Jim Mitchell Death
James (Jim) passed away on July 12, 2007 at the age of 63 in Petaluma, California, USA. James (Jim)'s cause of death was heart attack.
When did Jim Mitchell die?
July 12, 2007How did Jim Mitchell die? What was the cause of death?
Heart attackHow old was Jim Mitchell when died?
63Where did Jim Mitchell die? What was the location of death?
Petaluma, California, USA
Jim Mitchell Birthday and Date of Death
Jim Mitchell was born on November 30, 1943 and died on July 12, 2007. James (Jim) was 63 years old at the time of death.
Birthday: November 30, 1943
Date of Death: July 12, 2007
Age at Death: 63
Jim Mitchell - Biography
hy Jim Mitchell and his brother Artie were pioneers in the production of pornographic films and "adult entertainment" in the San Francisco Bay Area starting in the Swinging Sixties. In addition to shooting porno loops and feature films, they also founded San Francisco's O'Farrell Theater, a porno grind house they later turned into a sex entertainment emporium featuring nude dancing and sex shows. Hunter S. Thompson praised the porno palace as "The Carnegie Hall of public sex in America."The older of the two brothers, James Lloyd Mitchell was born on November 30, 1943 in Stockton, California. He and Artie were raised in Antioch, California. Their father, J.R., was a gambler, a vocation accepted by his mother, Georgia Mae. It was an ordinary upbringing in a blue-collar town, except perhaps for that fact that when the brothers were children -- they were inseparable from the beginning -- their parents would sometimes cook roadkill for dinner. It was an environment they wanted to escape.Jim went off to the-then San Francisco State College, while Artie was drafted and did a stint in the army. At State, Jim matriculated in the film program, dreaming of becoming the American Jean-Luc Godard, who had revolutionized film narrative as part of the French New Wave. Needing money, Jim became a "pin-up" photographer, which consisted of approaching girls and offering them five or ten dollars to pose topless for his camera. It first happened at San Francisco's Ocean Beach, when he walked up to a pretty, bikini-clad gal and propositioned her.He sold his photos to local porn purveyors at a profit. Soon he was directing short sex films known as "loops", as the films, many less than three minutes, would play continuously in the burgeoning peep show theaters. For each loop Jim charged up to $100.Next came "nudies," very short exhibitions of nudity and simulated (if not real) sex shot on 16mm film and shown at down-at-the-heels movie theaters in decaying neighborhoods like the Mission. These short nudies, which dispensed with the plot that drove the high-grossing movies of American auteur and smut king Russ Meyer, had men lining up around the block to see them. Because of the sexual revolution the Bay Area (and the country as a whole) was undergoing in the late 1960s, there were many good-looking California girls interested in taking part in his films, all in the name of freedom, unbridled expression and sexual liberation.Jim dropped out of S.F. State's film program in the late 1960s, offended by a professor's criticism of his student work. In 1968 film censorship had officially died (the industry Production Code was replaced by the self-policing ratings regimen of the M.P.A.A.) and the mainstream barriers against sexually explicit film began dropping as rapidly as a porno actress' bluejeans. While there was not as yet any hardcore feature-length films, the liberalization was felt in the fringes of the grindhouse circuits by the transition from soft-core forms featuring discreet nudity and then full-frontal nudity to hardcore porn loops and ten-minute shorts featuring actual intercourse, the so-called "Tijuana" stag flicks, since hardcore porn until that time time could only be seen -- outside of a gentleman's "smoker" -- in a "legitimate" theater in outposts such as that Mexican city across the border from San Diego.The films were shot on the cheap with student-caliber 16mm cameras. Jim and his associates created grindhouse nudies and hardcore cinema with the pretensions of student filmmakers, but when Artie partnered with Jim, the pretensions to art were dropped in favor of churning out product like sausages for their O'Farrell Theater, which was opened on Independence Day, 1969, located on the site of an old Pontiac automobile showroom. The San Francisco Police Department raided the theater shortly after it opened, and obscenity charges were filed against the Mitchell Brothers, but there were many left-wing lawyers ready to defend them and their First Amendment rights in late 1960s San Francisco.In the sybaritic confines of the O'Farrell Theater, the Mitchell Bros. pushed the envelope on what was acceptable fare for exhibition and were arrested for obscenity numerous times. It was a much more liberal era, and the courts generally leaned toward expanding adults' rights to view films of their own choice. Beating the raps made them well-known in California and gave them a counter-cultural allure they reveled in, as well as making them rich. By 1971 they decided to make a feature film and show it at their own theater (for the auteur Jim, a feature film also was a lo
