Hello, my name's Justin the Cluhr, I'm here today with Will Sloan.

And you're listening to The Important Cinema Club.

And today, we're going to be talking about Dorsey Arsner, the director of Dance Girl Dance,

The Wild Party, Marily, We go to hell. Get Your Man.

Christopher Strong.

And you may be asking yourself,

wait, I've never heard of any of these movies.

Dorothy Arsner is the most prolific female filmmaker of the Hollywood studio era. And she wasn't the first woman director, Alice Gie Blanchi, was one of the first

directors ever.

She pretty much did the first narrative film, and there were other along the way,

but like most women in careers dominated by men, and by that I mean every career,

if they had one screw-up or one little thing that went wrong, they were excluded forever from that career.

But in the late 20s, the 30s, and the early 40s, Dorothy Arsner worked consistently as a

writer-director, often making, let's call them women's pictures. Yeah, she got started in the industry

when she became a script girl, and from there she moved up to be a cutter, and then an editor.

She worked most famously on Blood and Sand, the 1922 version, which starred Rudolf Valentino.

And from there, she went on and formed relationship with James Cruz. And she helped edit films

like Ruggles of Red Gap from 1923 and The Covered Wagon. Dorothy Arster may not be a familiar

name. I think she's becoming more reclaimed in recent years because there's a great appetite for

female filmmakers and like the history of woman directors. And in particular, her film Dance Girl

Dance was rediscovered by the second wave feminists of the 1970s. And I've been hearing it just

talked about more and more lately.

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