Dolores Dorn

Some actresses have entered films via the stage while others walked the path of a successful modelling career Dolores Dorn managed to straddle both by being a graduate of Chicagos Goodman Art Theatre as well as having been a former placegetter second and third respectively in 1950 and 1951 at the annual Miss Chicago contest A blonde beauty with a sunny smile she was also voted Miss Photoflash of 1951 by the Chicago Press Photographers Association She was born Dolores Heft in 1933 some sources mistakenly cite 1934 in Chicago of mostly Lithuanian descent the only child of a welltodo automobile dealer Edward Heft and his wife Alice She first headlined before the footlights at the Chez Paris nightclub In 1954 she joined the Schaffner Players repertory comedy troupe as lead ingénue on tour through Illinois Missouri and Iowa At some point she was spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout while sipping soda at a drug store This led to her first minor film role in Phantom of the Rue Morgue 1954 as one of the beasts murder victims to be followed by a secondbilled part in the Randolph Scott western The Bounty Hunter 1954 Dolores Dorn made her New York stage debut in 1956 in Chekhovs Uncle Vanya at the Fourth Street Theatre A year later she also played the part of Yelena Andreyevna in the subsequent film version opposite future husband Franchot Tone who was 29 years her senior Having attracted the attention of studio execs with an offBroadway performance in Between two Thieves she was signed by director Samuel Fuller to a Columbia contract Her first notable starring role for the studio was in Underworld USA 1961 for which she was cast as gangsters moll Cuddles romantic interest to Cliff Robertsons revengeseeking exconvict She was billed unlike on Broadway as simply Dolores Dorn Her last noteworthy fling at the big screen was in 13 West Street 1962 a fashionable melodrama about teenage delinquency in which she costarred with Alan Ladd During the late 1960s Dorn focused on stage endeavors around New York and Los Angeles There were also a few TV guest appearances to follow between 1973 and 1985 but that was pretty much it However behind the cameras she worked as an acting teacher at the American Film Institute 1977 the Lee Strasberg Institute 1983 and as acting coach for the reality television game show Star Search 1983 IMDb mini biography by ISMowis