9. Diana Dors
The 'British Marilyn Monroe' is best remembered today for being exactly that, a British answer to the blonde bombshell.
However, Diana Fluck as she was born, had a tumultuous life just like Marilyn. She actually managed to become a star in Britain before Marilyn entered the scene in the US. Breaking out in the late forties, she became the youngest registered owner of a Rolls Royce in the UK, aged 20, even though she couldn't drive.
Married four times, she launched the career of Richard Dawson when he couldn't get a break. But it was her husband, Dennis Hamilton, that caused much of the drama in her early life. He managed to ruin her career in the USA after just two pictures into her contract with RKO (he assaulted a photographer at a pool party she hosted in an attempt to obtain a house formerly owned by Marlene Dietrich), and thus had to return to Britain at the end of the fifties, still only in her late twenties.
Her career then faltered, an episode she filmed in 1961 for
Alfred Hitchcock Presents was archived for years for being too gruesome at the time. Her company Diana Dors Ltd. went into debt after she had to sign over all her assets to Hamilton when they divorced, and she was reduced to doing cabaret tours. Her career with Dawson gave her a small break from this, but when they divorced, she returned to the UK to do much the same.
She then became the target of the tabloids when she began hosting adult parties in her mansion, where she filmed the participants and kept recordings of them. This, along with her quick wit, made her a chat show favourite. But strapped for cash, she had to tour working men clubs, something she utterly loathed.
Retreating to television presenting and appearing as the Fairy Godmother in a music video for Adam & The Ants, Dors' health began to fail. She died aged 52, from recurring ovarian cancer. Her husband, Alan Lake, then committed suicide just days after her death.
Her fortune, which she left in a code for her children, has still yet to be found after Alan Lake's death.
(I don't count the crappy TV movie made about her as a biopic, her life was better than what it made it out to be
)