision of teenage lust, before she disappeared through a green door.”

The theatrical run ran its course and did well, but as with most productions that Chuck had a hand in, this one wasn’t without its problems. In this case, he ended up suing the theater owners claiming Marilyn wasn’t properly paid for her performances. The owners counter-sued, stating Chambers failed to live up to the publicity terms of her contract. The matter was ultimately settled out of court.

In early 1974, they put on the show again, this time at the Riverboat Restaurant in New York, located at the base of the Empire State Building. The New York reviews weren’t as stellar, with one critic writing, “if she wants to go on working in clubs as a star attraction, I suggest she get herself a trapeze again” – referring to the famous sex scene which was at the center of ‘Behind the Green Door’.

Marilyn backstage

But not everyone was underwhelmed by Marilyn’s talent. When the Riverboat engagement closed, Chuck was contacted by Maynard Sloate, the entertainment director at the Union Plaza hotel in Las Vegas. Sloate was staging a comedy called ‘Mind with the Dirty Man’ that featured a porn-star character, and he was interested in casting Marilyn. In truth, Sloate had contacted Linda Lovelace first, but after being turned down, he opted for the only other porn star he’d heard of.

After some negotiation, Chuck and Marilyn agreed to the play and decided to settle in Las Vegas. They bought a ranch just outside of the city and Marilyn began rehearsing the comedy which would premiere in October 1974. Everyone involved was optimistic though unsure of how the production would be received. After all, this was Vegas – home of the big glitzy shows and it would be difficult to compete with many of them. Maynard Sloate himself was cautious, and only set up a three-month run. Much to everyone’s relief, and thanks in large part to heavy promotion featuring Marilyn, the show was popular from the first night.

Suddenly everything was golden in Chuck and Marilyn’s world. Offers flowed in and lucrative opportunities presented themselves each day. Chuck decided they should publish a tell-all ‘autobiography’ of Marilyn, just as he had done with Linda. And, as with ‘Inside Linda Lovelace’, Chuck had a heavy hand in writing it. In truth, the resulting book, titled Marilyn Chambers, My Story, was a quick and dirty effort just like Linda’s autobiography had been. Predictably Marilyn’s dedication on the first page paid tribute to the eternal Svengali in the shadows:

“To Chuck, my Traynor and constant companion,” it read. “Thanks for making my life so beautiful!”

Meanwhile Chuck was about to sign another contract with Marilyn. In December 1974, Chuck and Marilyn got married in Las Vegas, with Sammy Davis Jr. as best man. Their decision to get married is interesting in light of how Marilyn – or Chuck – ends the book:

“People ask if Chuck and I are going to get married. Sure. Of course not. Definitely. Never. The truth is, we don’t know. Marriage isn’t a big thing for us, and if we do it, it will be for very private reasons and it will be done in a very private way. Right now, we like the way we’re living and have no desire to change it, but who knows how we’ll feel next week? I love Chuck, I love making him happy, love pleasing him… And he loves me. And does it really matter if I’m married? Mrs. Chuck Traynor or not, I’ll always be your girl next door.”

Chuck’s public take on their nuptials was a little less romantic. Asked by ‘Time’ magazine why he’d gone from being married to Linda to marrying Marilyn so quickly, Chuck said: “You gotta trade in your old car when it can’t make the hills.”

To which Marilyn responded: “I just hope I’m never your old car.”