Dolores Gray born 7 June 1924

Dolores Gray (June 7, 1924 – June 26, 2002) was an American actress and singer. She was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Musical twice, winning once.

She was born as Sylvia Dolores Finkelstein in Chicago. Both her mother and father were vaudeville actors, which is how they met. Gray's parents divorced when she was two and she grew up with the name of Sylvia Dolores Vernon. Vernon being her father’s stage name. Her father died when she was seven and her mother took her to Hollywood where, unlike most of her contemporaries, who dreamed of becoming film stars, Dolores set her heart on dancing, then, finding she had a voice, she turned to singing. She began performing as a 14-year old in clubs in Hollywood, until she was accosted by a policeman who told her she was too young and should not sing again until her 18th birthday. While attending Polytechnic High School she was in the Girls' Glee Club.

She drifted from club to club until she was discovered by Rudy Vallee, who gave her a guest slot in his radio show. She made her Broadway debut at the Ziegfeld Theatre in 1944 with Beatrice Lillie in Seven Lively Arts. The same year she made her screen debut, taking a small singing part in the Bette Davis vehicle Mr Skeffington.While she was appearing in Annie Get Your Gun in London (1947–1950), she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1948. As a fundraiser to help rebuild the RADA theatre, she appeared as Nell Gwyn in In Good King Charles's Golden Days at Drury Lane Theatre (Oct 1948). Gray won the Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Musical for her role in Carnival in Flanders, even though this Broadway musical, with a script by Preston Sturges, ran for only six performances. She therefore holds a record that is unlikely to be broken: briefest run in a performance which still earned a Tony.

                    

At Decca, the sultry singer collaborated on a long string of singles with the illustrious likes of Tutti Camarata, The Ray Charles Singers, and Sy Oliver. She recorded pop tunes, novelties, and material from then-current musicals and films. She is the first person to have sung the English version of the French song “C'est si bon”, for the short film Holiday in Paris: Paris directed by John Nasht.

Dolores with Howard Keel in Kismet

She was briefly signed with MGM, appearing in Kismet (1955) and It's Always Fair Weather (1955). Dolores  appeared at the London Palladium in 1958 while doing a concert tour of Europe and in cabaret at The Talk of the Town in February 1963. Among her many stage roles, she appeared in Two on the Aisle (1951), Carnival In Flanders (1953) and Destry Rides Again (1959).

Portraying a singing and dancing stage actress, she appeared with Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall in the highly successful film Designing Woman (1957), as his former romantic interest. During her successful music career, she sang Marilyn Monroe's part on the Decca Records soundtrack album of There's No Business Like Show Business (1954). In Hollywood, with her Decca contract ended, Gray signed to Capitol and recorded her only full-length studio album, Warm Brandy, with arranger-conductor Sid Feller in 1957.

The difficulties of her early years left their shadow. In 1960 surgeons attempted to remove a bullet which had lodged in her left lung when, as a young woman, she had been caught in the cross-fire in a gang fight. The operation was unsuccessful and the bullet remained inside her for the rest of her life. On September 24, 1966, Dolores Gray married Andrew J. Crevolin, a California businessman and racehorse owner who won the 1954 Kentucky Derby. Dolores concentrated on raising thoroughbred horses for nine and a half years, until the call came for her to play Gypsy in London.

She was best known for her theatre roles, but didn’t appear on the New York stage again until the short-lived Sherry! in 1967. In 1973 she took over from Angela Lansbury in the London production of Gypsy at the Piccadilly Theatre. In 1987 she starred in the London production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies at the Shaftesbury Theatre to great acclaim and appeared in the Royal Variety Performance of that year with a show-stopping performance of the song 'I'm Still Here" from the show. In 1978 she also appeared on BBC TV's long-running variety show The Good Old Days – chairman Leonard Sachs had also appeared in Follies as theatre owner Dimitri Wiseman, introducing Miss Gray, one of “The Wiseman Girls”. Theatre critic Michael Phillips wrote that Gray's voice sounded like “a freight-train slathered in honey.”

In the 1980s Dolores made her final appearances on Broadway and in the West End with 42nd Street and Follies, respectively. In 1988 she appeared in the Doctor Who 25th anniversary story “Silver Nemesis,” playing an American tourist.

Gray died of a heart attack in her Manhattan apartment on June 26, 2002.aged 78. Upon her death, she was cremated and her ashes interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. 

(Edited mainly from Wikipedia)