Career Highlights: Riso Amaro, Birds Do It, The Lost Weekend
First Major Screen Credit: The Lost Weekend (1945)
Biography
The older sister of Hollywood leading lady Constance Dowling, American actress Doris Dowling began making films in the mid '40s. Not a classic beauty in the movie sense, Dowling had a cosmopolitan attractiveness that made her useful in "this girl is trouble!" roles. Her best part was as Ray Milland's saloon pickup and erstwhile drinking companion in The Lost Weekend (1945). In The Blue Dahlia (1946), she dispensed truculence to screen husband Alan Ladd and everyone else around her for a full reel before being bumped off by a mystery killer. Not interested in continuing in such unsympathetic parts, Doris left for Italy in 1948 to appear in such neorealistic films as Bitter Rice (1948) and in such Rennaissance-drenched pieces as Orson Welles' Othello (1951), in which she played Bianca. Doris Dowling remained in European picture-making until her retirement in the late '50s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
In 1973, Dowling shared an Outer Critics Circle award for her performance in a revival of The Women on Broadway.
Personal life
Dowling was married three times. She was band leader Artie Shaw's 7th wife, by whom she had a son, Jonathan, a tattoo artist who reportedly owned Manhattan's oldest tattoo parlour until 2004.[citation needed] Her other husbands were Robert F. Blumofe (1956 - 1959) and Leonard B. Kaufman (1960 until her death in 2004).