A film probably best remembered for casting someone called Pauline Stroud in lead role while overlooking Kay Kendall, Audrey Hepburn, Joan Collins and Dana Wynter who were all up for the part.
Stroud is fine - not magical, but fine. Maybe the others were too knowing. The film is stolen, as they often were, by Diana Dors, as an experienced beauty contestant. The scenes between Stroud and Dors, with the latter showing the former the ropes, have the most heart.
It should have been in colour and the satire is mild when surely there was more to mock - I couldn't help thinking Frank Launder made it to have a perv. I wonder if it wouldn't have been a better movie ten years later when it could have risked more censorship-wise.
There is fun to be had - Dennis Price as a self centered movie star, John McCallum playing an Aussie pineapple farmer who talks about kookaburras, Alistair Sim cameo'ing as a British film director and making some cracks about the industry (the fun is lessened when he laments not being able to chase Stroud), Sid James as the person who runs a French revue, Stanley Holloway as dad. Kay Kendall is her sister but doesn't do that much.
Dors is wonderful - but we don't see her after the first part of the movie. This film really should have been about Dors and Stroud as buddies on the make like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes or something. Or just cast Dors in the lead.
Too much isn't pleasant - like John McCallum abducting Stroud at the end. But it's worth a look.
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