AllMovie

One of extravagant stage impresario Florenz Ziegfeld's less glorified girls, blonde, blue-eyed Diana Allen followed two seasons of the famous Follies and Ziegfeld's rather disastrous attempt at straight musical comedy, Miss 1917, with a leading role in Maurice Tourneur's allegorical Woman (1918). It was the beginning of a rather inauspicious film career mainly spent on Poverty Row. Never much of an actress, the Swedish-born, American-reared Allen was usually applauded for her beauty, although at least one eagle-eyed reviewer of 1920's Heliotrope recognized her as a an erstwhile "Follies" girl -- "a little past the school-girl age of the role assigned to her." She was rather more appropriately cast as the lead in Salome (1923), a quickie production made to compete with Alla Nazimova's famous starring vehicle of the same name. "Salome with bobbed hair and a Broadway glide!" sniggered Variety's Sime Silverman. It was Allen's final starring role and she left films the following year.