Year of Ann Dvorak: Day 314

I am going to once again break my loose rule of only posting photos from my personal collection because these are too magnificent. In 1915 a 4-year-old Ann Dvorak was cast in the feature film Ramona directed by Donald Crisp and produced by William H. Clune. It was an epic undertaking and the result was a movie comprised of 10-12 reels. Ann, credited as “Baby Anna Lehr” only appears in the first reel, portraying the title character as a child, and sadly that is not the reel that has survived.

At least we still have these photos, courtesy of Marc Wanamaker and his Bison Archives. For those of you not familiar with Marc, he is an absolute gem of a man and a incredible source for early Hollywood history. I relied on him a few times while trying to piece together “Mama” Anna Lehr’s chronology for the bio. He has been amassing a crazy collection of Hollywood photos for decades for the sole purpose of advocating film scholarship which he has done through his own writings and by allowing his photos to be used in other projects. He sold a large chunk of his collection to the Motion Picture Academy recently, but still retained a big portion of the images and is always working on a new book about local history.

When I first asked Marc if he had any photos from Ramona, I had little hope that he could actually produce. Boy was I wrong! I used the top image in Ann Dvorak: Hollywood’s Forgotten Rebel, which is a cropped close-up of one of the photos below.

I think this final photo looks freakishly like mini-Ann, but the shadows across her face were so pronounced that I thought it wouldn’t produce well in the book, so I went with that top photo.

Thanks again to Marc for giving me the thumbs up to share the images here.

Happy Sunday!

Year of Ann Dvorak: Day 311

Now that the Ann Dvorak bio is finally out, I can start sharing some of the photos from the book which I have been keeping under wraps. Here is a glass lantern slide from the 1917 Triangle feature The Man Hater which is one of three known film appearances she made as a child. Amazingly, an unmistakeable Ann appears on the slide at the age of 6 alongside star Winifred Allen. Unlike in the book, I am able to post the slide in all its hand-tinted color glory.

This was a 2009 eBay purchase and I still cringe at the thought of how much I ended up paying for it. I am actually still surprised that I got into a bidding war over a glass side from a lost and forgotten silent films starring Winifred Allen. At any rate, I think it was worth the money since it got to make an appearance in Ann’s bio.

Year of Ann Dvorak: Day 304

This photo of Ann Dvorak dressed like a bat(?) is the closest thing I have to a Halloween photo of her.

Happy Halloween and be safe out there!

Year of Ann Dvorak: Day 300

Yipes, I have actually made it through 300 consecutive days of blogging about Ann Dvorak. The next 65 should be a breeze (I hope). I am getting ready to take the toddler to a Halloween party, so today is a quickie.

This is a recently acquired photo of Ann Dvorak & Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in Love is a Racket. It’s a beautiful image but what really struck me about the it is that it appears to be un-retouched, which is unusual for studio issued photos. Ann had a mole above her upper left lip, which was almost always air-brushed out of photos and it’s clearly visible.

Yes, after spending the last 15 years with Ann, these are the ridiculous things I notice.

Happy Sunday!

Year of Ann Dvorak: Day 297

I was thrilled to have recently acquired these three photos from the abandoned MGM feature The March of Time, made when Ann Dvorak was still a chorus girl at the studio. The film was supposed to have been the most grandiose of the early 1930s musical revues as is evident in the above image showing the 80 foot high set for the “Lock Step” number featuring the Dodge Sisters and a bevy of dancing jail birds. By the time the film was nearing its 1930 release date, these types of musicals had aggressively fallen out of fashion with audiences so MGM thought it best to scrap The March of Time. They would end up recycling some of the musical numbers in later films.

These are the first three images from The March of Time be added to my collection. The photo directly above came up on eBay around nine years ago and I stopped bidding when it got up to $45. To get it for $10 earlier this month was thrilling indeed! I always assumed Ann would be among the girls in the Native American inspired costumes, and I was bitterly disappointed when I initially did not see her among the group.  Then I was able to breathe a sigh of relief when I spotted her in the bottom left side sporting her teen-aged grin.

The third photo is another spectacular behind the scenes shot of the “Father Time” number on the stairs.

Unfortunately, the two girls costumed like Ann are out of focus, but I think it’s possible the one on the right with her head turned could be our gal (yes, I realize this is hard to make out).

Back to the “Lock Step” photo at the top of the post. I am not 100% certain, but the jail bird on the far left second floor looks more like Ann-D than any of the others.

For a more in-depth look at The March of Time including some clips, check out this fantastic post over at All Talking! All Singing! All Dancing!

Year of Ann Dvorak: Day 296

I took the time to scan some of my cards which is why it’s been a lobby card week, so here are a couple more.

I’ve really grown to love The Private Affairs of Bel Ami, which is George Sanders at his scoundrel best and Ann Dvorak at her most sophisticated. Add to that gorgeous sets and beautiful period costumes, and you end up with lovely lobby cards.

Unfortunately, Ann is only on two of them, but we’ll enjoy them nonetheless.

Year of Ann Dvorak: Day 295

If you couldn’t already tell, I love vintage movie memorabilia. When it comes to Ann Dvorak, I will collect anything that was put out to promote one of her films. Old movie advertising art came in all shapes and sizes, but lobby cards are especially fantastic.

For those of you new to the hobby, lobby cards were issued for just about every feature film (and some shorts) and usually came in sets of eight including a “title card” and seven scene cards. In the 1930s, the images on the cards were usually hand tinted and frequently had attractive border art. The great thing about lobby cards is that they are small (11″x14″) and easy to pop into a frame and display. Because they were printed on a heavy card stock, they tend to stand the test of time really well and are frequently some of the easier pieces of memorabilia to locates.

However, there are always exceptions to every movie memorabilia rule and there are a handful of Ann Dvorak titles that  I have had trouble finding cards on. For a number of years, I had very little on the 1935 Warner Bros. musical Sweet Music. A few years back, these two cards popped up on eBay, and even though they are kind of trashed, they are the only lobby cards I have ever seen from this film and am grateful to have found them.

If memory serves correctly, these cards were used as insulation in a 1930s house and were found during a remodel. While this may sound crazy, it happens more often than you might think and many fantastic collections have been recovered this way.

Year of Ann Dvorak: Day 294

Ann Dvorak only made one film at Paramount during the pre-Code era, which is too bad because the lobby cards from this time period are gorgeous. There’s something about the color tinting and border graphics that just pop out. Here are the two cards I have for the 1933 feature The Way to Love co-starring Maurice Chevalier. The one above of Ann in full biting mode is one of my favorites and I plan on having a blow-up of it on display at the book launch party on November 12th.

Ann is on at least one other card from this set, so fingers crossed that it joins these two in the near future.