After some Broadway musical stage work as a chorine, Detroit-born actress Doris Dowling followed her older sister Constance Dowling (who died relatively young in 1969) to Hollywood and made about an equal representation. Doris started off auspiciously with the role of the barfly and drinking companion to fellow alcoholic Ray Milland in the sobering classic film The Lost Weekend (1945). That movie, which won "best picture" and "best actor" and was the first to deal with the harrowing effects of alcoholism, led to an equally victimy part for Doris in the choice Raymond Chandler piece The Blue Dahlia (1946) starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. Her post-war credits started dropping off, however, and (like her sister) managed to revive her career in Italy where her soulful eyes and dark, earthy beauty complemented several dramas whose themes reflected the realities of war, including Riso amaro (1949) and Roma città aperta (1945) (Open City). Doris also appeared in Orson Welles' European production of Othello (1952) playing the role of Bianca. Returning to the US, theater and TV would comprised much of her later work, continuing on such popular shows as Bonanza (1959) and Barnaby Jones (1973). In 1973, she shared an Outer Critics Circle award for her performance in the all-star stage production of "The Women" on Broadway. Married three times, she was wife #7 to band leader Artie Shaw, by whom she had a son, Jonathan Shaw.
A rather wanderlust fellow before he latched onto acting, Denver Pyle--who made a career of playing drawling, somewhat slow Southern types--was actually born in Colorado in 1920, to a farming family. He attended a university for a time but dropped out to become a drummer. When that didn't pan out he drifted from job to job, doing everything from working the oil fields in Oklahoma to the shrimp boats in Texas. In 1940 he moseyed off to Los Angeles and briefly found employment as a (somewhat unlikely) NBC page. That particular career was interrupted by World War II, and Pyle enlisted in the navy. Wounded in the battle of Guadalcanal, he received a medical discharge in 1943.
