Dorothy Gulliver

Dorothy Gulliver, actress: born Salt Lake City, Utah 6 September 1908; married 1926 William De Vito (marriage dissolved 1932), 1947 Jack Proctor (died 1976); died Valley Centre, California 2 May 2001.

Dorothy Gulliver was one of the silent screen's most popular actresses between 1926 and 1929, her most notable work being in the series The Collegians opposite the actor George J. Lewis and as a leading lady in westerns, riding the saddle with John Wayne, Hoot Gibson and Tom Tyler. Forty years after her retirement, she scored a success with John Cassavetes's Faces (1968). The Los Angeles Times wrote, "Where has Dorothy Gulliver been hiding for so long? She is a first-class actress with an amazing on-screen presence. May she continue to shine."

The oldest daughter of seven children, she was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1908 to Violet and Alfred Gulliver, English immigrants. From childhood, she was an avid film fan. Among her favourite actors were Gloria Swanson, Mae Murray and Marie Prevost.

In 1924, she entered a beauty competition and won the title "Miss Salt Lake City". A talent scout from Paramount Studios suggested that she follow him back to Hollywood, where a contract would be waiting for her. Dorothy's mother, Violet, a strict Mormon, was less enthusiastic about the offer and turned him down.

Undaunted, Dorothy tried her luck again with a nationwide talent contest and won. This time, realising that their daughter wanted nothing else, her parents allowed her to claim her prize, a contract with Universal, on the condition that her two elder brothers accompany her and act as her guardians.

Arriving in Hollywood by train in 1925 with also a younger sister in tow, Dorothy found the movie capital of the world not quite what she had anticipated. "I don't quite know what I expected," she recalled,

but it certainly wasn't what greeted us. I imagined movie stars walking along Hollywood Boulevard and my photograph plastered on every street corner. The reality couldn't have been further from the truth. There was no one to greet us, no car, no studio representative, instead we had to find our own way out to the studio and wait in a darkened office to be seen. I was heartbroken.

Once in residence at the Hollywood Hotel, Dorothy began the arduous task of being groomed for stardom:

I had my eyebrows plucked, my eyelashes dyed and my hair permed. I hardly recognised myself. At the studio I was

shown how to ride a horse on the back lot by Yakima Canutt, and given a series of bit parts so that I could learn my trade.

In 1926, she was paired with George J. Lewis for The Collegians. Based on the lives of two college sweethearts, the film was an instant hit. "I became a favourite of male adolescents everywhere."

As well as follow-ups to The Collegians Gulliver made a string of westerns. She added valuable support to Fay Wray and Ben Corbett in One Wild Time (1926), and appeared with Fred Humes in One Glorious Scrap (1927) and with Jack Hoxie in The Rambling Ranger (1927). In 1926, she made The Shield of Honor opposite Thelma Todd:

Thelma was the smartest dumb blonde I ever knew. She played the studio executives off against one another: this way she got big cheques and good parts. Thelma introduced me to the director William De Vito and it was love at first sight. We were married from her home in the Holmby Hills. Universal were horrified when they discovered what I'd done and made me keep my marriage a secret until I was a more established star.

The following year, Gulliver was loaned out to Warner Brothers, where she was cast opposite their canine star Rin Tin Tin in A Dog of the Regiment. Good Morning, Judge (1928), Malcolm St Clair's Night Parade (1929) and Painted Faces (1929) followed.

In 1929, she was chosen as one of the 13 most promising young ingénues in Hollywood by the Western Association of Picture Advertisers, a body of established directors and movie people who each year selected a group of young actresses who they felt held promise. Lupe Velez, Lina Basquette, Alice Day, Molly O'Day and Audrey Ferris were also shortlisted.

With the arrival of sound, The Collegians came to the end of its course. With no other film roles in sight, a furious Gulliver walked out on her contract and decided to freelance. It proved to be a grave mistake:

At that time Hollywood was awash with actors released from their studio contracts due to their failure to make it in talking pictures.

Although Gulliver made the transition with ease, without a studio behind her her career began to wane. Reluctantly, she made a return to westerns and, in 1931, signed a four-picture deal with the film mogul Nat Levine at Mascot. The Galloping Ghost (1931) ran for 12 chapters. After it came The Phantom of the West (1931), The Last Frontier (1932) with Lon Chaney Jnr and Shadow of the Eagle (1932) with John Wayne. Also in 1932, she divorced De Vito. The actor/director Danny DeVito is her stepson.

Her other films include The Honor of the Press (1932), The Phantom Express (1932), Outlaw Justice (1933) and Revenge at Monte Carlo (1933). Cheating Blondes (1933) reunited her with Thelma Todd, and she had a minor role in King Kong (1933).

In 1935, Gulliver was involved in a serious motoring accident that nearly cost her a foot. It took more than a year for her to recover. When she did finally return, Hollywood had virtually forgotten her and, after only a handful of films, she retired. Her final film, Borrowed Hero (1941), found her billed 18th on the cast list.

During the 1940s, she worked as a spokesperson for a pharmaceutical company. In 1947 she was married again, to a public relations consultant, Jack Proctor. It was a stormy marriage from the outset. When it became violent, Gulliver hid her bruises with heavy stage make-up. On one occasion he pushed her down the flight of stairs in their Hollywood home. But she refused to leave him.

In 1967, she and Proctor joined their friends Frances Drake and her husband Cecil Howard and the director Fritz Lang for a dinner party in Beverly Hills. That evening she sang a song for the guests. It was no big deal for her, but it caught the eye of director John Cassavetes. It didn't take much prompting for her to accept a role in his new picture, Faces (1968). Critics hailed her portrayal of Florence, an affection-starved middle-aged housewife, as one of the year's best screen performances.

"I hadn't been in front of a camera for more than 25 years and yet I had no reservations," she recalled in 1995. "After the first day, I was relaxed. It all came so naturally to me. I felt right at home with the camera."

Any idea of a comeback was soon quashed. Proctor refused his wife to partake in any publicity to promote Faces, threatening Cassavetes if he dare call his wife again. Fellow cast members, including Gena Rowlands, were witness to Proctor's verbal attacks on his wife, but could do nothing. It was only following his death from cancer in 1976 that the truth about their marriage surfaced. "It was I who was to blame for not leaving him," Gulliver explained:

He deeply resented me, not just the career. He hated other men paying any kind of attention towards me. Like a lot of men he hated all women. He brutalised me.

For the rest of the 1970s and throughout the next decade, Dorothy Gulliver was a regular speaker at women's groups and centres for domestic violence.

In 1984, she accepted an invitation to attend a western film convention in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her appearance on stage to receive an award for her body of work culminated in a standing ovation. Two years later, in Hollywood, she accompanied her contemporaries Madge Bellamy, Dorothy Revier and Judith Wood at a film tribute held at the recently refurbished Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Again she received a warm welcome from fans.

Gulliver was invited back to film work on numerous occasions, none more so than by Danny DeVito, who, on learning he was to play "The Penguin" in Tim Burton's Batman Returns (1992), urged the director to give his stepmother a small cameo. DeVito tried again in 1996, this time suggesting the role of the Grandmother in Mars Attacks. Although Tim Burton was more than willing, Gulliver refused on both accounts. "I left Hollywood in 1988 for the valley," she said:

I can sit on my patio and watch the sun set behind the mountains. The chirp of crickets and croaks of bullfrogs fill the air. It's just wonderful here, you wouldn't get this in Hollywood. I am not resentful, far from it. I'm content in the knowledge that I was responsible for someone else's happiness. That makes me very very happy.

Howard Mutti-Mewse