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May 27, 2020 33 mins

Dorothy Arzner wasn’t the first woman to direct films in Hollywood, but she was one of the few who endured. A female director who managed to succeed, for a time, in a man’s world. She worked her way through the studio system, first as a typist, then an editor, until she was trusted as a director. Between the silent era of the twenties and the early forties she made 16 films, and pioneered the use of the boom mic in the process. 


Then, stay for a discussion on the difficulties that still exist for women in the film industry with Sonejuhi Sinha, who recently directed her first film after working for years as an editor, just like Dorothy.  


Main Sources

  1. Directed by Dorothy Arzner - by Judith Mayne
  2. An extensive Interview with Dorothy Arzner conducted by Karyn Kay and Gerald Peary in 1974 - published first by ‘Cinema’ and then by ‘The British Film Institute’ in 1975.
  3. What Women Want: The Complex World of Dorothy Arzner and Her Cinematic Women by Donna R. Casella - Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, vol. 50 no. 1-2, 2009, p. 235-270. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/frm.0.0033.
  4. Kate: The life of Katharine Hepburn - by Charles Higham published in 1975
  5. Me: Stories of my Life - by Katharine Hepburn published in 1991

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Dorothy Arsner wasn't the first woman to direct films in Hollywood,
but she was one of the few who endured an
exception of the rule, a female director who managed to
succeed for a time in a man's world. Between the
silent era of the twenties and the early forties, she
made sixteen films in about as many years. I think

(00:26):
that she represented a commitment to telling women's stories. That's
Dorothy's biographer, the film critic and professor Judith Mayne, whether
they were love stories or work stories, or complicated stories,
especially complicated stories about the relationship between love and work.
And I think the fact that Dorothy Arsner survived as

(00:49):
long as she did is really testimony to what a
great independent creative spirit she had. From I Heart Radio

(01:11):
and Tribeca Studios, this is fierce. I can't type women.
We're going to do presenting Problems, a podcast about the
incredible women who never made it in your history books
and the modern women carrying on their legacies today. Us
to the Lady, the Fair and the Week. I can't
find women workers don't mind routine, repetitive work. Will you

(01:33):
make a copy of this naturally? Each week We're bringing
you the story of a groundbreaking woman from the past
who made huge contributions to the present, but whose name
still isn't on the tips of our tongues for whatever reason.
Maybe it's because men wrote most of history. At the
end of each episode, I'll be joined by a woman

(01:54):
living today who's standing on the shoulders of this historical figure,
whether she knows it or not. Dorothy's stepmom center to
the posh Westlake Girls Prep school in the hopes of

(02:15):
educating the tomboy out of her. She had the habit
of donning a newsboy cap in a three piece suit.
She called herself by the name of Garth. But there
wasn't much the Westlake or stepmother could do about this.
Pants would always be Dorothy's signature style. Dorothy's parents operated

(02:39):
a Los Angeles restaurant called the Hoffman Cafe. It's where
all the silent film stars and filmmakers would congregate. That
could have been enough to suck Dorothy into the high
flying world of tinseltown, glitz and glamour, but it didn't.
The proximity actually turned her off. I had been around
the theater and actors all my life. That's an actress
reading Dorothy Arsner's words. The sources for her quotes are

(03:01):
from her biography by Judith Maine and an extensive interview
conducted by Karen Kay and Gerald Peery in nine. My father,
Louis Arsner owned a famous Hollywood restaurant next to a theater.
I saw most of the fine plays that came there
with Maud Adams, Sarah Bernhardt, David Warfield. All of the
early movie and stage actors came to my dad's restaurant

(03:23):
for dinner. I had no personal interest in actors because
they were too familiar to me. The experience of her
father owning this restaurant frequented by Hollywood types really kind
of turned her away from motion pictures because she said
that people were always throwing her in the air and
you know, paying unwanted attention to her. After graduating from Westlake,

(03:46):
Dorothy decided she wanted to be a doctor or a nurse,
something outside the industry. She began studying medicine at USC
but she quickly got bored of it. I wanted to
be like Jesus, heal the sick and raised the dead
in stantly without surgery. Peals at several all thoughts of
university and degrees in medicine were abandoned. Even though I

(04:07):
was an a student and had a fairly extensive education,
I became a so called dropout. Growing up relatively well
off with the father who was willing to give her
financial support meant that Dorothy had the freedom a lot
of women at the time didn't have. She could choose
what she wanted to do, play around with her options,
try things out, and decide they were boring, or fail

(04:29):
at them entirely. So. After the outbreak of World War One,
Dorothy volunteered with the Domestic Ambulance Corps. In the ambulance Core,
she met William de Mill, the guy running the volunteer operation.
He also happened to be the brother of the famed
studio executive Cecil B. Demel. Even though Dorothy had been
gunshy about getting into the film business, there was no

(04:52):
denying that motion pictures were the place for an eager,
young modern woman living in Los Angeles to be. It
was exciting and it was a good job. Plus the
time was right to be starting out in the industry.
There had been a serious flu epidemic, so workers were needed.
It was possible for even inexperienced people to have an
opportunity if they showed signs of ability or knowledge. She

(05:16):
was also lucky. William Demill took a liking to her
when they worked together, and he agreed to take her
on a tour of the studios to see what jobs
might be available and what might be interesting to her.
Dorothy was nothing if not ambitious. She thought being the
director was the best job. I remember making the observation,
if one was going to be in this movie business,

(05:38):
one should be a director, because he was the one
who told everyone else what to do. In fact, he
was the whole works. However, after I finished a week
of observation, William DeMille's secretary told me that typing scripts
would enlighten me to what the film to be was
all about. It was the blueprint for the picture. All

(05:59):
the apartments, including the directors, were grounded in the script.
So I turned up at the end of the week
in William de Mille's office. He asked, now, where do
you think you'd like to start? I answered at the bottom?
Where do you think the bottom is? I meekly answered,
typing scripts? For that, I'll give you a job. The

(06:20):
reb was Dorothy was just awful at it. I was
a terrible typist. There was a big, red headed Irish
girl who was a wonder at typing. She took pity
on me and did more than half my work. But
for her, I wouldn't have lasted a week. But the
typing let her get her hands dirty, let her see

(06:40):
firsthand what went into writing a silent movie script, how
all the pieces fell together. And through that period of
apprenticeship into the motion pictures, she really learned a lot
from different people. She was encouraged by a female cutter
named Nan Harran to work on a silent film called
Too Much Johnson. I watched her work on one reel
and she let me do the second while she watched

(07:02):
and guided every cut. Everything was done by hand. The
film was red and cut over an eight inch by
ten inch box covered with frosted glass and a light
bulb underneath. The film pieces were placed over a small
sprocketed plate, snipped with glue and pressed by hand. Dorothy
loved this chart much more than the type in and

(07:23):
because she enjoyed it, she took a real initiative in
getting the work done. On Sunday, I went into the
studio and assembled the next reel on Monday. I told
her about it, and she looked at it and approved.
I finished the picture under her guidance. From there, Arsenal
took up a position as a cutter and eventually chief editor.
I cut something like thirty two pictures in one year.

(07:45):
I worked most of the day and night and loved it.
She got her first real shot behind the camera while
editing a movie called Blood and Sand, a silent drama
about a bullfighter starring Rudolph Valentino. She became very well
known on the basis of this particular picture for her editing,

(08:06):
because what she did was she very expertly combined archival
footage of full fights into the filmed action of the
motion picture, so that it looked almost seamless as you
moved from the stock footage to Rudolf Valentino in the arena.
By doing that, she ended up saving the studio a

(08:27):
heap of money. That's when Dorothy developed this reputation for
efficiency and economy in a system that was hungry for cheap,
quick movies. The director James Cruz, who was this really
a big deal at the time, also took note of
Dorothy's work on blood and sand. My god, who cut

(08:47):
that picture? She worked on to James Cruise Films, and
he was a real kind of father figure to her
and helped mentor her through the stages of her apprenticeship.
He always treated me as though I were his son,
without any frills, but with a sort of comradely friendship.

(09:09):
Soon Dorothy was in demand on these rough and tumble
adventure and action flicks, Western's historical epics, movies filled with gambling, drinking,
and fighting. Arsner was very much a woman working in
a man's world, but she was something else too. She
set herself apart with her beautifully tailored suits, her slicked
back hair like the boys. People would say, oh, Dorothy

(09:32):
Arsner dressed like a man, or she was so mannish. No,
she dressed like a lesbian, and that's what was threatening
to people. Dorothy Arsner was out in every way, but
in word, she didn't talk openly about her sexuality. Most
of Hollywood likely knew she was gay, but they never
spoke of it. Dorothy also made no attempt to hide it.
She lived with her partner, Marian Morgan for much of

(09:53):
her life, and she wore pants. I think that people
were confused what to do with this woman who dressed
so obviously he has a butch lesbian. I think that
a lot of producers, specially later in her life, made
life very difficult for her because they were known for
their homophobia, and they were going to put up with

(10:15):
not only a woman director, but a woman director who
was a lesbian on top of it. And when you
read the popular press about Dorothy Arsner at the time,
boy did people bend over backwards to describe what she
looked like. But then at the same time they would
describe her as having a very assertive presence. And it

(10:36):
was her professionalism on set that really got her through
because she did her job so well. Dorothy was intent
on learning everything about how a movie was made. That's
when she began trying her hand at screenwriting, penning a
few scripts for rival studio Columbia. It wasn't long before
she aspired to direct. She asked repeatedly at Paramount to

(11:01):
be given the chance to direct. She was laughed off
as many times Columbia, a much smaller operation than Paramount,
was willing to give her a shot. She was ready
to leave Paramount behind, but not before making sure they
knew exactly what they were losing. She went looking for
B P. Schulberg had a production at Paramount, but schulberg
secretary told her he was in a meeting. So I

(11:22):
went out to my car in the parking lot, had
my hand on the door latch when I decided, after
so many years, I was going to say goodbye to
someone important and not just leave unnoticed and forgotten. The
ego took over. She went back up, asked the secretary
if she could wait. Secretary said no. Just then Walter Wager,
another Paramount exec, happened to walk by. As he passed,

(11:45):
I called out, Oh, you'll do She told him she
was leaving, going to another studio. He immediately called Schallberg
into the meeting. The two men tried to convince her
to stay, but Arsenal was adamant that wasn't going to
happen unless she got to direct. I would rather do
an A picture at Columbia, which was then a second
year studio, than a B picture at Paramount. I backed

(12:06):
them into a corner. I wasn't about to do it
their way. I had years of experience and results behind me.
I want to have to start all over again at
the bottom where they might have kept me out of bigotry.
The threat worked and she was given the opportunity to direct.
Time for a quick break, be right back. The studio

(12:38):
was finally willing to take a chance on Dorothy as
a director. They handed her a play, The Best Dressed
Woman in Paris, but they weren't going to make it easy.
They told her to write the script and beyond set.
In two weeks, Oursoner's directorial debut, Fashions for Women, the
adaptation of the Best Dressed Woman in Paris, was released. Yea.

(13:05):
Dorothy made it swiftly and under budget, and that was
the beginning of her career. It was filled with romantic
turmoil and eventually love with a handsome male protagonist boiled
down to its basics that could be considered a precursor
to the modern romantic comedy. Commercially, it was a box

(13:26):
office success, even though reviews were mixed, still, almost all
of them praised Arsner's debut directorial skills, making sure to
note she was an anomaly. A woman director, woman director
delivers delightful photoplay. Considering the ungrateful story she had to
contend with, director Dorothy Arsner, Paramount's first woman director did

(13:48):
fairly well. The success of Fashions for Women landed Arsner
a long term contract directing for Paramount. The studio ended
up having so much faith in Dorothy Arsner that they
entrusted her with their first talk g a film starring
Clara Bou, who at the time was one of Paramount's
biggest stars. She had another fluffy comedic romp called The
Wild Party. Clara Bou was very nervous about the transition

(14:14):
to sound, so Dorothy invented what came to be called
the fish pole mic. She had a mic mounted literally
on a fishing pole, so that out of frame, Dorothy
and her assistance could move the microphone across the stage
with Clara Beau's movements, so that she wouldn't be so
self conscious about speaking correctly into the microphone. This may

(14:37):
have been the first instance of a boom mic used
on set, and that was a huge success. Is The
Wild Party was very, very successful, and that was really
a great beginning for both Clara Beaux and Arsner in
the talking picture phase. Arsner was hailed in the press
for successfully transitioning Bow to the talkies. This woman, Dorothy Arsner,

(14:59):
has just governed a new star in Hollywood. She has
disclosed that Clara Bow, a fiery red haired star of
the Silver Sheet, is an even greatert stellar light in
talking pictures than she was on the silent screen. Arsner
became something of a starmaker, building careers or elevating them
to a new level, like she did for Clara Beau.

(15:20):
It's important to remember that at this time the studio
was king. Dorothy didn't get to pick and choose most
of her pictures because she was a woman. Director Dorothy
Arsner was often assigned the so called women's films, fluffy,
cliched romances and melodramas, but Arsner did everything she could

(15:41):
to push those boundaries to try to showcase more complicated women,
complicated relationships real life. Sure, she adhered to the time
worn tropes of love and courtship, but she also focused
on the things that torment women within society, about how
difficult it actually is for women to fulfill the rules
that have always been assumed for them. She saw female

(16:04):
characters as characters inspired by desire, and not just desire
for a man or for romance, but a desire to
be something, a desire to have a place in the world.
She told women's stories in all their complexity. One of

(16:28):
the films that did that incredibly well with Sarah and Son.
It was a story of Sarah, a German immigrant maid
who gives up her son for adoption to a wealthy family.
Years later, Sarah becomes a successful singer and tries desperately
to reclaim her child. The film was a critical hit.
It made all the lists of top ten movies of

(16:49):
the year. In some ways, it even became the defining
woman's movie at the time. One reviewer noted, it is
very much a woman's picture. Adapted by a woman, directed
by a woman, and enacted by a woman. Here is
a motion picture that will grip every woman in the
audience and hold her in thrall through its length. Another

(17:10):
of you called it a triumph for the women. Variety
dubbed it an all film film. Classification of being a
woman director got to Arsener. I was so averse to
having any comment made about being a woman director that
in my first contract I asked that I didn't even
have screen credit on the picture because I wanted to

(17:31):
stand up as a director and not have people make
allowances that it was a woman. Her paramount contract was
renewed in one, but when the studio underwent a reorganization
in ninety two, they instituted a mandatory pay cut. Dorothy
refused it and struck out on her own as an
independent director. Her first megaphone for higher project was on

(17:52):
the archaeo flick Christopher Strong, starring Katherine Hepburn. I chose
to have Katherine Hepburn from seeing her about the studio.
She had given a good performance in Bill of Divorcement,
but now she was about to be relegated to a
Tarzan type picture. I walked over to the set. She

(18:12):
was up a tree with a leopard skin on, and
she had a marvelous figure, and talking to her, I
felt she was the very modern type I wanted for
Christopher Strong. It would be Hepburn's first film with starbuilding,
and a lot was writing on the picture. The celebrity
biographer Charles Higham described it like this. For Arsenal, making

(18:33):
the picture was a challenge as a woman in a
man's business. She dared not have any failures. She would
have been let out of the club. There are plenty
of mixed opinions about how Arsner and Hepburn, two of
Hollywood's strongest personalities got along Onset. In her own autobiography,
Hepburn wrote, she wore pants, and so did I. Here's

(18:56):
Trudith Maine describing the film. It's a real demonstrate shan
on the part of Dorothy Arsner of how taking prescribed
roles too seriously it can lead to one's demise. There's
a great scene in the film that's become very famous
when she and Christopher make love for the first time.
There's a shot of the end table of their bed

(19:18):
and he has given her a bracelet and she extends
it into the frame, so that's all you see, and
she says, now I'm shackled. I love my beautiful basic.
I'll never get a button before I'm shackle But she
really manages to bring a critical element to these films

(19:39):
about romance. She brings a critical eye to what's expected
of women in Hollywood. In six Arsner directed the movie
that would make Rosalind Russell as star. It's called Craig's Wife.
Russell plays a wife so obsessed with keeping the interior
of her house picture perfect that she drives her husband
completely insane. Practical about leaving your wife in your home.

(20:02):
I haven't a wife to leave you neither may not
honored me. Would you married me all the same? And
you married a house. A news story on Craig's Wife
described it like this. There is a film which will
be shown all over the country next week that raises
a very interesting point for filmgoers. It is a film
which has been made for women, and it has been
written and directed by women. Although there are one or

(20:24):
two men in the cast, they are only there because
they helped the women to express their points of view.
Craig's Wife was not a high budget picture to make.
I told Harry Cohen I would give him an a
picture for be picture money he felt for that. It
was not one of the biggest successes when it was released,
but it got such fine press that over the long

(20:45):
run it was released several times and stood high on
Columbia's box office list. George Kelly, the original playwright of
Craig's Wife, was allegedly displeased with Dorothy's subtle feminist take
on his play. I did try to be his face
full to his play as possible, except that I made
it from a different point of view. Arsner decided that,

(21:06):
rather than the shrew Kelly had written the character of
Craig's wife should simply be portrayed as a stronger woman
than her husband. When I told Kelly this, he rose
to a six foot hide and said, that is not
my play. Of course, she didn't only but heads with
the men on some occasions. I have detected a certain

(21:27):
antagonism and the women I was directing, But I believe
this was due to the fact that a woman director
was a novelty. Hollywood was starting to shy away from
pictures about complicated women. Even though Dorothy went on from
there to direct good films with the likes of Joan
Crawford and Lucille Ball, her career was beginning to slow down.

(21:48):
Soon she found herself clashing with the all powerful MGM
Studio had Louis B. Mayer. Dorothy eventually began to feel,
and probably rightfully so, that Mayor was black following her,
he sent me two or three scripts. One had Roslyn
Russell playing three parts. It was silly. I refused the
next two or three scripts, and I was suspended. Mayor

(22:12):
put out the word that I was difficult. Dorothy went
back to Columbia to direct one last film. First comes Courage,
a movie about the Adventures of a Female Spy, but
then she got terribly ill with pneumonia during the filming,
and the project was completed by another director. Yes, Dorothy

(22:32):
was physically sick, but she was also psychologically beaten down
by an industry that she felt didn't support her in
telling stories the way she wanted to tell them. She
said that she really felt like Hollywood left her as
much as she left Hollywood, and the reason for that
is because big male producers for her, we're making it

(22:55):
extremely difficult to continue working in Hollywood on her own terms.
So she left, and so Dorothy Arsner never directed in
Hollywood again. She settled into a low key lifestyle with
her longtime partner Marian Morgan, traveling and eventually buying a
house in the desert. She said, I took time out

(23:15):
to look at the world and beyond it away from Hollywood.
Maine has said it's important not to frame Arsner as
a victim. She continued to work just on her terms.
She made training films for the Women's Army Corps during
World War Two and trained women editors to cut them.
She dabbled in radio, She directed some commercials and taught

(23:39):
a film class at U c l A. They're Her
most famous student was a young man named Francis Ford Coppola.
He had later praised Dorothy Arsner as giving him the
confidence he needed to become a director. Dorothy Arsner knew
better than anyone how precarious a life in Hollywood could be.
She came to terms with that, and she found a

(24:00):
life beyond it, telling her students the most secure thing
you can have is to embrace the insecurity of life.
Time for a break. When we get back, we'll be
joined by director and editor son as Juis Singer, whose
first feature films Stray Dolls, premiered at the Tribeca Film

(24:22):
Festival in Dorothy Arsna remains the most prolific woman director
to work within the Hollywood studio system. She directed stars
like Katherine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Lucille Ball, and Rosalind Russell.

(24:48):
But more importantly, she changed the way women were depicted
in film. She made them real and complicated and flawed.
She gave them agency on and off the screen. And
yet even many women filmmakers today, the ones who are
still trying to break through the incredibly male dominated Hollywood
industrial complex, have never heard Dorothy Arsner story, and even

(25:12):
though Arstar broke through a glass ceiling nearly a hundred
years ago, not enough has changed. Women go to the
movies they account for of movie goers, and yet for
the top hundred grossing films of nineteen, women represented only
twelve percent of directors, of writers, and of editors. It's

(25:32):
a significant increase from but there's still a long way
to go. Katherine Bigelow is still the only woman to
ever win the Academy Award for Best Director, and only
five women have ever been nominated. Things are starting to
change slowly. Today we're joined by director and editor son

(25:53):
A Jouy Sena. Like Dorothy son A Joy, began her
career as an editor The Cutter, and as an editor
she worked beside acclaimed film directors like Harmony Karen, Julie Taymore,
and Spike Jones. Sana Juey took pains to master the
technical aspects of making a film before she began her
own work as a director. As a woman of color

(26:15):
in the film industry, Sana Juei, now, much like Dorothy then,
has always felt like she needed to work harder, faster,
and smarter than the men around her. Going into our interview.
She didn't know much about Dorothy Arsner's legacy, and then
we told her the story. I knew that women worked
in film, women were directing films, but I didn't know

(26:38):
Dorothy's story until I read all about her. It made
me think that while she had so many breakthroughs, and
you know, broke through the glass ceiling almost a century ago,
it's almost like the glass ceiling formed again. Women have
to keep shattering it every time and every few years.
What are some of the challenges Dorothy was facing that

(26:58):
you're still facing today. I saw so many parallels in
Dorothy's story to mine. She had the standoff moment with
Paramount where she told him that she was leaving and
that she would rather direct an A picture at Columbia
than direct a B picture at Paramount. I could sort
of relate to this time. In making my feature Straight Dolls,

(27:19):
we had gone down the road with a certain group
of producers who were very excited about producing my feature.
But they kept saying, we'll do it this fall, we'll
do it next spring, we'll do it next year of spring.
And so this sort of dragged out for almost two years,
and I began to realize that there was always going
to be a male director or a more established director

(27:42):
who was gonna cut in in front of me and
they were going to produce his phone before mine. It
was three men who took my spot before me. So
there was this moment that I realized that if I
don't take the initiative to figure out the production side
and get my film made, that it possibly will not
get made. No one's going to hand you that really
coveted opportunity that you want. When Dorothy directed, she had

(28:05):
to prove over and over again that she was competent.
She was always under budget, She delivered things quick, and
she delivered them cheap, straight alls. My first feature was
made for perhaps one third of the budget that it
should have been, and we wrapped under budget. I felt
like the steaks were pretty high, and I didn't have

(28:25):
the leeway to reshoot a scene again or funk up
in a way where we had to go back and
used resources. The film had stunts, it had nudity. It
was a challenging film to do for the budget that
we did. But I almost felt like if I proved
myself and showed the world that I could do that

(28:46):
film for one third of the budget, then that would
give me the freedom to do more work and do
it had a bigger budget, so there was just a
lot at stake, and I felt like I was representing
all women of color directors. You felt like you were
represent and every woman of color exactly because there's so
few of us. It's literally you can count them on
your fingers. But not because women don't want to direct

(29:09):
and women of color don't want to direct, but because
these opportunities are so far and few, and very few
people hold the keys to opening those doors, and so
a lot of women are shut out. Whenever the studio
spoke to the press about Dorothy, they used this condescending language.
She does women's films, and only a woman like Dorothy

(29:29):
could add a woman's touch to this woman's film. Are
those kinds of modifiers still happening now with your movies? Yes?
Oh my god. This section really spoke to me because
Indie Wire did this list of twenty five female emerging
directors and there were some incredible directors on that list.
Some of them had one awards at Sundance. I was

(29:52):
on that list as well. But I just found that
really ironic because if a male director wins the top
award at Sundance, he doesn't get put on this list
that calls him an emerging male director. He's just you know,
the top directors to watch. I mean, I think they've
just stopped calling Eva Duvernet emerging like as of a

(30:13):
few years ago. So I think there is this female
ghetto that women get put in. So where do we
go from here to make sure that in the next
hundred years women directors are just directors. You're not emerging,
you're not women directors, You're not placed in the pink gatto.
How can we make sure that all of your names
aren't lost to history the same way we lost Dorothy's.
I think the problem is so systematic and so complex

(30:36):
that it has to be addressed from so many different perspectives.
Of course, writer directors like me and women of color
need to just jump into the ring and demand what
they deserve. But I think it also there's some responsibility
that lies with people who are in power now, because

(30:57):
it seems that every time a woman breaks ground, the
crack closes up again. Unless the full spectrum of our
population now is reflected on screen the way that we
see it within our friends and our colleagues, we don't
get to say that we exist, Like, for example, I

(31:17):
don't see people like myself in lead roles in a
large commercial entertaining Hollywood films, So then does that mean
that I don't even exist? So I think representation is
really important and for us all to feel like we're
part of the narrative that we're part of society now
that is going to shape the next ten years and
the next thirty years or fifty years to come, and

(31:40):
it's necessary especially now. We're very grateful to our guest
biographer Judith Maine and director Sna Juisina, whose film Straight
Dolls was released on April tenth. It's available now on
streaming services and we encourage you to watch it. Dorothy
Arsner is voiced by Blanca Camacho. The male voices in

(32:01):
this episode were all done by Jacob bon Eichel. Fierce
is hosted and written by Joe Piazza, produced and directed
by me Anna Stump. Our executive producers are Joe Piazza,
Nikki Etre, Anna Stump, and from Tribeca Studios, Leah Sarbib.
This episode was edited and soundscaped by Anna Stump. Tristan
McNeil and Aaron Kaufman. Our associate producer is Emily marinof

(32:22):
fact checking by Austin Thompson, researched by Lizzie Jacobs. The
Fierce Theme is by Hamilton Lighthouser and Anna Stump. Are
very sincere thanks to Mangesha Tikadoor for making this series
possible and to Nikki etre Are, co executive producer. Thank
you so very much for everything you did for this show.
Sources for this episode directed by Dorothy Arsner by Judith Mayne.

(32:43):
An extensive interview with Dorothy Arsner conducted by Karen Kay
and Gerald Pury in nineteen seventy four, published first by
Cinema and then by the British Film Institute in n
What Women Want The Complex World of Dorothy Arsner and
her Cinematic Women by Donna ar Cassella, found in Framework,
the Journal of Cinema and Media, Volume fifty from two
thousand nine. Thank you so much for listening. For more

(33:08):
podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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