[Deathwatch] Doris Dowling, actress, 81

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Many thanks to a long-time reader for several submissions - Ed.

Doris Dowling, '40s Star of Stage and Film, Is Dead at 81
Robert Simonson 

Doris Dowling, a throaty brunette star of the 1940s Broadway stage and
Hollywood films, died in Los Angeles on June 18, the New York Times
reported. She was 81.

Doris and her older sister, Constance, got their start on the Broadway
stage in 1940, Constance in Liliom, Doris as a chorus member of the
Cole Porter musical Panama Hattie. She played another ensemble member
in the 1941 Eddie Cantor vehicle Banjo Eyes, and then the short-lived
1942 George Abbott-directed musical Beat the Band.

Despite these credits, she was cast the next year in New Faces of 1943.


Ms. Dowling made a far bigger impact in Hollywood. Her second film was
Billy Wilder's Oscar-winning drama about alcoholism, "The Lost
Weekend." She played Gloria, a sympathetic barfly and prostitute,
opposite Ray Milland. Many expected her to be nominated for an Oscar
(she was not). "One day Billy Wilder and I were lunching at Lucey's
with Charles Jackson, who wrote the novel `The Lost Weekend,''' she
said, according to The Independent. "He said it was too bad I wasn't a
more common type so that I could play Gloria. And Billy never even
looked up. He just said,`She is.' That's all. Just, `She is.' I almost
went crazy with excitement." She and the married Wilder would soon
embark on a years-long affair that was an open secret in Hollywood.

Her next role, in 1946, was in the Raymond Chandler thriller "The Blue
Dahlia," one of the many noirs that starred Alan Ladd and Veronica
Lake. Ms. Dowling played Ladd's murdered wife.

"Riso Amaro," an Italian film from 1949 and perhaps her best role, was
about small-time criminals who hide out among a community of rice
workers. The Scotsman reported that director Giuseppe de Santis was
impressed by the younger Dowling's "dark hair, soulful eyes, alabaster
complexion and deep voice" and said that if she brushed up on her
Italian, she could become the star of his new film.

It was the first of many Italian films she would make. Others were
"Cuori sul mare" (with Marcello Mastroianni) and "Alina" (with Gina
Lollobrigida). She also played Bianca in Orson Welles' famous and
famously troubled production of "Othello." She did not find much luck
after that and worked increasingly in television. Her final film was
1981's "Separate Ways."

In 1973, she made a return to the stage as part of the all-star cast of
a revival of Clare Booth Luce's The Women.

She was married three times, most famously to jazz man Artie Shaw, with
whom she had one child. Her first husband was producer Robert Blumofe.
Her third and last was Leonard Kaufman, who she married in 1960 and who
survives her.