Ann Dvorak: Hollywood's Forgotten Rebel

Epilogue

303 Epilogue After her retirement in 1952, Ann Dvorak was worried her contribution to cinema would be quickly forgotten. To a certain degree this did happen in the ensuing years as she fell into the ranks of actors whose names would elicit a blank stare or only the vaguest hint of recollection. Part of the reason this happened no doubt can be attributed to the “What have you done lately?” attitude of the film industry, which was prevalent even back when Ann’s mother was making films. Another possible reason for Ann’s quick fade into obscurity was her own reclusiveness and ultimate relocation to Hawaii, which caused her to be out of sight and mind. The unavailability of her films is yet another culprit. Some of Ann’s most potent performances came during the pre-Code era. The enforcement of the Code starting in 1934 not only watered down the types of roles available to actresses of the era but also caused many films to be hidden for decades. Editing movies like Three on a Match and The Strange Love of Molly Louvain to gain PCA approval for reissues was an impossible task, so titles like these were left to collect dust in studio vaults indefinitely. The emerging field of film scholarship in the 1960s fostered a strong interest in the films of Howard Hawks, which could have shone a bit of a light on Ann Dvorak as Cesca in Scarface, arguably her most important film and performance . However, the classic gangster film not only faced ongoing censorship issues, it was also a victim of its producer, Howard Hughes. The millionaire had grown increasingly eccentric as the years wore on, and at one point he pulled Scarface completely out of circulation. The film remained unavailable until it was officially rereleased in 1979—ironically, the year of Ann’s death. However, even if film scholars had been introduced to Ann via Scarface in the 1960s and 1970s, it’s difficult to tell how receptive she would have been had anyone sought her out in Hawaii for comment. But although Ann did become relatively obscure, she was not completely forgotten. For comedian Lenny Bruce, she was “the woman across the water” in a routine about Warner Bros. films, and author Gore Vidal Ann Dvorak 304 paid homage to Ann in his novel Myra Breckenridge; he writes of a character , “She was thrilling, every inch of her a great actress on the order of Frances Dee or Ann Dvorak.”1 Occasionally, a film writer would scratch the surface of Ann’s story, like Doug McClelland in his piece “Ann Dvorak: The Underground Goddess” for Film Fan Monthly magazine in 1969 or James Robert Parish’s chapter on Ann in his 1978 volume Hollywood Players: The Thirties. More recently, Ann Dvorak received a closer look from Laura Wagner in the 2004 book Killer Tomatoes: Fifteen Tough Film Dames. Aside from these few writers, however, it seemed likely that Ann Dvorak would eventually fade away permanently, known only to the most ardent classic film fan. Then home video came about, and with it an accessibility to films never before seen by audiences born long after Hollywood’s golden age. Starting in the 1990s, pre-Code films, which had been buried in studio vaults for decades, began being released for home consumption, and new generations of fans have been discovering Ann Dvorak. Three on a Match, ignored in its day, has become a quintessential pre-Code film, and Vivian Revere is recognized as an emblematic character of this era. Ann’s performances in early gems like Scarface, Heat Lightning, and “G” Men have garnered her a steady stream of new admirers, and later roles in titles like A Life of Her Own and Our Very Own still make viewers take notice. The year 2002 saw the launching of a website devoted exclusively to Ann, and Turner Classic Movies honored her in 2011 with twenty-four hours of programming in its annual “Summer under the Stars” festival. Ann Dvorak will never be a household name, like her contemporary Bette Davis, but she has developed a devoted following in recent years that continues to grow as more of her films become available and word about her spreads online. The question that remains is could Ann Dvorak have risen to the star caliber of fellow Warner Bros. player Bette Davis had she played the studio game, if only for a little while? There is probably no real answer...