Dorothy 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. With the exception of long-time silent film director Lois Weber, Arzner was the only female director working in Hollywood from 1927 until her retirement from feature directing in 1943. 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. Arzner was the first woman to join the Directors Guild of America and the first woman to direct a sound film.
Early life
Arzner was born in San Francisco, California, in 1897 to Jenetter (née Young) and Louis Arzner but grew up in Los Angeles, where her father owned the Hoffman Café, "a famous Hollywood restaurant next to a theatre". After finishing high school at the Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles, she enrolled at the University of Southern California, where she spent two years studying medicine with hopes of becoming a doctor. After spending a summer working in the office of a respected surgeon, however, Arzner decided that she did not want a career in medicine. "I wanted to be like Jesus," she said. "'Heal the sick and raise the dead,' instantly, without pills, surgery, etcetera."
When Arzner met with DeMille in 1919, he asked her in which department she would like to start working. "I might be able to dress sets," Arzner replied.
Through her work with Cruze, Arzner gained considerable leverage and threatened to leave Paramount for Columbia if she was not given a picture to direct.
After The Wild Party, Arzner directed more features for Paramount, including Sarah and Son (1930), starring Ruth Chatterton, and Honor Among Lovers (1931), starring Claudette Colbert, as well as two where she worked in tandem with director Robert Milton, Charming Sinners (1929) and Behind the Make-Up (1930), for which she was not credited. After 1932, she left the studio to work on a freelance basis. This plot is an example of the way Arzner turned conventional societal views of women upside-down. Instead of pitting the two women against each other, buying into the narrative of women as rivals, Arzner complicates and interrogates typical views of women by portraying a genuine moment of connection between Cynthia and Elaine. The film was based on a stage play of the same name by George Kelly but differed in its treatment of its female protagonist. The play, in a much more misogynistic look at the American housewife, sided with Harriet's husband, portraying Harriet as cold and disinterested. Arzner's version turned the story into what So Mayer calls "a plea for women to become their own people rather than beautiful possessions." and became an influence on his later work. Arzner's documents, files and films are preserved in Cinema and Television File in UCLA, thanks to Jodie Foster, who raised sufficient funds for their maintenance.
Personal life and death
thumb|Arzner with [[Marion Morgan (choreographer)|Marion Morgan, 1927, photo by Arnold Genthe]]
Arzner would maintain a forty-year relationship with Marion Morgan, a dancer and choreographer who was sixteen years older than Arzner. Morgan choreographed some dancing sequences in some of Arzner's movies, such as Dance, Girl, Dance. Even though she tried to keep her private life as private as possible, Arzner was linked romantically with a number of actresses, including Alla Nazimova and Billie Burke. It was rumored, though never confirmed, that Arzner also had relationships with Joan Crawford and Katharine Hepburn.
In 1930, Arzner and Morgan moved to Mountain Oak Drive, where they lived until Morgan's death in 1971. While they lived in Hollywood, Arzner assisted various cinematographic events. In her last years, Arzner left Hollywood and went to live in the desert. In 1979, at the age of 82, Arzner died in La Quinta, California.
Since the resurgence of Arzner's films, they have been studied by feminist and gay theorists alike for their depictions of gender and female sexuality, as well as for Arzner's focus on the female relationship.
In March 2018, Paramount dedicated its Dressing Room building to Arzner.
In February 2025, an LGBTQ+ cinema opened in Bermondsey, London called 'The Arzner'.
In popular culture
R.M. Vaughan's 2000 play, Camera, Woman depicts the last day of Arzner's career. In the play, Harry Cohn fires her over a kissing scene between Merle Oberon and fictitious actor Rose Lindstromthe name of a character played by Isobel Elsom in Arzner's last film, First Comes Courage, in which Oberon starredin a never-completed final film. The play also depicts Arzner and Oberon as lovers. It is told in a prologue, four acts, and an epilogue in the form of a post-show interview that contains actual quotations from Arzner.
S. Louisa Wei's 2014 feature documentary, Golden Gate Girls, compares the news media representation of Arzner with that of Esther Eng, Hong Kong's first female director who was a Chinese American. Judith Mayne, the author of Directed by Dorothy Arzner, is interviewed in the documentary, saying, "I love the fact that history of woman filmmakers now would include Dorothy Arzner and Esther Eng as the two of the real exceptions, who proved it was entirely possible to build a successful film career without necessarily being a part of mainstream identity."
In the 2022 film Babylon, which portrays a fictionalized, exaggerated version of 1920s Hollywood, the character of director Ruth Adler is mainly inspired by Arzner and her collaborations with Clara Bow.
Filmography
{| class="wikitable"
|+
!Year
!Title
!Role
!Notes
|-
|1943
|First Comes Courage
|Director
|
|-
|1940
|Dance, Girl, Dance
|Director
|
|-
|1937
|The Bride Wore Red
|Director
|
|-
|1937
|The Last of Mrs. Cheyney
|Director
|Uncredited
|-
|1936
|Craig's Wife
|Director
|
|-
|1934
|Nana
|Co-Director
|
|-
|1933
|Christopher Strong
|Director
|
|-
|1932
|Merrily We Go to Hell
|Director
|
|-
|1931
|Working Girls
|Director
|
|-
|1931
|Honor Among Lovers
|Director
|
|-
|1931
|The House That Shadows Built
|
|Paramount promotional film with excerpt of never-produced film Stepdaughters of War to be directed by Arzner
|-
|1930
|Anybody's Woman
|Director
|
|-
|1930
|Paramount on Parade
|Co-Director
|
|-
|1930
|Sarah and Son
|Director
|
|-
|1930
|Behind the Make-Up
|Co-Director
|Uncredited
|-
|1929
|Charming Sinners
|Co-Director
|Uncredited
|-
|1929
|The Wild Party
|Director
|
|-
|1928
|Manhattan Cocktail
|Director
|lost, except for the montage sequence by Slavko Vorkapić released in 2005 on DVD Unseen Cinema
|-
|1927
|Get Your Man
|Director
|Missing two of six reels
|-
|1927
|Ten Modern Commandments
|Director, Writer
|Lost
|-
|1927
|Fashions for Women
|Director
|Lost
|-
|1924
|Inez from Hollywood
|Editor
|
|-
|1923
|The Covered Wagon
|Editor
|
|-
|1922
|Blood and Sand
|Additional Footage
|Uncredited
|-
|1920
|The Six Best Cellars
|Editor
|
|-
|1919
|Too Much Johnson
|Editor
|
|}
See also
- Female gaze
- Feminism
- List of female film and television directors
- List of lesbian filmmakers
- List of LGBT-related films directed by women
- Women's Cinema
Further reading
References
External links
- Dorothy Arzner — Encyclopædia Britannica
- Arzner, Dorothy (1897–1979) — Encyclopedia.com
- Dorothy Arzner bibliography — UC Berkeley Media Resources Center
- Literature on Dorothy Arzner
- Erin Stein. Dorothy Arzner: A Genuine Woman — via David Soren (archaeologist)
- Arnold Genthe (1927) Photographs of Dorothy Arzner and Marion Morgan:
- Dorothy Arzner and Marion Morgan, Library of Congress: LC-G412-T-5202-002-x
- Dorothy Arzner and Marion Morgan, Library of Congress: LC-G412-T-5202-B-007