Dorothy McGowan

Who is Dorothy McGowan?

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Dorothy McGowan is a Brooklyn, New York-born former model and actress. She was discovered as a talent agent picked her out of a crowd of Beatles fans at Kennedy Airport.

Her sole screen credit is for the 1966 French film Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, in which she had the starring role of a supermodel.

As a model McGowan appeared on countless covers of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Glamour, and other publications in the 1960s. She was photographed by Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Melvin Sokolsky, Francesco Scavullo, and others.

A daughter of Irish immigrants Sarah and Michael McGowan and born in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, she had one sister, Mary, and two brothers, Peter, a policeman who became a Roman Catholic priest, and James, a policeman whose role as lead negotiator in a hostage crisis was dramatized in the film Dog Day Afternoon.

McGowan was one of photographer William Klein's favorite models. After the release of his film Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, she disappeared from public view and apparently neither acted nor modeled again, according to Klein.

She was married to and divorced from photographer Didier Dorot with whom she has two children, Damien and Juliette.