Dorée Leslie Papers

Dorée Leslie was born Dorothy Phyllis Goldberg to Samuel and Mae (Leslie) Goldberg in Boston, Massachusetts on March 21, 1912. Dorothy Goldberg became Dorothy Golden when her father changed the family's last name and began her career as a dancer and actress before the age of 10. Her mother, a frustrated actress, seems to have been heavily involved in her career, countersigning many of her minor child's contracts. Dorothy Golden appeared in several Broadway musicals and revues, including with the Ziegfeld Follies, in the early 1920s. She began using the stage name Dorée Leslie in about 1924 and went on perform with Elsie Janis' Nine o'Clock Frolic Season (1924-1925), with Jimmy Clark and his White Way Entertainers, with Ed Wynn's Grab Bag (1925-1926) and as Annie Moore in Castles in the Air (1926). In 1927, she performed in Chicago with The Frolics in addition to working with George White in New York City. She appeared in White's Scandals before starring in his Manhattan Mary (1929) and performing in Florenz Ziegfeld's Simple Simon (1930).

Leslie completed screen tests with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and signed a contract to explore talking pictures in June of 1929. She also appeared in the early Warner Bros. short Let's Merge (1930). Her contract with MGM, however, was never fully served. Leslie married Lee S. Gordon (1901-1987), a broker from New York, on June 2, 1929 and left the theatre world after completing her contract with Ziegfeld for Simple Simon on June 14, 1930. Her younger son later recalled that [i]t was a decision she never regretted, and she never looked back. The couple settled in Chicago, where they raised two children, Alan Leslie and Michael Stanley. Dorée Gordon involved herself with Illinois politics and community service in addition to serving as vice president of Chicago's Temple Shalom Sisterhood and working for the Illinois Department of Labor during World War II.

In 1955, Dorée Gordon began selling sportswear at Chicago's Bramson salon in order to help defray the cost of her sons' medical education. She had a flair for fashion and built a career in the field, becoming a buyer for Bramson and, after she and her husband moved to Miami, Florida in 1969, managing an Elizabeth Arden salon on Miracle Mile in Coral Gables. When her husband retired eight years later, she retired as well. Dorée Gordon died on June 2, 1997 and was interred in Mt. Nebo Kendall Memorial Gardens.