Dana Delany Pays Tribute to Her ‘Undying Friendship’ with Late Actress Arleen Sorkin (Exclusive)

Actress Arleen Sorkin died of multiple sclerosis last month at the age of 67. Here, her close friend and fellow actress Dana Delany remembers Sorkin in her own words.

Arleen Sorkin and I became close friends in our 20s because we shared a lover. Well, he and I weren’t seeing each other anymore, but he wanted me to meet this new woman he was crazy about. She was brilliant and performed with the comedy group The High Heeled Women. The first thing I noticed about Arleen was her killer body. And then you hear Guys and dolls voice, followed by one-line lines. Only later do you learn about loyalty, impossible wisdom and sacrificial generosity. The boyfriend didn’t last, but our eternal friendship did.

Arleen Sorkin, ‘Days of Our Lives’ actress and voice of Harley Quinn, dies at 67

Yes, the world will rightly remember Arleen as Calliope Jones in the Days of our lives. She brought sass and humor to a genre that is not very well known. But watch it on YouTube. There’s a pathos and yearning in Calliope that rivals any Judy Holliday performance. Watch her break your heart as Harlequin’s court jester days. Because of this, her friend from Emerson College, Paul Dini, created Harley Quinn in her image.

Harleen “Harley” Quinn is now part of DC Batman canon. It feels like she’s always been around, but she was the original Arleen Sorkin, fathered by Paul Dini. The roots go even deeper, to Dr. Irving Sorkin, MD Arleen’s father was a successful dentist in Washington DC, but he always dreamed of show business. As a boy he idolized beautiful movie stars, none more so than the silent goddess Billie Dove. From the age of 10, Irv wrote Billie letters and sent gifts and miraculously, she responded.

David Livingston/Getty, Warner Bros. / Courtesy: Everett Collection

The dentist had no doubt at all that his charming daughter would become an actress and one day meet Billie Dove in Hollywood. Arleen took tap and singing lessons because that’s what the stars of the 1920s did. She knew how to crack jokes better than any assistant. When we met in New York, I became Barbara Stanwyck to my Joan Blondell.

But Arleen was more than that. She was smart and had an analytical mind like all good comics. She could take a joke apart and put it back together. People don’t remember that she was a co-author Perfect picturestarring Jennifer Aniston in 1997. Or she created her own comedy series Set on fire that same year. It was also when she fulfilled one of her father’s many dreams.

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At the age of 79, Irving thought he was too old to meet Miss Dove. He didn’t want to spoil any of their (undoubtedly) romantic fantasies. But at his urging, Arleen made a phone call to his idol. One day she and I drove up to Rancho Mirage and had a tuna salad lunch with Billie Dove at her home at Thunder Bird Country Club. The 1950s ranch house on the golf course was full of memorabilia and photos of the silent screen beauty with her many fans. We heard the story of how Howard Hughes paid his husband a million dollars to give up his wife. “And that was a lot of money in those days,” said Billie modestly. And she posed gracefully in a Spanish hat sent to her by Irving. When Billie died later that year at the age of 94, Arleen and I attended a memorial service at Forrest Lawn. It was small, but the longtime president of the Billie Dove Fan Club was in attendance, who of course remembered Irv.

Arleen Sorkin 2011

Joe Cohen/WireImage

Ever since childhood, Irving has been a man with a million and one (truly) great ideas. Arleen’s final gift to her father was an inexorable development of a story he had read in the Washingtonian. It became Something the Lord created, starring Alan Rickman and Yasiin Bey. In 2004, Dr./Producer Irving Sorkin won an Emmy for Best Picture and a Peabody Award. His daughter did not take the loan.

Before MS slowed her down, Arleen’s last passion project was a documentary Bhutto, about the assassinated Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Arleen fought hard for it because she felt it was an important story about democracy in the post-9/11 world. She won her own Peabody Award in 2011.

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But I think Arleen would say her greatest creations are her sons, Eli and Owen. Like her father, Arleen was not your ordinary mother. No one looked better in a bikini when she was pregnant. She was delighted when both boys wanted to learn tap. And instead of bedtime stories, they would tell a bedtime joke. It’s no surprise that Eli is a comedy writer and Owen is an actor.

The last time I saw Arleen this summer, I was helping her set up the TCM app so she could watch from her bed. For 35 years we have had a standing meeting to watch the Oscars together. Caviar and champagne. No one else was allowed to join us because they talk too much. Next year I will be very sad to watch alone, but I will raise a glass to Billie, Irving and my beautiful friend Arleen.

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Source: HIS Education