In Search of . . . Billie Dove

World War I was raging in Europe when teen-ager Lillian Bohny donned a knit swimsuit to become the billboard girl for a new product called Emulsified Coconut Oil. When producer Florenz Ziegfeld spotted the advertisement, he dispatched an assistant to locate the model, who went on to become Billie Dove, the highest-paid chorine in the Ziegfeld Follies.

Within three years of her discovery, she was also an established silent screen star. She made 50 films between 1921 and 1933, playing opposite the likes of Douglas Fairbanks Sr. (“The Black Pirate,” 1926), Tom Mix (“Lone Star Ranger,” 1923), Francis X. Bushman (“The Marriage Clause,” 1926) and Robert Montgomery (“Blondie of the Follies,” 1932).

At the height of the Roaring ‘20s, film mogul Louis B. Mayer called Dove “the most beautiful woman in Hollywood.” Howard Hughes reportedly spent a fortune trying to win her as his wife--ultimately buying her contract from First National Pictures, in an attempt to pave the way for marriage.

“Our love affair lasted for 3 1/2 years,” recalls Dove, now at work on her autobiography, which will recount the affair (there’s no publisher yet). “We both carried torches for a long, long time.”

She made 11 talkies, but retired from the screen in 1933, still in her 20s, following her marriage to oil and real estate tycoon Bob Kenaston. “I decided that I wanted to be called mom instead of movie star . . . There was the belief at the time that you couldn’t be a mother and remain a leading lady at the same time.”

The mother of two, Dove lives today in the Palm Springs community, where she paints and is active in society circles. Her last acting job was in 1962--a brief scene in “Diamond Head”--and she says she has no regrets over leaving the movies at such an early age.

Especially, she adds, since her years in Hollywood marked “a glorious time for the movies.”