Dory Previn had been drawn to Hollywood after hearing Judy Garland sing “Dear Mr. Gable: You Made Me Love You,” so it was the opportunity of a lifetime when “The Wizard of Oz” star was cast in “Valley of the Dolls” and Previn, by the 1960s, had become one of the film industry’s most successful songwriters, ready to pen a song for her. As you can hear her recount in journal entries (read tenderly by J. Smith Cameron) in “Dory Previn: On My Way to Where,” she found the frenzied hook for the theme song for “Valley of the Dolls” from her own experience with the cyclical nature of drugs, though she “hoped no one would notice” when the showstopper was belted out with the kind of the gusto that one could expect from Garland, who might’ve been too in touch with the tune when her behavior on set forced her to bow out of the production due to her addictions at the time. The fact that Hollywood was making an adaptation of Jacqueline Susann’s novel with its pill popping heroines was the mark of a sea change in the culture, but whether they were prepared for Previn to be as open as she could be was another story.
Previn wasn’t one to necessarily hide her intentions, as co-directors Dianna Dilworth and Julia Greenberg beautifully convey in their radiant doc about the studio songsmith-turned-singer/songwriter. Her songs were used in group therapy sessions when she had detailed her own struggles with mental illness and the filmmakers are able to lean on her voice throughout the film to tell her story with incredible clarity in her work, often letting historical context seamlessly give way to her lyrics. However, how much she could reveal of herself in relation to her professional pursuits become a fascinating question in a career that covers a curious period of time, from 1945 when the Hollywood dream factory was at its peak and her work found its way to “Singin’ in the Rain” producer Arthur Freed, who paired her with the composer Andre Previn, to the 1970s when Tinseltown may have had little use for her, but she struck out on her own as a contemporary of Linda Ronstadt and Carly Simon.
No less than Ann Powers can be seen claiming now that her second album “Mythical Kings and Iguanas” was the most daring of the lot in the watershed year of 1971, but Dilworth and Greenberg make a compelling case that Previn had been pushing the envelope for some time, simply being honest with herself about her capabilities. With Previn’s recognition that she could write about her experience with clarity when the experience itself was chaos, the film not only has her music to lean on as a soulful core, but also draws on the sophistication of Emily Hubley’s animation to take simple lines and doodles to illustrate how they started to give shape to bigger ideas. Although the filmmakers certainly don’t suggest an easy life, their understanding of Previn extends to seeing any hardships as opportunities, from the creativity that emerged from her neurodivergence to falling out of fashion with Hollywood where being a woman had been tough enough, but the end of her marriage to Previn had led to a second act as a solo artist right when studios might’ve been less receptive to her music but audiences themselves were looking for more authentic female voices as the women’s liberation movement grew.
When its subject was often at odds with the system while finding success within it, “Dory Previn: On My Way to Where” takes an appropriately discursive approach, loosely following a chronological timeline, but attaching memories to the music where Previn could do the strongest self-reflection and after investing so much of herself emotionally into tracks for movies such as “Inside Daisy Clover” and “Two for the Seesaw,” it only seems right that Dilworth and Greenberg let the medium return the favor, allowing her words to resonate and be appreciated in full.
“Dory Previn: On My Way to Where” does not yet have U.S. distribution.