Ann Dvorak Shows Up in the Darndest Places – A Junk Shop in Vegas

Year of Ann Dvorak: Day 231

I haven’t updated my log lately, (yes, I keep a log of all the Ann Dvorak items in my collection) but at last count I own over 1,100 photos of Ann-D. Some images are favorites just because they are beautiful or unusual. Others because of the circumstances under which I found them.

This photo of Ann in Our Very Own falls under that latter category. I found it in the bottom of a box at a junk shop in Las Vegas around eight or nine years ago. If I am remembering correctly, my friend Darin and I had made the trip because Virginia Mayo was appearing at a paper show. We were able to spend a few minutes with her, though her strongest recollection of Out of the Blue, the film she made with Ann, was that “it wasn’t much of a picture.” Neither one of us are much for drinking or gambling (though Darin can sure clean up at that Wheel of Fortune slot machine) so when we’re in town we usually hit the antique shops. We were at a particularly junkie shop with piles of paper all arounf when I started digging in a box and found this photo at the bottom of it. “Hey look!” I exclaimed to Darin, “Ann Dvorak!” He was not impressed.

It’s really not that great a photo, but it is one of the few I have from this film and has a much better story than “I bought it on eBay.”

One Comment

  1. Scott August 19, 2013

    There are dozens and dozens of stories that have passed into the realm of “Hollywood Legend”. Some of which can’t actually be proved, one way or the other. Some others of which, however, are so good that you find yourself wanting them to be true.

    One such story, at least for me, involves the aforementioned Virginia Mayo.

    It seems that at around the same time Virginia appeared with Ann in “Out Of The Blue”, the Sultan of Morocco proclaimed Virginia’s beauty was such that it was proof of the existence of God.

    Which might, in some ways, be the apotheosis of the power of motion pictures during the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’.

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