Can you guess which one is Dorothy Lamour? She is on the right. This is a still from her first film Footlight Parade 1933.
I found this picture on a friend of mine's face book. He has a collection of photographs which he calls American Inspiration. Well, some of these are very inspiring. I liked this photo for a number of reasons. First, it was three young girls posing in costume, but take a good look at their feet. Those are chorus girl shoes, not the shoes of stars.
It kind of tells a story. When I figured out that I thought this photo was Dorothy, I researched her and found out it actually could be her. Then I found the photo in a collection of photos for the film. While some of the stars in the film, those who got credit, are people whose names that today we might not recognize, a lot of us do remember Dorothy. Dorothy was still performing in our youth, the 1960's, 70's and 80's. She was on stage doing dinner theater, night club acts and on TV, doing Murder She Wrote, Hart to Hart and other programs. I remember her at first thought as part of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby's Road Movies.
Dorothy remained popular even though most Glamour Girls didn't and perhaps still don't have too much longevity, it was all about her personality. Or, like my husband would say, "The Package".
She had a good sense of humor and a real lack of pretension , according to those who knew her. I think you see that Dorothy in the shoes she wore in this still. The girl in the middle could hoof it in that complete costume, with no changes, right onto the stage. The other girl is almost there. Dorothy, well, those are her regular, low heel shoes. You can imagine her saying to herself that the call was for a certain height of girl, body type, etc. She just threw her shoes on and answered it. Based on the costume, it was a probably a water role, so the shoes ultimately would not have been part of the costume try on.
The way it usually works, costumes are fitted to stars, understudies, "supers", extras or chorus girls are generally fitted to the costumes. Calls for these are by body type and sex, generally.
Her costume looks like it was in a Busby Berkeley water scene. There were a couple of those scenes, numbers, in this film. It was also pre code. That means that it was at once risque and possibly bawdy. For some films, they used to circumvent censorship with alternate footage. I don't know about this particular picture, but it is likely that Berkeley did submit different versions to different districts to avoid trouble.
This is overall a very significant film, in part due to all the Berkeley numbers in it. This movie was selected for preservation and is in the Library of Congress and the National Film Registry.
Interestingly, Dorothy Lamour shares my birthday, and we both worked at one point at Marshall Fields in Chicago. While that might not be too interesting to some, I was amazed by it today when I was looking at everything and researching the picture. Her date of death is the birthday of my husband. Dorothy did not finish high school, but did finish secretarial school and could type like a wiz and did so all of her life. She did her own correspondence and things like that, even as a star. I was lousy at typing in school....but I was never a star either!
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WIKIPEDIA - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footlight_Parade
Copyright 2011 by SheilaTGTG55
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AJCalhoun
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Comments
"Early in her career, Lamour met J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. According to Hoover's biographer Richard Hack,[6] Hoover pursued Lamour romantically, but she was initially interested only in friendship with him. Hoover and Lamour remained close friends to the end of Hoover's life, and after his 1972 death, Lamour did not deny rumors that she'd had an affair with him in the years after she divorced Kay."
By beard, do you mean like a spy or something? I am not sure what you mean by that.
Great post sheila and rated with hugs
I actually watched a documentary once on Dorothy. Couch anchors watch a lot of documentaries...
Dorothy was so beautiful, from what I saw that beauty was inside and outside. Just look at that radiant smile.
And thanks for the delightful clip - I'm downloading it now.
kurt -r-
lschoompie: Yes, provocative. I think that between the silent era, and artistic standards of the time, there was a lot going on in those films before censorship began to be a real issue. It is almost funny to realize how strict censorship became when there was so much going on in the old silent and new talkie films. Our standards here have always been stricter too for television that our counterparts in the world with respect to nudity.
and right about this actress.
Thanks for the memories here Sheila.
Jon: I took it as a kind of challenge and enjoyed learning this was her very first film.
Mission: I am the kind of person who picks up on the most obscure details and somehow focuses and that is what happened here.
I still love those old musicals, even if modern audiences consider them corny!
As to Hoover, he was one scary dude on a lot of levels. However, maybe we needed him just then....
Scarlett: I agree, the costumes, the lavishness of so much, the interiors and such. In all the pre WWII movies it was so elegant and lush. During the war, there were actually fabric shortages and restrictions, so styles changed dramatically and costumes too. Then post war, the designs changed to reflect the abundance of fabric again, it is amazing the effect of war on life, in things that you might not at first consider.
To set the record straight, I am the son of Dorothy Lamour. Uncle Edgar as kids used to call their parents friends, was a part of my extended family. We have some pretty cool memories of being in Washington D.C. a few times. My parents, brother and I would go and visit him at his F.B.I. office. He was gracious to us on our visit. We got to be in his office, sit at his desk and go down to the basement where there was a shooting gallery. We were able to shoot GI guns at life sized posters that were reeled back in for us to keep. When mom was in New York he would meet her and my father at the Stork Club for dinner. Not sure who paid for those.
In California he had come by the house to visit and bring Mom some tokens from Washington. My brother when he was a kid started a group called the "Federal Raiders". Uncle Edgar made him an honorary member of the F.B.I. My brother's entire career has been in Law Enforcement.
I'm not certain about any romantic involvement between Mom and Edgar but he was a family friend. And by his nature kept eyes on our family and he was there to help when needed.
I do hope this new movie does do him justice.
Thank you all for the kind comments about my mom.