A striptease is an erotic or exotic dance in which the performer gradually undresses, either partly or completely, in a seductive and sexually suggestive manner. The person who performs a striptease is commonly known as a "stripper" or an "exotic dancer".
Dame Joan Henrietta Collins is an English actress, author and columnist. Collins is the recipient of several accolades, including a Golden Globe Award, a People's Choice Award, two Soap Opera Digest Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. In 1983, she was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She has been recognised for her philanthropy, particularly her advocacy towards causes relating to children, which has earned her many honours. In 2015, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for her charitable services. In 2021 she celebrated her 70th year in the entertainment industry.
Jim Dale is an English actor, composer, director, narrator, singer and songwriter. In the United Kingdom he is known as a pop singer of the 1950s who became a leading actor at the National Theatre. In British film, he became one of the regulars in the Carry On films, along with Leslie Phillips, Valerie Leon, Kenneth Cope, Julian Holloway, Hugh Futcher, Anita Harris, Amanda Barrie, Jacki Piper, Angela Douglas and Patricia Franklin.
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art is a drama school in London, England, that provides vocational conservatoire training for theatre, film, television, and radio. It is based in the Bloomsbury area of Central London, close to the Senate House complex of the University of London and is a founding member of the Federation of Drama Schools. It is one of the oldest drama schools in the United Kingdom, founded in 1904 by Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. It moved to buildings on Gower Street in 1905. It was granted a Royal Charter in 1920 and a new theatre was built on Malet Street, behind the Gower Street buildings that was opened by Edward, Prince of Wales, in 1921. It received its first government subsidy in 1924. RADA currently has five theatres and a cinema. The school’s Principal Industry Partner is Warner Bros. Entertainment.
The Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster in London. Its red-brick facade dominates the west side of Cambridge Circus behind a small plaza near the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road. The Palace Theatre seats 1,400.
Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850. It faded away after 1918 as the halls rebranded their entertainment as variety. Perceptions of a distinction in Britain between bold and scandalous Victorian Music Hall and subsequent, more respectable Variety differ. Music hall involved a mixture of popular songs, comedy, speciality acts, and variety entertainment. The term is derived from a type of theatre or venue in which such entertainment took place. In North America vaudeville was in some ways analogous to British music hall, featuring rousing songs and comic acts.
Stewart Granger was a British film actor, mainly associated with heroic and romantic leading roles. He was a popular leading man from the 1940s to the early 1960s, rising to fame through his appearances in the Gainsborough melodramas.
The Windmill Theatre in Great Windmill Street, London, was a variety and revue theatre best known for its nude tableaux vivants, which began in 1932 and lasted until its reversion to a cinema in 1964. Many prominent British comedians of the post-war years started their careers at the theatre.
Pauline Collins is a British actress who first came to prominence portraying Sarah Moffat in Upstairs, Downstairs (1971–1973) and its spin-off, Thomas & Sarah (1979). In 1992, she published her autobiography, titled Letter to Louise.
Pauline Boty was a British painter. Boty was a founder of the British Pop art movement and the only female painter in the British wing of the movement. Boty's paintings and collages often demonstrated a joy in self-assured femininity and female sexuality and expressed overt or implicit criticism of the "man's world" in which she lived. Her rebellious art, combined with her free-spirited lifestyle, has made Boty a herald of the 1970s feminism.
In film, nudity may be either explicit or suggestive, such as when a person is seemingly naked but covered by a sheet. Since the birth of film, depictions of any form of sexuality have been controversial, and in the case of most nude scenes, had to be justified as part of the story.
Samuel Anthony Tenser was an English-born film producer of Lithuanian-Jewish descent. He began as the producer of low budget exploitation films before moving into mainstream productions.
Vivian Van Damm was a prominent British theatre impresario from 1932 until 1960, managing the Windmill Theatre in London's Great Windmill Street. The theatre was famed for its pioneering tableaux vivants of motionless female nudity, and for its reputation of having 'never closed' during the Blitz.
Sheila van Damm was a British woman competitor in motor rallying in the 1950s, and also the former owner of the Windmill Theatre in London. She began her competitive driving career in 1950, and won the Coupe des Dames, the highest award for women, in the 1953 Alpine Rally. The following year she won the Women's European Touring Championship and, in 1955, the Coupe des Dames at the Monte Carlo Rally.
Peter Gordeno was a British dancer, recording artist, cabaret singer, choreographer, and occasional actor.
Stanley A. Long was an English exploitation cinema and sexploitation filmmaker. He was also a driving force behind the VistaScreen stereoscopic (3D) photographic company. He was a writer, cinematographer, editor, and eventually, producer/director of low-budget exploitation movies.
Michael Klinger was a British film producer and distributor. After Tony Tenser, then a publicist became his business partner, the two men created the Compton cinema chain and distribution company and financed Repulsion (1965) and Cul-de-sac (1966) both directed by Roman Polanski. After their association ended, Klinger produced Get Carter (1971), starring Michael Caine, and Gold (1974), with Roger Moore in the lead, and was the executive producer of the 'Confessions' series of sex comedies with Robin Askwith.
Harry Bruce Woolfe was an English film producer and occasional director who founded British Instructional Films. The company focused on documentaries, nature films, and works concerning World War I. He was himself a veteran so had an interest in using film to re-enact the war. This links to his being referred to as an "ardent imperialist" who intended to tell heroic stories of said war. In addition to work on war films he initiated the Secrets of Nature series.
Naked as Nature Intended is a 1961 British nudist film produced and directed by George Harrison Marks and starring Pamela Green. It was the first film from producers Tony Tenser and Michael Klinger.
Mrs Henderson Presents is a musical comedy with music by George Fenton and Simon Chamberlain, with lyrics by Don Black and a book by Terry Johnson. Based on the 2005 film Mrs Henderson Presents, the musical received its world premiere at the Theatre Royal, Bath in 2015 and transferred to the West End's Noel Coward Theatre in February 2016. The film was based on the true story of Laura Henderson and London's Windmill Theatre.
