The seaside snap that blew the rest of Britain away
Pat StewaRt admits it: she wasn’t wearing any knickers when she was photographed on the railings of blackpool Promenade in 1951, laughing with her friend wendy as the wind caught her skirt to create an iconic picture of the british seaside, four years before Marilyn Monroe famously stood above a New York subway grate in the Seven Year itch.
then aged just 17, Stewart was actually wearing a modest, one-piece bathing costume beneath her flyaway frock. but when Picture Post photographer bert hardy showed the magazine’s editor the pictures he’d snapped with his little box brownie, heads were shaken in the newsroom.
the editor was so worried that readers would think the triangle of swimsuit visible was actually her underwear that he ordered hardy to remove all sign of it. he didn’t want to be accused of publishing an ‘indecent’ photograph of a girl’s knickers. but the edited image looked even saucier.
when Stewart first saw her picture, she clasped a hand to her mouth in horror.
‘Oh no! what’s my mam going to say?’ she gasped. ‘Don’t show her,’ advised a friend.
but it was no use. hardy’s ‘blackpool belles’ shot was being used to launch a major nationwide photography competition with a grand prize of £5,000: a huge sum at the time, enough to buy two houses in Stewart’s home town of Featherstone, west Yorkshire, where her dad worked as a coal miner and her mum wore her fingers ragged picking peas to put her only daughter through dance school.
in a charming new memoir, Stewart (now 82) tells the plucky story of her life as a high-kicking
Tiller Girl in the Fifties, working with some of the biggest stars of her time, including Laurel and Hardy, Morecambe and Wise, the Beverley Sisters, Benny Hill and Diana Dors.
Stewart’s mother had launched her into showbiz by entering her in a series of bonny baby competitions. With her blonde hair set in Shirley Temple ringlets, she landed her first modelling contract as a toddler, promoting teething biscuits called Bickiepegs.
Aged three, her parents bought her dancing lessons and it quickly became apparent she had a natural talent.
During the war, her mum traded fabric on the black market to make stage costumes, which she stitched by candlelight in the blackouts.
Stewart was thrilled to be accepted as a Tiller Girl, travelling to Soho for training — the other girls had to explain why women in the street below kept leading men in through a doorway.
Between exhausting rehearsals the girls would lie flat on the floor with their legs against the wall to relieve the pain in their calves. There were giggles on the day the elastic in Stewart’s silky stage knickers snapped mid-show.
But although she had fun with the other girls — and her stage- door admirers — she was quickly bored by the Tillers’ robotic routines, and jumped at the chance to become part of a glamorous ballroom double-act.
She worked with Diana Dors, who advised her on hair bleach; Oliver Hardy always had a kind word; and the infuriating catchphrase of Arthur Worsley’s ventriloquist’s dummy would boom incessantly through the backstage speakers: ‘Gottle of geer!’
At the heart of her story is her love affair with Welsh comedian Johnny Stewart, whom she met on the road and married before an evening show in Weymouth in 1956.
Her adoration of his wit and confidence shines from every page. Once due onstage after Morecambe and Wise, he got his laugh by creeping up behind them and dropping his trousers. When they turned and saw what he had done, Eric and Ernie dropped theirs, too, leaving their audience rolling in the aisles.
Although Stewart gave up the stage to be with her husband, she made an impressive career for herself as a theatrical agent while raising her three children.
A few years ago, another woman popped up on BBC’s The One Show claiming to be ‘the girl in the spotty dress’. Luckily Pat had the original contact sheet of photos to prove that her rival was mistaken.
She sold some of them in 2011, finally making money herself from an image that had profited so many others.
The high-kicking career took its toll on her bones, and both her hips disintegrated. Calling a surgery advice line, she gave her name and was delighted when the man on the line exclaimed: ‘I know who you are! You’re the girl in the spotty dress!’