Year of Ann Dvorak:Day 101

At the dawn of 1932, Ann Dvorak was under contract to Howard Hughes. The millionaire producer had allowed Howard Hawks to bring Ann over to Warner Bros. for The Crowd Roars, and the Burbank studio quickly became infatuated with her. They were, in fact, so eager to have Ann in their films that they cemented a deal with Hughes to borrow her exclusively for six months. One of the terms of this agreement gave Hughes script approval on anything they wanted Ann to appear in.

On April 11, 1932, Warner Bros. sent Hughes’ Caddo Co. the script for a movie called Crooner along with a letter requesting that Ann appear in this film instead of Cabin in the Cotton which had been previously approved. The role she had been pegged to play in Cabin in the Cotton was Nordie Lord, a plantation owner’s saucy daughter. By the time the film started shooting, the character’s name had been changed to Madge Norwood and Warner contract player Bette Davis had stepped into the role.

Those of you familiar with Crooner and Cabin in the Cotton may be either scratching your heads in wonder or screaming “WHY??” up to the heavens. While Crooner is an amusing enough little comedy, Ann has very little to do in it, especially when compared to Madge Norwood, who Bette later described as the first “downright, forthright bitch,” she ever played.

Warner Bros. seems to have frequently cast actors in one film and then suddenly swap them out for someone else, so I don’t think there was any deep meaning behind putting Ann on Crooner instead of Cabin in the Cotton. Eighty three years later, it’s just another  “what if” in the career of Ann Dvorak.