Maria Frost

Maria Frost was predominately a nude model, much in demand in the late 1960s. Throughout that period you could find Maria in glamour pictorials and 'leather and bondage' themed photo spreads for the kinkier customer. Maria was also a cover girl to five shilling sex manuals like 'Sex Manners for Advanced Lovers' (New English Library, 1969), which were sold in the back pages of magazines like 'Continental Film Review'. Her brief career in the first wave of British sexploitation films was purely down to their directors' preference for casting nude models rather than actresses. In this cinematic realm a model who couldn't act but was willing to strip off was far more vital than an actress who could act but might become 'difficult' when asked to go nude. Great acting was never essential for British nudies and Frost's roles in School for Sex (1969) and Permissive (1970) are by and large unremarkable. As 'Pretty Polly' in 'School for Sex' she is - perhaps tellingly - featured more in the film's stills than she is in the film itself (the Frost posterior is preserved for posterity on the cover of School for Sex's current video release). Her only real claim to celluloid immortality is playing the topless safecracking spy in a segment of Antony Balch's sex and horror portmanteau film Bizarre (1970). Maria's character 'Lindy Leigh-Agent 28' who's always ready to 'put her sex appeal to patriotic purpose' was the creation of Alfred Mazure, a multi-talented writer/cartoonist who due to a deal with a Colonel Parker type publisher lived and died largely penniless. Maria was under no delusions about her acting ability and reportedly turned pale when she discovered the extent of her role, telling director Balch 'I'm a model, I can't act'. Asked about Frost in later years Balch remembered 'we got a naïve kind of acting and personality that captured the essence of Lindy Leigh'. Maria's career as an actress ended with her playing a sexy export to the Swiss Alps shot softcore farce 'Charley's Tante Nackt' released in the UK as 'The Sexy Dozen', thereafter she appears to have left showbiz.