Dorothy Revier

Biography

Silent screen vamp Dorothy Revier (nee Velegra) was born in San Francisco, California on April 18, 1904, the daughter of a musician. As a result, Dorothy found herself leaning towards a career in music, finding work as a chorine and nightclub dancer in her teens. She broke into films at age 17 with Life's Greatest Question (1921), billed then as Doris Velegra. The film's storyline was written by first husband Harry Revier, a sometime director and producer. He also directed Dorothy in her next film The Broadway Madonna (1922), wherein she changed her stage moniker to reflect her married status. As Dorothy Revier, she proved a tempting blonde who specialized in femme fatale types, but inexplicably never hit top-flight stardom during her silent film reign. Typical alluring titles included Dangerous Pleasure (1924), The Fate of a Flirt (1925), The Siren (1927) and The Tigress (1927). A former 'Wampas Baby Star,' Dorothy's most notable effort was as the scheming beauty Milady de Winter in 'Douglas Fairbanks Sr'' The Iron Mask (1929). She was able to make the transition to sound pictures comfortably enough but moved almost exclusively into "B"-level fare, eventually earning the dubious title "Queen of Poverty Row" working for inhabitants of Gower Gulch. Dorothy retired from films after co-starring in the Buck Jones' western The Cowboy and the Kid (1936), and turned to writing and painting. Divorced from Revier in 1926, she later married commercial artist William Pelayo. She died of natural causes in 1993.