Overnight, British film actress Susannah York (snuggled above with William Holden on the set of their new film, The Seventh Dawn) has risen from novice to box-office draw. Until recently a student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she made the most of her first professional opportunities--important parts in three TV shows--and parlayed them into stellar roles in Tunes of Glory, as Alec Guinness' daughter; Freud, in which she played a pretty but hysterically paralyzed patient opposite Montgomery Clift; and in Tom Jones, as the virtuous heroine who led Albert Finney a merry chase throughout the story--and shared with him the abundant praise bestowed upon the film. Still in her early 20s, seductive Susannah seems assured of a bright future.
When The Seventh Dawn is released by United Artists in July, Susannah's press reviews may rave as much about her physical charms as her acting skills. She shares top billing with William Holden and Capucine in this on-location movie of civil strife in Malaya. The sequence shown here occurs early in the script, when Susannah sheds her clothing for a brief dip. Holden fortuitously meets her and, from then on, the young girl and the older man struggle through a trouble-fraught romance. (Above, Holden records the scene for his personal photo scrapbook.) The swimming tableau may never reach the screen in the United States, since the producers of The Seventh Dawn, in conformity with present Hollywood practice, may have filmed it primarily for the foreign market and domestic publicity, and will excise it if censorship threatens the box office. However, the mere shooting of the scene, with an established star, exemplifies the current phenomenon of film nudity in this country, from low-budget nudies, to adult bed-and-bath farces (see page 110 of this issue, The Nudest Mamie Van Doren, for the most recent example of this genre) to major productions like The Seventh Dawn.
