Adult Film Star Marilyn Chambers Dies

Marilyn Chambers was found dead in her Los Angeles home yesterday, but investigators do not suspect foul play.

From CNN:

Chambers began her career in 1970 as a model for Ivory Snow soap, and starred two years later in the porn classic “Behind the Green Door.”

“She was a really nice girl,” said actor Ron Jeremy, who co-starred with Chambers in adult films starting in the 1970s.

Chambers’ death was a “total shock,” Jeremy said, because they had been scheduled to sign a contract Monday to perform together in an off-Broadway “tongue-in-cheek” re-enactment of the porn classic “Deep Throat.”

“What’s strange is that she was at a stage where she was totally happy and totally content with her life,” Jeremy said. “Her life was falling together, and she was doing really well.”

A family member found Chambers, 56, in the mobile home where she lived in the Canyon Country area home and called police Sunday evening, sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitemore said.

The death appeared to be from natural causes, although toxicology tests have not been completed, Whitemore said.

“Deep Throat” Dead at 95

W. Mark Felt, also known as Deep Throat,  who helped bring down President Richard Nixon by resisting the Watergate cover-up, died today at the age of 95.

From the New York Times:

His death was confirmed by Rob Jones, his grandson.

In 2005, Mr. Felt revealed that he was the one who had secretly supplied Bob Woodward of The Washington Post with crucial leads in the Watergate affair in the early 1970s. His decision to unmask himself, in an article in Vanity Fair, ended a guessing game that had gone on for more than 30 years.

The disclosure even surprised Mr. Woodward and his partner on the Watergate story, Carl Bernstein. They had kept their promise not to reveal his identity until after his death. Indeed, Mr. Woodward was so scrupulous about shielding Mr. Felt that he did not introduce him to Mr. Bernstein until this year, 36 years after they cracked the scandal. The three met for two hours one afternoon last month in Santa Rosa, where Mr. Felt had retired. The reporters likened it to a family reunion.

Mr. Felt played a dual role in the fall of Nixon. As a secret informant, he kept the story alive in the press. As associate director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he fought the president’s efforts to obstruct the F.B.I.’s investigation of the Watergate break-in.

Without Mr. Felt, there might not have been a Watergate — shorthand for the revealed abuses of presidential powers in the Nixon White House, including illegal wiretapping, burglaries and money laundering. Americans might never have seen a president as a criminal conspirator, or reporters as cultural heroes, or anonymous sources like Mr. Felt as a necessary if undesired tool in the pursuit of truth.

Like Nixon, Mr. Felt authorized illegal break-ins in the name of national security and then received the absolution of a presidential pardon. Their lives were intertwined in ways only they and a few others knew.

Nixon cursed his name when he learned early on that Mr. Felt was providing aid to the enemy in the wars of Watergate. The conversation was recorded in the Oval Office and later made public.