Starring Chrystabel Leighton-Porter, Michael Hogarth, Ian Colin, Sonya O'Shea, Edward Stanelli, Wally Patch, Peter Butterworth, Norman Pett
Directed by Edward G. Whiting
Jane is given a bracelet by an elderly admirer. He is in league with Cleaver, a suave crook, and the two plan to use Jane and the bracelet to smuggle diamonds into the country and then to abscond with it.
The Adventures Of Jane is based on a popular comic strip in Great Britain that never travelled across the pond to the USA. Jane is an innocent, young woman who frequently gets herself into scrapes that usually end up with her scantily clad (by the standards of the day) and in need of some sort of gallant rescue.
This is the film version of the stage show based on the comic strip Jane originally created by Norman Pett. The Adventures of Jane was shot entirely in Brighton and the surrounding countryside. The inn at the centre of the storyline was filmed at the Tudor Close hotel in Rottingdean, Sussex.
In the beginning credits, Chrystabel Jane Leighton-Porter poses for Norman Pett for a drawing entitled Jane in the Navy. Although Chrystabel starred in the film, she was not credited. It simply said: "starring Jane and Fritz." The reason for this is possibly due to the fact that to many people, Jane's character was almost a real person; her daily misadventures had comforted and raised their spirits during the horrors of World War II. However, Chrystabel Leighton-Porter was credited in the brochure released by Eros Films.
In 1949 Britain, the film censors were much stricter than the newspaper censors. Consequently, we never see the lovely Miss Leighton-Porter stripped down to nearly the degree of nudity that was a daily event for the newsprint version of Jane.
Fritz the dog appears as himself, as does Daily Mirror cartoonist Norman Pett.
Chrystabel Jane Leighton-Porter was the model for the Second World War Daily Mirror newspaper cartoon heroine Jane which boosted morale during the Blitz. Prime Minister Winston Churchill suggested that Jane was "Britain's secret weapon".
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. Pett's original model was his wife, but he replaced her with Chrystabel in 1940. In 1944, when Jane first appeared nude in the cartoon, she was credited with 'inspiring' the 36th Division to advance six miles into Burma.
Chrystabel began a music hall striptease-act based on the Jane character which toured army bases around the country. 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, despite her having no real acting experience and no singing ability. Nevertheless, she was - Jane!
The character was so popular it was later revived as a TV series in the 1980s starring Glynis Barber, and a campy 1987 film entitled Jane and the Lost City starring Kirsten Hughes, which also featured Maude Adams and Jasper Carrott.