Lamour Sarong And Other Publicity Stunts

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 192, 10 May 1940, Page 6

Lamour Sarong And Other Publicity Stunts

A FEW years ago, Paramount Studio took to Hollywood an obscure but sirenic “torch- singer,” Dorothy Lamour. A week later, pictures of this young lady, clad in a sarong, were featured in newspapers. Her neighbours in an apartment house, an American newspaper said, had summoned police when they discovered her pet chimpanzee swinging gayly above the street on a window, drape. This little incident was a publicity stunt, but tremendously effective. Similar ideas kept coming from the Paramount publicity department. Dorothy Lamour’s pictures kept appearing in the papers, and by the time she appeared in her first movie, the tropic island thriller called “Jungle Princess,” she was famous. Then the publicity department went into a huddle and decided it was time to tone down her publicity. On her own merits, she had “clicked” at the box-ofiice. What she needed now was a little dignity. One of her sarongs was presented to the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art It got Dorothy, who is now wearing a sarong in another tropic island film, entitled “South of Samoa.” into “Time,” “Life,” “The American Mercury.” “The New Yorker.” and newspapers.