Background
Diana Dors was born on 23 October 1931 in Swindon, United Kingdom.
Diana Dors was born on 23 October 1931 in Swindon, United Kingdom.
She began when better parents would have kept her in school: The Shop at Sly Comer (46, George King); Holiday Camp (47, Ken Annakin); Good Time Girl (48, David MacDonald); as Charlotte in Oliver Twist (48, David Lean, who made a pass at her); Here Come the Hnggets (48, Annakin), wowing Jack Warner; Diamond City (49, MacDonald); Dance Hall (50, Charles Crichton); Lady Godiva Rides Again (51, Frank Launder); The Last Page (52, Terence Fisher); My Wife’s Lodger (52, Maurice Elvey); The Great Game (53, Elvey); Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? (53, Elvey); The Weak and the Wicked (53, J. Lee Thompson); It’s a Grand Life (54, John Blakely); As Long As They're Happy (54, Thompson); A Kid for Two Farthings (55, Carol Reed); Value for Money (55, Annakin); An Alligator Named Daisy (55, Thompson); in prison in Yield to the Night (56, Thompson), her best part; The Long Haul (57, Ken Hughes).
She got to Hollywood at last for The Unholij Wife (57, John Farrow), costarring with Rod Steiger—an immediate affair; I Married a Woman (58, Hal Kanter); but it was back to England for Tread Softly Stranger (58, Gordon Pari ); Passport to Shame (59, Alvin Rakoff). Then to America for Scent of Mystery (60, Jack Cardiff); On the Double (61, Melville Shavelson), with Danny Kaye; Kingof the Roaring Twenties (61, Joseph M. Newman); The Counterfeit Constable (64, Robert Dhery), which was made in France.
The Sandwich Man (66, Robert Hartford-Davis) was made back in England, as were Berserk (67, Jim O’Connelly); Danger Route (67, Seth Holt); Hammerhead (68, David Miller); Baby Love (69, Alistair Reid); There's a Girl in My Soup (70, Roy Boulting); Deep End (70, Erzy Skolimowski), the best film she was ever in; Han- nie Caulder (71, Burt Kennedy); The Pied Piper (62, Jacques Demy); The Amazing Mr Blunden (72, Lionel Jeffries); Nothing But the Night (72, Peter Sasdv); Theatre of Blood (73, Douglas Ilickox); From Beyond the Grave (73, Kevin Connor); Praise (74, Freddie Francis); Swedish Wildcats (74, Joseph W. Sarno); Adventures of a Taxi Driver (75, Stanley Long); “Mrs. Horne” in Adventures of a Private Eye (77, Long); Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair (79, YVilly Roe); Steaming (84, Joseph Losev).
Tall, curvaceous, with pillows of silver-blond hair, bumper-pad hips, and self-consciously naughty eves, Diana Dors cried out for some Frank Tashlin or Luis Buñuel who knew how to use her. But all she got was the Arthur Rank charm school, endless pinups in the News of the World, a succession ol disastrous, controlling men, and the British picture business of the forties and fifties. She did get to Hollywood, but it was too late. Of course, those who knew her report that she was “a bit of a prude,’’ but so was the audience in her day. She could act a little bit; enough, probably, given the right material and sympathetic collaboration. But she was too bold for British timidity, too repressively channeled into still photography and moments of everlcisting innuendo. That let us not forget the considerable part played in a forlorn career by her fatal choices and gruesome timing. Nevertheless, the Arena documentary on Dors—Swinging Dors was the cute title to a book of 3-D nudie shots she did—is a lovelv tribute to getting it all wrong.