THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 24, 1996 TAG: 9609240035
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: 80 lines
DURING WORLD WAR II she was the undisputed Queen of the Jungle - complete with sarong and Polynesian charms more native to a Hollywood backlot than an island paradise.
Usually she portrayed lovelies with names like Lona or Aloma and heated up the home front with songs about how the Moon of Manakoora would bring her lover back to eager arms. American servicemen took her pinup into battle.
But if ever there was a down-to-earth woman who acted her age, it was Dorothy Lamour.
She died Sunday, leaving America to remember a simpler time when a sarong was racy garb and America worked together toward a common, desperate goal - to win the war.
There was always more than a hint from Dorothy Lamour that she realized the whole image was mildly ridiculous.
When she appeared at the Naro Expanded Cinema in Norfolk five years ago, she said: ``It's cruel to have me introduce a movie I made when I was 19. I haven't had my face lifted because there isn't a derrick big enough.''
She was always eager to point out that ``I made some 60 movies, and I only wore a sarong in about six of them.''
She was more proud, and serious, about her title as ``Bond Bombshell.'' During one of her several visits to Norfolk, she told me, ``I sold $9 million worth of bonds in the first seven days - and it was a new idea. I only took cash. My birthday was two days after Pearl Harbor. All Hollywood had planned a big party for me, but on that night, the entire city was blacked out. We were actually fearing an aerial attack. As I sat there in the dark, I kept thinking what I could do to help the war effort. The next day, I called Henry Morganthau, the secretary of the Treasury, and told him I thought movie stars would be especially effective in selling war bonds.''
He went for the idea. Lamour sold more than $300 million worth of war bonds by the war's end.
In 1991, she was honored at the Omni Hotel in Norfolk at a 50th anniversary celebration for the USO.
She visited Norfolk numerous times. In 1966, she stopped here on her way to entertain troops at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where she said: ``Look kids, I probably sang these same songs to many of your fathers in the Pacific during World War II. It's nice to know Marines haven't changed.''
Her son, Ridge, was stationed in Cuba at the time.
``Norfolk is a very special place,'' she once said. ``I think of it as a place that represented the last port before a lot of lonely guys went off to war.''
Born Mary Leta Dorothy Lambour in New Orleans, she was Miss New Orleans when she was 16. She later returned as a star to reign over the Mardi Gras parade one year.
She was an elevator operator in a Chicago department store before she was discovered by bandleader Herbie Kay, who became her first husband. She was given star billing in her very first movie, ``The Jungle Princess.''
In movies, she is best known as a comic foil for Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in the string of ``Road'' movies, beginning with ``Road to Singapore'' and going through trips to Bali, Morocco, Rio, Hong Kong, Utopia and Zanzibar.
``The boys behaved themselves pretty well,'' she said. ``Those pictures were a lot of fun, but it's not easy being the straight woman. I seldom had the jokes. I just stood around and had the two boys fight over me. There are worse jobs.''
She scored, too, as a feisty circus showgirl in the Oscar-winning ``The Greatest Show on Earth.''
In the last decades of her life, she turned down numerous scripts that she called ``sick.''
``I'm a mother and a respectable woman,'' she said. ``What would my son think seeing me on screen as an alcoholic, or worse? No, I have a following, and they wouldn't like me doing those movies. Some of my fans, after all, are still alive.''
Although the sarong may have been through the washer and dryer a few times, Lamour playfully laughed at her whole image. She commented: ``Sometimes when I see one of my old pictures - me, the sarong girl - I just say to myself. `Golly, Dottie, just look at you. Weren't you something?' ''
She was right.
Lamour is a name that rhymes with tourjour. Forever! ILLUSTRATION: Dorothy Lamour, 1914 - 1996
Associated Press [Photo]
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