Diana Allen was a Ziegfeld Follies dancer and silent film actress from Sweden
She was born on November 27, 1898 in Gotland, Sweden. Tragically her father died when she was an infant. After her mother remarried they moved to the United States. Diana was educated in New Haven, Connecticut. She started her career dancing in vaudeville with Eddie Wittstein and Ned Wayburn. The blonde haired, blue eyed beauty was invited to join the Ziegfeld Follies in 1917. She also starred in the Broadway show Miss 1917 and in Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic. Diana made her film debut in the 1918 short Way Up Society. Then she had a role in the drama Woman. She was signed by Paramount in 1920 and costarred with Monte Blu in The Kentuckians. Her performance got good reviews and people started saying that she looked like Olive Thomas. In 1922 she appeared in eight films including The Beauty Shop, Beyond The Rainbow, and Divorce Coupons.
Then she was cast as boxer Benny Leonard’s leading lady in a series of two-reel comedy shorts. Diana said her ambition was “To learn and then to act”. She married Samuel P. Booth, the President of a newspaper circulation company, in 1924. He was more than thirty years older than her. Soon after she decided to quit acting and become a full-time housewife. Her final film was the 1925 short The Jazz Fight. Diana and her husband divided their time between homes in New York City and Palm Beach, Florida. The couple remained happily married until Samuel’s death in 1939. Sadly on June 12, 1949 she died at the young age of fifty-one. Her cause of death was not publicly revealed. She was buried next to her husband at Roseland Park Cemetery in Berkley, Michigan.
