Sponsored by
Yorkshire Diary: When the stars visited Leeds
Some unlikely celebrities have visited Leeds over the decades and been pictured in some unlikely settings. Jayne Dawson reports
Celebrities are very carefully managed these days, and their images guarded by a whole team of people.
It is rare to see an "official" photo that isn't perfect, or doesn't portray them in the best light possible – but it hasn't always been the case.
Over the decades many glamorous stars visited Leeds and some were
pictured in some strange and unlikely settings.
Perhaps the most unusual was American actress Jayne Mansfield.
Miss Mansfield was a blonde bombshell in the style of Marilyn Monroe, with the same breathy style of delivering her lines and a high-pitched giggle.
* Click here to watch latest YEP news and sport video reports.
She was associated with all that is glamorous, and lived in a 40-room, pink-painted Hollywood mansion, which even had "I love you Jaynie" spelled out in gold mosaic at the bottom of her heart-shaped swimming pool.
* Click here for latest YEP news and sport picture slideshows.
Yet in April 1967 she was photographed in a very different environment – outside Armley Jail.
She was over here to appear at Batley Variety Club but her reason for posing outside the prison, and in a dress that looks a little travel-worn, is not made clear.
But there she certainly was, clutching her two chihuahua dogs to her chest and being watched by a group of children, at least one of whom looks very bored indeed .
It is hard to imagine glamorous stars of today like Katie Price or Cheryl Cole allowing themselves to be pictured in such an unglossy setting but back in the 1960s and 1970s Miss Mansfield was not the only one.
Pat Phoenix was another well-known actress who allowed herself to be pictured in a very ordinary location when she visited the city in 1971.
Miss Phoenix played Elsie Tanner in the long-running soap Coronation Street – a role rather less glamorous than those played by Jayne Mansfield, but she was nonetheless an actress with an upmarket image.
Yet in 1971 she agreed to visit Leeds to open a new department for women with fuller figures at the then Leeds store Matthias Robinson.
At the store, on Briggate, Miss Phoenix confided that her own hips had once measured 44inches, though she had since slimmed down.
The actress, wearing what was then known as a "midi" (calf length) coat trimmed with mink collar and cuffs which she designed herself, spoke of the difficulties of finding clothes to fit.
On the day she bought a pair of hot pants – but with a cover up skirt, on the grounds that she believed she was too old to show her legs.
Other Hollywood stars also visited Leeds in earlier decades, perhaps the most famous among them being Laurel and Hardy, who came to the city in August 1932.
They arrived in Leeds New Station looking "a little tired" said the news report. The two then made their way through a crowd of 2,000 to stay at the Queen's Hotel in Leeds.
Another unlikely visitor to the city was Ronald Colman, who made the trip in 1948. But the man who was once the most famous movie star in Hollywood was over here not to promote a new film but to visit his sister, who was the wife of a Leeds doctor.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Leeds
Thursday 24 May 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 10 C to 25 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: East
