Mamie Van Doren

Biography

Mamie Van Doren (/ˈmeɪmi væn ˈdɔːrən/; born Joan Lucille Olander; February 6, 1931) is an American retired actress. The last living blonde bombshell from the Golden Age of Hollywood, she is one of the "Three M's", a group formed by Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, who were contemporaries. In 1953, Van Doren, then named Joan Lucille Olander, signed a seven-year contract with Universal, which hoped that she would be their version of Monroe. She starred in teen dramas, exploitation, musical, comedy, and rock and roll films, among other genres, many of which have gone on to become cult classics. She was one of the leading sex symbols in the 1950s.

Van Doren was born and raised in Rowena, South Dakota, but her parents moved to Sioux City, Iowa, and eventually to Los Angeles in 1942 before she married Jack Newman. In 1949, at the age of eighteen, she won Miss Palm Springs and Miss Eight Ball. As Miss Eight Ball, she was discovered by film producer Howard Hughes, who put her in the RKO films His Kind of Woman (1951), Two Tickets to Broadway (1951), and Jet Pilot (1957) in minor roles. In 1950 she was dating the heavyweight boxer Jack Dempsey, over thirty-five years her senior, in New York City and was engaged to him. However, she left him to go back to Los Angeles. On January 20, 1953, Van Doren signed a contract with Universal, who wanted her to be Universal's equivalent of Monroe. While at Universal, Van Doren changed her name to Mamie Van Doren, the "Mamie" from then–First Lady Mamie Eisenhower and the "Van Doren" from Universal's telling Van Doren she was more Dutch than Swedish.

During her time at Universal, Van Doren starred in movies such as The Second Greatest Sex (1955), Running Wild (1955), and The All American (1953). Outside of Universal she starred in Untamed Youth (1957), Teacher's Pet (1958), High School Confidential (1958), Born Reckless (1958), The Beat Generation (1959), and Sex Kittens Go To College (1960). She starred on television shows such as What's My Line?, The Jack Benny Program, and The Bob Cummings Show. After Universal failed to renew her contract in 1959, Van Doren struggled to find work as a free agent. She starred in many B movies, such as Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968), The Las Vegas Hillbillys (1966) with Mansfield, and 3 Nuts in Search of a Bolt (1964), a film which challenged the Hays Code. The same year, she appeared in the June 1964 Playboy magazine with nude photos of her on the set of the film.

Van Doren has married five times and had intimate affairs with many other Hollywood actors. She went to Vietnam in the 1970s to entertain troops during the Vietnam War. Partially because of the sudden deaths of Mansfield and Monroe, she decided to retire from acting. In 1987 Van Doren released her autobiography, Playing the Field: My Story. On February 1, 1994, she received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1998, she created her website, describing herself as “the first authentic kitten on Cyberspace".

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