Dixie Dunbar, 72; Dancer Had First Film Role at 15
Dixie Dunbar, a former chorus girl who traded a film career for marriage to a millionaire, has died in Miami Beach, where she had lived since the 1950s.
Her minister and longtime friend in Florida, Michael Fitzgerald, said this week that she had died Aug. 29 after a series of heart attacks. She was 72.
Born Christina Elizabeth Dunbar, she made her first film appearance at 15 dancing in the 1934 “George White Scandals.” After a handful of roles as an energetic dancer or “cute” second-lead in such pictures as “King of Burlesque,” “Pigskin Parade,” “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” and “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” she quit movies.
Her last professional appearances in the early 1950s did not involve her face but her legs as she danced enclosed in a mock pack of Old Gold cigarettes.
Fitzgerald said she had married Jack L. King about 40 years ago and had lived quietly in Florida. Her husband preceded her in death.
“Although she was blinded by glaucoma her spirits were always up,” Fitzgerald said.
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