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Mary Millington had trained to become a veterinary nurse, but a chance meeting with infamous London photographer John Lindsay changed her life. Under Lindsay's influence, Mary started to pose nude in dozens of photo spreads in British glamor magazines. From this she progressed into illegally made hardcore porn films. In 1974 she met up-and-coming publisher and film producer David Sullivan, and very soon she became the most recognizable nude model in the UK. Sullivan relentlessly promoted her through his magazines and starred her in his 1977 movie Come Play with Me (1977). The film ran for 201 weeks at one London cinema and broke box office records throughout the country. Other movies followed, but "Come Play with Me" still stands as the longest-running film in British movie history. Unfortunately, as Mary's fame increased so did her reliance on drugs. Hounded by the police and becoming more and more paranoid about her looks, Mary tragically committed suicide on 19th August 1979.

John Barrett was born on 18 February 1910 in Rochdale, Lancashire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) and The Monsters (1962). He was married to Gwyneth Owen. He died on 22 May 1983 in Walton-on-the-Hill, Surrey, England, UK.

British novelist/playwright Anthony Hope was born Anthony Hope Hawkins in London. His father was the headmaster of the St. Johns Foundation School for the Sons of Poor Clergy. He was educated at Marlborough School and Baliol College, Oxford, obtaining an M.A. with honors in 1885. He studied to become a lawyer, and was admitted to the bar in 1887. He set up his own practice, but clients were few and far between, and he spent the periods in between cases by writing novels. When he couldn't find a publisher for his first novel, he published it himself. It became a hit, coincidentally at the same time his law practice began to take off. When it got to the point where he had to choose between his law practice and writing, he chose writing.

He published two successful novels in 1894--"The Dolly Dialogues", which was fairly successful but is little remembered today, and the now-classic "The Prisoner of Zenda". "Zenda" is generally credited as the first--and the best--of what came to be known as "Ruritanian" novels, stories set in a small fictional European principality involving intrigue, double-crossing, power grabs and forbidden romance at the royal court (Richard Harding Davis, among others, took up that particular genre with his "Graustark" series), and "Zenda" has been made into film and television productions at least ten times. In 1898 Hope wrote a sequel of sorts, "Rupert of Hentzau", using the villainous character of "Zenda".

He first toured the US in 1897, and made several subsequent trips there. On one of them he met an American woman named Elizabeth Somerville Sheldon, and they married in 1903. The marriage produced two sons and a daughter. Hope was knighted in 1918 and bought a country estate at Tadworth in Surrey, where he spent the rest of his life. He wrote more books and several plays. He died in 1933 at age 70.