REVIEWED BY DAVID VINEYARD:


THE ADVENTURES OF JANE. Eros Films, UK, 1949. Christobel Leighton-Porter, Michael Hogsworth, Peter Butterworth, Sonya O’Shea, Ian Colin, Stanelli, Sebastian Cabot. Screenplay by Alf Goulding, E. J. Whiting and Con West, based on the comic strip “Jane” created by Norman Pett. Directed by E. J. Whiting and (uncredited) by Alfred Goulding and Norman Pett. TV series: BBC, UK, 1982-84 (reviewed by Michael Shonk here ).

   Jane, that grown up Little Orphan Annie in and out of lingerie, wasn’t the first glamor girl to strip down in the comic strips on either side of the Atlantic, but her predecessors like Fritzi Ritz, Dixie Dugan, Blondie (before marrying Dagwood), and Frank Godwin’s Connie were modest in comparison to the British Gypsy Rose Lee of the news kiosk.

   Jane lost more clothes, showed more skin, and outlasted the best of them. She has hardly been out of the papers since her creation and even managed two movie outings over forty years apart.

   That’s not bad for a lass and her pet dachshund Fritz, especially since Jane’s chief talent was a gift for getting caught out after spectacular costume failures.

   Jane put the strip in comic strip.

   She was created by artist Norman Pett as a morale booster, a bit along the lines of Milton Caniff’s “Male Call,” but Jane ran in the daily papers and fairly soon, unsatisfied with simply finding ways for Jane to lose her clothes, Pett decided there should be a bit of plot to go with all that skin, so Jane got involved with smugglers, spies, saboteurs (certainly a fifth column was involved in sabotaging her costumes), and kidnappers. Across her career she would veer into a soap opera for a while and even acquire a daughter just as prone to losing her clothes as Maman.

   There is a whole school of British comic strip inspired by Jane and Pett, including Romeo Brown by Peter O’Donnell and Jim Holdway, who soon got more serious with Modesty Blaise.

   Here we have the original Jane, Christobel Leighton-Parker, in the flesh, the model whose photos often accompanied Pett’s annuals and collections of Jane’s adventures, cast as Jane, a show girl who gets involved with smugglers when a seeming nice old man, Sneyd (the name should have been a clue) gives her a fake diamond bracelet.

   It’s all part of a dastardly plot to get past British customs with the stolen Bulawayo Diamond by the handsome criminal Cap, but bound to be foiled by Fritz and Jane’s less than bright policeman boyfriend Tom, and Jane herself, because Jane is never just a victim to be rescued by a man.

   That’s it folks. There is a swimsuit contest Jane judges, Jane shuts doors, and other things, on her clothes and loses her skirt while only wearing scanties, Jane changes her clothes, Jayne wears lingerie, a comic drunk climbs in bed with Fritz in her room, Jane goes to sea, gets wet and changes out of her wet clothes… It pretty much is the same formula as the comic strip in action.

   A young Sebastian Cabot even shows up in a comic bit about a Frenchman going through British customs.

   If you haven’t guessed how The End flashes on screen you aren’t trying.

   But it is fun in the same way as the strip was, plus under the titles we get to see Pett drawing his most famous Jane picture as Leighton-Porter and Fritz pose. You can catch it in two parts on YouTube if you want, and it is currently on Amazon Prime.

   It’s all fun and tease, and Jane, for all her innocence of her various states of undress, is a surprisingly smart and capable heroine who as often as not rescues herself. It’s no wonder she has survived the ravages of time and changes of custom.

   Jane is a force to reckon with.

   A naked force at that.