Billie Dove was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
actress.
Early life and career
She was born as
Bertha Bohny in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
to Charles and Bertha Bohny who were Swiss immigrants. As a teen, she worked as a
modelA model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products or to serve as a subject of works of art....
to help support her family and was hired at the age of 15 by
Florenz ZiegfeldFlorenz Ziegfeld, Jr. , , was an American Broadway impresario, notable for his series of theatrical revues, the Ziegfeld Follies , inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris. He also produced the musical Show Boat...
to appear in his
Ziegfeld Follies RevueThe Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 through 1931. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air....
. She legally changed her name to
Lillian Bohny in the early 1920s. and migrated to Hollywood, where she began appearing in silent films. She soon became one of the most popular actresses of the 1920s, appearing in
Douglas FairbanksDouglas Fairbanks, Sr. was an American actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films such as The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, and The Mark of Zorro....
' smash hit
TechnicolorTechnicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
film
The Black PirateThe Black Pirate is a 1926 silent adventure film shot entirely in two-strip Technicolor about an adventurer and a "company" of pirates. It stars Douglas Fairbanks, Donald Crisp, Sam De Grasse, and Billie Dove.-Plot:...
(1926), as Rodeo West in
The Painted Angel (1929), and was dubbed
The American Beauty (1927), the title of one of her films.
She married the director of her seventh film,
Irvin WillatIrvin Willat was an American film director of the silent film era. He directed 39 films between 1917 and 1937. Early in his career Willat worked as a cinematographer on several films...
, in 1923. The two divorced in 1929. Dove had a huge legion of male fans, one of her most persistent being
Howard HughesHoward Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world...
. She shared a three-year romance with Hughes and was engaged to marry him, but she ended the relationship without ever giving cause. Hughes cast her as a comedian in his film
Cock of the Air (1932). She also appeared in his movie
The Age for Love (1931).
Early retirement
Following her last film,
Blondie of the FolliesBlondie of the Follies is a 1932 comedy film directed by Edmund Goulding and written by Anita Loos and Frances Marion.-Cast :*Marion Davies as Blondie McClune*Robert Montgomery as Larry Belmont...
(1932), Dove retired from the screen to be with her family, although she was at the time still popular. She next married oil executive Robert Kenaston in 1933, a marriage that lasted for 37 years until Kenaston's death in 1973. They had two children — one son and one
adoptedAdoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the original parent or parents...
daughter. She later had a brief third marriage to architect John Miller, which ended in divorce.
Last years/death
Aside from a brief cameo in
Diamond HeadDiamond Head is a film starring Charlton Heston, Yvette Mimieux, George Chakiris, and James Darren, directed by Guy Green, and released by Columbia Pictures. The original music score was composed by John Williams, Hugo Winterhalter composed the theme, and Darren sang the title song...
(1962), Dove never returned to the movies. She spent her retirement years in Rancho Mirage before moving into the
Motion Picture & Television Country House and HospitalThe Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital is a retirement community, with individual cottages, and a fully licensed, acute-care hospital, located at 23388 Mulholland Drive in Woodland Hills, California...
in Woodland Hills, California where she died of
pneumoniaPneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
in 1997, aged 94.
She has a star on the
Hollywood Walk of FameThe Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
located at 6351 Hollywood Blvd.
External links