Dorothy Granger

Dorothy Granger was one of the first members of SAG when the Screen Actors Guild was founded over 65 years ago. A Texas beauty contest winner at the age of thirteen, Dorothy's career ran from a long-running two-reel series, as the wife of Leon Errol for RKO, to the long-running television series Death Valley Days (1952) with Ronald Reagan. 'Dott-ee,' as Stan Laurel would call her, worked as a young foil with Laurel and Hardy, a damsel-in-distress for the Three Stooges, and a prop for Lucille Ball to pop in Perfectly Mismated (1934). From one short comedy to another, she worked with every popular comic or comedy team of the twenties and thirties, from Burt Wheeler to W.C. Fields. But Dorothy wanted to be a dramatic actress. She appealed to her funny buddy Andy Devine, who told her, "Put on a petticoat and you'll work forever." She did, and she did. In the forties, it was western after western, working with Lon Chaney Jr. and Andy in North to the Klondike (1942), Randolph Scott and Broderick Crawford in When the Daltons Rode (1940), Robert Young and Betty Grable in Sweet Rosie O'Grady (1943), and Gene Autry in Blue Montana Skies (1939). Tiring of westerns, Dorothy ventured into everything from horrors with Bela Lugosi to musicals to the Charlie Chan series with Sydney Toler. By the fifties, she'd hit her stride, working episodic TV, regularly on The Abbott and Costello Show (1952), Cameo Theatre (1950) with James Drury, and The Jack Benny Program (1950). But like the westerns, Dorothy's style had passed, reducing her to bit roles in films like Dondi (1961) with Walter Winchell and David Janssen, New York Confidential (1955) with Anne Bancroft, and Raintree County (1957) with Montgomery Clift. Andy was right-the petticoat was the most natural wardrobe for Dorothy, since she spent most of her career in petticoats and covered wagons. Dorothy accepted that the West was done. Ending her career with over 250 films, she quit. The three most enjoyable things for Dorothy were making movies, her affair with Clark Gable, and watching her grandnephew, Alex Wilde, grow as an actor.