Billie Dove

She was born Bertha Bohny in New York City to Swiss immigrants. As a teen, she worked as a model to help support her family and was hired at the age of 15 by Florenz Ziegfeld to appear in his Ziegfield Follies Revue. She migrated to Hollywood in the early 1920s and began appearing in films. She soon became one of the most popular actresses of the 1920s. She legally changed her name to Lillian Bohny in 1923. She was one of the most popular actresses of her time, and reportedly the most beautiful. She was dubbed The American Beauty which was also the title of one of her films[1].

 

She married the director of her seventh[2] film, Irvin Willat, in 1923. The two divorced in 1929. Dove had a huge legion of male fans, one of her most persistent being Howard Hughes[3]. She shared a three-year romance with Hughes and was engaged to marry him, but she ended the relationship without ever giving cause. Hughes cast her as a comedian in his film Cock of the Air (1932). She also appeared in his movie The Age for Love (1931).

 

 

Done