With an accent you could cut with a knife, Doria Caron plays Yvette in I Ring Door Bells, the French maid of two-timing gold digger Helen Carter (Jan Wiley),who is about to marry the son of a newspaper magnate. The latter asks one of his reporters, Dick Meadows (Robert Shayne), to investigate Helen, and to do so, Dick snuggles up to poor Yvette. She, in turn, falls for him in a big way and when she spots him kissing fellow reporter Brooke Peters (Anne Gwynne) in a night club, she hightails it back home. Only to find Helen's dead body sprawled in the apartment. And this all happens in the final 15 minutes of this fast-paced PRC comedy-drama. We shall refrain from divulge the identity of the murderer but we can reveal that Yvette isn't French at all but hails from Brooklyn. Which makes for a nice little happy ending when instead of handsome Dick the reporter guy she heads off to the nearest watering hole with Stubby the photographer guy (Roscoe Karns), who himself hails from Flatbush Avenue or environs.
Like her character in I Ring Door Bells, Doria Caron was as American as apple pie, apparently from Fall River, MA, and had toured with the anarchic comedy team of Olsen & Johnson with her sister Blanche before entering films around 1937. She continued to play bit roles through the following decade, including as one of the waitresses in Mildred Pierce (1945). I Ring Door Bells, however, proved her only screen assignment of any importance.
Doria and her sister Blanche aka Adel, were my aunts and toured with the Orphyum Circuit when Doria was 15 and Del 16. Blanche was a name Adel chose early in her career. When they troupe came to town in Hartford CT, they would come to our house with some group members and the music came with them. The sisters were close all their lives and both passed away in Hollywood CA. They are buried in Forrest Lawn in Glendale CA.
ReplyDeleteYour aunts were friends of my family, who lived in East Hartford. I have a professional photo of them together, that they signed for my grandmother.
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