Based on the best-selling book ‘Who Lie in Gaol’ about the autobiographical prison experiences of author Joan Henry, The Weak and the Wicked (1954) depicted the plight of female prison inmates with ground-breaking authenticity, albeit as far as the censor would allow.  

The upper middle-class Jean (Glynis Johns), the brash Betty (Diana Dors) and the pregnant Pat (Rachel Roberts) reveal what brought them behind bars, each of their stories shown in a series of flashbacks.  Jean’s story shows how her gambling habit led her to incur a casino proprietor’s wrath and subsequent framing of her for fraud.  Jean bonds with her fellow inmates, which improves her ordeal, and is moved to an experimental open prison for the rest of her sentence. 

Inspiring Jean’s storyline, Joan Henry was a writer with a gambling problem who was sentenced to 12 months in prison for passing a fraudulent cheque, for which she claimed she was framed.  She served 8 months at Holloway and the more liberal Askham Grange open prison.  When Oscar and BAFTA nominated writer-director J. Lee Thompson (Yield To The Night, Tiger Bay, The Guns of Navarone) read her book, he was determined to make it in to a film, and subsequently wound up falling in love and marrying Joan.  With Mary Poppins’ star Glynis Johns cast as Jean, and Diana Dors as a brassier felon, filming of The Weak and the Wicked took place just weeks after Diana Dors made headlines in real life for being convicted of stealing alcohol from a friend’s house.