Dorothy Lamour possessed some great distinctions beyond that most obvious one of being pursued by Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in the classic ``Road'' comedies, or beyond what she did for the skimpy piece of cloth she made world famous as a ``sarong.'' She was, for one thing, a superstar with no known enemies. And how many people, stars or otherwise, can make that claim? Everybody loved Dotti Lamour. (And, whether you knew her five minutes or five years, she was ``Dotti''; none of that ``Miss Lamour'' stuff for her.)
Ask a studio head or a commissary waitress and the answer would always be the same. ``The nicest person in the business? Oh, Dotti Lamour,'' they'd say, adding, ``She was my favorite. The best.'' Lamour was, indeed, a great gal, one of those ``good eggs'' you hear about but rarely find outside a Mark Twain story.
I also liked the fact she had no illusions whatsoever about the extent of her talent. (Once when she was asked by an interviewer if she had ever studied acting or singing, she said, ``No, can't you tell?'')
But she did have justifiable pride in her accomplishments, especially in the fact that she sold more U.S. war bonds during World War II than any other individual - somewhere in the vicinity of $300 million. She was also the first Hollywood star to get out in the field and pitch for the public to buy bonds. And the public loved her for it; so did the U.S. Treasury, although it didn't get around to giving her a citation for those efforts until 20-plus years later.
Where Dorothy Lamour always got the short stick was in the after-the-fact assessments and perceptions of her career. Historians have tended to leave the impression that Lamour's importance was only as the appendage to Crosby and Hope while they were off on those roads to Singapore, Zanzibar, Morocco, Utopia, Rio, Bali and Hong Kong.
Wrong.
Those may be the films in her portfolio with legs, but in her time and for at least 10 years (1938-47),
Lamour was a potent boxoffice name even without Der Bingle and Hope, especially when she was encased in that sarong on some tropical isle, be it for John Ford in his epic ``The Hurricane'' or at Paramount fighting a ``Typhoon'' or lolling on a lagoon as ``Aloma of the South Seas.''
Also, to
keep the record straight, Lamour did as many important films sans the sarong as when wearing one. She was fully clothed and extremely popular co-starring in films like ``Johnny Apollo'' with Ty Power, ``Chad Hannah'' with Henry Fonda, ``The Fleet's In'' with William Holden and, one of her best, ``A Medal for Benny'' with J. Carrol Naish.
She didn't need a sarong; she didn't need Bing and Bob. Between 1942 and '46, Paramount, in fact, pulled the plug on making more of those Crosby-Hope-Lamour ``Road'' films for one basic reason: It was foolish, the studio decided, to tie up its three most popular stars in a single film when each could be pulling in huge grosses in a film of his/her own.
I have some personal reasons for holding an extra-added soft spot for D.L., including the fact that thanks to her, and an impromptu dinner at 21, a chain of events began that led to my joining the Turner Classic Movies network. I'm grateful for that; I'm grateful fate happened to put me in her path in the first place. Dorothy Lamour was one of the nice ones.