Posts in Category: Personal
Technical Difficulties
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So, I just realized today that when I relaunched the site last November, the christina@anndvorak.com email address stopped forwarding to my Gmail. Yes, I thought it was a little odd that I had not heard from other Ann fans for awhile, but apparently not odd enough to look into it. Now, I have around 900, mostly spam, emails to sort through, but it looks like a few admirers of Miss Dvorak have been kind enough to drop me a line.
For those of you who sent me an email sometime in the last six months, my apologies for being so lame, and you will be hearing from me in the next couple of days.
Some Shameless Self Promotion
While this website is designed to be all Ann Dvorak all the time, I am going to stray for this one post to promote a side project I have been invited to contribute to.
Richard and Kim are a couple of regular patrons at the library who run the Estouric Bus Adventures around Los Angeles and for the last three years have recruited locals to contribute to The 1947 Project, which is a blog reporting a crime a day in LA on a particular year.
This year, Kim has switched gears and decided to highlight Bunker Hill and was kind enough to invite me along for the ride. For those unaware, Bunker Hill was an elevated area of Downtown Los Angeles that was developed in the 1880s as residential neighborhood with beautiful Victorian mansions. Most of the homes eventually became boarding houses and the area was pretty rundown, though still very interesting, by the 1940s and was used as a filming location for a lot of noir flicks. In the 1950s & 60s, the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) razed the ENTIRE neighborhood and now it’s the area that forms the Downtown skyline.
A group of us locals have been furiously typing away and I hope you’ll get a chance to check out the contributions, even though they have nothing to do with Ann-D!
I have written about the Castle, Crocker Mansion, Rose Mansion, Hildreth Mansion and Brunson Mansion. Enjoy!
And now back to our regularly scheduled program…
Ann Dvorak Birth Date Confirmed as August 2, 1911
In the ten years that I have been researching the life of Ann Dvorak, most sources give her birth date as 1912, including her application for a Social Security number. Ann’s death certificate gives 1911 as the year, but I just figured the informant gave an incorrect date.
This past weekend, I accompanied my husband, Josh, to New York City for Comic-Con and stopped by the library to take a quick look at the birth index which is on microfiche and not yet available online. Imagine my surprise when I found Anna McKim listed on the 1911 index, instead of 1912. One year is not a big deal, but it’s nice to be accurate.
While I was at it, I looked up Ann’s mom, Anna Lehr who tended to shave off a few years here and there. She is listed as Anna Lajer, born November 18, 1890.
During my short stay in the Big Apple I bought five new Ann photos at one of my favorite poster shops and actually found a gorgeous still from Dr. Socrates at Comic Con. Overall, a very successful weekend.
On a personal note, one of Josh’s college buddies is a member of the Players Club, which was the former home of Edwin Booth, the renowned actor and brother of Lincoln’s assassin. We had a wonderful time touring the club and sipping wine on the balcony overlooking Gramercy Park. I heart NY.
Welcome to the New Site!
I launched my Ann Dvorak tribute site in November 2002. After five years, I decided it was time to give the site a face-lift. All the old content is still here with some extras. The new format is much easier to work with and I will be able to update it on a regular basis. I will also be able to post news updates (because there is so much news on Ann Dvorak) and spotlight items in my collection. I fully acknowledge that the watermarks on the photos are pretty obnoxious, but after seeing cheap copies of my pics being sold on eBay and used on other sites without credit, I was a bit irritated.
The biggest news in the world of Ann Dvorak is that Three on a Match will be released March 4th on DVD. It is included in Volume 2 of the TCM Archives Forbidden Hollywood Collection, which will also have The Divorce, A Free Soul, Night Nurse and Female. All these movies are pretty great and Three on a Match is the reason I became and Ann Dvorak fan, so I am really looking forward to it.
The big news in my life is that I got married last month, and the ceremony/reception was held at Ann’s San Fernando Valley ranch home. Ann and husband Leslie Fenton built the place in 1934 in the middle of what was once a 30+ acre walnut ranch. The land was subdivided in the late 1940s, but her house and some of the grounds are still intact. Perfect day, perfect place, perfect guy. We posted 14 of the 600 photos here.
Again, I hope you enjoy the new layout. Let me know what you think.