by In the 1950s, Diana Dors was one of Britain’s biggest and most popular film stars. Dubbed the ‘Marilyn Monroe of England’, by the time she was 25, she was the country’s highest-paid female actress, with a string of leading parts in some of the most popular films of the day, including the classic Brit-noir Yield To. The Night and the 1958 crime thriller Tread Softly Stranger.
But away from the big screen, Dors’ life was in many ways more colorful and dirty than any part she had ever played, as she famously admitted to the News of the World in 1960: “There were no half measures at my parties,” the actress told the celebrity paper at her home in Berkshire. “Out came the jumpers, bras and panties. In fact it was a case of land with everything – except the lights.”
Not only was Dors’s spicy story surprising to readers in 1960, but it was her lack of shame about guests unwittingly filming sex, and watching couples copulate through a two-way mirror.
It is worth remembering that Britain in 1960 was still very discreet about sex, as was shown in October of that year when Penguin Books found itself accused under the Publications Act, for DH Lawrence’s novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which he had great reason to publish.
Since even common or garden wedding pumps were rarely mentioned in the media, all this talk of orgies and two-way mirrors was explosive material, a titillating – and shocking – glimpse into a more licentious world, and that all. from the mouth of one of Britain’s most famous actors.
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This is not news to those in the know. The soirées that Dors put on with her first husband Dennis Hamilton were famous in showbiz circles, and although the actress never gave names, she often claimed in interviews that there was a litany of movie stars, socialites, sportsmen and TV personalities are regulars.
One celebrity who broke cover, however, was Bob Monkhouse. In his 1993 autobiography Crying With Laughter, the comedian described how, in 1952, he was invited to one of what he called “one of [Dors’] celebrity parties”.
“Hamilton,” he wrote, “was provided by obliging girls for single gentlemen to enjoy,” adding, “The dim lights were kept for the continuous showing of blue films.”
But Dors and Hamilton were not just “single gentlemen” serving. As the party progressed, Monkhouse, then 24, began to notice a pattern. “An ugly couple,” he said, “would get the nod from Hamilton and follow him out of the room.” The comedian explained that Hamilton would return alone, but would leave again with Dors, before they would come back around 15 minutes later, and give the nod to two other lovers.
Then, Hamilton and Dors gave the name Monkhouse, and he and the woman with whom he had settled followed the couple down a corridor lined with pornographic photographs into a bedroom which, as Monkhouse wrote , “[like] a knock shop in Marrakesh”.
“I’ll lock the door so nobody can disturb you,” Hamilton told the comedian. “You have about a quarter of an hour, so make the most of it.”
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On the ceiling was a mirror and as the couple disrobed, they heard a squeal of laughter from above. Suddenly aware that they were being watched, Monkhouse scrambled for his clothes and ran towards the door, where he was met by Dors. “What a waste,” she told him. “Still, the night is still young, come upstairs and join us.”
“Some people love to put on a show,” she said, explaining that she thought Monkhouse knew about the two-way mirror beforehand. As he was ushered into the upstairs room, he was greeted by the sight of “couples laughing, laughing, mostly in various states of undress”. He wasn’t expected to do more, Dors told him to lie down and watch the next couple.
It would take another eight years for the Derry parties to become publicly known, and when the News of the World exclusive was published, the establishment queued up to insult her. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, branded the actress a “wayward hussy”, and the Mayor of Swindon, where the actress was born in 1931, accused her of bringing “disgrace” to the town. The Press Council, meanwhile, said the newspaper’s story was “extremely lazy and salacious… a disgrace to British journalism”.
But the lurid revelations did little damage to Dors’ career, and she seemed to relish the fame it brought her, continuing to host wild, sex-fueled parties throughout the ’60s and ’70s. , playing a selection of more diverse roles for the most part. and small screens.
She married the actor Alan Lake in 1968 (Dennis Hamilton died of a heart attack in 1959) and, years later, her son Jason would recount how his mother’s reunion was a regular part of his childhood.
“There were no taboos in our house,” he said. “I was only seven but I was free to wander in and out of my mum’s parties, no matter how hot they got. She loved having friends around to watch the porn movies they made. They sat around giggling as couples groped each other and made love on the bed. Most didn’t even know they were being filmed.”
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The two-way mirror device was still there, though as Lake described it as a “more dated version”.
“Some of the girls were wise to him,” he explained. “Mum just said, ‘This is what happens’, and I thought it was completely normal.”
But because of all the banishment associated with Diana Dors’ famous parties, she was, according to her son, homogenous herself, and was not – to his knowledge – involved in the company of sexual henanigans. “Sometimes she would go into a room with dad and lock the door,” he remembered, “but I never saw them with other people.”
Diana Dors died aged 52 in 1984.
