Film & TV / Theatre & dance
Doris Dowling
1923–2004
· actress
Detroit-born actress of 1940s film noir and Italian neorealism, remembered for The Lost Weekend, The Blue Dahlia and Bitter Rice.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Los Angeles, California
aged 81- Detroit years
- 1923–1920s
- Field
- Film & TV, Theatre & dance
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Doris Dowling was born in Detroit on May 15, 1923, but grew up in New York City with her siblings, among them the actress Constance Dowling, so her Detroit years belong to infancy. She started as a Broadway showgirl and dancer and signed with Paramount in the mid-1940s, where she made a vivid impression in small but sharp roles: the bar girl Gloria in Billy Wilder's Oscar-winning The Lost Weekend and the unfaithful wife in the Raymond Chandler-scripted noir The Blue Dahlia. Frustrated in Hollywood, she followed her sister to Italy, where she co-starred in Giuseppe De Santis's neorealist hit Bitter Rice (1949) and played Bianca in Orson Welles's Othello. Back in the United States she worked mainly on stage and television, including the sitcom My Living Doll. She was briefly married to bandleader Artie Shaw.
Highlights
- Gloria in Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1945)
- The Blue Dahlia (1946), written by Raymond Chandler
- Italian neorealist classic Bitter Rice (1949)
- Bianca in Orson Welles's Othello (1951)
- Irene Adams in My Living Doll (1964–1965)