Lady Godiva Rides Again was a 1951 British movie about a beauty contest winner who tries to get a career in the movie business. It was directed and co-scripted by the highly-rated Frank Launder, whose wife Bernadette O’Farrell co-starred in the film; she later played Maid Marion in the 1955-1959 TV series The Adventures of Robin Hood.
The central character in Lady Godiva Rides Again, though, was played by little-known and now mostly forgotten Pauline Stroud.
Joan Collins and Audrey Hepburn had both tested for the role. Hepburn was rejected as “too thin” and Collins was relegated to a bit part as a beauty contestant, her first movie role. Pauline Stroud won the title role despite her only previous movie experience having been Vera-Ellen’s stand-in in Happy Go Lovely (1951).
Ruth Ellis
Lady Godiva Rides Again also features (uncredited) Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in Britain. She appears as a beauty queen. She was four months pregnant at the time and had dyed her hair black, styled into a bob.
Also appearing uncredited were Trevor Howard, Jean Marsh, Alastair Sim and Googie Withers. Starlet Dana Wynter appeared billed as Dagmar Wynter and Anne Heywood appeared billed as Violet Pretty.
Lady Godiva Rides Again was re-released in the US in 1953 under the title Bikini Baby with Diana Dors getting top billing.
In 1956, Diana Dors starred as the central character in Yield to the Night (retitled Blonde Sinner in the US), which is about a woman sentenced to death for murder and which is often said to be loosely based on the Ruth Ellis case but which, in fact, was based on the novel Yield to the Night by Joan Henry which had been published before the Ruth Ellis court case.
(Ruth Ellis’ appearance in Lady Godiva Rides Again was uncovered by Monica Weller, co-author of the book Ruth Ellis: My Sister’s Secret Life.)
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 