Blonde, brassy and built to last = the Fifties bombshell was a generous woman in all departments, says GEOFFREY PHILLIPS. Now she's been recreated for television

WOMEN are not built as they once were.

I might not have noticed had it not been for the Diana Dors story on ITV next week. But one glimpse of Keeley Hawes as Miss Dors and suddenly the memories started to trickle. Ah, the Blonde Bombshell. In the Forties and Fifties she was the embodiment of female allure. Previously there had been the It Girl and the Vamp. The BB's specifications were more exact. There was, for a start, the hair. The cascade of semi-petrified peroxide tumbling about the bare shoulders and in that unmistakable Forties/Fifties shade that was supposed to be the colour of golden summer corn but which, in a harsh light, had the stained-yellow look of a geriatric sheepdog's teeth. Contrasting dramatically with the shimmering hair were the black eyebrows. Drawn with more boldness than precision, anyone who has ever written a Pit-man's shorthand outline with a paintbrush can do great BB eyebrows. And the sooty-broom eyelashes. The lips, one need hardly say, were in a state of permanent pout and in a shade of scarlet visible to aircraft. The BB could (not that she would ever have to) run 100 yards for a bus and her lips would still be an inviting arc of incipient passion. 

Now to the bosom, which the BB had to have in abundance. The plunging neckline might reveal acres of bosom but it was vital to convey the impression that several hectares more were being held in reserve. The bosoms of Blonde Bombshells were a wonder to behold, and indeed it was the beholding of them that made them famous. It has to be remembered that the Forties and Fifties were still times of austerity and one could not get much of anything, especially if it was good for you. A rationed, pinched nation craved generousness, and found it in the bosom of the Blonde Bombshell. Yet, looking at Keeley Hawes (Amanda Redman plays the more mature version), one begins to realise that the key to the BB's look lies further south. Note the wasp waist and the emphasised hips. Viewers will not be able to take their eyes off the Hawes/Dors hips. I have not seen such majestic hindquarters as that since attending a rally for Percheron draught horses in Normandy. Seen from behind, it looks as if she is wearing panniers. No wonder Ms Hawes had to pile on weight - around a stone and a half, since you are bound to ask - in order to play the part. 

One has to assume that apart from contributing to the definitive hourglass silhouette, the wide-screen hips are essential to what we might describe as the BB's locomotive engineering. That characteristic sway of the BB in motion was most famously captured on celluloid by Billy Wilder when he had Marilyn Monroe sashay along the railway station platform in Some Like It Hot. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon gazed at MM's retreating form and speculated as to whether her derriere contained some unique arrangement of springs; they spoke in awe and reverence, and on behalf of all men, everywhere. Outlinewise, Diana Dors was not quite in the Monroe class, but there seemed to be more of her and anyway she was the best the British could do at the time. And distinctly more oomphy than the previous pinup offering, the Sweater Girl (sweet girl-next-door in bumpy jumper). So, America had MM; we had Dors; in the Second Division of the BB Championship the US came up with Jayne Mansfield, Britain replied with Sabrina. It was an age of Glamour with a capital Gee. The word is still used these days but with nothing like the old conviction or weight of meaning. A girl might talk about getting glammed up for a night out, meaning the posh frock, the hairdo and a serious session with the paintbox. In Diana Dors's heyday, glamour could not be so easily acquired. Glamour set a girl apart from the dowdy mob (and in the Forties/Fifties Britain could have won Olympic gold in freestyle dowdiness). Glamour could be a girl's only way out of Dullsville. It murmured of lifestyle as well as looks. At the start of ITV's version of the Diana Dors story, the Swindon schoolgirl Dors is asked what she wants to be when she grows. She declares: "A Hollywood film star with a cream telephone and a swimming pool." Cream telephone: now there was a glamorous thought at a time when they only came in black and the public ones were worked by Button A and Button B. 

There were a couple of drawbacks to being a Blonde Bombshell. To the prim and proper, Blonde Bombshell equalled Tart. Bleached hair, mascara, vivid lipstick: they were considered sure indicators of a woman with elastic morals and a giving nature. No wonder men swarmed around them. And then there was the underwear. In the first bedroom scene of the saga, Diana Dors is in bed with Denis "mad, bad and dangerous to know" Hamilton. "I want to be a star (pant, pant)" she moans. "I can make you a star (pant, pant)," he promises. But one hardly notices the dialogue. Just look at Miss Dors's underwear. With corsetry like that you could have had any figure you liked. Some years later Playtex was to warble the merits of the 18-hour girdle; Miss Dors's lacy body armour looks as if it would take 48 hours to get out of, even with the aid of oxyacetylene cutters. Full marks to Mr Hamilton for perseverance. Naughty Mr Hamilton, the ITV saga reminds us, persevered too in introducing Miss Dors to the world of country house orgies, two-way mirrors and naked lunches, thence some time later to the divorce and bankruptcy courts. It is all there in the Diana Dors Story: all four hours of it. Some might find this amount of time spent with the fast set goes quite slowly, but no matter: when one begins to weary of the times the malleable Miss Dors is led into making a wrong move ("don't bother reading that Saturday Night and Sunday Morning script, sweetie; who is this Albert Finney, anyway?"), one can continue to dwell with fascination on the phenomenon of the BB. Whatever became of this creature? In the ITV saga, Dors's agent blames the downturn in her career on The Beatles and the dawn of kid- culture; others might say that the BB's demise was signalled by a different BB Brigitte Bardot. These may have been factors, but the whole truth is probably, like Ms Dors's underpinnings, more complex. 

The BB was a glorious confection; the trouble is, the cream bun too often turns into a giant sponge cake. This is a tendency that cannot be arrested by another layer of icing. BBs do not so much disappear as subside. Gravity will out. Anyway think of the logistics, what with the hair, the hobble- skirt, the corsetry and the cosmetics, getting a BB ready for her day was like preparing a large galleon for sea. The BB was essentially a fantasy, candyfloss for a corned-beef age. A big-boys' Barbie. Nowadays we don't have to go to Hollywood to get a cream telephone. And we still have glamour; it just comes with less glamour. And that's a good thing. Isn't it? Anyway, who needs a Blonde Bombshell when we have Charlie Dimmock?

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