Inherit the Wind - 1960

Inherit the Wind (1960) pits Fredric March versus Spencer Tracy, and fundamentalist religion versus science, but at its core is the premise that knowledge should not be repressed because the religious right is uncomfortable with it.

This is obviously a timely message for our present era, but the script was based on the 1955 play by Robert E. Lee and Jerome Lawrence, whose message was more about the repression of McCarthyism than creationism, who used the famous standoff of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial to reflect on not only the right of free speech, but of the very right to think for oneself.

“An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral,” goes one line in this strong, literate script.

As regards the battle between Mr. March and Mr. Tracy as actors, it is a pleasure to see two old lions with juicy character parts to play.  Since much of the story takes place in a courtroom, which is inherently dramatic, this gives them a notable setting to joust. 

Spencer Tracy, of course, was famous for stealing a scene just by standing still, but Fredric March stretches even his usual strong screen presence by unrepentant scenery chewing in this movie.  At times, it appears to render his character somewhat cartoonish, but then, we know that bombastic men who enjoy public notoriety can sometimes appear cartoonish.

Directed by Stanley Kramer, the film is rich in atmosphere with the setting of a small Southern town almost lyric in its storytelling.  I love the slow-moving camera that glides around characters in a scene without sharp, abrupt cuts. 

We begin with the tick-tock of the clock on the courthouse, and the march of a sheriff, joined by others including a minister, to the jailhouse to retrieve the prisoner for his trial.  There is no one else on the streets, and its almost like a “high noon” showdown in a western.

There is no desperado in the jail, however, just young Dick York, a high school science teacher who has taught his class about evolution from Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man. We will soon see that it is something of a show trial rather than a criminal indictment; the creationists have enticed a nationally known public speaker to prosecute the case, and an equally nationally known lawyer arrives to defend Dick York. 

York plays his role with sensitivity and nuance, he was really a fine actor before his more well-known gig as Darrin Stevens in the TV show, Bewitched. His character is overwhelmed by the attention, pained over the separation from his fiancée, who is not sure his crusade is either wise or necessary, and ultimately he takes a principled stand because of the trauma inflicted on the parents of a student by fundamentalist insensitivity over their son’s tragic death.

Gene Kelly plays a smart-aleck reporter, whose newspaper has provided the services of Spencer Tracy as a means to showcase the event and sell papers. 

Florence Eldridge, the real-life wife of Fredric March, plays his wife here.  This was the final of several films she made with her husband. We last saw her play his longsuffering wife here in Another Part of the Forest (1948).  She is not so longsuffering in Inherit the Wind, but she does have a lot to contend with keeping her larger-than-life husband supported with her understanding, fried chicken, and occasional admonishments to keep him in line.

The characters played by Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Florence Eldridge, Gene Kelly, and Dick York are, of course, all based on real-life people.  They are given fictional names here, perhaps to keep the story more of a parable than a documentary.  The real figures are William Jennings Bryan, who like his fictional counterpart played by March is a three-time unsuccessful candidate for president, was a Secretary of State under President Wilson, and a noted orator whose “Cross of Gold” speech in 1896 pushing for keeping the U.S. off the gold standard monetary system made him a giant of nineteenth-century American politics. He, like his fictional counterpart, also supported women’s right to vote, which makes him a fascinating contradiction.

Spencer Tracy’s character is based on Clarence Darrow, eminent attorney and one-time supporter of William Jennings Bryan in his presidential campaigns.  It also seems like an abrupt contradiction when Tracy and March meet at the local hotel and we think the fireworks will start, but they greet each other as old friends. 

First, Tracy greets Florence Eldridge warmly; they are old friends, too.  We are set up to understand that though the citizens of this small town who clamor at the courthouse and burn Dick York in effigy are hot under the collar at feeling their religious beliefs are threatened, the fight between the two old gladiators is an intellectual sparring of mutual respect. 

Gene Kelly’s character is based on the acerbic journalist H.L. Menken, himself a bundle of contradictions who enjoyed tearing down pomposity, but was himself an elitist, who was not a fan of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

The so-called Scopes Monkey Trial occurred in Dayton, Tennessee, in a blistering hot week of July 1925.  Here in the movie, a local funeral parlor passes out fans with their advertising to the people in the courtroom.  Later in the film, the two combatant counsels get permission to peel off their suit coats. (In the real trial, the proceedings were finally allowed to take place outdoors due to the awful heat in the courtroom.)

Because the teaching of evolution is taken as a blasphemy by creationists who take the Bible as literal, and is illegal in Tennessee, the story quickly becomes, as it did in 1925, a fight to preserve religious teaching from being pushed aside in relevance by scientific thought.  We begin the story, as the men march to from the courthouse, one of them wearing a clerical collar, we hear an acapella rendition of “Give Me That Old-Time Religion.”  It sung as a slow, stately dirge by Leslie Uggams.  This is just a voiceover, however.  We do not see her, nor do we see any people of color in this movie.  Another interesting contradiction.

This is a somber moment, and though the quiet streets of this small town will soon be filled with street vendors selling souvenirs and hot dogs, and an actual carnival with a Ferris Wheel, the intent at the outset in this community is to keep their dignity and pride.

In the courtroom, Mr. Tracy and Mr. March, both of nimble minds despite their tired bodies, hash out not so much the Constitutional ideas of separation of church and state, or the First Amendment, but rather confine themselves almost entirely to biblical logic and illogic. 

Mr. March states with authority that the world began in 4,004 B.C. on October 4^th at 9:00 a.m., and Mr. Tracy after some thrust and parry, gets Mr. March to admit that the day at the time of creation might not have been a precise 24 hours.  One day might have lasted years, or eons.

This is the crux of the courtroom battle, for Tracy’s expert witnesses, all representing scientific disciplines, are disallowed by the judge, played by Harry Morgan.  To build his case, Tracy must rely on putting Mr. March on the stand instead and using Mr. March’s formidable knowledge of the Bible to turn the tables on him. 

Because they are old colleagues and know each other well, the twists and turns of their minds is like playing chess with a familiar opponent.

Fredric March, rather than protest, actually enjoys being put on the stand because he is something of a grandstander, who clearly directs his remarks not to the jury, and not to Mr. Tracy, but rather to the crowd in packed seats in the courthouse, and the new-fangled radio microphone in court.  He loves an audience.

This is where March does most of his mugging and scenery chewing, but how close this came to the real William Jennings Bryan, I really don’t know.  He is, at least in the film, an example of a highly intelligent man who enjoys an argument, but with God on his side, anyone who opposes him must be morally deficient.  The townspeople, already disposed to find fault with Dick York’s teaching evolution in his science class to their teenagers, is gleeful to see his lawyer marked as a heretic. 

At one point, we see Fredric March, along with his wife, show great compassion and concern for Dick York’s fiancée, played by Donna Anderson.  She is troubled by the trial, especially since her father is actually the minister, played by Claude Akins.  He is a fire-and-brimstone preacher, and in one scene, when he prays to a photo of his deceased wife in his daughter’s presence, begging his wife not to condemn their daughter for loving and defending a heretic schoolteacher, from falling from the way of grace, and we see he is unfeeling, cold, manipulative, and arrogant.  When she seeks guidance in the matter from March, he is kind and we see another side of the famous grandstander.

However, in confidence, she has told him that Dick York left the church.  A student of his drowned two years previously, a 13-year-old boy, and Preacher Claude Akins said the boy was damned because he had not been baptized.  This infuriates Dick York, and pains the boy's parents, who are in the courtroom.  His father is played by Noah Beery.

March gets her on the stand and twists her words to break her, until his wife, Florence Eldridge, from the gallery, shouts his name to stop.  Is he trying to get the fiancée to repent of loving Dick York and shame her as her father tried to earlier, or does he just really want to win this case?  Is it his religious zeal or his competitiveness that turns him to cruelty?

Beyond the scenery chewing, the other aspects of March’s portrayal I find distracting is his heavy makeup and obvious skull cap to replicate William Jennings Bryan’s baldness.

Spencer Tracy manages to mock Fredric March enough to the point where even the devout gallery snickers at March and applauds Tracy, and that evening when March and Florence Eldridge retire to their hotel room, he is an exhausted and frustrated man, hurt at being laughed at in court.  We wonder if he is emotionally stable.

At the end of the trial, his character collapses in court from the heat and dies, as did the real William Jennings Bryan (though some weeks after the trial was over).  In the next scene, when Tracy is quietly packing his briefcase in court, and Gene Kelly snidely congratulates him and triumphs over the theatrical ending of Fredric March, Tracy pays tribute to March.  He calls him a great man. 

Mr. Kelly teases Tracy, and they have a brief war of words, and Kelly learns and delights in the contradictions he has discovered in Tracy.

All the three principal men in this story have their contradictions, and we leave it to Florence Eldridge’s summation when Donna Anderson confronts her about her husband’s cruel fanaticism:  “My husband is neither a saint nor a devil, and he makes mistakes…if he’s been wrong, at least he stands for something.”

Gene Kelly stands for nothing, he’s only here for the deliciously cynical mocking.  As Tracy says to him, “You never pushed a noun against a verb except to blow up something.”

One of Kelly’s lines I love: “It’s a newspaperman’s duty to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

As Tracy leaves the courtroom, we hear Leslie Uggams’ lovely voice again, acapella, singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  It is slightly more triumphant-sounding, but still a sober reflection as a national song against the Civil War rebellion and the lauding of the Republic, but a republic that rejoices in victory as “the coming of the Lord.”  Again, another thought-provoking contradiction.  We are a nation full of them.

Inherit the Wind, (which Tracy quotes from the Bible, “he that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind” Proverbs 11:29) is one of the films from that pivotal era I mentioned in this post on A Face in the Crowd (1957):  There was…

“…something noticeably different about movies in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  There is no name for them, at least not that I know of, but they are pointedly liberal in their message.  Films like Inherit the Wind, Twelve Angry Men, Judgment at Nuremberg, The Miracle Worker, To Kill a Mockingbird, Seven Days in May, are different from the cynical noir of the late 1940s and early 1950s, as if in the wake of crumbling of McCarthyism, an era when liberals were politically and legally persecuted, when the Silent Generation marched cautiously, blindly toward the New Frontier, the writers—who were the most persecuted under McCarthyism, came out from the noir shadows and said, 'Enough.  Our turn in the sun now.'”  

Inherit the Wind, which comes out of the McCarthy era, is really about free speech, including, but not only, the right to quote from other than the Bible.  As Tracy says, “It is a good book, but it is not the only book.”

I recall an incident from when I was in college, I think it was in 1980.   I had a geology class, and the professor cheerfully announced that anyone in class who may have had deep religious beliefs need not be unsettled by the Big Bang theory of the creation of the universe, because it could have been God who created the Big Bang.

I was shocked by his announcement.  I had been raised to go to church and considered myself religious, yet I found nothing upsetting by learning about science.  It never occurred to me that a college professor in a very progressive state (Massachusetts) would feel the need to placate anyone about science possibly refuting their literal interpretation of the Bible.  

No one in class, as I remember, made any comment or reacted, so perhaps I was the only one surprised.  Along with church, I was also raised on the notion of separation of church and state.  

I thought he was a good teacher, and I enjoyed the class, and soon we were engrossed in talking about another Big Bang, as that was the year Mount Saint Helens erupted.  He never mentioned anything about that being in the Bible.

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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.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

It is also here in paperback from Ingram.

And here in hardcover from Ingram.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation. 

Buy this or any of my books online here at Bookshop.org.

 

 

"The Clementine Jones Story" - Wagon Train - 1961 (And more TV 1960-1963)

In “The Clementine Jones Story” episode of Wagon Train, Ann Blyth plays the title character, a hard saloon gal about to be run out of town by the zealous Purity League.  Here’s another example of how her voice and movement changes drastically with character.  Her voice drops to a lower, growling register, is hard and barking, her posture alternately the audacious pose of the saloon entertainer of men, and also the stooped, hardworking pioneer woman who knows her way around a frying pan.  She’s morphed into Miss Kitty of Gunsmoke fame, and a careworn woman of the 1860s, vulnerable, but with a spine of steel.

This is our contribution to Aurora's Big Stars on the Small Screen Blogathon.  Please have a look here for the other great blogs participating in this really fun event.

Before we get to the episode, a word from our sponsor.  Just kidding: a few observations on Ann Blyth’s career as it entered the 1960s and her fourth decade as an actress.  On February 8, 1960, Ann was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  It’s on the north side of the 6700 block on Hollywood Boulevard.  This was part of the first huge batch of stars installed in what would become a major tourist attraction in Hollywood many years hence, but at the time did not draw the media fanfare it does today.  At the time, though long-planned, the new Hollywood Walk of Fame had about the same amount of press coverage as the average sidewalk repair.

Ann’s name was included in the jumble of stars from the silent era to the 1950s in tribute to her popularity in the past decade, when she was on the covers of enough movie magazines to choke a horse.  We’ll talk about those down the road.  At the time her star was cemented on the pavement, her film career, unknown to her at the time, had finished three years ago with The Helen Morgan Story (1957).  Television guest roles still brought her work, and because of her selectiveness, quality work.

About ten days after her star was planted, she appeared in a 90-minute TV movie for ABC, a version of The Citadel from the novel by A. J. Cronin about a young Scottish doctor’s conflicts with professional ethics that follows him from a Welsh coal town to the elite Mayfair section of London.  James Donald is the doctor, and Ann Blyth plays his wife, one of only two Americans in the cast, reportedly, “…tackling an English accent and six different hair-dos as the doctor’s wife.”

It was an ambitious undertaking, with a huge cast of 35 speaking roles, 64 actors in all, and 42 different sets to cover a span of years and locations.  The show got a great review from John P. Shanley of The New York Times, with special notice for James Donald and Hugh Griffith.  Ann Blyth he said, “…performed creditably with the rather colorless role of the teacher whom the young doctor married to further his career.”  It would be Ann’s complaint, and as well as other actresses, that substantial roles for women on TV were becoming few and far between. 

It had become the fate of the actress in the 20^th century to juggle her presence in the entertainment media if she wanted to work in films or TV.  The following month she appeared as a guest on the Steve Allen late night talk showing singing “Baubles, Bangles, and Beads” from Kismet (1955), which we covered here.  She also performed a comic skit with Steve Allen demonstrating the evolution of a nervous new singer into a confident diva. 

In April she appeared at the Academy Awards, held again at the RKO Pantages Theater, accepting the Documentary Short Subject award from Mitzi Gaynor for the absent winner. 

By August 1960 it was a guest spot on the new (short-lived) TV game show hosted by Ben Alexander, About Faces.  If this sounds like sliding into obscurity, it was also sliding into some needed downtime.  Pregnant with her fourth child (and counting), her baby son was born in December.  The following summer, at 33 years old with four children under seven years old, she still found time for another ride on the Wagon Train.  Her first trip Westward Ho on “The Jenny Tannen Story” in 1959 is covered in this previous post.

“The Clementine Jones Story”, broadcast October 25, 1961 in the fifth season of the show, is a delightful episode, comic and yet at turns poignant with the barely hoped for goal of redemption dangling before three of the West’s misfits: Ann; Dick York, who plays a no-account saddle tramp and unsuccessful bank robber; and young Roger Mobley, an orphan boy with an ugly attitude and a wistful dream of the good life in California.

I like Dick York’s exasperated incredulousness, and he shows himself, paradoxically, a subtle dramatic actor in the serious moments of quiet intensity.

We start comically, when Ann, whom we are told by town mayor Willard Waterman has, “spread more happiness in this town from one end to the other than the whole Purity League,”—and we are left to imagine what kind of happiness—is being forced out by righteous citizens.  They are hustling her out on the next stage.  We see instantly this is a different Ann Blyth as our first image is of her yelling at them in a hard voice.  She faces them down with vaudevillian mellerdramer that they are persecuting her and, “The wound will never, never heal.  I will carry it festering in my bosom to my grave.”

Comedy works best when the actors have a keen sense of irony and a playful attitude toward the ridiculous, which Ann clearly does, and this looks to have been an enjoyable role.  She refuses to leave town until she withdraws her money from the bank, $17.40, and runs into Wagon Train star John McIntire at the bank—just as Dick York’s stumblebum gang is robbing the bank.  It’s an unlucky day for everybody.

Mr. McIntire, trying to help foil the robbery, shoots at the villains, but hits Ann in her bustled bottom.  I love when the grim sheriff enters late on the scene, and we think he is going to investigate and make arrests, but he just comes in asking for a roll of quarters.  He has no idea what has just happened.

The righteous ladies of the Purity League curiously swarm to Ann’s backside to get a peek at the wound.

Dick York escapes and happens upon little Roger Mobley, newly orphaned and alone on the trail in his family’s wagon.  Mr. York makes a proposition that they travel together, because he needs a front and a cover story to escape the sheriff’s posse.  The boy, feisty and shrewd, knows he needs a grownup along if he’s ever going to make it to California, which he idolizes as the promised land where he will be happy.  It’s a business arrangement, with no love lost between them.

Roger Mobley, no stranger to TV westerns, is very good as the aloof and cussedly independent kid, holding his own with the grownups very well.  

John McIntire’s wagon train swings through town, and they join up, and are made to take Ann Blyth with them (once the town doc has gotten through with operating on whatever the Purity League ladies found under her bustle) to get her out of town.  Ann and Dick York exchange embarrassed glances and we see…ah, they know each other from a distant, intimate past.

John McIntire, as we’ve mentioned in our last post on Top O’ the Morning, appeared in a handful of Ann Blyth’s movies, and had a long career as a sinister villain or crusty character.  My favorite is probably his turn as Ann’s nemesis, the oily “Goldtooth” McCarthy in Sally and Saint Anne (1952), which we’ll get to next month.  Wagon Train gave him a starring role at last, as the rough but kindly wagon master after the death of former show star, Ward Bond.

Mr. McIntire will pop in and out of this episode, ultimately taking a hand in their destiny, but most of the interaction is between Ann, Dick York, and young Roger.

We sense almost immediately that they will end up a family, but this is done most entertainingly by avoiding obvious maudlin devices, and instead shows them as three of the most irascible people ever put together.  They spend the entire episode hollering at each other.  It is only through twists and turns that we get their back stories:  Ann and Dick York were lovers, but she thought he abandoned her.  She did not know he had been taken to prison.  He wrote to her and explained, asking her to wait for him.  She never got the letter, and he spent bitter years blaming her for leaving him and taking up the fallen life of a saloon gal.

I love the dialogue.  Ann, sarcastic, throws his insinuations back in his face.  “I ruined my life working in a saloon and you preserved your sainthood in a penitentiary.  That’s just the way a man looks at it…they put me out on the street.  What else could I do?”

The boy, we will eventually learn, never had a family.  His “parents” that died on the trail were a couple who bought him from an orphanage to work as a hired hand, something that was quite common in the nineteenth century.  Even up until the early twentieth century “orphan trains” created a new slave society of children.  This kid has learned to take care of himself, and trusts no one, especially grownups, but his suspicious heart is turned by this unlikely duo, ironically, with comically “tough love.”

When he mouths off to one of them, the other warns him not to be disrespectful to his elders and threatens to smack him.  At one point, Dick York makes as though to whack him, but before he can wind up and release his pitch, Ann slaps the boy across the face, a loud smack courtesy of the sound effects guy.  The sound effects guy gets another starring moment when Ann whacks Dick in the skull with a frying pan.

When she's not hitting people with cookware, Ann turns out to be a pretty good cook, which makes the boy slowly warm up to her.  Dick York, rescues his dog from an iron trap, and both care for Roger when he falls sick.  They turn from footloose refugees on the lam to fearful, heartsick parents before they even realize what is happening to them.  At one point, when he thinks his dog is lost, Roger breaks down and cries from the enormous burdens he’s withstood all his life, and Ann pulls him roughly towards her in a hug.  He struggles, wanting none of this, but she is stronger than him, and he eventually relaxes in her embrace, submitting to being comforted. 

We know they are bonding, but it is in spite of themselves, and manages to avoid mawkish melodramatic clichés.  There are also the running gags throughout the episode about Ann’s sore bum and the pillow she sits on embroidered with: “Home Is Where the Heart Is.”

At one point, when after a quiet family supper and boy plays "Lorena" on his harmonica, Ann tears up with the bitterness of someone whose regrets are draining whatever courage she has left.

Their trek with the wagon train grows tense and a suspenseful climax is reached when the law catches up to them and they must make some hard decisions.  Redemption doesn’t just fall into your lap. 

At the very end of “The Clementine Jones Story”, Ann sings only one line of the Civil War-era tune, “Lorena.”  It is not enough, but it is lovely, and it shows a hint of what will come beginning in the early 1960s for Ann’s evolving career.  Her lovely and powerful soprano voice, too little used in films, would be heard across the country in limited-run regional stage musicals.  They  would provide her an outlet for her talent that she could also work around her family. 

But in the twentieth century, with the boom of entertainment media governing popularity, and therefore, work opportunities, if an actress was not in films or at least on television, she flew under the radar.  Soon enough, the years would come of the “whatever happened to?”  

Another appearance on The Steve Allen Show in July 1963 (shortly after the birth of her daughter, her fifth and last child) was advertised with the description: “The actress, Ann Blyth, will be a guest of the Steve Allen Show tonight, along with comedians Rowan and Martin.  Since she married Dennis Day’s brother, she has been seen much on the screen where she became famous as a singer, and also performed well as an actress.” 

I’m not sure if the explanation of who she was is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, or if having married Dennis Day’s brother was really her claim to fame six years after making her last film.

You can still see “The Clementine Jones” story here on YouTube.  Let me know what you think.

Don't forget to check out the other great entries in the Big Stars on the Small Screen Blogathon.

Come back next Thursday when we travel back a decade earlier to 1951 when Ann Blyth (a top star at the time who needed no introduction) plays another feisty, bitter, and tragic woman.  Convicted of murder, she’s on her way to the gallows when she takes refuge with Claudette Colbert, and a murderer, one dark and stormy night in Thunder on the Hill (1951).

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The Deseret Utah News & Telegraph, July 19, 1963, p. 63
The New York Times, article by John P. Shanley, February 20, 1960, p. 45.

The St. Petersburg (Florida) Times, February 19, 1960, p. 9-D.

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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.

The eBook and paperback are available from Amazon and CreateSpace, which is the printer.  You can also order it from my Etsy shop. 

If you wish a signed copy, then email me at JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com and I'll get back to you with the details.