What the Fluck? A look at the life of Diana Dors
Ink Heritage Focus - The story of Swindon's most famous daughter
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This is our monthly ‘Heritage focus’ editions which will normally appear on the third Thursday of every month. The first Thursday is ‘Business’, and the second Thursday of the month is ‘Education’, and the final Thursday is ‘Food & Drink’.
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“I’m the kind of girl that things naturally happen to. When they don’t, I give them a push.”
By local historian and author Angela Atkinson
Having written about Desmond Morris in last month’s piece, I figured a look at Swindon’s very own screen siren, Diana Dors (née Fluck), made sense. This daughter of Swindon was, after all, an early girlfriend of Desmond’s and she did teach him to jitterbug.
I’ve been in Swindon for 30-plus years now. 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. I’m 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*
Immortalised 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.