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Billie Dove
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Stunningly beautiful silent screen star Billie Dove was born Lillian Bohny in New York City on May 14th, 1903 to Swiss immigrants and she was educated in private schools. She became a model early in life and was featured on the covers of many magazines. Billie knew from childhood that she wanted to be an actress and she wasted no time in pursuing her goal. At the age of fourteen Billie was featured in the Ziegfeld Follies, and at age sixteen in The Midnight Revue. She played bit parts in the films produced at the early studios at Fort Lee, New Jersey. At age nineteen she had her first Hollywood contract with Metro, and soon appeared with Constance Talmadge in "Polly Of The Follies" (1922), her first successful picture.
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Billie Dove was born May 14th 1903 in New York, New York. Billie married Irvin Willat in 1923; they later divorced and she married Robert Kenaston in 1933. From this marriage she had one son and an adopted daughter. It was rumored that Billie lived with millionaire Howard Hughes for a few years in the 1930s. In addition to Billie’s many movie accomplishments she was a pilot, an artist and a poet.
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Billie Dove walked out on Hollywood at the height of her fame, spent three years as Howard Hughes' girlfriend, and was a Palm Springs legend for decades. Born Lillian Bohny of Swiss immigrant parents in 1903, Dove began her career in the "flickers"- those cheaply made silent movies made in and around Fort Lee, New Jersey in the days before Hollywood became the film capital of the world. At only sixteen, she was selected by master showman Florenz Ziegfeld as one of his showgirls for the legendary 1919 edition of the Ziegfeld Follies. Today, showgirls are anonymous Vegas chorines. In 1919, you could not get more famous than Ziegfeld could make you. Dove's beauty was the talk of a jaded New York, which eventually led to offers for more prestigious movies out West, in Hollywood.
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The impossibly beautiful Billie Dove coasts through the melodramatic convolutions of Adoration. Billie and Antonio Moreno play husband-and-wife Russian aristocrats who are separated during the Revolution. Upon meeting again, Moreno becomes convinced that Billie has been unfaithful. He walks out and takes to drink, while his wife, ever hopeful that she can patch things up, becomes a professional model to raise money. The caddish Nicholas Soussanin, who accused Billie of adultery in the first place, is at long last exposed as a liar, thereby assuring a happy ending for the displaced couple. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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Before she passed away at the age of 96, former actress and dancer "Billie Dove" believed that she was one of the last surviving Ziegfeld girls. During her heyday in the late '20s, Dove was certainly considered "Florenz Ziegfeld"'s most beautiful girl. At her apex as a star of stage and screen, Dove was hailed the "American Beauty." In 1927, the moniker became the title of one of her many films. The dark-eyed, wavy-haired lovely was born Lillian Bohny in New York City. Dove entered show business at age 15 after spending a year as an artist's model.
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The dazzlingly gorgeous Billie Dove is appropriately cast as the title character in American Beauty. This is the story of Millicent Howard (Dove), who banks upon her good looks to achieve wealth and luxury. Her efforts reach a pinnacle when millionaire Claverhouse (Walter McGrail) pops the question. But Millicent suddenly decides that Love is more important than Money, sacrificing all for the sake of comparatively impecunious Jerry Booth (Lloyd Hughes). Knowing full well what the audience wanted and expected, the screenwriters contrived to include several scenes in which the heroine strips down to her skivvies. Despite the "money isn't everything" throughline of American Beauty, Billie Dove is best-known today for her lengthy, well-publicized romance with zillionaire Howard Hughes.
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Billie Dove