Dorothy Arzner occupies an important position in film history. She was the only female director to work within the studio system and one of the few to make a career for herself directing. She was also the first woman to ever direct a talkie. Dorothy Arzner was also the first woman to join the Directors Guild of America. What makes Dorothy Arzner even more unique is that she was an open lesbian at a time when homosexuality was frowned upon.
Dorothy Arzner was born in San Francisco, but she grew up in Los Angeles. Her father, Louis Arzner, operated a restaurant that frequented by many of the early Hollywood and theatre elite, including Maude Adams, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Mack Sennett. She attended the University of Southern California, majoring in medicine, but ultimately decided she did not want to be a doctor. She began her film career in the script department of the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation (which would evolve into Paramount). She moved from the script department to working as a cutter and editor at Realart Studio, a division of Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. She received her big break when she served as the editor on
Blood and Sand (1922).
Dorothy Arzner became respected enough for her work as both an editor and screenwriter that eventually Columbia Pictures made an offer to her to write and direct a movie. Ms. Arzner used Columbia's offer as leverage with Paramount so that she could direct a major feature film.
Fashions for Women (1927) would be the first feature film ever directed by Dorothy Arzner. Sadly, it is also lost.
Dorothy Arzner directed the silent movies
Fashions for Women,
Ten Modern Commandments (1927),
Get Your Man (1927), and
Manhattan Cocktail (1928) before directing the Clara Bow vehicle
The Wild Party (1929).
The Wild Party would be historic for a number of reasons. It is not only the first talkie to star Clara Bow, but the first talkie directed by a woman and the first talkie ever produced by Paramount. On
The Wild Party Dorothy Arzner also made an innovation to filmmaking. Clara Bow was not particularly comfortable with microphones, so Ms. Arzner attached a microphone to the end of a fishing pole so Clara Bow could move around. Quite simply, it was one of the earliest boom mics (previously, for
Beggars of Life William Wellman had attached a microphone to the end of a broom).
The Wild Party was the beginning of the peak of Dorothy Arzner's career. For Paramount she directed such popular films as
Sarah and Son (1929),
Honor Among Lovers (1931), and
Merrily We Go to Hell (1932). She went freelance in 1932 and continued to make several popular films, including
Christopher Strong (1933),
Craig's Wife (1936),
Dance, Girl Dance (1940). She worked with some legendary leading ladies, including Claudette Colbert, Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, Lucille Ball, and Maureen O'Hara. As a freelancer she made films for such studios as RKO, United Artists, Columbia, and MGM.
Dorothy Arzner retired from Hollywood in 1943, although she made training films for the Women's Army Corps during World War II and later produced the radio show
You Were Meant to Be a Star. She worked with the Pasadena Playhouse and taught film at UCLA.
While Dorothy Arzner was not a particularly public person, she was openly a lesbian, as mentioned earlier. She had a relationship with dancer and choreographer Marion Morgan that lasted forty years. It also been claimed that she had relationships with various actresses, including Alla Nazimova and Billie Burke. Ms. Arzner was never in the closet and she never hid the fact that she was a lesbian.
A good deal has been written about Dorothy Arzner, from both feminist and queer perspectives, but even after casually viewing her films it is clear that Ms. Arzner's movies differed a good deal from her contemporaries. More so than movies made by her male contemporaries, Dorothy Arzner's films place an emphasis on relationships between women. This can be seen in
The Wild Party, in which the relationships between students at an all-female college are explored.
Dance, Girl, Dance centred upon the relationships between various dancers. Ms. Arzner's portrayal of female camaraderie was made all the more realistic in that her female characters were all four-dimensional. These were women who could actually exist rather than the usual Hollywood caricatures.
Dorothy Arzner's portrayal of romances and marriages also differed from those of other filmmakers of her period. This can be seen in
Merrily We Go to Hell, in which Jerry Corbett (Fredric March) and Joan Prentice (Sylvia Sydney) have what would today be called an "open marriage."
Honor Among Lovers features a romance that does not go quite as viewers might expect it to.
Craig's Wife portrays a traditional marriage as outright repressive. Even in the Pre-Code Era, heteronormative marriage was often held to be sacrosanct. Dorothy Arzner's movies often took another view.
Dorothy Arzner was a true pioneer. She was the only female director working in Hollywood throughout the Thirties.Her films were strikingly different from other films made at the time. There is little way one can mistake a movie made by Dorothy Arzner for a movie by another director. She was also very successful. Dorothy Arzner was ultimately a extremely talented woman with real insight into human nature.
