American actress of the 1920s. Some sources and articles, including some 1925 Standard Casting Directory type lists and the entry for "Get Out and Get Under" in The Harold Lloyd Encyclopedia, spell her name as "Dimmy," but "Dimny" (with an "n") was the spelling she used in both her private and professional lives.
Her parents were Ada Althea (née Heath, 1873-1952) and Paul Phillips (1873-1941), who married in 1896 in Iowa. They split sometime in the 1910s, with Paul remarrying to Pearl Duke Miller (1873-1950) in the 1920s. Virginia/Dimny had one sister, Marrion (Phillips) Anderson (1897-1979). The family moved to California in 1910, where Virginia/Dimny attended Hollywood High School, afterwards embarking on her film career.
She was married twice, first to auto salesman Dave M. Vaughan (1894-1958) on 26 May 1923; Dimny filed for and was granted a divorce in late 1926. On 6 December 1929, she married Joseph Harlan Walton (1898-1956), later a building contractor. They quickly relocated to Walton's hometown of Dubuque, Iowa (Dimny and her family also resided in Iowa, where the parents previously married, for a time after the girls' Minnesota births). There, they welcomed a son, Joseph Harlan Walton, Jr. (1931-2016), but the Walton family soon returned to California. After Joseph, Sr.'s death in 1956, Dimny Lee Walton went into business for herself as an interior decorator; she spent 25 years as an active member of the American Society of Interior Designers. She is buried alongside her husband at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California.
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