The December 2024 issue of UK nostalgia magazine Yours Retro (#82, with Bette Davis on the cover) includes a 1960s interview with ‘Britain’s blonde bombshell,’ Diana Dors, with journalist Roderick Mann. In the article, headlined ‘I Can’t Lose the Image Now,’ Diana reflected on being typecast as a sex symbol, and the ‘Hollywood wolves’ whom Marilyn also encountered.
“What is sometimes forgotten is that Diana Dors was the forerunner of the twin-initial girls. She came before Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot or Claudia Cardinale. Since Room at the Top, sex in British films has been taken for granted. But when Dors was struggling up, an Englishman’s best friend was still his dog … Dors had a Herculean task. Much harder than Monroe’s. Far harder than Bardot’s.
‘You know,’ she said, when I talked with her. ‘My glamour image has given me fame and money, but few people realise what a hard fight it was. I often wonder how far Marilyn Monroe would have got if she’d been lumbered with the kind of thing I had to do – My Wife’s Lodger and It’s a Grand Life. But I was determined. I’m not a natural platinum-blonde, of course, and I could never afford the Cadillacs or any of the other trappings.’
‘But they served their purpose. They wouldn’t work now, I’m sure, but they certainly worked then. The only drawback was the more voluptuous I became the less hope I had of getting into good pictures. Perhaps you wonder why, if I really wanted to be an actress, I ever started out with all the glamour stuff. The answer is simple, I wanted quick recognition.’
‘If I hadn’t dyed my hair and all the rest of it, I’d still be a mousey-haired girl in Swindon working on the railway. I don’t kid myself … My image was attainable, I suppose. Women working at a factory bench looked up at me on the screen and saw hope for themselves. I was within reach, unlike a lot of other actresses. But men. Men I scared. It’s odd isn’t it?’
‘If you’re voluptuous here, men just stand and look. But not in America. Oh, dear no. There, they take it for granted that, if you’re sexy looking, sexy you must be. And in they move. As the film industry declines, producers and actors seem to be becoming even more desperate in their advances. It’s as if they saw their old-time perks sliding out of reach. It doesn’t matter a damn if you’re with your husband or boyfriend, over they come with the same old lines.’
‘I tell you, marriage in Hollywood means nothing despite the sentimental junk you read in fan magazines. There are exceptions, of course, but not many. By and large every woman in that town who can stand is considered fair game. I really pity any little starlet starting out now.'”
Elsewhere, Yours Retro looks back at some auction highlights of 2024, including Marilyn’s ‘Mae West dress,’ designed by Travilla and worn in a deleted scene from The Seven Year Itch, which sold for $127,000 at Julien’s in March; and a the regular ‘Reel Obsession’ feature, reader Pheobe Beehop names Some Like It Hot among her seven favourite movies.
The Marilyn Report 