Biography[]
Character: Echo DeBorba
Birthday: March 25, 1925
Place of Birth: Los Angeles, California
Date of Death: June 2, 2010
Place of Death:
First Short: Pups Is Pups
Last Short: Mush And Milk
Number of Shorts: 24
Year Active: 1930–1960
History: Dorothy Adelle DeBorba originated from a music background. Her mother was a singer and a dancer, and father was a drummer in the band for Paul Whiteman. They married and divorced three times her life. Her first starring role was for Men of the North (1930), a movie directed by Hal Roach, who liked her so much he hired her to star in his Our Gang series. Despite her cute and curly hair appearance, she was a big tom-boy. In her first appearance, Pups Is Pups, she recalled having a lot of fun having to make thirty-seven takes jumping into a pool of mud, getting taken out, cleaned and redressed to do it again. However, in Shiver My Timbers, filmed at San Pedro Harbor, she got a splinter in her while sliding down a gangplank, and during a storm scene, she got wet inside a box that turned out not to be waterproof. She also recalls falling on the phony ice in Spanky and getting rammed by the goat in Hook And Ladder.
After three years of shorts, Dorothy entered the gawky age and was let go. She was the last Our Gang leading lady to serve multiple years until Darla Hood became a regular two years later. Director Robert F. McGowan advised her mother to wait before letting her star in any features, possibly to let Dorothy to blossom into a young beautiful lady, but Hal Roach gave Dorothy a short scene in "Bombshell" with Jean Harlow. Afterward, Dorothy left acting altogether. She grew up, had two children and settled in Northern California. Before she retired, she was senior clerk in the School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.
Dorothy became a member of the Sons of the Desert in 1980, loyally attending banquets in Los Angeles and International Conventions until her health no longer allowed her to travel. She was planning on attending the International Convention in Sacramento, when she passed away from emphysema and lung disease on June 2, 2010.
List of Shorts[]
- Pups Is Pups
- Teacher's Pet
- School's Out
- Helping Grandma
- Love Business
- Little Daddy
- Bargain Day
- Fly My Kite
- Big Ears
- Shiver My Timbers
- Dogs Is Dogs
- Readin' And Writin'
- Free Eats
- Spanky
- Choo-Choo!
- The Pooch
- Hook And Ladder
- Free Wheeling
- Birthday Blues
- A Lad An' A Lamp
- Fish Hooky
- Forgotten Babies
- The Kid From Borneo
- Mush And Milk
Other Projects[]
- Bombshell (1929)
- Men Of The North (1930)
- The Stolen Jools (1931) - with Matthew Beard, Norman Chaney, Oliver Hardy, Allen Hoskins, Robert Hutchins, Mary Ann Jackson, Stan Laurel, and Shirley Jean Rickert
- Up in Central Park (1954)
- Hello, St. Louis (1954)
- Marie Antoinette (1955)