Vera Day

A highly photogenic blonde starlet of the 1950s, petite, buxom Vera Day was once touted as Britain's answer to Marilyn Monroe. Having dropped out of school at the age of 15, she had tried her hand in retail and hospitality before finding steadier employment as a beauty parlour assistant and hairdresser's model. Modelling then became her full-time occupation, but Vera had loftier ambitions. Answering an ad for showgirls in a theatrical publication, she went on to audition for bandleader and impresario Jack Hylton. Hylton was sufficiently impressed by her looks and self-assurance to cast her in his West End stage production of Wish You Were Here at the London Casino in 1953. This was followed a year later by a small supporting part (Valerie) in Pal Joey at the Princes Theatre. That same year, Vera married pugilist and bodybuilder Arthur Mason, took on the role of his manager and made her motion picture debut in Dance Little Lady (1954).

Resisting offers for grittier, more down-to-earth roles, Vera was happy to be typecast on the screen as glamour girls and dizzy blondes: Mimi in A Kid for Two Farthings (1955), Marilyn's colleague Betty in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) (wearing a brown wig, so as not to upstage her illustrious co-star), Sheila, a local barmaid, in Quatermass 2 (1957), a hooker in The Flesh Is Weak (1957) and a singer who falls victim to Boris Karloff in The Haunted Strangler (1958). A rare leading role came her way in The Woman Eater (1958), a rather ludicrous low-budget horror offering about a carnivorous tree and (of course) a mad scientist (played by George Coulouris). Little is remembered about this film, except for Vera's tight-fitting sweater and bullet bra.

For television, Vera first appeared in an episode of Britain's first soap opera, The Grove Family (1954). Her later guest spots included Dixon of Dock Green (1955), No Hiding Place (1959), The Saint (1962) and The Bill (1984). After a hiatus of 34 years, Vera came out of retirement to play the role of Tanya in Guy Ritchie's gangster epic Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998).

After divorcing Mason in 1961, Vera married fashion photographer Terry O'Neill two years later. The couple divorced in 1976, O'Neill moving on to marry American star actress Faye Dunaway.