Dorothy Michelle Provine (January 20, 1935 – April 25, 2010) was an American singer, dancer and actress.
Provine was born in Deadwood in southwestern South Dakota, to William and Irene Provine, but grew up in Seattle, Washington, where her parents ran a nightclub. She attended the University of Washington in Seattle, from which she graduated with a degree in Theater Arts in 1957. While there, she joined the women's fraternity Alpha Gamma Delta. After only a few appearances in amateur productions of musicals, she was spotted by a Hollywood talent scout.
In Hollywood, she starred in the titular role as the cigar-chomping, machine-gun firing heroine of the 1958 film The Bonnie Parker Story directed by William Witney. That same year, she performed in a credited walk-on part in the NBC Western television series Wagon Train, in the episode "The Marie Dupree Story." In 1959, she was in the cast of The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock, which was Lou Costello's last screen appearance. In that same year she again appeared in Wagon Train in the episode "Matthew Lowry Story", this time having a part that ran the full episode.
On January 3, 1959, Provine appeared as Laura Winfield in the episode "The Bitter Lesson" of the NBC Western series Cimarron City. Laura Winfield is a newly arrived schoolteacher with false credentials who is plotting with a male companion to rob a stage shipment of gold, but not before Deputy Sheriff Lane Temple (series star John Smith) falls in love with her. Dan Blocker and Gregg Palmer also appear in this episode as interested suitors of the new teacher. A few weeks thereafter, she was cast in a supporting role in the episode "The Giant Killer" of the ABC/Warner Bros. Western series Sugarfoot, with Will Hutchins in the title role.
In 1959, Provine appeared as Ann Donnelly in the episode "The Confession" of another ABC/WB Western series, Colt .45, starring Wayde Preston. Charles Aidman was cast in this episode as Arthur Sibley; Don C. Harvey as Sheriff Clinter. About this time she was also cast in an episode of the ABC sitcom The Real McCoys starring Walter Brennan.
Another 1959 appearance was as "Chalmers" in the episode "Blood Money" of the CBS televised Western The Texan starring Rory Calhoun as Bill Longley and Ralph Meeker in the guest cast as Sam Kerrigan. She also guest starred in the syndicated Western series Man Without a Gun starring Rex Reason.
At the same time, Provine was a regular on TV, gaining her first series, The Alaskans (1959-60), set during the Yukon goldrush of the 1890s, in which she played a saloon owner and singer called Rocky Shaw who has attracted an adventurer, Roger Moore. The onscreen romance reflected the fact that Moore had fallen for Provine in real life, which almost caused a rift between him and his wife, Dorothy Squires. Frank Sinatra then dated her for a while, but there was no question of marriage as the Catholic Provine would not wed an already twice-divorced man.
In her biggest hit, The Roaring 20s, she delightfully sang at least one vintage number in each episode. Provine recorded an album of songs from the show, and had two hit singles in the UK Singles Chart — "Don't Bring Lulu" (number 17 in 1961) and "Crazy Words, Crazy Tune" (number 45 in 1962). Provine was cast as the cool wife of the put-upon Milton Berle in Stanley Kramer's mammoth homage to slapstick comedy, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), in which she is the only one of the avaricious group hunting the $350,000 of stolen cash who wants no part of the fought-over money.
Provine then played what could be called "a good sport" in half a dozen comedy films, the sort that Ethan Coen felt "had a very weird, wooden aesthetic that nobody's interested in any more", but which he loved as a child. These included the tame but entertaining sex farce Good Neighbour Sam (1964), in which she co-starred with Jack Lemmon as his suburban wife; That Darn Cat! (1965), a Walt Disney movie in which she and the cleancut Dean Jones were upstaged by the feline of the title; Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die (1966), a contrived James Bond pastiche with Provine as an English spy; Who's Minding the Mint? (1967), as the girlfriend of Jim Hutton's US mint employee; and the riskily titled Never a Dull Moment (1968), opposite Dick Van Dyke. In between, she made a terrific cameo appearance in The Great Race (1965), singing, in a saloon again, He Shouldn't-a, Hadn't-a, Oughtn't-a Swang On Me!
It was while making Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die in Brazil that she met the English-born director Robert Day, who was shooting Tarzan and the Great River there. Despite her previous qualms about divorced men – Day gained a divorce on the grounds of adultery with Provine – the couple married in 1968, and she retired from show business, appearing in only three TV shows in the 1970s. They moved to Bainbridge Island, Washington, about 1990, where they resided with their son. Provine was reclusive in retirement and indulged her love of reading and movies and occasionally drove around the island with her husband.
Dorothy Provine died of emphysema on April 25, 2010 in Bremerton, Washington.
(Edited from Wikipedia & The Guardian)