Pretty Marjorie Clark (Pauline Stroud) – whose parents run the local corner shop – wins a beauty competition in her Midlands town and finds herself in a Festival of Britain procession in Coventry as Lady Godiva (though not in the buff).
Against the wishes of her puritanical old father (Stanley Holloway) and her possessive boyfriend Johnny (George Cole) the impressionable and naive lass enters another beauty contest, and accidentally wins after the organiser attempts to rig the contest in favour of his girlfriend – but she and Marjorie swap gowns.
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.
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.
Dennis Price appears as Simon Abbott, a smoothly lecherous matinee idol who tries to get every girl he meets into bed with him and there is an amusing cameo from Alastair Sim as Hawtrey Mewington – an ageing, down-on-his-luck film producer.
Released in the USA as Bikini Baby.
TRIVIA
Joan Collins features as a Beauty Queen contestant in her movie debut. One of the other contestants is a dark-haired Ruth Ellis, later to become infamous as the last woman hanged in Britain for murder.
Marjorie Clark
Pauline Stroud
Simon Abbott
Dennis Price
Larry Burns
John McCallum
Mr Clark
Stanley Holloway
Mrs Clark
Gladys Henson
Janie
Bernadette O’Farrell
Johnny
George Cole
Dolores August
Diana Dors
Eddie Mooney
Eddie Byrne
Sylvia
Kay Kendall
Beattie
Renee Houston
Lew Beeson
Sidney James
Harry
Cyril Chamberlain
Vic Kennedy
Lyn Evans
Mr Green
Fred Berger
Buller
John Harvey
Susan
Patricia Goddard
Otto Mann
Richard Wattis
Lady in Charge of Publicity
Dora Bryan
Compere
Tommy Duggan
Comic
Eddie Leslie
Joe
Michael Ripper
Hawtrey Mewington
Alastair Sim
Lucille
Charlotte Mitchell
Lucille’s husband
Toke Townley
Susan Foster
Googie Withers
Singer at Dance
Jimmy Young
Dorothy Marlowe
Violet Pretty
Myrtle Shaw
Dagmar Wynter
Director
Frank Launder
