LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Arlene Dahl
built 642 days ago
Allan Dwan takes on hard-boiled master James M. Cain in a film starring Arlene Dahl as Dorothy Lyons, a red-headed nymphomaniac looking for trouble. Hoping to smear Frank Jansen (Kent Taylor), the reform candidate for mayor in his city, crime syndicate boss Sol Caspar (Ted de Corsia) sends his top lieutenant Ben Grace (John Payne) to look into the private life of Jansen's secretary, June Lyons (Rhonda Fleming). He finds not only that she's involved with her boss, but that her sister Dorothy, a kleptomaniac who gets around, has just been released from prison. When Caspar murders a newspaper publisher who had supported Jansen, Ben, who is angling for Caspar's slot, supplies evidence of Caspar's involvement in the crime to June, and convinces her to accept his help in electing Jansen, making her believe he's now on the side of law and order. Meanwhile, Caspar is forced to flee and Ben takes over his job. Ben and June soon become involved, but their romance goes sour when Arlene, always in search of new friends, makes a move on the racketeer.
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Although she was still in demand as an actress, Dahl virtually abandoned her acting career in the late 1950s for the business world. Beginning in 1951, she had written a popular syndicated beauty column. Later in the 1950s, she took it a step further and started a highly successful company that marketed cosmetics and lingerie. In the 1960s and 1970s, she took on relatively few acting roles; ... when her cosmetics company went under in the early 1980s, she went back to acting, taking a recurring role on the ABC daytime drama One Life to Live. In the early 1990s, Dahl once again retired from the screen, this time to write an astrology column.
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[T]he other night Arlene Dahl and Marc Rosen celebrated their 20th at a black tie dinner. The evening began with cocktails. In the crowd: Marylou Whitney and John Hendrickson, Dina Merrill and Ted Hartley, CeCe and James Earl Jones, Kathy and Rick Hilton, Rita Gam and Peter Powell, Patrice Munsel and Robert Schuler, Susan Lucci and Helmut Huber, Sally Jesse Raphael and Karl Soderland, Wendy Carduner, Barbara de Portago, and Barbara Taylor and Robert Bradford.
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At various times Arlene has designed sleepwear for A. N. Saab & Co., served as beauty director of Sears, Roebuck & Co., and worked with advertising agencies. In 1969 she was named Woman of the Year in Communications by the New York Advertising Club! She has ... found the time to write several best-selling books, including Always Ask a Man (1965), Beautyscopes (1968), and Secrets of Hair Care and Secrets of Skin Care (1970).
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Synopsis: Wicked as They Come stars Arlene Dahl as Kathy Allen, whose sour attitude on life has been formed by a sexual assault in her childhood. Rising out of the shabbiness of the Lower East Side, Kathy ruthlessly climbs the social and financial ladder by using and then abandoning a series of gullibleRead More
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The screenplay by Robert Blees ... diminished the role of June, who was played by buxom redhead Rhonda Fleming, and built up the role of her wicked sister, played by yet another blazing redhead, Arlene Dahl. In fact, the film begins with June meeting Dorothy as she gets out of prison (for shoplifting?) while Ben (Payne) photographs them from a distance, obviously gathering "dirt" with which to smudge June and her boss, the reform mayoral candidate.
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Arlene Dahl