Respectable - The Mary Millington Story [DVD]

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A real labour of love for writer/producer and director Simon Sheridan who had previously written both Come Play with Me: The Life and Films of Mary Millington and Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema, key texts concerning the British sexploitation industry of the 1970s and its biggest star, Mary Millington. 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] Released to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Mary Millington's death, this special edition Blu-ray box set (individually numbered and limited to 3,000 units) features Mary's most glamorous film roles, with new, stunning 2K restorations, including:

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. The wonderful Irene Handl plays the matriarch of the establishment and there's a host of other very well-loved comedy names in attendance, such as Tommy Godfrey, Alfie Bass, Bob Todd, Henry McGee and Rita Webb. And the young actresses, like Mary Millington, are all dressed in nurses' outfits (naturally) and cavort with the old-timers. It's quite a spectacle! 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. A feature-length documentary chronicling Millington's life, entitled Respectable – The Mary Millington Story, [31] [32] [33] was partly shot and produced at Pinewood Studios in 2015.Firstly, I must tell you, compiling this new Mary Millington collection of films on Blu-ray has been my dream job! I've curated the whole box-set with the fantastic team at Screenbound Pictures. I've been asking them to remaster Mary's movies for years, and now it's happened. I don't care if anybody gets sniffy about Mary's films, because they're actually hugely culturally significant. These movies kept the British movie industry going through some pretty dark times - I absolutely believe they deserve to be restored, so I'm thrilled to bits about it. They look better now than ever. 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. Something wrong? Let us know! Respectable: The Mary Millington Story streaming: where to watch online? I've been fascinated by Mary Millington's life and career since I was a child in the 1970s. I always recall seeing her image on cinema posters when I was very young and wondering who this beautiful blonde woman was. Even at a formative age I knew she was an 'adult actress', but couldn't quite understand how TV favourites like Diana Dors and Irene Handl were co-starring with her in naughty big-screen comedies. 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]

Sheridan, Simon (2011). Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema (fourthed.). Titan Publishing. ISBN 9780857682796. 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. Upton, Julian (2004). Fallen stars: tragic lives and lost careers. Headpress/Critical Vision. ISBN 9781900486385. 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] 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.If you are in Australia or New Zealand (DVD Region 4), note that almost all DVDs distributed in the UK by the BBC and 2entertain are encoded for both Region 2 and Region 4. The UK and Australasia are in the same Blu-ray region (B). However, in her later years, she faced depression and pressure from frequent police raids on her sex shop. After a downward spiral of drug addiction, shoplifting and debt, she died at home of an overdose of medications and vodka when she was 33 years-old. Sheridan, Simon (1999). Come Play with Me: The Life and Films of Mary Millington. FAB Press. ISBN 9780952926078. In 2014, four spoken word erotic stories recorded by Millington in 1978–9 were released as a vinyl LP. [28] Of course, Mary was only one of many involved in the 'sexploitation' sex comedies of the 1970s - perhaps the most culturally important, but still one of many. And there are plenty of other great, or not-so-great but similarly important, films in the genre too, which I'd love to celebrate in future. So many! I have plans for something very, very special next year, but you'll just have to wait for now. It's going to be the project I have always wanted to do. Maybe then I can retire from the world of 1970s' sex comedies forever!

I was born respectable, but I soon decided I wasn’t going to let that spoil my life.” – Mary Millington 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! Weekend Box Office Results: Five Nights at Freddy’s Scores Monster Opening Link to Weekend Box Office Results: Five Nights at Freddy’s Scores Monster Opening Keep It Up, Sue! In Conversation with Sue Longhurst. Mary Millington’s co-star Sue Longhurst talks about her career in saucy British sex comedies and recalls the making of Come Play with Me. Sheridan, Simon (30 November 2015). "Teaser Trailer for 'Respectable: The Mary Millington Story' ". Simon Sheridan . Retrieved 3 April 2016.Extras: Audio Commentary. Sam Dunn from the BFI discusses the making of Respectable with its writer/director/producer, Simon Sheridan.