Respectable - The Mary Millington Story". BFI. Archived from the original on 23 February 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. 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. Adding extra VAM are Sheridan’s new documentaries, produced specially for this box set, offering a diverse range of fresh new insights into the Mary Millington success story. Harrison Marks’ daughter Josie offers some frank and funny recollections about the Come Play With Me svengali and there’s a surprisingly touching and affecting tribute documentary devoted to Harry Knights, Millington’s ghost-writer for her horny escapades in Whitehouse and Playmates. On a lighter note, photographer George Richardson recalls snapping the iconic photo of Mary outside 10 Downing Street and actress Sally Faulkner ( Doctor Who, Prey, Vampyres, I’m Not Feeling Myself Tonight) is hilariously candid and insightful on her involvement in the British film industry during the sexploitation era. A highlight of the special features in this set is Mary Millington On Location, a time travel capsule which takes the viewer on a ‘then and now’ tour of significant locations in Mary’s life and career, classily narrated by Judy Matheson ( Lust For A Vampire, The Flesh & Blood Show). There’s also the option of commentaries with Sue Longhurst, David Sullivan, Willy Roe and more.

Sheridan, Simon. "The Mary Millington Movie Collection Limited Edition Blu-Ray Box-Set". Cinema Retro (Interview). Interviewed by Smith, Adrian. Come Play With Me opens this box set, and it’s a curio inasmuch as although it’s the film whose title is associated with Millington in the public mindset, thanks to Sullivan’s publicity blitzkrieg – the sex thimble barely appears in the film compared to the screen time devoted to her pulchritudinous co-stars such as Sue Longhurst, Suzy Mandel, Nicola Austine, Suzette Sangalo Bond and the striking Sonia Svenburger. It’s a sex comedy that’s neither sexy nor particularly comical, with the blame laying squarely between producer David Sullivan – who supplied the readies – and writer/director George Harrison Marks, the former king of the ‘nudie pics’, who litters the film with antiquarian music hall gags, a cheesy song’n’dance number and mugs shamelessly in the lead role defacto as Cornelius Cornworthy. It’s no Eskimo Nell. In 2008, an exhibition of the work of the late glamour photographer Fred Grierson was held in London, which included several little-seen pictures of Millington taken by Grierson at June Palmer's Strobe Studios in the early 1970s. [ citation needed]

Mary comes to Blu-ray

a b Sweet, Matthew (24 November 2000). "No sex please; we're bored". The Guardian . Retrieved 8 September 2017. NEW Ten Million Dirty Words – a brand new featurette about Harry Knights, the Nottingham-based porn writer who helped create Mary’s image. 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.

But as with everything, tastes change in British comedy, and they definitely did in the late-1970s. The fourth and final Confessions film was released in 1977, with the final in the original run of Carry On movies the year after. TV audiences were also huge at this point in time. People were tiring of traipsing out to the local ODEON to watch sex comedies, preferring to stay at home to watch The Benny Hill Show instead. In 2014, four spoken word erotic stories recorded by Millington in 1978–9 were released as a vinyl LP. [28] Birth name cited at "Millington, Mary". BFI Film & TV Database. Archived from the original on 26 January 2009.Confessions of a Pixie – an interview with Josie Harrison Marks, the daughter of Come Play With Me’s director George Harrison Marks. 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] 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 ] 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 ]

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 ] a b Prynn, Jonathan (8 September 2017). "Former 'sex comedy' cinema given new life as steakhouse". London Evening Standard . Retrieved 8 September 2017. 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] The Mary Millington Movie Collection’ Limited Edition Blu-Ray Box-Set (Screenbound Pictures) released 22 June 2020. Come Play With Me was released on 8mm by Fletcher Films and on VHS by Hokushin Audio Visual in 1979. [11]

See also

Screenbound Pictures: Come Play With Me and The Playbirds Restoration Comparison". Blu-ray.com. 1 April 2020 . Retrieved 13 October 2020. Mary on Location – Then and Now’ travelogue revisiting the main locations in Mary’s life and films. Sheridan, Simon (1999). Come Play with Me: The Life and Films of Mary Millington. FAB Press. ISBN 9780952926078. With the aggressive marketing and publicity skills of Playmates’ proprietor David Sullivan, Millington became a household name, principally through a trilogy of low-budget British films whose audience exceeded that of the ‘dirty mac brigade’ of Soho’s square mile; and it’s these films (restored in all their grubby-turned-pinsharp ‘70s glory) alongside a bountiful bevy of posthumous productions and specially-made bonus documentaries that comprise Screenbound’s gorgeous box set The Mary Millington Movie Collection, curated by Mary’s biographer Simon Sheridan. Cum Lay With Me (1977): short 8mm sex film starring Sonia Svenburger and directed by Harrison Marks.

You don't really hear the word much 'sexploitation' anymore, but it's just a by-product of 'exploitation' - films predominantly made in the 1960s and 1970s that exploited a certain element of storytelling to engage the cinemagoers' attention. At the time, British filmmakers needed to offer the public something they couldn't see on TV - and this tended to be material which wasn't allowed on the small screen - namely violence, horror, martial arts and sex. In the 1970s British films were a lot tamer than European fare. Hardcore porn movies played mainstream cinemas on the continent, whereas in the UK it was a slightly different story. Simon Sheridan is a writer, broadcaster and filmmaker, as well as being Mary Millington's biographer. He is the world's leading authority on British sexploitation cinema and has written several books on the subject, including Come Play With Me: The Life And Films Of Mary Millington, X-Rated and Keeping The British End Up. Come Play With Me: Part 3 (1982): unrelated Swiss sex film again directed by Dietrich, re-titled by Tigon and David Sullivan and promoted as a second "sequel" to the earlier film. Mary Ruth Maxted (née Quilter; [1] [2] 30 November 1945– 19 August 1979), known professionally as Mary Millington from 1974 onwards, was an English model and pornographic actress. Her appearance in the short softcore film Sex is My Business led to her meeting with magazine publisher David Sullivan, who promoted her widely as a model and featured her in the softcore comedy Come Play With Me, which ran for a record-breaking four years at the same cinema. Come Play With Me: Part 2 (1980): unrelated Swiss sex film directed by Erwin C. Dietrich, re-titled by Tigon and David Sullivan and promoted as a "sequel" to the earlier film.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] 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. McGillivray, David (2017). Doing rude things: the history of the British sex film, 1957-1981 (2nded.). Wolfbait. ISBN 978-1999744151.