1903-1997
Actress Billie Dove was born Bertha Bohny to Swiss immigrants on this day in New York City. She was one of the earliest "blonde bombshells" in Hollywood; and her nickname was "The American Beauty." She first changed her first name to legally to "Lillian" in the 1920's when she moved to Hollywood, and later began using the stage name "Billie Dove" when entering film work. She got her start back in New York as a model and was then hired by Florenz Ziegfeld for his Ziegfeld Follies Revue; upon her arrival in Tinsel Town she promptly found work in film. Her first role came in 1921, when she appeared in Frank Borzage's comedy Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford (a remake of Fred Niblo's film of the same name from 1916). From then on, Dove specialized in comedy and comedic roles. She also managed to make it into at least one very important technological "first"--she landed the role of Princess Isobel in the feature length techicolor The Black Pirate released in 1926 (this is early, so-called "2 Strip Technicolor"). We are truly fortunate that the film survives and has been restored; ill-regardless of whether one is a fan of silent swashbucklers or not, this film worth a look just for the color alone...and Dove playful performance (it's currently on Amazon Prime). Dove married thrice in her life, and her first marriage was to director Irvin Willet, whom she met on the set of All Brothers Were Valiant in 1923. They divorced in 1929 and she was next connected to Howard Hughes, to whom she was briefly engaged. But it was her marriage to oil executive Robert Alan Kenaston in 1933 that stuck (she may have actually met him through Hughes, who was from Texas). With Kenaston she had two children (one adopted) and it was her nuptials to the weathy oil man that ended her acting career. Her last silent film was Careers in 1929, it was also released as a sound film to theaters in big cities that had the ability to screen films with sound effects and music (her last fully silent film was the melodrama Night Watch). She then made a handful of early talkies, ending the decade with The Painted Angel. Dove made only a handful of movies in the 1930's, despite the fact that she was a literally a movie star of extreme popularity. Her last film was Blondie of the Follies in 1932 (she reportedly shot a cameo appearance for Diamond Head (1962), but the footage was left out of the film). She retired to family life after this. She does not seem to have missed the life however; in addition to being a comedic acting talent, she was also an accomplished artist, (and an author and enjoyed flying, becoming a pilot at some point). Her marriage to Kenaston came to end in 1970 upon the occasion of his death; three years later she wed architect John Miller, only to divorce him a year later. She lived out her life, writing and painting, in her adopted home town of Hollywood; dying there of complications from pneumonia on New Year's Eve 1997 at the age of 94. She is interred at the Freedom Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale under the name Lillian Bohny Kenaston with "Billie Dove" inscribed below. Reportedly her "name" Billie was taken by another extremely talented lady born only 11 years after Dove; Eleanora Fagan is better known to the world as Billie Holiday.
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| [Source: Find A Grave] |
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