Dorothy Stone (actress)

Dorothy Stone (June 3, 1905 – September 24, 1974) (a/k/a Dorothy B. Stone and Dorothy Stone Collins) was an actress, dancer, and singer in theater and motion pictures, born in Brooklyn, New York.

She was the daughter of Fred Stone, a stage actor, dancing comedian, and owner of the Fred Stone theatrical stock company. Her mother, Allene Crater Stone, acted with her father and was a singer. Her sisters were Paula Stone and Carol Stone. The family had a ranch at Lyme, Connecticut.

She went into show business at an early age and in July, 1921, she was thrown and kicked by a pony she rode in the second annual circus and Wild West show of the Lights Club, an organization composed of theatrical people living on Long Island. Dorothy, known as the "Queen of Chin Chin Ranch," was shaken up by her fall and bruised by kicks from the pony but not otherwise injured.

Dorothy’s Broadway debut was in 1923 in Jerome Kern’s “Stepping Stones” with her father, Fred Stone. She was a big hit in the show. The New York Times reports that the audience was cheering her before the first act was over.

Dorothy performed with her father again at the Globe Theater in Manhattan, in Criss Cross in October 1926. This was followed by “Three Cheers” in 1928 (with Will Rogers taking her father’s place because of an airplane accident). The headline of the review by Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times read “Dorothy Stone Captivates as Dancer and Singer.”

In August, 1929, when Ruby Keeler (Al Jolson’s wife) had to withdraw due to illness from the cast of Ziegfeld’s “Show Girl”, Dorothy took over to headlines that read “Dorothy Stone scores a hit on ‘Show Girl’ . . . Receives an Ovation.”

Dorothy next appeared with her father (having recovered from his accident), mother, and Paula (making her stage debut) in "Ripples", a show which debuted in New Haven, Connecticut, in January 1930. The first New York production of the show came to the New Amsterdam Theater in February. As Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times reported, “Fred Stone is back.”

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