Beulah Bondi in "The Pony Cart" episode of THE WALTONS

Beulah Bondi in “The Pony Cart” episode of The Waltons, is “still on the top of her game,” or so recalled Judy Norton-Taylor, who played “Mary Ellen” in the popular family television drama.  It is a performance worth noting for that, and also because it was Miss Bondi’s very last role, and because she won an Emmy for it.

This is my entry in the 10^th Annual Favourite TV Show Episode Blogathon hosted by Terence at A Shroud of Thoughts blog.  Have a look at the other great posts listed.

“The Pony Cart,” season 5, episode 10, broadcast December 2, 1976, is actually the second appearance of Beulah Bondi on the program, having introduced the character of Martha Corinne Walton two years earlier in season 3, an episode called “The Conflict,” broadcast September 12, 1974.  In that episode, Martha Corinne, who is the Grandfather Zeb’s (played by Will Geer) sister-in-law, having married his older brother Henry, is being forcibly removed from her home.  She lives in a cabin in the mountains.  She, her son Boone and her great-grandson and his wife have to leave the area when a new highway is to be built and the land has been taken by eminent domain. 

In “The Pony Cart,” it is summer 1937 and Martha Corinne comes to visit the Waltons, bringing with her some personal treasures as gifts to everyone.  At first she is a welcome guest, a part of their family history.  Indeed, she still dresses in old-fashioned ways including a bonnet when she goes outside.  She settles into family life, but soon proves to be an irritant for her outspoken opinions and suggestions, and everyone from Grandma Walton (played by Ellen Corby, with whom she appeared decades earlier in It’s a Wonderful Life) to some of the kids chafe under her strong, independent personality.  She pokes her nose into everyone’s business, and it is actually pretty funny, if it’s not your business.

Brother Ben, played by Eric Scott, is constructing a pony cart in the family’s sawmill, and Martha Corinne takes special interest in this; it is something like her, a time traveler from the past and gentler days.  In her time, they called it a shay.  She interferes here as well, telling him the best way to build it. 

Understanding she has worn out her welcome, she asks John-Boy, played by Richard Thomas, to take her back to her new home, but first to ride up to the remains of her old cabin and to visit her husband’s grave in the mountains.  On that trip, she remarks on what is the saddest prospect of all about growing old: “The sad thing is to see your kin and your friends go, one by one.  That’s the hardest part.”

She is teary-eyed upon standing on the ruins of her cabin, which she and her husband had built together in the late 1800s.

She has an attack of angina, and admits that being 90 years old, “I’m wore out.”  He wants to take her back to the Waltons’ house, but she refuses.  “I’ve got too much pride,” but agrees only when he promises not to tell anyone she is dying.

Back at the Waltons, where nobody is at first all that happy to see her again, they later relent and coddle her when John-Boy tells them the truth about Martha Corinne’s health.  She is furious.  “Now they’re all waitin’ for me to drop dead so they can pick me up before I hit the floor…I don’t want to be dead before I die.”

She is given the project of painting Ben’s pony cart, and fashions it into a lovely piece of folk art with stenciled flowers.  Ben gives her the first ride when it is finished, and along the road, she asks to be let out to stretch her legs near a patch of wildflowers.  As Ben pulls away, intending to circle around and come back, Martha Corinne is alone for the moment, blissful in the sunshine, picking flowers, when suddenly, another attack of angina, and bending over, she looks upward toward the sky, squinting, not exactly in distress, but rather a look of almost childlike curiosity.  There is a slow fadeout, and we know that Martha Corinne has passed away, peacefully enjoying her final earthly moment in nature.

I can still recall the first time I saw the episode and tearing up at this scene.  Having watched it again for this blogathon, it retains its power and delicacy.

What makes the episode especially interesting is that Martha Corinne is the focus of the entire episode.  The subplots that occur reflect her place in the story.  With exquisite respect to a veteran actress, the episode is given over to her, and Beulah Bondi has the strength and skill to command the entire episode; she is in nearly every scene.

At age 87, she won the Emmy for “Outstanding Lead Actress for a Single Appearance in a Drama or Comedy Series.”  Her last film had been in 1963, and had made only a handful of television guest appearances in between.  “The Pony Cart” and its resultant Emmy was a triumphant way for a marvelous actress to end her long career.  Miss Bondi passed away in 1981 at 92 years old.

Compare this performance with her devastating turn as the elderly woman parted from her husband in Make Way for Tomorrow (1937), which we discussed here. 

Here’s a clip of Beulah Bondi sweetly recalling her husband on their wedding day in the first episode, “The Conflict.”

Have a look here at Judy Norton-Taylor’s remembrance of and touching insights on “The Pony Cart” episode here on her YouTube channel devoted to The Waltons.

For more posts on great TV show episodes by some great bloggers, have a look here at the roster for the 10^th Annual Favourite TV Show Episode Blogathon!

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

The 1930s - then and now Part 5 - Make Way for Tomorrow - 1937

Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) is a poignant and devastating film. Its simplicity of storytelling, and the decency of the elderly married couple, thrust shafts of conscience on us with the sharpness of a sword and the sweetness of a kiss.

This is the final part of our series on films from the 1930s and their lessons for today, and this one probably has more resonance for our current era than any of the others we discussed. Those movies include Gentlemen Are Born (1934), Our Daily Bread (1934), Wild Boys of the Road (1933) and Girls of the Road (1940) and One Third of the Nation (1939).

The movie begins with one of those introductory written paragraphs that is meant to set us up with a point we’re supposed to take away from it, but which we tend to forget by the end of the film. Not so this time. The message of this movie is subtly present in every scene. The movie begins, “Life flies past us so swiftly that few of us pause to consider those who have lost the tempo of today...”

We are reminded also, from Scripture, to Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother, but the “life flies past us so swiftly...” is a double reminder that what is past is prologue. The story of the elderly couple may well be our story one day, and currently is for many elders across the United States. Other cultures may not subject their elderly to the same conditions we do, so I would not say the problems of the story are universal, except that aging is universal, and it is also universal that most young people do not imagine themselves as ever being elderly.

Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore play a retired couple about seventy years old. Our first shot of their family homestead is of a cozy little cottage in a winter scene, looking something like out of a Currier and Ives print, the nostalgic idealism which may have been an ironic gesture on the part of the director, Leo McCarey. All is not well here. Their grown children have come to visit them, but this is more of a business trip because they have been summoned by their parents to discuss an important matter.

Their grown children are played by Thomas Mitchell, one of the most versatile “workhorse” character actors of the era; Elisabeth Risdon; Mina Gombell, who we earlier saw in this series as the gun moll auntie in Wild Boys of the Road; and Ray Mayer. There is another daughter who lives in California who is spoken of, but who never appears in the movie.

Victor Moore, who had a career on stage and in the movies playing stumblebum characters of some innocence, was around sixty-one at the time this movie was made. He is good-natured, humorous, a kindly codger with an independent streak, devoted to his wife, played by Beulah Bondi.

Beulah Bondi also had a long career on stage including Broadway, and was actually only about forty-eight years old at the time of this movie, but she is made up to play older. Most of the aging process is really Miss Bondi’s luminescent magic and what she does with her voice and with her body, and you believe every word she says. She came to the movies quite late, about forty-three years old, and spent most of them playing mothers (she was James Stewart’s mother in four different movies). She lived to be ninety-one years old, and it is a tribute to her prodigious talent that late in her life she won an Emmy for "Outstanding Lead Actress" for an appearance on The Waltons in 1976.

Beulah Bondi does most of the heavy lifting in this movie. She is the heart and soul of it, and she glows, absolutely glows, whenever the camera is on her. Even if she stands in the background, she has our full attention. Hollywood in this era had many, many character actors we came to identify and love, but few of them could be a character actor with the magnetism of the star player and that is what Beulah Bondi was. She utterly charms us in this movie, and tears our hearts out. Rather than overplay the stereotyped mannerisms of an old lady, her portrayal is subtle and real, every gesture is one benevolent understanding on the part of a much younger actress for the character she is playing.

The couple have called their children together to announce that in a week the bank is taking their home. Mr. Moore had stopped working five years previously when he was about sixty-five years old. We may assume he retired at that time, we are told only that he hasn’t worked in five years. We may assume that he stopped working about 1932, the Depression was at its worst, and probably wouldn’t have had many working opportunities anyway, even if he were a young man.

Their grown children are shocked, of course. Their parents had known this was going to happen for six months, but they did not want to tell their children because they hoped something good would come along, and obviously, always being independent, they were embarrassed about their financial problems. Whatever money they saved for their golden years is gone.

We have a clue to their children’s other reaction to this news, at the very beginning of the film when Thomas Mitchell enters the home and his father, greeting him joyfully, remarks, “I haven’t seen you since...” The parents have not seen their children in a long time. Their children do not bother to keep in touch.

Their preeminent reaction to their parents’ financial distress is worry about getting stuck with them. The two daughters and two sons struggle with appropriate replies and excuses. The two daughters are married.  Miss Risdon’s husband is out of work. Miss Gombell’s husband is in business, but struggling, so she says. Ray Mayer is single, the youngest of the group, a joking, jovial prankster, but because he is single, and doesn’t show up again until the end of the movie, we assume, as does his family, that being single means he doesn’t have to take care of his parents.

Thomas Mitchell, who is married, lives in a New York City apartment and has one daughter, is a likely candidate to take in his parents and it is he who feels the most guilt. But he can’t take both of them at the moment. His teenage daughter, played by Barbara Read, will be attending college in several months. Mitchell suggests that his mother stay with him, share the daughter’s room until he can take both of them. Elisabeth Risdon will take her father until such time as Barbara Read leaves for college and then their father can join their mother in Thomas Mitchell’s extra room.

It is awkward, it is hasty, but they all agree that it won’t be forever.

So the loving couple is split up, temporarily, and it is like an adventure, just a visit, not meant to be a permanent arrangement and that soothes everybody’s nerves, the fact that it is not meant to be permanent.

Most of their possessions are sold off with the house, but Beulah Bondi gets to bring her rocking chair and a large framed portrait of her husband to her son’s New York apartment. She doesn’t fit in with her son’s family. Fay Bainter plays Thomas Mitchell’s wife, a mannered society woman who conducts classes in the playing of bridge in her apartment. For these evenings, all the guests dress formally and play at card tables, so it is as much a social evening as it is a class. She earns “a few extra dollars” doing this. Beulah Bondi’s attempt at cozying into her son’s family’s life is funny because she is naturally an irritant without meaning to be. She talks to the guests when she is not supposed to, even kibitzing a little at the cards. Their daughter Barbara Read is more put off by Grandma, and doesn’t want to bring her friends home anymore because Grandma talks to them. Apparently, grandmas are not supposed to talk; it weirds everybody out.

They have a maid, played by Louise Beavers, who is also put off by Beulah Bondi because when Thomas Mitchell and Fay Bainter go out on the town, she cannot have her evenings free anymore, she must stay with the old lady.

There are many scenes that have a deft, dual comic/sad effect.  One is when Beulah Bondi receives a phone call from her husband in the middle of the bridge class. She speaks on the phone very loudly and the other people cannot help but overhear. In another moment, they have suspended their play and they have all turned in their chairs to watch her on the phone. Mitchell and Fay Bainter are embarrassed, but the guests are touched at this old lady talking to her husband whom she clearly misses very much, and they are engrossed by the scene.

We will see throughout this movie that strangers are much kinder to the old couple than their children.

Beulah Bondi remarks into the phone, “Must’ve cost you a lot to call me.” She listens and then responds, distressed, “You could’ve bought yourself on nice warm scarf for that.” Her eavesdroppers feel sorry. “Goodbye…,” and her voice trails off with a frail, “My dear.”

Fay Bainter begs her daughter, “If you love me,” take Grandma to the movies with you and get her out of the house. Barbara Read gets Grandma settled in her theater seat and then sneaks out on a date. She sneaks back into the theater afterwards and asks the usherette to fill her in on the plot. She is played by Fritzi Brunette – a really great name – in a funny standout comic moment when she explains the plot of the movie. Fritzi was one of those uncredited actresses who played in many films, beginning in 1912 in the silents, but died only six years after this movie was released at forty-seven years old.  She adds, excitedly, “There’s a newsreel and Betty Boop!”

Beulah Bondi catches Barbara Read sneaking out on her date but promises not to tell the parents and the bond grows between granddaughter and grandmother.

Victor Moore is faring no better. He is clearly unwelcome in his daughter’s home and must sleep on the couch in the living room. He visits his friend, the local storekeeper played by Maurice Moscovitch. He broke his glasses so Mr. Moscovitch reads to him his latest letter from Beulah Bondi. The shopkeeper lives with his wife in the back of the store; his children are grown and moved away, too. He remarks, “You can’t give them as much as other children, they’re ashamed of you. And when you give them everything, put them through college, they’re ashamed of you.”

In the letter, Beulah Bondi remarks that Fay Bainter and Thomas Mitchell have brought her to visit a home for the aged because there are people there her own age she could talk to, but she thinks it is a dismal place. She thinks perhaps that they want to deposit her permanently in such a place. Victor Moore wants desperately to find a job keep his wife from that fate. 

When he leaves, Mr. Moscovitch is so rattled from Beulah Bondi’s letter, he calls anxiously for his own wife, played by Ferike Boros, another familiar face in many films in bit roles, and when she shows up in the midst of her chores, irritated, wanting to know what he wants, he says with love and relief, “I just wanted to look at you.” It is another one of those touching and heartbreaking moments.

Back at Thomas Mitchell’s New York City apartment, Barbara Read, the somewhat spoiled daughter, is going out on the sly with a thirty-five-year-old man. Beulah Bondi cautions her against it. In turn, Barbara cautions her about expecting that her husband is going to be able to get a job, “He’s much too old.” She tells her grandmother to face facts.

Beulah Bondi gently replies, that for the very old, their enjoyment, “is pretending there aren’t any facts to face.” The girl is touched, and kisses Grandma on the head. But she stays out too late, doesn’t come home by morning, and the parents are angry at Grandma for not telling them about Barbara’s boyfriend. It is the last straw.

Inevitably, Beulah Bondi notices a letter addressed to Fay Bainter from the home for aged women and she knows that it’s all over. She will be placed there soon, against her will. She has no other options. 

Victor Moore has caught a cold and his doctor decides he needs a warmer climate, so the kids decide that the daughter in California is going to take care of Dad for the winter. Before he goes, and before Beulah is dumped into the home for aged women, their children allow them one last visit. Victor Moore will come to New York City and he and his wife of fifty years will be allowed to have five hours together.

Beulah tells her son Thomas Mitchell that she will willingly go to the home for aged women but she wants him to promise her not to ever tell his father about it. She wants to spare that hurt to her husband.

Another poignant moment is when we see Louise Beavers pay a warm tribute to Beulah Bondi by sharply telling the moving man to handle her rocking chair gently.

The film picks up as Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore get one last adventure together in New York City where, as it happens, they went on their honeymoon fifty years earlier.

They walk a great deal and talk and Victor Moore mourns that he has been a failure. Not only about not having enough money to live on, but on how little regard their children have for them. Beulah commiserates and she feels like she also, “slipped up someplace.”

They walk past a store that has a “help wanted” sign and Victor Moore leaves her on the sidewalk for a moment while he slips in, saying he wants to buy something but we know, and she knows, he wants to apply for the job, one last Hail Mary pass to keep them together and obtain their independence. He comes out and says it was the wrong size.

But he was the wrong age.

Now more strangers step in to be kindly to them. A car salesman sees them staring at an expensive auto and he thinks they are well-heeled, so he takes them on a test drive. They sit in the back of his roadster and they reminisce to each other about their honeymoon in New York City. He listens and enjoys their time together and takes them to the hotel where they stayed at when they were honeymooning. He realizes they are not going to buy a car but he doesn’t care, he’s perfectly willing to be nice to them for the sake of being decent.

At the hotel, where they had stayed in the 1890s, it has been modernized, but the people there are just as respectful of old customers as new. The hotel manager pays for their drinks and their dinner and spends time sitting with them and chatting.

They are funny together, arguing about whether they did something on their honeymoon on a Thursday or on a Wednesday, talking about the things they did, such as going to the theater, going to the museum. She has never had an alcoholic drink before and they drink Old Fashioneds and she gets a little tipsy but she is sweet. He teases her again that her old beau is now the bank manager and she blushes like a girl. He says jovially, “I’ve got his girl, but he’s got my house.”

They are two old people in love and she recites a poem and they almost kiss, but with propriety she looks around and holds back because they are in public.

They go to the dance floor where a waltz plays, but it ends and a rumba starts to a modern tune, and before they can leave the dance floor in confusion and discomfort, the kindly orchestra conductor stops, and in deference to them alone, begins the old waltz from their youth, “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” The dance begins and the old couple waltzes and the younger people see them and pull away and watch. It is a moment of kindliness, but not only that; it is a moment of tribute to them.

Then it is 9 o’clock and they must leave the party like Cinderella and go to the train station because Victor Moore is being sent to California to stay with his other daughter.

There have been many goodbyes at train stations in the old movies, but I don’t think there was ever one more devastating than this.

Their children, gathered to have a final dinner with them, are annoyed to be stood up, but son Ray Meyer quips, “We’ve known all along that we were the most good for nothing bunch of kids that were ever raised, but it didn’t bother us much till we found out that Pop knew it too.”

The old couple at the train station put on a pretending act together, pretending as if they will be together soon, that they will see each other again, and yet at the same time they say what are actually final goodbyes, knowing that they are final. They kiss a few times and Beulah Bondi says, “It’s been lovely, every bit of it, the whole fifty years.”

If you’re not sobbing by now, you’re dead.

He gets on the train and as it pulls out, she blows a kiss to him. Then she stands, slightly hunched, very still, a hollow look in her eyes, as if she is trying to process what has just happened:  A final goodbye to her husband, and is trying to keep herself together. Then she turns abruptly away from the camera.

The end.

And this is possibly the most shocking thing about the movie, because now we realize it really is the end. They are never going to see each other ever again.

When we lose someone in death it is obviously a heartbreak, but even the finality of knowing we will never see that person again, it is somehow easier to accept thinking, as we may in time, that they are “in a better place,” that they are “not suffering,” or any other thing we tell ourselves to heal. But when we lose someone we will never see again but they are still living, there is an unfinished aspect and our grief will never heal. We will always imagine them somewhere hurt, ill, needing us, or missing us as much as we do them. The thought of their continuing pain and heartbreak is more difficult to bear than the thought of them being at peace. Some people really do think more of other people than they do themselves, and that is always a shock for people who don’t.

For those of us who cared for our parents in their final years, it is a matter of deep disgust for those who don’t. And though this movie is about grown children who choose not to care for their parents, or who do it grudgingly, there are other stories out there of elderly people who simply have no other recourse. It is not that their children won’t care for them; it is that their children can’t for any number of reasons, or perhaps they have no children.

What, then, is the ultimate fate of millions of elderly?

This couple has five children who pass their parents among themselves, and Thomas Mitchell, at least, can afford to send his mother to an old age home. In an era before social safety nets, the only other option for this couple would have been the "Hoovervilles" in a park, in a town dump, or under a highway bridge.

Only about two years before this movie was released, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first Social Security plan as part of his New Deal was passed. The first monthly payout did not begin until 1940 and the person received $22.54. It would have been enough to pay rent on a cheap apartment at the time. The poverty rate for seniors was extremely high in those years and actually would continue as Social Security was established and modified. At first, it only covered workers and their survivors who were in manufacturing and commerce. A domestic worker, such as Louise Beavers played in the movie, was not eligible to receive Social Security. Disability benefits were also not part of the original program. 

It is been estimated that in the decades afterwards, seniors below the poverty line fell from 40 percent to 10 percent.

With the establishment of disability benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, more help has been provided to millions of people than existed for the elderly couple in this movie.  However, cuts to what conservatives call “entitlements” have left a weaker support system.  Though Paul Ryan and other crackpot followers of the crackpot Ayn Rand cult, including Trump's proposed cuts for the program for 2019, did not get as far as they would have liked so far in destroying these programs, there is an ongoing danger of the disability and the old age funds paying out less in the future.  A generation has come along that fears not having Social Security, and another generation is coming of age sure that their economic futures are already doomed.

The old and young are meeting up in strange places these days:  In campers, or in their cars, in parking lots because they cannot afford rents, and work several part-time jobs because they cannot obtain full-time jobs with adequate pay or medical benefits.  We do live in interesting times.  2017 saw the first rise in homelessness since 2010.

“Life flies past us so swiftly that few of us pause to consider those who have lost the tempo of today...” This is what director Leo McCarey had to say to us in script scrawled on the screen at the start of the movie. 

The tempo of today is chaos.  If we could backtrack a bit and look in the rearview mirror about where we’ve been, we might be able to catch the rhythm again, or at least rediscover empathy for others; one of these days, we may badly need it ourselves.

The title is prophetic: Make Way for Tomorrow.  It's tomorrow. The world we live in now, and its measures of coping with unemployment, healthcare costs, and old age benefits, is our legacy of the suffering of millions of people in a peculiar decade some eighty years ago.  

Thank you for joining me in this series on films of the 1930s and their message for today.

Part 1 - Gentlemen Are Born (1934)

Part 2 - Our Daily Bread (1934)

Part 3 - Wild Boys of the Road (1933) and Girls of the Road (1940).

Part 4 – One Third of the Nation (1939)

Ann Blyth - Two Stage Dramas

Author's collection.

Two stage dramas, seventeen years apart in Ann Blyth’s career, tell of her acting range and of how she mined opportunities for a variety of work.  One occurred in 1950 when she was well established in her film career and a star just shy of her 22^nd birthday.  The second occurred a decade after her last film, when, though still a working actress on TV guest roles and in summer musical theatre around the country, she was considered, at 38, to be flying under the radar for her absence on the big screen.

The first play: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at the La Jolla Playhouse in La Jolla, California, in August, 1950.  The second: Frederick Mott’s thriller Wait Until Dark at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago, 1967.

With her latest film released, Our Very Own (1950), which we covered here, the year 1950 brought new adventures, and challenges, for Ann Blyth that gave her a break from her film work.  One of these was her first time singing at the Academy Awards, which we'll cover in a future post.  Another was a week’s engagement at the La Jolla Playhouse, founded by actors Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire, and Mel Ferrer, which we talked about here in this previous post.

It had been seven years since Ann had trod the boards, having come to Hollywood via the national touring company in Lillian Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine, in the role of Babette, which Ann originated on Broadway.  We discussed that in our intro post to this series on Ann Blyth’s career here.  Ann was a child of 12 when she won her role in that prestigious play. 

Though Hollywood scavenged a lot of actors from the theater, the seven-year contract rarely released them back to that other world.  The La Jolla Playhouse, with its limited summertime schedule, offered a chance for stage-starved actors to put a toehold back in that other world, if only briefly.

Photo Modern Screen, November, 1950 (public domain)

Mel Ferrer, Millard Mitchell, Ann Blyth, Marshall Thompson

Our Town featured Millard Mitchell as the stage manager, with Ann as Emily, opposite Marshall Thompson as George.  Beulah Bondi as Ann’s mother, and Edgar Buchanan rounded out the top-notch cast of Hollywood escapees.  Mel Ferrer directed the show, performed at the La Jolla High School Auditorium.  Also in the cast were O.Z. Whitehead, Esther Somers, Raymond Greenleaf, Clarence Straight, Jay Barney, Frank Conlan, Elizabeth Slifer, and Ricky Barber.

In a review by Katherine Von Blon for the Los Angeles Times, the scene where Ann as Emily returns as a ghost to relive a happy birthday morning from her past is described as “almost unbearably moving.”

Exquisite Ann Blyth demonstrated rare and sensitive gifts as an actress.  There were few dry eyes in the house when she made the speech ending with “goodbye world.”

The show was “truly an unforgettable experience.”

But, of course, the stage world is ethereal, and so we may not forget, but we move on with only memories—and a few reviews and a tattered, yellowed program—to document the event.

Have a look at a few production photos of Our Town rehearsal here at the Mel Ferrer website.

At the end of the run, Ann returned to Hollywood, and was loaned out to MGM for The Great Caruso, which began her participation in MGM’s screen musical golden age.  We’ll talk about that film down the road.

By 1967, when Ann performed in the Chicago production of the Broadway hit Wait Until Dark, she had not made a film in a decade, and her stage work that had come to replace film as her main acting endeavor was devoted to popular musicals, allowing her, at last, to use her beautiful, trained, singing voice in a wide range of musicals that she never got to do on film.  But she was still receptive to a good dramatic role, and the part of Suzy, the blind woman at the mercy of a gang of drug dealers was an exceptionally meaty role.  It is emotionally draining, and physically challenging, and most actresses who’ve tackled the role get bruised and bumped up in the fight scene.

Production photo, credit unknown at this time.

I’ve always thought that the climactic scene where the villain opens the refrigerator door, casting a beam of light across a darkened stage to find his victim, who has been hiding from him, one of the most chilling sights in theatre.  So simply done, no theatrical razzle-dazzle, yet so creepy.

“Creepy” was the watchword of Thomas Willis’ review of Wait Until Dark in the Chicago Tribune.  Mr. Willis, longtime arts and music critic for the Tribune, labels not only the gang of drug dealers as creepy, but also the husband of the blind woman for his “deliberate lack of sympathy” for his wife’s blindness in forcing her to be more independent.  He calls Ann Blyth “the most believable” in her role and also finds it creepy she is able to compensate for her character’s blindness by distinguishing people around her by their footsteps, yet still has trouble navigating her own apartment.

Miss Blyth is beautiful as ever, but somewhat stiff in characterization of the girl not yet accustomed to sightlessness.

With that typically bored and blasé tone of many critics, he notes that the rest of the "uniformly capable" cast, “measure up," with most of his review describing the plot of the story, rather than commenting specifically on the acting or technical elements.

Wait Until Dark played for five weeks.  James Tolkan played the sinister Harry Rote.  Donald Buka and Val Bisoglie were the thugs-as-chumps, with Michael Ebert as her husband.  Sheryl Mandel was Gloria, the little girl upstairs who proves to be an ally.

Six bucks for the orchestra.  (The blogger heaves a big sigh.)

Later on in this same year that Ann performed in Wait Until Dark, 1967, she went back to musical theatre in The King and I in St. Louis, and then right into Carnival in Salt Lake City, where the Deseret News called her a “petite star of all five mediums,” recounting her role in Mildred Pierce (1945), which we discussed here, and then reminds us, “After that, she was one of the brightest stars of the movie world.  She has also starred in television, on the stage, and in nightclubs.”

It sounds like an obituary.  Just rounding 39 years old, and the press was reminding readers who she was.  But these musicals, though “off the radar” by standards that judged film to be the most important reflection of popular culture, yet offered her creative challenges, the ability to flex muscles, and, most especially, starring roles.  We’ll cover those in a later post.

We mentioned last week in a post on three of her radio performances that though while Ann Blyth is primarily remembered for her films, she made only 32 of them.  She performed as many as 400 times on radio.

But she acted on stage probably at least 700 times over the course of more than 40 years, not including her singing concerts, which extended her career another couple of decades. 

Her first stage appearance in Chicago was in 1942, (twenty-five years before Wait Until Dark) the year she turned 14, on the road show of Watch on the Rhine, which played at the Grand Opera House on Clark Street.

The year before, 1941, the show was still on Broadway, and Ann recalled for Modern Screen magazine in an article from 1953 a funny, but uncomfortable stage memory from that show:

What I remember particularly is the second act when I was supposed to be on stage and cook some potato pancakes (really flat bran muffins) for Lucile Watson.  One night I was so busy chatting with someone offstage that I missed my cue and Miss Watson had to improvise.  She walked right to the stage entrance where I was dreaming and said, “Where is Babette?  Oh, there you are!  (Looking at me so sharply that I woke up and realized what I had done).  I was wondering where my potato pancakes were!”  I ran on stage with them.  But when the act was over, I burst into tears that lasted all through the intermission, and I’m still embarrassed about it.

Missing a cue at 13 is even more terrifying than being attacked with a trick knife in Wait Until Dark at 38.

Still, that 13-year old leaves a small but special footprint -- it is common that when a playscript is published, the names of the original cast are included.  When you order a Watch on the Rhine actor's script today from its current publisher, Dramatists Play Service, this will greet you in the opening pages:

Come back next week when Ann rides TV's Wagon Train once more in 1963, as a tragic frontier officer’s wife who drowns her anguish in alcohol.  Ronald Reagan co-stars in one of his last acting roles.

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Chicago Tribune. "Wait Until Dark' at the Studebaker Tomorrow", May 14, 1967, p. E13;  "Wait Until Dark Simulates Terror" by Thomas Willis, May 16, 1967, p. B3.

Deseret News (Salt Lake City) August 26, 1967, p.10A, “Ann Blyth to Star in Carnival at Valley Music.”

Hellman, Lillian.  Watch on the Rhine. (Dramatists Play Service).

Janesville Daily Gazette (Janesville, Wisconsin), May 15, 1967.

Modern Screen. “Take My Word for It” star column by Ann Blyth, January 1953, p. 69.

Modern Screen, November 1950, “Ann Blyth’s Story” by Cynthia Willet, p. 88.

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THANK YOU....to the following folks whose aid in gathering material for this series has been invaluable:  EBH; Kevin Deany of Kevin's Movie Corner; Gerry Szymski of Westmont Movie Classics, Westmont, Illinois; and Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear.

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UPDATE:  This series on Ann Blyth is now a book - ANN BLYTH: ACTRESS. SINGER. STAR. -

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The audio book for Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is now for sale on Audible.com, and on Amazon and iTunes.

Also in paperback and eBook from Amazon, CreateSpace, and my Etsy shop: LynchTwinsPublishing.

 "Lynch’s book is organized and well-written – and has plenty of amusing observations – but when it comes to describing Blyth’s movies, Lynch’s writing sparkles." - Ruth Kerr, Silver Screenings

"Jacqueline T. Lynch creates a poignant and thoroughly-researched mosaic of memories of a fine, upstanding human being who also happens to be a legendary entertainer." - Deborah Thomas, Java's Journey

"One of the great strengths of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is that Lynch not only gives an excellent overview of Blyth's career -- she offers detailed analyses of each of Blyth's roles -- but she puts them in the context of the larger issues of the day."- Amanda Garrett, Old Hollywood Films

"Jacqueline's book will hopefully cause many more people to take a look at this multitalented woman whose career encompassed just about every possible aspect of 20th Century entertainment." - Laura Grieve, Laura's Miscellaneous Musings''

"Jacqueline T. Lynch’s Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is an extremely well researched undertaking that is a must for all Blyth fans." - Annette Bochenek, Hometowns to Hollywood

Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. 
by Jacqueline T. Lynch

The first book on the career of actress Ann Blyth. Multitalented and remarkably versatile, Blyth began on radio as a child, appeared on Broadway at the age of twelve in Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine, and enjoyed a long and diverse career in films, theatre, television, and concerts. A sensitive dramatic actress, the youngest at the time to be nominated for her role in Mildred Pierce (1945), she also displayed a gift for comedy, and was especially endeared to fans for her expressive and exquisite lyric soprano, which was showcased in many film and stage musicals. Still a popular guest at film festivals, lovely Ms. Blyth remains a treasure of the Hollywood's golden age.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - 1939

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) has grown to legendary status. It represents an icon of 20th Century American popular culture. It stands tall among the giants of that pantheon of 1939 films. It generated great controversy at its release, but today, though it enjoys restoration and placement in the Library of Congress as a film of significance, it is perhaps seen in the soft nostalgic glow as just another example of “Capra-corn.”

Its simplicity is both its greatest dramatic asset and its singular fault among critics. That is the dichotomy of any Capra film. Paradox is the order of the day. Just a few examples:

This movie was banned both in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union for showing the American democratic process in a positive light. However, this film was roundly criticized by Washington as showing senators in a negative light and the political process as being rife with corruption. They wanted it banned, too.

The movie shows corruption in Congress, but no political party is ever named. Claude Rains plays the senior senator, who has compromised his integrity for graft, and James Stewart plays the junior senator from the same state. We do not know with which party they are affiliated. We do not even know which state they are from, but since the story is partly based on a book which named Montana as the home state, the senator from Montana walked out on this movie at its preview at Constitution Hall in Washington. Many other senators were no-shows in protest.

Art reflects life, as we realize the main message of this film is the crime of arrogance. Politics is rife with it. Both political parties are guilty. Graft is graft, no matter who does it.

And it’s easy see how Capra both pulled away and exploited the combustible nature of politics in this film. We take politics personally. We cringe and get our backs up when we hear an opposing political viewpoint. That is human nature. How we behave about how we feel is what makes us ladies and gentlemen…or thugs.

Politics is also rife with idealism, sometimes pure and hopeful in its natural state; sometimes exploited in creative political ads meant to play on the emotions of the public and how well they respond to dramatic backlighting of a candidate in his shirtsleeves superimposed over a waving flag. It’s hokey, and it’s still being done. The arrogance of politicians in believing we are really that stupid.

Director Frank Capra was a conservative Republican. The scriptwriter, Sidney Buchman, was a Communist Party member between 1938 and 1945. Yet, they shared ideals and vision for this movie. (Buchman would be blacklisted in the 1950s when he refused to name names.)

Most of those shots of Washington buildings and monuments were taken on the sly; the United States Parks Service denied the filmmaker access.

One more paradox: despite this canon of idealistic films of Capra’s, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is actually quite a dark movie, sinister and cynical. James Stewart is the only Pollyanna of the bunch, and by the end of the movie even he gets his teeth kicked in.

Long post ahead. You’ve come this far. It would be a shame to turn back now.

We begin the movie with that heartthrob Charles Lane as a reporter, holed up in a phone booth barking in his sexy nasal twang about the sudden death of a senator and the need for his state to send an immediate replacement.

Only a truly great movie would start the show with Charles Lane.

We learn right off the bat that Edward Arnold, the prototype of the greedy corporate thief, runs his state with an iron hand and a bottomless wallet. Guy Kibbee is the harried governor, who asks “How high?” when Mr. Arnold tells him to jump, much to the chagrin of his wife, Ruth Donnelly, and his large family of children. The kids suggest James Stewart as a replacement senator. Stewart runs the Boy Rangers (because the Boy Scouts of America didn’t want to touch this film with a ten-foot pole) and publishes a boys’ newspaper and recently heroically fought a forest fire.

Edward Arnold is great in this film, with his voice kept low and sneering. If he bellowed and blustered it would not be half so chilling as that snide, quiet confidence he displays.

One of the real delights of this film is spotting the character actors. Porter Hall and Grant Mitchell are senators, Jack Carson gets a couple lines as a reporter. Lafe McKee (who we discussed in this previous post) gets a brief, but iconic moment in this film when he stands before the Lincoln Memorial helping his little grandson to pronounce the difficult words in the Gettysburg Address, which is engraved in stone on the building.

As he says the word “freedom,” we get a shot of an elderly African-American man standing nearby, who has removed his hat in respect for Honest Abe. If this man is over 77 years old, he might have been born a slave. Politics is personal.

Eugene Pallette is on board as Edward Arnold’s right-hand man. Catch the scene where Pallette struggles to get his large body out of a phone booth. Dub Taylor, who we last saw in Cowboy Canteen (1944), is a wisecracking reporter who is part of a gang that interviews a bewildered James Stewart upon his arrival in Washington. You might even catch a glimpse of a young Craig Stevens as a reporter in the Senate chamber gallery writing fast and furious with a pencil.

Dickie Jones, the young Senate page who helps out Stewart, you’ve likely seen in many films.

Much of this movie, when it really works well, hinges on the magnificent Jean Arthur. Her performance is transcendent. She is secretary to Claude Rains, and has seen enough of Washington’s seamy side to stamp out any idealism she once might have had. As she tells Rains, “When I came here my eyes were big blue question marks. Now they’re big green dollar marks.”

She is assigned to babysit James Stewart, whom she first regards with eye-rolling bemusement tinged with disdain. Gradually, however, her own latent idealism is re-ignited under his slow-talking, sincere, nervous charm. He tells her about the beauty of his state, and his father, a small-town newspaper publisher who was murdered for standing up to a mining company, and how his father told him to look with wonder at life around him and “Always try to live as if you’ve just gotten out of a tunnel.”

She is moved, in spite of her own misgivings and fear of being duped. You can see all of that in her delicate expression, her sense of breathlessness, and we watch her falling in love with him. As we’ve discussed before, Jean Arthur had a remarkable ability to play pathos and comedy right at the same time. I can’t think of anybody else who could work as well at this deceptively complex role, with perhaps the exception of Barbara Stanwyck. Jean Arthur’s faith in politics and mankind is rekindled, and then dashed again as her heart is broken when James Stewart becomes the prey of Edward Arnold and his machine.

Stewart gets himself targeted when he proposes a bill, with Jean Arthur’s help, to create a national boys’ camp where boys from all walks of life, races and creeds, can come together. The land he chooses is the spot Edward Arnold wants and has been sneakily buying up under false names. Claude Rains, the “Silver Knight,” a respected senator who has been kept in office for decades by allowing himself to be Mr. Arnold’s stooge, must now crush James Stewart on the orders of his boss. He even dangles his society snob daughter, played by Astrid Allwyn, in front of Stewart as a diversion.

Jean Arthur, who knows all of this, is heartsick. One of her best scenes is in the press club bar with pal Thomas Mitchell, as she self-medicates her pain with booze. She and Mitchell also played confidantes that same year in Only Angels Have Wings discussed here. Frank Capra, quoted in Frank Capra-The Catastrophe of Success by Joseph McBride (Simon & Schuster, NYC, 1992), p. 417 - “I defy any other actress to play that scene,” Capra marveled, “She’s a great actress, much better than she knows. She made it believable with little things, like the way she tried to pick up her glass and didn’t know which glass she was picking up.”

During this scene she tipsily mourns sending James Stewart off to the Senate with a bill that was going to make him a target of the bad guys: “I felt just like a mother sending her kid off to school for the first time. Watching the little fellow toddling off in his best bib and tucker. Hoping he can stand up to the other kids.” It’s hysterical, and heartbreaking at the same time.

Though I think my favorite line is when Thomas Mitchell, in her apartment looking for stuff to mix cocktails, asks her where the bitters are. She replies absently, “In the thing there. Behind the thing.”

At her drunken scene, she accepts Mitchell’s longstanding marriage proposal as a way to escape Washington and the hypocrisy around her. In Jean Arthur - The Actress that Nobody Knew (Limelight Editions, NYC, 1997), p. 116 - author John Oller quotes Howard Hawks, who directed Mitchell and Miss Arthur in Only Angels Have Wings, remarking of Arthur’s work in this scene, “That was a beautifully-done thing.”

Jean is quoted explaining the scene, “The trouble about a woman being drunk is you have to be careful not to go overboard because then it’s not funny…A man can be awfully funny when he’s drunk but not a woman.”

Still a little drunk, she and Mitchell head back to her office so she can clean out her desk (her stuff, comically, includes a large rag doll). She runs into Mr. Stewart there, and vents her anger at him for being so gullible. She clues him in on the facts of life, how he is being used, and how the bad guys are playing him for a sap. When she marches out, she stops, as if overwhelmed by her own misery, and leans on the wall out in the empty hallway. Thomas Mitchells hovers by her, concerned. Her back to us, she sobs with her head against the wall and we see, as does Thomas Mitchell, that there will be no marriage between them, that she is in love with Stewart, and that she is hopelessly afraid for him. It’s wordlessly eloquent, all done with body movement.

Two more brief moments I love: When she sleepily awakes, still sitting in the Senate gallery to watch him below standing alone in the middle of the night during his filibuster reading softly from the Bible, “and the greatest of these is charity.” Also when she sends him a love note tucked inside a bound copy of the Constitution.

James Stewart grows up a lot now. He sees the corruption, confronts Claude Rains and tries to spill the beans in Congress. He is silenced when Rains pulls a fast one on him and accuses him of corruption instead. Stewart gets pilloried. Jean Arthur finds him, at last, with his suitcases prepared to leave town, sitting before the Lincoln Memorial at night, crying with that bewildered pain we suffer when people, whether it’s the kids on the playground, our coworkers, or our family, have rejected us.

Just as Jean Arthur was so perfect for her role, I don’t think any other actor would have done as well in his part as James Stewart. Capra had originally hoped to use Gary Cooper in an extension of his “Mr. Deeds” role, but that fell through. Cooper was great, and Jean Arthur loved working with him, had a crush on him, but Cooper’s innocent heroes had something yet sly and knowing about them. Stewart is completely at the mercy of his own unthinking exuberance.

Jean Arthur saves him. She coaches him through a filibuster from her perch in the gallery of the Senate chamber. It’s a terrific showdown, a gunfight with ideals and stubbornness rather than six-shooters.

As Stewart’s voice grows hoarse through the weary hours of his filibuster, Edward Arnold tries to spin lies in the press to their home state, telling the public only what he wants them to know, faster than you can say Fox News.

These scenes are where Capra, in another paradox, both captures the emotions of the audience but also loses believability when small newsboys on the side of James Stewart are used to convey the David versus Goliath aspect. I suppose it’s difficult to find imagery to support the nobility of the common man without getting hokey. It’s difficult sometimes for Capra, anyway.

I get a kick out of real radio newsman H.V. Kaltenborn used here, standing in front of a mic, narrating the magnitude of the moment. Waxing eloquent with the few minutes allotted him in days when live news was in its infancy. Today, we have hack media personalities -- I hesitate to call them journalists -- telling us about the latest poll or topic trending on Twitter. And the overuse by CNN of “breaking news” with asinine repetition to hijack our attention over topics which are neither news nor breaking.

Many of us remember a time when the announcement “Special Report” was given sparingly and only for really big news. Our stomachs turned when we heard it because it usually followed with the first reports of an assassination.

But Mr. Kaltenborn stands at his post, using proper English and trying to give the circus some dignity, instead of trying to turn something dignified into a circus.

The Senate chamber scenes are wonderful. A replica was created on the Columbia lot. The pageboy explains to Stewart, and to us, who sits where, and the history and significance of the setting. In many scenes, we may note that many of the desks are empty -- a silent gesture showing that our senators are not always on the job.

I love the shots of Jean Arthur in the gallery throwing signs to Stewart like a catcher to a pitcher to guide him through the filibuster process.

There is some strong imagery in the Senate chamber. We see Claude Rains and the other senators filmed from the floor to the ceiling so they look like giants. We see shots down from the ceiling at the menagerie of “senators” and extras looking small as they fill the room, a tight cluster of humanity. The arrogance of the senators when they turn their backs to Stewart as he speaks.

The climax is strangely quiet. Claude Rains directs the pageboys to carry in baskets of telegrams from an angry public denouncing James Stewart because of the lies they have been fed by Edward Arnold. It’s almost like that glorious scene in Miracle on 34th Street (1946) when the letters to Santa arrive. But these scraps of paper do not save Mr. Stewart. They condemn him.

He first looks heavenward, a Christ-like figure as if to say, “Why hast Thou forsaken me?” Then he locks his gaze on Harry Carey, who is sublime as President of the Senate, smiling through his fingers as he tries to mask his bemusement at Stewart through previous scenes. He is a kind of craggy-faced Will Rogers-type character whose eloquence is not in his quips, but in his expression.

Mr. Carey gives him a gentle smile of encouragement, and Mr. Stewart finds the will to continue despite it being a lost cause. James Stewart is triumphant in this moment, not because he has won, but because he has fought the good fight.

I find the ending is where Frank Capra loses us again in a saccharine solution. Claude Rains, overcome by his conscience, hysterically confesses his guilt. Convenient, but unlikely. We know too well that people in office rarely admit guilt. Especially if it would lead to a conviction.

Claude Rains is fascinating to watch in the film. He has a complex role and his evolution is just as important as Stewart’s or Arthur’s. He is a man of ideals who gave up most of them in order to survive in the Washington jungle.

Early on in the film, a banquet is held to welcome Stewart to political life, and Mr. Rains is surprised to discover that Stewart is the son of his old friend. He leans over the dais to spy Stewart’s mother, the lovely Beulah Bondi, who exchanges a look of fond reminiscence. Here is where we first see that Rains has an honest past, and this is where his struggle of conscience begins. He carries the burden through the film.

We see a lot of father-son imagery in the movie: between Rains and Stewart, between Stewart and his Boy Rangers, with the pageboy, between Harry Carey and Stewart.

The first time I went to Washington, D.C., as a young woman and stood in the visitors’ gallery of the Senate chamber, I could not help but think of how it looked in Mr. Smith. It was one of many trips. Washington, D.C., is a place I never get tired of visiting. One can feel cynical and still be inspired.

Despite its occasional hokey sentimentality, these are the real truths expressed in this movie. Jean Arthur reminds a disgusted Stewart that, “They aren’t all Taylors and Paines in Washington. That kind just throw big shadows, that’s all.”

Another truth is Claude Rains’ dismissal of the people voting him out when they learn of the corruption: “You can’t count on people voting. Half the time they don’t vote anyway.”

We get heartily sick of the nastiness of political campaigns, especially when they seem to last so long. But it is a good thing, I think, that we air our grievances so publicly and that other nations can see our anger and discontent. Because they also see that it all leads to election day. No coups, no hanging or shooting the opposing party when you’ve won and they’ve lost. The winners take office. At the end of the term, we vote again. Like clockwork. It’s that splendid confidence in our own system that drove both Nazi Germany and the USSR to ban this movie. It was our suspicion of our own leaders that drove Washington insiders to criticize this film at its premiere. Trust and suspicion, in healthy doses. A marvelous paradox Frank Capra didn’t create, but was clever enough to appreciate. [Addendum: from the perspective of 2022, this last paragraph seems sadly naive.]

This movie, despite, or because of, its sentimentality has inspired many over the decades. It was one of my mother’s favorite movies, and she presented it to me as a kind of civics lesson. When the reporters rush from the Senate chamber shouting, “Filibuster! Filibuster!” -- I recall my mother echoing, “Filibuster!” excitedly when I saw it the first time on TV, grinning, urging me to see what happens next. She was one of the most politically astute people I ever knew. Though neither of my parents were joiners of causes, they learned early the intimate place politics had in their lives when as children the programs like the CCC and the WPA created by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt saved their lives.

Growing up in poor families, President Roosevelt literally kept them from starving and gave them job training and hope for the future. They never took politics for granted after that. It was personal. The most important program in my house was the news. They devoured news magazines and newspapers, and we watched conventions like some people watched the World Series.

When they got ready to go vote, my father shaved. My mother put on makeup. Reading glasses, check. Notes on specific ballot questions, check. They announced with almost theatrical dignity, “We Are Going to Vote,” as if they were about to save the world.  Being able to vote gives you a great sense of power.  Ask anybody who can't.

We were to be good until they got back from saving the world.

I am voting tomorrow because that is what I was raised to do. Because my mother loved Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Because my mother, rest her soul, who never had a driver’s license or a passport, were she living today would be denied the right to vote by some politicians who are aching to get a whip-smart, no nonsense liberal like her off the books.

And because like James Stewart in the movie, I get all choked up when I visit the monuments in Washington, D.C.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.  Her new book, a collection of posts from this blog - Hollywood Fights Fascism - is available here on Amazon.