Classical Hollywood era star Arlene Dahl died November 29 in New York. Born Aug. 11, 1925 in Minneapolis, Dahl was active in theater at school. After graduating from Washburn H.S., she briefly attended Univ. of Minnesota but soon moved to Chicago, where she modeled for Marshall Field’s store, before relocating to New York, where she continued to model while pursuing theater work. She made her Broadway debut in the short-lived 1945 musical Mr. Strauss Goes to Boston, which led to her getting the lead in the 1946 play Questionable Ladies. The play closed in Philadelphia during its out-of-town tryout, never making it to Broadway, but she was seen by movie exec Jack Warner, who invited her to Hollywood. Dahl had an uncredited bit part in Life with Father (1947) but was soon promoted to leading lady in Warner’s musical biopic My Wild Irish Rose (1947).
The biopic led to a long-term contract offer from MGM, and she soon began attracting notice for her work in that studio’s film noir and Western movies, though she really wanted to make musicals. Dahl finally got her chance with the biopic Three Little Words (1950). The highlight of her performance is “I Love You So Much,” originally written for the 1930 film The Ramblers, accompanied by a chorus of top-hatted men.
Dahl left MGM after two B-movie flops in 1951 and began writing the beauty column “Let’s Be Beautiful” for the Chicago Tribune Syndicate, which she continued to do for 20 years. She would later also write a syndicated astrology column as well as books on both beauty (1965, 1980) and astrology (1983). She worked at Paramount on a series of forgettable adventure movies before returning to musical comedy with the studio’s 1953 Bob Hope vehicle Here Come the Girls.
In 1953, Dahl also returned to Broadway as Roxane in a revival of Cyrano de Bergerac with José Ferrer, reprising his Tony-winning performance, and began hosting The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse TV anthology series. In 1954, she made her TV acting debut in the Lux Video Theatre adaptation of Casablanca as Ilsa, which she recreated for a 1958 edition of Co Star: The Record Acting Game, and launched Arlene Dahl Enterprises, marketing cosmetics and lingerie. Dahl reunited with Hope for his 1966 NBC-TV variety special, The Bob Hope Show, appearing in the “Leading Ladies” comedy segment. Dahl enters about 23:30 in the video below and begins her rendition of “I Believe in You” (from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying) at 24:44, in which she is joined by Rhonda Fleming and Marilyn Maxwell.
After closing her company in 1967, Dahl joined the ad agency Kenyon & Eckhardt, before serving as director of beauty products for Sears from 1970 until 1975, when she founded the short-lived fragrance company Dahlia. Her musical work in the 1970s included her 1972 return to Broadway as Margo Channing in Applause and her 1976 recording of “Mad About You Manhattan” (from the Off-Broadway musical Be Kind to People Week) as one of the celebrities in Skitch Henderson’s Million Dollar Chorus. In 1981, Dahl declared personal bankruptcy but rebounded with a recurring role on One Life to Live (1981-84) and TV guest roles. She ended the decade with an appearance at the London Palladium in Stairway to the Stars (1989), in which she performed her signature song,“I Love You So Much,” and the duet “Bosom Buddies” (from Mame) with Jane Russell.
Dahl’s last film role, after a hiatus of more than two decades, was in Night of the Warrior (1991), which co-starred her son Lorenzo Lamas. Her final film appearance was in the 2003 documentary Broadway: The Golden Age, which you can watch in its entirety below. (Dahl’s brief interview occurs at 1:22:17.)