Chili Williams was a 1940s model and actress known as The Polka-Dot Girl
She born Marian Sorenson on December 18, 1921 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her father, John Sorenson, was an automobile salesman. When she was a child she loved singing, dancing, and playing baseball. After graduating from Marshall high school in 1939 she moved to New York City to become a model. Agent Harry Conover signed her and decided to change her name. In the Fall of 1943 a photo of Chili wearing a polka-dot bikini appeared in Life magazine. Over the next few months she received more than 350,000 fan letters and several dozen marriage proposals from strangers. With curvaceous measurements of 35-24-35 she quickly became one of the most popular pin-up girls in the country. The press nicknamed her "The Polka-Dot Girl" and she was almost always photographed in polka-dots. Chili was a natural blonde and kept her figure by drinking milk. She landed a movie contract at RKO and made her film debut in the 1944 comedy Heavenly Days.
Then she got small parts in Having Wonderful Crime, Johnny Angel, and Copacabana. Chili went on a USO tour with Carole Landis and started her own line of polka-dot clothing. The blonde beauty appeared on numerous magazine covers including See and Coronet. Ginger Rogers became her close friend and mentor. Meanwhile her romances with Rory Calhoun and Jack Carson kept her name in the gossip columns.Unfortunately when she posed for pin-up artist Earl Moran she ended up in the center of a scandal. Earl's wife claimed that she found her husband and Chili romping naked in his studio. She denied doing anything wrong and said she had never taken her clothes off. Despite her claims that she never posed nude she was named one the best "undressed" women in the world. Chili tried to change her image by dying her hair brunette and refusing to wear more polka-dots She made headlines again in 1950 when she was caught breaking into her ex-boyfriend's apartment.
Although she appeared in more than a dozen films she never became a major star. Her final acting role in the 1952 film Captive Women. In January of 1953 she married Hugh Bayne, a thirty-one year old business executive, in Las Vegas. Their marriage lasted less than a year. While singing in the church choir she met John Uhlman. Chili married John in 1954 and decided to retire from show business. She told reporters she would never be known as "Chili Williams" again. The couple moved to Las Vegas where they opened a successful dress shop. They had two children together and lived happily away from the spotlight. During a 1970 interview she said "I dove into that whirlwind career head-first and now, looking back, I really thank God there were angels around my shoulders." On October 17, 2003 she passed away from natural causes in Los Angeles. Chili was eighty-one years old. She was buried at Westminster Memorial Park in Westminster, California
