Diana Dors (born Diana Mary Fluck; 23 October 1931 – 4 May 1984) was an English actress and singer.
Dors came to public notice as a blonde bombshell, much in the style of Americans Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, and Mamie Van Doren. Dors was promoted by her first husband, Dennis Hamilton, mostly in sex film-comedies and risqué modelling. After it was revealed that Hamilton had been defrauding her, she continued to play up to her established image, and she made tabloid headlines with the parties reportedly held at her house. Later, she showed talent as a performer on TV, in recordings, and in cabaret, and gained new public popularity as a regular chat-show guest. She also gave well-regarded film performances at different points in her career.
According to film critic David Thomson, "Dors represented that period between the end of the war and the coming of Lady Chatterley in paperback, a time when sexuality was naughty, repressed, and fit to burst."
Early life
Diana Mary Fluck was born in Swindon, Wiltshire, on 23 October 1931 at the Haven Nursing Home. Her mother, (Winifred Maud) Mary, née Payne, was married to Albert Edward Sidney Fluck, a railway clerk, but she had been having an affair with another man, and when she announced she was pregnant with Diana, she admitted she had no idea if the other man or her husband was the father.
Diana was educated at a small, private school, Selwood House, on Bath Road, Swindon, from which she was eventually expelled. Diana would repeatedly talk and otherwise misbehave during French lessons, being given by an elderly Czech Jewish refugee, who admonished her, "Pay attention. After the war, you will be able to go on holiday to France and speak with the locals." She replied, "Who wants to go to silly old France anyway?" At this point, he threw a stick of chalk at her. She caught the chalk and threw it back at him, hitting him in the face, for which she was summarily expelled.
During the war, Diana dated a boy named Desmond Morris from the Boys' High School, also on Bath Road, Swindon. Morris, who was from one of the town's wealthier, more prominent families, used to take her aboard his rowing boat on the lake in his family's garden. The garden and lake later comprised Queen's Park in Swindon. In the late 1960s, Morris (a zoologist) became famous as the author of The Naked Ape and presenter of the TV series adapted from the book.
From the age of eight, her heroines became Hollywood actresses Veronica Lake, Lana Turner, and Jean Harlow, and she enjoyed going to the cinema to watch them.
Towards the end of the war, Dors entered a beauty contest to find a pin-up girl for Soldier Magazine; she came third. This led her to work as a model in art classes, and she began to appear in such local theatre productions as A Weekend in Paris and Death Takes a Holiday.
Early career
LAMDA
Having excelled in her elocution studies, after lying about her age, at 14 she was offered a place to study at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), becoming the college's youngest student, starting in January 1946.
She lodged at the Earl's Court YWCA, and supplemented her £2-per-week allowance, most of which was spent on her lodgings, by posing for the London Camera Club for one guinea (equivalent to £51 in 2024) an hour. Signed to the Gordon Harbord Agency in her first term, she won a bronze medal, awarded by Peter Ustinov, and in her second won a silver with honours.
First films
Just prior to LAMDA, Dors had unsuccessfully auditioned for the part of Kanchi in Black Narcissus that was played by Jean Simmons. She acted in public theatre pieces for LAMDA productions, one of which was seen by casting director Eric L'Epine Smith. He suggested Dors for what became the actor's screen debut in the noir film The Shop at Sly Corner (1947). Dors was cast in a walk-on role that developed into a speaking part. Her pay rate was £8 per day for three days.
During the signing of contracts, in agreement with her father, she changed her contractual surname to Dors, the maiden name of her maternal grandmother; this was at the suggestion of her mother Mary. Dors later commented on her name:
They asked me to change my name. I suppose they were afraid that if my real name Diana Fluck was in lights and one of the lights blew ...
Returning to LAMDA two weeks later, she was asked by her agent to audition for Holiday Camp (1947) by dancing a jitterbug with young actor John Blythe. Gainsborough Studios gave her the part at a rate of £10 per day for four days.
Dors's third film was Dancing with Crime (1947), shot at Twickenham Studios opposite Richard Attenborough during the coldest winter for nearly 50 years, for which she was paid £10 per day for 15 days.
Following her return to LAMDA, she graduated in spring 1947 by winning the London Films Cup, awarded to LAMDA by Sir Alexander Korda for the "girl most likely to succeed in films." Greta Gynt presented the award to her at a ceremony. Dors timed her return to Swindon to visit her parents with the local release of The Shop at Sly Corner.
Rank Organisation
Charm School
At the age of 15, Dors signed a contract with the Rank Organisation, and joined J. Arthur Rank's "Charm School" for young actors, subsequently appearing in many of their films. The Charm School had been established by producer Sydney Box, whom Rank appointed head of production at Gainsborough Studios, one of the companies under the Rank umbrella. (Other students of the school who went on to become famous included Petula Clark, Claire Bloom, and Christopher Lee.) Dors disliked the Charm School, but received more publicity than other students at the time in part because of her willingness to be photographed in glamour shots and attending premieres. An August 1947 article said her nickname was "The Body".
Her first film under contract to Rank was Streets Paved with Water, where she was the fourth lead; filming started in July 1947, but was cancelled after a month. She had a small role as a maid in Gainsborough's The Calendar (1948), and a good part in Good-Time Girl (1948), as a troubled teen being warned at the beginning and end of the film. She then played the role of Charlotte in Rank's adaptation of Oliver Twist (1948), directed by David Lean.
Dors had a bigger part in a B film, Penny and the Pownall Case (1948), a 50-minute movie for Highbury Productions. This was her first significant role, the second female lead after Peggy Evans. Bob Monkhouse wrote in his memoirs that, when he saw the film in the cinema, he thought it was "really bad" but was impressed by Dors. "It was her energy that at first attracted me", he wrote. "Her acting was raw but promising and her vitality made me remember her afterwards as if her part of the screen had been in colour."
In August 1948, Rank announced Dors would be one of its young players that it would be building up into stars. (The others included David Tomlinson, Susan Shaw, Patricia Plunkett, Sally Ann Howes, and Derek Bond.) In September, she was in A Boy, a Girl and a Bike (1949) by which stage her fee was £30 a week; she says that the movie took six months to shoot.
After a bit in My Sister and I (1948), Dors was given a showy comic-support part in Here Come the Huggetts (1948), a series that followed Holiday Camp, playing the lazy niece of the Huggetts, who causes trouble when she goes to stay with the family. Dors was so well received that she returned for the second movie in the series, Vote for Huggett (1949). Both were produced by Betty E. Box, who recalled, "Diana was all woman", despite only being a teenager. "She thought like a woman, acted like a woman, and looked like a woman." She was also in It's Not Cricket (1949).
David Shipman later argued that when Dors "was young she was very funny: she did a neat parody of the man-mad teenager, the nubile cousin who ogles the best man at the wedding breakfast, the office junior ready for a bit of slap and tickle behind the filing cupboard. She was the best thing about most of her early films."
Leading lady
Rank promoted Dors to leading roles in 1949's Diamond City, the story of a boom town in South Africa in 1870. Jean Kent was originally cast as a saloon owner in love with hero David Farrar, who loves a missionary played by Honor Blackman; Kent turned down the role and Dors took over. Filming took place in late 1948 and early 1949, when Dors was only 17 years old. She was paid £30 a week. She says the part of "Diana" in The Blue Lamp was written for her, but she lost it to Peggy Evans when the director decided he wanted "a waif type"; she also tested for the female lead in The Cure for Love, but lost out to Dora Bryan.
While waiting for Diamond City to come out, Rank sent Dors to appear with Barbara Murray in The Cat and the Canary at the Connaught Theatre, Worthing. She then appeared on stage in The Good Young Man with Digby Wolfe and in September 1949, with Marcel Le Bon in a touring production of Lisette, a three-act play by Douglas Sargeant.
In November 1949, Dors was contracted out to Ealing Studios, which put her in Dance Hall (1950), as one of the four female leads, along with Natasha Perry, Petula Clark, and Jane Hylton. Dors later called it "a ghastly film – quite one of the nastiest I ever made", although she received good personal reviews.
In February 1950, she went into the play Man of the World with Roger Livesey and Lionel Jeffries, directed by Kenneth Tynan, which opened at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. It only had a short run, but she received strong personal notices and was awarded Theatre World magazine's Actress of the Year award.
Diamond City flopped at the box office, though, and with Rank now £18 million (equivalent to £715 million in 2024) in debt, Rank closed their Charm School and made Dors redundant in September 1950. David Shipman argued that "though the Rank Organization knew how to put Dors through its Charm School paces, they had no idea how to handle such an individual talent."
British stardom
Dors landed the female lead supporting Ronald Shiner in Worm's Eye View (1951), a comedy that was one of the most popular movies of 1951 in Britain; her fee was £250. She had a leading role in a TV movie for the BBC, Face to Face (1951) then appeared in two plays – Miranda at Stratford, and Born Yesterday at Henley. She auditioned for the lead in Lady Godiva Rides Again and was turned down because it was felt she did not appeal to men and women, but she was given a support role. She later said her fee of £750 helped restore her financial situation.
Dennis Hamilton
With her boyfriend in jail and having just undergone her first abortion, Dors met Dennis Hamilton Gittins in May 1951 while filming Lady Godiva Rides Again for Rank, a film that has uncredited appearances by Joan Collins and Ruth Ellis (then four months pregnant). (Dors described herself as "the only sex symbol Britain has produced since Lady Godiva".) The couple married five weeks later at Caxton Hall on Monday, 3 July 1951.
Later that month, Dors starred in a British film noir The Last Page (1952), directed by Terence Fisher for Hammer Films in association with producer Robert L. Lippert; her fee was £450 for four weeks' work. Lippert reportedly offered Dors a one-picture deal on condition that she divorce Hamilton, but Dors refused.
Dors often played characters suffering from unrequited love, and by the mid-1950s, she was known as "the English Marilyn Monroe". Hamilton also made sure that she had the lifestyle attachments of a sex symbol, agreeing to a lease-deal with Rolls-Royce such that a headline could be created in the tabloids that, at the age of 20, she was the youngest registered keeper of a Rolls-Royce in the UK.
Hamilton went to great lengths to advance Dors's career and his income or influence from it. After her death, friends and biographers said that Hamilton would lend Dors as a sexual favour to hiring producers and leading actors, much as in the "casting couch" practices of Hollywood.
Dors worked with Terry-Thomas on the TV series How Do You View? for £250. The Sunday Times called her a "charming addition to his crazy household."
In December 1951, a newspaper reported that the "likeliest British names for glamour in 1952 are probably Britain's Glynis Johns and plumpish Diana Dors. Both are going to Hollywood." She gained a second offer from Burt Lancaster for a lead role in his His Majesty O'Keefe (1954), but this time Hamilton turned down the part on her behalf before she even knew of the offer. The result was that her early career was restricted to mainly British films.
Theatre and Maurice Elvey
In April 1952, Dors appeared in a stage revue with Wally Chrisham, Rendezvous, which eventually made it to London.Variety said in May she made the "only noteworthy contribution" to the play, which ultimately only had a short run. However under Hamilton's guidance she received enormous publicity. Dors later said these reviews, in addition to Hamilton's publicity, helped turn her career around. Dors later said Hamilton "promoted me strictly as a sex symbol, never as an actress, but it served its purpose and at the time it was fun."
Laurence Olivier reportedly offered her a role in The Beggar's Opera, but Dors says the start date kept changing. Instead, she accepted an offer to appear in a show in Blackpool, Life with Lyons at a fee of £100 a week for three months. The Times newspaper reported on Tuesday 28 July 1953 (page 2) that Diana (under her married name Diana Mary Gittins) received an absolute discharge after being convicted of the theft of several bottles of spirits from a friend's flat in Blackpool.
Dors's film career started to improve when she was cast in a support role in My Wife's Lodger (1952), directed by Maurice Elvey, who subsequently cast her in a small role in another low-budget comedy called The Great Game (1953) made by Adelphi Films.
In December 1952, Dors appeared on stage in It Remains to be Seen, which only ran seven performances. The Observer said Dors "bangs at it with goodwill." The Daily Telegraph said she "carries blondeness to its ultimate pitch, works very hard, and is likeable as a good-hearted little trollop."
In March 1953, Dors did a cabaret act in Glasgow. Variety said she showed "little ability to be a personality act." She began touring a variety act and performed variations of this act throughout her career.
Adelphi were impressed by Dors, announcing in February 1953 that they had bought the screen rights to the popular play Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? (1953) as a vehicle for Dors; it was directed by Elvey in April. Her fee was £1,000 for four weeks work. She was paid that for another comedy, It's a Grand Life (1953) with Frank Randle.
Dors had a supporting part for Hammer in The Saint's Return (1954). In September 1953 the producer of that movie, Julian Lesser, announced he had an option for Dors's services on two more movies.
British stardom
Dors's career stepped up another level when she was cast in a supporting role alongside Glynis Johns in a prison drama, The Weak and the Wicked (1954), directed by J. Lee Thompson. She made the movie in August 1953, only a few weeks after having been convicted in real life of stealing alcohol from a friend's house. By this stage she was earning a reported £12,000 a year. When the film came out, it was a big hit in Britain and earned Dors some excellent reviews.
She played Aladdin as a Christmas pantomime in 1953 and did The Lovely Place for Rheingold Theatre on TV. In April 1954 she said "I'm picking and choosing my parts now. That doesn't mean I'm waiting for the perfect part, but I'm sick to death of being the sexy siren."
In 1954, Hamilton had the idea of exploiting the newly printed technology of 3D. He engaged photographer Horace Roye to take a number of nude and seminude photographs of Dors, which Hamilton subsequently had published in two forms; the semi-nude pictures were issued as a set called "Diana Dors 3D: the ultimate British Sex Symbol", which was sold together with a pair of 3D glasses; the full-nude test shot photographs became part of Roye's booklet London Models (1954). Police pressed charges, alleging the books were obscene but a court ruled that they were not.
Adelphi called her back for Miss Tulip Stays the Night (1955) for a fee of £1,500. She then played one of the leads in A Kid for Two Farthings (1955), directed by Carol Reed in mid-1954 for Alex Korda, paid £1,700; the film was one of the most popular movies of 1955 in Britain. Dors was offered the female lead in Thompson's As Long as They're Happy (1955) with Jack Buchanan, but was unable to accept; she agreed to do a guest role, instead, at £200 a day. Filmink argued "she steals the film."
In October 1954, questions were asked in Parliament about why she was allowed to claim her mink coat as a tax deduction.
In December 1954, she reportedly turned down a seven-year contract with Rank worth £100,000 (equivalent to £3.27 million in 2024) because she could make more freelance. She did sign a three-picture deal with Rank worth £15,000 (equivalent to £491,000 in 2024). The first of these was Value for Money (1955) for director Ken Annakin starring with John Gregson, filmed in early 1955, and An Alligator Named Daisy (1955), directed by Thompson, also for Rank, starring Donald Sinden.
The success of her movies, particularly Kid for Two Farthings, led to British exhibitors voting her the ninth-most popular British star at the box office in 1955 – the sole female star in the top 10. She ranked after Dirk Bogarde, John Mills, Norman Wisdom, Alastair Sim, Kenneth More, Jack Hawkins, Richard Todd, and Michael Redgrave, and in front of Alec Guinness. In November 1955 the press criticised her for wearing revealing necklines when meeting royalty.
Dors made a fourth film with Thompson, Yield to the Night (1956), filmed in late 1955. It was a crime drama with Dors playing a role similar to Ruth Ellis. She received some of the best reviews of her career. She was acclaimed at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. J. Lee Thompson said he cast Dors in Yield over the objections of the studio who wanted Olivia de Havilland adding in May 1956 that "I must find a new part for Diana Dors. I'm looking for one all the time. It isn't easy because you can't take chances with Diana – not any more..." But she would never work with Thompson again.