Tributes - 1997

Billie Dove

Silent film actress. Born New York City, May 14, 1900. Died Woodland Hills, California, December 31, 1997, aged 97.

Billie Dove was one of the great beauties of the silent film era, turning heads in a business with no shortage of pretty faces. Even the young Gerald Ford, 50 years before becoming U.S. President, "never missed one of her movies".

He was not alone. Dove was publicised as 'The American Beauty' (she even made a film of that name), and was chosen as the leading lady in some of the first Technicolor features - including the spectacular The Black Pirate (1926), possibly the highlight of her career. She played a lovely princess, rescued from the clutches of pirates by the dashing Douglas Fairbanks.

Not a bad life for a New York girl, born with the unassuming name of Lillian Bohney. In her teens, she had supported her family as an artist's model - before being noticed, at age 15, by impresario Florenz Ziegfeld. Ziegfeld hired her for the chorus line of his famous Follies revue, in which he sought to "glorify the American girl".

Ziegfeld was so taken, in fact, that he devised a solo entrance for her, dressed in extra style. Her response was ask him, "If I'm so special, why aren't I getting more money?" Impressed by her nerve, Ziegfeld raised her wages to a generous $US50 a week.

Like many Ziegfeld girls, she eventually moved on to the movies, making her debut in Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford (1921), a remake of a 1917 Australian film. Soon afterwards, her career was guided by director Irvin Willat, who married her in 1923.

Like many Hollywood stars of the twenties, she was very prolific, churning out up to seven films a year. Her acting, while adequate, came a distant second to her looks. It was a face that belonged only in show business - and in many of her films, her characters happened to be in the same line of work.

Her actress character in The Marriage Clause (1926) even faced a similar predicament - having to choose between her stage director fiance (Francis X Bushman); and a promising theatre contract which contained a 'no-marriage clause'. By the end of the film, of course, she chose Bushman's love over her career.

A few years later, her real-life husband would not be so lucky. Dove's own marriage clause was presented to her by the millionaire playboy and film producer Howard Hughes. Enamoured by the starlet, Hughes offered her a contract worth $US50,000 per picture "if she would remove herself from any marriage entanglements". Not burdened by the morals of a movie heroine, she chose her career (and presumably, Hughes' affections) over her husband. Her marriage was annulled in 1929, leading to rumours that Willat had sold his wife.

Dove was among the first of many film actresses to be romantically linked with Hughes, living with him for three years. Like other silent movie actors, however, her star had faded with the coming of the 'talkies'. Hughes produced only two films for her, both of which were commercial and critical disasters.

More successful was Blondie of the Follies (1932), in which Dove and Marion Davies played showgirls, each chasing the same handsome millionaire. Again, the story parallelled Dove's own: the actresses had been Ziegfeld chorines, and they both had their millionaires. (Davies was the mistress of press baron William Randolph Hearst.)

The end of the movie was also true to life. Davies won the man; Dove lost him - and backstage, she lost Hughes as well. She later claimed that she had first turned down three marriage proposals from him. Others have suggested that he simply dumped her as she lost her box office clout, replacing her in every sense with newcomer Jean Harlow.

After Blondie, Dove retired to start a family. "I thought I had attained everything I wanted to attain, and wanted to be like other people," she would say in a 1994 interview. "I had seen some of the other girls try to hang on to their careers after they had started to slide. I vowed that would never happen to me."

In 1933 she married oil executive Robert Kenaston, and stayed with him until his death in 1973. She later had a brief marriage to architect John Miller.

Aside from a small role in the drama Diamond Head (1962), she never returned to the movies. In the 1984 charity gala Night of 100 Stars, however, she was introduced by Liza Minelli: "Ask any boy in the twenties who was the most beautiful girl in the world, and chances are he would have said Billie Dove."

Dove outlived most other silent movie actors, of course. With her death, only a handful remain.

She is survived by her adopted daughter, Gail Adelson, and a grandson, Gordon Kenaston. Her son, Robert Kenaston, died in 1995.