San Francisco welcomed Dorothy Emma Arzner to the world in 1897. Her father purchased a restaurant when she was a child and they relocated to Los Angeles. The business was quite the hangout for Hollywood actors, celebrities, and creative spirits of all kinds, so Dorothy had early access to the movie crowd. Gender wasn’t seen as a deterrent in her eyes, and she grew up believing that if you were to do something it should be done well.
She finished high school and went to the University of Southern California with aspirations of becoming a doctor. She even spent two years in pre-med and went overseas with the ambulance corps during World War 1. But after returning stateside, a visit to a local movie studio changed her life forever. In a later interview she recollected that she realized if she were to enter the movie business, she should become a director since that person gets to tell everyone else what to do. So that’s precisely what she did.
Of course, it wasn’t as easy as that. Hollywood didn’t view women as industry leaders. Hiring females as secretaries and stenographers was completely acceptable as long as they had the skills and a connection to get them in the door. Dorothy just happened to know director William C. DeMille. Name dropping such a main player in 1919 got her in on the ground floor at Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, before it turned into Paramount Pictures. She wasn’t a stenographer for long though. Within six months, she was promoted to screenwriter and then editor when she easily mastered the tasks assigned to her.
Her first editing assignment was for the 1022 classic Blood and Sand starring Rudolph Valentino. Immediately, accolades and requests for more work started rolling in under famous directors such as James Cruze. He hired her as his personal writer and director for several of his films including Old Ironsides. Between his work and her other 50 films at Paramount, Dorothy had quite the career and ego boost. She wasn’t just seen as a woman behind the scenes anymore. But she hadn’t reached the top yet, and that needed to change.
Dorothy knew her credibility was cemented in Hollywood, so she did what any other top level male professional would have done. She walked right into Paramount’s head office and demanded for a contract as a director. If they refused, she threatened to go right over to their main rival, Columbia Studios. In 1927, Paramount did the only thing they could… and Dorothy’s first directorial debut was for the box office smash Fashions for Women. In her years at Paramount, Dorothy Arzner directed 11 movies, including feminist-forward shockers like Anybody’s Woman (1930), and Honor Among Lovers (1931). She moved on as a freelancer in 1932 and directed at RKO, Columbia, MGM, and United Pictures during her 25-year career.
Dorothy Arzner launched the careers of Tinsel Town staples such as Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russel, and Lucille Ball. She directed women to play unusually strong and complex characters with actual minds of their own as seen in Christopher Strong (1933) and The Bride Wore Red (1937). Many of Dorothy’s movies had underlying homosexual themes which depicted her own personal leanings.
Arzner is noted as the first woman to make a “talkie” and the first woman to join the Directors Guild of America. She left the director’s chair in 1943 following rumored bouts of illness. But she directed Army training films and national commercials. Her last years before her death in 1970 were devoted to teaching young film students like Francis Ford Coppola at UCLA’s film school. Dorothy Emma Arzner’s golden touch was far more than just a “woman in Hollywood”. She was a pioneer for successful women everywhere.
