Ann Dvorak Movies

In this strange, convoluted tale, a hotel clerk ends up pregnant and alone after she has a brief fling with a wealthy playboy. Shortly after her daughter's birth, she hooks up with a criminal. She does not realize that the good-hearted bellboy with whom she works secretly loves her. When the criminal inadvertently involves her in a murder, an eager-beaver reporter, who also grows to lover her, hatches a clever scheme to save her and win her hand. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Three on a Match covers approximately 13 years in the lives of girlhood chums Mary Keaton (Joan Blondell), Ruth Wescott (Bette Davis) and Vivian Deverse (Ann Dvorak). Having graduated from grammar school together in 1919, the girls stage a reunion ten years later. Hard-boiled Mary is now a chorus girl, level-headed Ruth has a steady job as a secretary, and vixenish Vivian is on the verge of capriciously deserting her wealthy husband Robert Kirkwood (Warren William) and their baby in favor of sexy mob-boss Mike (Lyle Talbot). Several more years pass, during which Mary marries Henry, Ruth is hired as governess for Henry, and Vivian's son and a drug-addicted Vivian become fatally enmeshed in a kidnapping plot involving her own child. In his second Warner Bros. film, tenth-billed Humphrey Bogart essays his first sneering-gangster role. Three on a Match was remade (and considerably laundered) in 1938 as Broadway Musketeers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Completed in mid-1930, Scarface, based on Armitage Trail's novel of the same name, might have been the first of the great talkie gangster flicks, but it was held up for release until after that honor was jointly usurped by Little Caesar and Public Enemy. Paul Muni stars as prohibition-era mobster Tony Camonte, a character obviously patterned on Al Capone (whose nickname was "Scarface"). The homicidal Camonte ruthlessly wrests control of the bootlegging racket from his boss, Johnny Lovo (Osgood Perkins), and claims Lovo's mistress, Poppy (Karen Morley), in the bargain. But while Poppy satisfies him sexually, Tony has a soft spot in his heart only for his sister Cesca (Ann Dvorak). The film's finale is one of the longest and bloodiest of the 1930s, maintaining suspense and concern for the characters involved even though Muni has deliberately done nothing to make Tony likeable to audience. The grimness of Scarface is leavened by a few choice moments of black humor. Forced to leave a stage production of Rain in order to commit a murder, Tony returns to his theater seat and anxiously asks his buddies how the play came out. Some of the film's funniest moments belong to Vince Barnett as the mentally deficient, illiterate gangster secretary, who at one juncture gets so mad at a caller on the phone that he shoots the receiver. Scarface features a famous "'X' Marks The Spot" logo, inspired by news photos of gangland murders: whenever a character is killed, the letter "X" appears on screen in one form or another. Example: When a rival gangster (played by Boris Karloff) is killed at a bowling alley, the camera cuts to his bowling ball knocking down all the pins -- a strike, denoted, of course, by an "X." Producer Howard R. Hughes couldn't release Scarface until he toned down some of the violence, reshot certain scenes to avoid libel suits, added the subtitle "The Shame of the Nation" to the opening credits, and shoehorned in new scenes showing upright Italian-Americans banding together to wipe out gangsterism. After its first run, Scarface was completely withdrawn from distribution on Hughes' orders; the film would not be seen again on a widespread basis until it was reissued by Universal in 1979, shorn of 8 of its original 99 minutes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

With a blonde wigged Joan Crawford offering one of her more high-handed performances, and veteran silent star Pauline Frederick doing her best to keep up, audiences are in for MGM soap-opera at its 1931 zenith. Reunited with her long-lost mother in Paris, Crawford fails to realize that the loving and dignified woman is actually kept by a Parisian roué Albert Conti. Although she briefly falls in with a fast crowd, headed by the alcoholic Monroe Owsley), Crawford, a good girl at heart, falls in love with visiting Harvard graduate Neil Hamilton, and he with her. But Hamilton's stern, puritanical parents (Hobart Bosworth and Emma Dunn) frown upon Crawford's Parisian friends, who rudely spoil a dignified but deadly dull evening of superficial conversation and bridge. When a disgusted Hamilton informs his upcoming bride about her mother's true metier, Crawford is at first disbelieving and then huffily breaks the engagement. A penitent Frederick agrees to leave her life as a kept woman, but when she realizes that her daughter still carries a torch for the stuffy Hamilton, she pretends to willingly return to Conti. Denouncing her mother, Crawford goes on a tryst with Owsley, but is returned by Hamilton, who reunites her with the self-sacrificing Miss Frederick. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Buster Keaton's talkie debut (discounting his non-speaking guest appearance in Hollywood Revue of 1929) was Free and Easy, an uneven but generally amusing comedy with a Hollywood setting. When pretty Elvira (Anita Page) of Gopher City, Kansas wins a beauty contest, her prize includes a trip to Tinseltown and a screen test at MGM. Appointing himself protector of Elvira and her formidable mother (Trixie Friganza), gas-station attendant Elmer Butts (Keaton) accompanies them to California. Once they've arrived, Elmer manages to disrupt the daily MGM routine, stumbling into films in progress, knocking over sets and breaking props, and finding himself taking a screen test in which he repeatedly blows the single line "The queen has swooned" ("The sween has quooned", "The coon has sweened") over and over. Meanwhile, latin-lover film star Lorenzo (Robert Montgomery) sets his sights on innocent Elvira, attempting to seduce her while Elmer's back is turned. But Lorenzo turns out to be a good guy -- in fact, his real name is Larry, and he's a Kansas boy himself -- and he arranges for Elvira to get her big break. In a surprise turnaround, Elvira doesn't win a contract, but Elmer and Elvira's mom become popular musical-comedy stars! The film is studded with guest appearances by such MGM contractees as directors Cecil B. DeMille, Lionel Barrymore, Fred Niblo, and actors Gwen Lee, John Miljan, William Haines, Karl Dane and Keaton's then-girlfriend Dorothy Sebastian. Free and Easy was also filmed in French, Spanish and German-language versions, with Keaton speaking his words phonetically in all three. The film was remade as Pick a Star in 1937, and as Abbott and Costello in Hollywood in 1945. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A pleasant enough western parody starring one of the victims of sound, William Haines, Way Out West is the story of a carnival huckster forced to work on a western ranch in order to repay a couple of cowboys he once fleeced. There's a sandstorm, a fist-fight with the ubiquitous crooked foreman (Charles Middleton), a pretty female ranch owner (Leila Hyams), and sundry other western clichés thrown in to prove the star's manly qualities.The light-weight Haines played many such roles, but reshuffling due to sound (not to mention a quarrel with MGM studio head, Louis B. Mayer), ended his career. Haines later became a fashionable interior decorator. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

With the arrival of talkies, every major studio hopped on the musical bandwagon by turning out lavish "revues," spotlighting their top stars performing specialty numbers. MGM's entry in this all-star genre was Hollywood Revue of 1929, which, though a box-office smash and a "Best Picture" Oscar nominee, is an absolutely deadly experience when seen today. Even so, it coasts by on its curiosity value, as several major MGM luminaries display their all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing talents (or lack of same). The film is hosted by Conrad Nagel and Jack Benny, the latter still purveying the "wise-guy" personality he used on screen before adopting his more likable radio characterization. Some of the individual acts are modestly entertaining: Joan Crawford, the top of her head cut off due to faulty camerawork, is quite appealing in a jazz number; Laurel and Hardy and Buster Keaton provide genuine laughs, the former in a makeshift magic act and the latter performing a burlesque ballet; Bessie Love and Marion Davies are cute and cuddly in their respective musical numbers, while Marie Dressler is outrageously funny in her brace of appearances; and, best of all, Cliff Edwards solemnly introduces MGM's "signature" tune Singin' in the Rain, which serves as a leitmotif throughout the picture. Other "highlights" are more impressive for their concept than their actual execution: Gus Edwards' "Lon Chaney Will Get You if You Don't Find Out" would have been more interesting had the real Lon Chaney Sr. made an appearance (something he reportedly refused to do), while John Gilbert and Norma Shearer's "slang" version of the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet (a sequence filmed in Technicolor) produces winces rather than laughs. At that, these scenes are easier to digest than the wretched sentimental ballad Your Mother and Mine, performed ad nauseum by the otherwise reliable Charles King, and the overproduced and under-rehearsed Orange Blossom finale (also in color). Long available only in its 82-minute TV release version, Hollywood Revue of 1929 was restored to nearly its original 125-minute length in the 1970s; the film is worth seeing once for historical purposes, but is hardly a "keeper," even for the most diligent of video collectors. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide