Local history: Akron girl’s Hollywood career is ‘Gone With the Wind’

For nearly 80 years, Pat Marks, 92, has wondered about a rumor that circulated in Firestone Park when she was a girl in Akron.

Could it be true?

“I heard about it from the kids at school,” she recalled.

In the mid-1940s, there was chatter among her Garfield High classmates that a celebrity lived in the neighborhood.

“Her first name was Dottie and her last name began with a P,” Marks said. “She lived on Neptune Avenue.”

According to local lore, the girl appeared in the 1939 movie “Gone With the Wind” starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh.

Marks never was able to verify the story, so she asked the Beacon Journal for confirmation.

“I have no way to find out anything,” she said. “I don’t have a smartphone. I’ve just got smart friends with smartphones.”

So we checked our files. And frankly, my dear, we found an answer.

Her name was Dorothy Ann Pailliotet. The daughter of Frank and Beulah Pailliotet was born in 1933 and grew up on Neptune Avenue. Her father worked as a machinist at B.F. Goodrich and her mother was a homemaker.

“It wasn’t just a rumor?” Marks said. “Oh, my God.”

Akron girl went to Hollywood

Little Dottie was a dimple-cheeked cutie who competed in local pageants as a toddler. She won a baby doll in 1936 after singing Shirley Temple’s “Animal Crackers in My Soup” at a dance in Goodrich Hall. She also won a $25 prize in a beautiful baby contest sponsored by a New York newspaper in 1938.

While Frank Pailliotet stayed behind in Akron to work, Beulah and Dottie took a trip to California to visit a friend and her daughter. Dottie was discovered while playing outside a rented bungalow.

“We were just awfully lucky,” Beulah told the Beacon Journal in 1940. “Dorothy Ann was sitting on the steps of our apartment house one day when Al Mathews, casting director for [David O.] Selznick, spotted her and, after talking with her a moment, came and knocked on my door and asked if I would consider letting her take a part in ‘Gone With the Wind.’ ”

“I’ll think about it,” Beulah said as she closed the door on the stranger. She’d heard about men like him.

As she later recounted the visit to friend Margaret Meighan, the next-door neighbor unexpectedly vouched for the guy.

“I know him,” said Meighan, who worked as a movie extra. “He’s the casting director for Selznick. He wasn’t kidding.”

“I couldn’t believe it was a bona fide offer,” Beulah said.

She escorted her daughter to the Selznick studio lot as Victor Fleming directed the MGM movie based on Margaret Mitchell’s bestselling novel. Dottie was cast as the double for child star Cammie King, who played Bonnie Blue, the daughter of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara. The brunette girls were about the same age and looked quite alike.

Dottie appears on camera in the London scene where Rhett Butler picks up his sleepy daughter and puts her to bed. The Internet Movie Database provides a shortened version of her name, Dorothy Ann Pailliot, in the credits for the Civil War epic.

Earning $16 to $25 a day, Dottie also landed uncredited parts in three movies released in 1940: Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine; “The Villain Still Pursued Her” featuring Buster Keaton, Anita Louise and Hugh Herbert; and “Grand Ole Opry” with the Weaver Brothers and Elviry.

After a year in California, Beulah and Dottie returned home to Akron to resume their normal lives. Dottie attended St. Paul’s School, Garfield High School and St. Mary High School, where she graduated in 1950.

In 1955, she married her high school sweetheart, Jack Smith, and the couple moved out of Akron.

That’s where the story should end. It would be nearly impossible to track down Mrs. Jack Smith, wouldn’t it? She could be anywhere in the world.

But we found her.

Childhood memories of Hollywood

“Oh, my goodness,” Dorothy A. Smith, 90, said with a laugh when we explained our reason for calling. “99% of my friends don’t even know about that.”

She agreed to talk under the condition that we not reveal too much about her current life, including where she resides. Smith would rather not have the disruption of people trying to get in touch with her to discuss something she did when she was 6 years old.

“I’m at the age where I don’t need that really,” she said. “I’m a very happy and blessed woman.”

Her memories of Hollywood are understandably limited. How much do you remember from when you were 6?

On the set of “Gone With the Wind,” she recalls the giant wooden staircase with the red carpet. That’s where Bonnie Blue ran up and Scarlett O’Hara fell down.

“Yes, I do remember seeing that,” she said.

She wishes she could better visualize her time with Clark Gable, an Ohio native who lived in Akron and worked at Firestone Steel Products and Miller Rubber Co. in the early 1920s.

“He took my mother and I out for lunch,” Smith said. “My mother said he was the most down-to-earth person. He was just a gentleman.”

As far as she knows, they share only one moment in the film: Rhett and Bonnie’s trip to England, a subplot that wasn’t even in the book.

“He took me to London,” Smith said. “The only scene I have was in the bed scene where I was crying and he came in and picked me up. That’s the only scene I have in the whole movie.”

Cammie King wasn’t available for filming that day, so her double stood in.

Smith said she delivers one line of dialogue on camera: “Where’s Mother? I want to go home.”

Although it’s just a bit part, Smith apparently is the last surviving cast member of the 1939 movie. Cammie King died in 2010 at age 76, Olivia de Havilland (Melanie Wilkes) died in 2020 at age 104 and Mickey Kuhn (Beau Wilkes) died in 2022 at 90. Both Gable and Leigh passed away in the 1960s.

In addition to “Gone With the Wind,” Smith has a few other memories of Hollywood. One of her little friends was a famous child star.

“We were invited to Jane Withers’ home,” Smith said. “I remember that because it was so unbelievable. And we went to Hugh Herbert’s home. They were both estates. He had a goldfish pond right when you went into his front door. I thought, ‘Wow, this is really unique.’ ”

But her movie career was brief. Dottie’s father wasn’t able to leave work to visit his wife and daughter in California.

“It got to the point that we all got homesick and decided it wasn’t worth going any further with this,” Smith said. “... We just walked away. And I, of course, have no regrets. I think the Good Lord was looking after things. I really do.”

Happy with a normal life

Dottie went back to school in Akron. She made a few personal appearances at local movie theaters, but that was the end of her career in entertainment. After graduating from St. Mary, she worked in the classified ad department at the Beacon Journal and the teletype department at Firestone Tire & Rubber Co.

By the time that she and Jack Smith got married, Hollywood was a distant memory. She didn’t even tell her sons about her childhood acting until they were in high school. Their excited classmates wanted to know if they lived in a big house with servants.

“What a disappointment, huh?” Smith joked.

In addition to being a homemaker, she worked part-time as a secretary at a fertilizer company. She and her husband have been married for 68 years.

To this day, she is happy that she didn’t grow up in Hollywood.

“My mother said it was really competitive,” Smith said. “It was very vicious. People were very different. I’m so glad my mother had the sense to say, ‘Enough is enough,’ and came back to a normal life.”

Although she’s averse to publicity, she’s not ashamed of her brief career in motion pictures.

“I just figure that it’s part of my life — that I was privileged,” she said. “But I’m far more privileged now than I’ve ever been. I’m thankful for that.”

Before saying goodbye, the former Dorothy Ann Pailliotet asked for the phone number of fellow nonagenarian Pat Marks, the Akron woman who inspired us to look into the local legend about “Gone With the Wind.”

Smith gave her a surprise call and they enjoyed a nice, long chat about growing up in Firestone Park, reminiscing about mutual acquaintances and bygone times.

“I’m still in shock,” Marks said.

The legend was true.

Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com

Local history: Hollywood star David McLean, who played Marlboro Man, was an hombre from Akron

Local history: Montrose Drive-In flickered to life 75 years ago

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Local history: Akron girl’s Hollywood career is ‘Gone With the Wind’