Ann Dvorak

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Ann Dvorak (August 2, 1911 – December 10, 1979) was an American film actress.

Asked how to pronounce her adopted surname, she told The Literary Digest: "My name is properly pronounced vor'shack. The D remains silent. I have had quite a time with the name, having been called practically everything from Balzac to Bickelsrock."

Life and career

Born Anna McKim in New York City of Irish-Australian descent, the only child of two vaudevillians, she was raised in the business that would later make her a star. Her father, Edwin McKim worked as a director for the Lubin Studios, and her mother, Anna Lehr, found success as the star of many silent features. The couple split when Ann was four, and she and her mother moved to Hollywood. Ann would not see her father again until a national appeal to the press reunited the two in 1934.

As a child, she appeared in several films. She began working for MGM in the late 1920s as a dance instructor and gradually began to appear on film as a chorus girl. Her friend Joan Crawford introduced her to Howard Hughes, who groomed her as a dramatic actress. She was a success in such pre-Code films as Scarface (1932), as Paul Muni's character's sister, as the doomed unstable Vivian in Three on a Match (1932), with Joan Blondell and Bette Davis, Love Is a Racket (1932), and opposite Spencer Tracy in Sky Devils (1932).

Known for her style and elegance, she was a popular leading lady for Warner Brothers during the 1930s, and appeared in numerous contemporary romances and melodramas. A dispute over her pay (she discovered she was making the same amount of money as the little boy who played her son in Three on a Match) led to her finishing out her contract on permanent suspension, and then working as a freelancer, but although she worked regularly, the quality of her scripts declined sharply. She appeared as secretary Della Street to Donald Woods' Perry Mason in The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (1937). She also acted on Broadway. With her then-husband, British actor Leslie Fenton, Dvorak travelled to England where she supported the war effort by working as an ambulance driver, and appeared in several British films.

She retired from the screen in 1951, when she married her third and last husband, Nicholas Wade, to whom she remained married until his death in 1977. It was her longest and most successful marriage. She had no children.

She lived her post-retirement years in anonymity until her death from stomach cancer in Honolulu at the age of 68. She was cremated and her ashes scattered.

Ann Dvorak has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contribution to Motion Pictures, at 6321 Hollywood Boulevard.

Filmography

Features

Ramona (1916)

The Man Hater (1917)

The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929)

So This Is College (1929)

It's a Great Life (1929)

Devil-May-Care (1929)

The March of Time (1930) (unfinished)

Chasing Rainbows (1930)

The Woman Racket (1930)

Lord Byron of Broadway (1930)

Free and Easy (1930)

Children of Pleasure (1930)

Our Blushing Brides (1930)

Way Out West (1930)

Good News (1930)

Love in the Rough (1930)

Dance, Fools, Dance (1931)

A Tailor Made Man (1931)

Just a Gigolo (1931)

Politics (1931)

Son of India (1931)

This Modern Age (1931)

The Guardsman (1931)

Sky Devils (1932)

Scarface (1932)

The Crowd Roars (1932)

The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (1932)

Love Is a Racket (1932)

Stranger in Town (1932)

Crooner (1932)

Three on a Match (1932)

The Way to Love (1933)

College Coach (1933)

Massacre (1934)

Heat Lightning (1934)

Midnight Alibi (1934)

Friends of Mr. Sweeney (1934)

Housewife (1934)

Side Streets (1934)

I Sell Anything (1934)

Gentlemen Are Born (1934)

Murder in the Clouds (1934)

Sweet Music (1935)

'G' Men (1935)

Bright Lights (1935)

Dr. Socrates (1935)

Thanks a Million (1935)

We Who Are About to Die (1937)

Racing Lady (1937)

Midnight Court (1937)

The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (1937)

She's No Lady (1937)

Manhattan Merry-Go-Round (1937)

Merrily We Live (1938)

Gangs of New York (1938)

Blind Alley (1939)

Stronger Than Desire (1939)

Cafe Hostess (1940)

Girls of the Road (1940)

This Was Paris (1942)

Squadron Leader X (1943)

Escape to Danger (1943)

Flame of Barbary Coast (1945)

Masquerade in Mexico (1945)

Abilene Town (1946)

The Bachelor's Daughters (1946)

Out of the Blue (1947)

The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947)

The Long Night (1947)

The Walls of Jericho (1948)

Our Very Own (1950)

A Life of Her Own (1950)

The Return of Jesse James (1950)

Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone (1950)

I Was an American Spy (1951)

The Secret of Convict Lake (1951)

Short Subjects

The Five Dollar Plate (1920)

The Doll Shop (1929)

Manhattan Serenade (1929)

Pirates (1930)

The Flower Garden (1930)

The Song Writers' Revue (1930)

The Snappy Caballero (1930)

A Trip Thru a Hollywood Studio (1935)

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