The early 50s is remembered as an era smeared with boredom, with Billy Cotton on the wireless and rationed gruel for dinner. In such a country, the beauty and easy charm of Diana Dors must have seemed like an insult to many people.
Dors is frequently referenced as Britain's "answer" to Marilyn Monroe, but a brace of Dors's films – My Wife's Lodger (1952) and Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? from 1953 – set for DVD release by the BFI – show a vibrant and underrated star with a decidedly English sass. Aside from her role as a convicted murderer in Yield to the Night, it is usually assumed that her acting talent was wasted on fripperies, yet she also had hefty roles in another prison drama, The Weak and the Wicked (1954), and Carol Reed's A Kid for Two Farthings (1955), set around Petticoat Lane. "Putting glamour and serious acting into separate compartments," she said at the time, "makes me sick."
Nevertheless, if she became typecast as the knowing innocent or the sexual predator, she was unbothered, and her saucy roles were unique in British 50s cinema. As model Dolores August in Lady Godiva Rides Again, she claims to have met a pair of suitors at the Festival of Britain – "I picked them up in the Dome of Discovery" – while her startling cameo as an actress in 1956's As Long As They're Happy leads Jack Buchanan to "capture her for posterity". "You leave my posterity out of this," she winks back. My Wife's Lodger has a script riddled with puns so weak you'd think jokes were being rationed ("Have you been creating a career for yourself in Korea?", "No, I was committing suicide in Suez"). An odd mix of Three Stooges slapstick and prewar music hall, it is little more than an intriguing curio.
The main reason for her appearances in such minor movies (she was making an average of four a year in the 50s) was her husband and agent Dennis Hamilton. He had failed as an actor and was working as a door-to-door salesman when he spotted his golden ticket and wowed her with huge bouquets of flowers. Off camera, he initiated Dors into the world of sex parties and two-way mirrors; he also stunted her career like an ungodly mix of Colonel Tom Parker and Simon Cowell by guiding her away from serious roles, roaring "to hell with all that acting rubbish!" Light entertainment was where the money was.
Meanwhile, in 1953, Marilyn Monroe was shooting the film that made her an international phenomenon, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. From that point onwards Dors – who might have been a star in her own right – was walking in Monroe's shadow. A brief stint in Hollywood later in the decade was mainly memorable for Dennis Hamilton losing his cool and kicking a photographer senseless at a housewarming party. Dors was nicknamed Marilyn Bovril and given a couple of tired, obvious roles before returning home.
The imminent DVD captures her in fresher times, when stardom was still a possibility. The French poster for Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? was topped by the legend "la ravissante Diana Dors", and in Italy the rest of the cast weren't even mentioned – the poster featured Diana alone, perched on a cloud in a slinky blue gown.
In some ways Dors's talent was underdeveloped – her real life lines were funnier and saucier than most she was given by scriptwriters. In 1964, she sat on a Juke Box Jury panel next to Andrew Oldham, the manager of the Rolling Stones, who'd had a boyhood crush on her. As he nervously picked up a glass of water it spilt all over Diana's lap – "My my," she purred off mike, "you couldn't wait." You can't imagine Marilyn coming up with a line like that. Diana Dors was knowing, effortless, mischief personified. Leaning on a bar in My Wife's Lodger, she sighs "I don't know what to drink – I'm so hot." "Lady", says the wag next to her, "you said it."
Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary and My Wife's Lodger are released together on 21 June in a dual format edition (DVD & Blu-ray).