Diana Dors was a sex symbol with whom the UK was obsessed in the 1950’s, where she was often referred to as the British Marilyn Monroe, a comparison that does a disservice to both women. I mostly know her from horror anthology films from roughly two decades later when her appearance was…well, not exactly the kind of thing which was on posters on the walls of bedrooms of teenage boys.
She is in peak physical form in 1953 comedy Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? Unfortunately, this is a sad excuse for a comedy, an artlessly filmed screwball romp which betrays its origins as a stage play by taking place almost entirely in one very large room.
In this, what might be the world’s largest hotel suite, newlyweds Bonar Colleano and Diana Decker are endlessly disrupted from trying to consummate their marriage on their wedding night. The main disruption is Dors, as his ex-wife, who is there to squeeze some bucks from him, as the divorce he obtained in California was never confirmed in England.
Thus, we have the setup for an idiot plot and Colleano lives up to the task of being a perfect idiot. He seems to think he’s Cary Grant in Arsenic & Old Lace and, if that’s the case, he is gravely mistaken. All he has to do is tell Decker about the conundrum but, no, he is instead has Dors in the guest room right next to their own bedroom in the suite. He even has his lawyer (David Tomlinson) arrive to pose as the husband of Dors.
Adding to the noise (and I do mean noise) is Colleano’s army buddy and best friend, played by Sidney James. This is comic relief guy, though he doesn’t do much that is funny. One thing that is telling is Decker’s remark early on when she sees how pally the two are together: “You two boys want to be alone?”
What she is suggesting might shed some light on how badly James treats the housekeeper (Audrey Freeman). The young woman is inexplicably attracted to the much older man, though he responds to her advances with repeatedly threats to do things like bash her teeth in. So, this is what passed for humor back then. Odd fact: in real-life Freeman was married to Tomlinson until his death in 2000. I don’t know if they met on the set of this picture.
Any potshots I take at this are moot as this is really just a showcase for Dors. She’s OK, but she isn’t as cute as she thinks she is. Her performance feels like something out of a cartoon—Bugs Bunny by way of Jessica Rabbit. I can understand why Colleano and Tomlinson try to lose her in a pea-souper. It looks like something out of The Mist, and I was kinda hoping one of the monsters from that film would get her.
If there is one character I was rooting for here, it was Decker, as she seems to have the most sense of anybody in the cast until she suddenly doesn’t. I kept expecting her to just leave her husband with each additional, preposterous excuse he gives her for not coming to bed. At one point, he offers to tell her about his time in Hawaii and she says, “My mother prepared me for hardly everything but not that.” When it becomes obvious she will forgive Colleano anything, I lost interest. In answer to the title question of Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary?, I would say this one isn’t.
Dir: Maurice Elvey
Starring Brian Colleano, Diana Decker, David Tomlinson, Diana Dors
Watched on BFI UK blu-ray (all-region)