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, reportedly earned $25 million.
From their offices atop the O'Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, a combination movie and stage show emporium that opened in 1969 and was called the Carnegie Hall of Sex, 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 reported 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, supporting 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.
