Dorothy Arzner, the only woman director during the "Golden Age" of Hollywood's studio system--from the 1920s to the early 1940s and the woman director with the largest oeuvre in Hollywood to this day--was born January 3, 1897 , the first film school grad to achieve major success as a director. She taught at UCLA until her death in 1979. She was honored in her own lifetime, becoming a symbol and role model for women filmmakers who desired entry into mainstream cinema. The feminist movement in the 1960s championed her. In 1972 the First International Festival of Women's Films honored her by screening "The Wild Party", and her oeuvre was given a full retrospective at the Second Festival in 1976. In 1975 the DGA honored her with "A Tribute to Dorothy Arzner." During the tribute, a telegram from Katharine Hepburn was read: "Isn't it wonderful that you've had such a great career, when you had no right to have a career at all?"
In 1936, she became the first woman to join the newly formed Directors Guild of America.
Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 3-8. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
She made history when she became the first woman to direct a sound picture, Manhattan Cocktail .
She started in the film business as a typist for director William C. de Mille , and within three years had worked her way up to screenwriter, then editor.
On the set of The Wild Party , Arzner, irritated that the microphone was always in one place, had the sound technicians rig one up to a fishing pole and follow the actors around the set with it, in effect creating the first boom mike.
In the 1960s, she began teaching screenwriting and directing courses at the UCLA Film School, and did so until her death.
During World War II, she produced training films for the Womens Army Corps.
The subject of Canadian poet/playwright R.M. Vaughans 2000 play "Camera, Woman", inspired by Arzners last film, First Comes Courage .
She was posthumously awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1500 North Vine Street in Hollywood, California on January 24, 1986.
Dorothy Arzner passed away on October 1, 1979, three months away from what would have been her 83rd birthday on January 3, 1980.
Longtime companions with Marion Morgan.
Attended and graduated from the University of Southern California.
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. .
