Dorothy Arzner
1897 - 1979Dorothy Emma Arzner (January 3, 1897 – October 1, 1979) was an American film director whose career in Hollywood spanned from the silent era of the 1920s into the early 1940s. From 1927 until her retirement from feature directing in 1943, Arzner was the only female director working in Hollywood. Additionally, she was one of a very few women able to establish a successful and long career in Hollywood as a film director until the 1970s. Arzner made a total of twenty films between 1927 and 1943 and launched the careers of a number of Hollywood actresses, including Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, and Lucille Ball. Additionally, Arzner was the first woman to join the Directors Guild of America and the first woman to direct a sound film.
The Women Who Run Hollywood
Julia Kuperberg, Clara Kuperberg
Paula Wagner, Lynda Obst
The first talkie was directed by Alice Guy, the first color film was produced by Lois Weber, who directed more than 300 films over 10 years. Frances Marion wrote screenplays for the Hollywood Star Mary Pickford and won two Oscars, Dorothy Arzner was the most powerful film director in Hollywood. And what do all of them have in common? They are all women and they have all been forgotten. Incredibly, it also took until 2010 for the first woman, Kathryn Bigelow, to win the Oscar for Best Director. Even if underrepresented women have always played a big part in Hollywood and it is this part of the film history left untold that this documentary sets out to uncover.
The Women Who Run Hollywood
Merrily We Go to Hell
Dorothy Arzner
Sylvia Sidney, Fredric March
A drunken newspaperman, Jerry Corbett, is rescued from his alcoholic haze by an heiress, Joan Prentice, whose love sobers him up and encourages him to write a play, but he lapses back into dipsomania.
Merrily We Go to Hell
Dance, Girl, Dance
Dorothy Arzner
Maureen O'Hara, Lucille Ball
Judy O'Brien is an aspiring ballerina in a dance troupe. Also in the company is Bubbles, a brash mantrap who leaves the struggling troupe for a career in burlesque. When the company disbands, Bubbles gives Judy a thankless job as her stooge. The two eventually clash when both fall for the same man.
Dance, Girl, Dance
Manhattan Cocktail
Dorothy Arzner
Nancy Carroll, Richard Arlen
Nancy Carroll stars in Manhattan Cocktail as Babs, a college coed who dreams of becoming a famous actress. Joining up with her campus chums Fred (Richard Arlen) and Bob (Danny O'Shea), likewise aspiring thespians, Babes heads to Broadway with stars in her eyes. The winsome threesome are quickly disillusioned by the heartless machinations of nasty producer Renov (Paul Lukas) and his harridan wife (Lilyan Tashman). Before the plot proper gets under way, the audience is regaled with a cute "mythological" prologue, featuring the same three leading actors. Manhattan Cocktail was a silent picture, except for two brief musical numbers showcasing Nancy Carroll.
Manhattan Cocktail
First Comes Courage
Dorothy Arzner
Merle Oberon, Brian Aherne
Merle Oberon plays a Norwegian resistance figure in a small town, married to a Nazi commandant. When his superiors begin to suspect her, the Allies land an assassin to kill him -- an assassin who happens to be her former lover.
First Comes Courage
Working Girls
Dorothy Arzner
Judith Wood, Dorothy Hall
Two sisters from Indiana, the wide-eyed and innocent Mae Thorpe, and her sister June, more streetwise, move into the Rolf House for Homeless Girls in New York. With June's help, Mae obtains a job as a stenographer for scientist Joseph von Schraeder, while June gets work as a telegraph operator at Western Union.
Working Girls
The Wild Party
Dorothy Arzner
Clara Bow, Fredric March
Wild girls at a college pay more attention to parties than their classes. But when one party girl, Stella Ames, goes too far at a local bar and gets in trouble, her professor has to rescue her. Gossip linking the two escalates until Stella proves she is decent by shielding an innocent girl and winning the professor's respect.
The Wild Party
Charming Sinners
Dorothy Arzner, Robert Milton
Ruth Chatterton, Clive Brook
Charming Sinners was a stilted adaptation of Somerset Maugham's play The Constant Wife. Robert Miles (Clive Brook) starts the ball rolling when he falls in love with Anne-Marie Whitley (Mary Nolan), the best friend of his own wife Kathryn (Ruth Chatterton). In retaliation, Kathryn begins a flirtation with her former boyfriend Karl Kraley (William Powell). After reels and reels of verbal fencing, the status quo is re-established, and Robert and Kathryn are reunited.
Charming Sinners
Nana
Dorothy Arzner, George Fitzmaurice
Anna Sten, Lionel Atwill
Young Parisian Nana wards off of a boozed-up military officer at a local restaurant, and fellow diner Gaston Greiner is so impressed with her pluck that he decides to make her a performer at his musical theater. Soon, Nana is a star, and the girlfriend of Greiner and two other men. But when he learns that she's been getting around, Greiner fires her. As she tries to reclaim her singing job while dodging yet another suitor, her treachery might get the better of her.
Nana
