In 1926, Dorothy Arzner became the first female director in an overwhelmingly male Hollywood studio system. With 20 credits to her name , including 17 feature films, she remains the woman director with the largest oeuvre in the history of the industry. And as an openly gay woman, she was a trailblazer in more ways than one. Still, her career, which spanned until 1943, when she came down with pneumonia and was unable to continue working, went largely unrecognized until the late 1970s. A dusty star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame bears her name, and as the first female member of the Director's Guild, she was honored in a 1975 ceremony. At the time, legendary actress and contemporary Katherine Hepburn sent Arzner a telegram , congratulating her on the momentous occasion. It read: "Isn't it wonderful that you've had such a great career, when you had no right to have a career at all?"