by Ray Hagen
There is an inside joke regarding the name of her character on Banyon, Peggy Revere, head of the secretarial school; it was the name of her over-theatrical actress in Stage Struck back in ’36.
Blondell’s health declined progressively in the ’70s, first from a stroke, then when she was diagnosed with leukemia. Through it all she looked ahead and continued to work, on television and in motion pictures.
“Without work, what is life?” was trouper Blondell’s motto. “Retirement doesn’t really come into my way of thinking,” she remarked. “I don’t think I could do it. I’ve never stopped working in my life. Even in all the years since Warner Brothers, I have worked somewhere. There was only a period of three years when I didn’t; I was married to someone who wanted me to quit and that was perfectly all right with me. But aside from that, even if I wasn’t in pictures, I started on the road taking shows out, then coming back and starting in again here.”
And she stayed active until December of 1979, when she passed away on Christmas Day. Surrounding her was her family: son Norman, daughter Ellen and sister Gloria, herself a successful radio and TV actress. Joan had always kept it real, always kept her priorities straight. “I wasn’t that ambitious. I enjoyed a home life more than a theatrical career. I just took what they gave me, because I wanted to get home quickly.”
Joan, said one writer, personified everyone’s “good friend,” on- and off-camera. “Of all the stars I have interviewed,” wrote Charles Higham, “I have liked Joan Blondell the best. She is unique in my experience in being an actress who is devoid of ego, self-congratulation and self-pity, and would not dream of quoting a favorable review of herself. She is down-to-earth and human and real. This is almost unheard of in Saran-wrapped Hollywood.” Her accessibility, straightforwardness and her quick-with-a-comeback attitude was her appeal, and it never diminished as she got older.
In a candid 1971 interview, Joan, typically realistic, remarked: “I live a quiet life now; I’ve earned the right to live the way I want to. I can relax and enjoy my $34 set of silverware, and every time I see a gorgeous hunk of silver, or a painting, I can think, I’ve had all that. I don’t have it now, but I did have it, and the hell with it.”
1930: Broadway’s Like That (WB short), Devil’s Parade (WB short), The Heart Breaker (WB short), The Office Wife (WB), Sinner’s Holiday (WB). 1931: Illicit (WB), Millie (RKO), My Past (WB), God’s Gift to Women (WB), Other Men’s Women (WB), The Public Enemy (WB), Big Business Girl (WB), Night Nurse (WB), The Reckless Hour (WB), How I Play Golf #10 (WB short), Blonde Crazy (WB). 1932: Union Depot (WB), The Greeks Had a Word for Them (Goldwyn/UA), The Crowd Roars (WB), The Famous Ferguson Case (WB), Make Me a Star (Paramount), Miss Pinkerton (WB), Big City Blues (WB), Three on a Match (WB), Central Park (WB), Lawyer Man (WB). 1933: Broadway Bad (Fox), Blondie Johnson (WB), Gold Diggers of 1933 (WB), Goodbye Again (WB), Footlight Parade (WB), Havana Widows (WB), Convention City (WB). 1934: I’ve Got Your Number (WB), He Was Her Man (WB), Smarty (WB), Dames (WB), Kansas City Princess (WB). 1935: Traveling Saleslady (WB), Broadway Gondolier (WB), We’re in the Money (WB), Miss Pacific Fleet (WB). 1936: Colleen (WB), Talent Scout (WB), Sons O’Guns (WB), Bullets or Ballots (WB), Stage Struck (WB), Three Men on a Horse (WB), Gold Diggers of 1937 (WB). 1937: The King and the Chorus Girl (WB), A Day at Santa Anita (WB short), Back in Circulation (WB), The Perfect Specimen (WB), Stand-In (Wanger/UA). 1938: There’s Always a Woman (Columbia). 1939: Off the Record (WB), East Side of Heaven (Universal), The Kid from Kokomo (WB), Good Girls Go to Paris (Columbia), The Amazing Mr. Williams (Columbia). 1940: Two Girls on Broadway (MGM), I Want a Divorce (Paramount). 1941: Topper Returns (UA), Model Wife (Universal), Three Girls About Town (Columbia), Lady for a Night (Republic). 1943: Cry Havoc (MGM). 1945: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (TCF), Don Juan Quilligan (TCF), Adventure (MGM). 1947: The Corpse Came C.O.D. (Columbia), Nightmare Alley (TCF), Christmas Eve (UA). 1950: For Heaven’s Sake (TCF). 1951: The Blue Veil (RKO). 1956: The Opposite Sex (MGM). 1957: Lizzie (MGM), This Could Be the Night (MGM), Desk Set (MGM), Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (TCF). 1961: Angel Baby (AA). 1964: Advance to the Rear (MGM). 1965: The Cincinnati Kid (MGM). 1966: Paradise Road/Big Daddy (Syzygy/United), Ride Beyond Vengeance (Columbia). 1967: Waterhole No. 3 (Paramount), Winchester ’73 (TV). 1968: Kona Coast (WB), Stay Away, Joe (MGM). 1970: The Battle at Gannon’s Bridge (TV), The Phynx (WB). 1971: Support Your Local Gunfighter (UA). 1975: The Dead Don’t Scream (TV), Winner Take All (TV). 1976: Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (Paramount), Death at Love House (TV). 1977: Opening Night (Faces Distribution, Inc.), The Baron/Black Cue (Paragon). 1978: Grease (Paramount), Battered (TV). 1979: The Champ (MGM), Family Secrets (TV), The Glove (Pro-International; released 1981). 1980: The Woman Inside (TCF).
Ann Dvorak: A Life of Her Own
by LAURA WAGNER
She was thrilling, every inch of her a great actress on the order of … Ann Dvorak.—Gore Vidal, in his novel Myra Breckinridge.
In 1932, Ann Dvorak was poised for great stardom. Just a chorus girl at MGM when she was discovered by Howard Hughes in 1931, she was cast as Paul Muni’s sister in Howard Hawks’ now-classic Scarface. Her striking, highly intense performance made her the talk of the town.
An impressed Warner Brothers bought her contract and important things were promised. Jack Warner was struck by her “dainty, unworldly quality,” believing that she had a “dazzling future” ahead of her.
Then, it all went haywire.
She was born Annabelle McKim on August 2, 1911, in New York City. Her father was Edwin Samuel McKim, a silent-era director. Her mother, Anna Lehr, had a respectable acting career, working in over 40 films from 1912 to 1928. At least one is known to still exist, Jesus of Nazareth (1928), in which she played the Virgin Mary. The surname “Dvorak” originated from her mother’s family.
The McKims were separated in 1916, divorcing by 1920. Her father disappeared shortly thereafter.
Due to her mother, five-year-old Ann made her film debut in Ramona (1916) as Baby Anna Lehr, the name she would use in The Man Hater (1917) and The Five Dollar Plate (1920).
Ann’s educational history is unclear. Studio bios tell us that she was put in a succession of boarding schools, convents, Los Angeles Page School for Girls (editing the school newspaper The Pagette) and Hollywood High (Dvorak’s biographer Christina Rice found no record of her having gone there). Ann claimed in later interviews that she “majored in journalism and edited a school newspaper” at Occidental College. Publicity states that she was also briefly a cub reporter with The Los Angeles Times. Since this period is clouded by studio elaborations, it’s hard to tell what’s what. However, buried in a Movie Mirror article, Ann lets slip that “I supported myself and my family ever since I left school at 15.”
Ann’s lack of education might explain her later, almost fanatical thirst for reading, her studying of languages and various subjects.
She had long been serious about dancing and singing, taking extensive lessons, but she was also interested in following her mother’s footsteps. In 1928, Ann unsuccessfully tested for the film The Iron Mask (1929).
Undaunted, she sought work as a chorus girl at the Pom Pom Club in Los Angeles. With what would become typical Dvorak moxie, she managed to up her salary from $25 to $65 a week, minutes after landing the job.
MGM’s call for chorines for The Hollywood Revue of 1929 motivated Ann to audition. When she was turned down, Dvorak approached dance director Sammy Lee. “Are you running this show?” she asked. “Well, I’m as good as the ones you chose. Why didn’t you pick me? I’m going to get somewhere. I’m sincere. I work. I have ambition.” This fire-in-the-belly drive worked, she was hired. Six months later, she was Lee’s assistant. In addition to her 20-plus film appearances at MGM during 1929–31, she coached Conchita Montenegro in La Sevillana and Joan Crawford in Dance, Fools, Dance.
Portrait of Ann Dvorak, 1938.
Crawford is often credited with tipping off Howard Hughes, who was producing Scar
face, to Ann, but that distinction goes to actress Karen Morley. The two girls had become friends at MGM, and Morley, who was already cast in Scarface as Paul Muni’s moll, advised Ann that the part of Muni’s sister was still open. Ann tested for Hughes.
But according to Scarface director Howard Hawks, it was George Raft who finally secured Ann’s hiring. The scene was a party at Hawks’ house. “Ann asked [Raft] to dance with her but he said he’d rather not,” Hawks later recalled. “She was a little high and right in front of him starts to do this sexy undulating dance, sort of trying to lure him on to dance with her. She was a knockout. She wore a black silk gown almost cut down to her hips. I’m sure that’s all she had on. After a while George couldn’t resist her suggestive dance and in no time they were doing a sensational number which stopped the party.”
An impressed Hawks cast her as Tony “Scarface” Camonte’s sister Cesca, for whom he has obsessive, incestuous feelings. Hughes, too, signed her to a five-year contract at $250 a week, starting in September of 1931. She was on her way.
Considering that she didn’t seem to have any acting lessons or experience, Dvorak’s arrival as a fierce, excitingly emotional actress in Scarface was a revelation. Where did all that smoldering fire come from? Her scenes with Muni were fervent and uncomfortably real for that time, making all too clear his motives and her fearful, restless nature.
Trying to break free of her brother’s terrifying emotional bonds, she boldly acts out, pursuing an interested but cautious George Raft. Her provocative dance for him out in front of a nightclub, mirroring their real-life party dance, is a terrific pre–Code moment.
Howard Hawks was wowed by Dvorak’s “sprightly, direct, unbashful manner” off-camera, and the two began an affair that would last into their next picture together, The Crowd Roars.
Before Scarface was completed, Howard Hughes assigned Ann to the lighter Sky Devils (1932). She was as far away from Chicago gangsters as she could get: an American chorus girl in France who joins in the adventures of two WWI fliers (Spencer Tracy, William Boyd). She got to dance, do pratfalls and act highly amused—and was a natural.
By the time it was released in January of 1932, ahead of Scarface, which was encountering censorship problems, Dvorak was being treated to some high-gear publicity. Jerry Hoffman, in his Los Angeles Examiner review of Devils, stated that he could “understand now the why and wherefore” regarding all the buzz about her.
This quickie was followed by one of Ann’s best early roles, a loan-out to Warner Bros. for The Crowd Roars (1932).
“I can’t play a neurotic,” protested Joan Blondell.
Concurred Dvorak, “I can’t play an ingénue.”
With these words, the two actresses, with Howard Hawks’ consent, switched roles. Ann plays the long-suffering, high-strung mistress of race car driver James Cagney, while Blondell is the attitude-heavy tramp in love with his brother. Ann’s best scene is also her most intense. Believing her a bad influence on his younger brother, Cagney dumps her. Ann’s already frayed emotions escalate until they explode into a torrent of desperation, slapping him and then pitifully sobbing for his forgiveness. Wow. No one had an emotional meltdown quite like Dvorak.
Warners was delighted with her performance, and in late January of 1932, they paid $40,000 to Hughes for her contract. Her weekly salary stayed at $250.
She was put to work immediately in The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (1932), a strong showcase for her talents as a dramatic actress—and singer. Ann, who first sang on-screen in Scarface (“The Wreck of the Old 97”), here gets to do a scat version of “Penthouse Serenade,” and a song she herself wrote, “Gold Digger Lady.”
The scene in which the two songs are sung together is a transitional one: “Penthouse,” reflecting her lost dreams of a happy family life with the man who left her pregnant, and “Lady,” her acceptance of following a wanton path, getting involved with a crook and leaving her child behind.
It’s Ann’s movie all the way—a heartbreaking, highly effective role, allowing her to run a wide gamut, from youthful exuberance to bitterness, regret, pain and passion, to mother love, sacrifice and redemption.
“Three on a match means one will die soon.” Ann Dvorak, Joan Blondell and Bette Davis in Three on a Match (WB, 1932). The role was Ann’s finest at Warners.
It was during filming that Ann met actor Leslie Fenton, fifth-billed as the man who sets her off onto the wrong road. In view of future events in Dvorak’s personal life, that was quite fitting.
The British-born actor was ten years older and had been in film since the early ’20s. The intellectual, moody Fenton was a world-traveler, a bit eccentric, and to Dvorak he might have represented the ultimate man of the world. And a father figure. He also had an attitude when it came to Hollywood, preferring to follow his own path rather than conform to studio demands. It was an attitude that, coupled with Ann’s own fiery determination, would prove disastrous.
She was rushed right into Love Is a Racket (1932), a film reeking of sophistication and pre–Code hijinks. Ann is simply there to supply her striking presence, pine for Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and toss off some witty asides.
About two weeks into filming, on March 17, 1932, she and Fenton flew to Yuma, Arizona, and were married. It was a whirlwind month-long courtship, catching everyone by surprise. Especially Gladys Freeman. Several days after the announcement of the nuptials, Gladys, who acted under the names Julie Carter and Gladys Belmont, sued Fenton for $250,000 in a breach of promise and betrayal suit. She alleged that he “promised to marry her, and induced her to live with him for several months.” Fenton had also been guiding Freeman’s career.
Warners kept Ann working on a hectic schedule, just as they did with all their contract players. Before July she had finished three more films. Both Stranger in Town and Crooner were standard-issue female leads, meant simply to put her in front of the public. Three on a Match was quite a different story. It was the role which would become her crowning achievement at the studio.
Bette Davis, playing one of the three, called it “a dull B picture.” The reason was simple: Davis had a minuscule role. Quite the contrary, Match was an unforgettably powerful drama realistically depicting Ann’s swift debasement from booze, drugs and the sexual magnetism of Lyle Talbot.
When she starts the film, she is the beautiful, pampered wife of rich Warren William and has a child. Yet she is restless, life is “tiresome and pointless” and she is “fed up with everything.” Then gorgeous Talbot appears. That’s it, she’s gone. Ann leaves her family, shacks up with Lyle and gets her party on.
The remarkable aspect of Dvorak’s performance is her physical and mental deterioration, which she does with expert subtlety; drunk, lying wasted on her bed, she eventually advances to full-blown cocaine addict. Ann has all of the addict’s tics, groggy visage and pauses down brilliantly.
Her role could have easily been overacted—if Davis had done it, God knows the hysterics which would have resulted. Even in her final gut-wrenching scenes, when Ann realizes the hoods are going to kill her kidnapped son, she brings a simmering, beautifully controlled intensity to her desperation. Murmuring to herself in prayer, crying and trembling uncontrollably, she shakily scribbles a message in lipstick on her nightgown. When the crooks suddenly approach, a screaming Ann bolts for the window, crashing through the glass and falling to her death—to save her child.
Her vivid performance deserved at least an Oscar nomination. It didn’t come, but an “unlimited future” was predicted, and Warners was ready to give her the projects that would propel her to real stardom.
No one reckoned on ill-timed temperament.
Obviously, resentment had been building, possibly spurred on by her maverick husband. Warners had no inkling when, on July 4, 1932, they received a wire:
Going to Europe via New York. Ann tired and unhappy over studio conditions. She must have rest. Take care of things for us. See you later. Leslie and Ann.
In New York, Ann
confronted reporters. Of her many gripes, the biggest was that Buster Phelps, the child who played her son in Three on a Match, made double her salary. Ann wanted a raise and a rest. (Truth be told, Phelps was paid the same amount as Dvorak.)
By leaving when she did, Ann lost out on several important roles, including a few that went to Bette Davis (20,000 Years in Sing Sing); Samuel Goldwyn had wanted her for Cynara with Ronald Colman.
Fan magazines seized on a different angle for her departure—love. The romantic “young runaways” were having their belated honeymoon, seeing the world together and learning about each other. When Dvorak returned, a full nine months later, she was glad, she said, that she had put Fenton ahead of her career. “Love is more important than fame,” she gushed.
But, still …
If only Ann had waited until she had a firmer foothold at the studio; she had only been at Warners six months when she went on strike. When Bette Davis later rebelled for better parts and salary, she was several years into her contract; Bette lost her case, but earned the respect of the studio and worthier roles. Dvorak acted too soon.
They returned to America in March of 1933. Meetings with Warners were arranged to iron out her contract. Her weekly salary would eventually be advanced to $1,500.
There had to be some lingering animosity. Her future roles at Warners, with a few exceptions, would be of inferior quality, and one wonders if they were punishment for her hasty rebellion. That Dvorak was able to rise to these occasions is a testament to her versatility and professionalism.