Ann Dvorak: Hollywood's Forgotten Rebel

Preface

ix Preface When I first encountered Ann Dvorak in the mid-1990s, I’d never have guessed she would become so ingrained in my life. I had checked out a VHS copy of Three on a Match from my local library, expecting only to enjoy a short, snappy, minor pre-Code film with Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis. Instead, I was blindsided by Ann Dvorak’s performance as a society wife who throws away wealth, motherhood, and security for hot sex with Lyle Talbot and a lot of drugs. Her long slide to hell was mesmerizing and her ultimate demise shocking. I was so floored by this actress I had never heard of that when the film ended, I hit the rewind button and watched it again. Ann Dvorak was officially on my radar. Viewings of Scarface and “G” Men soon followed and there she was again, with those large eyes, distinct voice, and mannerisms that seemed contemporary rather than dated. I found myself desperately wanting to know why this beautiful and talented actress had not become a bigger star. This was in the early days of the Internet and I was a clueless twentysomething , so my efforts to find information on Ann or more of her films were fruitless. I gave up quickly, and Ann Dvorak went on the back burner. In the fall of 1997, I was interning at a Beverly Hills talent agency alongside a fellow named Darin, the first classic-film buff I had ever encountered. I felt like an old-movie hack compared to him, and in a desperate attempt to sound like I knew something about obscure 1930s actors, I pulled Ann Dvorak out of my hat. It worked. He was impressed and intrigued by my interest in this actress he was only vaguely familiar with, so Ann ended up forging a lasting bond between us. Darin quickly introduced me to the various movie memorabilia shops that were still around in those days before eBay took off, and I quickly discovered that even though I was a starving college student, I could afford to collect gorgeous vintage posters from Ann’s films. Why? Well, because no one else wanted them. Ann Dvorak was mine to claim if I wanted to—so I did. x Preface Somewhere along the line, I decided to become Ann’s biographer, though it soon became apparent that this was not going to be easy. She retired from the entertainment industry so long ago that most people she worked with are long gone. Those whom I did track down had only hazy memories of working briefly with Ann on forgettable productions. There were no children, no siblings, no close friends to be found, and she outlived her three husbands. There were no personal papers donated to a research institution, and since she spent the last twenty years of her life living in obscurity in Hawaii, she was never interviewed by film scholars in the 1960s and 1970s. I’m not one to believe in spirits or ghosts, but at times I felt as if Ann was continuing to play a role in her story. When two different people gave me large collections of letters written by Ann and her mother, Anna Lehr, it was sheer serendipity. I poured over the 1960s correspondence of these two women, who both wrote in an excited, desperate, breathless fashion, using multiple ellipses to string together sentences describing an action as mundane as feeding the cat. And while these letters sometimes reflected a very troubled side of both, I still felt like I had Ann’s seal of approval on my project. When I was permitted to have my wedding ceremony and reception at Ann’s 1930s San Fernando Valley ranch home, how could I not imagine her smiling down on me? On other occasions, Ann seemed to actively oppose my prying into her life. There are no photos of her third, and last, husband to be found in these pages, because the snapshots that a member of the Wade family mailed to me never showed up. Three weeks after I turned in the final draft of this book to the publisher, I received a cryptic message from a person claiming to have Ann’s personal possessions, including letters, photos, and a journal—items I had dreamed of finding for over a decade. After two frustrating months of haggling, the box arrived on the day my final edit approvals were due. In the eleventh hour...