Chrystabel "Jane" Leighton-Porter: Britain's Secret WW2 Weapon

Chrystabel Leighton-Porter was the model for the Second World War Daily Mirror newspaper cartoon heroine Jane which boosted morale during the Blitz. While American troops ogled pinups of Betty Grable and the Varga girls of Esquire magazine, British soldiers, sailors and airmen went to war inspired by The Daily Mirror's comic strip. Prime Minister Winston Churchill suggested that Jane was "Britain's secret weapon"

Born Chrystabel Jane Drewry in Eastleigh, Hampshire on 11 April 1913, her father worked at the town carriage works. Chrystabel had an older twin, Sylvia, and was the youngest of eleven children of whom three died young.  Eastleigh was surrounded by fields and hedgerows, where she could grow to love the countryside and while away the days, without a care in the world, playing tennis and swimming. Her modelling started after she left school when she moved to London to live with her sister and she earned a living posing for life classes.

"When I first posed nude, it felt rather strange. But I soon realized that, as far as the artists were concerned, I might as well be a flower vase, so I didn't feel as though I had been ogled."

Jane was born when artist Norman Pett made a wager that he could create a comic strip as popular to adults as the strip Pip, Squeak and Wilfred was to children. Originally Pett's wife Mary modeled for him, but in the late 1930s, she abandoned modeling in pursuit of golf. Pett then teamed up Chrystabel whom he met while she was modeling for a class in Birmingham, where she also worked as a telephone operator.

The Daily Mirror cartoonist Norman Pett had been drawing a weekly cartoon since 1932 which he called Jane's Journal — The Diary of A Bright Young Thing. she had made her first appearance in the Mirror on December 5 of that year.

In 1938, Don Freeman started writing for the comic, adding to its continuity. Jane was drawn in a simple cartoon pen style very similar to the post–WW I (1919) cartoons of Rene Giffey (1884-1965) and his French society magazine colleagues and their lineal descendants. The amount of danger surrounding Jane was always mild, and the amount of skin she exposed and her own awareness of her role in her misadventures cycled up and down through the years — the basic rule of thumb being the more unaware she was of her sexuality, the more skin she could show.

In a gesture of ultimate support for the war effort, Christabel did her first nude photo session for the Mirror just before D-Day. A few days later, high above the Allied push in France, a lone plane circled before dropping fat bundles of the newspaper for the troops fighting below. There followed an understandable lull in the fighting, before it resumed with a certain renewed vigor. It was said that the first British armored vehicle ashore on D-Day carried a large representation of a naked Jane, inspiring soldiers to say that "Jane had given her all."She was also credited with 'inspiring' the 36th Division to advance six miles into Burma.

Chrystabel was the woman who kept British soldiers smiling through their gloomiest hours, One story illustrates her effect on those in the armed services. A British submarine had been attacked, and was crippled and powerless on the bottom of the ocean. Sea currents swirled round the vessel and there was always the chance the enemy would swoop in for the kill. The crew inside fully expected the vessel to become their tomb, but knew how they wanted to spend their last moments. A request was put in to the captain. The submariners wanted to live out what time remained gazing at pictures, currently in his safe, of a stunningly beautiful woman from Eastleigh, Hampshire. Their commanding officer obliged and the images of the supremely sexy Christabel Leighton-Porter, aka "Jane," were distributed.

Unbelievably, this particular maritime incident had a happy ending. It was eventually possible to refloat the stricken sub and the crew returned to the safety of dry land. And this is just one of dozens of similar tales which reveal how the A-grade assets of this classy Hampshire lady were a direct hit with the armed forces.

 Jane's intimate confidant was a pet dachshund named Fritz. Her full name was Jane Gay, a play on the name Lady Jane Grey.  Until 1943, Jane rarely stripped to more than her undergarments, but then she made a fully nude appearance when getting out of a bath and clumsily falling into the middle of a crowd of British soldiers.

Christabel reflected, "Young people cannot understand what all the fuss was. But during the war, there was a different atmosphere, different feelings. Jane had a cult following. It was so important to the boys. I loved the fuss that was made of me. But I was always amazed by the strip's popularity. And when people said 'Oh, you don?t know how much Jane means to us?,' I was overwhelmed."

The impact of her wide smile and superb physical statistics on WW II troops cannot be underestimated. In the fight against fascism, maintaining the morale of service personnel in a climate of relentless death, rationing, and destruction was practically as vital as having enough ammunition.  Christabel was, quite simply, Britain's first sex bomb.

 The cartoon's prominence was such that submarine captains were given copies of the strips weeks in advance so their crews didn't miss out on any crucial developments. There's no denying that in the dark days of the war a sex interest for "the boys" was vital. But warfare fueled by coursing hormones was nothing new. There was a sense of innocence about the cartoons and the heroine's honor always remained unsullied.

Photographs of Christabel were everywhere, slapped on the walls of mess halls and bars all over the country. Her image was painted on planes and daubed on jeeps. Fan mail flooded the Daily Mirror's Fleet Street offices and whenever she put in a personal appearance, she ended up in the center of a churning sea of uniforms.

''Suddenly I became a sweetheart all over the world,'' she recalled. ''One admiral told me that there wasn't anybody on the ships, from the lowest rating to the highest in the fleet, who didn't have a drawing of Jane in his pocket or on his bunk.''

There is story upon story showing the extent of Christabel's popularity and allure. One of dozens of letters she received over the years tells how exhausted and traumatized soldiers returning to East Anglia from the horrific Battle of Arnheim were offered baths and beds, but just wanted to read about Jane. "They stumbled off the aircraft ... some of them kissed the turf; all they wanted was the Daily Mirror," she says.

 PETT AND CHRYSTABEL WITH FRITZ THE DOG

 Chrystabel Leighton-Porter began a music hall striptease-act based on the Jane character which toured army bases around the country. As Hitler's bombs rained down on London, thespians fled the West End to places where there were safer boards to tread, leaving many theatres starless. When they moved out, Christabel and her leggie chorus girls danced in, and to great effect. They were able to side-step a law banning naked women from moving around on stage by wheeling her out on a sledge, parading her around, then pushing her off again. "It was quite a naughty show for those days," Christabel recalled. "A chorus girl stood in the wings with a fur coat for me."

In the war, it was compulsory for actors and entertainers to join ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association) whose job it was to organize entertainment for the troops, and although Chrystabel's audience were mainly soldiers, she was never asked by ENSA to perform on the front line.

"I think they felt that my show was a little too risqué, and perhaps risky to put on for a theatre full of lusty troops! It was different when I did stage shows in provincial theaters, because although there was a lot of boys there, there was always a lot of general public too. As well, it was in a slightly more controlled environment really," Chrystabel explains.

The content of the act varied due to restrictions set in by local censors. Some censors were concerned about the amount of clothes Chrystabel removed during the show.  Christabel's favorite moment from the fame of being Jane occurred when the sexy showgirl, for once demurely dressed, met the then Lord Chamberlain. "Tell me my dear," asked the head of the royal household, "what do you do in your act?" "Well," explained Christabel, "at one stage I turn my back to the audience, take off my bra, and then cover my breasts with my hands as I turn 'round." There was a momentary silence, before the King's sidekick replied, "You must have very large hands."

If the entertainment was near the knuckle, then Christabel's journey home, with the real-life Fritz, often turned into a white-knuckle ride. She cycled part of the way, dodging bombs, with her dog sitting in a front basket. The show toured much of the country and a busy itinerary was made yet more hectic by invitations to visit service installations wherever she was playing.

She won the title of "Britain's Perfect Girl" at the London Palladium and was signed up by theatrical agent Lew Grade which led to her starring in the film The Adventures of Jane in 1949. It was released on DVD in April 2008.

 Christabel remained slightly startled by the strong reaction her figure and face prompted, but was clearly delighted that her beauty propelled bomber crews through perilous raids across the English Channel and deep into Germany. She recalled transfixing an entire regiment during an appearance: "I didn't even think about it," she said of the sexual aspect to her work. "Wherever I have been, people have asked why it was so popular. It's something I have never been able to answer. It was done in such a way that made Jane a real person. It was more what you didn't see, not what you did. I was always treated with the greatest respect."

"Jane" received many letters from servicemen proposing marriage (62 in just one week) and Chrystabel was careful to hide the fact that she had already secretly married Arthur Leighton-Porter, a Royal Air Force pilot, before the outbreak of the war.

When she reflected on the comic strip's popularity, Mrs. Leighton-Porter chose not to dwell on the risque. ''I think it was because Jane was a bit girl-next-doorish, a bit of England for the boys,'' she said. ''Jane became a cult thing really, and I think wives and girlfriends were glad that their boys had something to get a kick out of.''

In 1948, Pett's assistant Michael Hubbard took over the Jane cartoons. Hubbard continued to develop the cartoons' storyline until 1959, when he gave Jane a happy marriage and ended the series.

In the early-1960s Chrystabel moved to Bermuda and then to Horsham in Sussex where she centered her activities on her son Simon (who later followed his father into the RAF) and was a fund raiser for several charities. In the 1980s a BBC television serial was made of "Jane" and starred Glynis Barber.

GLYNIS BARBER AS "JANE" IN THE TV SERIES

Throughout her later years, Chrystabel Leighton-Porter made regular appearances at wartime reunions. In 1993, the Imperial War Museum exhibition Forces Sweethearts included her 1940's frilly knickers. 

 At a gathering of Second World War veterans at the Special Operations Executive 60th Anniversary, SOE men stood gazing at her still beautiful face, then gently mobbed her for autographs. Later she was to be found sitting surrounded by admirers reminiscing with a stack of her semiclad snaps from that era. "They still treat me as if I'm 18 or 19. The nostalgia just goes on and on. They practically ate me alive ... ."

Chrystabel died on 6 December 2000 aged 87 and her husband  Arthur died in January 2002.