Lady Godiva Rides Again

It may interest people to know that appearing in the film uncredited as a contestant in a beauty contest is Ruth Ellis.

On July 13th 1955 she became the last woman hanged for murder in Great Britain. In a jealous rage the 28 year old night-club manageress fired six shots at her 24 year old lover David Blakely outside the Magdala Pub in Hampstead, London. Two bullets missed, one piercing the hand of a passer-by; two hit him in the back, one in the thigh and one in the left arm. He died instantly.

When sentenced to death the only thing she said was 'Thanks'.

The female star of the film was Diana Dors. Her greatest ever screen performance was in 'Yeild to the Night' the harrowing story of murderess Mary Price Hilton a character based on Ruth Ellis.

Consultant on the film was executioner Albert Pierrepoint - the man who hanged Ruth Ellis.

Alastair Sim, Diana Dors, Stanley Holloway, Dennis Price, George Cole and Sidney James in this Girl's Own story about a drippy young woman in the midlands chosen in a beauty pageant in Westbourne (Blackpool) to advertise soap. All the actors play their respective characters, Diana Dors as a bad girl in the pageant, Stanley Holloway as the avuncular father, Dennis Price as a philandering film star, George Cole as a ingenuous working class piker, and Sidney James as a dodgy geezer running a strip show. But it doesn't really save the contrived and well worn plot.

Marjorie Clark, a working-class girl from an industrial Midlands town, becomes a local celebrity when she is chosen to play Lady Godiva in a local pageant. Much against the wishes of her puritanical old father and her possessive boyfriend Johnny she enters a beauty contest, and accidentally wins after the organiser's attempt to rig the contest in favour of his girlfriend misfires. Marjorie becomes a national celebrity and for a time enjoys success as a model, but has less success when she tries to conquer the world of showbiz despite having very little talent for acting, singing or dancing.

In Britain the film was known as "Lady Godiva Rides Again", but was released in the United States as "Bikini Baby", in a particularly dishonest piece of marketing. The poster designed for the American market proclaimed in huge letters "starring Diana Dors" accompanied by a picture of Dors in a bikini. Beneath, in smaller letters, it mentioned Kay Kendall and Stanley Holloway, and "dozens of beauty queens and artists' models!", but made no mention of the film's actual leading lady Pauline Stroud, who plays Marjorie. Contrary to the impression given by the poster, Dors plays a secondary character who appears only in a couple of scenes.

The marketing may have been dishonest, but I can see why it was done. Dors, oozing sex appeal and charisma from every pore, steals every scene she is in. Her character Dolores August- she who should have won the contest but didn't- is the sort of girl for whom the expression "fur coat and no knickers" could have been invented. She will drop her knickers for any man who might advance her career, and would sell her soul for a fur coat. It is no surprise that in Britain Dors became the leading sex symbol of the fifties. (Internationally her success was to be more limited).

Some films on the well-worn theme of "it's grim in showbiz" can be serious, even tragic, in tone, but this one is mainly a light-hearted comedy. There is a good deal of satire at the expense of the entertainment industry, and not just crooked beauty contests. The opening scene, showing Marjorie's home town on a rain-sodden Sunday afternoon, seems to be a parody of the then-popular "kitchen sink" social-realist genre, possibly inspired by one of the best-known films in that genre, Robert Hamer's "It Always Rains on Sunday". The "glamour school" which Marjorie attends seems to have been a dart aimed at Rank's "charm school", a training-ground for young actresses which concentrated more on looks and deportment than on acting ability. Dennis Price appears as Simon Abbott, a smoothly lecherous matinee idol who tries to get every girl he meets into bed with him. (Several real-life matinee idols might have recognised themselves in this portrayal). There is an amusing cameo from Alastair Sim as Hawtrey Mewington, an ageing, down-on-his-luck film producer, forever bemoaning the (alleged) fact that the once-great British film industry was being ruined by competition from television and Hollywood. (Memo to HM Government: Do more to support British cinema!)

Dors, Price and Sim are not the only big-name stars who appear in small roles. Holloway plays Marjorie's father and Kendall her sister. George Cole is Johnny, Sid James (not as big a star in 1951 as he was to become later) appears briefly as a sleazy impresario, and if you blink you might miss Dora Bryan and Googie Withers. Trevor Howard makes an uncredited as appearance as a theatre patron. This is, in fact, the sort of film in which all the small parts are played by big names and the only big part by a small name. Stroud never went on to become a major star, which does not really surprise me. She was pretty but lacked Dors's charisma, and on the evidence of this film lacked talent as well. (She also sounds too posh for a working-class Midlands girl, but is not alone in that. In the scenes set in the Midlands all the female characters speak with genteel RP accents and the male ones sound like Cockneys). The film as a whole, in fact, is quite amusing and provides us with an interesting look at British life in the early fifties. With a stronger actress in the lead, however, it could have been a lot better. 6/10

There are two strange coincidences about this film, both involving Dors. The contestants at the beauty contest include, besides Stroud and Dors, not only a teenage Joan Collins in her film debut but also a then-unknown model and actress named Ruth Ellis. In 1955 Ellis was to become famous, but sadly not for her acting or modelling. She was sentenced to death after shooting dead her abusive boyfriend, becoming the last woman to be executed in Britain. When a fictionalised version of Ellis's story, "Yield to the Night", was made soon afterwards, Dors, who had befriended Ellis during the making of "Lady Godiva Rides Again", was cast in the leading role.

In one scene there is a scuffle between Johnny and Abbott, who has cast his lustful eye on Marjorie, ending with Abbott falling into the river. As a result of the ensuing bad publicity, the film studio who have signed Marjorie up as a starlet sack her, invoking a "morality clause" in her contract. This closely parallels what was to happen to Dors during her ill-fated attempt to conquer Hollywood a few years later. A scuffle between her husband Dennis Hamilton and a photographer ended with several people falling into a swimming pool. As a result of the ensuing bad publicity, Dors's studio sacked her, invoking a "morality clause" in her contract.

The movie industry turns out one of those "It's not easy in the moom pitcher business" movies every few years, like A STAR IS BORN, and this Launder-Gilliat production, made during the slide of the 1950s is their contribution to the field. Pauline Stroud is hectored into taking part into a local beauty pageant. This leads to a glamour competition, which she wins, when Diana Dors doesn't want to take time out from her more profitable life to accept the prize of a 3-month studio contract. Miss Stroud thinks she is on the road to stardom.... but the industry is full of chiselers and ineffectual nice guys down on their luck, while she is too mousy and moral to do more than flounder and sink.

There are plenty of interesting players, from Dennis Price and Miss Dors, to surprising unbilled cameos like Alastair Sim and Googie Withers; the beauty contestants are starlets who would become prominent over the next couple of decades, like Kay Kendall and Joan Collins. It's the dourest of comedies that could manage a general release, while never releasing its hold on the audience's attention.

Marjorie Clark is a very pretty girl from a hard working family, she doesn't ask for much in life. Yet after what seemed to be a pointless beauty pageant she is transported into the realm of stardom, a sequence of events that brings wealth, respect, and the unwritten pitfalls of fame............

If i'm totally honest here, then the only reason i came across this film was because at this moment in time i'm on a mission to see any film that has the names of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat attached to it. I saw that Dennis Price, Sid James, George Cole, Diana Dors, Stanley Holloway and Alistair Sim were in the cast list, British institutions one and all, yet still i had low expectations with it. I had never heard of it before, my parents are both staunch British cinema fans, they have surely never put this one my way, it's rated just above five right here on IMDb, yep, i certainly wasn't expecting much.

Perhaps that is why i enjoyed it so much?, i mean don't get me wrong here, it's not one i will go back and revisit, but the performance of Pauline Stroud as Marjorie Clark and the dark undertones of the plot make this something of a must see piece. The perils and the highs and lows of a pretty girl with stars in her eyes, has rarely been so poignant as it is here, the film has some splendid comedy moments, and also has a lovely little romantic core, but chiefly it's the downturn of events that is the scripts crowning moment. I would wager that IMDb tagging this as a genre comedy only is a big error, but cest la vie, they own the site, and i'm but a mere user!. Fans of Alistair Sim and Sid James should note that their parts in the film are pretty thin, so seeking this out for those actors will leave you feeling pretty flat, but hopefully, there may be something i have written that will pique your interest when you are stuck for an intelligent comedy/drama from the Great part of Britain. 7/10

Footnote:There is some wonderful, and quite creepy trivia attached to the film, if that has you intrigued then i point you to the user comment for this film written by Jeremy Beadle!!!, it's not hard to find since at this moment in time there be only four of us who have bothered to write a comment for the film!!.