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Myrna Dell

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Myrna Dell
Born
Marilyn Adele Dunlap

(1924-03-05)March 5, 1924
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
DiedFebruary 11, 2011(2011-02-11) (aged 86)
Studio City, Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupations
  • Actress
  • writer
Years active1940–1990
Spouse(s)Jack Buchtel
(m. 1951; div. 19??)
Herbert Patterson
(m. 19??)[1]
Children1
With Joe DiMaggio at the Stork Club, 1949

Myrna Dell (born Marilyn Adele Dunlap;[2] March 5, 1924 – February 11, 2011) was an American actress, model, and writer who appeared in numerous motion pictures and television programs over four decades.[3] A Hollywood glamour girl in the early part of her career, she is best known today for her work in B-pictures, particularly film noir thrillers and Westerns.[4]

Early life and career

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Dell's mother was silent-film actress Carol Price.[5] Dell entered show business when she was 16 as a dancer [6] with the Earl Carroll Revue in New York. Her film debut came in A Night at Earl Carroll's (1940),[2] after which she appeared in Ziegfeld Girl (1941), Raiders of Red Gap (1943), and Up in Arms (1943).

She found work at Monogram Pictures, a "budget" studio specializing in inexpensive entertainments for double-feature theaters. She appeared as an ingenue in a B-western, Arizona Whirlwind (1944), with silent-screen veterans Ken Maynard, Hoot Gibson, and Bob Steele.

She signed a contract with RKO Radio Pictures in 1944, and followed the path of other RKO starlets: bit parts and chorus-girl appearances in features, then dialogue roles in short subjects starring Leon Errol or Edgar Kennedy, and then featured roles in "B" pictures and smaller roles in "A" pictures. Myrna Dell was very prolific at RKO, and many fans know her best from these pictures. Beginning as a showgirl in the Eddie Cantor-Joan Davis musical comedy Show Business (1944), Dell gradually worked her way up, from a Zane Grey western to gradually larger roles in three of the studio's popular Falcon mysteries with Tom Conway, and finally becoming established as a hard-boiled glamour girl in film noir thrillers like Nocturne (1946), The Locket (1946), and Destination Murder (1950). She once told a reporter that she loathed the glamour-girl image, stating, "After a time... a girl gets bored with the glamour, the atmosphere, the drinking, the cigarettes to smoke, the wolves."[7] Between assignments she returned to the Leon Errol unit to play dangerous blondes opposite the flustered comic, and would even play incidental walk-ons not calling for any dialogue (she's the nightclub blonde silently kibitzing Tommy Noonan's card game in the 1946 comedy Ding Dong Williams).

In 1948 her term contract with RKO ran out, and she began freelancing at other studios. She played sultry blondes for Republic, Columbia, Universal, Paramount, and Lippert. She occasionally returned to RKO and Monogram; her last major role in motion pictures was as the femme fatale in Monogram's Bowery Boys comedy Here Come the Marines (1952).

With roles in feature films becoming fewer, Dell turned to television in 1952 for the China Smith series. She went on to appear on such programs as Gang Busters, Lux Video Theatre, Crusader, Dragnet, The Ethel Barrymore Theatre, Maverick, Pete and Gladys, Batman, Hazel, The Donna Reed Show, and The Texan. Her last film appearance was in Buddy Buddy (1981)[8]

In her later years, she worked as a writer for Hollywood: Then and Now Magazine in which she shared countless stories about her days as an actress and thanking such figures as Jack L. Warner, Louis B. Mayer, and Samuel Goldwyn for their contributions to the film industry.[7]

Personal life

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On June 15, 1951, Dell married Jack Buchtel, a restaurateur.[9] In the 1960s, she married Herbert Patterson, an actor.[10]

Dell was a lifelong registered Republican and a practicing Episcopalian.[11]

A California resident all her life, Dell continued living in the state by spending her final years in Studio City, California, answering fan mail and keeping her fans up to date through her personal website.[12] She died from natural causes on February 11, 2011, at her studio apartment one month shy of her 87th birthday. She was survived by one daughter, Laura Patterson, who spread her ashes next to the Hollywood Sign.[13]

Filmography

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References

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  1. ^ "Pictures That Talk : Obituary: Myrna Dell". www.picturesthattalk.com.
  2. ^ a b Koper, Richard (2010). Fifties Blondes: Sexbombs, Sirens, Bad Girls and Teen Queens. Oklahoma, Duncan: BearManor Media. p. 353. ISBN 978-1-59393-521-4. Retrieved March 20, 2019.
  3. ^ "Myrna Dell". BFI. Archived from the original on March 10, 2016.
  4. ^ III, Harris M. Lentz (April 30, 2012). Obituaries in the Performing Arts, 2011. McFarland. ISBN 9780786491346 – via Google Books.
  5. ^ Scott, John L. (July 24, 1949). "Actress Buzzes Out of 'B' Hive". The Los Angeles Times. California, Los Angeles. p. Part IV - 1. Retrieved March 20, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. ^ Koper, Richard (March 31, 2010). Fifties Blondes. BearManor Media. ISBN 9781593935214.
  7. ^ a b "Biography". Myrna_dell.tripod.com. March 5, 1924. Retrieved September 10, 2012.
  8. ^ Erickson, Hal. "Myrna Dell - Biography, Movie Highlights and Photos - AllMovie". AllMovie.
  9. ^ "Myrna Dell Weds Restaurant Owner". The Akron Beacon Journal. Ohio, Akron. United Press. June 15, 1951. p. 27. Retrieved March 20, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. ^ Lentz, Harris M. III (2012). Obituaries in the Performing Arts, 2011. North Carolina, Jefferson: McFarland & Company. pp. 79–80. ISBN 978-0-7864-69949. Retrieved March 20, 2019.
  11. ^ An Interview with Myrna Dell, Skip E. Lowe, 1990
  12. ^ "Biography". myrna_dell.tripod.com.
  13. ^ Wilson, Scott (August 19, 2016). Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed. McFarland. ISBN 9781476625997 – via Google Books.
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