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 (some sources put the year as 1900), in San Francisco, California, to a German-American father and a Scottish mother. ...
Dorothy Arzner passed away on October 1, 1979, three months away from what would have been her 83rd birthday on January 3, 1980.
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She was posthumously awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1500 North Vine Street in Hollywood, California on January 24, 1986.
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The subject of Canadian poet/playwright R.M. Vaughan's 2000 play "Camera, Woman", inspired by Arzner's last film, First Comes Courage (1943).
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During World War II, she produced training films for the Women's Army Corps.
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In the 1960s, she began teaching screenwriting and directing courses at the UCLA Film School, and did so until her death.
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On the set of The Wild Party (1929), 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.
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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.
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She made history when she became the first woman to direct a sound picture, Manhattan Cocktail (1928).
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Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 3-8. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
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In 1936, she became the first woman to join the newly formed Directors Guild of America.
$1.7 Million
