1906-1988
American actress, largely of the pre-code era, Dorothy Hendricks Jordan was born on this day in Clarksville, Tennessee. Jordan's career was quite short by Hollywood standards and she made her debut at the very end of the 1920's. Although Jordan did appear in films that had silent versions, she never acted in a fully silent film, having made her first motion picture appearance in George B. Seitz's Fox melodrama Black Magic in 1929; the film was a partial silent, with music and sound effects by MovieTone. Jordan would go on to have parts in three more films in 1929; one of them an important supporting role and the other was a leading role. The first of these was the Fox extravaganza that was the musical comedy Words and Music, that despite it's billing as a "song and dance' film also had a fully silent version...and an appearance by a young "Duke Morrison" aka John Wayne. She next appeared as Bianca in the all talking Sam Taylor directed adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew, starring Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. She then moved on to the lead opposite Ramon Novarro in MGM's romantic fancy with music Devil-May-Care. Without skipping a beat, she was cast again in the lead role opposite Novarro in the musical romance In Gay Madrid, and again in Call of the Flesh, both released in 1930. She went on to appear in 17 more films between 1930 and 1933. During this time she acted along side Robert Montgomery, Marie Dressler, Robert Montgomery, Clark Gable, Mary Astor, Lewis Stone, Will Rogers, Richard Bathelmess, Lionel Barrymore and Bette Davis. In May of 1933 she married famed King Kong producer/director Merian C. Cooper and left pictures. She did have two screen tests for the roles in Gone With The Wind, including for the lead role of Scarlett; but, of course, the part went to Vivian Leigh. She instead raised a family of of two sons and a daughter. She briefly came out of retirement in the 1950's as a favor to family friend, director John Ford in the 1950's. Of the three films that she made for Ford, two of them starred The Duke himself--John Wayne. They included the extremely famous Wayne western The Searchers (1956) and the last film that she appeared in The Wings of Eagles in 1957. She then retired for good and went back to her family life. She lived in Los Angeles the remainder of her life, dying there at the age of 82 of congestive heart failure on the 7th of December in 1988. She was cremated at the Chapel of the Pines and her ashes were scattered at sea (reportedly in the same location that her husband's ashes were scattered in 1973).
