Dolores Dorn

Some actresses have entered films via the stage while others walked the path of a successful modelling career. Dolores Dorn managed to straddle both, by being a graduate of Chicago's Goodman Art Theatre as well as having been a former place-getter (second and third, respectively, in 1950 and 1951) at the annual Miss Chicago contest. A blonde beauty with a sunny smile, she was also voted 'Miss Photoflash' of 1951 by the Chicago Press Photographers Association.

She was born Dolores Heft in 1933 (some sources mistakenly cite 1934) in Chicago, of mostly Lithuanian descent, the only child of a well-to-do automobile dealer, Edward Heft, and his wife, Alice. She first headlined before the footlights at the Chez Paris nightclub. In 1954, she joined the Schaffner Players repertory comedy troupe as "lead ingénue" on tour through Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa. At some point she was spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout while sipping soda at a drug store. This led to her first (minor) film role in Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954) as one of the beast's murder victims, to be followed by a second-billed part in the Randolph Scott western The Bounty Hunter (1954).

Dolores Dorn made her New York stage debut in 1956 in Chekhov's 'Uncle Vanya' at the Fourth Street Theatre. A year later she also played the part of Yelena Andreyevna in the subsequent film version (opposite future husband Franchot Tone who was 29 years her senior). Having attracted the attention of studio execs with an off-Broadway performance in 'Between two Thieves', she was signed by director Samuel Fuller to a Columbia contract.

Her first notable starring role for the studio was in Underworld U.S.A. (1961), for which she was cast as gangster's moll "Cuddles", romantic interest to Cliff Robertson's revenge-seeking ex-convict. She was billed, unlike on Broadway, as simply Dolores Dorn. Her last noteworthy fling at the big screen was in 13 West Street (1962), a fashionable melodrama about teenage delinquency in which she co-starred with Alan Ladd.

During the late 1960s, Dorn focused on stage endeavors around New York and Los Angeles. There were also a few TV guest appearances to follow between 1973 and 1985, but that was pretty much it. However, behind the cameras, she worked as an acting teacher at the American Film Institute (1977), the Lee Strasberg Institute (1983) and as acting coach for the reality television game show Star Search (1983).