Dolores Fuller
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Dolores Fuller (born 1923 in South Bend, Indiana) is an American actress and songwriter best known as the one-time girlfriend of the low-budget film director Edward D. Wood, Jr. She played the protagonist's girlfriend in Glen or Glenda and a filing clerk in Bride of the Monster.
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[edit] Film career
According to Fuller, the female lead in the latter film was written for Fuller but Wood gave it to Loretta King instead when she offered to help finance the movie. King denied the allegation.
Fuller was cast to make The Vampire's Tomb with Bela Lugosi in August 1954. Frank Yaconelli was named as her co-star and comic killer. She ended up making Bride of the Monster (1956) with Lugosi.[1] Fuller hosted a benefit for Lugosi which preceded the showing of Bride of the Atom (early working title of Bride of the Monster) on May 11, 1955. A cocktail party was held at the Gardens Restaurant at 4311 Magnolia Avenue in Burbank, California. Vampira attended and was escorted by Paul Marco. A single screening of the film was presented at the Hollywood Paramount.[2]
According to Fuller, as quoted in Nightmare Of Ecstasy, she first met Ed Wood when she went to a casting call with a friend for a movie he was supposed to direct called Behind Locked Doors. She became his girlfriend shortly thereafter and began acting in his films.
Her movie career included a bit part in It Happened One Night (1934) and roles in Outlaw Women (1952), Glen or Glenda (1953), Body Beautiful (1953), The Blue Gardenia (1953), Count the Hours (1953), College Capers (1954), Jailbait (1954), The Raid (1954), This Is My Love (1954), The Opposite Sex (1956), The Ironbound Vampire (1997), and Dimensions in Fear (1998).
[edit] Television performer, songwriter
Fuller had already had earlier experience on television in Queen for a Day and The Dinah Shore Show. As Fuller remembers, she was the one "putting bread on the table."
Another quote from her : "I had a size four and a half foot, so I modeled the slippers in an artist's short smock."
She lost her job on The Dinah Shore Show when, as she has said, "We were shooting all night, and into the next day, and time just got away from me, and I didn't realize that I was supposed to be on the set working as Dinah's double on her show, Chevy Theatre. I completely messed up my job, I was what they called a no show."
She was portrayed by Sarah Jessica Parker in Tim Burton's 1994 Wood biopic Ed Wood, a film of which she disapproved due to the image of her smoking in the film. Fuller says she never smoked.[citation needed]
Fuller's ability as a songwriter manifested itself through the intervention of her friend, producer Hal Wallis; Fuller had wanted to get an acting role in the Elvis Presley movie Blue Hawaii, which Wallis was producing, but instead he put her in touch with Hill & Range, the publisher that provided Presley with songs. Fuller went into a collaborative partnership with composer Ben Weisman and got one song, "Rock-A-Hula Baby", into Blue Hawaii. It was a beginning that eventually led to Elvis Presley recording a dozen of her songs, including "I Got Lucky" and "Spinout".
Fuller also had her music recorded by Nat 'King' Cole, Peggy Lee, and other leading talents of the time.
[edit] Private life
As Fuller says of the period before her success, "He (Ed Wood) begged me to marry him. I loved him in a way, but I couldn't handle the transvestism. I'm a very normal person. It's hard for me to deviate! I wanted a man that was all man. After we broke up, he would stand outside my home in Burbank and cry. "Let me in, I love you!" What good would I have done if I had married him? We would have starved together. I bettered myself. I had to uplift myself."
Fuller placed 2nd in a mother-daughter beauty contest in Sunland, California, in July 1951. She was listed as 25 years old and her daughter, Connie Rae, was 4. The runner up prize was a trip to Santa Catalina Island, California. Fuller's address was listed as 180 Puddingstone Drive in San Dimas, California.[3]
[edit] References
- ^ Vampire Types Gathering For Movie, Los Angeles Times, August 2, 1954, Page B9.
- ^ Lugosi Benefit Slated Tonight, Los Angeles Times, May 11, 1955, Page 27.
- ^ Girl, 4, Becomes Beauty Queen, So Does Mother, Los Angeles Times, July 2, 1951, Page 10
