Valerie Allen Profile

Valerie Allen

	(Valerie Pamela Allen)
10 February 36	is born in New York to theatrical parents. Her father is Edgar Allen, talent booker for the Keith-Orpheum vaudeville-movie houses. Her mother is Valerie Roemer / Raemier, a former Ziegfeld Girl.
45	her father dies
?	attends Los Angeles City College
?	works as a secretary and cocktail waitress
Mid-50s	visits Las Vegas with a friend whose uncle owns the The Old Frontier. To pay their huge hotel bill, they audition for various chorus lines, finally ending up at the Sands. Frank Sinatra opens the show, and Valerie is chosen due to her resemblance to Ava Gardner.
?	is discovered by Paramount while a chorus girl in Las Vegas
55	is crowned "Miss Bowling"
June 56	is in love with John Kirkman, the textile manufacturer
August 56	is the official hostess for the national convention of the American Legion, which is held in Los Angeles
?	as "Queen of the Seebees," she welcomes the crew of the U.S. Navy seaplane tender Curtiss back to Long Beach from three months in the Antarctic
July 57	gets a Paramount screen test after being on its payroll for two years
Christmas 57	together with Johnny Grant, Fay Spain, and Lita Milan, she's off on a USO tour of Europe. In Rome the girls look for men to marry.
Summer 58	visits Spain with her friend Fay Spain
59	leaves Paramount after only four years. She is the last contract player in the history of Paramount.
c. 59	badly sprains her left hand in a car accident in Benedict Canyon
July 59	is Hollywood's newest double feature with actor Earl Holliman
60	is bruised during a cinematic tussle with Judy Holliday on the set of Bells Are Ringing
August 60	is seen with Jack Haley, Jr.
61	is unmarried and lives alone in a Hollywood apartment. She drives her Thunderbird to Beverly Hills twice a week to visit her psychotherapist.
	does the pilot for a proposed TV sitcom with Ernie Kovacs and Buster Keaton, “Medicine Man.” The pilot is sold, and 13 episodes are scheduled, but production falls flat when Kovacs is killed in a road accident in January 1962.
66	meets her future husband, actor Troy Donahue, when she auditions for his Come Spy for Me
21 October 66	marries Donahue, the ex of actress Suzanne Pleshette, in Dublin, Ireland
?	does some theater with Donahue
11 April 68	separates from Donahue
16 November 68	divorces Donahue in Los Angeles. She testifies that he kept coming home late to dinner. Donahue agrees to pay $14,000 and $600 a month alimony and relinquishes to her his membership at The Factory, an exclusive Beverly Hills discotheque. He's 32; she's 28. Donahue will remarry in 1979.
?	Tom McDermott offers her a job at RCA, and she begins writing
?	becomes an executive at RCA
?	writes soap operas and works on cruise ships as a social director
02	writes a fictional account of Hollywood
18 June 13	dies of lung cancer at the Motion Picture & Television Fund Country House in Woodland Hills, California

Sources: "Valerie Allen - Riding the Wave Between Old Hollywood and New" by Robert Nott in Filmfax, Nevada State Journal, The Lima News, The Times Recorder, The Post-Standard, Picture Show Annual, TV Guide, www.IMDb.com
Recommended Books:
Links: Filmography