Dorothy Lamour (born Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton; December 10, 1914 – September 22, 1996) was an American actress and singer. She is best remembered for having appeared in the Road to... movies, a series of successful comedies starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.[1]
Lamour began her career in the 1930s as a big band singer. In 1936, she moved to Hollywood, where she signed with Paramount Pictures. Her appearance as Ulah in The Jungle Princess (1936) brought her fame and marked the beginning of her image as the "Sarong Queen".
In 1940, Lamour made her first Road series comedy film Road to Singapore. The Road series films were popular during the 1940s. The sixth film in the series, Road to Bali, was released in 1952. By this time, Lamour's screen career had begun to wane, and she focused on stage and television work. In 1961, Crosby and Hope teamed for The Road to Hong Kong, but actress Joan Collins was cast as the female lead. Lamour made a brief appearance and sang a song near the end of that film.
In the 1970s, Lamour revived her nightclub act, and in 1980, released her autobiography My Side of the Road. She made her final movie appearance in 1987.
Lamour married her second husband, William Ross Howard III, in 1943. They had two sons and remained married until Howard's death in 1978. Lamour died at her home in 1996 at the age of 81.
Early life
Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton[2] was born on December 10, 1914, at Charity ward at New Orleans East Hospital in New Orleans,[3][4] the daughter of Carmen Louise (née LaPorte) and John Watson Slaton,[i] both of whom were restaurant servers.[5] Lamour was of Spanish descent, with some English, French and possibly also distant Irish as well. Her parents' marriage lasted only a few years. Her mother married for the second time to Clarence Lambour, whose surname Dorothy later adopted and modified as her stage name.[6] That marriage also ended in divorce when Dorothy was a teenager.
Lamour quit school at age 14. After taking a business course, she worked as a secretary to support herself and her mother. She began entering beauty pageants, was crowned Miss New Orleans in 1931, and went on to compete in Galveston's Pageant of Pulchritude.[7] Miss Lamour was close friends with Dorothy Dell, who was in the Ziegfeld Follies. Lamour used the prize money to support herself while she worked in a stock theatre company. She and her mother later moved to Chicago. Lamour found a job working at Marshall Field's department store, working as an elevator operator at the age of 16. Her boss, Douglas Singleterry, referred to her as "Dolly Face"; he also recalled that she'd spend a lot of her time auditioning around Chicago. She was discovered by orchestra leader Herbie Kay when he spotted her in performance at a Chicago talent show held at the Hotel Morrison. She had an audition the next day; Kay hired her as a singer for his orchestra and, in 1935, Lamour went on tour with him. Her work with Kay eventually led Lamour to vaudeville and work in radio.[3] In 1935, she had her own 15-minute weekly musical program on NBC Radio. Lamour also sang on the popular Rudy Vallée radio show and The Chase and Sanborn Hour. On January 30, 1944, Lamour starred in "For This We Live", an episode of Silver Theater on CBS radio.[8]
Career
In 1936, Lamour moved to Hollywood. Around that time, Carmen married her third husband, Ollie Castleberry, and the family lived in Los Angeles.[9] That same year, she did a screen test for Paramount Pictures and signed a contract with them.[10]
Lamour made her first film for Paramount, College Holiday (1936), in which she has a bit part as an uncredited dancer.
The Jungle Princess and "sarong" roles
Publicity photo (1937)
Her second film for Paramount, The Jungle Princess (1936) with Ray Milland, solidified her fame. In the film, Lamour plays the role of "Ulah", a jungle native who wore an Edith Head-designed sarong throughout the film. The Jungle Princess was a big hit for the studio and Lamour would be associated with sarongs for the rest of her career. It also gave her a hit song "Moonlight and Shadows".[11]
Lamour supported Irene Dunne and Randolph Scott in High, Wide and Handsome (1937), singing "The Things I Want". Sam Goldwyn borrowed her for John Ford's The Hurricane (1937), where she was back in a sarong playing an island princess alongside Jon Hall. Her swimming and diving scenes were handled by stunt double Lila Finn, who at one point dropped the sarong and was filmed diving into a lagoon in the nude.[12] The film was a massive success and gave Lamour another hit song with "The Moon of Manakoora".
Paramount reunited her with Milland and a sarong for Her Jungle Love (1938). Tropic Holiday (1938) cast her as a Mexican alongside Bob Burns, Raye and Milland, then she supported George Raft and Henry Fonda in the adventure film Spawn of the North (1938). Raft was meant to be Lamour's leading man in St. Louis Blues (1939) but he turned down the part and was replaced by Lloyd Nolan.
In 1940, Lamour starred in Road to Singapore, a spoof of Lamour's "sarong" films. It was originally meant to co-star Fred MacMurray and Jack Oakie, then George Burns and Gracie Allen, before Paramount decided to use Bob Hope and Bing Crosby; Lamour was billed after Crosby and above Hope. The two male stars began ad-libbing during filming. "I was trying to follow the script but just couldn't get my lines out", she said later. "Finally, I realised that I should just get the general idea of a scene rather than learn the words by heart, then go along with the boys." Said Hope, "Dottie is one of the bravest gals in pictures. She stands there before the camera and ad-libs with Crosby and me knowing that the way the script is written she'll come second or third best, but she fears nothing."[13]
The movie was a solid hit and response to the team was enthusiastic.
20th Century Fox borrowed her to play Tyrone Power's leading lady in the gangster film Johnny Apollo (1940). She sang "This is the Beginning of the End" and "Dancing for Nickels and Dimes".
Response to Road to Singapore had been such that Paramount reunited Lamour, Hope and Crosby in Road to Zanzibar (1941) which was even more successful and eventually led to a series of pictures (although from this point on Lamour was billed beneath Hope). She and Hope then did Caught in the Draft (1941) which was one of the biggest hits of the year.[14]
There was another sarong movie, Beyond the Blue Horizon (1942). Both were well liked by the public but neither was as popular as her third "Road" movie, Road to Morocco (1942).[15]
Lamour was one of many Paramount stars who did guest shots in Star Spangled Rhythm (1942). She and Hope were borrowed by Sam Goldwyn for a comedy They Got Me Covered (1943), then she did one with Crosby without Hope, Dixie (1943), a popular biopic of Dan Emmett.
During World War II, Lamour was among the more popular pinup girls among American servicemen, along with Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, and Veronica Lake. Lamour was also known for her volunteer work, selling war bonds during tours in which movie stars would travel the country selling U.S. government bonds to the public. Lamour reportedly sold $300 million worth of bonds earning her the nickname "The Bond Bombshell". She also volunteered at the Hollywood Canteen where she would dance and talk to soldiers. In 1965, Lamour was awarded a belated citation from the United States Department of the Treasury for her war bond sales.[1]
Lamour made Melody Inn (1943) with Dick Powell, then And the Angels Sing (1944) with Fred MacMurray and Hutton, where she sang "It Could Happen to You". She made one last sarong movie, Rainbow Island (1944), co-starring Bracken.
Lamour emceed Front and Center, a 1947 variety comedy show, as a summer replacement for The Fred Allen Show, with the Army Air Force recruiting as sponsors.[3] The show changed to The Sealtest[16]Variety Theater in September[17] 1948.
Lamour played a successful season at the London Palladium in 1950 then was in two big hits: The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), Cecil B. De Mille's circus epic, and Road to Bali (1952). However this did not seem to lead to better film offers, and Lamour began concentrating on being a nightclub entertainer and a stage actress.
Lamour returned to movies with a cameo in the final "Road" film, The Road to Hong Kong (1962); she was replaced as a love interest by Joan Collins because Bing Crosby wanted a younger actress. However, Bob Hope would not do the film without Lamour, so she appeared in an extended cameo.
Lamour moved to Baltimore with her family, where she appeared on TV and worked on the city's cultural commission. Then David Merrick offered her the chance to headline a road company of Hello Dolly! which she did for over a year near the end of the decade.[18]
In 1986 she said "I'm still as busy at 71 as I was when I was just a slip of a girl. I do concerts, television and a lot of dinner theatre, where I sing old songs and talk about Bob and Bing and starting out at Paramount at $200 a week and working myself up to $450,000 a picture...I feel wonderful. Age is only in the mind and I'm grateful that God has taken care of me. And I'm very grateful for that sarong. It did a lot for me! But to be truthful, the sarong was never my favorite wearing apparel."[22]
In 1987, she made her last big-screen appearance in the movie Creepshow 2, appearing with George Kennedy as an aging couple who are killed during a robbery. The wooden, Native American statue in front of their general store comes to life to avenge their death. The 72-year-old Lamour quipped: "Well, at my age you can't lean against a palm tree and sing 'Moon of Manakoora'", she said. "People would look at that and say 'What is she trying to do?'"[1]
1990s
During the 1990s, she made only a handful of professional appearances but remained a popular interview subject for publications and TV talk and news programs. Lamour's final stage performance was as "Hattie" in the Long Beach Civic Light Opera's 1990 production of Stephen Sondheim's "Follies".
In 1995, the musical Swinging on a Star, a revue of songs written by Johnny Burke (who wrote many of the most famous Road to ... movie songs as well as the score to Lamour's film And the Angels Sing (1944)) opened on Broadway and ran for three months; Lamour was credited as a "special advisor". It was nominated for the Best Musical Tony Award; the actress playing her in the road movie segment, Kathy Fitzgerald, also was nominated.[citation needed]
Lamour's first marriage was to orchestra leader Herbie Kay, with whose orchestra Lamour sang. The two married in 1935 and divorced in 1939.[24][25]
Early in her career, Lamour met J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. According to Hoover's biographer Richard Hack, Hoover pursued a romantic relationship with Lamour, and the two spent a night together at a Washington, D.C., hotel. When Lamour was later asked if she and Hoover had a sexual relationship, she replied: "I cannot deny it."[26] In her autobiography My Side of the Road (1980), Lamour does not discuss Hoover in detail; she refers to him only as "a lifelong friend".[27]
On April 7, 1943, Lamour married Air Force captain and advertising executive William Ross Howard III[1] in Beverly Hills.[28] The couple had two sons: John Ridgely (1946–2018[29]) and Richard Thomson Howard (born 1949).[30][31]
In 1957, Lamour and Howard moved to the Baltimore, Maryland, suburb of Sudbrook Park.[32] In 1962, the couple and their two sons moved to Hampton, another Baltimore suburb in Dulaney Valley, with their oldest son, John, attending Towson High School.[33][34] She also owned a home in Palm Springs, California.[35] Howard died in 1978.[1]
Lamour was a registered Republican who supported the presidency of Ronald Reagan as well as Reagan's re-election in 1984.[36]
Death
Grave of Dorothy Lamour, at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills
Lamour died at her home in North Hollywood on September 22, 1996, from a heart attack, at the age of 81.[37][1] Her funeral was held at St. Charles Catholic Church in North Hollywood, California, where she was a member.[38][39] She was interred in the Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.[40]
For her contribution to the radio and motion picture industry, Lamour has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her star for her radio contributions is located at 6240 Hollywood Boulevard, and her star for her motion picture contributions is located at 6332 Hollywood Boulevard.[41]
Lamour is the heroine of Matilda Bailey's young adult novel, Dorothy Lamour and the Haunted Lighthouse (1947), whose "heroine has the same name and appearance as the famous actress but has no connection ... it is as though the famous actress has stepped into an alternate reality in which she is an ordinary person." The story was written for a young teenage audience and is reminiscent of the adventures of Nancy Drew. It is part of a series known as "Whitman Authorized Editions", 16 books published between 1941 and 1947 that each featured a film actress as heroine.[42]
She was featured in a brief print run of 2-3 issues during the 1950s, in Dorothy Lamour Jungle Princess Comics, a series of comic books dedicated to her on-film Jungle Princess persona (featuring screenshots from past movies as the covers).[43]
^Lamour, Dorothy; McInnes, Dick (1980). My Side of the Road. Prentice-Hall. p. 39. ISBN978-0132185943. It does get a little confusing; for example, my full name would be Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton Lambour Lamour Kay Kaumeyer Howard if you keep count. But at this point, I was just terribly happy to be Mrs. Herbie Kay.
^Room, Adrian (2014). "Dorothy Lamour". Dictionary of Pseudonyms: 13,000 Assumed Names and Their Origins (5th ed.). McFarland. p. 272. ISBN978-0786457632.
^Parish, James Robert; Pitts, Michael R. (2003). Hollywood Songsters: Singers Who Act and Actors Who Sing: A Biographical Dictionary. Vol. 2. Taylor & Francis. p. 447. ISBN978-0415937757.
^"Dorothy Lamour". Grand Comics Database. Retrieved December 6, 2020.
^State of Louisiana, Parish of Orleans, First City Court of New Orleans marriage license states name of groom as "John Wilson Slaton". His mother's was Leta Wilson (also noted on license).
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