Happy Birthday Day… Dorothy Malone
Dorothy Malone, an Oscar winner, died at the age of 92. Her biggest critical success came in 1957, when she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her sensual depiction of Texan oil heiress Marylee Hadley in Written on the Wind. She was best recognized for her role as Constance MacKenzie in the sitcom Peyton Place.
Dorothy Eloise Maloney, the daughter of Robert Ignatius and Esther Maloney, was born in Chicago in 1924. Patrick J. Maloney from Ireland and Mary, born in Illinois to Irish parents, were her paternal grandparents. Soloman S. Smith and Margaret O’Neal, whose father was Irish, were her maternal grandparents. Malone and her family immediately moved to Dallas, where she attended the Ursuline Convent before embarking on a pageant career and modeling for Neiman-Marcus. She went to Southern Methodist University to pursue nursing but ended up studying theatre.
She secured a deal with Warner Bros. in 1943, abbreviated her name to Malone, and began a 50-year film career as Hazel Dobkins in 1992’s Basic Instinct. Malone worked with many Hollywood giants during her long and adventurous career in film and television, including Rock Hudson, Robert Stack, Frank Sinatra, and Cary Grant. She began her career in modest roles, mostly in B-movies, with the exception of a supporting appearance in The Big Sleep. She transformed her look in the 1950s, notably following her appearance in Written on the Wind. Her career peaked in the 1960s, when she rose to prominence as Constance MacKenzie in Peyton Place (1964–1968).
Malone was an outspoken supporter of working mothers, arguing that her two kids, Mimi and Diane, were her top concern. As a result, she frequently played mothers on television, and she even accepted a pay cut when she appeared on Peyton Place to ensure that she would be home by 6 p.m. on weekdays and would not have to work weekends. “I never turned down a mother role,” she said to the Chicago Tribune in 1985. I started out in Hollywood as a very young girl performing westerns, playing a mother with two children.”
She moved back to Texas in 1971 and died there in 2018. In 1960, she was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. We Miss You
