Born January 3: Dorothy Arzner

In 1929, when Paramount wanted to make their first talking picture, The Wild Party, which director did they trust to do it? The prolific Dorothy Arzner, who had completed four features for them in the preceding two years. Usually seen wearing men's shirts, suits, and neckties, Arzner was open about being a lesbian. The following year she made no secret of the choreographer Marion Morgan moving in with her, a relationship that would last more than four decades. Although her movies were always studio fare, her Pre-Code pictures show a strong feminist streak, examining careers, independence, class, extra-marital sex, pregnancy, and prostitution. She helped launch the careers of or gave breakthrough roles to Katharine Hepburn (playing an Amelia Earhart-style pilot in Christopher Strong), Rosalind Russell (Craig's Wife) and Lucille Ball (Dance, Girl, Dance). After an illness in 1943, Arzner never again directed a feature and no one knows exactly why. She made Army training movies and taught film at UCLA, and she shot some Pepsi commercials, probably at the express request of her longtime friend and rumored lover, Joan Crawford. The Directors Guild of America, which she was the first woman to join in 1936, finally honored her work in 1975, four years before her death. Women in Film gives a directing award named for her, but still today so few women are making features that they've had to open the field to television as well, and even so have only given the award sporadically, seven times since 1993, most recently in 2007.