I was watching White Cargo (1973) a film, which I have never seen before the other night and got to wondering what happened to the actress Imogen Hassall sometimes referred to as "The Countess of Cleavage" who played one of the stripper, Stella.
The film stars David Jason (Fools and Horses fame) as daydreamer Albert Toddey, bored with is job and while frequenting a seedy strip club manages to get caught up in the white slave trade in seventies suburbia. The strippers in the club along with Imogen Hassall were being kidnapped to stock up an Arab sheikh’s harem. It was a sub-par comedy, watchable only if looking for that sleazy British seventies vibe which I do, and to spot a myriad of TV regulars such as Hugh Lloyd, Dave Prowse and Sue Bond.
The British actress was frustrated that she never really got the chance to shine beyond being typecast as a ditzy sex-bomb, all tits and cleavage, popular in British films of the time. She appeared in some of the best TV shows in the 60s early 70s, The Saint, The Avengers, and The Persuaders playing the eye candy and I remember her from ‘When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth’ (1970) playing the dominant cave-girl.
I suppose her biggest role was as Jenny Grubb in ‘Carry On Loving’, a frumpy sausage factory worker, a shy and sheltered girl, and after a minor make over (which mainly consists of taking off her glasses, ruffling her hair and putting on a padded bra!), blooms into a beautiful and sexy model.
She died at age 38, in London 1980, after taking an overdose of sleeping pills.
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