Showing posts with label hai karate aftershave. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hai karate aftershave. Show all posts

12 Nov 2015

Happy Birthday to the Hai Karate Girl

Valerie Leon as Paula Perkins in Carry On Girls (1973)


Valerie Leon is an actress who imposed her curvaceous figure onto British popular culture and the pornographic imagination throughout the sixties and seventies. 

Appearing in Bond films, Carry On comedies, Hammer horror movies and numerous classic TV shows of the period, she is perhaps best remembered - and much loved - for her role as the girl in the ads for Hai Karate aftershave (be careful how you use it).  

Born on November 12, 1943, Miss Leon worked as a trainee fashion buyer at Harrods after leaving school, before becoming a chorus girl and eventually making her West End debut alongside Barbara Streisand in Funny Girl at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1966. She then, as indicated, went on to become a regular and alluring screen presence.

Never quite a star - although she memorably took the lead role in Blood from the Mummy's Tomb as a reincarnated Egyptian queen - Miss Leon is something rarer and, in a way, far more interesting; what is often described as a cult figure; a fetishistic icon amongst those in the know and fully deserving of the many fan letters she receives from around the world.

I wish this glamourous and intelligent woman a very happy birthday.


Note: those readers interested in knowing more about Miss Leon and finding out about her present activities should visit www.valerieleon.com