In addition to being Miss New Orleans in 1931, Dorothy Lamour worked as
a Chicago elevator operator; band vocalist for her first husband, band
leader Herbie Kaye; and radio performer. In 1936 she donned her
soon-to-be-famous sarong for her debut at Paramount, Die Dschungel-Prinzessin (1936), and
continued to play female Tarzan-Crusoe-Gauguin-girl-with make-up parts
through the war years and beyond. The most famous of these was in the
popular Bob Hope/Bing Crosby "Road" pictures - a strange combination of
adventure, slapstick, ad-libs and Hollywood inside jokes. Of these she
said, "I was the happiest and highest-paid straight woman in the
business." As she aged, however, the quality of her films dropped.
Among her serious films were Johnny Apollo (1940) and A Medal for Benny (1945).
