Despite evidence to the contrary, Mary was not a natural blonde. She had been dyeing her beautiful locks since the late-1960s and it was her wavy fair hair which became her trademark. Mary’s natural colouring was actually more on the ginger/red spectrum, but by the time she had entered the ‘Miss Dorking’ contest she had already become addicted to the allure of the peroxide bottle. That’s not to say she didn’t sometimes revert to her original shade between modelling and acting jobs. Certainly, one friend, who lived next-door to Mary in Burgh Heath, Surrey in 1977, recalls that her affectionate nick-name during this period was ‘Rusty’. During 1976 she even appeared with her real hair colour in Lovebirds magazine, which surprised many of her readers and led to a flurry of concerned fan-mail.
Occasionally, Mary was photographed with her dark roots showing, but it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to assert that Mary’s lascivious public image only really worked when she sported blonde hair. However, particularly during the early part of her career, Mary liked to blur her image occasionally with a selection of wigs and hairpieces. In her pre-David Sullivan days she appeared as ‘Sally Stevens’ the nominal letters editor of Vibrations magazine, wearing an extravagant curly brown wig; and during her short tenure at Russell Gay’s Response magazine – as editor-in-chief ‘Samantha Jones’ – she wore her hair extra-long, and with a strawberry-hue.
Below is an unusual photograph of Mary in a spread which first appeared in Whitehouse magazine (issue 21) from the autumn of 1976. The photos, originally taken in Germany the previous year, show her donning a short-bobbed, dirty blonde wig. The effect is quite startling, since Mary suddenly doesn’t look like Mary at all…