Dorothy Wellman

Wellman was born Dorothy Rae Coonan in Minnesota in 1913. By 1920, she had moved to Oakland, California with her family and later that decade relocated with her mother and siblings to Los Angeles. ==Career==

Her career as a dancer began at the age of 14 with Warner Brothers Studios. Her early film credits as an on-screen dancer and actress included small, uncredited parts in early sound films such as The Broadway Melody (1929), Whoopee! (1930), Kiki (1931) Palmy Days (1931), and The Kid from Spain (1932). Her best-known films were 42nd Street (1933) and Gold Diggers of 1933. Many of the films in which she appeared were choreographed by Busby Berkeley. ==Career highlight==

Film director William Wellman cast Coonan as Sally, a "hobo" disguised as a male, in the 1933 Depression-era drama Wild Boys of the Road. This was her only role in which she was credited on screen. She does make a later uncredited appearance in Wellman's The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), portraying a World War II army nurse nicknamed "Red" who marries a soldier on the battlefield, where he is soon killed. ==Personal life and death==

Coonan and Wellman were married in Nevada in March 1934. ==References==