Janine Duvitski

Janine Duvitski was born in 1952 and is an English actress. She had an English mother and a Polish father; her original name of Drzewicki was probably abandoned as a stage name because the British public are still too lazy to figure out how to pronounce Polish. Duvitski moved to London early in life to train as an actress, and made her first forays into success with a couple of small television drama roles. Her first 'proper' role came about after she placed an advertisement and photograph in Spotlight magazine, and was invited to audition for a short play about incest. Although twenty years old, her audition was apparently convincing enough for her to win the role of the 13 year old girl. Further success followed, and after a few stage roles Mike Leigh spotted her and offered her the part of Angela in Abigail's Party - first the stage version, then the later television version.

That first role, with the incest and so on, is something of an oddity, being rather more serious than Duvitski's later roles. You see, over the years, beginning with Abigail's Party, Duvitski has cultivated a kind of dopey, naive charm and turned it into an art form. I've no doubt that in real life she's as sharp as a button but the character in Abigail's Party is a perfect example of Duvitski's metier. Mike Leigh's playscript calls for a meek and mundane character, and Duvitski plays it perfectly: she sits, completely out of place admidst the hostess, Beverly's, 'finery', and certainly is no match for the sophistication of the Sue character. 'I have very beautiful lips,' she goofily drools at Beverly, on command, while for most of the play her husband regards her with an expression of utter contempt. If you haven't seen Abigail's Party, of course, you have no idea what I'm talking about, so let's move swiftly on to Dennis Potter's 'Blue Remembered Hills'.

This excellent, deceptively cheerful play offers another chance for Duvitski to shine. Here she plays Audrey, a young girl clutching a dolly who is clearly as bright as a box of hair. Brilliant performances all round, of course, for the cast of this one; do try and see it.

Duvitski is also famous for her roles in Waiting For God, where she plays a rather dull-witted and simple woman, as Pippa Tench in One Foot In The Grave where she plays - wait for it - a rather dull-witted and simple woman. But please, don't be put off - she's brilliant at it. In fact, it would be a mistake to assume that Duvitski can only perform as a simple, dull-witted woman; her roles in the recent English National Opera production of On The Town and in Alan Bleasdale's Boys From The Black Stuff prove her versatility. The possibility of becoming typecast must always be a risk for any actor or actress... Duvitski flirts with it perhaps a little more than most, having accepted roles in The Madness Of King George and the 1979 version of Dracula, both of which involved playing mad women. But really, she's so good at it! There probably ought to be a separate category in the BAFTAs.

Duvitski is currently married to the actor Paul Bentall, with whom she has four children. That's not him in the picture; that's taken from the comedy series 'Benidorm', and she's standing next to actor Kenny Ireland.

Blue Remembered Hills

"Into my heart, an air that kills from yon far country blows. What are those Blue Remembered Hills? What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content. I see it shining plain. The happy highways where I went. And cannot come again." - extract from A. E. Housman's 'A Shropshire Lad'.

Blue Remembered Hills is a play by Dennis Potter, written for television as part of the BBC's 'Play For Today' series. It follows the success of his 1978 play 'Pennies From Heaven' and differs from it in a number of exciting ways, a significant change for Potter. The studio-based performances, recorded on video, of his previous work are replaced with film shot on location in Dorset. The result is a panoramic, sweeping feel to the film which alternates between moving shots that swoop past the characters and static, countryside-backed scenes. A memorable shot zooms down through the branches of a tree, hugging the trunk as the characters pass below. Excellent stuff.

But the main feature for which Blue Remembered Hills is notable is its depiction of children, seven of them, are all played by adults: Colin Welland (Willie), Michael Elphick (Peter), Robin Ellis (John), John Bird (Raymond), Helen Mirren (Angela), Janine Duvitski (Audrey), and Colin Jeavons(Donald). To begin with, there's something vaguely comical about Collin Welland's chunky frame, clad in grey flannel shorts and a knitted sweater, rolling about making spitfire noises, but after a while it all falls into place. The reminiscing begins: what it was like to be a child without adult supervision. The rosy glow of memory, and it's fun to watch. For a while.

Desperate for a bite of apple, Peter's character wrestles Willie to the ground, kneeling on his chest and spitting in his face. More friends join them, and a hapless squirrel is knocked from a tree with stones and then bludgeoned to death. All change, as a moment later they discuss holding a proper funeral for the poor creature. To say more would spoil the play, but suffice to say that children existing in a state of nature is all Potter needs to produce a gripping, horrifying, yet darkly humorous play, and one that's well worth tracking down on DVD.

Debbie Does Dallas

One of the five best selling porn films of all time, Debbie Does Dallas appeared in 1978, close enough to the release of The Exorcist, The Driller Killer and other such notorious seventies video nasties to provide blessed (if rather sticky) relief from a stream of blood and gore. Starring Bambi Woods, whose parents must surely have realised a name like that gave her little choice of career beyond pornography or wildlife films about deer, the film is, in truth, abysmal. Cheap, badly edited and portraying some of the worst acting in the history of bad acting, one can only assume the producers were fully aware most people would be focusing on the more 'artistic' content of the film - namely the endless parade of naked breasts and white, hairy arses.

The plot is simple. Debbie, cheerleader beyond compare, has been chosen to travel to Dallas and become a cowgirl. Alas, she is penniless and must raise the money herself. Her parents, quite wisely, refuse to support her. Despite having only two weeks, Debbie and her cheerleader chums decide to raise enough money to allow them all to travel down to Dallas and give Debs the support she deserves. (Understand that whilst this discussion takes place each girl removes her clothes and idly soaps herself in the shower, a scene that would later influence the infamous shower scene from Porky's. The display of mis-aligned tan lines is a highlight here - one girl has a white stripe that comes halfway up her buttocks at an angle of approximately thirty degrees off the horizontal.)

But where to find the money? The girls flock off to offer their services as bookshop assistants, sports equipment saleswomen and auditors of novelty candles at Mr Hardwick's candle store. The inclusion of a candle shop turns out to be a happy occurrence, of course, as later on in the film the young lady is possessed by an irresistible urge to penetrate herself with a sizeably-girthed wax item more commonly used to provide subtle or romantic illumination. Needless to say, she is discovered and diverse entertainments ensue: Mrs Hardwick somehow ends up with her fingers inside the young lady whilst her husband, never one to miss a bit of excitement in a candle shop, masturbates vigorously and rounds the whole thing off with a spot of inter-generational intercourse.

Of course, she's not the only one. Two other girls accept an offer of twenty-five dollars for a kiss. This, as you'd expect, leads to breast-licking, cunnilingus, fellatio, anal intercourse, ejaculation and a spot of ooh-look-I-can-rub-my-face-in-your-spunk. Other girls enjoy a bit of a spanking, various bouts of fondling and the usual stuff. All of it, remember, badly shot, badly edited and badly acted.

You'd think, with all this industrious copulation, there'd be enough cash to send an entire football team to Dallas, but no - in order to raise that final injection of cash Debbie is obliged to dress as a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader and indulge in various sexual shenanigans with an appropriately dressed Mr Greenfeld. In return, Mr Greenfeld will pay for the whole lot of girls to make their way down to Dallas. It's been hot, sweaty work, but it's clearly worth it... at the end of the film the word 'Next....' appears on the screen, concerning which we are left to draw our own conclusions.

There is no doubt that Debbie Does Dallas is famous for being famous, and that of those who speak of its nefarious charms few have actually seen it. Certainly the porn scenes on any copy commercially available in the UK are cut to ribbons and thus reduce the film to a rather tame, soft porn epic. The Debbie Does Dallas available today is not top-shelf, scorching-hot pornographic material. Add to this the fact that the quality, even on the later UK DVD releases, is extremely low. One of the early scenes has been clumsily edited and includes a painfully lengthy section filmed before action has been called - cue one second of teen cheerleader poised ready to 'act'.

Nevertheless, Debbie Does Dallas has entered modern culture as an epitome of adult entertainment, a paragon of pornography. Infamous but ultimately unsatisfying: an afternoon spent watching Debbie Does Dallas is not, it must be said, an afternoon well spent. Still, curiosity may get the better of you, or the urge to be one of those who can proudly say 'Yeah, I've seen Debbie Does Dallas'. If that's the case, Debbie was recently re-released in the UK on DVD in that censored, hacked-up form, or there's always those original seventies VHS and Betamax copies if you hunt round hard enough. Then, if even that doesn't quench your insatiable desire for tack, there's always the sequels... many, many sequels...

Debbie Does Dallas was directed by Jim Clark and released in 1978. It starred Bambi Woods as Debbie, and a host of other, now forgotten, actors and actresses who all did their clumsy, inept best with Maria Minestra's rather plain, straightforward script. There's surprisingly little information in The Internet Movie Database about Debbie Does Dallas, but a google search will provide those all important details, plus information on the Debbie Does Dallas play, which features no sex or nudity, functioning more as a tribute to one of the most famous pieces of pornography of all time.