Thoroughly Sexy Millie

Mary profiled in Photoplay, July 1978, again thanks to the original uploader for these scans.

Ads and Cinema Listings

Adverts and Cinema Listings for several of Mary’s films, thanks to the original uploader for allowing me to use these.

Mary Millington remembered at 68

 

This month marks what would have been Mary Millington’s 68th birthday. “It is hard to believe so many years have passed since she died” remarked one long-time fan of hers to me recently “still one of the horniest ladies ever in my opinion”. 68 years on from her birth though, I suspect we’re now nearing a time when we have to acknowledge that even if she had been left alone by the pious fools, the bent coppers and the bad time taxmen, gotten to live out her life naturally, and the events of the 19th of August 1979 and that lethal overdose of anafranil, paracetamol and alcohol never happened, she still might no longer be around now, but we’ll never know the answer to that one.





“No more looking back, No more living in the past, Yesterday’s gone and that’s a fact” claims Ray Davies in the 1975 Kinks song ‘No More Looking Back’, the penultimate track from an album entitled – appropriately enough - “Schoolboys in Disgrace”. Too true Ray, but elsewhere in that song Davies’ key themes of love, loss and nostalgia for better times conspire to form a contrary, and more persuasive argument. One suggesting that the past isn’t ever that easy to escape from or forget, since there are certain people from it destined to live on in the imagination of others, walking along beside them in their heads. I know that for many Mary Millington is such a person. So to mark the occasion I offer up an honorary spin of the tormented yet beautiful ‘No More Looking Back’, dedicated to all those now fully grown up schoolboys in disgrace who still carry her around in their heads, and of course to Our Lady of Dorking herself, who sadly belongs to yesterday.



 

A Piece of History

Mary’s 2004 entry into the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography can now be read online at http://www.oxforddnb.com/templates/article.jsp?articleid=61717&back=

While the Richard Davenport-Hines penned entry doesn’t add anything new to the Millington story his is a solid and sympathetic summarisation of her all too short life and times.

Keeping It Downstairs

I don’t know if I’m the first to pick up on this but the full frame 4:3 version of Keep it up Downstairs included as an extra on the DVD release does contain more nudity in the under the table sex table scene than the main 1:66:1 aspect version on the DVD, due to the fact that the 4:3 version favours the top and bottom of the screen whilst the 1:66:1 versions favours the left and right and thus crops off some of Mary’s ‘downstairs’. As good a reason as any why British sex comedies should be released in both 4:3 and 1:66:1 versions!!

4:3 full frame

1:66:1 version

4:3 full frame

1:66:1 version

4:3 full frame

1:66:1 version

4:3 full frame

1:66:1 version

4:3 full frame

1:66:1 version

4:3 full frame

1:66:1 version

Whose Bottom Am I?

Mary bottom doubling for Francoise Pascal in this colour still from Keep it Up Downstairs.

Whats Up Superdoc – Yugoslavian release still

still from 'whats up superdoc'

Sex and Fame: The Mary Millington Story

The 1996 Channel 4 documentary

1980 newspaper Ad

1980 newspaper Ad for a double-bill of Caligula’s Hot Nights and a re-titled Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair, scan courtesy of Steve Cannell.

Keep It Up Downstairs trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz8m6BTkFR4

Keep It Up Downstairs in May

A quick reminder that Keep It Up Downstairs gets its long-awaited DVD release in May.

Publicity blurb: “A bawdy British period romp in the classic Seventies "sex comedy" mould, Keep It Up Downstairs lampoons classic television series Upstairs Downstairs and sees a host of stars shedding their Edwardian costumes to save the family silver - including Diana Dors, sex superstar Mary Millington, Willie Rushton, Françoise Pascal, Aimi Macdonald and erstwhile Artful Dodger, Jack Wild. Keep It Up Downstairs is featured here in a brand-new transfer from original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio. The year is 1904; the setting is Cockshute Towers, one of England's stateliest homes. When the household is threatened with bankruptcy, both the masters and the servants are prepared to co-operate in trying to find some cash - after all, most of them are enjoying liaisons of one kind or another among themselves, and none have any desire to give up their rewarding way of life...
SPECIAL FEATURES: [] Full Frame 4:3, as-filmed version of main feature [] music-only audio track [] original theatrical trailer [] image gallery [] Press book PDF”

Youtube tribute video

A youtube tribute video by user6971it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fINhTmplLRA

 

Cinema Xciter

Promoting Erotic Inferno in the pages of Cinema X (vol 7 no 6) credit to ‘beutelwolf’ for this scan.

Ad cap from the C4 documentary

Advert cap from the original broadcast of the C4 documentary.