Dorothy Emma Arzner
Personal Information
Born: 1897 or 1900
Died: 1979
Country of Birth: USA
Nationality: USA
Ethnicity: White
Education
USC 2 years pre-med classes
""I wanted to be like Jesus," she said. "'Heal the sick and raise the dead,' instantly, without pills, surgery, et cetera."(wikipedia); "When I went to work in a studio, I took my pride and made a nice little ball of it and threw it right out the window." (imdb.com); “I was not dependent on the movies for my living, so I was always ready to give the picture over to some other director if I couldn’t make it the way I saw it. Right or wrong, I believe this was why I sustained so long—twenty years” (wfpp.columbia.edu); “Try as a man may, he will never be able to get the woman’s viewpoint in telling certain stories,” Arzner told the Washington Post in 1930. “Many stories demand treatment at the hands of a woman, not only from the script side but also in the direction, and here a woman should be allowed to direct in all cases.” (latimes.com); "To be a director you cannot be subject to anyone, even the head of a studio. I threatened to quit each time I didn't get my way." (encyclopedia.com); "
— Dorothy Emma Arzner
Professional Life
Field of Study: Motion Picture Director
Institution/Corporation: Paramount Pictures; Pasadena Playhouse; Directors Guild of America; UCLA School of theater, Film & Television
Degrees & Memberships: Member: Directors Guild of America (1936)
Awards & Achievements
Awards: 1986 Star on Hollywood Walk of Fame
Achievements: invented the 1st boom mic for the 1929 Paramount film The Wild Party but never applied for a patent; 1950 founded filmmaking classes at The Pasadena Playhouse; late 1950s became the entertainment and publicity consultant at the Pepsi-Cola Company making many commercials for them starring Joan Crawford;
1st woman to direct a talking film "Manhattan Cocktail" (1928).
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, Lucille Ball, Ruth Chatterton, Sylvia Sidney, and Irene Dunne
first woman to join the Directors Guild of America
took 2 years of pre-med courses at USC before joining an ambulance company during WWI
edited the Rudolph Valentino film Blood and Sand (1922) for Paramount using stock bull-fighting footage & saving the company money in the process but was never mentioned in the film credits
many of her films had the theme of unconventional romance
after 1932 left Paramount to work freelance & worked with RKO, United Artists, Columbia, and MGM
left Hollywood in 1943
made Women's Army Corps training films during World War II and declined an appointment to a position as an Army Major
1952 joined the staff of the College of the Arts of the Playhouse as the head of the Cinema and Television Department
1961 joined the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, in the Motion Picture division as a staff member, where she spent four years supervising advanced cinema classes before retiring in June 1965
at UCLA taught Francis Ford Coppola
her documents, files and films are preserved in Cinema and Television File in UCLA, thanks to Jodie Foster, who raised sufficient funds for their maintenance
maintained a forty-year relationship with Marion Morgan, a dancer and choreographer who choreographed many of her movies
her films are notable for the depictions of women's relationships & she typically reversed societal expectations of women, allowing them to find solidarity with one another
her film "Dance, Girl, Dance" (1940) has been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant