In 1932, Ann Dvorak was poised for stardom... What happened? Let's find out. If you enjoyed this video, I highly recommend Christina Rice's book Ann Dvorak: Hollywood's Forgotten Rebel. It's a 5/5-star biography. You can purchase it here: amzn.to/4cUKHB1. Also, be sure to check out Rice's website: www.anndvorak.com. For fans of Joan Blondell, you must read Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes by Matthew Kennedy. You can find it here: amzn.to/4efFjtE. Films: You can watch Sky Devils for free here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9ScCM64mhio.html. Scarface is available on an affordable DVD version from Universal. It doesn't have a lot of extras or bells and whistles, but you can't beat the price: amzn.to/3XdbFhD. For an edition loaded with extras, check out the Criterion edition: amzn.to/3MAat32. The Crowd Roars: amzn.to/3Xiqn76. The Strange Love of Molly Louvain is available to watch for free here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9w8t1Czkp4I.html and for purchase here: amzn.to/4egruLt. Unfortunately, Three on a Match is not available on a stand-alone DVD. It is included as part of the Forbidden Hollywood Collection, but it's quite expensive. I'd suggest finding a used copy, as they are usually more reasonably priced: amzn.to/3XjqmzN. Love is a Racket is available on DVD: amzn.to/4e4F2tu. Selected Articles: A Holiday Bonanza from Hughes Vault: www.newspapers.com/article/the-los-angeles-times-holiday-bonanza-fr/152251335/ Ann Dvorak LA Times Obituary: www.newspapers.com/article/the-los-angeles-times-ann-dvorak-obit/152258266/ Scarface Uncovers Stars: www.newspapers.com/article/fort-worth-star-telegram-scarface-stars/151873714/ Leslie Fenton Slated Now To Settle Down: www.newspapers.com/article/evening-express/154570332/ Ann Dvorak Is Missing With Film Waiting: www.newspapers.com/article/oakland-tribune-ann-dvorak-is-missing-w/151872692/ Ann Dvorak Thinks Film Career is Bunk: www.newspapers.com/article/the-times-ann-dvorak/151873293/ Ann Dvorak Walks Out in Scrap Over Salary: www.newspapers.com/article/the-minneapolis-journal/154568940/ Ann Dvorak Is Ambitious to Extreme: www.newspapers.com/article/hartford-courant/154698274/ If you love classic films and smart, entertaining deep dive stories about classic Hollywood subscribe to the free cinema cities newsletter 📰screenspectator.substack.com?sd=pf If you're loving these videos consider supporting the channel at: ☕www.buymeacoffee.com/cinemacities ⭐ patreon.com/CinemaCities Members get lots of great extras! I hang out on Twitter so come on over and say hi! 😀Twitter: twitter.com/cities1978 ✉Email: CinemaCities1978@gmail.com 🎵Like the music? Find my playlist with the music I've used here: share.epidemicsound.com/l84tue/?playlist=lnvbuebspkgzdtj2g5veg8o96estg9ks And, if you sign up to Epidemic Sound through the playlist link, you'll get 1 month for free! Disclosure: This video description may contain affiliate links and referral codes, which means I may receive a commission or referral bonus for purchases or sign-ups made through my links. I am a participant in multiple affiliate and referral programs, including Amazon and Epidemic Sound.
Watching right now, then I'll read all that. Lol. Thank you so much, I do appreciate and love the research and work you do to produce these amazing little films filled with gold nugget history and facts. ❤
I remember looking up Ann Dvorak’s work after seeing Scarface. I looked for a biography and was recommended the book by Christina Rice. The librarian who recommended it was proud to inform me that Ms. Rice was also a librarian. I purchased a precode video set so that I could watch Ann Dvorak in Three on a Match - she was such an intense and amazing actress.
I always thought 1951s I was an American spy was Ann's last film, not secret of convict lake. Also , gotta say that Ann was a great talent and incredible beauty.
I’ve always loved Ann Dvorak ! She was so real and brought tears to my eyes. Thank you for sharing her stories. You speak so clearly that even with my bad hearing I understood every word.
Riveting, well-researched and totally engaging. This is the first in-depht biography and retrospective in RU-vid about the (sadly) nearly forgotten Ann Dvorak. We movie lovers cannot thank you enough for this felt and sincere homage to the most wonderful and sensitive actress of the golden era of Hollywood.
Thank you so much for your kind words! It was truly an honor to spotlight Ann, and your book played such an important role in shaping my understanding of her. My hope was that, if you ever stumbled across this video, you’d feel that it did Ann Dvorak justice.
If feels like Ann Dvorak fell into the gray area of actresses like Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer that effectively gave up their careers once the Hays Code was enforced in earnest and others that moved forward and did the best with what women's roles would become in the enforcement era. It feels like her self-imposed hiatus came at exactly the worst time; effectively trying to re-capture her momentum with what would, generally speaking, become less complicated, less interesting, and less impactful roles. Thank you for another quality deep dive into Hollywood's golden age; I love how much I learn from watching your presentations!
Love her, love her, love her! Next to Ella Raines, the most beautiful eyes in Hollywood history. Great video and great tribute to beautiful and talented Ann Dvorak.
Very pleased for this video as I wondered why Ann Dvorak who had as much glamour and grit as Crawford/Davis, seemed to drift away inside riding the waves to stardom. A great admirer of her as Ann never disappoints.
Ann was terrific in Three On A Match! A classic film! She needed to confront the studio face to face as you point out. Also, I loved your comment about glycerine tears. Crawford definitely had no need for that.
Thank you so much! I always preferred Ann Dvorak and Sylvia Sidney, and they never got the credit of a Bette Davis. Dvorak was Warner's answer to MGM's Joan Crawford. I also like the 1932 "Scarface" a lot more than the Al Pacino version. Muni wasn't so cartoonish to me as Pacino.
I was blown away when I saw Ann Dvorak in Scarface. For me, she has the kind of vitality that flashes from the screen, so much so that it's hard to concentrate on the other actors. I couldn't figure out why I hadn't seen her in more movies. Thanks for an informative, if sad, look at her too-brief career.
What a surprise knockout! I thought this was going to be a nice puff piece about how Scarface (1932) is great, but it goes so much deeper. A deep dive into what blocked a star, and an unblocking! Ann Dvorak rules! Cinema Cities rules! Hip hip!!!!!!!!! So happy to have seen this! How do we contribute?
I was JUST thinking about you yesterday! And not only did you post a day later, you posted about an actress I feel is underrated, from my favorite era of classic film! Cheers 🍾🍾
Well done. I knew nothing of Ann and enjoyed this career bio. You covered the era very well making her a part of her times, in context with that time. Thanks!
Wonderful discussion of one of the early Hollywood greats! Very good biography! There are many more performers who truly deserve your excellent analysis! Please do one of my favorites, Kay Francis!
Wow. Fascinating to see the breadth of an actor. Having always enjoyed older black & white movies. Your channel is amazing to me. So very many movies I have never seen. Truly an amazing channel.
This is such high quality and so deep I feel like I'm going to have to watch it multiple times to get every bit of goodness from it. I came to be interested in Ann Dvorak a couple of years ago and I can only wish we'd had more of those quality performances of her early years. Thanks for the video essay!
I remember watching this Scarface after I had watched the Al Pacino Scarface many times in the 90s or so on TCM. I remember being impressed and entertained by Paul Muni but his role was so big its all I remember now, I'll have to check it out again. Thanks for the Hollywood video!
O! For years I admired Ann Dvorak as a Slavic beauty. This narrator even pronounces her surname correctly : "Dvor-zhak" (but no mention of her childhood). Kim Novak, tho, is Czech-American.
@@samp.8099 Her mom was Austrian with more distant Czech heritage, though. Most Austrians are part Czech if you go back. There’s a saying that “everyone in Vienna has a Czech grandmother.
So glad to see another of your exceptionally well produced offerings about one of my favorite ladies. I wonder however why you did not mention her absolutely hilarious and brilliant comedic role in the 1947 Eagle-Lion film "Out of the Blue" (screwball comedy). She stole every scene she was in, .... even when she was passed out !! She should have had a best supporting actress Oscar nomination for that one. She displayed a real talent for comedy !! It was just on TCM. I'm sure it's available for viewing if you search it.
Thank you for making this video about the totally underrated and wonderful Ann Dvorak! I thought she was fabulous in Scarface and Three on a Match I'm surprised she didn't become a bigger star as she was the whole package but the timing of her elopement didn't do her any favours at all. I'm so glad she hasn't been forgotten.
Thank you for this very gripping documentary about a truly talented and charismatic actress. I'd seen some of Ann's films and loved her performances and always wondered why she wasn't as prolific or as well-known as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and others. It seems that maybe some slight flaw in her character, combined with the studio system's inflexibility, held her back from completely fulfilling her potential but, nevertheless, what she left us is priceless. I'm British, so she has my gratitude for staying in England during WW2 and giving so much to the war effort.
Like others, I wish we didn't have to wait so long between videos, but these new, longer documentaries are worth the wait. You've done it again with this fascinating tribute to Ann Dvorak!
Outstanding work on your video! Bette Davis credited Ann Dvorak for her fight with Jack Warner for better roles by going on suspension, a tactic that served Olivia de Havilland and all actors well.
Really informative piece on yet another promising talent whose potential was less than fully realized. I’m relatively ignorant regarding pre code Hollywood so it was really interesting to be introduced to Ann Dvorak’s career. Great episode. Looking forward to the next one.
This was great! A wonderful start. I think her career as a character actress was far more interesting. She had great comic talent that Warmers would have never brought out.
Yet another superb retrospective and this time about one of my favorite actresses. I really don't know what to say, I have always enjoyed your RU-vid presentations and I am always impressed by the high level of production quality and content excellence. Your channel is in my top five very favorite RU-vid channels.
Great to see you here again! My first Ann Dvorak film was Our Very Own, when I was in junior high! Those few minutes with Ann Blyth really will break your heart. Sadly. I lost my VHS copy, but I hope to find a better copy one day. It's a pretty gut wrenching film. Three On A Match just stands out there on its own, maybe like the lesser G Men - she is what you remember, a raw nerve.. She just takes you into her own orbit for a while. I suppose the writung helps a little too in the fase if Match. I finally saw Scarface about ten years ago. She's a woefully underaporeciated talent. I had no idea she was a chorus girl! Excellent dancer.! It's also always a little trippy to see Osgood Perkins in his only screen role. I had no idea who he was the first time, but I went back, and I see these little mannerisms and tics. Even his voice is similar to his son, Anthony. I'm glad to see your exploration of the Pre Code era! Not everyone covers it so well.
I tried to find a good copy of Our Very Own and it's not available anywhere. It's so unfortunate and frustrating that so many films just aren't making it DVD. You can't even get a stand alone copy of Three on a Match, you have to buy it in an overpriced set. I agree about Osgood Perkins. When you really pay attention to him you see a lot of Anthony.
Excellent! Ann should've been at Bette Davis level, in terms of acting/ star prowess, well into the 1940s and '50s. She'd have been an amazing character actress later in life. She was the best part of George Cukor's 1948 A Life of her Own as the ill-fated former model. Ty for this vid. Ann remains my #1 1930s era crush. ❤👍
Another wonderful video!! We need a Joan Blondell video!!! FWIW Lenny Bruce name-checks Dvorak in one of his early bits (not sure which one, I'm afraid, but i can hear him in my head saying "anne de-vore-ack" clear as day). He was a huge movie buff - especially the B-movie stuff we like to see on this channel. See "Father Flotski's Triumph" for an example, and, of course, "Thank You, masked Man"
What a phenomenal video! You analyze and reveal beautifully. And 3 On A Match is great. Bette was perfect for her role, on that you and I do not agree. She's got a style that is unmatched a nervous sub-current that is exciting.
One of her last films, A Life Of Her Own, though in it briefly, she made the most of it, giving a powerful performance to essentially a stock, tragic character. I wished she had more scenes, but her influence on Lana Turner’s character haunts the film and helped give more depth to Lana’s performance. You thought of Ann off and on throughout the film. I highly recommend the it, and with each viewing, you’ll notice little bits of plot and character you missed before. And it’s directed by George Cukor, an actress’s (and actor’s) director.
This is a truly fascinating video about an actress who is not particularly well remembered. Perhaps it’s a cautionary tale, on one has a right to be a star. If Ann Dvorak had not left Warners for an extended trip to Europe she may very well have had the rest of the precode era to develop her star power and she may have been in a better position to transition into other type of roles the way Bette Davis did. There was a strong element of stubbornness in her character as there was in Bette’s personality but unlike Bette she didn’t time her rebellion well, she didn’t want until she was too massive an asset to the studio to drop. The choice of Dvorak was not a great one, few people could pronounce it and it wasn’t her real name but l enjoyed watching her story.
The great Ann Dvorak has the distinction of being driven to defenestration in not one, but two movies. In "Three on a Match" she ends it all out a window to save her son from kidnappers. With only 9 minutes of screen time as an aging alcoholic model in "A Life of her Own,", she steals the picture from the star, Lana Turner (as an unlikely model ), when out of sheer despair takes another dive.
I really appreciate all the work that went into this and it was very well done, but I am surprised that, when mentioning her later movies, you did not include her role as a tragic "aging" model in the 1950 move with Lana Turner, A Life of Her Own. Despite her her short time on the screen, in every scene she actually makes Lana Turner look boring.
Sidelight question: Am I missing some twisted and strange Hollywood wink or reference to the idea of "strange love"? Molly Louvain, Martha Ivers, Doctor Strangelove? Are there more?
This is just my opinion, so disagree with me if you like. What Dvorak lacked that Davis, Crawford and even Blondell had in spades was that elusive quality (coined in the 1920s) known as "it". Can't even define it, but you know when you are in its presence. I'm not talking about sexuality or even talent or ambition. It was something else.
*I've only gotten about eleven minutes through this video, but am still confused as to why Ann Dvorak, who was born in New York as Anna McKim, took on an acting name that was almost impossible for Anglophones to pronounce correctly; i.e. Ann Dvořák, the same as the Czech composer. Was there a plan at some time to promote her as an exotic European temptress, such as the Swede Greta Garbo or the German Marlene Dietrich? I know that Samuel Goldwyn tried, unsuccessfully, to do this with the Ukrainian-born Anna Sten--but that her career fizzled anyway.*
Always liked her movies, one of her later films, a life of her own, with Lana Turner, is worth watching. It's almost autobiographical, Ann plays a Star on the down side of her career. Lana is the rising star. Also thought G men was a very good film, Cagney, Barton McClain, Margaret Lindsey. Would like to see a video on Margaret Lindsey, like this.
Brava Ann Dvorak! For incredible talent, the guts to put personal happiness before professional avarice, and maybe most importantly, for her in-the-thick-of-The-Blitz brave contribution to the war effort in WW II.* Ann seemed to have had great range in both overt and nuanced physical and vocal acting, expressively and adroitly placed. Not too much, not too little. A ham sandwich she was not!! I hope she had a wonderful life in Hawaii. [*My own adorable father was a US Army Lt., a medic on Omaha Beach on D-Day and survivor of raising two not-fluffy daughters in the 50s, 60s & 70s... one had to look very closely to see that nervous tick he developed by his left eye as a result of that latter accomplishment.🤣]
thank you this review of one of Ms Dvorak. I have seen almost all of her earlier films except for the two you have linked in the description. I'll be off to one of those now, if you don't mind. 08:02 the *manufactured* public fascination with the gangsters, bootleggers and the criminal underworld. yes, the crime waves of the 1930s were serious but, whether there was a public demand for them before Hollywood took up the gangster film as a sensationalist way to get bums in seats, is to my mind, questionable. after all Howard Hughes was not above sensationalizing things, was he?
What an amazing channel. I have just subscribed. Ann Dvorak can also be seen in TECHNICOLOR in the film "It's a Great Life" (1929) MGM. We see her dancing "The Hoosier Hop" with the MGM dance ensemble, and The Duncan Sisters. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-usgFEgVS7Sc.html We see Ann VERY CLEARLY in this video from 00:20 to 04:20 so 4 mins of screen-time. And one can tell very easily that Ann is the LEAD DANCER in this number. In fact at 01:12 the Duncan Sisters walk off stage, and Ann takes over the dance with another girl. I have the DVD and its an amazing pre-code.
Between 1932 and 1934, the Best Actress Academy Award was limited to only 3 nominations, and there was no Supporting category until 1936. Dvorak's memorable work in 1932 would surely have led to a nomination in any other timeframe.
That was her preferred pronunciation. It was a stage name. I assume she wanted it pronounced like the Czech composer, Antonin Dvorak pronounced his name (though, in Czech, that last name is spelled with some diacritics "Dvořák").
Consistent with the "person who makes empty boasts" definition, apparently the term "four flusher" refers to a poker player holding four cards of one suit and another unmatched card -- essentially a hand of little value. Cheers.
This was enjoyable. Familiar with the name but not the films. The Hays code was a dumb idea instituted by prudes that held back movie making for years: you can't legislate & expect people to behave like angels. Because of another bad & greedy idea to many films are region 1, expensive (despite their age) and not available for region 2 thus import duties make them more expensive. I see that Scarface is slated for a Criterion release in the UK in November. Thanks for showing that there are still lots of good movies to watch that don't involve, franchises, CGI and sequels.
I don't think your perception of the Hays code's effects on movies is at all correct. Just consider that The Golden Age of Hollywood commenced at about the time the Hays code started to be observed. It's amusing to see pre - code films because you get shocked that they could be so blatant, but with a couple of exceptions, such as Twentieth Century, and of course, The Marx Brothers, the great movies which make people so nostalgic for that era were made under the impositions caused by the code.
@@zetectic7968 Dvořák is a Czech name . The ř is pronounced sort of like a J ( not exactly, more like RZ run together with the Z being soft , but J is a close enough approximation … it’s very particular to the Czech language )
why are you calling her Ann Vorjac it is "D" vorak that being said I love Ann Dvorak and this documentary, no movie star ever had an opening year like Mr Dvorak had in 1932
