Her modeling career reached its zenith during the 1950s, when she appeared on the covers of dozens of magazines and in advertisements and movie and television roles.
(Models did not have exclusive cosmetic company contracts until Lauren Hutton and Karen Graham in the early 1970s).
A song that The Beatles wrote for her, though not released on record, appeared in their 1970 documentary film Let It Be, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Score.
[2] Elizabeth believed she was undergoing menopause, but then discovered she was several months pregnant with her youngest child, Cecilia ("Suzy").
In 1944, Dorian worked as an advertising copy writer when a coworker encouraged her to go to the Conover Modeling Agency.
Dorian became one of the top models in the world,[citation needed] among the first small group of supermodels, which included Lisa Fonssagrives, Dovima, Barbara Goalen and Bettina Graziani.
She worked also non-stop for Vogue, Revlon, Hertz, Westinghouse, Max Factor, Bliss, DuPont, Simplicity, Smirnoff, and Ronson shavers, to name a few.
She also was on the covers of about 70 magazines around the world, including Vogue, Elle, Life, Look, Redbook, Paris Match and McCall's.
After being introduced to, and taught photography by, war photographer Robert Capa, Parker was briefly listed as a member of Magnum Photos.
Her other films include: Ten North Frederick (1958), The Best of Everything (1959), A Circle of Deception (1960 - during which she met future husband Bradford Dillman), Flight from Ashiya (1964) and Chamber of Horrors (1966).
In 1950, she and her high-school sweetheart, Ronald Staton (some sources cite Charles), drove to Georgia to secretly marry.
Parker said that she married him in a bikini with a raincoat on top, adding, "He was very good-looking, and it [the marriage] was just a sheer disaster.
"[12] The young couple drove back to Florida where she was still living with her parents who were upset because of her age and because Ronald was part Cherokee.
Parker was already modeling in the United States and Europe while Ronald was attending the University of Pennsylvania as a freshman.
Parker met journalist Pierre de la Salle (Pitou, born July 12, 1925) at a Jacques Fath party outside of Paris.
Parker was hospitalized, with broken bones and embedded glass, but with her face untouched, under the name Mrs. Pierre de la Salle.
A March 14, 1977, People magazine article featured Parker trying to launch her then 17-year-old daughter Georgia as a model.
The family lived in Bel Air, Los Angeles, until Dinah was bitten by a rattlesnake in the yard and almost died.
In 1964, she was nervously rehearsing for her famous appearance in the well-known The Twilight Zone episode "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" when she was in another car accident.