Oh, Lamour

Today would have been the 88th birthday of Miss Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton, better known to the world as Hollywood's "exotic beauty" Dorothy Lamour.

As the writer Donald Woolfe says, "Most moviegoers thought she truly was the Polynesian jungle princess she portrayed in almost a half dozen films where she was cast in that stereotypical role." In fact her origins were American-Irish and Creole French-Spanish.

She was indeed a beautiful woman (Miss New Orleans in 1930) - and having married bandleader Herbie Kay and entered the showbiz world, it was not long before Hollywood (in the form of Louie B Mayer) came to call. Starting with Jungle Princess she repeatedly played the sarong-wrapped Island girl before finding the niche for which she is probably most remembered, as the foil for the repartee of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in the "Road to..." movies. However she did make dozens of other movies alongside the likes of William Holden, Tyrone Power, Ray Milland, Henry Fonda, Jack Benny, George Raft and Fred MacMurray.

By the end of the 1950s, with her big-screen career beginning to fade, she made the transition to television and appeared in shows like I Spy, Marcus Welby M.D. and The Love Boat, before retiring from acting in 1987. However before, during and after her screen career, she was renowned as quite a marvellous singer - she was the first to sing such standards as Moon of Manakoora, I Remember You and But Beautiful. And here are a couple of clips of the lady showing us how it should be done:

The Things I Want:
[2019 UPDATE: gone from YouTube]

Dorothy Lamour - Constantly (from Road to Morocco)

Facts about Dorothy Lamour:

• There were rumours that she was the long-term lover of the notorious J. Edgar Hoover, terror of the FBI in the early 20th century. She was in fact married to husband #2, William Howard III, from 1943 to his death in 1978.
• She ran her own hairdressing salons in the 1960s.
• She was the star of a touring version of Hello, Dolly! in the 1960s and took the show to Vegas, alternating in the role of Dolly Levi with none other than Ginger Rogers.
• She died of a heart attack in 1994, aged 81.

RIP

Dorothy Lamour official website