Dorothy Lamour (Born Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton in New Orleans, Louisiana, De… Read Full Bio ↴Dorothy Lamour (Born Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton in New Orleans, Louisiana, December 10, 1914 – September 22, 1996) was an American film actress and singer. She starred in a number of movie musicals and sang in many of her comedies and dramatic films as well. She introduced a number of standards, including "The Moon of Manakoora", "I Remember You", "It Could Happen to You", "Personality", and "But Beautiful". She is best remembered for appearing in the Road to... movies, a series of successful comedies starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.

In 1935, she had her own fifteen-minute weekly musical program on NBC Radio. She also sang on the popular Rudy Vallee radio show and The Chase and Sanborn Hour.

In 1936, she moved to Hollywood and began appearing regularly in films for Paramount Pictures. The role that made her a star was Ulah (a sort of female Tarzan) in The Jungle Princess (1936). She wore a sarong, which would become associated with her. While she first achieved stardom as a sex symbol, Lamour also showed talent as both a comic and dramatic actress. She was among the most popular actresses in motion pictures from 1936 to 1952.

She starred in the Road to... movie series with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in the 1940s and 1950s. The movies were enormously popular during the 1940s, and they regularly placed among the top moneymaking films each year. While the films centered more on Hope and Crosby, Lamour held her own as their "straight man", and sang some of her most popular songs. Her contribution to the films was considered by the public and theater owners of equal importance to that of Crosby and Hope during the series' golden era, 1940-1952. The series essentially ended with the release of Road to Bali in 1952, with her career declining, while co-stars Hope and Crosby remained major show business figures.
During the World War II years, Lamour was among the most popular pinup girls among American servicemen, along with Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, and Veronica Lake. Lamour was also largely responsible for starting up the war bond tours in which movie stars would travel the country selling U.S. government bonds to the public. Lamour alone promoted the sale of over $21 million dollars' worth of war bonds, and other stars promoted the sale of a billion more.

Some of Lamour's other notable films include John Ford's The Hurricane (1937), Spawn of the North (1938; with George Raft, Henry Fonda, and John Barrymore), Disputed Passage (1939), Johnny Apollo (1940; with Tyrone Power), Aloma of the South Seas (1941), Beyond the Blue Horizon (1942), Dixie (1943; with Bing Crosby), A Medal for Benny (1945), My Favorite Brunette (1947; with Bob Hope), On Our Merry Way (1948) and a supporting role in the best picture Oscar-winner The Greatest Show on Earth (1952; with Charlton Heston). Her other leading men included William Holden, Ray Milland, James Stewart, Jack Benny, and Fred MacMurray.

Lamour's film career petered out in the early 1950s, and she began a new career as a nightclub entertainer and occasional stage actress. In the 1960s, she returned to the screen for secondary roles in three films, including John Ford's Donovan's Reef (1963) with John Wayne and Lee Marvin, and became more active in the legitimate theater, headlining a road company of Hello Dolly! for over a year near the end of the decade.

Lamour's good humor and lack of pretension allowed her to have a remarkably long career in show business for someone best known as a glamour girl. She was a popular draw on the dinner theatre circuit of the 1970s. In the 1960s and 1970s, she lived with her longtime husband William Ross Howard III (whom she married in 1943), in the Baltimore suburb of Sudbrook Park. He died in 1978. Lamour published her autobiography, My Side of the Road, in 1980, revived her nightclub act, and performed in plays and television shows such as Hart to Hart, Crazy Like a Fox, Remington Steele and Murder, She Wrote.
During the 1990s, she made only a handful of professional appearances but remained a popular interview subject for publications and TV talk and news programs. In 1995, the musical Swinging on a Star, a revue of songs written by Johnny Burke opened on Broadway and ran for three months; Lamour was credited as a "special advisor". Burke wrote many of the most famous Road to ... movie songs as well as the score to Lamour's And the Angels Sing. The musical was nominated for the Best Musical Tony Award, and the actress playing her in the Road movie segment, Kathy Fitzgerald, was also nominated.

Lamour died in her sleep at her home in North Hollywood at the age of 81 from a heart attack. She was interred in the Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.

It Had To Be You
Dorothy Lamour Lyrics

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It had to be you, it had to be you.
I wandered around and finally found the somebody who
Could make me be true, could make me feel blue,
And even be glad just to be sad thinkin' of you.

Some others I've seen might never be mean
Might never be cross or try to be boss,
But they wouldn't do.

For nobody else gave me a thrill.
With all your faults, I love you still,
It had to be you, wonderful you,
It had to be you.

It had to be you, it had to be you.
I wandered around and finally found somebody who
Could make me be true, could make me be blue,
And even be glad just to be sad thinkin' of you.

Some others I've seen might never be mean
Might never be cross or try to be boss,
But they wouldn't do.

For nobody else gave me a thrill.
With all your faults, I love you still.

It had to be you, wonderful you

It had to be you.

Overall Meaning

The lyrics of Dorothy Lamour's song "It Had to Be You" convey a feeling of inevitability when it comes to the singer's love for a certain person. The first two lines express this idea of destiny - "It had to be you, it had to be you." The singer explains that they had been wandering around aimlessly in search of someone who could make them be true and feel blue - and finally, they found that person. The following lines talk about the qualities that this person possesses that others don't - they might not be mean or bossy, but they wouldn't do either because they don't give the singer the same thrill that this person does.

The final lines return to the initial idea that this love was preordained - "With all your faults, I love you still. It had to be you, wonderful you, It had to be you." Despite their flaws, the singer loves this person because they were meant to love them all along. The song conveys the idea that love is not rational - it's not something that can be explained or controlled. When two people are meant to be together, it just has to be that way.

It Had To Be YouDorothy Lamour Lyrics

It Had To Be You
Dorothy Lamour Lyrics