Respectable

Maxted Headroom

Respectable - The Mary Millington Story
UK 2016 Directed by Simon Sheridan
Odeon Films DVD Region 2

When I read on Twitter that Simon Sheridan, the writer responsible for the excellent book about Mary Maxted (aka Mary Millington), Come Play With Me - The Life And Films Of Mary Millington (reviewed by me here) had written, produced and directed a new documentary film about her, I was expecting something like a more seductive, pop culture approach to the lady’s life which would be a kind of abridged version of the book... but in no way a substitute for it. As it turns out, Respectable - The Mary Millington Story is both less and more informative than the tome in question. Which is a bit of a bonus, as far as I’m concerned.

The film starts off with the sound of film... proper film, none of that digital rubbish... running through a projector and, as you can hear the stock threading through on the soundtrack, the screen is dark and we hear the first of many recorded sound bites from Mary herself. We then get a quick rundown of the trajectory of her tragic life as a kind of précis of the film to come, in quick inserts from the various ‘talking head’ interviews which, as always in a film of this nature, fill up the majority of the running time. Which is what you would expect when the writer has obviously gone to the trouble of getting so many interviews with people who either knew her, encountered her or could bear expert witness due to their being in a similar profession (and it was really great seeing Linzi Drew again, to be honest). Anything else and the audience would feel somewhat short changed, to be sure.

Now, if you have read the aforementioned book on Mary’s shenanigans then you might feel that her early life story is somewhat glossed over here, perhaps. What you have to remember though is that you can’t throw all that detail in about a person from a book and expect the documentary, which is not that much shy of two hours anyway, to be either interesting or pacey. I think certain things are said which hit the key points and, if not all the facts and issues which may have gone into the lady’s psychological make up are highlighted here, they are emphasised enough that one can glean the main issues which led to certain behaviour later on in her life, perhaps. Either way, it doesn’t matter because anyone interested in reading more about the subject matter can purchase the aforementioned book and find out for themselves.

That being said, there is also a lot of stuff in this movie which I hadn’t actually heard before, to be honest and, unless I was sleep reading before, wasn’t included in the volume in question. It’s also quite possible that some of the stories and anecdotes which come to light here were either not available or actually not allowed to be printed at the time that the book was first published for various reasons. The first printing was released, after all, about 17 years ago. So, for example, I never realised... or at least it never hit home in my brain before... that Mary’s notorious short porn film Miss Borloch was actually one of the prize winners of what was the first ever porn film awards, The Wet Dreams Festival, at Amsterdam in 1970. Everybody who went to the event had to go naked and the judges included famous feminist writer Germain Greer in their number. Mary Millington was an even bigger star in Europe, it seems, than she was initially as an illegal, ‘under the counter’ star in the United Kingdom, at the time.

Another story new to me involved her, sometimes official, prostitution antics (for want of a better word), where it is alleged that Coleman’s Mustard once hired Mary to sleep with the head of Tesco so they could get their brand of product into the supermarket chain. Which is a bit of an eye opener, if this is true.

Other stories, like a more softened down version of her encounter with prime minister Harold Wilson are also present (if you want more details, buy the book) and her meteoric downfall involving the tax men, a corrupt police force (it would seem... who Mary paid protection money to but still managed to have them constantly raiding her sex shops), her increasing but completely unnecessary kleptomania and various other factors which culminated in her early suicide are all thrown into the mix. There’s also some things that don’t, necessarily, add up when it comes to taking a closer look at that suicide. It’s often noted that, in light of another brush with the law where they threatened her with a prison sentence, she retired to her room without her husband (who slept elsewhere in the house that night and who she was in the process of divorcing), wrote some goodbye notes and then ended her life by taking a large amount of pills washed down with vodka. And that’s indeed the story that the autopsy confirms. However, there is a big question mark in the involvement of certain other people, or a specific person, which is quite pointed in terms of the remembrances of some of the guests on this documentary and it’s interesting that several of them mention that Mary would never drink alcohol. Just being around the smell of beer made her feel sick. So... yeah... interesting stuff, I would say.

The way the film itself is shot and presented is very pacey and the whole thing never flags as the director balances the various interview footage of people such as members of Mary’s friend and family (which are heartbreaking in some cases), various lovers and major celebrities such as François Pascal and actor Dudley Sutton (who worked with her in the film The Playbirds - reviewed here) with excerpts from Mary’s films, recordings of Mary herself and the occasional bit of documentary footage of London in the 1970s... which I personally found most nostalgic since I was a child model at the time, working in my school holidays in various locations around London. Sheridan also adds the nice touch of coming back to new footage of the source of some of the on screen audio and visual excerpts... so he might precede an excerpt of a film with a shot of a projector showing it or go into a sound bite of Mary while showing a tape recorder playing the sample. He doesn’t do this a lot but he does it enough to make an impression and I kinda liked this way of handling it, all of which adds to an interesting watch.

Above all, from the various testimonials caught here, I got the impression that Mary Millington was much more about living a life of moral justice, far above the issues of the legality or illegality of what she was doing at any given time. So, for instance, she would stock illegal, ‘under the counter’ items in her sex shops because she believed it was the right thing to do and shouldn’t be against the law at all. There’s a lovely line from one of the interviewees in the film which, for me, summed up Mary’s brand of enlightened naivety very smartly. It's mentioned that she was a lady who carried "the spirit of the 1960s Summer of Love well into the seventies with her." I kinda like that idea and it’s maybe something we should all think about doing more of, methinks.

So there you have it. Respectable - The Mary Millington Story is a truly great little documentary that’s written, produced and directed by someone who has had an interest in Mary’s life for a very long time and can be considered something of an expert in this field, I suspect. In other words, a truly informative, sometimes thought provoking but always entertaining look at a tragic but very influential, in some ways, lady who also happened to be Great Britain’s first, bona fide porn star. The disc comes with the usual amount of interesting extras that are the normal expectation of an Odeon DVD release of one of Mary Millington’s films and this one gets a big recommendation from me. And if you do take a look at this movie and like it... then you can always go buy the book, too.

Come Play With Me: The Life and Films of Mary Millington

Bird Of Play

Come Play With Me: The Life and Films of Mary Millington
by Simon Sheridan
Fab Press 
ISBN: 978-0952926078 

You know... I’m not exactly familiar with the work of model, porn star, sex entrepeuner, prostitute and Playbirds mascot Mary Millington... other than from her almost hushed but legendary stories from around the time I was growing up in the 1970s. I’ve never seen any of her movies, asides from a few minutes of some of her ‘early’ artistic (aka hardcore) work which can be found randomly streamed on sites of a dubious but easy nature... although I acquired two of her commercial features earlier in the year to watch at some point for a review on this site. I did remember two things though, which brought me to the point of considering reading this book.

One was the amount of British Sex movie posters I’d seen her featured in or mentioned on when I was a young lad of about 10 years of age. Posters for a lot of British sexploitation films such as Come Play With Me and The Playbirds, along with tonnes of non-Millington movies (usually sex comedies) were regular fixtures outside my local cinema as I used to admire the prominently painted assets of a number of talented young ladies on my journeys to and from various destinations. Also, there were many raunchy and related adverts pushing the same movies in the pages of Film Review magazine (anyone remember that?) and Time Out. Thus my awareness of the fairer sex, albeit a relatively skewed view, grew in leaps and bounds as the memories of the imagery haunted me in my sleep, taking up residence in my libido next to the likes of Caroline Munro, Valerie Perrine and Carrie Fisher.

The other thing which made me want to read up on her was the memory of a TV Documentary about her shown maybe 15 or more years ago, in which her general naivete and her fondness for checking up how much money she’d made in her sex shop at the end of the day... “Cashing up is better than sex.”... made an impression on me. So I was pretty happy when I found a copy of Simon Sheridan’s cool book, Come Play With Me: The Life and Films of Mary Millington, on sale at the Camden Film Fair earlier in the year with a cracking £5 price tag. This was money well spent.

As is expected, the book tells a tale of tragedy and naivete about a young lady who loved her mother, loved her lifestyle and who ultimately committed suicide at the age of 33 due to threats from both the police and the Inland Revenue. It also tells the story of how, through her love of sex and the free giving of it to friends and strangers at the drop of a hat, she became a staunch supporter, as should we all, of free speech and anti-censorship. This in an era of British history where we really did need to have both eyes open at the ludicrous and daily liberties taken by those in some small position of power from our personal rights and freedoms. Of course, as I write this, the irony that this country has flip flopped back again from a brief period of enlightenment to an even more draconian, intrusive, illogical and ultimately sinister brand of abusive censorship is not lost on me.

Sheridan portrays Mary, for the most part, as someone who was an innocent, just caught up in life. He touches on the fact that some of her business partners could perhaps be seen as exploitative of her talent and enthusiasm in the sexual arena but it also points out that she was always absolutely aware of just what it was she was getting into, embracing it fully and certainly, it seems, she never really let herself be exploited in any way... other than in the ways she most wanted to be. Her accumulation of wealth and the acquaintances she made are quite eye opening and, although a severe dent is put in her character towards the end of the book when a trait akin to a compulsive form of kleptomania is highlighted... ultimately she seems to have been a joyous and engaging young lady who cared very much about people and animals and who, perhaps, did not best express herself when she needed help in certain areas of her life... those which took her to her untimely death in 1979.

The book is both frank and playfully cautious in equal measure. For example, Mary’s sexual encounters with prime minister Harold Wilson, actress Diana Dors and several other celebrities are included in the pages of the book. Other people who played a part in her life have been left out or alluded to without actually being named and I’m guessing the potential publication of certain information in the book which is passed over or referred to more enigmatically... such as a ‘leading comedy personality’ who used to visit Mary for sex in disguise so he wouldn’t be recognised... might still be damaging or, at the very least, seen as defamatory, if they were revealed at the time of the publication of this book. Sometimes, if you piece certain information together from other parts of the book, you can kind of guess who some of these ‘friends’ of Mary’s were but, other times, it’s a little more difficult.

The book is really nicely written and it’s an excellent portrayal of Mary’s life. It also has a second, very large section of reviews discussing all of Mary’s non-hardcore feature film appearances. This section has some fascinating anecdotes and stories from the productions of these films, some of which were shot by prominent directors at the time (one of the main Bond film directors springs to mind in this context). It also touches upon films made after her death and which traded on her name and reputation. Come Play With Me was and still is, I believe, Britain’s longest running film showing at the cinema... running non-stop for years and making a tidy profit in the process. So you can understand why some of Mary’s past business partners may have wanted to capitalise on that after her death but, of course, this really is the part of the book where one can justifiably say that Millington, after her tragic suicide, really was being exploited.

This book was an absolute joy to read. Very sad, obviously, but ultimately a celebration of the life of its subject and, from what I can gather, a much more factually correct account than the TV documentary I mentioned above and certain other ‘biopic’ type films which were even farther from the truth. A really great read and a big thumbs up to the writer and to Fab Press for putting this one out. Not just thumbs up... but possibly other parts of the anatomy up too, as it’s fully illustrated throughout with shots of Mary and her colleagues. Certainly a recommended read if you want to find out the fascinating things which were happening in the early 1970s porn trade and how the participants in these things got their start. Really happy I stumbled across this one in my travels and, if you have any interest in the subject, it’s definitely one to pick up while it’s still out there, I would say.