"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..."
It would have been the 78th birthday today of Britain's answer to Jayne Mansfield, Miss Diana Dors.
Born in unprepossessing Swindon - it's grim today, imagine what it would have been like for an aspiring glamour-puss in the 1940s! - by the age of sweet sixteen, Miss Fluck was already under contract to Rank Studios and was appearing in small parts in their films. By the time she was 20, she was famously the youngest registered owner of a Rolls Royce in the UK.
Yet despite this promising start Diana Dors never quite achieved the huge success of other famous blondes with whom she was often compared (Jean Harlow, Marilyn Monroe). Eventually she became typecast in either tarty roles, or later, as a bawdy rotund maneater. Not so far for the truth, in real life, actually. Her infamous drunken parties and alleged orgies were manna from heaven for the tabloids, and discredited her completely in Hollywood. She only sold modest numbers of her (now cult) album Swinging Dors - a shame as it is rather fabulous.
In Britain however she became, and remains, one of our best-loved characters in the world of entertainment. Numerous TV appearances (Morecambe & Wise, Two Ronnies, variety shows and even her own comedy series Queenie's Castle) reinforced her popularity, and inevitably she became a camp cult figure - famously appearing as the Fairy Godmother in Adam & The Ants' Prince Charming video.
The whole country mourned her untimely death from ovarian cancer in 1984. I remember feeling like I had lost a relative, a naughty auntie perhaps - the one your Mum doesn't talk about. A fabulous and legendary woman! RIP.
Diana Dors official website
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