[edit] Career

Soon after this she met the pornographer John Jesnor Lindsay, and began appearing in 8 mm hardcore porn loops which sold well in Europe.[3] One of her first films was Miss Borehole in 1970.[3] Miss Bohrloch won the Golden Phallus Award at the Wet Dream Festival held in November 1970 in Amsterdam. Millington starred in around twenty short hardcore films for John Lindsay,[6] although only five (Miss Bohrloch, Oral Connection, Betrayed, Oh Nurse and Special Assignment) have so far resurfaced. She then returned to modelling for British pornographic magazines such as Knave and Men Only.[6] She also appeared in softcore short films by Russell Gay (Response, 1974), Mountain Films (Love Games, Wild Lovers) and Harrison Marks (Sex is My Business, c. 1974).

Sex is My Business was shot late on a Saturday night at a sex shop on London’s Coventry Street. The storyline concerns a powerful aphrodisiac being dropped by a customer, the potency of which renders the shop's staff and customers sex crazy. Millington, dressed in a short see-through dress, is the film's main focus of attention, playing a member of staff who drags a customer into the back room for some multi-position sex, thoughtfully turning on the shop's CCTV camera so others can watch. Sex is My Business was considered something of a lost film until a Super 8 mm film print of the film was located and privately transferred to DVD in 2008. The film subsequently made its internet debut on the 26 July 2008 at the (now defunct) site ZDD Visual Explosion, in 2010 Sex is My Business is set to be included as a special feature on the DVD re-release of Come Play With Me. .

In 1975 she met adult magazine publisher David Sullivan,[6] having been introduced to him by her Sex is My Business co-star Maureen O’Malley in February 1975. Although she was still married the pair became lovers.[6] Millington became well-known thanks to her appearances in Sullivan's porn magazines such as Whitehouse and Private.[7] In her first Whitehouse appearance Sullivan claimed that she was the bisexual nymphomaniac sister of the magazines editor Doreen Millington, and so gave Mary a new stage name.[7] She soon became the most popular model in any of Sullivans magazines.[7] She then had a small part in Sullivan's 1977 softcore sex comedy Come Play with Me, alongside Alfie Bass and Irene Handl[8] Although critically panned, the film was highly successful, running continuously for four years at one London cinema.[8] It then became one of the first British films to sell in large numbers on the new VHS format.[8] This was followed by a larger role in The Playbirds (1978), in which she was cast as a policewoman working undercover as a nude model.[8] Although her poor acting ability was evident, The Playbirds was also a commercial success.[8] Like Come Play with Me it was extensively trailed in Sullivans magazines.[8] At the height of her fame she was also working behind the counter in Sullivans sex shops, mainly in the Whitehouse shop in Norbury.[4] She also continued working as a call girl, which she had done since her early modeling days.[4] She then made a cameo appearance in Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair (1979), which was a flop,[4] and Queen of the Blues (1979). She also appeared in other sex movies such as Eskimo Nell (1975), Intimate Games (1976) and Derek Ford's What's Up Superdoc! (1978). Millington's final appearance was in the Sex Pistols film Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle directed by Julien Temple, which was released theatrically in March 1980. However, neither she nor her punk rock co-star Sid Vicious lived to see the completion of the movie.

One of Millington's most outrageous moments was being photographed topless outside 10 Downing Street. In which Millington, while posing for an innocuous picture with a policeman outside Number Ten, decided to unzip her top, exposing her breasts for the photograph, much to the surprise of those also present which included fellow Come Play With Me actress Suzy Mandel, Whitehouse photographer George Richardson (who took the picture anyway) and the policeman in question (who tried to confiscate the reel of film). According to Simon Sheridan’s biography of Millington, “For this stunt Mary was conditionally discharged and bound over to keep the peace”.[9] Millington's film Come Play With Me still stands as one of the longest-running films in British movie history, and ran continuously at the Moulin Cinema in London's West End from 1977 to 1981. In a publicity stunt for the second year anniversary of the film’s opening, both Suzy Mandel and Millington posed in lingerie on the Moulin cinema’s marquee.[10]

In 1978 she was approached to appear in a hardcore porn film called Love is Beautiful, to have been directed by Gerard Damiano. However, despite Millington and Damiano being pictured together at that year's Cannes Film Festival, the movie (meant to have been produced by David Grant’s Oppidan Films) never materialized. Potential co-stars may have included Harry Reems, Gloria Brittain, and Lisa Taylor. The same year she turned 33, and began being replaced by younger models in Sullivans magazines.[4] She began to spend more time working in her own sex shop, in which she sold illegal material.[5] The shop was raided by the police on numerous occasions, and she claimed the police threatened her and forced her to pay protection money.[5]
[edit] Last years and death

She had always been prone to neurosis and depression, which was exacerbated by her cocaine habit.[4] Her mother's death in 1976 also affected her deeply, and her behaviour became unpredictable, which led to her breaking up with Sullivan.[4] Her life had begun a downward spiral into drug use and depression following the raids on her shop. A few months prior to her death she had received a large tax bill which she was unable to pay.[5] Her kleptomania became more pronounced in the last year of her life, with her being arrested for shoplifting in June 1979, and again for stealing a necklace the day before her death.[5] Millington committed suicide at age 33, using a deliberate overdose of paracetamol at her home in Walton-on-the-Hill, Surrey.[5] Her husband found her dead in her bed on 19 August 1979.[5] She left four suicide notes which were found near her body.[11] In one of them she had written, "The police have framed me yet again. They frighten me so much. I cant face the thought of prison...The Nazi tax man has finished me as well"[5]

She was buried at the St Mary Magdalene Church, Betchetts Green Road in the village of South Holmwood, Surrey. Her grey granite tombstone is situated at the side of the churchyard and bears the surname "Maxted" – her married name. She is buried in the same grave as her mother, Joan Quilter, who died in 1976.
[edit] Legacy

A posthumous exploitation film about her life was released in London in October 1980, entitled Mary Millington's True Blue Confessions. In 1996 Channel Four television screened a tribute to her entitled Sex and Fame: The Mary Millington Story featuring an interview with David Sullivan.

Twenty years after her death, the author and film historian Simon Sheridan put Millington's life into context in his critically acclaimed biography Come Play with Me: The Life and Films of Mary Millington. Further information about her career can be found in Sheridan's follow-up book Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema, the third edition of which was published in April 2007.[12]

In 2004 Millington’s prominence was recognized by her inclusion into the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,[13] edited by Colin Matthew and Brian Harrison. Her entry was written by Richard Davenport-Hines.

2008 saw a London exhibition of the work of the late glamour photographer Fred Grierson, which included several little-seen pictures of Mary taken by Grierson at June Palmers’ Strobe Studios in the early 1970s.

In 2009 Millington was referenced in an episode of Eastenders (broadcast Thursday 18/06/09) when Aunt Sal (Anna Karen), after hearing Ronnie Mitchell (Samantha Janus) had been caught in a compromising position on the Queen Vic’s floor, greeted Ronnie with “ooh, here she is, Mary Millington herself”.

In late 2009, an 8 mm 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 another 8mm film starring Millington "Wild Lovers" was also traced and transferred from 8mm to DVD.
[edit] Biographical movie