From 1927 until her retirement from feature directing in 1943, Arzner was the only female director working in Hollywood.
Additionally, she was one of a very few women able to establish a successful and long career in Hollywood as a film director until the 1970s. Arzner made a total of twenty films between 1927 and 1943 and launched the careers of a number of Hollywood actresses, including Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, and Lucille Ball. Additionally, Arzner was the first woman to join the Directors Guild of America and the first woman to direct a sound film.
Arzner would maintain a forty-year relationship with Marion Morgan (1881-1971), a dancer and choreographer who was ten years older than Arzner. In 1930, Arzner and Morgan moved to Mountain Oak Drive, where they lived until Morgan's death in 1971. While they lived in Hollywood, Arzner assisted various cinematographic events. In her last years Arzner left Hollywood and went to live in the desert, in La Quinta, California..