Chambers comedy unique to its time

Last week's death of porn pioneer Marilyn Chambers excavated a showbiz artifact so forgotten it takes an archaeologist -- or at least a microfilm reader -- to find its remains.

Most of what you see on the Strip today, from headliners to hypnotists, has deep roots. But good luck finding a dinner-theater sex comedy, with a title such as "Hanky Panky" or "Natalie Needs a Nightie."

For the run of the disco era, they were the unique province of the Union Plaza's still-surviving showroom, brought to you by a still-surviving and good-humored producer named Maynard Sloate.

And for most of 1975, the Plaza was the place to see Chambers, third-billed in "Mind with the Dirty Man."

"That was the first play we ever did," Sloate recalls. For its first three years, the downtown hotel had featured musicals such as "Funny Girl." "I decided if we could get away with doing a play it would be a hell of a lot cheaper."

The farce included a porn-star character, so Sloate thought of casting Linda Lovelace. But he ended up with Chambers -- "the only other name (in porn) I had ever heard" -- after tracking down their common link of Chuck Traynor, the husband-manager who had just traded one starlet for the other.

"I had never seen a porn movie. I figured if they're in movies, they're actors," Sloate says. It was well after the play opened when he finally caught up to Chambers' notorious "Behind the Green Door" and realized, "She didn't say a word!"

But the play booked for three months lasted nearly a year, and Chambers became the marketing focus. Small wonder in the Watergate era, when movie-theater porn was advertised alongside Las Vegas shows.

Only the rare audience member realized Chambers wore no underwear, a concession to Traynor fretting about her porn "validity."

Chambers went back to hard-core in the '80s. She seemed less to be pitied, more in the vein of today's empowered entrepreneurs such as Tera Patrick. Still, a quote in the book "The Other Hollywood" rings bitter: "I thought (porn) was going to be a stepping stone to bigger and better things. ... That never happened."

But "Mind" established a haven for a range of fading actors, from Bob Denver to Virginia Mayo. And Sloate mined a streak of comedies "which were just used for the spicy titles, that hopefully would bring people to a play in Las Vegas."

The '70s had their own recession. The Plaza comedies drew better than 3,000 people per week, "pretty much breaking even in a time when everyone was giving away shows."

And they did that on "no budget," just a few repairs. They were called "slamming door" comedies for a reason. "The slamming door was the punctuation mark," Sloate explains. "Quite often it had to be repaired."

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.