We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Of all the celebrities that the Pop artists Jann Haworth and Peter Blake put on their Grammy Award-winning cover of The Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), Diana Dors (1931–84) is the most eye-catching. Featured in the front row line-up, she stands out, resplendent in a gold figure-hugging shoulderless gown, threatening to steal the limelight from the ‘fab four’ at the centre of this crowded collage. Even the garishly coloured outfits of John Lennon (yellow), Ringo Starr (pink), Paul McCartney (blue) and George Harrison (red) are not enough to distract attention from Dors for long. There she stands with her hands on her hips, proud and poised, looking like the ultimate Hollywood movie star with her hair falling in large graceful curls to her shoulders, a stole hanging over her arms and evening gloves covering her hands and wrists. Presented in three-quarter profile, she gazes directly into the camera as a self-assured seductress. Who can possibly resist looking at her?
Dors outshines Mae West, Fred Astaire, Laurel and Hardy, Marlon Brando, Johnny Weissmuller and Marilyn Monroe in this luminous line-up. Not even Oscar Wilde, Karl Marx or George Bernard Shaw can distract from her for more than a moment or two. Haworth and Blake’s placement of Britain's leading blonde bombshell here implies that if anyone could steal the show from the most famous group to ever come out of Liverpool – as well as their political, literary and pop culture idols – it was Swindon's Swingin’ Diana Dors, known far and wide simply as ‘Dors’. In 1967, The Beatles’ latest chart-topping album secured her a prominent place in the pantheon of 20th-century icons, ensuring that the 32 million or so people that bought it would be sure to feast their eyes repeatedly upon her wax effigy – it was Diana Dors’ twentyfive- year-old self that was moulded into wax and preserved as part of Haworth and Blake's photomontage. This meant that Dors’ image remained in circulation on the cover of this celebrated record long after the Madame Tussauds Museum had melted down her dummy.
When the album was first released in May, Dors’ film career had virtually collapsed, while her thirty-five-year-old face and body were accruing signs of middle-age.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
