Thursday, December 07, 2017

Yield to the Night and Talking Pictures TV

Embed from Getty Images

The most welcome development of the past week has been the appearance of Talking Pictures TV on Freeview.

You no longer need an HD set or receiver to view it. Just do a reinstall and it will appear on channel 81.

Talking Pictures offers a diet of vintage British films, leavened with a few from America and interspersed with the sort of old travel films I often post here.

Already I have seen one film that I have long been looking out for.

Yield to the Night was made released in 1956 and deals with the last days of a woman murderer who is waiting to be executed.

The makers denied that it was inspired by the case of Ruth Ellis, who was hanged the year before. But having seen the film - the murder in particular - I cannot believe them.

Yield to the Night stars Diana Dors and shows what a good actress she was. It is being shown again on Talking Pictures on Sunday evening.

Billed as the British Marilyn Monroe, she died in 1984 aged only 52. In her later years she was happy to play character roles that contrasted with her years as a pin up.

She was born in Swindon and her real name was Diana Fluck.

As she was fond of saying:
"They asked me to change my name. I suppose they were afraid that if my real name, Diana Fluck, was in lights and one of the lights blew…"

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