It's the Benny Hill Show!

Stripped to their lingerie yet again!

In its heyday, The Benny Hill Show was the most popular comedy on British TV. A fast-paced sketch programme recalling the "golden age" of English music hall, the show frequently ended with a Mack Sennett-style chase scene full of stereotype 1970s "dolly-birds" running around in their underwear - usually the result of Benny's bumbling antics.

As the series' humour revolved around sexual innuendo, a considerable amount of risque imagery was incorporated into the skits and routines. Initially employing female television extras (mainly upcoming starlets and "page three" girls), Benny later founded a repertory dance ensemble (The Hill's Angels), which featured in many of show's musical and variety numbers. Highly skilled entertainers in their own right, they also contributed a great deal of humorous content, most often by falling out of their clothes at the most inopportune moments.

Your guess is as good as mine.

Virtually all of the specials produced by Thames TV after 1971 incorporated gratuitous panty shots, unexpected stripteases, wardrobe "malfunctions" and full-figure lingerie scenes. As the show progressed, the costume department kept pace with the fashion industry, especially where the actresses' underwear was concerned. Female cast members wore floral bras and briefs during the early seventies, eventually giving way to gauzy French intimates throughout the Eighties.

Lingerie in 1971...

Lingerie in 1981.

Contrary to the allegations propagated by New Wave critics and (self-appointed) moral guardians, Benny Hill was a talented and hard-working entertainer, now recognized as one of Britain's greatest comedians. Close friends and associates - including former cast members - remember him as a kind, gentle and generous man who treated everybody with the courtesy and respect they deserved. The Show's continued success over thirty years since its cancellation is a testament to Benny's comedic genius.

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Not Now, Darling!

Wikipedia describes the term Farce as "a form of comedy which seeks to entertain an audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, ridiculous, absurd, and improbable." In British theatre, it seems more of a thinly-veiled excuse to have pretty young women strip down to their bare knickers before a live audience. This is most certainly true in the case of Ray Cooney's 1967 stage play Not Now, Darling and its 1973 movie adaption.

 

Completely gratuitous lingerie scenes from Not Now, Darling (1973).

 

The plot (such as it is) centers on a fur coat shop in central London, where philandering businessman Gilbert Bodley (Leslie Phillips) is trying to "seal the deal" with one of his wealthy "lady friends." In common with many British comedies of the period, the storyline contains three completely gratuitous stripteases by the female leads, played by Julie Ege, Trudi Van Doorn and Barbara Windsor.

 

What a Carry On!

 

 

The carry-on girls from...well, Carry On Girls.

 

The seaside town of Fircombe is facing a crisis – it's always raining and there's nothing for the tourists to do. Councillor Sidney Fiddler (Sid James, of course) hits on the notion of holding a beauty contest. The general populace is taken with the idea but the feminist contingent is naturally outraged by this "gross" exploitation.

 

During a subsequent press conference, fem-lib activists try to disrupt proceedings by demanding that the contestants submit to a full medical examination (don't bother asking why; this is a Carry On film, nothing needs to make sense). 

 

When the girls ask if they have to take everything off, Sid replies "Nah, just down to your undies." Naturally, the dolly-birds agree to this gratuitous striptease, immediately slipping down to their bras and panties before a local television crew (which is apparently how things were done back in the early seventies).

 

Summary freely adapted from Wikipedia. 

Jane at War

Another thinly-veiled excuse to see Jane in her underwear...

Seeing as we couldn't possibly say it any better ourselves, we thought we might present this extract from Don Markstein's Toonopedia:

"There are certain types of entertainment that never go out of style — funny stories about home life … exciting stories about great heroes … pretty women who repeatedly strip or get stripped down to their underwear or less … The first is represented in comics by such famous features as Blondie and Hi & Lois, and the second by such famous features as Dick Tracy and Prince Valiant. But newspaper comics featuring the third are few and far between.

In America, at least. But Britain has had them since December 5, 1932, when Norman Pett's Jane's Journal: The Diary of a Bright Young Thing debuted in London's Daily Mirror (a leader in British comics, the most famous alumnus of which is Andy Capp). A couple of sources say the character was modeled after Pett's wife, but this may be a pious fiction, as other sources say she was based on model/actress/sexpot Christabel Leighton-Porter, who would have been 19 at the time.

The first episode of Jane (which became the official title of the strip not long after it began, and by the way, no relation) was rather mild, cheesecake-wise — just a one-panel glimpse of Jane (last name Gay, tho this was rarely mentioned) in a petticoat as she prepared to meet Count Fritz von Pumpernikel. But that one did set the stage in at least one way. Fritz, who turned out to be a dachshund, was her constant companion from that moment forward. Jane (with Fritz) continued a few years as a vehicle for daily gags (which often involved her innocently dressing, bathing or catching her skirt on a thorn), but those soon gave way to loose continuity and then, when Don Freeman came aboard as writer in 1938, to full-fledged adventure stories. It was in the middle of a spy adventure that she met Georgie Porgie, who was to be her adversary, ally, and eventually lover (tho from all indications, a chaste one).

Throughout these adventures, Freeman and Pett retained the comedy element. That way, Jane could remain innocent while they brought every manner of contrivance to bear in getting her clothes off. In fact, she stayed innocent even when she "gave her all," as newspaper reports described the event — that memorable day in 1943, when, in a hilarious scene, Freeman and Pett brought circumstances together that forced Jane to run through a cafe crowded with military men, naked as a jaybird.

A week later, the American newspaper Round-up reported on the event, and added, "The British 36th Division immediately gained six miles." Coincidence? Perhaps. 

By that time, Jane had already become something of an icon in British popular culture, so it isn't surprising her doings were so closely followed by British soldiers. Even in America, she'd inspired a few imitators in the "Spicy" line of pulp magazines (the best remembered of which is Sally the Sleuth from Spicy Detective). Her first comic book, which combined reprints with new material, came out in 1944, and new ones appeared regularly for the rest of the '40s. In 1948, Pett moved to a rival paper, The Dispatch, and launched a rival clothes-shedding character, Susie. Pett's assistant, Michael Hubbard, took over the art on Jane. Hubbard used a more realistic style, and the strip had less humor as well. By then it had become practically an institution on the Mirror's comics page, but it lost steam over the next decade. On October 10, 1959, Jane accepted Georgie's proposal of marriage, they sailed off together into the sunset, and the now-legendary series was over..."

Read the original article on Don Markstein's Toonopedia.

Tiffany Jones

Posh, British elegance from Tiffany Jones...

 

Tiffany Jones was a British comic strip that ran in syndication between 1964 and 1977 and was published in Daily Sketch. The series centered on a young woman who traveled to London to become a fashion model. It is notable for being created by two female comic strip artists, Pat Tourret and Jenny Butterworth. Following in the steps of her predecessors, Tiffany featured a surprising number of gratuitous stripteases and lingerie scenes. 

Amazingly, this is all that Wikipedia has to say on the subject.

Mandrake the Magician: Lora

Lora flees a fate worse than death in her bra, panties and stockings...

Modesty Blaise

Click image to enlarge...

 

From Wikipedia: "Modesty Blaise is a British comic strip featuring a fictional character of the same name, created by author Peter O'Donnell and illustrator Jim Holdaway in 1963. The strip follows Modesty Blaise, an exceptional young woman with a criminal past."

 

Oddly enough, the Wikipedia article makes no mention of her talent for falling out of her clothes and undressing in public (as seen in the images posted above). Following Holdaway's death in 1970, artistic chores were handed over to Enrique Badía Romero, who is credited with introducing the strip's more "voluptuous" take on the character (ie, more nudity and lingerie scenes).

James Bond: Gretta

 

Gretta getting into trouble (and out of her clothes)...

Artwork by Yaroslav Horek

Mary Perkins, On Stage

Gratuitous striptease from Mary Perkins

 

Mary Perkins was an American newspaper comic strip by Leonard Starr for the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate. Running from February 10, 1957 to 1979, it

mixed soap opera, adventure and broad humor, while the artwork was characterized by a variety of sweet young things stripping down to their underwear for no apparent reason a studied line and innovative storytelling. 

 

Text adapted from Wikipedia.