While on holiday in Weston-Super-Mare, Shirley Freeman, a young typist from Bristol, enters a beauty contest. (Weston and Bristol are only about twenty miles apart, but in the sixties most people's annual holiday was a week- or, if they were lucky, a fortnight- in the nearest seaside to their home town). When she wins, she is persuaded by Don Mackenzie, a local journalist, to give up her previous career and become a full-time beauty contestant, even though this means offending her strict, puritanical father and breaking up with her wet-blanket boyfriend Harry. Don's motivation is to build her up into a local celebrity who will provide him with a supply of stories for his paper. Shirley goes on to win the prestigious "Miss Rose of England" competition (for which read "Miss United Kingdom"), thereby qualifying for "Miss Globe" (for which read "Miss World", although unlike the real Miss World contest, which at this period was always held in London in November, this one takes place in Cannes in summer- doubtless a more enticing prospect for cast and crew).
There is a curious sub-plot involving Rex Carrick, a handsome movie star whom Shirley meets in the course of her adventures. Although Rex is regarded as an irresistible heart-throb by young women, he remains uninterested in their advances, and although homosexuality is never expressly mentioned, there is a strong implication that he might be gay. (I wondered if his character was based upon Rock Hudson). He is not the only possibly gay character in the film; we are also introduced to Shirley's screamingly camp hair stylist.
The title "The Beauty Jungle" suggests that the film was intended as an exposé of beauty contests, which were highly popular in the sixties. (Nobody in Britain at the time used the Americanism "pageants"). The film-makers evidently felt that a film which simply celebrated a young woman's success as a beauty queen would be too bland and lacking in drama. As, however, the film was aimed the young male audience, and as its main selling-point to that audience was the sight of Janette Scott and other attractive young actresses in swimsuits, the film-makers must have realised that if they repeated the standard feminist "cattle market" criticism of beauty contests they would be opening themselves up to accusations of hypocrisy.
Their solution, therefore, was to make a film implying that beauty contests are corrupt, that the winners are picked for commercial reasons and that the contestants, even (or perhaps especially) the successful ones, do not derive any satisfaction or happiness from them. On the eve of "Miss Globe" Shirley sleeps with one of the organisers of the contest but still does not win, largely because the cosmetic company sponsoring the contest, wanting to expand their business in South America, have decided to rig the result in favour of Miss Peru.
There are two problems with these criticisms. The first is that they were not ones that anyone was actually making in the sixties. "Miss World" was certainly criticised by feminists, and also on the grounds of perceived racial bias; nearly all the winners in its early years were European or of European descent. It appears, however, to have been free of the sort of sexual and commercial corruption which this film purports to expose, if only because its organisers were well aware that any scandal might destroy the contest altogether. (They could sometimes err on the side of excessive puritanism; in 1975, for example, the title-holder was controversially stripped of her title when it was discovered that she was an unmarried mother).
The second problem is that although the film is supposed to be an exposé it deals with its subject-matter in a vague and uncertain way. It might have been more dramatically interesting had Don been developed into more of a controlling Svengali figure, but his role is a rather ambiguous one. He becomes Shirley's manager, but the two never become lovers, even after her split from Harry, although Don would certainly like them to be, and there is a suggestion that she is using him as much as he is using her. Janette Scott may have been attractive, but she gives a bland and uninteresting performance, and we never get much idea of what sort of person Shirley really is. When she sleeps with the contest organiser this comes as a complete surprise as there has been no previous indication that she might be a person who could behave in such a way.
"The Beauty Jungle" occasionally still turns up on British television, although it is looking very dated these days. (The colours in the print I saw were looking very faded; I don't know if any better prints exist). Beauty contests are still held in Britain, but nobody takes much notice of them; even the feminists no longer bother to protest against them. This is very much a film from a vanished era. 5/10
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