The rediscovery of Dorothy Arzner, A-list director

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Although long overdue, the time seems right for a rediscovery of Dorothy Arzner, the first female member of the Directors Guild of America. The med-school dropout and one-time ambulance driver went from typist to script girl to film cutter, editor, screenwriter and director who made many good movies within the studio system. Irrespective of gender, she was an A-list director.

This Thursday, Toronto's Revue cinema will screen Arzner's 1940 film Dance, Girl, Dance in a 16mm print. Arzner wasn't the original director on the picture (Roy Del Ruth was dropped) but once she took over, she shaped it to her distinctive point of view, away from having the typical love triangle be the top plot. The result is a look at the tension between commercial success and artistic integrity, among other things. It's one of the few films of that era that would ace the Bechdel test.

In Women Directors and Their Films, Mary Hurd says Arzner got a reputation as a star-maker, "directing female actors who in many way epitomized modern women – those who sought careers and financial independence in roles that emphasized their unique talents and mirrored the complications inherent in being ambitious American women."

Arzner spotted the swagger in such stars as Claudette Colbert, Katharine Hepburn, Clara Bow, Joan Crawford, Anna Sten and Merle Oberon early in their careers.

Arzner directed 17 films between 1927 and 1943 – four silents before successfully making the transition to sound (she was responsible for Paramount's first talkie, The Wild Party, starring Clara Bow). After retiring from Hollywood she continued to have a hand in the business – filming Women's Army Corps training films and Pepsi commercials for friend Joan Crawford, and teaching at UCLA (Francis Ford Coppola was one of her students).

Although her namesake Dorothy Arzner Directors Award is given to female directors in the film and television industries (this year's recipient is Selma's Ava DuVernay; in the past it's gone to Lisa Cholodenko and Gillian Armstrong), she has been forgotten until recently.

In addition to the Revue's screening, Arzner is the subject of a retrospective on now at L.A.'s Hammer Museum Billy Wilder Theater, with screenings of Christopher Strong (a bleak interrogation of love and marriage) and Merrily We Go to Hell. The latter, from 1932, is another pre-Code gem about the state of modern matrimony, with actress Sylvia Sidney explaining the rules of goose and gander to her freewheeling, errant spouse: "If being a modern husband gives you privileges, then being a modern wife gives me privileges."

Dance, Girl, Dance, meanwhile, stars Maureen O'Hara in the year after her big break in Jamaica Inn, alongside Lucille Ball in a non-comedic role as the vampy Bubbles, a burlesque performance with a female dance troupe.

In one memorable scene, as her disintegrating costume sabotages her performance, O'Hara narrows her eyes and strides back on to centre stage to confront the jeering audience.

"Go ahead and stare, I'm not ashamed," she begins.

"I know you want me to tear my clothes off, so as you can look your 50 cents' worth. Fifty cents for the privilege of staring at a girl the way your wives won't let you.

"What do you suppose we think of you up here, with your silly smirks your mothers would be ashamed of?"

"To my surprise," O'Hara writes in 'Tis Herself, her 2004 autobiography, "feminists responded to my character in the movie and used her in support of their campaign for women's rights. It rolled like prairie fire all across the country."