LAST WISH OF ’50s PIN UP
A PIN-UP girl from the 1950s will have her dying wish – to be buried in the dress that made her famous.
Pat Stewart became an overnight celebrity when she accidentally flashed her knickers to a photographer on Blackpool promenade.
She became known as “the girl in the spotty dress” and it helped launch her showbusiness career.
The great-grandmother, from St Athan near Barry, died of heart failure with her family at her bedside. She was 83.
Her daughter Rachel, 47, said: “Mum was still teaching kids how to dance to rock and roll up until a few weeks ago.
“She went into hospital with heart problems and was cracking jokes with the doctors right up to the end.
“She wanted to wear her famous spotty dress at her funeral and her wish will be carried out.”
Trained dancer Mrs Stewart was a tiller girl at the Blackpool North Pier theatre in 1951 when she had her picture taken alongside friend Wendy Clarke.
As the camera clicked a sea breeze lifted her skirt and the seaside snap, taken by legendary photographer Bert Hardy, became an iconic image.
But Mrs Stewart kept a secret about her underwear which she only recently revealed.
She said: “It wasn’t my knickers in the picture – I had a swimming costume on underneath the spotty dress.
“And it wasn’t all that revealing – it covered the top of my thighs, not like the swimsuits of today which are cut up to the armpits!
“I’ve always kept a copy of the photograph – I was so young and free and the picture captured that moment.”
Widowed Mrs Stewart returned to Blackpool for the first time in 65 years last year to recreate the photograph.
She said at the time: “The tower is still there and it’s windy just like it was on the day the picture was taken.
“I’ve changed a bit since then but I still managed to fit into another spotty dress for my return.”
Mrs Stewart, who is 17 in the picture, had a glittering career in showbusiness working with Laurel and Hardy, Morcambe and Wise, Joan Collins and Benny Hill.
She even met the notorious East End gangsters The Kray twins in the 1960s.
She married stand-up comedian Johnny Stewart and the couple settled in South Wales where she wrote her autobiography, The Girl in the Spotty Dress.
The mum of three discovered another woman was passing herself off as the girl in the spotty dress which was brown and white, not black and white as people thought.
Mrs Stewart produced the original prints of Bert Hardy’s photographs from the windy day photoshoot to prove she was the real girl in the spotty dress.
She even rang the impostor telling her to stop – or face legal action.
Mrs Stewart later revealed she was scared stiff of toppling over the railing and falling 12ft to the beach below when the photograph was being taken.
She said: “My friend Wendy was holding on to the railings but Bert Hardy wanted me to sit perched next to her with nothing to hang on to.
“When the gust of wind came I had to choose whether to preserve my modesty by holding my skirt down or grab onto Wendy for safety.
“I let my skirt blow up and Bert got a picture which was very daring for the time.
“The war was not long over and the photograph seemed to capture the people’s new-found freedom.”
But when the editor of the Picture Post magazine saw the snap he banned it for being too risque.
It appeared on the cover two weeks later after Pat’s underwear was airbrushed out.
South Wales photographer Dimitrios Legakis, who took Pat back to Blackpool last year, paid tribute to her.
He said: “She was a pleasure to work with, a true natural when she was posing even at her age.
“Pat never complained even though it was very cold and windy in Blackpool and the shoot took a while.
“Afterwards she would often call me to see how I was and catch up with me, it was like I knew her forever.”
Mrs Stewart’s family are making the arrangements for her funeral which will be held in South Wales.
Her coffin will be carried away to Gracie Fields singing: “Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.”
Mrs Stewart will be buried in the spotty dress which she wore last year when she recreated the photograph in Blackpool.