Besides being one of the most prolific and influential songwriters of all time, Bob Dylan is also a movie fan. He talked about many of his favorite films over the years and also once listed some of his favorite actresses of all time. He mentioned them in a conversation with Interview magazine back in 1986 and Rock and Roll Garage shows you who they were and what famous movies they did.
5 movie actresses that Bob Dylan listed as favorites
Hedy Lamarr
“I can’t remember what she was in, though,” Bob Dylan told Interview magazine. Well, Hedy Lamarr is famous for movies like “Algiers” (1938), the Western “Boom Town” (1940) and the drama “White Cargo” (1942). But her most successful movie was the religious “Samson and Delilah” (1949). In 1960 she was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
She stopped acting in the 50s and had a recluse life afterwards, dying in 2000 at the age of 85 of heart disease. Her ashes were spread in Austria’s Vienna Woods, region she was born, according to her last wishes
Dorothy Dandridge
“I loved her in a movie she really needed, with Trevor Howard,” Bob Dylan told Interview magazine. The movie mentioned by Dylan is “Moment of Danger” which is also known as “Málaga”, released in 1960.
The movie has Dorothy Dandridge and Trevor Howard, in a crime story taking place in Spain. It shows a former gangster (Howard) trying to escape his past while getting involved with a nightclub singer (Dandridge). It was one of Dorothy’s last movie roles before she left Hollywood.
She was also a dancer and a singer, and by 1963 her popularity had decreased and she was performing in nightclubs to pay off debts from numerous lawsuits. She filed for bankruptcy and went into seclusion before coming back as a lounge act in Las Vegas in 1964. Dorothy died in 1965 at the age of 42, victim of an accidental overdose of the antidepressant imipramine.
Marilyn Monroe
The third one mentioned by Dylan, and the most famous one in the list, was Marilyn Monroe and he noted he liked her in the movie “The Asphalt Jungle”. Released in 1950 and directed by the legendary John Houston, the film shows a major heist which goes off as planned. However, later on double crosses, bad luck and police investigation cause everything to unravel.
Monroe was one of the most popular sex symbols of the 50s and 60s. She was a top-billed actress for a decade and her films made about 200 million dollars (About 2 billion dollars in 2024) by her death in 1962 of an overdose of barbiturates. She was only 36 and was in the prime of her career.
Some of her most famous movies were “The Seven Year Itch” (1955) and “Some Like It Hot” (1959).
Jane Russell
The fourth actress mentioned by Dylan was Jane Russell and the movie she was in that he liked was “The Outlaw”, released in 1943. The movie was directed by Howard Hughes and shows a story involving Western legends like Pat Garrett, Doc Holliday and Billy the Kid.
This was Russell’s first work as an actress. She was selected by Howard Hughes after a nationwide search for a woman with a voluptuous figure.
Jane had a long career and acted until the 1970 when she did her final movie “Darker than Amber”. She died in 2011 at the age of 89 of a respiratory-related illness.
Darla Hood
The final actress mentioned by Dylan was Darla Hood and he praised her in “Our Gang”, also known as “Little Rascals”. It was an American series of comedy short films which showed a group of poor neighborhood children and their adventures. The shorts were produced from 1922 to 1944. Of course several artists portrayed the kids over the decades and one of them was Darla Hood. She was on the show from 1935 to 1941, from the age of 4 to 10.
Her acting career was not very prolific but she appeared in movies in the 30s, 40s and 50s. The final one as a princess in Gulliver’s Travels Beyond the Moon (1965). She died of heart failure in 1979 at the age of 47.
