Year of Ann Dvorak: Day 89

I’ve been collecting on Ann Dvorak for around 15 years now, and initially was interested in paper pieces like posters and lobby cards. After a while, those types of items became harder to find, so I turned to original photos of which there are thousands floating around.  Once I committed to writing Ann’s biography, I really started keeping an eye out for images that might be good for the book. Eventually, I ended up with a handful of non-Ann photos that were still somehow related to Ann and her career, like this portrait of her first husband Leslie Fenton, who was arguably the love of her life.

Once it came time to select images for the book, I realized that it would be silly to use up valuable real estate on photos of  people other than Ann. If the book is about Ann Dvorak, readers want to see photos of Ann Dvorak, right? In the case of Leslie Fenton, I have so many images of him and Ann together that it seemed especially wrong to use this portrait, even though it is rather nice. I did use three non-Ann photos, which are of her parents, but otherwise there will be 66 glorious images of the Divine Ms. D when it comes off the press.

In the meantime, we’ll spend some days in the next week looking at images that did not make the cut.