A drifter turns up at a run-down roadside garage. The owner, a grumpy middle-aged man, gives him work. The owner's young, attractive wife is sick of the drudgery of working in the garage and the cafe and longs for a life of glamour and excitement. Inevitably the drifter and the wife begin an affair. They kill the husband, but still have to keep their relationship quiet in order to allay suspicion. The strain and the guilt destroy them.
The astute reader will recognise that as the plot of James M Cain's The Postman Always Knocks Twice. Hollywood's done it twice, and France and Italy's film industries have also had a go at it. Marilyn was Britain's attempt - not that anyone would have admitted it at the time. It was supposedly based on Peter Jones's play Marian, though that's not mentioned in the on-screen credits either.
Sandra Dorne plays the blonde with the yen for the good life. She's perhaps rather too classy for a role Diana Dors could have breezed through. If she's no Lana Turner, then the actor playing her lover is certainly no John Garfield. He's Maxwell Reed, Britain's least sexy sex symbol. All Brylcream and leather jacket, he's not exactly the ideal for a gal with aspirations but next to hubby Leslie Dwyer he does, for once, seem like a prospect.
The cut-price cast is reflected in the cut-price location. The garage and cafe look suitably cheap, hidden away on some obscure back road or, more likely, a corner of the studio backlot. The limitations of the budget suit the story in that it's hard to imagine that anyone would willingly turn up here.
There is a school of thought that B-movies are a more fertile source for the social historian than A-movies. Marilyn goes a long way to prove that theory. It captures the dreariness of 50s Britain. Dorne's character expresses the longing that many people felt for the glamour of a Hollywood life when what they were living through was more like Hancock's Sunday Afternoon at Home. No mink bikinis for her, she's expected to be grateful for the comfort of a gas fire in every room.
Another aspect of life that rarely made it into A-movies is shown in Vida Hope's character. She plays Marilyn's maid and it soon becomes apparent that she's only hanging around because she's in love with her. Lesbianism is a rarity in 50s cinema and Hope seems to go out of her way to downplay the sensationalism by giving a rather monotone performance. This makes her lengthy speech at the climax feel more like an exposition chore rather than a shocking dénouement.
Though the film was initially released as Marilyn, the title was quickly changed to Roadhouse Girl. This change also emphasised that longing for that American dream, as did the original change from Marion to Marilyn. Under either title it's definitely watchable.
Script: Wolf Rilla. (o.a. Peter Jones)
Director: Wolf Rilla
Players: Ferdy Mayne, Hugh Pryse, Kenneth Connor, Ben Williams, Gerald Rex, Hugh Munro
Marilyn is available on DVD in a double bill with Stock Car. Get it from
Amazon UK
