Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Dorothy Lamour - American motion picture actress.

She is probably best-remembered for appearing in the Road to... movies, a series of successful comedies co-starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

n 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.

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 1950s and she began a new career as a nightclub entertainer and occasional stage actress. In the 1960s 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.