Dorothy Lamour

Dorothy Lamour
(1914 – 1996)

"I made 60 motion pictures and only wore the sarong in about six pictures, but it did become a kind of trademark."
– Dorothy Lamour

The sarong was Dorothy’s costume in her second film, The Jungle Princess (1936) with Ray Milland. A sarong is a single piece of fabric, cunningly wrapped around the wearer. In this case, the sarong was designed by Edith Head, and while the sarong left much to the imagination, it was certainly enough to set the imagination percolating!

Dorothy was born to Carmen and John Slaton, a pair of restaurant workers in New Orlean’s French Quarter in 1914. The marriage did not last very long, and Carmen married Clarence Lambour when Dorothy was a teen ager. Dorothy adopted Clarence’s surname and later modified it for her stage name. However, Carmen’s second marriage did not last long, either.

At the tender age of 14, Dorothy quit school, took a business course and began working as a secretary to support her mother and herself. (Dorothy considered herself an excellent typist, and continued to type most of her own correspondence when she was more than wealthy enough to hire her own secretary.) She also began entering local beauty pageants, and was crowned Miss New Orleans in 1931.

The prize money was enough to support Dorothy and her mother while she began working in a theater stock company. The experience was exciting enough that Dorothy and Carmen moved to Chicago to find better acting opportunities. She wound up taking a job as an elevator operator in the Marshall Fields department store for $17 a week. Although Dorothy did not consider herself a singer at the time, she was spotted by bandleader Herbie Kay in a talent show. Kay convinced Dorothy to join the band on tour, where the couple became romantically involved, marrying in 1935. Eventually the tour took them to New York, where the Herbie Kay Orchestra won a 15 minute spot on radio’s The Yeast Foamers, sponsored by Fleischmann’s Yeast.

Kay’s college friend Rudy Vallee may have helped the band to land the job. Vallee did invite Dorothy to sing on his own radio show and get a singing gig at the El Morocco nightclub. One of the clubs frequent patrons was none other than MGM’s Louis B. Mayer, who convinced her to go to Hollywood for a screen test. The MGM screen test was lost, and before another could be shot, Paramount offered her a test shoot, loved the results and offered her a contract.

Paramount used her in a number of pictures following The Jungle Princess. John Ford cast her as a South Seas princess (another sarong role) in The Hurricane (1937). Her work in Hollywood while Kay was either in New York or on the road put a strain on the relationship, and the couple divorced in 1939.

Writers Don Hartman and Frank Butler were dusting off an old Paramount script for Fred MacMurray and Jack Oakie, but the actors turned the project down. The film was offered to radio’s Burns and Allen, who also declined. Before the project died, someone decided to pitch the idea to radio stars Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, who were enjoying a running feud between their respective programs. The result was The Road to Singapore (1940), but with two powerful comedians on the project they were short a straight man. The idea of a straight-man who looked great in a sarong came up, and The Road series became one of the most successful movie franchises of all time.

During WWII, not only was Dorothy among the most popular of Hollywood pin-up girls, she became known to the Treasury Department as "the Bond Bombshell" for her tireless efforts during War Bond Tours. She was often spotted at the Hollywood Canteen, serving the G.I.s, and appeared regularly on Command Performance, G.I. Journal and Mail Call. The serviceman whose morale she had the most direct influence upon would have been Air Force Captain William Ross Howard III. Howard was an advertising executive and was also been successful in frozen foods. They met during one of Dorothy’s War Bond tours and were married in Beverly Hills in 1943. The marriage produced two sons and lasted the rest of Howard’s life.

Ms. Lamour appeared in several editions of Lux Radio Theater supporting her films, and was a popular guest on several variety programs, especially those of her Road To co-stars Hope and Crosby. In 1947, she was tapped to emcee Front and Center, a variety program sponsored by Air Force recruiting which was a summer replacement for The Fred Allen Show. The program was popular enough to get its own slot in the 1948 lineup as The Sealtest Variety Theater.

Although there would be one more film in the series, 1952’s Road to Bali would be Dorothy’s movie swansong. Approaching 40 and happily married, she chose to seek happiness elsewhere than a Hollywood which was less than appreciative of aging beauty. The Howard’s bought a home in Baltimore’s Sudbrook Park suburb, and Dorothy enjoyed her role as housewife, although she did take on a few stage projects (during the Seventies Ms. Lamour was a big draw on the dinner theater circuit) as well as TV appearances. She was part of the John Wayne/John Ford project Donovan’s Reef (1963), a picture which was shot mostly to give the two Hollywood powerhouses an excuse to sail their yachts to Hawaii.

Her contributions to the Motion Picture Industry are honored with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6332 Hollywood Blvd. A Star at 6240 Hollywood Blvd honors her contributions to Radio.