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Purveyor, Fine Asian Porn
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
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Jim Mitchell passed away last Thursday
I was in Vegas for X-Biz and missed this news - as one of the famed Mitchell Brothers, who were pioneers and legends that built a small empire here in the Bay Area, I thought this story was newsworthy (sorry if something was already posted):
Quote:
Porn king Jim Mitchell dead at 63
Article Launched: 07/15/2007 09:44:58 AM PDT
Jim Mitchell, an Antioch High School graduate who teamed with his brother, Artie, to build a legendary porn empire that included San Francisco's O'Farrell Theatre and cutting edge adult films - and who shot his brother dead in 1991 - died Thursday evening at his Sonoma County ranch home, family and a coroner's official said.
He was 63.
Mitchell, half of the eccentric Mitchell Brothers duo that became perhaps the nation's best-known purveyors of dirty films in their heyday of the 1970's and early '80s, lived amid the rolling hills of unincorporated Two Rock just west of Petaluma with his wife, Lisa.
Relatives said Mitchell suffered a heart attack.
"He was sitting in his chair and doing something, I think watching TV, and he just, `Ehhhh.' That was it," said Merle Lane, a relative by marriage. "His heart quit him just like that."
The Sonoma County coroner's office conducted an autopsy Friday but had not determined a cause, said Sgt. Mitch Mana. He said there were no signs of a suspicious death.
It was a quiet end to what once was a wild life of drug-fueled orgies, porn film-making and XXX shows, scores of arrests for obscenity and, in 1991, a fratricide that opened a courtroom curtain to their brash lifestyle and sent Mitchell to state prison for three years.
Before then, the brothers were credited with taking skin flickery from its dark but staid corners, giving it higher production values, humor and, mostly, more graphic sex.
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Their 1972 film, "Through the Green Door," starring porn icon Marilyn Chambers, was released in the same year as "Deep Throat," by Gerard Damiano and starring Linda Lovelace.
The two films drew crowds and launched porn into a new era, said former San Jose Mercury News reporter and editor John Hubner, author of "Bottom Feeders: From Free Love to Hard Core: The Rise and Fall of Counterculture Heroes Jim and Artie Mitchell."
"That's the two-lane highway that led to the mainstreaming of pornography. That's why they're important cultural figures," said Hubner. "When they first started, pornography was (mostly) nudists playing volleyball and men and women with bars across their eyes. . . . Jim and Artie were at the right place at the right time, which was San Francisco in the '60s."
The brothers grew up in a working class family, the sons of a card shark and a schoolteacher, "Okies from Antioch," as Hubner puts it. As kids, they often hung out together playing pool in Antioch and watching out for each other.
Jim graduated from Antioch High in 1962. According to a 1987 Contra Costa Times profile of the brothers, he became a "protest-marching, acid-dropping leftist at San Francisco State University, studying film and politics." He dropped out after riot cops chased him down the street during one demonstration.
He was two years older than Artie and would become a savvy sex industry businessman. Artie was the younger, crazier, sexually voracious brother, according to a 1992 biography, "X Rated: The Mitchell Brothers - A True Story of Sex, Money and Death," by David McCumber, a former San Francisco journalist and poker buddy of the brothers.
Their porno kingdom began modestly, selling nude photos to flesh magazines in San Francisco. They started making blue movies in the late '60's, hiring "hippie girls" on the cheap. They took the culture of free love to new bounds.
"The Summer of Love was all about, What's good?: Sex, drugs and rock and roll," Hubner said. "And what's better? More sex, more drugs, more rock and roll. Those guys really were about excess."
Their fame rose quickly, reaching cult status with "Behind the Green Door. Several other films followed. They made millions. When the AIDS epidemic struck, they made "safe sex" films, such as "Behind the Green Door, the Sequel," in 1986. The movie also featured "dwarfs, fat ladies and mythical creatures."
Their hub was an office above the gritty theater on O'Farrell and Polk streets, which they opened on the Fourth of July, 1969 in part because no other theaters would screen their movies. Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson once served as night manager. Thompson, who killed himself in 2005, once dubbed the theater the "Carnegie Hall of Public Sex."
Often, the brothers hired old buddies from Antioch to work for them.
A manager at the club declined to comment on Mitchell or his death on Friday, saying, "It just happened. We're just trying to take care of business."
In 1990, Artie Mitchell and other family members were rescued from a rip tide off Ocean Beach. Jim Mitchell used a surfboard to rescue his son, Storm. Artie was hospitalized with hypothermia.
A year later came the end of a brotherhood.
Prosecutors described the shooting - on a rainy night at Artie's home in Corte Madera - as a cold-hearted bid to control a younger brother. Jim Mitchell's lawyers claimed Artie, 45, was in an alcohol and drug-spurred tailspin and threatened to kill Jim. They painted the shooting as a desperate attempt to convince Artie to seek treatment.
Jim Mitchell was armed with a rifle, a handgun, a knife and a box of ammunition when he entered the house and fired on his brother, hitting him three times, the fatal shot in the head. When police arrested him as he walked from the home, he had a .22-caliber rifle stuffed down a pants leg and a revolver in a shoulder holster.
Mitchell kept a wide cast of friends high and low in San Francisco, and some of the city's political elite threw their support behind a lenient sentence, writing letters to the judge. But the judge, in handing Mitchell a 6-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter, likened him to Robert De Niro's crazed, driven killer in "Taxi Driver," saying: "You became Travis Bickle and as a result, Artie is dead. And despite his faults, Artie did not deserve to die."
Mitchell, who walked away from San Quentin State Prison in 1997, has since lived a quiet life, with horses on the ranch, family and friends said. Earline Lane, a cousin in Oregon, said Mitchell raised and showed horses.
"He seemed terrifically happy," said Jeannette Etheredge, owner of Tosca Cafe in North Beach, where two decades ago the brothers often partied. Etheredge, who said she had spoken with Mitchell but hadn't seen him in years, fondly recalls "a lot of good times at my bar."
"It just all happened too quickly," she said of those days. "(They) were quite a pair. I always liked Jim. He was always the sweeter, kinder (brother), a genuinely good guy. Whenever we needed anything, for a film festival or charities, he would always step up to the plate."
Mitchell was no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of the film and theater businesses, though he checked in periodically, a relative said.
Despite the cult status, Mitchell made no claim to cultural high ground. Once asked whether his porn films should be considered art, he said: "The only art in this business is my brother Art."
With his brother, he produced hundreds of films, while facing and beating more than 100 arrests on obscenity-related charges.
"He was a true pioneer in the business," said Hustler porn magnate Larry Flynt through his secretary. "He will be missed."
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RIP Jim and Artie
ADG |
07-18-2007, 11:51 PM
