Diana Dors Swindon Siren.

Having written about Desmond Morris way back and featured the sculpture of Diana Dors in my series about the West Swindon sculpture walk, I figured I ought to do a small piece with a bit of focus on Swindon’s very own screen siren herself – as opposed to the sculpture of her. The reason I mention Desmond Morris here is that, in their youth, they were close friends for a while.

I’m the kind of girl that things naturally happen to. When they don’t, I give them a push’.

Now I’ve been in Swindon for thirty+ years. Yet I’ve still not quite got used to the fact of living in the birthplace of someone so familiar to me from films and TV viewed during my childhood. Who knew that, back in Whitwell and watching Miss Dors in the TV sitcom Queenie’s Castle, I’d one day live in the town of her birth? Ditto with XTC for that matter. And Gilbert O’Sullivan – whose LPs I still have. And Rick Davies of Supertramp fame. Anyone else detecting a theme here?

A blue plaque above the Dors

Back in January of 2017, the Swindon Heritage folks installed a blue plaque on 61/62 Kent Road in Old Town. The address had, as the Haven Nursing Home, served as the birthplace of the infant Diana.

Now, I’ve had a few surreal experiences during my years in Swindon. But the sight of a metonymy for the American dream, a candy pink Cadillac, on an Old Town street has to be up there.

Shepperton Studios gave the car to Diana and it once bore the registration DD200. It’s now owned by Mendip Cars and is available to hire. Just imagine driving around in the Hollywood sunshine in such a car… *sigh*

Immortalized in bronze

It goes without saying that Diana is immortalized on celluloid and in hundreds – nay thousands – of photographs. But she’s immortalized in bronze too. The Swindon collection has in its possession a bronze bust of Diana, sculpted by artist Enid Mitchell. But that’s not all.

One of the sculptures on the West Swindon sculpture walk is a fittingly larger-than-life bronze edifice of the larger-than-life character that was Diana. Entitled ‘Diana Dors – Film Star’, the statue depicts her in a slinky evening gown with fur stole, as she appeared when she starred in the 1956 crime drama, Yield to the Night.The work of artist Jon Clinch, it stands outside the cinema complex at Shaw Ridge. In 1991, David Putnam and Diana’s son, Jason Dors-Lake, performed the unveiling. See the image above.

A literary alter-ego

Anyone familiar with Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next novels will know that R Diana has another identity there as Lola Vavoom. Although even larger-than-life than the actual sculpture and in a different location, Lola Vavoom, in Fforde’s 7 Wonders of Swindon, is at once recognisable as Diana Dors.

But … who was Diana?

As we’ve seen, Diana entered the world at the Haven Nursing Home, on Kent Road, on the 23^rd October 1931 the only child of Mary and Albert Fluck. 

A difficult delivery, late in life, that almost killed both mother and baby, determined Diana’s mother to give her daughter everything she herself had yearned for. And the opportunity to do everything she herself had dreamed of. Thus, she heaped upon Diana clothes, toys and dance lessons.  And private education.

When the time came for the young Diana to go to school, her mother went against her husband’s wishes and sent her to a small private school called Selwood House. It’s no surprise that Diana would write the names of film stars in the margins of her text books rather than concentrating on her studies. It’s reported that her father raged over her lacklustre school reports but her mother always defended her. 

Diana grew up fast – in every sense. By the time she turned twelve, she looked and acted much older than her age. There’s no doubt that the hours she spent studying actresses on screen and then emulating them had quite some influence on her early maturity.

Of her physical appearance, Diana said: ‘The figure was fabulous, but my face was never much, little eyes and lips like rubber tyres, I did well because I was the first and only British blonde bombshell.’

Diana desired no less than to go to the USA and Hollywood and to stake her place in film history. Her first step to achieving that ambition came when, aged 13, she achieved a good placing in a local beauty contest. That led to her being offered a role in a drama group.

The Rank organisation

The age of fifteen saw Diana sign a contract with the famous Rank organisation. Whereupon she joined J. Arthur Rank’s ‘Charm School’ for young actors. Subsequently she appeared in many of their films. Other famous names to emerge from Rank’s Charm School include Petula Clark, Claire Bloom and Christopher Lee.

Although Diana disliked the Charm School she got more publicity than many thanks to her willingness to be photographed in glamour shots and attending premieres. Shrewd as well as talented then.

An August 1947 article cited her nickname as ‘The Body’. 

Said Diana: ‘I was the first home-grown sex symbol, rather like Britain’s naughty seaside postcards. When Marilyn Monroe’s first film, the Asphalt Jungle, played here, a columnist actually wrote “How much like our Diana Dors she is.”.’

From Fluck to Dors

When it came to the signing of contracts, in agreement with her father and from a suggestion by her mother, she changed her contractual name to Dors. That being the maiden name of her maternal grandmother. Dors later said of the name change:

‘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 ….’

Despite and because of, the arguable handicap of her looks and physique, Diana Dors enjoyed a long career in films and TV. One in which she demonstrated, in no uncertain terms, that she was far from being a dumb blonde and that she could actually ACT. Indeed, as the piece about her on the Swindon heritage blue plaques website states:

‘She was more than a woman who exuded her sexy side, she was a fine actress as her films showed. As the 1960s turned into the 1970s, she began to play more mature roles with an effectiveness that was hard to match. Films such as Craze (1974), Swedish Wildcats (1972), The Amorous Milkman (1975) and Three for All (1975) helped fill out her resume.’

There’s no question that Diana fulfilled her youthful desire to have her name blaze bright in Hollywood’s lights.

In 1985, not long after filming Steaming, Diana received a cancer diagnosis. The siren of Swindon died, aged fifty-two, on May 4^th, in Windsor, Berkshire. And the nation lost a unique piece of its culture.

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See also:

Diana Dors Blue Plaque