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Dorothy Provine Profile
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| 20 January 37 | is born in Deadwood, South Dakota |
| ? | is raised in Seattle, Washington |
| Fall 53 - Spring 57 | attends the University of Washington for four years without graduating |
| 56 | is one of fifty Seafair Princesses in Seattle’s annual water festival |
| ? | sings in The King and I and On Your Toes in amateur opera |
| ? | replaces ailing Martha Wright in a professional South Pacific company |
| ? | is discovered by Warner Brothers talent executive Scotty Baiano when he sees her in a college production of Charley's Aunt at the University of Washington |
| Fall 57 | her roommate in Los Angeles, actress Lyn Osborn, steers her to Universal-International, where she is discovered by producer Howie Horwitz |
| February 58 | columnist Louella Parsons reports: "Dale Robertson, who was reported reconciling with his first wife, is now steady dating with Dorothy Provine, pretty U-I actress...." |
| July 58 | she and John Smith are seen at the Intrepid Fox |
| August 58 | columnist Harrison Carroll notes her at Kenny Miller's party for New York's writer Rona Barrett with Rick Strauss |
| Mid-September 58 | attends Duke Lloyd's "party for the younger set" with Curtis Harrington |
| Late September 58 | is seen at the new Beverly Crest's Venetian Room with Duke Lloyd |
| March 59 | Louella Parsons knows: "Twice this week Alan Ladd, Jr., and starlet Dorothy Provine have had dinner dates at the Hollywood Brown Derby, remaining on each time holding hands and talking..." |
| April 59 | columnist Walter Winchell reports: "CBS disc-jockey Jim Lowe has fallen hard for MGM actress Dorothy Provine. He's on the long-kisstance phone daily..." |
| May 59 | Parsons writes: "Alan Ladd, Jr., who was bedded with flu for a few days, wasn't too sick to phone Dorothy Provine, his best girl...." |
| July 59 | attends Cathy Crosby's 20th birthday party with Bud Pennell |
| August 59 | she and Gardner McKay are noted having dinner at the Kowloon |
| her parents are reported owning a small nightclub outside of Seattle |
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| confirms that she dated Andy Williams, Ray Strickland, and Alan Ladd, Jr. |
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| September 59 | is seen at the Luau with Ray Anthony |
| columnist Lee Mortimer tells: "Dorothy Provine is playing in a film called Thirty Foot Bride of Rock Candy which is why actor Doug Lambert is so interested..." |
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| October 59 | she and Ray Anthony have an early dinner at the Villa Capri before going to the Crescendo where Ray is appearing |
| January 60 | attends Connie Francis' bash with Buddy Bregman |
| will star in the screen version of High Button Shoes during a vacation from her TV hit, "The Alaskans" |
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| February 60 | columnist Harrison Carroll reports from Frank Sennes' new Ciro's: "Gustavo Rojo, just separated from Erika Remberg, was sitting ringside with Dorothy Provine." |
| March 60 | hands out awards at the foreign press awards dinner |
| April 60 | Louella Parsons reports: "Pretty blonde Dorothy Provine had a hectic but pleasant flight to Milwaukee with Dorothy Bailey of the Warner TV department. Dorothy P. went to meet the parents of Buddy Kaiser, scion of the Midwest hotel fortune, and apparently the Kaisers approved of her. Buddy is bringing a ring to Hollywood to put on the proper finger in 2 weeks. The Provine girl is in 'The Alaskans,' a Warner TV series." |
| August 60 | columnist Walter Winchell knows: "Buddy Bregman, who almost married Anna Maria Alberghetti for the publicity, is flirting with Dorothy Provine..." |
| December 60 | Louella Parsons knows: "At the Beachcomber's the good looking young man dining with Dorothy Provine was Mark Nathanson, Jerry's son..." |
| Late December 60 | columnist Earl Wilson considers her and Renee Taylor "Best New TV Glamourites" |
| February 61 | is noted dating Mark Nathanson again |
| Louella Parsons writes: "Dorothy Provine hasn't been told by her studio yet, but she will be given permission to star in Frank Sinatra's X-13 at Warners, after she finishes her work in the TV series ‘The Roaring Twenties’. Dorothy had an ulcerated right eye, but it's improving so rapidly she will be able to attend the Washington Press Correspondents dinner at which she will sing for President Kennedy." |
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| April 61 | columnist Dorothy Kilgallen tells: "Dorothy Provine, in town to try out for the lead in Little Me, dined with theatrical agent Jack Martin and moaned that although she's almost sure she can land the Belle Poitrine role, she fears her boss, Jack Warner, won't release her to Broadway..." |
| Late April 61 | accompanies Frank Sinatra and songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen to the Indian Wells Country Club. There, Sinatra, on orders by Sam Giancana, tells Desilu studio boss Desi Arnaz that his Italian friends didn't like “The Untouchables” program and that it makes all Italians look like killers. Arnaz refuses to change anything and Sinatra fumes. |
| June 61 | she and Mitzi Gaynor are mentioned for the Broadway musical The Night They Raided Minskey's |
| August 61 | is reported dating bullfighter Fernando Echeverria, whom she met in Mexico City |
| September 61 | is back from a vacation in Mexico and resumes work in "The Roaring 20's" |
| October 61 | is tested for the role of Naomi in The Chapman Report. Louella Parsons tells: "Although Naomi was a screwball and a nymphomaniac in the movie, she wants to play it, and Richard Zanuck wants her - so if the test turns out, she will probably play in this much cussed and discussed movie." |
| November 61 | flies to Las Vegas to be ringside at the Sands to hear Frank Sinatra |
| 23 December 61 | is with Bob Hope at his Christmas show at the Air Force base in Goose Bay, Labrador. Others in the entourage are Jerry Colonna, Jayne Mansfield, and Anita Bryant. |
| January 62 | Louella Parsons tells: "If Dorothy Provine got a jolt when Frank Sinatra announced his engagement to Juliet Prowse, you'd never know it. Dorothy has held her chin high and came out with colors flying - on the surface. So she gets an unexpected nice Valentine from her Warner Brothers bosses: On Valentine's Day, February 14, Dorothy planes to London to appear on the top TV show, ‘Sunday Night at the Palladium.’” |
| will star in Warner Brothers' upcoming TV series "The Perils of Pauline" |
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| moves into her Regency-style hillside Hollywood house, "the second house she has owned since becoming a star" |
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| Early February 62 | columnist Walter Winchell muses: "The March issue of a TV fan-mag breathlessly asks: 'Do you think Dorothy Provine will be Sinatra's next?..." |
| February 62 | due to her "The Roaring 20's" single recording, "Don't Bring Lulu," she's one of the most publicized American TV stars in England |
| Early March 62 | Dorothy Kilgallen tells: "There were many skeptics who didn't for a minute believe Frank Sinatra would marry Juliet Prowse, but the girl most 'in the know' must have been Dorothy Provine. The lovely Dorothy has been receiving all kinds of expensive presents from Frank and thinks he's marvelous - but isn't likely to marry him because she's deeply religious and her religion would forbid marriage to a divorced man..." |
| March 62 | columnist Hedda Hopper knows: "Dorothy Provine is back in action at Warners after being laid up five weeks with a fractured vertebra. She's guesting in a "77 Sunset Strip." Dorothy's collision with a chair made her miss her Palladium date in London..." |
| April 62 | columnist Mike Connolly tells that her "beau, Peter Mann, isn't too anxious for her to leave. It's the season's sizzlin'est romance..." |
| to play in Stanley Kramer's It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, she has to give up appearing in Broadway's Little Me |
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| Walter Winchell thinks she and Peter Mann "are Oh, Mann!...." |
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| May 62 | is reported a front runner for the Belle Joitrine role in Little Me. "At least the producers want her, and she'd like to play the role - but her handlers aren't sure it's the right move..." |
| June 62 | is reported terrified of facing six weeks of 105-115 degree summer heat in Palm Springs to film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Her ghostly complexion comes from a near-fatal attack of sun poisoning when she was a girl. |
| July 62 | Mike Connolly reports her making a beeline for Palm Springs. "Sure, I know it's hot there. But Dotty's favorite feller, Frank Sinatra, is there." |
| August 62 | battles her Warner Brothers bosses because she "absolutely refuses to make 'The Perils of Pauline,' the new series they want her to begin in 1963. Dorothy says: 'A movie or nothing'" |
| October 62 | she and Lana Turner are scheduled to be with Bob Hope at his annual Christmas tour of American overseas military bases. The trip will include bases in Japan and Korea. |
| November 62 | Jack Warner has her, Milton Berle, Claire Bloom, and Ty Hardin in mind for Wall of Noise |
| April 63 | the television series "Mind Over Marriage" is coming up for her at Warner Brothers |
| May 63 | comedian George Burns announces that she will replace Carol Channing as a co-star in his nightclub act |
| June 63 | is hospitalized with a burst blood vessel in one of her legs, the result of too strenuous rehearsing for her nightclub act |
| Dorothy Kilgallen tells: "When Dorothy Provine finished her recent appearance at the White House, she headed for the airport and what her friends understood would be a plane to Los Angeles. But she was only kidding. Actually she hopped a New York-bound shuttle and spent four days being wooed by Jack Martin, assistant to film man Stanley Shapiro..." |
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| August 63 | she and George Burns open at the Riviera in Las Vegas |
| September 63 | Movie Life reports that she was "dating short and fast Bob Vaughn" |
| Late September 63 | the press reports that the "team of George Burns and Dorothy Provine hasn't worked out too well. George may unload Dorothy and do a television series with Connie Stevens, instead...." |
| January 64 | buys herself out of her Warner Brothers contract |
| April 64 | columnist Louis Sobel reports: "More and more Dorothy Provine, the film lovely, is being seen in the company of a lad who is no way connected with the movie industry - Harold Fishman, a science professor who apparently likes gals of show business. He was formerly linked romantically, with Sandra Church...." |
| quits the TV scene and pushes ahead with a new nightclub act. "And hopes to open the autumn season in Manhattan's Persian Room..." |
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| June 64 | columnist Earl Wilson tells that she "and producer Joe Mankiewicz's son Tim cooled their romance..." |
| August 64 | is reported still a little bit stunned over getting her part in Warner Brothers' The Big Race. "I had a big feud with Jack Warner," she says. |
| October 64 | Louella Parsons writes: "Just when everyone thought Glenn Ford was getting steady with Suzanne Pleshette he's getting steadier with Dorothy Provine who everybody thought was getting steady with Richard Chamberlain. Dorothy and Glenn were together again at the Sergio Franchi opening at the Cocoanut Grove..." |
| Late October 64 | is among stars taking off with an airborne political road show to stump seven states for the Johnson-Humphrey ticket. Steve Allan and Henry Fonda head these Hollywood Democrats; others in the troupe are Jackie Cooper, Eddie Fisher, Tippi Hedren, Carl Reiner, Barbara Rush, Joan Staley, and the Winds of Notre Dame. |
| November 64 | she and Richard Chamberlain are seen at the opening night of an opera, she bejeweled and he in tails. "Dorothy won't admit there's a romance (they never do, you know). 'But we like each other. We talk, talk, talk when we're together because we're interested in the same things. Dick is the most immaculate man I have ever known." |
| March 65 | is scheduled for Harlow but Electronovision boss Bill Sargent announces that Carol Lynley will play the title role. No explanation is given as to why Dorothy was dumped. |
| April 65 | the press tells that she left the production of Harlow because she didn't feel the part suited her. But Sargent, watching Carol Lynley's death bed scene, confirms: 'That scene cost me $25,000 - I signed Provine but I just couldn't see her dying - I couldn't feel sorry for her.'" |
| June 65 | performs in the four-day Hollywood gala premiere of The Great Race. Reportedly the largest press junket in Hollywood history, it starts with a dinner party at the Beverly Hilton Hotel and has its climax with a dinner at one of Warner's biggest sound stages, catered by Chasen's. Phil Silvers is master of ceremonies. |
| July 65 | promotes The Great Race at the Moscow Film Festival and is interviewed by Pravda |
| September 65 | leaves for four months work in Rio and Rome and "intimates are wondering how it will affect the first real love in her ten years in Hollywood. Dorothy is absolutely mad about cameraman Dick Klein, but they'll have to be apart while Dorothy is away, because Dick's work will keep him in Hollywood." |
| May 65 | is back from two pictures in Europe and reports for her third at Columbia, Who's Minding the Mint? |
| September 66 | columnist Harrison Carroll confesses: "I couldn't get Dorothy Provine to the phone to check the report that she may fly to India to get married. She also refused to discuss the rumor with her representatives. Friends heard that Dorothy fell in love with an American when she was in Rome doing the picture Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die. Incidentally, she is due back in Rome to do another film, Wet Lips, Dry Mouth." |
| October 66 | accompanies Governor Edmund G. Brown on his Progress Express train through Los Angeles County. Also aboard are Gregory Peck, Peter Falk, and Bob Newhart. |
| December 66 | tells the press that she might sell her Hollywood home and move to Europe because she's bored with Hollywood life |
| February 67 | columnist Harrison Carroll asks: "Where do you think they found Dorothy Provine to get her to agree to appear in the Walt Disney Dick Van Dyke picture, Never a Dull Moment? In England, where her secret love lives. She won't be back until the middle of February, when the picture is supposed to start." |
| March 67 | is reported spending most of her time in London "where she is enamored of an Englishman. But even her romance goes unpublicized - at least up to now - and her boyfriend's name is a big secret." |
| November 68 | director Robert Day is reported having formally proposed to her in an overseas call. He and Dorothy "fell in love shortly after they met in Great Britain some months ago." |
| 11 December 68 | a London court grants divorce to Eileen Day, the wife of director Robert Day on the grounds of his adultery with Dorothy, who's expecting a baby. Judge Sidney Noakes allows the divorce decree to be made absolute in one month instead of the usual three. Dorothy doesn't take part in the trial. |
| Early 69 | marries Day. He's 46; she's about 32. |
| March 69 | columnist Harrison Carroll reveals: "Everybody has been waiting to hear of the London marriage of Dorothy Provine and director Robert Day. Actually, the pair got married early in January in Las Vegas." |
| April 69 | columnist Ed Sullivan tells: "The Bob (Dorothy Provine) Days named him Bob Jr..." |
| 28 May 69 | her son, Robert W. is born in Los Angeles |
| February 76 | columnist Marilyn Beck writes: "Director Robert Day will take his trawler, Rio Lady, up the coast to San Francisco when he shoots the comedy-detective ‘Gemini' pilot with the ‘Hee Haw’ Hager twins in the Bay Area this month. Day says he doesn't like planes or hotels - and will sleep on the boat he's named in honor of his actress wife, Dorothy Provine, whom he met ten years ago in Brazil..." |
| 81 | retires with her husband to Bainbridge Island, Washington |
| 25 April 10 | dies at age 75 from emphysema at Silverdale's Hospice of Kitsap County, about 10 miles northwest of Bremerton, Washington. From their Bainbridge Island home her husband says, “She was so beautiful.” There will be no funeral. Besides her husband, she is survived by her son Robert Day and her sisters, Susan Cameron of Silverdale, Washington, and Patricia Coldiron of California. |
| Sources: Joe Gardner, "Televised Gangsters" by John William Tuohy, The Associated Press, Kingsport Times, The Fresno Bee, TV Guide, The Daily Review, Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, The Vidette-Messenger, Anderson Daily Bulletin, Humboldt Standard, Burlington Daily Times-News, San Antonio Light, Star-News, The Modesto Bee, The Cedar Rapids Gazette, Nevada State Journal, Raleigh Register, The Evening Standard, Albuquerque Journal, Oakland Tribune, The Daily Record, Oneonta Star, The Pharos-Tribune, Daily Intelligencer, Pasadena Star-News, The Troy Record, San Antonio Express, The Lowell Sun, The Sheboygan Press, The Coshocton Tribune, Van Nuys News, Movie Life, Mansfield News-Journal, The Brownsville Herald, Independent Star-News, Delaware County Daily News, The Anniston Star, Charleston Daily Mail, San Mateo Times, Manitowoc Herald-Times, Syracuse Herald-American, The Record Newspapers, Naugatuck News, New Castle News, The Morning Herald, The Tribune, The Valley Independent, www.Ancestry.com, www.IMDb.com | |
| Recommended Books: Fifties Blondes by Richard Koper | |
| Links: Filmography | |