Come By Sunday The Fabulous Ruined Life Of Diana Dors – Damon Wise (1)

Since it was an outdoor party guests gravitated to the pool and at 8.30 p.m., Diana and Dennis stood with Hollywood agent Louis Shurr, whom Bob Hope had introduced to them, and dress designer Howard Shoup for a photo. Suddenly, there was a commotion and all four fell backwards into the shallow end. Diana was completely doused, emerg- ing with her newly styled blonde hair pushed back into a flat and unflattering slick, while the sixty-five-year-old Shurr, who could not swim, flailed bewildered in his ruined suit.

Dennis was enraged and climbed out of the pool, screaming, “Who did it? Who did it? I’ll give $5,000 to anybody who tells me!’ He picked on thirty-two-year-old United Press photographer Stewart Sawyer and knocked him to the ground, kicking him and screaming abuse. A few people tried to pull him away, but Dennis was too far gone.

‘Any man,’ he yelled, ‘who comes to my house, eats my food, drinks my liquor then throws me in my own fucking pool deserves everything he gets.’ In her anger, Diana forgot herself, too, and added a few choice words of her own, though Sawyer’s later claim that she, too, had kicked him ‘in the head’ seems rather unlikely given that she was wearing now- sodden diamanté-studded sandals.

The guests were shocked to see Sawyer carried away, bloodied and unconscious, and though some stayed, the party was unequivocally over. The next day, doctors revealed the extent of the damage — Diana had suffered bruises and abrasions on her arms and a possible sprained back, while Dennis, predictably, found his knuckles grazed and swollen. Sawyer had easily come off worse, with cuts and bruises on his face, head and ribs and-a suspected broken nose.

Sawyer posed with his injuries, denying any collusion in the incident and claiming not to remember anything until he woke up in someone else’s car. At first he flatly denied Dennis’s Come by Sunday accusations, but his story gradually changed, since he sub- sequently told Lionel Crane, ‘I didn’t do it deliberately.

First published 1998 by Sidgwick & Jackson This edition published 1999 by Pan Books an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Ltd 25 Eccleston Place, London SW1W 9NF Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world ISBN 0 330 36765 X Copyright © Damon Wise 1998 The right of Damon Wise to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. 135798642 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Typeset by SetSystems Ltd, Saffron Walden, Essex Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham plc, Chatham, Kent This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Special thanks to the following for sharing their time and correspondence: George Baker, Honor Blackman, Max Clif- ford, Olive Dodds, Terry Gardener, Lionel Jeffries, George Melly, Desmond Morris, Frederick Mullally, Pete Murray, Anthony Newley, James Pickles, Victor Spinetti. Thanks also to John Kelly, who introduced me to Swingin’ Dors; Bob Monkhouse, for permission to draw on his excellent auto- biography, Crying With Laughter (Arrow, 1994); John Waters, for his encouraging impatience; and Ian Woodward, for very generously giving me access to a most perceptive, unpub- lished interview transcript.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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