She did not want to be known as a Hollywood sex symbol.  A 1948 movie magazine article noted, "She is insisting on young character roles on the screen....her argument is ---glamour girls are a dime a dozen.  Good character actresses go on forever and can even look forward to the first wrinkle."

Yet, with such stunning good looks and what that same article characterized as her "whistle-bait proportions", Myrna Dell could never truly avoid being glamorous.  Her determination of put acting ahead of glamour, however, kept her working in films long after many of her colleagues had dropped out of sight.

Like many character actresses, Dell's name may not be a household word, but her face is always familiar.  Not surprising, since she appeared in more than 60 motion pictures and countless television shows from 1940 until the 1990s.  She shared the screen with (and often stole the scene from) stars such as Judy Garland, Jimmy Stewart, Dorothy Malone, Robert Mitchum, Barbara Stanwyck, George Raft, Ronald Reagan, Johnny Weissmuller, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.

Born Marilyn Adele Dunlap on March 5, 1924, she took her nickname Myrna and shortened Adele to Dell to become Myrna Dell when she entered showbiz.  Starting a career as a show girl in the Earl Carroll Revue (she appeared in the 1940 motion picture "A Night at Earl Carrolls"), she was soon  signed by MGM, where she made "Ziegfeld Girl" with Garland and Stewart.   When MGM dropped her option, it was back to the Revue for a while longer, then on to New York to appear at the famed Billy Rose Night Club, followed by a season in the "George White Scandals".

But the lure of Hollywood was too great to resist.  "I am set upon becoming a movie star", she told a "Boston Sunday Post" reporter in 1946.  "I like the work, I am fond of the money, and I could bear a bit of fame."

In 1943, she strode down Hollywood Boulevard once more and began her movie career in earnest, appearing in a number of Westerns such as "Arizona Whirlwind" with Bob Steele and Hoot Gibson, and "Raiders of Red Gap" with Robert Livingston.

Her part in "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" with Van Johnson was a small supporting role, but it was apparently enough to catch the eyes of the bigwigs over at RKO, who signed her as one of their studio players.

For the next few years, until 1949, she made more than 20 films for RKO, including the three entries in the popular "Falcon" mystery series.  All three were made with Tom Conway, who took over the title role in "The Falcon's Brother"(1942) when his real-life brother George Sanders left the series after making three episodes.

Dell's first movie away from RKO was in the 1949 Ronald Reagan comedy, "The Girl From Jones Beach".

Unlike many of Hollywood's glamour girls, Dell continued to work in films for years, appearing as recently as 1981 in Billy Wilder's "Buddy, Buddy" with Lemon and Matthau.  

She also successfully made the transition to the small screen, appearing in dozens of television shows with stars such as Shirley Booth, Donna Reed, Robert Walker, Ernie Kovacs, James Garner, Rita Moreno and Harry Morgan.

In the 1950s, she played "Shira", the Empress in the adventure series, "China Smith", with Dan Duryea.  Her most recent TV appearance was in an episode of  "Unsolved Mysteries", directed by her daughter (an experience she very much enjoyed, noting, " Its the only time I slept with a director and got a job").

 Like most actresses working during Hollywood's Golden Age, Dell's "off-duty" life fascinated the gossip columnists as well as the public.

Photographers snapped her picture celebrating with Joe DiMaggio and Bob Hope at Toot Shors restaurant when the N. Y. Yankees won the 1949 World Series.  They made sure they were on hand when she attended Frank Sinatra's party for his first television show.  They milked every ounce of publicity value from her barn dancing with Rory Calhoun, Gail Russell and Guy Madison.

 At one point, they even tried linking her romantically with Cary Grant....."Cary Grant?  Shush-shush..." she scolded a reporter.  "One of my movie idols, Cary became a good friend, but that's all, my pet, that's all there is to that."

In keeping with her disdain for the glamour girl image, Dell shrugged off such high society activities.  You can have the night clubs, for all I care, she told the "Boston Sunday Post". "After a time....a girl gets bored with the glamour, the atmosphere, the drinking, the cigarettes to smoke, the wolves."

Despite the obvious drawbacks of the Hollywood scene, she remembers her years there with fondness, and loves to reminisce about the people and movies which shaped that special era.

As a columnist in "Hollywood: Then and Now", she delighted readers with her stories about stars like James Stewart, who she called her favorite actor, and studio heads Jack Warner, L. B. Mayer, Sam Goldwyn and Harry Cohn (of whom she once said, "All of us who love movies should be grateful to them for all their efforts and contributions").

We could easily paraphrase that remark and say that all of us who love movies would be grateful to the hard-working character actors and actresses like Myrna Dell.  They're the ones who give us the real memories.