By Jon Thurber, Times Staff Writer
July 16, 2007
Jim Mitchell, who developed a multimillion-dollar adult film empire with
his
younger brother, Artie, but was later convicted of killing him, has died.
He
was 63.
Mitchell died Thursday night at his ranch near Petaluma, Calif. The cause
of
death was not immediately known, but foul play was not suspected, a
spokesman for the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department said. An autopsy was
conducted Friday, but the results were not made available.
The dramatic rise and flesh-and-blood fall of the Mitchell brothers has
been
chronicled in books, the Showtime movie "Rated X" and in countless
newspaper
and magazine articles.
In the 1960s and '70s, they produced a string of adult film hits,
including
"Resurrection of Eve" and "Sodom and Gomorrah: The Last 7 Days."
But their most famous and financially successful film was "Behind the
Green
Door," which starred Marilyn Chambers, who previously had worked as a
model
for Ivory soap ads. That movie, which cost about $60,000 to make,
re****tedly
earned $25 million.
From their offices atop the O'Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, a
combination movie and stage show em****ium that opened in 1969 and was
called
the Carnegie Hall of ***, the brothers built an empire that at one time
included 11 movie theaters, including two in Southern California, as well
as
movie and video productions, The Times re****ted in 1991.
Their success brought instant recognition from the police, who constantly
raided their theaters on various morals charges. The brothers were no
strangers to arrest and, at the height of their career, were said to be
spending hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on legal expenses,
according to The Times.
One of their longest legal disputes was a 10-year battle with the city of
Santa Ana over one of their theaters.
In San Francisco, the brothers displayed a keen knack for seeming more
naughty than nasty. They played the media well, sup****ting causes such as
saving the whales and the rain forests, and once demanded that Geraldo
Rivera donate $15,000 to AIDS-related charities before they allowed him to
film their strip shows for television.
They attracted a coterie of interesting friends, including Black Panther
leader Huey P. Newton; an up-and-coming writer named Hunter S. Thompson,
who
worked for them briefly as the night manager of the O'Farrell; and
counterculture cartoonist Robert Crumb.
Others in the city were not pleased by their business endeavors and tried
to
close them down. One of them was Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), then a
member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and later the city's
mayor.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, their response to her campaign
was
to put her private phone number on the O'Farrell's marquee with the
message:
"For a Good Time, Call."
The brothers' personal lives were as complicated and expensive as their
business dealings.
Seemingly inseparable, both were married and divorced multiple times and
fathered numerous children.
Jim was relatively quiet and contained while Artie was known as the party
guy. But at 45, he was caught in a spiral of drug and alcohol abuse that
prosecutors later said stimulated increasingly erratic behavior that
disrupted the business.
Their empire came cra****ng down on Feb. 27, 1991, when Jim Mitchell, armed
with a pistol and a rifle, went to his brother's home in the Marin County
community of Corte Madera and shot him to death.
Prosecutors said the killing was a coldblooded act sparked by a dispute
between the brothers over the future of the business.
Mitchell claimed that the shooting was an accident that happened when he
was
trying to persuade his brother to seek treatment for drug and alcohol
addiction.
Convicted of voluntary manslaughter, Mitchell was sentenced to six years
at
San Quentin State Prison but served less than three years. After his
release
in 1997, he lived quietly, raising horses at his ranch near Petaluma.
Several of his brother's children filed wrongful-death suits against him
that eventually were settled out of court.
"Rated X," the film based on their lives, appeared on Showtime in 2000.
Directed by Emilio Estevez, it starred Estevez as Jim and his brother
Charlie Sheen as Artie.
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