British Valentine's postcard in the Famous Film Stars Series, no. 7123 K. Caption: Ann Dvorak, whose maiden name was Ann McKim was born in New York on 2nd August, 1912. She began her stage career in review, took a position as Dancing Instructress and followed by getting parts. Her films include The Crooner, Stranger in TownSky Devils and The Way to Love.
British Valentine's postcard in the Film Stars and their Pets series, no. 5843 N. Photo: Paramount. Caption: Ann Dvorak - This attractive brunette was born in New York on August 2nd, 1912. Her real name is Ann McKim, and she began her screen career as a dancer in The Broadway Melody. As a First National player she has appeared in The Crowd Roars, Love is a Racket, and others. She is seen here with her Sealyham 'Mutt' between scenes of Paramount's The Way to Love.
Scarface
Ann Dvorak was born Anna McKim in New York in 1911. She was the daughter of actress Anna Lehr and director Edwin McKim. She began working at the age of four under the name Baby Ann Lehr for MGM. She was a child actress in three films: Ramona (Donald Crisp, 1916), The Man Hater (Albert Parker, 1917), and the short film The Five Dollar Plate (J. Gordon Cooper, Carl Harbaugh, 1920).
After a gap of several years, Dvorak returned to the sets when sound film set in. In the late 1920s, Dvorak worked as an assistant choreographer to Sammy Lee at MGM and gradually began to appear on film uncredited usually as a chorus girl or in bit parts. In 1929-1931 she did over thirty uncredited parts in early sound films such as the Ramon Novarro vehicles Devil-May-Care (Sidney Franklin, 1929) and Son of India (Jacques Feyder, 1931). Her first credited part was in a MGM musical short titled The Snappy Caballero (Jack Cummings, 1931), with Paul Ellis and Conchita Montenegro.
Her friend, actress Karen Morley, introduced her to billionaire movie producer Howard Hughes, who turned her from a dancer into a leading actress. First, she starred in the aviation comedy Sky Devils (1932) with Spencer Tracy and George Cooper, which reused some aerial footage from Hughes' Hell's Angels (Howard Hughes, Edmund Goulding, James Whale, 1930). Dvorak immediately got the female lead in the film. Yet, it was Hughes' next film for his company Caddo film, the gangster movie Scarface (1932) by Howard Hawks, that turned both Paul Muni and Dvorak into international stars.
At Warner Bros., Hawks recast her as The Other Woman opposite Joan Blondell in the motor-racing drama The Crowd Roars (Howard Hawks, 1932), starring James Cagney. From then on, Dvorak became a Warner star. She starred in several pre-code - often quite rough - dramas such as The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (Michael Curtiz, 1932), Love is a Racket (William Wellman, 1932), Stranger in Town (Erle Kenton, 1932), Crooner (Lloyd Bacon, 1932), Three on a Match (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932), The Way to Love (Norman Taurog, 1933), etc.
At age 19, Dvorak eloped with Leslie Fenton, her English co-star from The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (Michael Curtiz, 1932). They married and left for a year-long honeymoon despite her contractual obligations to the studio. This led to a period of litigation and pay disputes during which she discovered she was making the same amount of money as the boy who played her son in Three on a Match (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932). While less active in 1933, Dvorak was in seven more films in 1934, always produced by Warner/First National. In 1935, Paul Muni and Ann Dvorak were reunited in Dr. Socrates by William Dieterle, about a small-town doctor dragged into helping a notorious robber. The film was advertised as 'The Scarface of Medicine'.
British postcard by Film Weekly, London, no. 2.
Vintage collector card. Photo: Eagle Lion. Ann Dvorak in Out of the Blue (Leigh Jason, 1947).
Ambulance driver
Ann Dvorak completed her Warner Bros contract on permanent suspension. Occasionally, she also played at other companies such as 20th Century Artists, RKO and Republic, and in particular several films in the late 1930s at Columbia, but most of her films of the 1930s were at Warner and its affiliate company First National, such as the Perry Mason detective The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (William Clemens, 1937), in which she played secretary Della Street to Donald Woods' Perry Mason.
When Dvorak finally finished her Warner contract, she started freelancing. Offers were less frequent and scripts more modest. After only one film in 1936, she still did five in 1937, but afterwards just a few each year. Charles Vidor directed her at Paramount in She's No Lady (1937) and at Columbia in Blind Alley (1939). During WWII, Dvorak and her husband Leslie Fenton, went to Great Britain where she worked as an ambulance driver. Fenton also directed her in his films films Stronger Than Desire (Leslie Fenton, 1940) and There's a Future in It (Leslie Fenton, 1943), made at British sections of Warner and RKO. Dvorak's marriage to Fenton ended in divorce in 1946.
After the war, she continued to act in films but less frequently than before. She appeared as a saloon singer in the Western Abilene Town (Edwin L. Marin, 1946) with Randolph Scott and Edgar Buchanan. She was one of the leading actresses in Albert Lewin's The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947), starring George Sanders. Dvorak adeptly handled comedy by giving an assured performance in the screwball comedy Out of the Blue (Leigh Jason, 1947). In 1947, she married Igor Dega, a Russian dancer who danced with her briefly in the comedy The Bachelor's Daughters (Andrew L. Stone, 1946). The marriage ended two years later.
In 1948, Dvorak gave her only performance on Broadway in 'The Respectful Prostitute' (La Putain respectueuse), a French play by Jean-Paul Sartre, written in 1946. The play observes a white woman, a prostitute, caught up in a racially tense period of American history. Sartre's play is believed to have been based on the infamous Scottsboro case, in which two white prostitutes accused nine black teenagers of rape on a train travelling through Alabama in 1931. Dvorak was the female star of The Return of Jesse James (Arthur Hilton, 1950) and I Was an American Spy (Lesley Selander, 1951). She had also supporting parts in other films. In 1950-1952 she worked on five TV series.
Ann Dvorak retired in 1952. In 1951 she wed for the third time, to Nicholas Wade. In 1959, she and her husband moved to Hawaii, which she had always loved. They remained married until he died in 1975. She died in 1979 in Honolulu of stomach cancer, at the age of 68. The actress's body was later cremated and her ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean from Waikiki Beach. She had no children. All in all, Ann Dvorak acted in 95 films and TV series. A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is dedicated to her.
Italian postcard in the '100 Artisti del Cinema' series by Edizione ELAH 'La Casa delle caramelle', no. 43. Photo: Warner Bros. Ann Dvorak in La vittima sommersa, the Italian release title for The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (William Clemens, 1937).
British Milton postcard. Photo: Warner Bros / Vitaphone.
Vintage postcard, no. 950. Photo: Eagle Lion. Ann Dvorak in Out of the Blue (Leigh Jason, 1947).
Sources: Wikipedia (Italian and English) and IMDb.
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