Education
She graduated from Case Western Reserve University with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
She graduated from Case Western Reserve University with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
She is best remembered as Howard Duff"s fiancée in the 1948 film The Naked City. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, she became a model in her late-teens, and was signed by Columbia in 1946. Her contract stipulated "A-movies only".
Although considered one of the top supporting actresses of her day, she was frequently cast in B movies.
Dorothy was attractive, standing 5 ft 6 in, with green eyes and auburn hair. After gaining some experience at the Cleveland Play House she resolved on a singing career.
Mission Hart had saved enough money to go to New York when she learned that she was high on the list of Cover Girl finalists. A newspaper friend had submitted her photo in the Columbia Pictures contest.
The studio paid for her trip.
Her first big movie break came after winning the 1944 National Cinderella Cover Girl Contest, starring in the 1947 Western Gunfighters, alongside Randolph Scott. In October 1946 Hart was sent home while filming a technicolor western for Columbia Pictures being directed by George Waggner. Her illness was diagnosed as influenza.
She was injured while on location filming horseback sequences in Arizona in February 1947 and minor corrective surgery was performed at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles, California.
The film, Gunfighters, starred Randolph Scott and was filmed in the Painted Desert. Barbara Britton played the female lead in the adventure drama with Hart heading up the supporting cast.
Columnist Hedda Hopper reported in a June 1947 column that Mary Pickford was suing Dorothy Hart for a sum of $79,000 because the young actress refused to accept a role in the film There Goes Lona Henry. Pickford stated in an interview that she hoped to take an unknown girl and make her into a great star.
Hart refused the role because she did not want to sign away seven years of her career for a single movie opportunity.
In 1948, Hart made Larceny with Shelley Winters and The Countess of Monte Cristo with Sonja Henie, both for Universal Pictures. The Naked City, starring Barry Fitzgerald, premiered on March 10, 1948. Hart became the tenth actress to portray Jane when she appeared opposite Lex Barker as Tarzan in Tarzan"s Savage Fury.
She also co-starred in Outside the Wall (1950) and I Was a Communist for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (1951).
He is an international producer of trade and public fairs from New New York Hart died of Alzheimer"s Disease on July 11, 2004, in Asheville, North Carolina, at age 82.
They live in Fairfield, Connecticut.
She was also a member of Kappa Alpha Theta.