The Official Mary Millington Site

BOOKS BIOGRAPHY FILMOGRAPHY GALLERY MARY ON TV NEWS GUEST BOOK

Mary On TV

Despite Mary Millington's sex superstar status during the late 1970s she never fully integrated into the mainstream British entertainment establishment before her tragic death in 1979. Unlike fellow porn actress Fiona Richmond, Mary never became a guest celebrity on TV quiz shows, situation comedies, had a cameo in a Hollywood movie or even got a spot on the Parkinson show. Perhaps it is was more a case that she just didn't live long enough to see success outside of the world of sex comedies. No-one will ever really know what career path Mary would have taken had she lived to see the 80s and 90s. An ardent conservationist, owner of an animal sanctuary, pro-pornography campaigner, comedy actress, even propping up the bar in EastEnders? Certainly after her suicide Mary's popularity waned, although her ex-boyfriend and publisher David Sullivan continued to trade off her name with various magazines reprints, re-issues of her old films and two 'tribute' movies, using re-edited clips, Mary Millington's True Blue Confessions (1980) and Mary Millington's World Striptease Extravaganza (1981). However, long after her death Mary's name continued to be synonymous with sex to young men across Britain.
As the years went by more mystery and myth was heaped upon her. What sort of a person had she been? Why had she died so young? Virtually forgotten until 1992, Mary was brought to a new audience when journalist David McGillivray wrote a short piece on Mary's life in his saucy British sex book 'Doing Rude Things'. When a spin-off BBC2 documentary was screened three years later Mary again became the focus of much media attention. It was also the very first time clips of Come Play with Me and The Playbirds had ever been broadcast on British television. McGillivray pondered what might have happened to Mary had she not died aged just 33. 'I think she would have become a very, very big star indeed. As it was, because she died so young, she was only ever a raunchy British sex symbol.' Nearly 5 million viewers tuned in to watch the programme.
In October 1996 Channel Four presented a fifty minute documentary on Mary entitled Sex and Fame - The Mary Millington Story as part of their 'Fame Factor' season of programmes exploring the darker side of stardom. Produced by award-winning Perth-based Speakeasy Productions the documentary set about placing Mary in her historical context, exploring the more corrosive aspects of her rise to fame. The production team originally settled on Mary as their subject only after trawling through movie magazines and deciding her life story was easily the most interesting of any British celebrity of the Seventies. Shot between the months of February and August 1996 the documentary was a mixture of interviews with those who knew her including ex-lover David Sullivan, friend Colin Wills and infamous pornographer John Lindsay; new location work at Mary's old home in Walton-on-the-Hill and at her graveside plus rare movie clips from the archives. Speakeasy were able to dig out her very hard-core film, Miss Bohrloch from 1970 and were given special permission by Channel Four's lawyers to show censored excerpts from it. The programme created a sensation and was heavily previewed in all the daily newspapers when it was first broadcast. It has been repeated twice, in 1997 and again in 2000, each time scoring higher in the ratings.
As for television broadcasts of her actual movies only two, Keep It Up Downstairs (1976) and The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1979), have been broadcast on terrestrial TV. Keep It Up Downstairs has been shown twice on late night BBC1 and on both occasions was minus four minutes of sex footage with Mary's lesbian threesome and tree-house romp being removed completely. Cable channel Bravo have regularly shown three of Mary's most famous films, Come Play with Me (1977), The Playbirds (1978) and Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair (1979) since 1998, but despite Channel 5 taking a tentative interest in her films, neither Come Play with Me or any of her other movies have been shown on terrestrial television so far. With lesser known sex comedies like The Amorous Milkman (1975) and Adventures of a Private Eye (1977) showing healthy TV ratings surely it can only be a matter of time before the late great Mary Millington becomes a firm fixture of late night British television.

BOOKS BIOGRAPHY FILMOGRAPHY GALLERY MARY ON TV NEWS GUEST BOOK

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