Dorothy Lamour Profile - Starring Dorothy Lamour<br> Sunday, July 31 - 3 Movies
She was born Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton in a charity hospital in New Orleans on December 10, 1914, to John and Carmen Slaton, who were both waiters. In her autobiography, Lamour wrote that her pregnant mother Carmen had seen Rod LaRocque and Vilma Banky in Braveheart and wanted to name her child Dorothy after Banky's character. In actuality, Braveheart wasn't filmed until 1925, and Lillian Rich played Dorothy Nelson. Lamour may have mixed up the film, but her father mixed up her name. She was supposed to be named Dorothy Mary Leta, but the birth certificate had her listed as Mary Leta Dorothy.
John Slaton had been cut off from his family when he eloped with Carmen and his parents conspired to break up his marriage. Soon, Dorothy and her mother had to fend for themselves, and most of Dorothy's childhood was spent in near poverty. Her mother briefly married a man named Clarence Lambour and Dorothy took his name. As she began to grow up, she noticed that Mr. Lambour became abusive to his wife and overly attentive to her. The marriage soon ended in divorce.
Dorothy grew up with another Dorothy - Dorothy Dell, who became a Ziegfeld girl and later a Hollywood star. When Dell won the Miss New Orleans contest, she was entered into the International Beauty Contest in Galveston, Texas. Dell managed to talk the sponsors into letting her mother, her sister, and her friend, Dorothy Lambour, go with her. Dell won Miss USA and Miss Universe and Florenz Ziegfeld and Earl Carroll both wanted her for their shows. Dell decided on the Fanchon and Marco Company, which sent shows out on the road into vaudeville. Once again, Dell insisted that her sister and friend be included. At the age of 15, Dorothy Lambour found herself given the title of "Miss Louisiana" (because no contest had been held that year) and on the road in vaudeville.
After the tour, Dell went on to fame and fortune with Ziegfeld and Dorothy Lambour returned home, where she won the Miss New Orleans contest and decided to try her luck in Chicago. The best job she could find was as an elevator operator at the Marshall Fields department store. One day Dorothy Dell, on tour with Ziegfeld, stepped into the elevator and took her friend to meet yet another Dorothy, Dorothy Gulman, who was head of PR for the Morrison Hotel and radio hostess of Celebrity Nights from the Morrison Hotel. It was during this time that the future Dorothy Lamour met a young singer named Bing Crosby.
Gulman got Dorothy a job singing on the radio, which led to her joining Herbie Kay's band and she went out on the road for a time. She would later marry Kay but the majority of their life together was spent with her in New York or Hollywood and Kay on the road. The two would later divorce. While appearing with Herbie Kay's band in Dallas, Dorothy Lambour saw that a placard at the Baker Hotel had misspelled her name as "Dorothy Lamour". Kay thought it looked good and the name stuck.
The newly christened Dorothy Lamour decided to go to New York and was soon appearing in various clubs. Rudy Vallee, a friend and fraternity brother of Herbie Kay, introduced her to Sherman Billingsley who was the owner of the newly opened (but soon to be world famous) Stork Club. Lamour was quickly hired to sing over the radio during their live broadcasts from the club. During this time, Lamour would become friends with Bob Hope and be introduced to MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer, who invited her to Hollywood to make a test. Lamour always joked when people said she should get into movies and so she shrugged it off.
She now had her own radio program on NBC, The Dreamer of Songs, and when the network decided to move the show to Hollywood, Lamour and her mother boarded the train to California. Once there, she was again approached by MGM to make a test but Lamour's agent (who she refused to name in her autobiography) was so obnoxious that MGM demanded she get rid of him before they would test her. While Lamour didn't like her agent, she felt loyal to him, and refused. Paramount also made her an offer for a screen test but when the agent showed up, they told him to his face that his attitude was going to ruin her career. The shocked agent stepped aside and Lamour made the test. While visiting her husband in Denver, she got the news that Paramount wanted to sign her to a seven-year contract.
Unlike most of the actresses of her time, Lamour wore her brunette hair below her waist. That, combined with her olive complexion, got her the leading role in The Jungle Queen, but, as Lamour wrote, "I was so young, they changed it to Girl of the Jungle [the film's final title was The Jungle Princess (1936)]. I had yet to learn the plot of the film, but I frankly didn't care. All I knew was that I was going to be the star of that film! [...] Travis Benton [sic], the head costume designer, put me in the hands of one of his assistants, a small dark-haired lady who wore glasses. Her name was Edith Head, and who would have known that she was to become a multiple Academy Award winner? She pulled out some beautiful cotton print material and began to drape it around me. I was beginning to daydream of all the beautiful gowns, glamorous hairdos, and magnificent jewels that I would be soon wearing - and of the handsome leading men who would be holding me in their muscular arms - I asked how many dresses I would wear in the film. 'Dresses?' she exclaimed. 'Young lady, this is going to be a sarong!' I had to admit to her that I didn't know what a sarong was. She laughed, and when she explained, all my hopes of a glamorous movie debut flew right out the window." Lamour was a hit in The Jungle Princess opposite Ray Milland, and that sarong would not only get her typecast in similar "jungle girl" roles, it became inextricably linked with her for the rest of her life.
Her second film was as the nightclub singer who tries to take Fred MacMurray away from Carole Lombard in Swing High, Swing Low (1937). Lamour always spoke highly of Lombard, who would deliberately blow her lines when they worked together to get Lamour to feel more at ease. Later in her career, when she was a big star, Lamour vowed she would show newcomers the same kindness as Lombard, who she called her "idol".
The majority of Dorothy Lamour's career was spent in musicals. She introduced such classics as "Moonlight and Shadows, Panamania, I Remember You, Personality, You Took the Words Right Out of My Heart," and "The Things I Want." In a rare dramatic role, Lamour played a gun-moll opposite Tyrone Power in Johnny Apollo (1940) in which she sang, "This Is the Beginning of the End."
Her "sarong" films included John Ford's The Hurricane (1937), Her Jungle Love (1938), Tropic Holiday (1938), and Typhoon (1940) (with her then off-screen love, Robert Preston), but the most famous of all were the Road pictures that she made with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. Beginning in 1939, the three were starred in Road to Singapore, which was such a big hit that Paramount turned it into a series. It was formulaic, with Hope and Crosby providing the humor and Lamour providing the romantic element, usually dressed in a sarong. The series included Road to Zanzibar (1941), Road to Morocco (1942), Road to Utopia (1946), in which Lamour was finally able to ditch the sarong, as the film takes place in Alaska, Road to Rio (1947), Road to Bali (1952), and the final Road picture, The Road to Hong Kong (1962).
The last Road picture was not a happy experience for Lamour. Now in her late 40s, her role in The Road to Hong Kong was reduced to a very small cameo role and the leading lady, at Crosby's directive, was the much-younger Joan Collins. This did not sit well with Lamour or the public and the film was a flop. Lamour was not pleased with the way she had been treated and made no bones about it to the press. The issue still stung when she published her autobiography My Side of the Road in 1980. Nevertheless, at Bob Hope's 90th birthday party, Lamour said of the Road films, "I felt like a wonderful sandwich, a slice of white bread between two slices of ham!"
During World War II, Lamour was, along with Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable, one of the most popular pin-up girls, and in 1941 was voted the number one pinup by the Army. She dedicated a lot of her time during the war to performing for the troops and selling war bonds. Two of her original sarongs were auctioned off, raising $2 million worth of bonds. One of those sarongs was later donated to the Smithsonian. In 1943, Lamour married William Howard and had two sons. Having grown tired of Hollywood and wanting her children to be raised out of the spotlight, she moved to her husband's home state of Maryland, where she was active in local civic organizations, while making the odd return to Hollywood to appear in a film, on television, or in a nightclub. When her sons were grown, Lamour went back to her career, this time on the stage, with Hello Dolly! in 1967. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, she had a very successful career in theaters across the country, appearing in plays, musicals, and her own stage act.
Lamour continued to make television guest spots on Hart to Hart, Crazy Like a Fox, and Murder, She Wrote. She was also a much sought after interview subject on the studio era of Hollywood. Dorothy Lamour's last film appearance was in Creepshow 2 (1987) in which she plays a slovenly housewife who is murdered. With her trademark good humor, she said of the role, "Well, at my age, you can't lean against a palm tree and sing Moon of Monakoorah. People would look at that and say, 'What is she trying to do?'"
Dorothy Lamour died of heart failure at her home in California on September 22, 1996. Bob Hope said, "She was a lady of quality, beauty and class, which always made me look good. She was my No. 1 leading lady. She was not only a wonderful actress and a great performer, but a dear lady."
by Lorraine LoBianco
SOURCES:
Friedwald, Will A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers
The Internet Movie Database
Lamour, Dorothy and McInnes, Dick My Side of the Road
Paris, James Robert and Pitts, Michael R. Hollywood Songsters: Singers Who Act and Actors Who Sing, Volume 2
Severo, Richard "Dorothy Lamour, 81, Sultry Sidekick in Road Films, Dies" New York Times 23 Sep 96
Vallance, Tom , "Obituary: Dorothy Lamour", The Independent 24 Sep 96
