Diana Allen

Biography

Diana Allen was born in 1898 in Gotland, Sweden. Her family moved to the United States when she was five. Diana was educated in New Haven, Connecticut. She started her career dancing in vaudeville with Eddie Wittstein and Ned Wayburn. The blonde haired, blue eyed beauty was invited to join the Ziegfeld Follies in 1917. She also starred in the Broadway show Miss 1917 and in Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic. Diana made her film debut in the 1918 short Way Up Society. Then she had a role in the drama Woman. She was signed by Paramount in 1920 and costarred with Monte Blu in The Kentuckians. Her performance got good reviews and people started saying that she looked like Olive Thomas. She appeared in eight films in 1922 including The Beauty Shop, Beyond The Rainbow, and Divorce Coupons. Diana said her ambition was "To learn and then to act". In 1924 she was cast as boxer Benny Leonard's leading lady in a series of two-reel comedy shorts. They would be her final films. She married Samuel P. Booth, the President of a newspaper circulation company, in 1924. He was more than thirty years older than she was. After their marriage she decided to quit acting and be full-time housewife. The couple divided their rime between homes in New York City and Palm Beach, Florida. They remained happily married until Samuel's death in 1939. Sadly Diana died on at the age of fifty-one. Her cause of death was not publicly revealed. She was buried next to her husband at Roseland Park Cemetery in Berkley, Michigan.