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Today in New Orleans History |
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June 7
 Miss
New Orleans, Dorothy Lambour (Lamour) at the Club Forest  Born in the charity ward of Touro Infirmary ("We were not well off", she
said) on December 10, 1914 (?), Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton grew up to be a movie star.
She attended Beauregard elementary school, where from she remembered playing hooky to go to Canal Street to pay 15 cents to
spend the day watching the same movie over and over again. She was hooked. The
daughter of John Watson Slaton and Carmen Louis LaPorte, she was also raised by her cousin Jeanne Deshotels and her mother
Jeanne Schwerz. After divorcing Slaton, Carmen married Clarence Lambour and Dorothy took his last name. Deshotel
remembered taking the young "Dottie" to St. Louis Cathedral whereupon the child sang the 1918 jazz hit "Ja-Da
(Ja Da, Ja Da, Jing, Jing, Jing!) when the organ began playing. "I was so embarrassed", she said, "I couldn't
shut her up". As a teenager, she began entering beauty contests. In
1929 Dottie took first-place in a Biloxi pageant and earned the title Miss American Legion of New Orleans. On July
26, 1930 she was a contestant, along with her friend Dorothy Dell Goff, in the Miss New Orleans beauty contest at
Pontchartrain Beach's original location at Bayou St. John and the lakefront. Goff was crowned queen, and Dottie took
fourth place, in front of a crowd reportedly of 10,000 people. A
few weeks later, on Friday, August 1, 1930, Dottie and Dorothy boarded a 9 p.m. train at Union Station along
with their mothers to head to Galveston for the International Pageant of Pulchritude (the Miss America and Miss Universe contests).
Dottie's ranking in the New Orleans pageant qualified her as an alternate for Goff, who was crowned Miss United States (Miss
America) on August 5, 1930 and then Miss Universe on August 10, 1930 in the Texas pageants.
Goff, as Dorothy Dell became a film actress whose young life was cut short in an automobile accident on June 8, 1934
near Pasadena, California. Dottie Lambour won
the 1931 Miss New Orleans contest wearing a blue bathing suit and a blue linen dress she had bought on Canal Street for $2.98.
Miss Lambour is seen here in an advertisement for Club Forest (407 Jefferson Highway) on June 7, 1931.
She did, in fact, go on to the 1931 Galveston pageant but failed to take a crown. She attended Spencer Business College
and took a job in the real real estate business but still dreamed of fame. According a 1974 interview with local writer
David Cuthbert, Dottie bought two tickets to Chicago, left one along with a note to her mother, and left New Orleans for a
bigger city. Her mother arrived the following day. They took jobs in a restaurant, with Carmen in the kitchen
and Dottie waiting tables. She said the trays were too heavy for her to carry so "I walked into Marshall Field
Department Store. I had a terrible inferiority complex but when you do you put up more of a front." "I
want to see the supervisor" she said, to which the response was "Which one?" "Well that stopped
me. At D.H. Holmes and Maison Blanche all they had was one. In those days at Marshall Field they had nine. All I could
get out was 'I want to ride an elevator'. She got the job.While performing at a night clubs she was "discovered"
by orchestra leader Herbie Kay who hired her to sing for his band. On
November 14, 1932 she was back in New Orleans and back at Club Forest performing with Kay's "nation-wide
famous band" featuring Dorothy Lambour (Miss New Orleans 1931)". She later said that a Dallas sign painter
left the "B" out in her name on a hotel display announcing the band's performances and that Herbie Kay advised her
to let it be, and so she became "Dorothy Lamour". She also became Mrs. Herbie Kay/Mrs. Herbert F. Kaumeyer
on Monday, May 13, 1935. "Without Herbie, I don't think I'd be in show business", she said.  A November 23, 1936 article mentioned that Dorothy Lamour "once of New Orleans, is seen in a short feature on the Saenger
bill" which was likely a short film adopted from her New York radio show "Dreamer of Songs". Local entertainment
writer Charles P. Jones, in a January 17, 1937 article, briefly reviewed "Jungle Princess" (starring
Lamour and Ray Milland) which was playing at the Tudor Theater. "Miss Lamour is given a chance to sing as well
as act, and the picture is certain to make its heroine and impressive movie figure", he wrote. And so it was.
Not to mention that Dottie's "impressive figure" was wrapped in a sarong which made her as famous as she made it.Costume
designer Edith Head admitted that her sarong was "born" for "Jungle Princess". "It wasn't even
authentic", she said. A real sarong wrapped the body only below the waist but that "wouldn't clear any censor".
Head also described the process of selecting the sarong wearer for "Jungle Princess"; a nation-wide search by the
studio brought in state winners for screen tests; each young woman wore the same sarong, same bracelet, and same blossom behind
their ears; the wolf-whistle originated during Lamour's screen test as stage-hands watched and the wolf-whistle became a "system"
at the studio whereby a certain number of whistles predicted a young actress' probable popularity with the general public.
The sarong and Lamour teamed with Hope
and Crosby and went "on the road" to Singapore (1940), Zanzibar (1941), Morocco
(1942), Utopia (1946), Rio (1947), to Bali (1952), and Hong Kong (1962).
Dottie came home to celebrate her 50th birthday on December 10, 1967 while on a tour starring in "Hello,
Dolly!" which ran at the Municipal Auditorium on Saturday, December 16. Back home again to perform
in "Fallen Angels" at the Beverly Dinner Playhouse on February 22, 1974 she said to David Cuthbert
of the Times-Picayune "Honey, those studios biographers didn't care what they said about you. They had me born
in Chicago, New York, got may age wrong -- I don't care what the World Almanac or the film books say, I am 56, NOT 59!"
Dottie made a total of 50 films, seven
of them in the "Road to..." series. During World War II she performed for GIs, hosted at USO facilities, was
one of the most popular pin-up girls, and was not only the first star to volunteer to sell war bonds but is also credited
with selling some $300 million worth of them. In later years she toured with theatrical shows and became more active
in volunteer service. Referring to the 1987 film ''Creepshow 2,'' where she played sloppily housewife who is murdered,
she said ''Well, at my age you can't lean against a palm tree and sing 'Moon of Monakoora.'' Dottie died on September 22, 1996 in North Hollywood at the age of 81.  
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In 1890, the state of Louisiana passed a law (the Separate Car Act) that required separate accommodations
for blacks and whites on railroads, including separate railway cars. Concerned, a group of prominent black, creole, and white
New Orleans residents formed the Comité des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens) dedicated to repeal the law.[3] They eventually
persuaded Homer Plessy to participate in an orchestrated test case. Plessy was born a free man and was an "octoroon"
(someone of seven-eighths Caucasian descent and one-eighth African descent). However, under Louisiana law, he was classified
as black, and thus required to sit in the "colored" car. On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought
a first class ticket at the Press Street Depot and boarded a "whites only" car of the East Louisiana Railroad in
New Orleans, Louisiana, bound for Covington, Louisiana. The railroad company, which opposed the law on the grounds that it
would require the purchase of more railcars, had been informed already as to Plessy's racial lineage. Additionally, the
committee hired a private detective with arrest powers to detain Plessy, to ensure he was charged for violating the Separate
Car Act, as opposed to a vagrancy or some other offense. After Plessy had taken a seat in the whites-only railway car, he
was asked to vacate it and sit instead in the blacks-only car. Plessy refused and was arrested immediately by the detective.
As planned, the train was stopped and Plessy was taken off the train at Press and Royal streets. Plessy was remanded for trial
in Orleans Parish.
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