Moviemaking and The O'Farrell
In 1969, with the help of Artie's Ivy League-educated wife Meredith Bradford, they fulfilled their ambitions by leasing and renovating a dilapidated two-story building at 895 O'Farrell Street, which they converted into the O'Farrell Theatre, a movie theater with a makeshift film studio upstairs. They also rented a larger facility at 991 Tennessee Street in which to shoot some of their films; nevertheless, even their fans conceded that Mitchell movies ranged in quality from mediocre to atrocious. Jim Mitchell once quipped, "The only Art in is my brother."
The Mitchells opened the O'Farrell Theatre on the Fourth of July, 1969, and were confronted almost immediately by the authorities. They would open other X-rated movie houses in California over the years, spending much time in court and money on lawyers to stay open as indignant locals and officials tried to shut them down.
They became incorporated as Cinema 7 (headquartered in the managers' offices at the O'Farrell Theatre), and in 1972 produced one of the world's first famous feature-length pornographic movies, Behind the Green Door, starring then-Ivory Snow girl Marilyn Chambers in her porn debut. The movie, produced for $60,000, grossed over $25 million.
The Mitchells rode the porno chic wave, using some of their Green Door profits to produce fairly lavish hardcore movies including Resurrection of Eve in 1973 and Sodom & Gomorrah in 1975. One of their last big-budget movies was The Grafenberg Spot (1985), featuring the underaged Traci Lords, who had entered the adult-video industry with fraudulent identification. The Mitchell brothers were the first to transfer film titles to videotape and market them via ads in national sex magazines. The brothers were inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame.
In 1985, the Mitchells made the long-awaited (and -postponed) sequel to Behind the Green Door. They hired cabaret singer and frequent movie collaborator Sharon McNight to direct the picture and, uncharacteristically, chose to cast the film exclusively with little- or unknown performers, despite the availability of such adult-industry stars as Lady Ashley Liberty, who had just concluded an engagement at New York City's Show World Center. The Mitchell brothers auditioned every newcomer who responded to their advertisements (which appeared in Variety and Bay Area sex tabloids). A handful of O'Farrell dancers accepted small roles; one of them asked to be cast as Gloria, the female lead. While McNight considered her for that part, Artie Mitchell's then-girlfriend Missy Manners cast herself in it. Filming of the sequel occurred mainly in the O'Farrell Theatre, and took only one day.
Missy Manners, overweight and utterly inexperienced in acting and public sex, reportedly had much difficulty performing in front of the film crew; the set was so tense that at one point Jim Mitchell harangued one of his O'Farrell managers in front of everyone, because the catered lunch was inadequate. The Green Door sequel was also the world's first safe-sex film, in which all the men wore condoms, and self-protection advice was given to the audience by one of the characters.
Highly overbudget ($250,000), Behind the Green Door: the Sequel, according to adult magazines, was one of the worst porn pictures ever made, mainly due to the absence of a professional cast. Missy Manners promoted the film and billed herself as "the Republican Porn Star." She posed nude for Playboy and revealed that she was Utah-born and -bred Elisa Florez, a former aide to Republican Senator Orrin Hatch.
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