A Blossoming Career (1924—1926)
Adrienne Doré first appeared in Southern California in 1924, and one of her first known mentions under the name in the fabled cinema capital made a big splash. On June 15, 1924, Adrienne, alongside a troupe of bathing beauties, were led by obscure impresario Jewell Pathe to partake in the fourth annual Balboa Beach parade. These were held at the beginning of each summer in order to promote the luxurious seaside resort community’s season opening.
Various prizes for beauty and decorative swimsuits were won by a handful of the girls, including Adrienne. Judging took place aboard the Taurus, one of the prop ships used to film the Vitagraph production Captain Blood (1924).
Adrienne was mentioned a handful of newspaper clippings about the beauties, only one spelling her name correctly (an unfortunate issue that would plague her credits for the rest of her career). Although she took home a prize that day, it apparently wasn’t important enough to be named in the papers.
This marked the beginning of a bankable bathing girl career that eventually culminated in a vie for the “Miss America” title the next year.
Not a single peep is heard from Adrienne until April 1925, when once again she was in the lineup of another pageant. This one was held at Crystal Pier in Santa Monica:
Her name was dropped again just the next month, on May 2, this time with a prominent mention in Universal Weekly. The prestigious “U” had just signed Adrienne to a whopping five-year contract, and presented the aspiring actress with her own dressing room. There’s no mention of her in any film publication (or even a credit) prior to this, but according to Adrienne’s own admission in 1928, she had been an extra for months beforehand and had “seen work in various studios”. Other publications do mention her as a member of Universal’s Stock Company.
Adrienne’s first assignments under her new contract, according to the Motion Picture News, were supporting roles opposite Arthur Lake and Charles Puffy in a series of Universal’s popular one-reel Bluebird Comedies. She remains uncredited, and this writer has not yet been able to spot her in those that survive.
From here, things really began to pick up for the 17-year-old, though not for her screen work. Just days after the news of her contract broke, Adrienne was officially named the winner of the “Miss Los Angeles” contest held by the Los Angeles Examiner. This meant she would travel up to Santa Cruz in order to compete against girls from other cities for “Miss California”, the winner of which would in turn represent the entire state to grapple for the coveted “Miss America” title.
The girls would set off for the contest in mid June. In the meanwhile, Adrienne would make personal appearances alongside her rivals at big venues like Grauman’s Paramount Theatre (then referred to as the Metropolitan) and the Criterion on South Grand in Los Angeles. This time, however, she stuck out like a sore thumb with her recent win, and was named individually as opposed to being one of the bunch.
A bevy of beauties representing various cities in California arrived in Santa Cruz on the morning of June 10, Adrienne among them, and were consequently fêted with a large lunch at the city’s Hotel St. George on Front Street. Pageant festivities kicked off the same night. Adrienne and a handful of other girls would stay in the same hotel for the remainder of their visit.
On the night of June 12, Adrienne walked away with the title of “most beautiful girl in evening gown” in a contest judged by esteemed luminaries like William Desmond and actress Helen Ferguson. Her winning gown was described as a “simple” creation done in pale green and gold georgette. She was also lauded for being one of the few girls to wear her hair long, and not bobbed. This would be the only title bestowed upon her, as two days later the incumbent Miss California, Fay Lanphier, would reclaim her laurels in the final judging.
It would be an empty-handed trek back home to LA for Adrienne, though she still wound up traveling to Atlantic City that September for the fifth annual Miss America pageant. On her way down south, Adrienne posed for some portraits with Fay, Helen Ferguson, and Miss California 1924, Lillian Knight:
Over the summer, she continued to appear in bathing beauty revues in and around the city in locales like Long Beach and Venice. One hometown article published that July back in Spokane also claims Adrienne appears in the background of Universal’s legendary Phantom of the Opera (1925). Given the sheer amount of masked extras, it is certainly plausible, though virtually impossible to confirm.
Adrienne (whose name is unfortunately butchered as “Adrienne Adore” is photographed in Long Beach on August 9, 1925. She did not compete, but instead led the initial parade:
Publicity ramped up in August as Miss America excitement was thrown into high gear. At this point, Adrienne started giving varying birthdates (she was now eighteen; many articles claim her as fifteen) and provided the press with a fantastical story of being a convent girl at Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Seattle (prior to this point in time, no such claim existed, and there is no record of enrollment). In early September, the final contestants set off for Atlantic City, New Jersey, and were heavily photographed at their various stops along the way.
The troupe arrived in Pittsburgh a few days later, where Adrienne was interviewed by the Pittsburgh Daily Post and declared the city “isn’t a bit dirty”. Soon after they arrived in Atlantic City, and the pageant was opened on the eighth; the inaugural ceremony being a “Baby Parade” featuring two thousand festooned infants.
By the eleventh, only fifteen girls remained in the running, Adrienne included. The same day, the final fifteen rode on decorated floats in a “Rolling Chair” parade down the boardwalk; once again, Adrienne was noticed for her appearance in evening gown, but this time placed only second next to Miss New York, Edith Roberts. Fay Lanphier came in third, and the trifecta were photographed together in their winning attire:
At this point, Adrienne and Fay Lanphier were two of the three left who represented the entire western portion of the country. It was revealed that Miss America 1925 had already been chosen, but the winner’s name was concealed within a golden apple that would not be revealed until midnight on the twelfth. With bated breath, the golden apple was finally split with a hatchet; and once again, the winner was Fay Lanphier. Adrienne lost by a devastating 12 to 3 decision by the panel, but still managed to come away with the esteemed “runner up” position.
The two girls were showered with gifts, money, and opportunities; although Fay Lanphier won the chance to appear as the title character in The American Venus (1926) alongside Louise Brooks, Adrienne’s prizes weren’t so bad, either. Jesse L. Lasky awarded her with a scholarship to the Paramount School of Acting which had just been founded in March. Florenz Ziegfield even approached Adrienne with an offer to appear in his fabled Follies. However, according to a later statement, Adrienne’s mother Edith prevented this as she thought her daughter “a little too young for that”.
Funnily enough, one article in a 1927 issue of The New Yorker claimed Adrienne only lost out to Fay Lanphier because one judge was witness to some bad table manners on her behalf.
Her chance at “Miss America” evaporated, Adrienne used her remaining time on the east coast to visit New York and her step-grandmother in Superior, Wisconsin. She reflected on this in 1932. “You’ll laugh when I tell you the real reason why I entered the contest,” she told interviewer Gardner Bradford, “It was so that I could visit my grandmother in Minnesota. She hadn’t seen me since I was a baby and my mother never could scrape up enough money to take me there. The beauty contest solved the problem.”
This built upon a 1928 statement wherein she revealed her participation was only to publicize her film career. “We thought it would be good publicity,” she told a reporter, “but when I actually won and insisted on accepting the chance to compete at Atlantic City it was more than anything else an interruption in my screen career.”
This sentiment is further confirmed by this exceedingly frank tidbit featured in a Michigan newspaper in October 1925, during her stay at her grandmother’s home in Superior (not Minnesota, but just barely). AP photographers had followed her requesting pictures, and she wasn’t having it.
The next day, Adrienne’s visage appeared in the Buffalo Courier opposite director Edmund Goulding on the set of the full length drama Sally, Irene, and Mary (1925). According to a July article in the Venice Evening Vanguard, she was among fourteen girls specially selected to take screen tests for MGM with ‘most’ of them to be used in the film. “I believe we will use practically all the girls,” boasted executive Harry Rapf, though this apparently didn’t include Adrienne. Although she may be an extra, she was not credited.
By early November, Adrienne had made it back safely to California with numerous trophies in her possession. On the third, she was named one of a “jury” made up of various motion pictures star who would name the Queen of Ventura’s Thanksgiving Day Poinsettia Festival.
On December 17, Adrienne was one of hundreds of cinema luminaries featured in a multi-faceted talent exhibition that included singing, dancing, plays, and even a fashion revue. Held by the Los Angeles Examiner at the Olympic Auditorum, the purpose of the event was charity and proceeds went towards a Christmas dinner fund for the city’s less fortunate. An absolute galaxy of stars were featured, including Anna May Wong, Mary Astor, and a young Joan Crawford to name just a few. You can read the original program and much more info here. Adrienne is listed at the very bottom of the ‘Pageant of Fame’ column; her reigning title of Miss Los Angeles 1925 is given a nod.
From there into January 1926, belated publicity surrounding Adrienne’s Universal contract bled into movie periodicals and newspapers. She continued to make personal appearances, most notably alongside dancer Olive Ann Alcorn (who appeared in The American Venus) as judges for a “long hair” contest. The two were celebrated for their lack of shorn locks, and were picked to judge the contest in conjunction with Alcorn’s appearance at the Hillstreet Theater.
Later in the same month, Universal began assigning roles for Carl Laemmle’s The Mystery Club (1926), starring Matt Moore and Edith Roberts (not the same one who was ‘Miss New York’). Adrienne seemed to finally get a role, and is credited in various motion picture publications, but her name is absent from the final cast list. As the film appears lost, and no archive holdings are present, confirming the extent of her role and whether or not it was cut is a current impossibility.
In the meanwhile, Adrienne continued to make herself a known presence at star-studded events in and around Hollywood. She was among the crowd at the grand opening of the West Coast Balboa Theater in April; around the same time, she got a break when Universal’s Stern Brothers brought her on for their ”Excuse Makers” two-reeler series. Her first outing with them was in Love’s Hurdle (1926). Not only was she credited this time around, she was the leading lady opposite Charles King; an illustration of the two appears on a poster for the film.
King plays an ‘impoverished shoe clerk’ who attempts to improve upon his social status by becoming a horseback rider. Later on, the daughter of a thoroughbred owner comes into his shoe store; subsequently, King pretends to be the store’s owner. Hilarity and romance ensue. Sadly, this short is nowhere to be found, and is presumably lost.
Trade papers also name Adrienne as having a role in the “Let George Do It” series, also produced by Stern Brothers and starring Syd Saylor, but yet again, this remains unconfirmed due to the series’ obscurity.
This seems to be all from Adrienne at Universal–in the same aforementioned 1932 interview with Gardner Bradford, Adrienne recalls spending ‘five months doing practically nothing’ filmworthy while Miss America publicity raged on, leading to her to ask the studio to either put her to work or give her her release. “How quick I got that release!”
Adrienne Doré all but drops out of the studio’s roster by the end of 1926. We won’t hear much from her until 1927, when she embarked on a lucrative Los Angeles stage métier that set another stage of her career in motion.
At least we have this gorgeous Universal “Featured Players” spread with Adrienne center on the right page:
