I am still writing on the subway to and from work, and still making good progress. I have written about 32,000 words of the first “rough, rough” draft which takes me up through the end of 1936 and the end of Ann’s tenure at Warner Bros. Even though I still am following the mantra of “just write it,” I  had to take a bit of time to go over my documentation for her 1936 court case against the studio, just because I found myself at a loss to write about it without trying to understand exactly what happened. Now that I have gotten passed her legal issues and into her career as a freelancer, the pace is picking up once again.

At this point, I have been digging into the life and career of Ann Dvorak for around 10 years and I have come to find that the research never will completely end. In the past two months I spoke with a niece of Ann’s third husband, Nicholas Wade, who provided some fascinating insight into her retirement years and confirmed some unfortunate suspicions I had about that time period. I also exchanged emails with a gent whose mother knew Ann during her M-G-M chorus girl days and shared a couple of wonderful stories that had me doing a happy dance when I read them.

I can remember back in 2002 whining to my friend, Laura Wagner, about how I just needed to write the damn book and be done with it. Her constant reply was always, “What’s your rush? You’re the only one writing Ann’s story, so take your time and do it right.” Those have turned out to be wise words, because if I had banged out the book back then, it would have been pretty thin and probably not much more than a “films of” type thing. Because I followed Laura’s advice, I now know way more about Ann Dvorak than I ever dreamed of, and a lot of that info has come to light over the past four or five years, and keeps coming.

Still, there will come a time when the book will finally be written and I will have to finally let it go. Until that happens, I will continue to be amazed by the new things I find out about Ann on a regular basis.

I am happy to report that I have been making serious progress on the Ann Dvorak biography, but  had to completely alter my methods to get things moving along.

The first five chapters I wrote were done so in a very methodical and laborious manner. I would wait until I was “in the mood” to write, then would sit down at my desk, surround myself with mountains of research, put on a little mood music, and begin the excruciating task of putting Ann’s life on paper. The process was excruciating because I was attempting to make my first draft a final draft, which I now realize is ridiculous. As I worked on each sentence, I would shuffle through papers looking for facts and quotes, add proper citations, and would frequently stop to fact check things on the Internet which would lead to some serious time-killing. All this meant that each paragraph and most sentences would take an unbelievably long time to compose and I felt like I was back in college writing a term paper. A full-time job and an awesome husband who I want to spend time with also meant that that my free moments to work on the book were few and far between. In short, five chapters took me two years to write.

As I discussed in the last Progress Report, I had a baby in June and my free writing moments went from few and far between to nonexistent.  I quickly realized I no longer had the luxury of getting in the mood and surrounding myself with a pile of research and the sweet sounds of the Andrews Sisters. I had to either figure out a way to squeeze in the writing while working forty hours a week and devoting all my free time at home to my daughter, or just put the project on hold indefinitely.

My husband is a writer by profession and whenever I would whine about my lack of progress, he would comment “just write it.” In other words, don’t stop to look for quotes, to cite things, or to fact check. Just get the basic narrative on paper and go back later to add those other things and polish.

The funny thing is that during my many years of researching Ann Dvorak’s life and career, I entered most of the info I found onto a spreadsheet. The idea was that once I finally sat down to write, I would have a fairly fleshed out time-line of events to easily reference. However, I was so busy shuffling through my chronologically arranged stacks of papers that I seldom looked at  the spreadsheet I had spent so much time creating.

Last week, I made two drastic changes in my approach to writing the biography. First, I packed all the papers away and vowed to only reference the spreadsheet/time-line for the first draft. Second, I began taking my laptop to work so I can write on the 20 minute subway ride to and from work, as well as on my lunch break. So far, this has worked out amazingly well, and for the first time I am actually having fun writing the biography. I have been with Ann for so long and know her story so well that writing what I already know has been easy. In less than two weeks, I have written over 6,500 thousand words and am in the midst of the eighth chapter. This is triple the amount I completed in the ten months since my daughter was born. Granted this is a very rough first draft, and I will need to eventually go back to my mountains of research and be meticulous once again, but in the meantime I am really enthusiastic about the project, which I have not been for a very long time.

So, for the past few years I have been working on an Ann Dvorak biography. In 1997, I started collecting memorabilia from Ann’s films and at the time thought I should probably write a book.  I did not really get serious about the project until 2002 which is when I launched the previous version of this website and started researching Ann’s life and career in ernest.

Late last year, I finally started writing the book itself which has proven to be a fairly grueling experience. Surrounded by stacks of notes, photocopies, books, magazines, and other assorted documents, I am sometimes reminded of my last semester of grad school when I was holed up in my tiny apartment with only Thelma Kitty and the sound of  Betty Hutton recordings to keep me company as I frantically wrote two lengthy research papers on the fate of the library profession. I do admit that I am not exactly on a deadline and writing about Ann Dvorak is far more interesting than composing twenty pages on library security, but it still requires a certain amount of discipline that I have yet to master. In my defense, I do have a full time job and a husband who wants nothing more than to cuddle up after work and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but at this point I really want to be done with the book.

Over the years, a number of people have contacted me through this website to ask how the book is coming, and I usually feel a bit guilty by my lack of progress. As a motivating factor, I figured I would start posting progress reports which hopefully will shame me into picking up the pace. Without further ado here is the first progress report on the Ann Dvorak biography.

Progress Report #1

At this time, I have written a little over 9,000 words. The first chapter focuses on Ann’s parents who were both vaudvillians and were involved with the early film industry. Since this is probably the only time anyone is going to really explore the careers of Edwin McKim and Anna Lehr, I feel strongly about discussing them in some detail. However, writing about stage performances from a hundred years ago and lost silent films has proven to be challenging and I think I relied too heavily on quoting newspaper reviews, which can quickly become boring. I really struggled with this chapter and will definitely need to go back and rewrite parts of  it.

Ann officially enters the picture in Chapter Two which talks about her early childhood, including the three films she appeared in, and her time spent in New York schools. The next chapter finds Ann living in Southern California with her mom and step dad, attending a private school, and her attempts at launching a journalism career after graduating.

I am now in the middle of the fourth Chapter where Ann has been hired as a chorine by M-G-M, and The Hollywood Revue of 1929 has premiered.  This chapter will continue with her stint as a dancer on the Metro lot and some discussion of her more notable films there, as well as her inability to get the studio to cast her in more substantial roles.

Well, that’s the end of the first progress report. Hard to believe I have been officially writing for a few months, and am only up to 1929. Now that Ann is entering adulthood and I am getting to the part of her life and career that I am familiar with, I should be able to crank her story out a bit faster. Thanks to all of you who have been patiently waiting to read Ann’s story, and for all the encouragement you have given me over the years.

Progress Report #2 to come soon!