Jane was a comic strip created and drawn by Norman Pett exclusively for the British tabloid The Daily Mirror from 5 December 1932 to 10 October 1959.
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Originally entitled Jane's Journal - Or the Diary of a Bright Young Thing, the salacious strip featured the misadventures of the title ingenue. The hapless heroine had a habit of frequently (and most often inadvertently) losing her clothes. Her intimate confidant was a pet dachshund named Fritz. Her full name was Jane Gay, a play on the name Lady Jane Grey. The name "Gay" was a reference to her cheerful and fun-loving character, and did not connote the modern homosexual implication.
The original model was Pett's wife Mary, but success came when he began to use Chrystabel Leighton-Porter as the model. The strip became enormously popular during the Second World War and was seen as morale-boosting, inspiring a similar American version, Milton Caniff's comic strip Male Call. 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. It has been suggested that, as a result of this appearance, the British Army advanced five miles in North Africa.[1]
Norman Pett's assistant Michael Hubbard continued 1948 to take over developing the cartoons' original version storyline until ending in 1959 - with charmer Georgie giving Jane a happy marriage and ending the series. The Mirror tried to revive the character on several occasions. One such strip was Jane - Daughter of Jane, who was apparently the original's grown-up offspring, but she lacked her mother's charm and innocence. Another attempt was made in the 1980s.
In 1945, King Features Syndicate attempted to distribute Jane in the United States.[2] However, the nudity was too much for prudish American audiences, and the attempt ceased in 1946.[3]
Other comics in the tradition of, and possibly inspired by, Jane include Male Call, Sally the Sleuth and Little Annie Fanny.[4]
The strip inspired an eponymous stage play in the 1940s. Chrystabel Leighton-Porter, Pett's original model, starred in a 1949 film, The Adventures of Jane, directed by Edward G. Whiting. A 1987 film Jane and the Lost City was directed by Terry Marcel.
A television series was made by the BBC between 1982 and 1984, starring Glynis Barber in the title role. The first season was simply titled Jane, while the second was called Jane in the Desert. Despite the early evening scheduling slot, the show was decidedly risque with Jane continuously stripping down to her underwear, including stockings and suspenders. At the end of the second series' closing episode she appeared topless momentarily. Despite considerable publicity in the press at the time of its original screening, the show slipped somewhat into obscurity and has never had a commercial video or DVD release. The show was briefly revived in 1985 as a three-part sequence shown over a single morning on Breakfast Television but without Glynis Barber in the lead role.