MADRID, SPAIN.- Ann Boyar Warner,  was born in 1908, the only child of a Russian Jewish immigrant family.  When she was 12, her family moved to Los Angeles.  At age 16 she married  Don Alvarado, a silent screen movie actor and in 1936 she married again, this time to Hollywood movie producer Jack L. Warner, of Warner Brother studios.

In “It happened in Hollywood” Peter Hay relates that Jack L. Warner asked Dalí to paint a portrait of his wife, and threw a grand party for the unveiling.  All of Warner Brothers’ stars showed up at the event, which took place on a great gallery surrounding Jack and Ann’s mansion.  The head of the studio was standing next to the still draped easel and introduced the artist.

“If truth be said, I haven’t seen the painting yet, but I have great faith in this man’s talent, and all of you know how good I am at spotting talent.”

After these words,  Warner pulled the cord. The portrait offered a great semblance of Ann Warner. The background was a desert with a distant oasis.  There, very tiny but with a surreal clarity, Dalí had painted a cage with a monkey inside.  The monkey’s face bore a striking resemblance to Jack L. Warner. A painful silence ensued when the magnate took the painting inside, saying with a forced smile: “I’m glad I was included.”  As Paul Henreid remarked in his memories, “ I never saw the painting hung during Jack’s lifetime.” According to other sources approached by Hay, “the monkey was pure fantasy and the tycoon had hung the painting in one of the many rooms of the mansion.”

Ann Boyar Warner  was born in 1908, the only child of a Russian Jewish immigrant family.  When she was 12, her family moved to Los Angeles.  At age 16 she married Don Alvarado, a silent screen movie actor.  In 1936 she married again, this time to Hollywood movie producer Jack L. Warner, of Warner Brother studios.