/ Coiffeur-to-the-stars George Masters styling Arlene Dahl’s hair poolside in 1961 /
Farewell to Arlene Dahl (11 August 1925 – 29 November 2021).
The star of stage, screen and television, beauty advice columnist, astrologist,
authoress of fifteen books, surprisingly durable glamour queen and kitsch icon (and
one of the last survivors of Golden Age Hollywood) has died aged 96.
Renowned for her flaming red hair and trademark beauty spot, Dahl was routinely cited as “one of the most beautiful women in the world” in the fifties. Most of her movie roles were decorative, but the lurid film noir Slightly Scarlet (1956) is genuinely great, and I need to properly re-visit Wicked as They Come (1956). (Both of these are viewable on YouTube last time I checked). Like many an aging star, in the seventies and eighties Dahl cropped-up as a celebrity guest star on TV shows like Love Boat and Fantasy Island and then the soap opera One Life to Live.
In addition to acting, Dahl diversified into journalism (writing the newspaper column “Let’s Be Beautiful”) and business (as an entrepreneur, she launched Arlene Dahl Enterprises, marketing her own range of cosmetics, negligées and perfume. In the early seventies she hawked wigs for Sears!).
Dahl married six times. Her former husbands included screen Tarzan Lex Barker and suave Argentinian actor Fernando Lamas (Their son Lorenzo Lamas starred in 1980s soap opera Falcon Crest). She also had a fling with John F Kennedy in the forties.
Her most noteworthy literary effort - Always Ask a Man: Arlene Dahl’s Key to Femininity (1965) - rivals Joan Crawford’s 1971 volume My Way of Life as a camp sacred text. Let’s charitably say Dahl’s tips are “of their time.” “It’s a man’s world!” she preaches. “Don’t fight it – the key to happiness and success is femininity! You may be healthy, attractive, intelligent, witty, athletic, personable and rich but it just isn’t enough – for that man – if you’re not feminine!”
