 In a scene towards the end
of The Trouble With Girls, Sheree North's character slurs, "Actually,
I was always more of a dancer than a singer", before going into a drunken
tap-dance routine! Dancing was Sheree's forte long before The Trouble
With Girls. By the time Dawn Bethel was 10 years old, she was dancing at
USO socials in the Los Angeles area. At the ripe old age of 13, she was a
regular with the company of the Greek Theatre! Married at 15, and a mother
at 16 (to a daughter, also named Dawn), she continued her dancing at clubs
around Los Angeles, under the name of Shirley Mae Bessire.
In 1951, she had
an unbilled bit part in the Red Skelton film, Excuse My Dust. In
early 1953, choreographer Bob Alton, after seeing her dance at a club in
Santa Monica, landed her a job as an extra in Here Come The Girls. In
February, she got her big break as a dancer in the Broadway musical,
Hazel Flagg, which led to her taking a role in the film version, the
Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis feature, Living It Up. In February of 1954,
Sheree signed a contract with Twentieth Century Fox. The studio was hoping
to have another blonde actress that they could build up as the next Marilyn
Monroe, since they were having problems with Marilyn, who was then just
married to Joe DiMaggio. Sheree tested for Marilyn's parts in Girl in
Pink Tights and There's No Business Like Show Business. In 1955, she got the
part intended for Marilyn in How To Be Very, Very Popular when
Marilyn turned down the part, prompting LIFE magazine to feature Sheree on
the cover of the March 21st issue. Her dance scene for the "Shake, Rattle
and Roll" number also has the dubious honor of being advertised as "the
screen's first Rock N Roll dance scene". Sheree was featured in a few more
popular films in the next couple of years, such as The Lieutenant Wore
Skirts, The Best Things In Life Are Free and No Down Payment,
but the studio had switched to promoting their latest blonde, Jayne
Mansfield, and Sheree's career switched gears once again.
She began focusing
more on stage work and TV guest roles, honing her acting talents and
changing her image from that of a wide-eyed glamour girl to a more
down-to-earth, street-wise type, often playing the fallen angel. She gives
strong performances in supporting roles both in Don Siegel's
Madigan (1968), and The Gypsy Moths (1969) with Burt
Lancaster and Gene Hackman, before hamming it up with the king in The
Trouble With Girls.
|
