Biography

She took her stage name Mamie from First Lady Mamie Eisenhower.

Once posed for famous pin-up girl artist Alberto Vargas, the painter of the glamorous "Vargas Girls". His painting of Van Doren was on the July 1951 cover of Esquire magazine.

In 1964, she was a guest at the Whisky-a-Go-Go on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood when The Beatles were at the club visiting Jayne Mansfield, and an inebriated George Harrison accidentally threw his drink on her while trying to throw it on some bothersome journalists.

Was discovered by Howard Hughes the night she was crowned Miss Palm Springs. He dated her for five years and launched her career by placing her in several RKO films.

She was known as one of "The Three M's" along with fellow blonde goddesses Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield.

I don't wear panties anymore - this startles the Hollywood wolves so much they don't know what to pull at, so they leave me alone.

I came to Hollywood determined to follow in Jean Harlow's footsteps, but I was determined not to die young. My hope was to endure. And endure I have.

There's a scene in The Aviator (2004) that depicts Howard Hughes' first meeting with Faith Domergue that comes very close to the scene in my book 'Playing the Field' describing my first meeting with him. He asks Faith how old she is. Answer: 15. He asked me the same thing. Answer: 16. He even asks if she lived with her parents and how nice it was that she lived at home. The only thing he didn't ask her in the movie was the main thing he asked me: "Are you a virgin?".

At my age, having an orgasm is like having an occasional cocktail.

[on the period in the early 1960s when she was engaged to baseball star pitcher Bo Belinsky] It was a wild ride, but a lot of fun.