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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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