DALLAS -- Kim Dawson, whose top Dallas modeling agency
launched the careers of such talents as actresses Angie Harmon,
Janine Turner and Peri Gilpin, has died at the age of 85.
Kim Dawson Agency spokeswoman Dee Ann Vernon says Dawson died of
complications of Alzheimer's disease Thursday night at the Dallas
retirement center where she lived.
According to a biography in The Dallas Morning News, Dawson was
born Marjorie Marie Hughes in the small east Texas town of Center.
She took the name Kim Garrett when she signed with modeling agent
Harry Conover, who ran a top New York modeling agency.
She moved to Dallas in the early 1950s, married
photographer-musician George Dawson, but continued to model. Formed
in 1959, the Kim Dawson Agency remains in Dawson family hands.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
