Dola Frances Dunsmuir, 25, at her wedding to “Dish”, Henry James F. Cavendish, Hatley Castle, Victoria BC, August 11, 1928

There was some doubt as to Dola’s parentage; she was the youngest of 10 children, with an age gap of nine years between Dola and her brother James Jr, and 25 years between Dola and her eldest sister Byrdie. Dola’s father served briefly as BC Premier and the family was very popular in Victoria’s smart set. She was shy and reserved but well liked. She did the rounds in London when she made her debut in society, and spent a lot of time with her nephew Jimmy (who was actually older than her). Jimmy and Dola both enjoyed the theatre immensely. 

Dola was good friends with actress Talullah Bankhead, who would frequently come to Victoria and stay at Dola’s house. It was rumored they were lovers, but Talullah quipped “I know what people think, but I’ve never seen Dola in a slip”. They met in London before Dola’s marriage, and Dola lived in Tallulah’s home “Windows” in Bedford Village near New York until the death of her sister Kathleen (who had a brief, rather disastrous, career as an actress) at the Cafe de Paris bombing in London on March 8, 1941. She moved back to Victoria to care for her sister’s children. 

The dynamics of Tallulah and Dola’s friendship vary depending what sources you read. People from Tallulah’s camp classify Dola as more of a social secretary and housekeeper (playing a sort of Eve Harrington to Tallulah’s Margo Channing, ala All About Eve) while Dola’s biographers say they were equally devoted best friends. Either way, Dola was certainly attached to Tallulah: before they’d ever met, she’d ask her theatre friends if they thought Tallulah needed money, and once, according to Noel, Tallulah, Cole, and Me: A Memoir of Broadway’s Golden Age, when Talullah saw Dola in an expensive new fur coat she asked for it and Dola handed it right over. Dola asked permission to buy herself another, and Tallulah granted her request but stipulated it be a lesser coat. Tallulah would then tell anyone asking about the coats that hers was the genuine thing, while Dola’s was a cheap knock-off.

Another time, Dora mentioned to Tallulah that her official secretary, Evelyn Cronin, was forging cheques and stealing from her. Tallulah fired Evelyn but also sent Dola away. Once Tallulah looked into it, she saw that Evelyn had stolen even more than was originally thought, and pressed charged. Headlines ran across the country with Evelyn’s retorts to Tallulahs accusations, telling that the money was spent to buy Tallulah “cocaine, champage, marijuana and sex”. Tallulah quipped “I don’t know what that laywer means by ‘sex’. I don’t have to pay for sex. I haven’t slipped that far”.  Although “banished”, it was Dola who stepped in and gave Tallulah the equivalent of what Evelyn had stolen, $60,000, as well as a new Cadillac. 

Tallulah’s goddaughter, Brook Ashley, described Dola a little unfairly, writing: “Dumpy, lugubrious, and infatuated with Tallulah, she lived at “Windows” as a semi-permanent houseguest. Dola’s days were spent wandering through the rooms sipping from a tall glass of gin. She arranged flowers very, very slowly and never said a word to me.”

From Unknown Victoria: Tallulah’s house parties were epic. Freda Bemister, who worked as a housekeeper at Dolaura (Dora’s home) in the 1960s, recalls that one time a drunken judge got his car stuck in the mud outside the house, and the tow-truck driver was rewarded by drinking champagne from Tallulah’s shoe. “I never made a pot of coffee the entire time I was there,” says Mrs. Bemister, whose husband was often recruited to go buy more cases of Dola’s favourite gin. “Miss Bankhead never ate breakfast. Instead, she asked for mint juleps.”

Tallulah, a born exhibitionist, also spent much of her time parading around the house in the nude, enjoying the feeling of the ocean air on her naked body. “The cook wouldn’t serve Miss Bankhead dinner unless she had her clothes on, which wasn’t very often,” says Mrs. Bemister.