Friday, October 2, 2020

Firearms Friday with Dorothy Sebastian




Born in 1903 in Birmingham, Alabama, Dorothy Sebastian was a Zigfield Girl who turned to screen acting. When she wasn't militantly enforcing safe driving practices around the MGM lot (we kid... maybe), she portrayed femme fatales and other "tough" female characters, both villainous and heroic, in a range of genres.

Sebastian's first film was "Half a Hero" in 1925, and she stayed busy playing supporting roles of varying sizes through the end of the Silent Era. Stardom, however, eluded her, and with the arrival of sound, her career entered a steep decline. By the mid-1930s, she was mostly taking small parts in Poverty Row B-movies, and even those became fewer and farther between as the 1940s arrived. (Highly public scandals involving tax evasion, multiple divorces, and drunk driving didn't help either.)

Dorothy Sebastian, Pirate Queen!

Sebastian's final film roles were uncredited bit-parts, with the last one in 1948's "The Miracle of Bells". She passed away in 1957 after battling cancer for several years.


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