Helene Stanley(1929-1990)
- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Dolores Diane (her first stage name) made her film debut at age 14 in
Girls' Town (1942), a "B" picture
from low-rent PRC, then played a series of juvenile roles at Universal
in 1943-45 (sometimes as part of a teen dancing group known as
The Jivin' Jacks and Jills).
She worked at MGM (where her stage name became Helene Stanley) and
elsewhere from 1945-50 and at 20th Century-Fox in 1952, but her roles
never rose above starlet level. Her last role at MGM, notable if
uncredited, was in
The Asphalt Jungle (1950) as
the sexy teenager who causes Doc's downfall. Her live-action cinema
career ended with Dial Red O (1955),
both English and German-language versions. However, in a second career
she made major, if invisible, contributions to Disney animated
features, which used live-action films as the basis for animation.
Helene modeled Cinderella (1950),
Sleeping Beauty (1959) and the
young wife in
One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).
Amusingly, one critic complained that Cinderella was too "voluptuous"!
Also for Disney, Helene appeared in the Davy Crockett TV-films as
Davy's wife Polly. Helene was (briefly) the third wife of gangster
Johnny Stompanato, whose subsequent fatal affair with
Lana Turner made headlines. Her second
marriage to David Niemetz, a Beverly Hills physician, was happier, and
she formally retired from show business on the birth of her son in
1961. The cause of her 1990 death was not reported.
