Lady Godiva Rides Again [Bikini Baby] ** (1951, Pauline Stroud, Dennis Price, John McCallum, Stanley Holloway, Diana Dors, George Cole, Bernadette O’Farrell, Kay Kendall, Alastair Sim) – Classic Movie Review 5744

‘GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!’

Director Frank Launder’s spirited but feeble 1951 British black and white comedy Lady Godiva Rides Again [Bikini Baby] showcases the little-known Pauline Stroud’s finest hour in the movies as pretty young Marjorie Clark, an innocent girl who takes the trophy at an English Midland town’s provincial glamour contest and is asked to play Lady Godiva in the town’s Festival of Britain pageant.

She received an ‘introducing’ credit, though unfortunately she never became a major star, unlike some of the other actresses appearing much less prominently in the film.

The usually reliable team of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, commanding a host of favourite comic players, are simply off their best form, caught naked with Frank Launder and Val Valentine’s bare script, which is as blunt as a showbiz satire as it is as a smile-raiser. Nevertheless there is interest to be found everywhere, especially in the cast, the beauty pageant contestants, the atmosphere and the period charm.

Lady Godiva, of course, supposedly rode through Coventry naked to persuade her husband Leofric, 11th century Earl of Mercia, to cut the city’s taxes. Marjorie, though, is alas not asked to play Lady Godiva in the buff, but this still leads her way to the London showbiz world.

It marks Joan Collins’s film debut, aged 18, as a beauty pageant contestant.

Another Beauty Queen Contestant is Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in the UK, aged 28. The execution was carried out by Albert Pierrepoint on 13 July 1955. Diana Dors was to play as fictionalised version of her as Mary Hilton in Yield to the Night [Blonde Sinner] (1956), which is one of Dors’s best movies.

It is also the theatrical movie debut of Anne Heywood (as beauty contestant Dorothy Marlowe), then called Violet Pretty.

And it is the credited theatrical movie debut of Toke Townley (as Lucille’s husband).

Another of the Beauty Queens is Simone Silva, famed for her topless act beside Robert Mitchum at the Cannes Film Festival in April 1954.

The singer-DJ Jimmy Young appears as a singer at the dance, in the first of his only three film appearances. He died on 7 November 2016 in London, aged 95. He was the first English singer to have two consecutive records at number one in the UK charts (with “Unchained Melody” and “The Man From Laramie” in 1955), a record beaten by Frank Ifield, with three consecutive number ones in the early sixties.

As so often, the great British cast rides again to the rescue. It stars Diana Dors as Dolores August, Dennis Price as Simon Abbott, John McCallum as Larry Burns, Stanley Holloway as Mr Clark, Gladys Henson as Mrs Clark, George Cole as Johnny, Bernadette O’Farrell as Janie, and Kay Kendall as Sylvia. Alastair Sim appears uncredited as Hawtrey Murington from Optimum Films.

Also in the cast are Eddie Byrne as Eddie Mooney, Sidney James as Lew Beeson, Dora Bryan (Lady in Charge of Publicity), Renée Houston as Beattie, Tommy Duggan as Compere, Eddie Leslie as Comic, Googie Withers (actress in clip from The Shadow of the Orient), Charlotte Mitchell, Trevor Howard (uncredited as a guest at the theatre accepting a programme), Leslie Mitchell (TV interviewer), Walford Hyden, Simone Silva, Violet Pretty [aka Anne Heywood in her film debut as beauty contestant Dorothy Marlowe], Lisa Lee, Dagmar Wynter [aka Dana Wynter as beauty contender Myrtle Shaw], Russell Waters, Henry B Longhurst, Michael Ripper, Richard Wattis (Casting Director Otto Mann), Arthur Howard (Soap Publicity Man) and Toke Townley (in his feature film debut).

Lady Godiva Rides Again [Bikini Baby] was shot at Folkestone, Kent, England, and at Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England.

It runs 90 minutes, is made by London Film Productions and released by British Lion Film Corporation (1951) (UK) and Carroll Pictures (1952) (US).

Pauline Stroud, born on 21 March 1930 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, is remembered for Lady Godiva Rides Again [Bikini Baby] (1951), Her Three Bachelors (1953), Simon and Laura (1955) and Life in Emergency Ward 10 (1959). She made her last film in 1959 and worked on in TV till 1972. She died in London, on 15 December 2020 aged 90,

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