Career
Prime Minister Winston Churchill suggested that Jane was "Britain"s secret weapon". Born Chrystabel Jane Drewry in Eastleigh, Hampshire on 11 April 1913, Chrystabel Leighton-Porter had an older twin, Sylvia, and was the youngest of eleven children of whom three died young. The Daily Mirror cartoonist Norman Pett had been drawing a weekly cartoon since 1932 which he called Jane"s Journal — The Diary of A Bright Young Thing.
In 1944, when Jane first appeared nude in the cartoon, she was credited with "inspiring" the 36th Division to advance six miles into Burma.
In 1948, Pett"s assistant Michael Hubbard took over the Jane cartoons. Chrystabel Leighton-Porter began a music hall striptease-act based on the Jane character which toured army bases around the country.
lieutenant was released on Digital Video Disc in April 2008. "Jane" received many letters from servicemen proposing marriage (62 in just one week) and Chrystabel was careful to hide the fact that she had already secretly married Arthur Leighton-Porter, a Royal Air Force pilot, before the outbreak of the war.
Hubbard continued to develop the cartoons" storyline until 1959, when he gave Jane a happy marriage and ended the series.
In the 1980s a British Broadcasting Corporation television serial was made of "Jane" and starred Glynis Barber. Throughout her later years, Chrystabel Leighton-Porter made regular appearances at wartime reunions. In 1993, the Imperial War Museum exhibition Forces Sweethearts included her 1940"s frilly knickers.
Chrystabel died on 6 December 2000 aged 87.
Arthur died in January 2002.