Diana Dors (23 October 1931 – 4 May 1984) was an English actress, born Diana Mary Fluck in Swindon, Wiltshire. She first came to public notice as a ‘blonde bombshell’ of the Monroe style, as promoted by her first husband, Dennis Hamilton, mostly via sex film-comedies and risqué modelling. When it turned out that Hamilton had been defrauding her for his own benefit, she had little choice but to play up to her established image, and she made tabloid headlines with the adult parties reportedly held at her house. Later she showed a genuine talent for TV and cabaret, and gained new popularity as a regular chat-show guest.Dors claimed to have left a large fortune to her son in her will, via a secret code in the possession of her third husband Alan Lake. But after Lake’s suicide, this code was never found, and the whereabouts of the fortune remains a mystery.
Colville House, London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art
Nationality
British
Spouse
Alan Lake (m. 1968–1984), Richard Dawson (m. 1959–1966), Dennis Hamilton (m. 1951–1959)
Children
Jason Lake, Mark Dawson, Gary Dawson
Parents
Albert Edward Sidney Fluck, Winifred Maud Mary Fluck
Movies
Yield to the Night, The Unholy Wife, The Long Haul, Deep End, I Married a Woman, Tread Softly Stranger, A Kid for Two Farthings, Lady Godiva Rides Again, The Last Page, Berserk!, An Alligator Named Daisy, From Beyond the Grave, The Amazing Mr. Blunden, Oliver Twist, There's a Girl in My Soup, Value ...
[comment on the decline of the British film industry and acting in sex comedies and horror movies in the early to mid-1970's] The trouble is that there are so many good actors in this country and they are obliged to work in films like that because there is nothing else for them to do. This is why I get so sad. There is no film industry here anymore and the only types of films being made are either horror or sex films. I'm very fortunate because I can do cabaret as well as write books. I've gotten two number one best sellers and have many more strings to my bow. But if I was sitting around, as the majority of actors and actresses are today for an acting role to come along, then I'd never work unless I did horror films and sex films. I think it's very sad because we do have some marvelous actors and actresses in this country.
2
[on Nothing But the Night (1973)] I play a triple murderess with a record of assault, larceny, and prostitution. I play a mother who fights to get her daughter back from an orphanage. I was hunted all over like a wild animal in the moors. I wore a red wig, my clothes were dirty and disheveled, a million miles from my old image.
3
When I was 15 I was put under contract with the J. Arthur Rank Organization. It was fantastic. Marvelous. We had a film industry during those days and it was very exciting. J. Arthur Rank had saved it all and had poured millions from his flour empire into the film industry. It was a real industry. There was a lot of work for everybody, wonderful pictures were made, and glamorous premieres, which lasted until the early 1950's and then it all came to an end. It was very sad really. But I'd like to see something like that happen again. Perhaps we could find some rich Arab to take Mr. Rank's place.
4
Quite frankly, in America, they've never taken me seriously as an actress. They had not seen any of my work I had done when I went over and signed a contract in Hollywood. They were of the opinion, and quite naturally so, that I had merely aped Marilyn Monroe and that I was some British blonde who'd copied her and tried to climb on that bandwagon. That was a perfectly natural thing especially since they'd never seen any of the films I've done including Blonde Sinner (1956). They had never been released in America so all they'd read was the publicity and so forth.
5
I've played my share of drunken sluts, good time girls, and whores. Being bumped off is really no novelty for me. I've been shot, hanged, strangled, gassed, burned to death, and even pushed off a cliff. And for a TV episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), I was sawn in half by an electrical buzz saw.
6
[on The Amazing Mr. Blunden (1972)] That was a beautiful film. I played the villainess, a sort of female Sweeney Todd. They tarted me up, padded me out, and had me looking like I was 60. They even blackened out my teeth and gave me a wig that made me look bald when someone snatched it off my head. As the final straw, they put a wart on my chin. I really went over the top with that film but I had a ball. Lionel [Lionel Jeffries] became such a great director.
7
I did a small cameo in Deep End (1970) and that received fantastic critical notices. Really, out of all the films I've done, there are just a handful I can look back on and be proud of.
8
[comment made in the early 1970's] I'm forty now and I can't go on playing good time glamor girls and tarts forever. I want to play women my own age, now and in the future.
9
I've trained as an actress and all that sex glamor publicity stuff had gone long before. It was merely a sort of side step really. So when I went back to being a serious actress, it was very nice for me to take off where I'd left off so many years before.
10
The figure was fabulous, but my face was never much, little eyes and lips like rubber tires, I did well because I was the first and only British blonde bombshell.
11
I was the first home-grown sex symbol, rather like Britain's naughty seaside postcards. When Marilyn Monroe's first film was shown here [The Asphalt Jungle (1950)], a columnist actually wrote, "How much like our Diana Dors she is.".
12
I said to this priest, "Am I expected to believe that if I went out and had an affair that God was really going to be upset? Okay, thou shalt not kill... steal... but thou shalt not commit adultery? If no one is any the wiser, what the hell difference does it make?". He was lovely. He told me the Commandments were laid down for a lot of guys living in the desert.
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Fact
1
Became pregnant by her boyfriend Michael "Kim" Cabom-Waterfield in September 1950, and by her 1st husband Dennis Hamilton in February 1952 and August 1955. On all of these occasions she had abortions.
Was offered the role of Timmin in Doctor Who: The Caves of Androzani; Barbara Kinghorn was cast instead.
4
Met future husband Alan Lake in October 1968 on the set of "The Peeling of Sweet P. Lawrence". This was an episode of "The Inquisitors", an ITV adventure series produced by LWT which commenced production but was never broadcast.
5
She never owned a mansion without a swimming pool. It was her ambition as a child playing in a mud pond in her front yard to have her own swimming pool when she grew up.
6
Only child of Winifred Maud Mary and Albert Edward Fluck.
7
Dors was the maiden name of her grandmother.
8
Grandmother of Morgana and Ruby Lake, Lauren, Lindsey Dors, Tyler Emm and Emma Rose Dawson.
9
Was considered for the role of Venus De Marco in the horror film The Ice House (1969), which went to Sabrina.
10
At age 20, she was the youngest registered owner of a Rolls Royce in the country.
11
A tribute to Diana Dors, "Good Day", was written by Ray Davies after her death and is included on The Kinks' "Word of Mouth" CD.
12
Her third and last husband, Alan Lake, committed suicide five months after her death.
13
In 1974, she contracted meningitis but miraculously survived. In 1982, she was diagnosed as having cancer from which she died in 1984.
14
In 1972, she joined a campaign aimed at allowing prisoners to have sexual intercourse with their wives, in jail.
15
In her final years, Diana spent a lot of time working for various religious and charity groups.
$800,000
