Bikini Baby (1951) User Reviews

I'd rather have him than the bottom smacker at the co-op!.

[hitchcockthelegend · 7/10 · 13 September 2008]

Marjorie Clark is a very pretty girl from a hard working family, she doesn't ask for much in life. Yet after what seemed to be a pointless beauty pageant she is transported into the realm of stardom, a sequence of events that brings wealth, respect, and the unwritten pitfalls of fame............

If i'm totally honest here, then the only reason i came across this film was because at this moment in time i'm on a mission to see any film that has the names of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat attached to it. I saw that Dennis Price, Sid James, George Cole, Diana Dors, Stanley Holloway and Alistair Sim were in the cast list, British institutions one and all, yet still i had low expectations with it. I had never heard of it before, my parents are both staunch British cinema fans, they have surely never put this one my way, it's rated just above five right here on IMDb, yep, i certainly wasn't expecting much.

Perhaps that is why i enjoyed it so much?, i mean don't get me wrong here, it's not one i will go back and revisit, but the performance of Pauline Stroud as Marjorie Clark and the dark undertones of the plot make this something of a must see piece. The perils and the highs and lows of a pretty girl with stars in her eyes, has rarely been so poignant as it is here, the film has some splendid comedy moments, and also has a lovely little romantic core, but chiefly it's the downturn of events that is the scripts crowning moment. I would wager that IMDb tagging this as a genre comedy only is a big error, but cest la vie, they own the site, and i'm but a mere user!. Fans of Alistair Sim and Sid James should note that their parts in the film are pretty thin, so seeking this out for those actors will leave you feeling pretty flat, but hopefully, there may be something i have written that will pique your interest when you are stuck for an intelligent comedy/drama from the Great part of Britain. 7/10

Footnote:There is some wonderful, and quite creepy trivia attached to the film, if that has you intrigued then i point you to the user comment for this film written by Jeremy Beadle!!!, it's not hard to find since at this moment in time there be only four of us who have bothered to write a comment for the film!!.

Fur Coat and No Knickers

[JamesHitchcock · 6/10 · 20 June 2018]

Marjorie Clark, a working-class girl from an industrial Midlands town, becomes a local celebrity when she is chosen to play Lady Godiva in a local pageant. Much against the wishes of her puritanical old father and her possessive boyfriend Johnny she enters a beauty contest, and accidentally wins after the organiser's attempt to rig the contest in favour of his girlfriend misfires. Marjorie becomes a national celebrity and for a time enjoys success as a model, but has less success when she tries to conquer the world of showbiz despite having very little talent for acting, singing or dancing.

In Britain the film was known as "Lady Godiva Rides Again", but was released in the United States as "Bikini Baby", in a particularly dishonest piece of marketing. The poster designed for the American market proclaimed in huge letters "starring Diana Dors" accompanied by a picture of Dors in a bikini. Beneath, in smaller letters, it mentioned Kay Kendall and Stanley Holloway, and "dozens of beauty queens and artists' models!", but made no mention of the film's actual leading lady Pauline Stroud, who plays Marjorie. Contrary to the impression given by the poster, Dors plays a secondary character who appears only in a couple of scenes.

The marketing may have been dishonest, but I can see why it was done. Dors, oozing sex appeal and charisma from every pore, steals every scene she is in. Her character Dolores August- she who should have won the contest but didn't- is the sort of girl for whom the expression "fur coat and no knickers" could have been invented. She will drop her knickers for any man who might advance her career, and would sell her soul for a fur coat. It is no surprise that in Britain Dors became the leading sex symbol of the fifties. (Internationally her success was to be more limited).

Some films on the well-worn theme of "it's grim in showbiz" can be serious, even tragic, in tone, but this one is mainly a light-hearted comedy. There is a good deal of satire at the expense of the entertainment industry, and not just crooked beauty contests. The opening scene, showing Marjorie's home town on a rain-sodden Sunday afternoon, seems to be a parody of the then-popular "kitchen sink" social-realist genre, possibly inspired by one of the best-known films in that genre, Robert Hamer's "It Always Rains on Sunday". The "glamour school" which Marjorie attends seems to have been a dart aimed at Rank's "charm school", a training-ground for young actresses which concentrated more on looks and deportment than on acting ability. Dennis Price appears as Simon Abbott, a smoothly lecherous matinee idol who tries to get every girl he meets into bed with him. (Several real-life matinee idols might have recognised themselves in this portrayal). There is an amusing cameo from Alastair Sim as Hawtrey Mewington, an ageing, down-on-his-luck film producer, forever bemoaning the (alleged) fact that the once-great British film industry was being ruined by competition from television and Hollywood. (Memo to HM Government: Do more to support British cinema!)

Dors, Price and Sim are not the only big-name stars who appear in small roles. Holloway plays Marjorie's father and Kendall her sister. George Cole is Johnny, Sid James (not as big a star in 1951 as he was to become later) appears briefly as a sleazy impresario, and if you blink you might miss Dora Bryan and Googie Withers. Trevor Howard makes an uncredited as appearance as a theatre patron. This is, in fact, the sort of film in which all the small parts are played by big names and the only big part by a small name. Stroud never went on to become a major star, which does not really surprise me. She was pretty but lacked Dors's charisma, and on the evidence of this film lacked talent as well. (She also sounds too posh for a working-class Midlands girl, but is not alone in that. In the scenes set in the Midlands all the female characters speak with genteel RP accents and the male ones sound like Cockneys). The film as a whole, in fact, is quite amusing and provides us with an interesting look at British life in the early fifties. With a stronger actress in the lead, however, it could have been a lot better. 6/10

There are two strange coincidences about this film, both involving Dors. The contestants at the beauty contest include, besides Stroud and Dors, not only a teenage Joan Collins in her film debut but also a then-unknown model and actress named Ruth Ellis. In 1955 Ellis was to become famous, but sadly not for her acting or modelling. She was sentenced to death after shooting dead her abusive boyfriend, becoming the last woman to be executed in Britain. When a fictionalised version of Ellis's story, "Yield to the Night", was made soon afterwards, Dors, who had befriended Ellis during the making of "Lady Godiva Rides Again", was cast in the leading role.

In one scene there is a scuffle between Johnny and Abbott, who has cast his lustful eye on Marjorie, ending with Abbott falling into the river. As a result of the ensuing bad publicity, the film studio who have signed Marjorie up as a starlet sack her, invoking a "morality clause" in her contract. This closely parallels what was to happen to Dors during her ill-fated attempt to conquer Hollywood a few years later. A scuffle between her husband Dennis Hamilton and a photographer ended with several people falling into a swimming pool. As a result of the ensuing bad publicity, Dors's studio sacked her, invoking a "morality clause" in her contract.

A good girl gets her chance to be in pictures

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 31 March 2018]

Pauline Stroud the star of Lady Godiva Rides Again had a respectable career. But a lot of very familiar folks are down the cast list of this film

In Lady Godiva Strikes Again, Stroud a working class girl from the midlands who on a lark enters a beauty contest and wins. She gets to ride as Lady Godiva did through the streets of Coventry, but this could also mean a career in the British cinema.

Her father Stanley Holloway playing a role as dad that Eugene Pallette would have done in America is real skeptical about this. So's her working class boyfriend George Cole, nice guy but a bit of a lout. No reason she shouldn't reach for the stars.

Dennis Price is the nominal star of this film, but he's got a limited amount of screen time. He plays a supercilious screen star, a whole lot like the part he did in Kind Hearts And Coronets. An arranged studio date with Stroud turns out to be a disaster all around with the paparazzi getting a most indelicate picture of him.

Down the cast list though you will find British beauties Diana Dors and Joan Collins and Kay Kendall as contestants, Sidney James as a casting director and Alastair Sim as a milk drinking (ulcers) studio head. Even Trevor Howard who was a reigning star of the UK cinema has an unbilled walk on.

It all does work out in the end and Stroud's a wiser girl for it. Lady Godiva never had a ride like this though.

Unexpected

[thecatsmotheruk · 21 December 2003]

*possible spoilers

I remember watching this with my parents one evening when I was bored. I must confess I do have a soft spot for these bland British films of the fifties with their incestuous casts and inoffensive plots.

However this film is actually surprisingly dark. Our heroine is offered the part of Lady Godiva in a city pagent (though chastely dressed), is spotted by a beauty queen scout and she doesn't look back. However the beauty contest is fixed - she only wins because she has swapped costumes with another girl and the judges were told to pick the girl wearing it... Having been picked up by showbiz she is promptly dropped and eventually - no one wanting to employ a washed up model in the dramatic world - she is cast in a french review, as a nude, probably the equivalent of a porn film today.

Rescue comes in the shape of her family and an Australian who takes her to Oz, weds her and they live happily - though she is a little battle scarred.

It has the appearence of a typical bland film of the era, but it does contain hidden depth. The old story of a girl being abandoned by the showbiz that courted her is timeless. A remake might be in order to give it a wider audience.

Not Bikini Baby

[ygwerin1 · 7/10 · 11 August 2020]

The films plot such as it is highlights something of the humbug that woman still have to face today.

When boyfriend Johnny, caused actor Simon Abott to come a cropper. Its the young starlet Marjorie Clark's, burgeoning career that suffered and not his.

Still in 1952 things turned out bright for our film heroine why, because she not only got the man of every woman's dream. In this instance the ozzie hunk, but achieved a bonza lifestyle she could never have imagined.

The Yanks are Barmy whatever has the Title Bikini Baby, got to do with the films actual title of Lady Godiva Rides Again?

I have never heard of this film when I saw it was, on the Talking Pictures TV Channel tonight. I decided to watch it when I saw who was in it, some of my favourite old actors.

Watching it I have to assume that the American name change for the film, related to the soap company Beauty Competition. And then only because I presume the attempt was made, to flog the film to the States hence the yank actor Eddie Mooney.

That distraction aside a great attraction for me in these old films, is to see so many actors especially with them at such a young age.

It was particularly nice to see Diana Dors looking so radiant, I haven't seen her in many movies and in a few of those she is a bit older?

Dora Bryan is looking really young and chipper as the PR type.

Stanley Holloway is a favourite of mine though I feel that, his part of the rather bossy dad is something of a well trodden role for him.

Alistair Sim is another favourite though, he is in an all too brief scene stealing spot.

George Cole is young and fresh though with a truly awful Barnet, his character Johnny should really have been named Wally.

Sid James manages to quite literally pop up in oh so many British movies, in strikingly similar roles.

Be Careful What You Wish For

[boblipton · 6/10 · 1 April 2018]

The movie industry turns out one of those "It's not easy in the moom pitcher business" movies every few years, like A STAR IS BORN, and this Launder-Gilliat production, made during the slide of the 1950s is their contribution to the field. Pauline Stroud is hectored into taking part into a local beauty pageant. This leads to a glamour competition, which she wins, when Diana Dors doesn't want to take time out from her more profitable life to accept the prize of a 3-month studio contract. Miss Stroud thinks she is on the road to stardom.... but the industry is full of chiselers and ineffectual nice guys down on their luck, while she is too mousy and moral to do more than flounder and sink.

There are plenty of interesting players, from Dennis Price and Miss Dors, to surprising unbilled cameos like Alastair Sim and Googie Withers; the beauty contestants are starlets who would become prominent over the next couple of decades, like Kay Kendall and Joan Collins. It's the dourest of comedies that could manage a general release, while never releasing its hold on the audience's attention.

Comic Misfire

[malcolmgsw · 5/10 · 23 December 2012]

It is difficult to believe that with the talent both behind and in front of the camera that this film could be such a misfire.It clearly attempts to be a satire on beauty competitions and the film industry,but misses just about every target that it aims at.As one other reviewer has mentioned she is reminiscent of Ruby Keeler ie talentless.She is just totally out of her depth.Dennis Price is the nominal star of this film,but echoing is spiraling down career he only appears for about 20 minutes.He just had to appear in what ever he was offered he was desperately short of money.However there are 2 standout female performances both which show star potential.Diana Dors is great as usual and playing a sister of Proudfoot is the great Kay Kendall.just a couple of years away from stardom in Genevieve.

Not a porn film, but what a great title if it were.

[Wilbur-10 · 6/10 · 8 October 2001]

***Possible Plot Spoilers***

One of the lesser known films from the prolific director/producer team of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, this has more than enough quality to make it well above average.

Story follows the fortunes of village girl Marjorie, whose parents run the local corner shop. She is spurred out of her dull existence when she wins a local beauty contest. This leads on to a bigger beauty pageant which she also wins after befriending another contestant (Diana Dors), who lets Marjorie win the rigged event.

This is a simple story well told, with a multitude of locations and characters which result in a surprisingly complex narrative. We follow Marjorie's misfortune as she is entangled by the trappings of success in the male dominated glamour industry, continually forced to compromise her ideals. Despite her fall from grace, she retains the audiences sympathy - her motives are always honourable, not motivated by greed but simply the desire to make something of herself and not accept a life of mediocrity. She eventually ends up as a nude Lady Godiva in a seedy flea-pit of a theatre, watched by her outraged parents who have come to see her.

'Lady Godiva Rides Again' is really a pleasant surprise and far above the low budget 'B' film which I thought it was going to be. The cast is large with a multitude of already, or soon-to-be, well known faces - these include George Cole, Joan Collins, Stanley Holloway, Sid James, Dennis Price, Michael Ripper, Alastair Sim, Googie Withers, Dana Wynter and the already mentioned Diana Dors. I'm not sure what happened to Pauline Stroud who played Marjorie - she only seemed to appear in three more films.

While comparison with Ealing comedies isn't really possible, as here the story is played straight, in terms of production, performances etc. 'Lady Godiva Rides Again' can feel highly praised in that it could be mistaken as a minor entry from the famous West London studio.

A curiosity in austere post war Britain

[howardmorley · 4/10 · 18 November 2017]

I have read all the other user comments after watching this film billed as "Lady Godiva Rides Again" but shown on IMDb.com as "Bikini Babe" (1951) on London Live TV network today.My main interest was seeing an early screen appearance of Bernadette O'Farrell playing a minor part.She was mostly known for playing the maid Marion in the 1950s TV series 1&2 "The Adventures of Robin Hood" which starred Richard Greene and for playing a Miss Harper in "The Happiest Days of your Life" (1951).

I have remarked in my previous reviews of the aforementioned adventure series what a startling facial resemblance she bore to the late Jennifer Jones, all of whose films I possess on video &/or DVD.The lead who played the "wannabe" actress and Diana Dors I never found attractive on screen.It was a pity Bernadette had to marry Frank Launder and give up her film career so early as I would have liked to have seen her in other roles. Barely adequate at 4/10 and what a let down for the audience as we don't see Lady Godiva riding her white horse on stage naked even though at the time the lord Chancellor insisted at the time nude models had to kept perfectly static on stage!!

The Girl in the Black Costume

[richardchatten · 7/10 · 12 June 2023]

Made in the year of the Festival of Britain, this film is prefaced by a warning that it "Contains mild innuendo, cultural depictions of the era".

Pauline Stroud has long served as one the great warnings to aspiring actresses since she vanished almost without trace after playing the title role in this film, but actually aquits herself well and shows considerable cow-eyed charm.

Diana Dors as a hardened pro is supposed to be the film's glamour girl, but compared to the lovely Kay Kendal (wasted in a small part) she comes a very poor third; while harsh reality intrudes in the form of a predatory Dennis Price and Eddie Byrne's observation that life in austerity Britain for most girls consists of "seven years to live and then the kitchen sink!"

Good girls aren't pretty

[dsewizzrd-1 · 5/10 · 9 October 2018]

Alastair Sim, Diana Dors, Stanley Holloway, Dennis Price, George Cole and Sidney James in this Girl's Own story about a drippy young woman in the midlands chosen in a beauty pageant in Westbourne (Blackpool) to advertise soap. All the actors play their respective characters, Diana Dors as a bad girl in the pageant, Stanley Holloway as the avuncular father, Dennis Price as a philandering film star, George Cole as a ingenuous working class piker, and Sidney James as a dodgy geezer running a strip show. But it doesn't really save the contrived and well worn plot.

Austerity is Nearly Over!

[robinakaaly · 8/10 · 19 March 2010]

This was a hugely enjoyable film for those of us who were around when it was made. Even sixty years on I can still remember Battersea Funfair.

What I do wonder though, is how many in a modern audience will get all the topical jokes, a few for instance: the reference to Johnny being a butter patter: in those days Sainsbury's cut butter from a block, and patted it with wooden patters to the required weight; in the cinema Johnny buys a brickette ice-cream (without wafers); the 10/- fine if a half-naked girl moved during a tableau (Lord Chamberlain's rules - see Mrs Henderson Presents).

Among the nice touches: Alistair Sim's cameo as Hawtry Murington was quite brilliant from the opening, louring, shot of him to his accurate critique of the problems facing the British film industry; as Marjorie goes into see Otto Mann, casting director, a couch is just inside the door.

Although set in the North, the exterior shot of Chanters store is of Bentalls in Kingston. The station with the train back home is Kings Cross (the coaches are Eastern Region). And was the pawnbroker an uncredited Bernard Miles? Oh, and wasn't the 20 year old Diana Dors a dish? (And can somebody identify Joan Collins for me please).

The whole thing was a delight from start to finish (despite the lack of regional accents among the girls).

Trivia

[jjagb · 31 October 2005]

It may interest people to know that appearing in the film uncredited as a contestant in a beauty contest is Ruth Ellis.

On July 13th 1955 she became the last woman hanged for murder in Great Britain. In a jealous rage the 28 year old night-club manageress fired six shots at her 24 year old lover David Blakely outside the Magdala Pub in Hampstead, London. Two bullets missed, one piercing the hand of a passer-by; two hit him in the back, one in the thigh and one in the left arm. He died instantly.

When sentenced to death the only thing she said was 'Thanks'.

The female star of the film was Diana Dors. Her greatest ever screen performance was in 'Yeild to the Night' the harrowing story of murderess Mary Price Hilton a character based on Ruth Ellis.

Consultant on the film was executioner Albert Pierrepoint - the man who hanged Ruth Ellis.

A dud, but worth it for Alastair Sim's brilliant cameo.

[rick_7 · 11 June 2010]

Lady Godiva Rides Again (Frank Launder, 1951) is a disappointing comedy from the Launder-Gilliat team responsible for penning The Lady Vanishes and Millions Like Us. Pauline Stroud is naivety itself as a competition winner who crashes the big time and finds the showbiz world is a tad unpleasant. Her Ruby Keeler-esquire performance fuses big-eyed posturing with nauseating delivery to no visible end, as her character leaves behind good guy George Cole to rub shoulders with film star Simon Abott (Dennis Price at his most foppish) on the slippery slope to Sid James' dodgy "French revue". But at least pineapple salesman John McCallum hasn't deserted her.

Launder and Gilliat aren't sure whether they're dishing up a comic romp or a cautionary tale and the result is a largely laughless, frequently miserable, ultimately patronising film. On the plus side, there is one atypically fantastic scene around the hour mark featuring Alastair Sim as a broken-down producer, formerly "the Mr Murington", now "THAT Mr Murington". Marrying pathos and belly laughs, it's one of the most perfectly rounded sequences I've seen and presumably provided the template for Peter Sellers' pathetic, hilarious scene-stealing bit as The Wrong Box's Dr Pratt. It's also fun to see Richard Wattis, Sim's Happiest Days of Your Life co-star, putting in a couple of minutes as the sardonic Otto Mann, while the pneumatic Diana Dors has a showy bit-part as a bikini-clad model.

Elsewhere, the casting is bizarre, both wilfully so and in retrospect. As well as featuring Googie Withers in its film-within-a-film and boasting a walk-on from Trevor Howard, it offers a first glimpse at Joan Collins, gives future DJ Jimmy Young a chance to croon and presents Ruth Ellis - later notorious as the last woman to be hanged in Britain - as a beauty contestant. Such pub trivia aside, Lady Godiva is a bit of a damp squib, cantering completely off the road in the final reels as the makers strive for some sort of grand neorealist statement, and find only Sid James.

Trivia note: Dors played a character based on Ruth Ellis in Yield to the Night, though Ellis wouldn't get a real biopic until Dance With a Stranger in 1985, starring Miranda Richardson.