Noted Clothing-Eschewer Marilyn Chambers Dies at 56

You probably knew Marilyn Chambers best as the model who appeared on an Ivory detergent box in the early 1970s, or from her starring roles in Angel of H.E.A.T. and David Cronenberg's Rabid. Or perhaps you remember her as a 2004 vice presidential candidate, running with Charles Jay on the Personal Choice Party ticket and receiving almost a thousand votes.

I'm kidding, of course. You remember Marilyn Chambers as a porn star, titillating millions in such films as Behind the Green Door and Insatiable. She passed away over the weekend, in California, 10 days before her 57th birthday.

Chambers' career began wholesomely, with the Ivory gig and some other modeling jobs, as well as a few small-ish roles in movies, including the 1970 Barbra Streisand/George Segal comedy The Owl and the Pussycat, which sounds like porn but isn't. But it was gettin' naked and doin' it that made her a star, and though she found some mainstream work later on, it never approached the success she had in the porn biz. And besides, you might not consider Cronenberg's Rabid -- in which Chambers gets an emergency skin graft that mutates into a phallic stinger under her arm that turns people into zombies -- to be very "mainstream" anyway.

Her most recent work was in a yet-to-be-released indie film called Solitaire. She also did voice work for a spoof called Porndogs, joining several other legendary adult-film stars in providing voices for the animals who make up the bulk of the cast.