It’s hard to believe, but it was seven years ago this month that I first launched the first (and still only) Ann Dvorak tribute site. Thanks to everyone over the years who has provided moral support as I make my way through writing Ann’s life story, and to those who have given me whatever info on Ann they have been able to share. Here’s to many more years of celebrating the talents of this amazing actress and to getting the book done (believe me, I want it to be out there just as much as you do)!

Happy Thanksgiving~

-Christina

It’s been a few months since Progress Report #1 and I wish I could say I have a lot of progress to report, but I really don’t. In my defense, I was sidetracked by another ongoing project, and a promotion at work causes me to usually feel like a limp noodle by the time I get home.

I have gotten a tad bit more writing done, so without further ado…

Progress Report #2

I finally finished up Chapter 4, which takes us to mid-1931. Ann is still working at MGM, but is tired of extra-work and dance instruction and wants to actually act in films. The studio has no interest in doing anything else with her, and her pal Joan Crawford can’t even get her better parts. The chapter ends on the eve of Ann landing the role of Cesca in Scarface.

Even if the writing is slow going, the research never ends. As a result of the piece I wrote for Classic Images, a gal who interviewed Ann in New York when she was starring in the Respectful Prostitute contacted me. She didn’t have a tremendous amount of info, but supplied a couple of tidbits I found very interesting. I also got in touch with a lawyer who hung out with Ann and husband #3 in the early 1960s and gave me some great insight about their relationship and Ann’s attitude toward her career at that point.

My battle cry all along had been “once I get to her Warner Bros period, the words will fly off the keyboard!” Well, I am almost there and hope this proves to be true. Thanks to everyone who has been sending me words of encouragement and making it clear that there is a market for a full-length bio of the Divine Miz D.

-Christina

Just in case you could not get your hands on a copy of the July issue of Classic Images, it has now been posted online, including an article I wrote on how I came to be an Ann Dvorak collector and biographer.

My article accompanies Laura Wagner’s monthly BOOK POINTS column and can be found after her reviews under the heading BOOK TALK. Special thanks to Laura for inviting me to contribute this month.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

If you get a chance, check out the July issue of Classic Images Magazine which features a piece I wrote for the “Book Talk” column about Ann Dvorak. It’s basically a brief history of how I first encountered Ann and decided to become her biographer. I also discuss challenges and successes during the research process and what an integral part of my life Ann has become.

Special thanks to Laura Wagner who invited me to write this piece which accompanies her always insightful and often hilarious “Book Points.”

So, for the past few years I have been working on an Ann Dvorak biography. In 1997, I started collecting memorabilia from Ann’s films and at the time thought I should probably write a book.  I did not really get serious about the project until 2002 which is when I launched the previous version of this website and started researching Ann’s life and career in ernest.

Late last year, I finally started writing the book itself which has proven to be a fairly grueling experience. Surrounded by stacks of notes, photocopies, books, magazines, and other assorted documents, I am sometimes reminded of my last semester of grad school when I was holed up in my tiny apartment with only Thelma Kitty and the sound of  Betty Hutton recordings to keep me company as I frantically wrote two lengthy research papers on the fate of the library profession. I do admit that I am not exactly on a deadline and writing about Ann Dvorak is far more interesting than composing twenty pages on library security, but it still requires a certain amount of discipline that I have yet to master. In my defense, I do have a full time job and a husband who wants nothing more than to cuddle up after work and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but at this point I really want to be done with the book.

Over the years, a number of people have contacted me through this website to ask how the book is coming, and I usually feel a bit guilty by my lack of progress. As a motivating factor, I figured I would start posting progress reports which hopefully will shame me into picking up the pace. Without further ado here is the first progress report on the Ann Dvorak biography.

Progress Report #1

At this time, I have written a little over 9,000 words. The first chapter focuses on Ann’s parents who were both vaudvillians and were involved with the early film industry. Since this is probably the only time anyone is going to really explore the careers of Edwin McKim and Anna Lehr, I feel strongly about discussing them in some detail. However, writing about stage performances from a hundred years ago and lost silent films has proven to be challenging and I think I relied too heavily on quoting newspaper reviews, which can quickly become boring. I really struggled with this chapter and will definitely need to go back and rewrite parts of  it.

Ann officially enters the picture in Chapter Two which talks about her early childhood, including the three films she appeared in, and her time spent in New York schools. The next chapter finds Ann living in Southern California with her mom and step dad, attending a private school, and her attempts at launching a journalism career after graduating.

I am now in the middle of the fourth Chapter where Ann has been hired as a chorine by M-G-M, and The Hollywood Revue of 1929 has premiered.  This chapter will continue with her stint as a dancer on the Metro lot and some discussion of her more notable films there, as well as her inability to get the studio to cast her in more substantial roles.

Well, that’s the end of the first progress report. Hard to believe I have been officially writing for a few months, and am only up to 1929. Now that Ann is entering adulthood and I am getting to the part of her life and career that I am familiar with, I should be able to crank her story out a bit faster. Thanks to all of you who have been patiently waiting to read Ann’s story, and for all the encouragement you have given me over the years.

Progress Report #2 to come soon!

A couple months back,  I was selected to be profiled in the “Movie Lovers” issue of Los Angeles Magazine. The writer of the piece, Ed Leibowitz, spent around three hours interviewing me about Ann Dvorak and looking at all my memorabilia. Imagine how thrilled I was to have someone spend hours asking me about Ann Dvorak! I guess being an obsessive lunatic sometimes pays off.

The issue has officially hit the newsstands, and I could not be happier with how it turned out.  Special thanks to Ed for doing Miss Dvorak (and myself) justice, and to photographer Dustin Snipes for taking such an amazing photo. Extra special thanks to Chris Nichols for throwing my name out!

It’s the February 2009 issue with Kate Winslet on the cover. Go check it out!

A few months back, I was one of many Los Angeles Conservancy volunteers interviewed by Turner Classic Movies for a short piece about the many movie palaces in Downtown Los Angeles, and the annual Last Remaining Seats film series.

Mr. Mankiewicz was nice enough to humor me during the interview and asked questions about Ann Dvorak, which I figured would be cut out of the final product (they were). I still has a lot of fun waxing ecstatic about old movie theaters with the Turner crew.

For the sake of making this a Dvorak related post, I successfully pitched Scarface for the 2007 Last Remaining Seats, which played to a sold out crowed at the Alex Theater in Glendale, CA. My posse and I  cheered very loudly when Ann first showed up on screen, which I am sure confused most people in the audience.

I hope you enjoy this mini tour of my city’s movie palaces. By the way, I am the one talking about how cool it would have been to have a grandma get slapped by Joan Crawford on screen.

It’s been almost a year since I got married at Ann Dvorak’s house and since I am feeling a bit sentimental, I thought I would share a few wedding photos and give some background on the property.

Ann Dvorak and her husband, Leslie Fenton, purchased the property in the San Fernando Valley in 1934. Originally a 50 acre walnut ranch, the Fenton’s built a fairly modest home in the middle of the land along with servants quarters, horse stables, a pool house, and a greenhouse. The house and grounds were embellished with European imports and tiles by a local manufacturer called D&M.

Ann and Leslie lived on the ranch for ten years and made a substantial annual profit harvesting walnuts. When the Fentons split up in the fall of 1944, the home was put on the market and sold to crooner Andy Russell and his bride, Della. The Russells lived on the property until 1954 after having sold off the bulk of the acreage in the late 1940s. A music editor at Disney was the third owner of the Dvorak property who sold it to the current owner in 1959.

Ann was photographed on the property quite a bit and you can take a look at some pics on the Candids Page.

Here are a few shots of the wedding which give an idea of how amazing Ann’s home on the ranch is.

So, I just realized today that when I relaunched the site last November, the christina@anndvorak.com email address stopped forwarding to my Gmail. Yes, I thought it was a little odd that I had not heard from other Ann fans for awhile, but apparently not odd enough to look into it. Now, I have around 900, mostly spam, emails to sort through, but it looks like a few admirers of Miss Dvorak have been kind enough to drop me a line.

For those of you who sent me an email sometime in the last six months, my apologies for being so lame, and you will be hearing from me in the next couple of days.

While this website is designed to be all Ann Dvorak all the time, I am going to stray for this one post to promote a side project I have been invited to contribute to.

Richard and Kim are a couple of regular patrons at the library who run the Estouric Bus Adventures around Los Angeles and for the last three years have recruited locals to contribute to The 1947 Project, which is a blog reporting a crime a day in LA on a particular year.

This year, Kim has switched gears and decided to highlight Bunker Hill and was kind enough to invite me along for the ride. For those unaware, Bunker Hill was an elevated area of Downtown Los Angeles that was developed in the 1880s as residential neighborhood with beautiful Victorian mansions. Most of the homes eventually became boarding houses and the area was pretty rundown, though still very interesting, by the 1940s and was used as a filming location for a lot of noir flicks. In the 1950s & 60s, the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) razed the ENTIRE neighborhood  and now it’s the area that forms the Downtown skyline.

A group of us locals have been furiously typing away and I hope you’ll get a chance to check out the contributions, even though they have nothing to do with Ann-D!

I have written about the Castle, Crocker Mansion, Rose Mansion, Hildreth Mansion and Brunson Mansion. Enjoy!

And now back to our regularly scheduled program…