In the 1950s, Diana Dors was one of Britain’s biggest and most sought-after film stars. Dubbed ‘England’s Marilyn Monroe’, she was the country’s highest-paid female actor at the age of 25, with a string of leading roles in some of the era’s most popular films, including the Brit-noir classic Yield To The Night and the 1958 crime thriller Tread Softly Stranger.
But off the screen, Dors’s life was in many ways more colourful and voluptuous than any role she had ever played, as she sensationally admitted to the News of the World in 1960: “There were no half measures at my parties,” the actor told the paper of celebrity gatherings at her Berkshire home. “The jumpers, bras and knickers came off. In fact, it was a case of turning everything off – except the lights.”
It was not only Dors’s racy confession that shocked readers in 1960, but also her perceived lack of shame about filming guests having sex without their knowledge, and about watching couples copulating through a one-way mirror.
It is worth remembering that Britain was still quite prudish about sex in 1960. This was demonstrated, for example, when Penguin Books was charged under the Obscene Publications Act in October of that year for publishing the erotically charged novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence.
Given that even the usual marital nonsense rarely made it into the media, all this talk of orgies and two-way mirrors was explosive stuff, an exciting — and shocking — glimpse into a more debauched world, all from the mouth of one of Britain’s most famous actors.
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Not that this was news to those in the know. The soirées Dors hosted with her first husband Dennis Hamilton were notorious in showbiz circles, and although the actress never named names, she often claimed in interviews that a whole host of movie stars, socialites, sportsmen and TV personalities were regular guests.
One celebrity who did come out was Bob Monkhouse. In his 1993 autobiography Crying With Laughter, the comedian described how in 1952 he was invited to what he called “one of [Dors’] famous parties”.
“Hamilton,” he wrote, “had provided a number of helpful girls for single gentlemen to enjoy,” adding that “the lights were kept dim because of the constant showing of blues films.”
But it wasn’t just “single gentlemen” that Dors and Hamilton were catering to. As the party progressed, Monkhouse, then 24, began to notice a pattern. “A couple in love,” he said, “would get the nod from Hamilton and follow him out of the room.” The comedian explained that Hamilton would return alone, but then leave with Dors, only to return about 15 minutes later, at which point they would give the nod to another pair of lovers.
Then Hamilton and Dors called out Monkhouse’s name, and he and the woman he was paired with followed the couple down a hallway decorated with pornographic photos to a bedroom that looked, as Monkhouse wrote: “[like] a manhunt shop in Marrakech”.
“I’m going to lock the door so no one can bother you,” Hamilton told the comedian. “You’ve got about 15 minutes left, so make the most of it.”
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A mirror hung from the ceiling, and as the couple undressed, they heard a shriek of laughter from above. Suddenly realizing they were being watched, Monkhouse grabbed his clothes and ran to the door, where he was greeted by a disappointed Dors. “What a waste,” she told him. “But the night is young, come up and join us.”
“Some people love to put on a show,” she added, explaining that she thought Monkhouse had known about the two-way mirror in advance. As they led him upstairs, he was greeted by the sight of “whispering, laughing couples, usually in various stages of undress.” Since they were no longer expected to perform, Dors told him to simply lie down and watch the next couple.
It would be another eight years before Dors’s partying became public knowledge, and after the News of the World exclusive was published, the establishment queued up to heap abuse on her. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, called the actress a “depraved slut”, while the mayor of Swindon, where the actress was born in 1931, accused her of “bringing shame” to the town. The Press Council, meanwhile, declared the paper’s story “grossly indecent and salacious… a disgrace to British journalism”.
Yet the shocking revelations did little to harm Dors’ career. She seemed to enjoy the fame it brought her. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she continued to throw wild, sexually charged parties and played increasingly diverse roles on the big and small screen.
In 1968, she married actor Alan Lake (Dennis Hamilton died of a heart attack in 1959) and years later their son Jason would tell how his mother’s lustful get-togethers were a regular part of his childhood.
“There were no taboos in our house,” he said. “I was only seven, but I could freely come and go at my mother’s parties, no matter how hot they got. She loved having friends over to watch porn. They would sit around giggling as couples groped each other and made love on the bed. Most of them didn’t even know they were being filmed.”
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Even the two-way mirror device still existed, but Lake described it as a “more modern version.”
“Some girls were smart about it,” he explained. “Mom just said, ‘This is what happens,’ and I thought it was completely normal.”
But despite all the debauchery of Diana Dors’s famous parties, according to her son, she was monogamous and never participated — as far as he knew — in the sexual antics. “Sometimes she would disappear into a room with her father and lock the door,” he recalled, “but I never saw them with other people.”
Diana Dors died in 1984 at the age of 52.