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Dorothy Lamour (December 10, 1914 – September 22, 1996) was an American motion picture actress, born in New Orleans, Louisiana, died in Hollywood, California.

Lamour was born Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton to John Wilson Slaton and Carmen LaPorte;[1] Lamour came from a variation of the name of her step-father, Carlo Lambour. After winning the title of Miss New Orleans in a beauty pageant she moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1931, hoping to become a professional singer. She first attracted some attention singing with the band of Herbie Kay, who became her first husband. In 1935, she had her own fifteen-minute weekly musical program on NBC Radio. She also sang on the popular Rudy Vallee radio show.

Film Stardom

In 1936 she moved to Hollywood and began appearing regularly in films for Paramount Pictures. The role that made her a star was Ulah (a sort of female Tarzan) in The Jungle Princess (1936). She wore a sarong, which would become associated with her, and captivated many viewers with her sensuous exotic attractive appearance. While she first achieved stardom as a sex symbol, Lamour also showed talent as both a comic and dramatic actress. She was among the most popular actresses in motion pictures from 1936 to 1952.

She appeared in the classic series of "Road to..." movies, such as Road to Morocco, also starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in the 1940s and 1950s. The movies were enormously popular during the 1940's, and they regularly placed among the very top moneymaking films each year as a new one came out. While the films centered more on the talents of Hope and Crosby, Lamour held her own as their straight man, looked beautiful, and sang some of her most popular songs. Her appearance in the films was considered by the public and theater owners of equal importance during the series' golden era, 1940-1952. It was only after the series was essentially over with the release of Road to Bali in 1952 and her career declining while co-stars Hope and Crosby remained major show business figures that her contributions to the series began being downplayed by journalists.

During the World War II years, Dorothy Lamour was among the most popular pinup girls among American servicemen, along with Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, and Lana Turner. Lamour was also largely responsible for starting up the war bond tours in which movie stars would travel the country selling war bonds for the US Government to the public. Lamour alone promoted the sale of over $21 million dollars worth of war bonds, and other stars promoted the sale of a billion more.

Some of Dorothy Lamour's other notable films include John Ford's The Hurricane (1937), Spawn of the North (1938), Disputed Passage (1939), Johnny Apollo (1940), Aloma of the South Seas (1941), Beyond the Blue Horizon (1942), Dixie (1943), A Medal for Benny (1945), My Favorite Brunette (1947), On Our Merry Way (1948) and The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). Her leading men included the likes of William Holden, Tyrone Power, Ray Milland, Henry Fonda, Jack Benny, George Raft, and Fred MacMurray.

Dorothy Lamour starred in a number of movie musicals and sang in many of her comedies and dramatic films as well, introducing a number of standards including "The Moon of Manakoora", "I Remember You", "It Could Happen to You", "Personality", and "But Beautiful".

Lamour's film career petered out in the early 1950's and she began a new career as a nightclub entertainer and occasional stage actress. In the 1960's she returned to the screen for secondary roles in three films and became more active in the legitimate theater, headlining a road company of Hello Dolly! for over a year near the end of the decade.

Career in Her Senior Years

Lamour's lack of prententiousness and good humor allowed to have a remarkably long career in show business for someone best known as a glamour girl. She was a popular draw on the dinner theatre circuit of the 1970's. After the 1978 death of her longtime husband William Howard (whom she married in 1943), following a year of grieving, Lamour kicked her career into high gear, publishing her autobiography My Side of the Road in 1980, reviving her nightclub act, and performing in plays and acting on such television shows as Hart to Hart, Crazy Like a Fox, and Murder She Wrote.

As she entered her late seventies, in 1990, she made only a handful of professional appearances but she remained a popular interview subject for publications and TV talk and news programs. In 1995 the musical Swinging on a Star, a revue of songs written by Johnny Burke opened on Broadway and run for three months; Lamour was credited as a "special advisor" in the credits. Burke wrote many of the most famous "Road to..." movie songs and well as the score to Lamour's And the Angels Sing. The musical only ran three months but was nominated for the Best Musical Tony Award and the actress playing "Dorothy Lamour" in the Road movie segment, Kathy Fitzgerald was also nominated.

Dorothy Lamour died at her home in North Hollywood, California at the age of 81 from a heart attack. She was interred in the Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, California, after a Catholic funeral service.

Quotes

• "Glamour is just sex that got civilized."

• "I won't play dirty roles. Let some other actress play whorehouse madames."

Filmography

• Footlight Parade (1933)
• The Stars Can't Be Wrong (1936) (short subject)
• College Holiday (1936)
• The Jungle Princess (1936)
• Swing High, Swing Low (1937)
• The Last Train from Madrid (1937)
• High, Wide, and Handsome (1937)
• The Hurricane (1937)
• Thrill of a Lifetime (1937)
• The Big Broadcast of 1938 (1938)
• Her Jungle Love (1938)
• Hollywood Handicap (1938) (short subject)
• Tropic Holiday (1938)
• Spawn of the North (1938)
• St. Louis Blues (1939)
• Man About Town (1939)
• Disputed Passage (1939)
• Road to Singapore (1940)
• Johnny Apollo (1940)
• Typhoon (1940)
• Moon Over Burma (1940)
• Meet the Stars #1: Chinese Garden Festival (1940) (short subject)
• Chad Hanna (1940)
• Road to Zanzibar (1941)
• Caught in the Draft (1941)
• Aloma of the South Seas (1941)
• The Fleet's In (1942)
• Beyond the Blue Horizon (1942)
• Road to Morocco (1942)
• Star Spangled Rhythm (1942)
• They Got Me Covered (1943)
• Show Business at War (1943) (short subject)
• Dixie (1943)
• Riding High (1943)
• And the Angels Sing (1944)
• Rainbow Island (1944)
• A Medal for Benny (1945)
• Duffy's Tavern (1945)
• Masquerade in Mexico (1945)
• Road to Utopia (1946)
• My Favorite Brunette (1947)
• Variety Girl (1947)
• Unusual Occupations: Film Tot Holiday (1947) (short subject)
• Wild Harvest (1947)
• Road to Rio (1947)
• On Our Merry Way (1948)
• Lulu Belle (1948)
• The Girl from Manhattan (1948)
• The Lucky Stiff (1949)
• Slightly French (1949)
• Manhandled (1949)
• Here Comes the Groom (1951) (Cameo)
• The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
• Road to Bali (1952)
• Screen Snapshots: Hollywood Shower of Stars (1955) (short subject)
• The Road to Hong Kong (1962)
• Donovan's Reef (1963)
• Pajama Party (1964)
• The Phynx (1970)
• Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)
• Creepshow 2 (1987)

External links

• Dorothy Lamour fan website

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