Mitchell Brothers

Brothers James Lloyd "Jim" Mitchell (November 30, 1943, in – July 12, 2007, in Petaluma, California) and Artie Jay Mitchell (December 17, 1945, in Lodi, California – February 27, 1991, in Marin County, California) were pioneers in the pornography and striptease club business in San Francisco and other parts of California from 1969 until 1991, when Jim was convicted of killing Artie.

They opened the O'Farrell Theatre in 1969 as an adult cinema and at one time operated 11 such businesses; they produced and directed many adult films, including Behind the Green Door in 1972. They were also successful as the defendants in many obscenity cases. The Mitchells's notoriety significantly increased with Jim's fratricide; they became the subject of three books, X-Rated, Bottom Feeders, and 9½ Years Behind the Mitchell Brothers' Green Door and one movie, Rated X.

The Mitchells' father, Robert (known to all as Bob), an "Okie", was a professional gambler. He and his wife, Georgia Mae, settled in Antioch, near San Francisco, and according to the Mitchell brothers' biographers, provided a relatively stable childhood for Jim and Artie; the boys were popular and their childhood friends would become important members of the Mitchells' porn empire.

Jim, a part-time filmmaking student at San Francisco State University in the mid-1960s, aspired to become an "important" director like Francis Ford Coppola and Roman Polanski, and headed a clique of classmates with similar ambitions. While in school, he worked at the Follies, a cinema showing "nudies" (brief, plotless films featuring naked performers), and observed that each night the theater was filled with "horn dick daddies" (masturbators) who arrived simply for the onscreen nudity. He therefore perceived pornography as a potentially lucrative career opportunity for himself and Artie, who had just been discharged from the Army.

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