Joel McCrea Westerns Collection
Ann Dvorak - 8/9
Ann Dvorak was born Anna McKim in New York City August 2, 1911 into a motion picture family. Her father was Edwin Samuel McKim, who had been a silent film director at the Lubin and Biograph Studios, and her mother, Anna Lehr, was a silent film actress who made at least 40 films starting in 1912, most famously as the Virgin Mary in the 1928 film Jesus of Nazareth. Dvorak made her film debut at the age of four under the name "Baby Anna Lehr" in the film Ramona (1916), directed by Donald Crisp.
The McKims separated in 1919 and divorced in 1920. Dvorak didn't see her father until 1934 when she sent out an appeal to the press, trying to find him. He was living as an orange grower in Fort Pierce, Florida. When they reunited in Hollywood, he told the newspapers, "It was back in 1919. I was in Cuba with Ann and her mother making a film there for the old Biograph Company. We quarreled and decided to separate. The following year we were divorced in Philadelphia. Ann went with her mother. I remember her as a little girl of eight with curls hanging down her back. I never knew a thing about her being in the films. I never went to the movies. But I remember seeing Ann's picture in the newspapers often. But I never recognized her."
After the divorce, Dvorak and her mother went to Hollywood. The publicity machine in the entertainment business being 90% invention and 10% truth, and with no published biography of Ann Dvorak to date, it's difficult to know the truth about Dvorak's early life (although www.anndvorak.com web site owner and memorabilia collector Christina Rice is working on an upcoming biography). At various times, she is said to have been a journalism major at Occidental College and a cub reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Dvorak was reported to have gone to Hollywood High, but there are no records to support this. What is known is that she worked at MGM for two years as a choreographer's assistant to Sammy Lee, at first using her mother's name of Anna Lehr and then later changing her name to Ann Devorak. At MGM, she became friends with Joan Crawford, who supposedly tried to influence the studio to give her film roles. The best role Dvorak got at MGM was appearing as a chorus girl in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929).
In 1931, director Howard Hawks supposedly saw Dvorak at a party and tried to convince George Raft to dance with her. Raft wasn't interested and Dvorak began to dance in front of him, swinging her hips back and forth seductively, trying to convince him. It worked. Hawks, who was in pre-production on Scarface (1932) knew he had the right girl to play Cesca Camonte, the doomed sister of gangster Paul Muni. Hawks needed to get Dvorak from MGM, which didn't seem too difficult, as he later remembered, "Ann Dvorak was a chorus girl at Metro-Goldwyn. I knew the vice-president at Metro, and I asked him if I couldn't borrow her. He said sure. I said, 'I don't mean just borrow her and then you get her back. I want her after this is over.' He said OK." When Dvorak signed her contract with Hawks' Caddo Company, she signed it "D'Vorak" but the name was finalized as Dvorak. In an interview with Literary Digest, she explained the pronunciation of her name, "My name is properly pronounced vor'shack. The D remains silent. I have had quite a time with the name, having been called practically everything from Balzac to Bickelsrock."
Ann Dvorak had a smash hit with Scarface and it led to her contract being purchased by Warner Bros who immediately threw her into a heavy schedule of films, including one of her best, Three on a Match (1932) with Bette Davis and Joan Blondell. Other films in 1932 included Crooner and The Crowd Roars. The original casting for The Crowd Roars had Dvorak assigned to play Eric Linden's girlfriend and Joan Blondell to play James Cagney's. Knowing the roles were wrong for them, the two women approached director Howard Hawks, with Blondell saying "I can't play a neurotic," and Dvorak saying, "I can't play an ingénue." They asked to have their parts switched, which they were, with Howard Hawks' approval.
In July of 1932, she married British actor/director Leslie Fenton, who she had met on the set of The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (1932) and left on her honeymoon without giving notice to the studio. There have been reports that she left because she discovered that her salary, $250 a week, was the same as the child actor earned who played her son in Three on a Match. En route to Europe, she told the press, "I don't want to go back to Hollywood if I can help it. I want to go back to the stage. The trouble with Hollywood is everybody is crazy for money. The producers are trying to make pictures cheaper and faster. They do not realize the public is becoming more critical, and can see the cheapness." Biographer Christina Rice, who has researched Dvorak's life extensively, said in an interview, "[I]t's more complicated than that. In less than a year, she had made eight movies, had gone from unknown chorus girl to 'Hollywood's New Cinderella,' as the press liked to call her, and had gotten married to a man she had only known for a couple of months. When her husband, actor Leslie Fenton, got the opportunity to film a movie in Germany, he decided it was a perfect chance to show his exhausted and overwhelmed bride the world, despite her contractual obligations. Two weeks before the Fentons took off, the deal between Warner Bros. and Howard Hughes for the purchase of Dvorak's contract was finalized, and Ann's agent saw her departure as a way to gain leverage in negotiating her new Warner deal. The agent encouraged Ann to skip town and probably advised her to go to the press with her salary woes, which were not very effective in the midst of the Depression, resulting in a mild media backlash. When she finally returned to Los Angeles eight months later, her new contract included a raise in pay, but Warner Bros. ceased promoting a 'star' career for her and were just trying to make some kind of return on their $40,000 investment, which is what they paid Howard Hughes."
By angering Warner Bros., Dvorak in effect derailed her career permanently. Had she waited a year or two before making salary demands, it would have been more successful and her career might have rivaled that of Bette Davis. Instead, Dvorak made some enemies at the studio (although they were supposedly ordered by Jack Warner to treat her the same way when she returned from her trip and to leave all salary negotiations to him, personally) and served out her contract with Warner Bros. without the same star build-up she had been given. For the rest of her career, she would work as a freelancer. While their business relationship might have gone awry, Dvorak seems to have stayed on cordial terms with Jack Warner, even writing to him when she was in England during the war. Warner, in his autobiography, expressed regret that events had gone the way they had.
With World War Two brewing, Fenton and Dvorak left for England in 1939, where Fenton became a commander on a British PT boat in the English Channel and was wounded in the commando raid on the port of St. Nazaire. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by King George VI. Dvorak made arrangements for the upkeep of their 40-acre walnut ranch in the San Fernando Valley and took the next boat to England, where she enlisted in the M.T.C. (Mechanized Transport Corps.) as an ambulance driver, working under heavy fire during the London Blitz and touring service camps, entertaining the troops. She also made a few films in England, including This Was Paris (1942), co-starring Ben Lyon, at the Warner Bros. Teddington Studios.
The Fentons returned to the United States in 1944 and after getting their home back in order, Dvorak went to work in westerns such as Flame of the Barbary Coast (1945) and Abilene Town (1946), and even appeared on Broadway in 1948 but she was still stuck in supporting roles and "B" pictures.
The Fentons separated in 1944 and divorced about a year later. Dvorak would then marry Russian dancer Igor Dega briefly and then, a final marriage with Nicholas Wade, who she married at her retirement from films in 1951. Dvorak spent her last years in films that may not have been at the level of her early Warner Bros. pictures, but did give her a chance to showcase her talent, as in her own personal favorite, I Was an American Spy (1951), based on the true story of a nightclub singer in the Philippines who is discovered to be a spy by the Japanese and tortured. In preparation, Dvorak struck up a friendship with Clare Phillips, the real-life model for her character and worked hard to bring realism to her role. Her final film was The Secret of Convict Lake (1951), a crime drama starring Glenn Ford and Gene Tierney.
Dvorak made several appearances on television in 1951 and 1952, including The Broadway Television Theater and The Celanese Theater. Her final performance was on The Ken Murray Show in 1952. Off-screen Dvorak was a voracious reader, and collected old manuscripts and books. She was also interested in horticulture and bacteriology, as well as songwriting and poetry. She and her husband tried to start a television production company in Hawaii, which failed, ran a chemical company for a while, and traveled. The marriage, her longest, although supposedly unhappy, lasted until Wade's death in 1975. Ann Dvorak remained in Hawaii where she developed stomach cancer and died on December 10, 1979. According to the newspaper reports at the time, her death was not reported until two weeks later because she had been going by her married name of Ann McKim Wade. Ann Dvorak left behind no survivors, but she did leave some stellar performances on film and the lasting regret of her audience that her career took a wrong turn. Her talent, so evident on screen, should have made her a major star.
by Lorraine LoBianco
Sources: Soares, Andre "Ann Dvorak: Q&A with Biographer/Collector Christina Rice" Alt Film Guide http://www.altfg.com
Boggs, Johnny D. Jesse James and the Movies
Hagen, Ray and Wagner, Laura Killer Tomatoes: Fifteen Tough Film Dames
Higham, Charles Howard Hughes: The Secret Life
Hopper, Hedda "Leslie Fenton and Ann Dvorak Rebuilding Lives After 'Doing Bit'" The Miami News 13 Aug 44
Kennedy, Matthew Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes
"McKim is Surprised Ann Dvorak is Lost Daughter" Lewiston Daily Sun Feb 34
McBride, Joseph Hawks on Hawks
Rice, Christina http://www.anndvorak.com
http://anndvorak.com/cms/Portraits/?directory=MGM¤tPic=2
The McKims separated in 1919 and divorced in 1920. Dvorak didn't see her father until 1934 when she sent out an appeal to the press, trying to find him. He was living as an orange grower in Fort Pierce, Florida. When they reunited in Hollywood, he told the newspapers, "It was back in 1919. I was in Cuba with Ann and her mother making a film there for the old Biograph Company. We quarreled and decided to separate. The following year we were divorced in Philadelphia. Ann went with her mother. I remember her as a little girl of eight with curls hanging down her back. I never knew a thing about her being in the films. I never went to the movies. But I remember seeing Ann's picture in the newspapers often. But I never recognized her."
After the divorce, Dvorak and her mother went to Hollywood. The publicity machine in the entertainment business being 90% invention and 10% truth, and with no published biography of Ann Dvorak to date, it's difficult to know the truth about Dvorak's early life (although www.anndvorak.com web site owner and memorabilia collector Christina Rice is working on an upcoming biography). At various times, she is said to have been a journalism major at Occidental College and a cub reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Dvorak was reported to have gone to Hollywood High, but there are no records to support this. What is known is that she worked at MGM for two years as a choreographer's assistant to Sammy Lee, at first using her mother's name of Anna Lehr and then later changing her name to Ann Devorak. At MGM, she became friends with Joan Crawford, who supposedly tried to influence the studio to give her film roles. The best role Dvorak got at MGM was appearing as a chorus girl in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929).
In 1931, director Howard Hawks supposedly saw Dvorak at a party and tried to convince George Raft to dance with her. Raft wasn't interested and Dvorak began to dance in front of him, swinging her hips back and forth seductively, trying to convince him. It worked. Hawks, who was in pre-production on Scarface (1932) knew he had the right girl to play Cesca Camonte, the doomed sister of gangster Paul Muni. Hawks needed to get Dvorak from MGM, which didn't seem too difficult, as he later remembered, "Ann Dvorak was a chorus girl at Metro-Goldwyn. I knew the vice-president at Metro, and I asked him if I couldn't borrow her. He said sure. I said, 'I don't mean just borrow her and then you get her back. I want her after this is over.' He said OK." When Dvorak signed her contract with Hawks' Caddo Company, she signed it "D'Vorak" but the name was finalized as Dvorak. In an interview with Literary Digest, she explained the pronunciation of her name, "My name is properly pronounced vor'shack. The D remains silent. I have had quite a time with the name, having been called practically everything from Balzac to Bickelsrock."
Ann Dvorak had a smash hit with Scarface and it led to her contract being purchased by Warner Bros who immediately threw her into a heavy schedule of films, including one of her best, Three on a Match (1932) with Bette Davis and Joan Blondell. Other films in 1932 included Crooner and The Crowd Roars. The original casting for The Crowd Roars had Dvorak assigned to play Eric Linden's girlfriend and Joan Blondell to play James Cagney's. Knowing the roles were wrong for them, the two women approached director Howard Hawks, with Blondell saying "I can't play a neurotic," and Dvorak saying, "I can't play an ingénue." They asked to have their parts switched, which they were, with Howard Hawks' approval.
In July of 1932, she married British actor/director Leslie Fenton, who she had met on the set of The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (1932) and left on her honeymoon without giving notice to the studio. There have been reports that she left because she discovered that her salary, $250 a week, was the same as the child actor earned who played her son in Three on a Match. En route to Europe, she told the press, "I don't want to go back to Hollywood if I can help it. I want to go back to the stage. The trouble with Hollywood is everybody is crazy for money. The producers are trying to make pictures cheaper and faster. They do not realize the public is becoming more critical, and can see the cheapness." Biographer Christina Rice, who has researched Dvorak's life extensively, said in an interview, "[I]t's more complicated than that. In less than a year, she had made eight movies, had gone from unknown chorus girl to 'Hollywood's New Cinderella,' as the press liked to call her, and had gotten married to a man she had only known for a couple of months. When her husband, actor Leslie Fenton, got the opportunity to film a movie in Germany, he decided it was a perfect chance to show his exhausted and overwhelmed bride the world, despite her contractual obligations. Two weeks before the Fentons took off, the deal between Warner Bros. and Howard Hughes for the purchase of Dvorak's contract was finalized, and Ann's agent saw her departure as a way to gain leverage in negotiating her new Warner deal. The agent encouraged Ann to skip town and probably advised her to go to the press with her salary woes, which were not very effective in the midst of the Depression, resulting in a mild media backlash. When she finally returned to Los Angeles eight months later, her new contract included a raise in pay, but Warner Bros. ceased promoting a 'star' career for her and were just trying to make some kind of return on their $40,000 investment, which is what they paid Howard Hughes."
By angering Warner Bros., Dvorak in effect derailed her career permanently. Had she waited a year or two before making salary demands, it would have been more successful and her career might have rivaled that of Bette Davis. Instead, Dvorak made some enemies at the studio (although they were supposedly ordered by Jack Warner to treat her the same way when she returned from her trip and to leave all salary negotiations to him, personally) and served out her contract with Warner Bros. without the same star build-up she had been given. For the rest of her career, she would work as a freelancer. While their business relationship might have gone awry, Dvorak seems to have stayed on cordial terms with Jack Warner, even writing to him when she was in England during the war. Warner, in his autobiography, expressed regret that events had gone the way they had.
With World War Two brewing, Fenton and Dvorak left for England in 1939, where Fenton became a commander on a British PT boat in the English Channel and was wounded in the commando raid on the port of St. Nazaire. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by King George VI. Dvorak made arrangements for the upkeep of their 40-acre walnut ranch in the San Fernando Valley and took the next boat to England, where she enlisted in the M.T.C. (Mechanized Transport Corps.) as an ambulance driver, working under heavy fire during the London Blitz and touring service camps, entertaining the troops. She also made a few films in England, including This Was Paris (1942), co-starring Ben Lyon, at the Warner Bros. Teddington Studios.
The Fentons returned to the United States in 1944 and after getting their home back in order, Dvorak went to work in westerns such as Flame of the Barbary Coast (1945) and Abilene Town (1946), and even appeared on Broadway in 1948 but she was still stuck in supporting roles and "B" pictures.
The Fentons separated in 1944 and divorced about a year later. Dvorak would then marry Russian dancer Igor Dega briefly and then, a final marriage with Nicholas Wade, who she married at her retirement from films in 1951. Dvorak spent her last years in films that may not have been at the level of her early Warner Bros. pictures, but did give her a chance to showcase her talent, as in her own personal favorite, I Was an American Spy (1951), based on the true story of a nightclub singer in the Philippines who is discovered to be a spy by the Japanese and tortured. In preparation, Dvorak struck up a friendship with Clare Phillips, the real-life model for her character and worked hard to bring realism to her role. Her final film was The Secret of Convict Lake (1951), a crime drama starring Glenn Ford and Gene Tierney.
Dvorak made several appearances on television in 1951 and 1952, including The Broadway Television Theater and The Celanese Theater. Her final performance was on The Ken Murray Show in 1952. Off-screen Dvorak was a voracious reader, and collected old manuscripts and books. She was also interested in horticulture and bacteriology, as well as songwriting and poetry. She and her husband tried to start a television production company in Hawaii, which failed, ran a chemical company for a while, and traveled. The marriage, her longest, although supposedly unhappy, lasted until Wade's death in 1975. Ann Dvorak remained in Hawaii where she developed stomach cancer and died on December 10, 1979. According to the newspaper reports at the time, her death was not reported until two weeks later because she had been going by her married name of Ann McKim Wade. Ann Dvorak left behind no survivors, but she did leave some stellar performances on film and the lasting regret of her audience that her career took a wrong turn. Her talent, so evident on screen, should have made her a major star.
by Lorraine LoBianco
Sources: Soares, Andre "Ann Dvorak: Q&A with Biographer/Collector Christina Rice" Alt Film Guide http://www.altfg.com
Boggs, Johnny D. Jesse James and the Movies
Hagen, Ray and Wagner, Laura Killer Tomatoes: Fifteen Tough Film Dames
Higham, Charles Howard Hughes: The Secret Life
Hopper, Hedda "Leslie Fenton and Ann Dvorak Rebuilding Lives After 'Doing Bit'" The Miami News 13 Aug 44
Kennedy, Matthew Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes
"McKim is Surprised Ann Dvorak is Lost Daughter" Lewiston Daily Sun Feb 34
McBride, Joseph Hawks on Hawks
Rice, Christina http://www.anndvorak.com
http://anndvorak.com/cms/Portraits/?directory=MGM¤tPic=2
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