Mamie Van Doren

**Mamie Van Doren** (born **Joan Lucille Olander** on February 6, 1931) is an American actress, singer, glamour model and sex symbol.

## Acting career

On January 20, 1953, she signed a contract with Universal. The studio had big plans for her, hoping she would bring the success that 20th Century Fox had with Marilyn Monroe, the reigning sex symbol of the era. It has been said that because the day she was signed was also the day President Eisenhower was inaugurated, the studio decided to give her the name Mamie for Ike's wife, Mamie Eisenhower, and Van Doren as a good-natured dig at fellow blonde and buxom starlet Jayne Mansfield, who claimed to possess the genius-caliber IQ of 165.

The Van Dorens were a noted family of American intellectuals, including two Pulitzer Prize winning brothers, Carl (biographer) and Mark (poet), and Mark's wife Dorothy, an academic and historian. In 1957, Mark and Dorothy's son Charles Van Doren made front page news both by winning $129,000 on a television game show, then admitting the program was rigged. The scandal briefly reinforced Mamie's intellectual credentials and kept her name before the public.

Her first movie for Universal was *Forbidden* (1953), playing a singer. She then made *All-American* (1953), playing Susie Ward, a girl from the other side of the tracks who is the man-trap at a campus beer joint. In *Yankee Pasha* (1954) starring Tony Curtis and Rhonda Fleming, she played a slave girl, Lilith.

Van Doren starred in several bad girl movies that have gone on to become cult films. These include *Sex Kittens Go to College* (1960), *College Confidential* (1960), *Vice Raid* (1960), *Girls Town* (1959), *The Big Operator* (1959), *Guns, Girls, and Gangsters* (1959), *The Girl in Black Stockings* (1957), and *Untamed Youth* (1957). She also appeared in some of the first movies to feature rock and roll music and became identified with this rebellious style, and made some rock records.

While she and such other blonde bombshell contemporaries as Cleo Moore, Sheree North and Diana Dors did not attain the same level of superstar status as Monroe, Van Doren did become a very famous star and notable Hollywood sex symbol. Marilyn, Mamie and Jayne Mansfield were known as the "Three M's," and Van Doren achieved legendary status as being the sole survivor (although she was referred to as "the poor man's Mansfield").

But while Monroe did *Gentlemen Prefer Blondes* and Mansfield had a big success with *Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?*, a part that was originally written for Van Doren, who turned it down, Universal stuck Van Doren with Francis the Talking Mule in *Francis Joins the WACs*.

## Marriages, child and affairs

Van Doren has married five times, first to sportswear manufacturer Jack Newman (married 1950-divorced 1950), then bandleader, composer and actor Ray Anthony (married 1955-divorced 1961), baseball player Lee Meyers (married 1966-divorced 1967), businessman Ross McClintock (married 1972-divorced 1973) and actor Thomas Dixon (married 1979-present).

She and Anthony had one son, Perry Ray Anthony (born March 18, 1956).

Her on-again off-again engagement to baseball player Bo Belinsky broke off for good in 1964. In her tell-all autobiography, she acknowledged numerous affairs, including ones with Clark Gable, Howard Hughes, Johnny Carson, Elvis Presley, Burt Reynolds, Jack Dempsey, Steve McQueen, Johnny Rivers, Robert Evans, Eddie Fisher, Warren Beatty, Tony Curtis, Steve Cochran, and Joe Namath.

## References

1. ↑ 1940 United States Census, United States Census, 1940; Sioux City, Iowa; page 480, line 13, enumeration district 97-61B. Retrieved on February 13, 2014.

## External links

* Mamie Van Doren links at FreeOnes
* Mamie Van Doren at Babepedia
* Mamie Van Doren article at *Wikipedia*