Notes of critic who panned stars made public for first time (From Swindon Advertiser)

Notes of critic who panned stars made public for first time

10:40am Wednesday 15th February 2012 in News By Katie Bond

SWINDON’s very own blonde bombshell has come in for criticism from one of theatre’s toughest talent scouts.

The critiques of Cary Ellison, of the Spotlight casting directory, who died in 2002, aged 87, have been made public for the first time.

Ellison, a former actor and theatre manager, attended more than 1,600 productions between 1953 and 1980.

He kept detailed notes about almost every show he saw, and his theatre programmes have been acquired by the archive at Kingston University.

Diana, who was already one of Britain’s most established stars, was slammed for her turn as principal boy in a 1965 production of Sleeping Beauty.

Ellison had once employed an unknown Dors when he was manager of the Hayes Theatre in Middlesex in the 1940s.

But he then wrote: “Looked good in her very short gold costume. Thin voice and very little dancing aptitude. Not much impact at all really.”

Diana, dubbed the English Marilyn Monroe, was the only daughter of railway worker Peter Fluck and his wife Mary.

She married three times and had four children.

She died in 1984 following a battle with stomach cancer.

According to other critics, Dors’ best work as an actress was the role of a murderess in the 1956 film Yield To The Night, in which she played a woman awaiting execution.

Ellison also criticised two of the world’s stage and screen legends – Sir Laurence Olivier and Dame Judi Dench.

He was dismissive of Olivier when the legendary actor took over from Leonard Rossiter as the social-climbing insurance salesman Fred Midway in the play Semi-Detached by David Turner.

Olivier, then 56, was a box-office hit thanks to the success of films such as Spartacus and The Entertainer, and producers believed he was the right man for the play’s West End debut in 1963.

But Ellison wrote: “Well I have to say that I hardly understood one word even with glasses focused on his mouth. So miscast!”

Ellison also lambasted Dame Judi, now regarded as one of Britain’s greatest ever actresses, when she played prostitute Dol Common in a 1965 Oxford Playhouse production of Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist.