Year of Ann Dvorak: Day 235

Last week, I confessed to what I feel is my biggest shortcoming as a biographer which is my less than stellar interview skills. However, there are two people who I suspect may have been  foolproof when being asked questions about Ann Dvorak. Unfortunately, I was not able to interview either one of them.

Karen Morley was a close friend of Ann’s in the 1930s when they were both under contract to MGM. Even though Morley was getting ingenue rolls and seemed to have a bright future, she has no problems rubbing elbows with Ann who was a chorus girl which some on the lot considered a lowly position. Karen even tried to help Ann get better roles, and it was she who introduced Ann to Howard Hawks which lead to Ann getting cast in Scarface.

Since the pair had been such good friends and Karen played such a pivotal role in Ann’s life, she probably would have had some wonderful insight. However, she passed away in 2003 and I was not able to speak with her. While it is disappointing , at least I do not feel guilty because I did in fact try to contact her. Sometime around 2000 she appeared at a screening of Dinner at Eight. At the time, I wasn’t too knowledgeable about Ann and did not put two and two together. Once the light bulb went of in 2002, I called the theater and got the name of her “manager” and left numerous messages that were never returned. I still see this guy around town and secretly shoot daggers into the back of his head.  I also tried sending her a letter, but that came back as un-deliverable.  At least I tried, and there was a newspaper interview with her from the late 1990s that I was able to quote, so that’s something.

The other person I did not interview is what I consider my biggest failing. It’s been my deep dark secret up until now, and I wasn’t even sure if I should admit it. Howard Fenton was Ann’s brother-in-law from her first marriage. Even though the union dissolved in the mid 1940s, Ann stayed in touch with Howard until she died.

Now, I first conceived of writing an Ann Dvorak bio back in 1998, but did not start seriously researching until around 2002. Even then, I was in grad school and working full time, so Ann was there but not a top priority. I recall one night, maybe around 2003-2004, when I was up late trying to work on homework, though mainly avoiding it. I knew Leslie Fenton (hubby #1) had passed away in Santa Barbara. I also knew he had a brother named Howard. A quick search on White Pages .com for “Fenton” and “Santa Barbara” turned up a listed for Howard Fenton. Did I jump for joy and place a call the next day? Nope. I thought, “Naw, it couldn’t be,” and moved onto the next thing to distract me from my “History of Books” course.

Flash forward to 2006, and I am having tea and cucumber sandwiches with the owner of Ann & Leslie’s Encino ranch home. We’re talking about Ann, and he says, “You know who should talk to? Howard Fenton, who last I heard was in Santa Barbara.” Howard had actually visited the property on a couple of occasions and exchanged letters with him.  The first thing I did was feel like an idiot for not jumping on this lead years before, and the second thing I did was look Howard up – to discover that he has passed away less than two months earlier. I immediately wrote a letter to his widow and received a response from her caretaker stating that Mrs. Fenton was too incapacitated to speak with me.

Perhaps Howard was also in a bad state when I first looked him up online, but I don’t know for sure because I didn’t try. He knew Ann Dvorak for close to 50 years and was quite fond of her, and for some reason I didn’t try to contact him when I had a chance. It’s probably my biggest regret about this book. He did write an article about Ann and Leslie, and I do have the letters her wrote later on which reference Ann, so at least I do have that. However, my supreme loathing of cold calling people is probably what thwarted me in the end, and because of that, I more than likely missed out.

Then again, maybe he would have told me to buzz off. I like to think so, because it makes me feel better about the one that got away.

Year of Ann Dvorak: Day 228

Today is Ann Blyth’s Summer Under the Stars day over at Turner Classic Movies. As many of you are aware, Ms. Blyth is alive and well and even made an appearance at the TCM Film Festival back in April. Before you ask – no, she is not interviewed in Ann Dvorak: Hollywood’s Forgotten Rebel. 

Mind you, that’s not from a lack of trying. I wrote her a couple of letters that were not returned, so I assume they made it to their destination. No answer. About five years ago, I was volunteering at a screening of Mildred Pierce for the annual Last Remaining Seats series where Blyth’s daughter and grandchildren were in attendance. I accosted the poor woman in her seat and begged her to have mom get in touch with me. Had the aisles at the Million Dollar Theatre not been so narrow, I would have gladly gotten on my knees to emphasize my desperation. The daughter was lovely and receptive, but I still never heard from Blyth.

Even if Ann Blyth had contacted me, I probably would not have gotten much out of her. I am a fantastic researcher and a decent writer, which I feel confident in saying are two strengths of the book. However, I am a lousy interviewer, which was my main failing during this process. Locating people who were still alive and worked with Ann was hard enough, but trying to extract information about a person they worked with 50+ years ago in an insignificant film with minimal screen time – damn near impossible, for me at least.

I did get in contact with a handful of people, including Virginia Mayo, Hugh O’Brien, and Jane Wyatt. They didn’t have much to say other than Ann was lovely and very professional. It never occurred to me to send them a copy of the film to refresh their memory.  Had I done that, Joan Leslie may not have looked at me like an idiot when I asked her about Flowers for John, the teleplay she an Ann appeared in sometime in the early 1950s.

In all honesty, I just flat out hate contacting people for interviews. I always felt like I was being intrusive and people were not always receptive. I tracked down the daughter of a couple who were caretakers on Ann and Leslie Fenton’s ranch. I figured she would be thrilled to hear from me. Instead, she had her husband email me to say she knew nothing about it and wasn’t interested. It didn’t help that I contacted her while she was planning her own daughter’s traditional Chinese wedding. You see? Intrusive.

Still, I sucked it up and tried to get a hold of people. Angela Lansbury never responded.  Neither did one of Igor Dega’s (husband #2) dance partners. I was thrilled to find Herbert Rawlinson’s 90-something-year-old daughter was still around, as he seemed to be a friend of Ann and her mother. No response. I became so desperate to find people who knew Ann that I placed an ad in the Los Angeles Times. That resulted in a bunch of collect calls from county jail inmates, and one repeat caller whose messages were so obscene they made our unflappable friend Tony blush.

The best recollections I was able to pull out of people were actually from non-actors, including a gentleman who corresponded with Ann in the 1960s and spent an *interesting* evening with Ann and her mother, and another who knew Ann in Hawaii at the end of her life.

Don’t get me wrong, the book still turned out great and the primary source documents I was able to access are, in my opinion,  far more valuable than vague, decades old recollections. But this aspect of biography writing is why I’ll probably never undertake a project of this nature again.

Year of Ann Dvorak: Day 219

Yesterday, I briefly tapped into how my chosen profession of librarianship lead to my Ann Dvorak book having a finely crafted index. As I was writing that post, I started to think about how being a librarian aided my Ann-D research in general.

I first conceived of writing a book on Ann back in 1997 or ’98 and for the next few years, my research mainly consisted of collecting memorabilia on Ann and her films. I started researching in earnest around 2003, after I enrolled in graduate school to earn my MLIS and had learned some of the finer points of information retrieval. Once I actually became a librarian in 2005, the research really took off and didn’t slow down until last year as I was finishing up the writing.

There are a few obvious reasons why being a librarian can be an advantage. It’s my job to know where to find information and to provide access to it. The library I work at subscribes to databases with digitized historical newspapers, genealogical information, biographical resources, and Sanborn Maps, all of which I used extensively while researching Ann, but I became familiar with these resources because it’s what  I am paid to do. I am also supposed to know about “traditional” research sources like print indexes and what neighboring institutions have relevant collections.

Being a librarian in the know is great, but I was also at an extreme advantage because I work at Central Library which has deep collections relating to Los Angeles history. Before I ever worked there, a regular patron would come in and pull microfilm for every Los Angeles area newspaper, of which there were many in the 1920s-1950s. This fella would look at every issue and create indexes of films actors which he then sold to researchers. Amazingly, he compiled an index on Ann Dvorak, which a friend of mine had and gave me a copy of. When I first saw it, I had no clue what the cryptic abbreviations stood for. EHE, LAX, HCN, LAR meant nothing to me, so I filed this index away. It took me about two days of working at Central Library to realize I had a key to unlock the contents of the Evening Herald and Express, Los Angeles Examiner, Hollywood Citizen News, and Los Angeles Record – newspapers from Ann’s time which still have not been digitized. For the first six months I worked At Central, I spent every lunch hour on the microfilm machines, looking at each and every last entry in that index, which is something I may not have taken the time to do otherwise.

Working at a place with amazing collections also afforded me the ability to wander up to the Literature Department where the biographies of film actors are (don’t ask) and just browse, looking for books on Ann’s co-stars. If I found a reference indexed in Google books, but not scanned, I could usually find the actual book in our collections. I once spent my lunch breaks for a few weeks browsing the Highland Park Herald newspaper, just because Ann went to private school there. I found a couple of useful things doing that. Accessing old periodicals for film reviews – not a problem. Figure out a new lead? The materials were usually at my fingertips. In need of images of Ann fighting Warner Bros. in court or getting a divorce? Bingo! I am fairly certain that if I did not have such easy access to all these materials, I would not have dug so deep.

Another advantage to being a librarian is that if there was something I did not know, there was usually a colleague who did. A librarian in the department with the legal collection helped me dig up a case relating to Ann and her third husband which went to the California Court of Appeals. He also helped me figure out the whereabouts of their lawyer who I contacted and interviewed for the book. Another librarian in the Business Department helped me get the filing documents for a company Ann and her third husband ran. Had I not worked with these talented people, I may not have even known these materials existed.

Then there are all the fantastic people I came across while working at a public desk. It was a patron who turned me on to Scrivener, the software I used to write the Dvorak book, which was a vital tool. Another fellow posted about Ann on a message board on my behalf, which led to the discovery that a British short she made during the War still existed. One of the editors of Los Angeles Magazine  regularly taps into our librarian brains for various stories. When they put together a cinema issue, he was impressed enough with my Ann Dvorak obsession that Ann and I got the double page spread posted above, which is probably the best photo that will ever be taken of me.

While being a librarian enabled me to do a hell of a lot of deep Ann Dvorak research, I also owe a debt to Ann. The amount of research I have done to uncover the life of Ann and her parents has in turn made me an excellent librarian.

Year of Ann Dvorak: Day 170

I am not sure how long it’s been there, but someone recently notified me that Ann Dvorak: Hollywood’s Forgotten Rebel is now showing up for pre-order on the Turner Classic Movies website. I have to say, this really makes me feel like a legitimate classic film biographer.

Also, I was contacted by two separate places in the Chicago area for screenings/book signings. After 15 years, this is all becoming quite real!

Year of Ann Dvorak: Day 155

Me & D after scoring big at a London movie memorabilia show in 2005.

If it weren’t for Darin Barnes, there would be no Ann Dvorak book.

No, Darin didn’t know Ann and doesn’t have any particular connection to her. However, without him, I would have never even thought of writing a book on Ann.

I met Darin back in the fall of 1997. I was majoring in film as an undergrad and entering my last semester, so I needed to find an internship. I was interviewed by Darin at a Beverly Hill talent agency where he was the assistant. The interview was pretty routine until he asked me what I wanted to do for a living. At the time I was toying with film preservation as a career and said so, adding that I loved old movies. The interview abruptly ended with Darin asking when I could start. I had never landed a job so easy and thought it seemed a bit strange, but I was happy to have an  internship and didn’t think twice about it.

As it turned out, Darin was a classic film buff – the likes of which I had never seen. I knew a thing or two about old Hollywood, but compared to Darin I was a hack. I quickly realized I was offered the position because I had said I love old movies and after working there a couple of weeks, felt like I was a disappointment. I was fine when it came to the tasks of the job, but when carrying on a conversation about 1930s Hollywood, I totally fell short – at least that’s how I felt. I should also mention I was unreasonably insecure at that age.

One day, I was feeling particularly desperate to impress Darin with my film knowledge and blurted out, “You know who I love, but just can’t find anything on – Ann Dvorak.”And this was true. I had seen her in 3 movies and was fascinated by her, but had not been able to find anything else. Immediately, I had stumped and impressed him. Ann had come though for me.

The next time I walked into the office, he handed me a still of Ann from Three on a Match. Darin was also a movie memorabilia collector and had been collecting on Norma Shearer since he was a teenager. Anyone who has been collecting long enough knows that you end up with a bunch of stuff you don’t actually want, which is why he had this photo of Ann and Warren William. I was amazed to own an actual piece of 1930s ephemera from an Ann Dvorak film, and soon learned the photo was barely the tip of the iceberg. This was in the pioneering days of eBay, so there were still a handful of memorabilia shops around town. On our lunch break, we would hit the shops and I soon realized I could collect, not only photos, but lobby cards and large posters. Because of Darin, I officially became an Ann Dvorak collector.

Amazingly, days after making my Dvorak confession to Darin, TCM actually did a tribute to her and spent an evening airing some of her movies. Darin recorded them all and when we weren’t trolling for posters, we were having Ann Dvorak Theatre on our lunch breaks and after the office closed. During those fall months, we totally bonded over Ann’s films. I remember us shrieking with outrage when she went blonde in Molly Louvain and watching all of A Life of Her Own, hoping Ann’s character survived the jump out a hi-rise building and would re-appear. Darin was also the one who introduced me to the Margaret Herrick Library whose clipping file started to give me an idea of who Ann Dvorak was off screen. It was during these months that I first contemplated writing her biography – something I would have never dreamed of had Darin not brought me into this world.

During these subsequent 15+ years, Darin has been along for the Ann Dvorak ride. We’ve traveled to London, Brussels, Amsterdam, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Columbus in search of Ann. He came with me to Hawaii, not to lay out in the sun, but to sit with me in the Honolulu City Archives and behind microfilm readers at the public library, along with trolling random antique shops hoping to find Ann’s personal possessions. He endured multiple trips and countless hours at the L.A. Recorder’s Office in Norwalk and the Downtown courthouse, all in the name of finding every last shred of documentation on Ann. When I first visited Ann’s Encino ranch home, where I would ultimately be married, Darin was with me. It was Darin who ended up brokering the recent deal to buy Ann’s  personal belongings when I was at my wit’s end.

I may not have met Darin because of Ann, but I can thank her for forging one of my most cherished and lasting friendships. I can thank them both for impacting my life in a most excellent way.