Trivia of Arlene Dahl

 Trivia of Arlene Dahl (11 August 1925 - 29 November 2021)

*As a child, Dahl took elocution and dancing lessons and was active in theatrical events at school.After graduating from high school, she held such jobs as performing in a local drama group and briefly working as a model for department stores.She then traveled to New York and worked as a model for the Walter Thornton Model Agency, where she successfully auditioned for a part in the broadway musical Mr. Strauss Goes to Boston (1945).

*Dahl was selected to be a Rheingold Beer Girl for an ad campaign, and studio head Jack Warner spotted her and signed her to a contract at Warner Bros. She had an uncredited part in the William Powell starrer Life With Father (1947).

*After play in some uncredited role in Warner Bros, she moved to MGM and promoted to leading lady in My Wild Irish Rose (1947) with Dennis Morgan, a big hit that led to an offer from MGM for a long-term contract.Play as Rose Donovan, this is Arlene Dahl’s first credited role.

*Beside an actress, she was also an author and entrepreneur. She founded two companies, Arlene Dahl Enterprises and Dahlia, a fragrance company.Start in 1951, Dahl began writing for a tri-weekly beauty column for Let's Be Beautiful, a newspaper owned by Chicago Tribune founder Robert McCormick.She later founded Arlene Dahl Enterprises, selling lingerie, nightgowns, pajamas and cosmetics.She also invented the Dahl Beauty Cap, a knitted cap for women to wear to bed to keep their hair from becoming mussed. Her first of more than 15 beauty books, "Always Ask a Man: Arlene Dahl’s Key to Femininity", was published in 1965 and sold more than 1 million copies.

*Was a standout in several film noir dramas : Scene of Crime (1949), Reign of Terror (1949), No Question Asked (1951), Wicked as They Come (1956), Slightly Scarlet (1956).

*Her first and second husbands were actors.First was Lex Barker of Tarzan fame (he later married Lana Turner).In the second was dashing Argentina-born leading man Fernando Lamas (he went on to wed Esther Williams).

*During filming Journey to The Center of The Earth (1959), her co-star James Mason reportedly had very little patience with Arlene Dahl's "movie star" preening. Pat Boone recalled filming the dramatic whirlpool sea scene: "James Mason, Arlene Dahl, Peter Ronson and I were on a raft, caught in a giant whirlpool. It was a tricky thing to shoot — the raft was on a revolving platform that tilted when it went around. It had to look like we were being tossed violently. Hundreds of gallons of water were being dumped on us to simulate a stormy sea. The noise was deafening, but not enough to drown out Dahl, who started screaming as she held on for dear life. She screamed at the director, Henry Levin, 'Get me off this thing. Get me down. I'm going to pass out!' She kept yelling. Mason had little patience for it. He thought Dahl had already overplayed the role of a dainty creature when we had to wear very heavy parkas, feigning winter amid very hot July weather, for another scene (Dahl complained then of heat prostration). Mason was not amused as this time he yelled back at her, 'Shut up woman! We're going to have to do this ten times if you don't keep quiet.' We were going to have to dub dialogue anyway, and they got the shot.Dahl became unconscious and it took 30 minutes to revive her."