Respectable - The Mary Millington Story [DVD]

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Confessions from the David Sullivan Affair. Film producer David Sullivan chats about life with girlfriend Mary Millington, as well as exclusively revealing a self-portrait Mary gave him in 1977. Millington has been described as one of the "two hottest British sex film stars of the seventies", the other being Fiona Richmond. [3] Early life [ edit ] Hunt, Leon (1998). British Low Culture: From Safari Suits to Sexploitation. Routledge. ISBN 9780415151832. Sheridan, Simon (2011). Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema (fourthed.). Titan Publishing. ISBN 9780857682796. Millington was buried at St Mary Magdalene Church, in South Holmwood, Surrey, marked by a grey granite tombstone which bears her married name. She is buried in the same grave as her mother, Joan Quilter, who died in 1976. [20] Legacy [ edit ]

Come Play with Me original 1977 trailer plus the British theatrical trailer for Come Play with Me, unseen for nearly 40 years.In 2014, four spoken word erotic stories recorded by Millington in 1978–9 were released as a vinyl LP. [28] 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. Written, directed and produced by Mary Millington's biographer Simon Sheridan, the film mixes archive footage, previously unseen photographs and interviews with Millington's family, friends and co-stars, including David Sullivan, Pat Astley, Dudley Sutton, Linzi Drew and Flanagan. McGillivray, David (2017). Doing rude things: the history of the British sex film, 1957-1981 (2nded.). Wolfbait. ISBN 978-1999744151.

Respectable teaser trailer plus 2015 teaser trailer for Respectable, originally released on what would have been Mary Millington’s 70th birthday. In 1978, she was approached to appear in a hardcore porn film called Love is Beautiful, to have been directed by Gerard Damiano. However, despite Millington and Damiano being pictured together at that year's Cannes Film Festival, the movie (meant to have been produced by David Grant's Oppidan Films) never materialized. Potential co-stars may have included Harry Reems, Gloria Brittain and Lisa Taylor. That same year she turned 33 and found herself being replaced by younger models in Sullivan's magazines. [5] Last years and death [ edit ] We also have Queen Of The Blues (1979) and posthumous film Mary Millington's True Blue Confessions ( 1980), which is the most eye-opening of the lot. The set also contains my 2015 movie Respectable: The Mary Millington Story, in which I chronicled her amazing life through interviews with her family, friends, lovers and co-stars. I think it's a nice bookend to Mary's career and I'm very proud that it's part of the set.

The release also gave me an opportunity to make some new documentary shorts, all of which relate to aspects of Mary's life: there are eight new documentaries, including Mary Millington On Location, which looks at the places she made the films; a look at audio recordings she made in 1977, called Aural Sex; plus new interviews with co-star Sally Faulkner, veteran glamour photographer George Richardson, and Josie Harrison Marks, who is the daughter of Come Play With Me's director. There's even a documentary on how I made Respectable. So there's something for everybody, I hope. 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] Millington's story is somewhat akin to that of Marilyn Monroe's; a beautiful starlet who transcended her chosen medium and, is it said, developed relationships and links that went to the very top (the rumour of affairs with multimillionaires and even the then PM, Harold Wilson, is explored here). Like Monroe however, Millington's private life was riddled with tragedy. Following the death of her mother after a ten year battle with cancer in 1976, Millington's life began to unravel. Cocaine addiction, pronounced kleptomania and debilitating neurosis and depression, the breakdown of her marriage to Bob Maxted, the persistent interest from the police and the taxman into her business affairs and the combined fear of going to prison and bankruptcy led to Millington taking her own life on the 19th August 1979. She was just 33. Party Pieces 1974 Mary Millington film. A short film, once presumed lost, with a young Mary Millington. Originally released on 8mm without sound, it was digitally restored at Pinewood Studios.

A posthumous film about her life was released in 1980, entitled Mary Millington's True Blue Confessions. [24] In 1996, Channel Four screened a tribute to her entitled Sex and Fame: The Mary Millington Story, featuring an interview with David Sullivan. [25] In late 2009, an 8mm copy of one of her early John Lindsay short films Special Assignment resurfaced. Unseen since the early 1970s, it was subsequently transferred to DVD. Two years later in 2011, Wild Lovers, another 8mm film starring Millington, was also traced and transferred from 8mm to DVD. [ citation needed]Babington, Bruce (2001). British Stars and Stardom: From Alma Taylor to Sean Connery. Manchester University Press. ISBN 9780719058417. 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.

Her most famous film was Come Play With Me - almost a film genre all to itself! In a nutshell, the plot follows a couple of banknote forgers who are on the run. Hiding out at a stately home being run as a health farm, they find it is almost entirely staffed by sexy young women. There's an unexpected song and dance routine in the middle of the film, plus some fairly explicit sex scenes - certainly a world away from the likes of Carry On Camping! Extras: Audio Commentary. Sam Dunn from the BFI discusses the making of Respectable with its writer/director/producer, Simon Sheridan. 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 ] Respectable: The Mary Millington Story". Regent Street Cinema. Archived from the original on 16 April 2016 . Retrieved 3 April 2016.As a new Blu-ray box set collating her films is released, its curator and her biographer, Simon Sheridan, explains all about Mary Millington, a pioneering personality of the 1970s. The film received its world premiere at London's Regent Street Cinema in April 2016. [34] A DVD of the film was released in the UK on 2 May 2016. [35] Selected filmography [ 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]