Ann Dvorak: Hollywood's Forgotten Rebel

1. Vaudeville Days

7 1 Vaudeville Days The actress known to movie audiences as Ann Dvorak was born as the less exotic-sounding Anna McKim. Unlike many aspiring starlets who journeyed to Hollywood from small towns and humble beginnings, Ann Dvorak was born amid the hustle and bustle of Manhattan. At the time of her birth in 1911, New York City was the country’s epicenter of live entertainment and a burgeoning film industry. This was the exciting and unpredictable world into which her vaudevillian parents brought her. Dvorak’s father did not play a prominent role in her life—he was completely absent from it from her early childhood into her twenties. Depending on what newspaper you read in 1934 when father and daughter were reunited, his name was either Edward, Samuel, or Edwin McKim. His given name was in fact Samuel, but he later opted to go by Edwin S. McKim. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in October 1869 to John McKim, a Scot by birth who had emigrated from Ireland, and Margaret Keasey, a Keystone State native who was born around 1843 and was a year younger than her husband. Ann Dvorak would later claim she was a direct descendent of Vice President John Caldwell Calhoun, but this seems untrue. Three of Dvorak’s grandparents were immigrants, so the only connection to Calhoun would be through her paternal grandmother . Margaret Keasey’s parents were also natives of Pennsylvania, whereas Calhoun’s children and grandchildren were all born in the South. If there is some sort of distant connection to the southern politician, that link is not “direct,” as Dvorak liked to claim. When John met Margaret in the mid-1860s, she was a widow who, unable to support financially more than herself, had been forced to place two daughters in an orphanage. The couple was able to get one child, Annie, out of the orphanage, but the other girl had already been adopted. Alexander and Edwin were the first two children born to the McKims, Ann Dvorak 8 followed by John Jr., Ellen, Wilson, Blanche, Walter, Alice, and Cora. John McKim supported his ever-growing family mostly by working as a millwright, though for a time he was employed by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Nineteenth-century Pittsburgh was a thriving city due to the coal and steel industries, and all the McKim boys eventually contributed to the family purse by finding work as laborers—except Edwin. Exhibiting a more genteel nature than the rest of the McKim men, he instead sought out office jobs, including a clerk position with the B&O Railroad and another at the local courthouse. He moved his way up to become the superintendent of sewers, working at Pittsburgh’s city hall, and appeared to have a promising future in local government. This potential career was cut short when Edwin discovered the theater. He made an early stage appearance in November 1889 as a member of the Curry School of Elocution and Dramatic Culture, which presented a “very creditable rendering” of Damon and Pythias.1 While still working Ann’s father, Edwin S. McKim, who could have risen up the ranks of Pittsburgh government but opted for acting instead. Vaudeville Days 9 in Pittsburgh government, Edwin pursued his interest in the theater, putting on local productions to benefit charities.2 McKim would frequently recruit family members to appear in his productions, including sister Cora, who was a trained dancer. In 1904 Edwin left city hall forever and became a full-time actor, joining a traveling company in a production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night starring celebrated actress Marie Wainwright. The tour lasted for over a year, as the troupe performed in cities across the country. Most reviewers reserved their praise for the popular Miss Wainwright, though some applauded the supporting male cast: “Orsino the duke of Illyria, master of Viola, was well interpreted by Edwin McKim.”3 Following the yearlong tour, McKim moved to New York, and by the end of 1905 he was starring in a production of the melodrama When the World Sleeps at the Star Theater in East Harlem. The New York Dramatic Mirror found McKim to be a “manly chap” with a smile that “is winning and worth cultivating.”4 On Saturday afternoons, a small group of students from a nearby private school attended matinees at the Star Theater. McKim, then in his mid-thirties, became smitten with one of the visiting...