Mamie Van Doren is the last living blonde bombshell, one of the “Three M’s”, a group formed by Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. And she’s ready to shatter some Hollywood myths
She was friends with Marilyn Monroe, snogged Clark Gable, and faced the wrath of Janet Leigh for her steamy scenes with Tony Curtis. Now, aged 95, screen legend Mamie Van Doren has written a no-holds-barred autobiography that lifts the lid on that golden age of Hollywood. Mamie, who lives in Newport Beach, California, says: “I have so many stories to tell, so when I was 90 I thought I had better get my ass going if I was going to write a book.
“How many actresses live to be almost 100? I mean, we’re celebrating what would have been Marilyn’s birthday in June but she’s been dead all these years, while I’ve been alive – and living a hell of a life.” You Thought I Was Dead: My Life of Celebrities, Sex and Champagne is, says the actress, a memoir about life at the glittering, and sometimes gritty, edges of stardom.
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As the last “blonde bombshell” of that era – famously one of the Three M’s which included Marilyn and Jayne Mansfield – there are few more qualified to recall the stars and scandals of that age. Five times married Mamie, who dated Rock Hudson, Quincy Jones and Howard Hughes, says: “I’ve been around so long, I wanted to make sure that people realised I was still here.”
Her first memoir, Playing The Field, came out in the late 1980s, but Mamie says she was forced to exclude things back then. She adds: “The publisher didn’t like some of the stuff. This book, though, will make you laugh and cry and might even embarrass you – but it’s all me. And myths are made to be shattered.”
Born Joan Lucille Olander in 1931 in South Dakota into the poverty of the Depression era, her father worked at a quarry, earning 35 cents a load. She remembers it as a terrible time. A sickly child, she spent some years on her grandparents’ farm, without electricity or running water, before living with her parents in a “dollar a day” rooming house in Iowa.
She says: “I had so many dreams of being a movie star. I remember seeing a newspaper with Jean Harlow’s picture on it; there was this beautiful, sexy woman with white blonde hair and I thought, ‘That’s who I want to be like.’ Recalling her family’s move to LA when she was 11, she says: “I remember seeing my first palm trees and mountains and then the Hollywood sign and thinking, ‘Jean Harlow saw that sign’. It was where I was meant to be.”
A teenage film buff, she worked as an usherette, watching movies for free. She later recalled: “In every one of those celluloid fairytales, the heroine lived happily ever after in the company of the man she loved. I yearned for that.” In summer 1949 she won the title of Miss Palm Springs and caught the eye of film producer and businessman Howard Hughes, who also discovered Marilyn Monroe. He immediately signed her to film studio RKO, where she starred in a movie opposite John Wayne, albeit with only one word of dialogue.
With a movie career under way, her romantic life blossomed: she dated Howard and Quincy Jones and was briefly engaged to boxer Jack Dempsey. She says: “Quincy and I were 17 or 18 when we met and both had our dreams. It was difficult in those days going out with a Black guy; it was scary sometimes.”
Platinum locks and ruby red lips swiftly had her labelled a “blonde bombshell” and touted as another Marilyn. She says: “I was flattered, because I adored Marilyn and knew her very well. We both had unhappy childhoods and grew up in Hollywood together. There was no jealousy between us, though. She liked to see me get a hit, and I liked to see her get one. But she had a problem with rejection; when she didn’t get something or had a personal problem she couldn’t seem to get over it. Me? If I didn’t get something I just moved on.
“That ‘bombshell’ label never hurt me because I always considered myself a good actress.” By 1953 Mamie had won her first major role, starring opposite Tony Curtis in All American. She says: “He was married to Janet Leigh, and there was a problem there. The studio told me, ‘Stay away from Tony Curtis.’ How was I supposed to do that? I was doing love scenes with him, dancing in his arms. It was very difficult – he certainly didn’t want to stay away, and Janet hated me.”
Signed to Universal by 1952, she had to be tough to survive the rigid studio system… and the unwanted on-set sexual advances. She says: “I arrived at Universal at a very conservative time. They didn’t have any sexy women under contract – Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn weren’t exactly sex kittens – so it was hard for me in the beginning because although women get jealous, so do men if they can’t get a piece of you.”
Her favourite leading man was someone she first set eyes on when she was just five years old. She says: “As a child, we heard Clark Gable and his wife Carole Lombard were flying into our local airport so my dad put me on his shoulders and off we went.
“They landed in Sioux Falls. I remember the airport was crowded. Everyone wanted to see these stars. Fast forward 20 years and I’m doing a movie with Gable, sitting in a booth, ready to film a love scene. It blew my mind. I had to kiss him. I was so nervous my lips were quivering and his moustache was in the way – I had to do the take about 10 times! It was hilarious and he was lovely.”
Mamie is unsurprised that Marilyn remains an icon. She says: “She is still remembered, I think, because she was beautiful, she sang Happy Birthday to the President and she died so young. Then, of course, there was mystery at the time around her death. When she died, she broke my heart.” Mamie stepped back from Hollywood to raise her son in the late 1950s, but continued in TV, theatre and modelling.
She says: “Do I have regrets? Well, I’m sorry I married a couple of people… if I’d had a dog that might not have happened. But, after all these years and all I’ve seen and done, I still have Joan Lucille Olander inside me – that little girl who dreamed of being a movie star.”
*You Thought I Was Dead: My Life of Celebrities, Sex, and Champagne will be published by Permuted Press in the UK on June 18
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