January 23rd, 1923- July 3rd, 2015
Diana Dill carved out a career as an in-demand working actress, appearing on the Broadway stage, in films, as well as on leading television programmes.
Her stage work includes a number of appearances on Broadway, as well as on stages throughout the United States, opposite such actors as Henry Fonda, Roy Dotrice, and John Houseman. Among the plays in which she has appeared are Hedda Gabler, Light Up the Sky, Cactus Flower, and Painting Churches, a work that she and her second husband, Bill Darrid, also presented at City Hall Theatre during the summer of 1990. In 2004, she and her nephew, Bermudian actor Sean Dill, acted as narrators in the Bermuda Festival production of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and Wolf Tracks.
Dill—now Diana Dill Webster and whose stage name is Diana Douglas—began her film career in 1942 with an uncredited part in Keeper of the Flame and appeared intermittently in films in a career spanning more than 60 years. Among her films are Planes, Trains and Automobiles in 1987 and, in 2003, It Runs in The Family, in which she appeared with her ex-husband Kirk Douglas, her son Michael Douglas and Michael’s son, Cameron.
Dill had starring roles, or was a guest star, on television, too, appearing multiple times in such popular programmes as Medic, Science Fiction Theatre, Robert Montgomery Presents, Naked City, Love is a Many Splendored Thing, The Cowboys, Cannon, The Waltons, Knot’s Landing, Lou Grant, Dynasty and The Paper Chase. She also appeared in Masterpiece Playhouse, Flipper, Ben Casey, Kung Fu, The Streets of San Francisco (with son Michael), Barnaby Jones, Days of our Lives, Remington Steele, Cagney & Lacey, Hardcastle and McCormick, The West Wing, Cold Case and ER.
She is a daughter of Ruth Rapalje (nee Neilson) and Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Melville Dill, a lawyer who served as Attorney-General of Bermuda, and as Commanding Officer of the Bermuda Militia Artillery. The Dill family can trace its Bermuda roots to the 17th century. Dill’s mother, Ruth, was an American who traced her ancestry back to Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch governor of New York.
Growing up in Devonshire, Dill attended the private Woodside School before the family moved to London, where she attended the Doreck School and Upper Chine School for Girls. The family returned to Bermuda in 1933 on the maiden voyage of the Queen of Bermuda, but Dill continued on at Upper Chine as a boarder while spending summers in Bermuda.
She left England in 1939 with her family—who had travelled from Bermuda to Denmark to collect her from summer holidays—aboard the liner, Aquitania, which zig-zagged across the Atlantic Ocean to avoid the attention of German U-Boats, the Second World War having just begun.
Rather than join the family back in Bermuda, Dill applied to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, which was then situated at Carnegie Hall. Acting had been a burning ambition for Dill since, at the age of 10, she had seen one of her idols, Katharine Hepburn, on screen.
At the acceptance interview, it was customary to set up a time for an audition, but Dill insisted on having her audition immediately—and launched into playing all three characters from As You Like It—Rosalind, Celia and Orlando. She was accepted straightaway; she was 16.
Dill met Kirk Douglas during her first year at acting school, and they began dating the following year. Their backgrounds were very different; Dill had lived a privileged life, while Douglas’ family was poor. He would jokingly refer to her as “Miss-Everything-is-Lovely-Dill”. She called him “Doug”.
In her last year at the Academy, Dill was offered a contract by Warner Brothers studio, and she was whisked to Hollywood, accompanied by her sister, Ruth, who briefly served as her chaperone. Dill soon attracted the interest of actor Errol Flynn, and for a time she lived the Hollywood lifestyle—tennis at the Westside Club and weekend sailings to Catalina Island.
When she was let go by Warner Brothers, Dill successfully auditioned for the role of Tracy Lord, the lead in The Philadelphia Story at the Pasadena Playhouse. She soon made her film debut with a small part in Keeper of the Flame, but not long afterwards she returned to the east coast.
Back in New York, she went on modelling assignments and trained as a nurse’s aide before working briefly in a couple of Manhattan hospitals. One modelling assignment for Life magazine saw her end up on the magazine’s cover. Kirk Douglas saw the magazine, got back in touch— and, after a whirlwind romance, they married in New Orleans in 1943. The marriage produced Academy Award-winning actor and producer, Michael, and Joel, who has worked in the film business on the production side. The couple divorced in 1951.
Dill’s career took off when, post-divorce, she moved back to New York. She got an agent, and was soon working regularly on stage, on television and in film.
While acting in a summer stock production in Ohio, she met actor, producer and novelist Bill Darrid. The couple married in December 1956, and spent their honeymoon at Wild Waves, a cottage at the Dill family’s cottage colony and hotel, Ariel Sands. Together they raised Michael and Joel.
Dill married Donald Albert Webster—an accomplished man who served as Treasury Chief of Staff under U.S. President Richard Nixon—on December 28, 2002, at Old Devonshire Church in Bermuda. Today, the couple live in California. During their marriage, Dill combined her family responsibilities with those of a working actress, appearing regularly on stage and on television, while her husband produced plays and wrote screenplays and novels. They lived in Westport, Connecticut before the demands of show business prompted a move to Sherman Oaks, California. They were regular visitors to Bermuda, particularly for special family occasions. Darrid passed away on July 1, 1992.
Dill continues to act, appearing on television in the hit series, ER, as recently as 2008.
