Dorothy Tree was born Dorothy Triebitz in New York. She
appeared in 42 films between 1927 and 1945. In seven of those films, she was uncredited.
In 1944, she made only one film. In
1943, she made two films and was uncredited in both of them. She retired from acting in 1945 to pursue a
career as a writer and returned to acting in 1950 and tried to restart her
career. That year she had an uncredited in A Life of Her Own, two TV spots and small
parts in three other films. The following year, 1951, she appeared in one TV
show and one film.
That same year, she was outed as a communist
by Larry Parks and later confirmed by Ronald Reagan, in May of 1951. Parks
testified that Tree and her husband, screenwriter Michael Uris ran their own
Hollywood cell. Uris didn’t have much a record either. He had only four screen
credits to his name and those were sold between 1936 and 1946. He was,
apparently, mostly a story editor.
Tree left Hollywood for New York to
work as a voice and diction coach and teaching at the Manhattan School of Music.
There is just no evidence that she was blacklisted from what can only be described
as a weak and sporadic career as a professional actor. Again, it is important to
point out that in 1951, Tree was 45 years old and parts for a woman her age
were far and few between.