Ann Dvorak's Big Future

Two Little Girls with Big Futures!

"The passage of time has been very kind to Three on a Match and Ann Dvorak, as the film now is considered a quintessential pre-Code classic, complete with sex, drugs, booze, skin, kidnapping, suicide, and magnified nose-hair plucking. For modern audiences aware of the ultra-sanitized scenarios that would plague American films for decades once the Production Code was aggressively enforced, Three on a Match stands out as a delightfully shocking and racy example of early 1930s Hollywood. Ann is only mildly effective as the society wife but comes to dominate the film once her downfall begins, and the train wreck that is Vivian Revere is mesmerizing. Any pent-up nervous energy Ann may have had in real life is unleashed through Vivian and she isn’t afraid to look like hell to bring this character to life. In one scene, as she waits for Blondell to exit a beauty parlor in order to hit her up for cash, Ann appears emaciated with dark circles under her eyes, wearing little or no makeup, and biting her nails (a habit she possessed in real life). Later in the film, as her life completely unravels, she is a pathetic mess, disheveled, going through withdrawal, battered, bruised, and clad in a dirty nightgown she has been wearing for days. As the film climaxes, she realizes the gangsters who have been holding her and her son hostage are getting ready to kill the boy, and her frantic attempts to find a way out of the high-rise apartment cause viewers to sit perched on the edge of their seats. Her final interaction with her child is heart wrenching, and her last scene is both haunting and devastating. Three on a Match is a prime example of what Ann Dvorak was capable of as an actress when given a decent role and a solid director, in this case Mervyn LeRoy. Interestingly, despite the riveting performance he got out of Ann, LeRoy was most impressed with one of her costars, noting, “They gave me three unknown girls in that one—Joan Blondell, Bette Davis and Ann Dvorak. I made a mistake when the picture was finished. I told an interviewer that Joan Blondell was going to be a big star, that Ann Dvorak had definite possibilities, but that I didn’t think Bette Davis would make it. She’s been cool to me ever since.”28 Though underappreciated at the time, Vivian Revere has proven to be one of Ann’s most unforgettable roles and has served as a fitting introduction to the actress for many modern-day fans of classic cinema.

If there was ever a crossroads in the career of Ann Dvorak, it was in early July 1932. She had been making films nonstop for more than six months, was a darling of the Hollywood press, and seemed positioned to have a long and fruitful career with Warner Bros., the studio that had just forked over $40,000 to Howard Hughes for her contract. The Production Code was still largely ignored by filmmakers, and opportunities for Ann to appear in daring roles like Cesca Camonte and Vivian Revere were still possible. By July her films were regularly showing in theaters to mostly positive reviews, and stories about Ann were turning up in the movie magazines. Having one’s name mentioned in the Hollywood columns of the daily papers was always welcome, but appearing in the fan magazines signified a whole new level of success, given the lengthy articles, beautifully reproduced photos, and nationwide distribution of these publications with names like Photoplay, Modern Screen, and Movie Mirror. Unlike the studio-invented backstories of many film personalities, Ann’s show-business upbringing was ready-made for the fan magazines, needing little alteration other than minor fibs like claiming she had attended Hollywood High School. The writers at these magazines could not get enough of Ann’s rags-to-riches story and sudden elopement, and after three years of hard work and dogged determination, she seemed to be on the precipice of a phenomenal career as a dramatic film actress. This was the exact moment Ann Dvorak chose to walk out on her contract and leave the country, essentially killing her chances of becoming a major star at Warner Bros.

Over the years, Ann’s sudden walkout has usually been attributed to salary issues with Warner Bros., specifically because she discovered that Buster Phelps, the child actor who portrayed her son in Three on a Match, was making the same amount per week, $250, as she was. This perception permeated the industry at the time. As Bette Davis stated decades later, “I even understood Ann Dvorak for disappearing from town because an infant in one of her films was earning more money than she.” This injustice no doubt played some part in Ann’s hasty departure, but there were many other factors at play. To perceive the walkout as some grand gesture against the servitude of the Hollywood studio system is simplistic and probably gives Ann too much credit. Three on a Match was the first film Ann made for Warner Bros. after it had agreed to the Caddo deal, but the studio was still in the process of drawing up a new contract for her. When filming began in June, she was still working under the terms and salary she had agreed to in August 1931, and what she had agreed to was $250 a week. When she left the country in early July, Warner Bros. had still not drafted a new contract.

A more pressing reason for the walkout stemmed from Leslie Fenton being offered a part in the English-language version of F.P. The movie was to be filmed in Germany later in the year and Fenton viewed this as the perfect opportunity to show his new bride the world. Shortly after their elopement, Fenton briefly went out of town for the Universal Pictures production Air Mail, directed by John Ford. As Ann admitted, “The time Leslie went to Bishop in California on location was enough. We were both so unhappy that we decided [being separated] isn’t worth it.” Contract or no contract, the notion of Fenton traveling abroad without Ann was simply not an option for the couple. Furthermore, Leslie seemed unfazed by his wife’s studio obligations.

Ann may have been more concerned with contractual obligations than her husband, but she was not happy with the way her career was going. Later on, Ann would sum up this early part of her career: “I stayed there [MGM] three years and never played a part. Then Karen Morley took me to Howard Hawks, who put me in ‘Scarface’ with Paul Muni—the first and best part I have ever had. Howard Hughes put me under a seven-year contract. Then he loaned me out to Warner Brothers for six months at the end of which he sold them my contract, although he had promised he would not. I made nine pictures in eight months—quantity, not quality.” As much as Ann may have wanted a career as an actress, she was clearly not pleased with Howard Hughes’s decision to make her the property of Warner Bros. Given the roles her new bosses were starting to cast her in, maybe she figured she wasn’t going to be missing out on much by skipping town for a few months.

Another factor in Ann’s decision to breach the contract was exhaustion. As much as she had wanted a successful film career, the past year had been a whirlwind for the young actress and she had barely had time to catch her breath. In ten months’ time, she had gone from lowly MGM chorus girl to second billing in a high-profile feature film to Warner Bros. workhorse. On top of the breakneck filming schedule, she had possibly had an affair with a married man, and had met and wed Leslie Fenton after an incredibly short courtship. This all happened before she was twenty-one. Initially, Ann was thrilled by her sudden change in fortune, stating, “There I was, a dancing girl—the same girl I’d been for three years—and then all of a sudden, zoom! Is it, or is it not, all sort of breathtaking?” However, a few days before taking off with Fenton, she had confided at a lunchtime interview, “I can’t go on. They’re pushing me too hard. I tell you I’m tired of seeing so much Ann Dvorak around—on the billboards, in the magazines. If they keep on, there will be nothing left of me. I’ll be dead so far as movies are concerned. And something in me will die too.” Had this been the story presented to the public, that of an overwhelmed young actress appreciative of the opportunities of the past year but desperate for rest and time alone with her new husband, she may have survived the walkout unscathed, with a slap on the hand from Warner Bros. and the sympathy of the press. Instead, outside influences would steer her in the wrong direction, causing her promising career to plateau at a studio none too amused by her actions."

"She spent the last 20 years of her life living in Hawaii, and her death on Dec. 10, 1979, initially went unnoticed because she had checked into the hospital where she died under the name Ann Wade. (Television producer Nicholas H. Wade was one of her four husbands.) In Honolulu, she was also known as Ann McKim."

Sources:

Photo by unknown

https://archive.org/details/screenland25unse/page/n59/mode/2up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF_fBIlQqcM

Ann Dvorak: Hollywood's Forgotten Rebel by Christina Rice

http://projects.latimes.com/hollywood/star-walk/ann-dvorak/

Still from Mervyn LeRoy's Three On a Match