One of the most fascinating
aspects to
Ann Blyth’s film career is how her
reputation flipped from powerful actress doing moody parts to nice girl playing
nice girl roles in which she was invariably taken less seriously.
A lot of that transformation in the eyes of
the press and the public had to do with the fact they found out that in real
life—she
was a nice girl.
In terms of press copy, her natural and intuitive versatility as an actress seemed to be outshone by her real-life pleasant, even spotless, reputation.
The utterly silly phenomenon began as How Could a Nasty Screen Character be Played by Such a Nice Person in Real Life...and morphed to Such a Nice Person in Real Life Cannot Play a Nasty Screen Character.
Mildred Pierce, in which she ferociously played a budding young conniving
sociopath (
see last post here), established her at the age of 16 as a serious
actress—so much so, that some in the press, including
Los Angeles Times drama editor Edwin Schallert, were excitedly calling
her a young Bette Davis.
For the first few films after
Mildred Pierce, she played other
troubled young women with chips on their shoulders, axes to grind, or evil
plots to hatch.
But she didn’t want to
be typecast, and worried at first that “mean” roles were the only kind she
would be offered.
Mr. Schallert
interviewed her when she was making
Swell
Guy (1946), her first movie after the long recovery from her back injury,
discussed in this intro post.
We’ll talk
about
Swell Guy later in the
year.
“Miss Blyth is reputed to give her
most sensational performance in this.”
Ann described her character in the film: “I’m not a mean girl…but I don’t change completely for the good…She is
wild at the beginning, but her wildness results in unhappiness for her. So I naturally am not against that part. However, I do want to do a nice role now, and
I want to sing in a picture. You see, I
am hoping, as perhaps many people do in Hollywood, for a variety of
opportunities.”
Mr. Schallert notes in his
November 1946 article that Ann “is essentially shy,” but he kindly does not
call her naïve for wanting or expecting not to be typecast in Hollywood. It was the bane of many, if not most actors,
that the studio’s bottom line and the public’s perception would roll over like
a steamroller an actor’s usual hope of playing something different than his
last movie. Mr. Schallert also kindly
notes the catastrophes suffered in the past two years with her spinal injury,
and the death of her mother, and that “The emotion associated with that
bereavement is too close as yet for Ann to discuss.
“Ann’s fortitude is nothing light
in the film world. Her experiences have
undoubtedly given her an unusual maturity in her work. She has no formula for playing the roles that
are so much at variance with herself.
She indicated that she does them intuitively as much as anything else.”
A simple answer to a question
that trailed Ann through her early career.
How could a nice girl play such less-than-virtuous people so
convincingly? She’s an actress, that’s why.
The very question seems to lead
us to the astounding conclusion that actors who play murderers, thieves, and
pickpockets must actually be murderers, thieves, and pickpockets.
Another article that November of
1946 notes her latest role in Swell Guy:
“Her part…is that of an ornery little brat grown up, and Ann is quite aware of
the danger she will be typecast as a ‘meanie.’
Result: she is studying vocal music, with every intention of snagging a
part in the next big musical show filmed at her studio.”
That next big musical at
Universal never happened, but after a few more ‘meanies’, her roles began to
change towards nice girls in less demanding parts. How much of this was due to her seeking new
material, and how much was due to a personal life that the press was touting
more and more as laudatory is an interesting question.
The notice of her as a young
woman living an exemplary life may have gained more steam in April 1949, when she was
slated to play the lead in a film called
Abandoned,
which she refused and was put on unpaid suspension.
The movie, (judging by this swell lurid
poster, was a crime noir with a great cast) deals with unwed mothers and a black
market baby adoption racket.
Many actors risked studio wrath
by rejecting scripts because the scripts were lousy. However, though I don’t know
the reason she rejected the movie and have never read an interview with her opinion
on the subject, some columnists seemed to infer that taking the suspension was
an exercising of her moral conscience. One would
assume that none of the greedy, conniving, promiscuous characters she had
heretofore played, performing unsavory deeds including shooting Zachary Scott
dead, would fall in line with how a proper young lady should behave, but the
columnists took the shortcut and wrote her up—and wrote her off—as a nice girl.
It was also regarded as somewhat
quaint, if admirable, that she preferred not to do any cheesecake photos.
Sheilah Graham noted in August
1949, that Ann didn’t smoke, or drink, and went to church regularly and attended
church socials, but also gave Ann credit for spunk. “She seems happy and easy going, but she has
a mind of her own. Not too long ago she
took a suspension from her studio for refusing to play a role she didn’t
like. In spite of her lack of experience
in real life, on the screen Ann is able to portray hardened, willful, sinful
characters.”
By 1954, syndicated columnist Sue
Chambers echoed the, by now, cemented public view of Ann, that she was deeply
religious, and there has “…never been a whispered breath of scandal
about her….she has never been temperamental; she has never kept anyone waiting
for an appointment…She leaves a good impression with everyone. Her working associates have never known Ann
to raise her voice in anger or turn down a request for a benefit appearance, no
matter how ‘small’ the group.”
Not keeping anyone waiting for an
appointment may be really fishing for nice things to say, but the press was
also apparently intrigued that she could be a homebody who was equally
interested in a career, the antithesis of the 1950s nice girl. Ms. Chambers noted that Ann, married the
previous year and expecting her first child at the time the article was published,
wanted a family “but she has no intention of giving up her career; she’s
intensely ambitious, too.”
Her reputation more than preceded
her; it wrapped around her like a cocoon.
From a syndicated article in 1952:
“Can a nice girl make the grade in the movies?"
Nice girls get paper dolls made in their image.
“Ann Blyth, a girl any fellow could proudly take home to meet mother,
is proof that virtue is its own reward—even in Hollywood. The young and beautiful actress is one of the
most talented and successful in the business.
Yet, paradoxically, her name is seldom, if ever, mentioned in the gossip
columns…Ann, it seems, spends most of her leisure time at church bazaars, a
most unlikely hangout for gossip columnists.
“She has three major motion pictures either just released or about to
be. All of them accent her
versatility…somehow, in between, she manages to make countless benefit
appearances at church suppers or hospital wing dedications.”
One of Hollywood’s most famous
gossip columnists, Louella Parsons, early on noted the amazing paradox of the
young girl who was career-ambitious and yet still seemed like a nice
person. By 1951, Louella, who had this
backyard fence familiarity/condescension in her prose, was still ruminating on
the problem child who was so frustratingly not a problem: “Ann’s
aunt and uncle are her family, and she lives with them. She has been brought up as if she had never
been in Hollywood or motion pictures.
“Her aunt waits up for her until she gets home at night…likewise,
Ann’s escorts are always carefully scrutinized by both her aunt and uncle. She might have been brought up in some small
town and then not had the protection she had with these two loving people. And, withal, she is a fine girl and a
versatile actress.
“Her first success was ‘Mildred Pierce’ when she played the horrid
daughter…and was everything a young girl should not be.
“How could you happen to play that girl so well when she is just the
antithesis of you?’ I asked her.”
Did Ann’s reply shock her?
“I like to vary my roles, and it would be very tiresome if I played
only sweet young things…I’d really rather have a part I can get my teeth
into—one with character rather than a milk and water girl.”
Louella wasn’t listening. She had decided, as did other members of the
press, that the nice girl should only play nice girls. A movie to be tentatively titled White Sheep was proposed for Ann in
April 1951 (though never made with Ann), and Louella Parsons announced, “This is the
story of a small town minister who helps regenerate a rather wayward
family. Ann, of course, is the white
sheep of the family. You could not
believe her in any other role.”
You could not believe her in any
other role? What happened to Another Part of the Forest, or A Woman’s Vengeance, or Mildred Pierce and the scheming, sultry,
promiscuous, greedy, backstabbing, murderess roles for which she had earlier
been called a young Bette Davis?
On her film, The Golden Horde – columnist Harold V. Cohen also scoffed at the
notion of the nice girl playing anything but:
“Nobody in his right mind could
possibly visualize sweet, wholesome Miss Ann Blyth in the role of a seductive
Persian princess, dressed in scanties and flimsies, who uses the wiles of her
sex to stop the ruthless march of the terrible Genghis Kahn…Now Miss Blyth can
take off those veils and go back to her cashmeres and dirndls, where she
belongs. In ‘The Golden Horde’ they’ve
sent an innocent child to do a woman’s work.”
You can seduce Zachary Scott and then blast him to
smithereens, but how quickly they forget.
Another aspect of Ann’s personal
life which may have influenced press opinion
may have been her resplendent Roman Catholic wedding ceremony in June 1953
celebrated by several clergy including a cardinal—James Francis Cardinal McIntyre, who also delivered a
blessing from Pope Pius XII.
In the company of several priests and
monsignori was an old friend from back east, the Rt. Rev. Charles E. Hagearty, a monsignor at that time located in Hartford, Connecticut. Msgr. Hagearty had been a curate at St. John's Church in Stamford, Connecticut when Ann visited her uncle and aunt there in the summers as a child. It was this same uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Tobin, who gave up their Stamford home and moved out to Los Angeles to care for Ann after the death of her mother, which we
discussed in the intro post here. According to an article in the Hartford Courant at the time, she was ten years old when she and Fr. Hagearty first met. He played the organ. She liked to sing.
The church was packed with some 500 people, but according to a newspaper description of the event, "set workers and crewmembers...far outnumbered the celebrities." The press lumped the nameless techies together as "friends of the bride." To most of them she was Annie.
More about her bridesmaids in a future post.
In a town that loved
spectacle, it was a spectacular beginning to a long and happy marriage.
Dr. James McNulty, a Los Angeles area
obstetrician, was invariably referred to in articles as Dennis Day’s brother
(who acted as best man at the wedding) more than I think he ever was referred
to as Ann Blyth’s husband.
Dr. and Mrs.
McNulty had five children over the next ten years, further cementing Ann’s
confounding respectability.
Her respectability, itself,
became a problem for television producers of the 1953 Oscars, when she had been
asked to perform the song “Secret Love” from
Calamity Jane (a movie we discussed in this previous post).
Doris Day had been slated to reprise the song
she made famous, but according to the authors of
Inside Oscar – The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards, Miss
Day turned down the opportunity due to being afraid to sing before the live
audience (made bigger still by television).
The program was telecast March 25, 1954.
Ann was pregnant with her first child (her baby son was born in June).
Having a pregnant woman on television
at all was still considered a dicey subject in this buttoned-up era, but one
who stood there and sang the lyric “and my secret love’s no secret anymore”
seemed to fill the NBC network powers that be with considerable trepidation.
It was the second time that the
Oscars were broadcast on TV, called by columnist Bob Thomas, “The biggest star
splurge in television history,” to an expected 60 million viewers. The ceremony was held at the RKO Pantages
Theater with Donald O’Connor as host in Hollywood, and Fredric March handling
the live TV-hook-up from New York.
Ann, who the newspapers were a
little more brave about acknowledging her pregnancy, still referred to it
delicately as her “soon-to-be-mother-condition” wore an emerald green chiffon
gown (“naturally,” commented columnist Buck Herzog with a nod to her Irish
ancestry) with a big skirt and off-shouldered neckline. She also wore emeralds. Too bad TV was still black and white then.
Ann, who evidently felt no reason
to wear a scarlet letter on her green gown, and seemed to see no reason why the
sight of a pregnant woman should engender sophomoric double entendres about
love not being a secret, performed without incident or apparent damage to her
career. Unfortunately, her old pal and former
co-star Donald O’Connor, did suffer the wrath of pundits, including the disgust
of Ed Sullivan, when he made the unpardonable faux pas of publicly acknowledging
that Ann was with child. He playfully
introduced her before her number as “Ann Blyth and family.”
He was berated for his poor
taste. Ann thought his remark was cute.
Over two years later, the press
was starting to crow with its typically short memory how mature the public was
in accepting pregnant women in society.
“Women entertainers used to retire temporarily when they became
expectant mothers, but in this day of the working wife, females everywhere go
on working as usual.” The columnist, Aline Mosby, cites for her examples as
Lucille Ball, Rosemary Clooney, and “Ann Blyth sang at the Academy Awards show
shortly before she had a baby.”
And the world didn’t end.
Not too long after the birth of
her son, she took her nice girl act on the road and really
showed them.
That September, Ann performed a
night club act at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas, and brought the house
down. Los Angeles Times writer Edwin Schallert, who we quoted at the
beginning of this piece when he interviewed her some eight years earlier,
marveled at how well the nice girl blossomed.
Nice girls also do Lux Soap ads with Peter Gunn.
“Miss Blyth won completely and
without sensationalism the cosmopolitan public that had previously been
intrigued by Dietrichs, Mae Wests, Gabors…it was a simple, sincere victory
gained by a fragile-looking young girl in a modest shell-pink lace gown who
confessed her knees were shaking.”
She sang such hits as “April in
Paris,” “September Song,” excerpts from
The Student Prince and
Rose Marie
(movies which we’ll discuss in future posts this year), an Irish song, and in a
series of songs labeled as a “Calendar Hit Parade”, she belted out “Yankee
Doodle Dandy”, and “Silent Night.”
She
closed the segment with “Auld Lang Syne.”
“With her eyes misty with tears as she held a huge armful of flowers,
she thanked the audience again and again for their tribute…There were also many
misty eyes among the people present.”
Louella Parsons crowed that Ann, “…brings
down the house, she’s so good.”
Syndicated columnist Bob Thomas
wrote, “The gamblers and dealers in this
hard-boiled town never saw anything like it.
Everyone in the night club was standing and cheering a demure beauty
whose act was pure enough for a Sunday school picnic.”
Good girl makes good.
He reported on her closing
performance after a three-week stint in Vegas, “With tears streaming down her cheeks, she sang, ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and
bowed off with a thundering ovation.
Most of those in the Congo Room were misty-eyed too.”
He compared her to other more
ribald acts such as the striptease by Marlene Dietrich and Mae West’s racy
humor. “But along came little Miss Ann
Blyth to prove that purity pays.”
She had tried out the act first
in San Diego, and then sang to the crowds at the California state fair in
Sacramento. Ann acknowledged, “It is the first time I played night clubs
or any singing dates, and it has opened up a whole new world to me.”
However, the old world of
Hollywood was increasingly reticent to accept Ann’s versatility as easily as
she had.
A big role was coming up that
would, unknown to anyone at the time, be her last film,
The Helen Morgan Story.
The
down-and-out, troubled, hard-living alcoholic 1920s saloon singer was
considered by everyone who voiced an opinion about it to be beyond Ann’s
abilities.
Some still recalled her earlier career
of sultry gals. According to Armand
Archerd, “She is truly a paradox, having
been described as ‘sweet Victorian’ to ‘sexy and sultry’…by nature, of course,
Ann is probably the sweetest person in the film colony.”
She was required to test for the
role in competition with something like 300 other actresses.
“Ann, by
virtue of her own reputation, was the least likely candidate of all.”
By virtue of her own reputation.
“Of course, no one in Hollywood believed she would get the role of the sexy
Miss Morgan.”
So how did she get the part?
According to Mr. Archerd, “…her test out-sizzled any of the so-called
sexy stars of Hollywood.”
The headline in the Daytona Beach
Sunday News Journal reflected a
shocked public.
Good Girl
In Movie
Gutter
Hollywood reassured a nervous
public, “Ann Blyth is still a good girl,
despite what some of her fans think…who fear that Hollywood’s ‘little lady’
compromised her own moral principles in taking the part.”
Ann responded, “There are always people who can’t
disassociate an actress’ personal life from her screen life…An actress, to keep
going, must portray life, and life is not all sweetness and light…there was
great conflict between good and evil in Helen’s life. Unfortunately, she had weaknesses and the
evil in her life often won over the good.
I personally think that such movies, when done in taste, do more good
than ones that gloss over the brutal facts.”
We come full circle then to a
description of Ann by Ida Jean Kain earlier in her career from 1949: “I thought you might be interested in
knowing what she is like is real life, this girl who plays the hateful, spoiled
darling roles so realistically.
She is poised and genuinely unaffected—completely unspoiled. And in a quiet, confident way, she knows
where she is going, and she is neither deviating nor taking short cuts.”
The quiet, confident woman
replied to Mr. Archerd at the time of
The Helen Moran Story as to how she could possibly make the transformation to
such a wayward woman?
“Well,” she blushed, “I guess I just try to be the person I’m playing.”
Because she’s an actress, that's why.
Come back next Thursday when we jump several decades ahead to 1985, a time when even the wholesomeness of
Hostess Cupcake television commercials could not keep her from turning wayward again as a woman haunted by the death of her first husband, who stabs her second husband with scissors in a fit of hysteria, and who may be a murderer. That's up for her friend, the intrepid Jessica Fletcher, to decide in
Murder She Wrote.
****************
Beaver Valley Times, syndicated article by Aline Mosby, December
28, 1956, p.11.
The Deseret (Utah) News,
November 8, 1946; also syndicated column by Louella Parsons, April 5, 1951,
articled by Ben Cook, April 21, 1952.
The Florida Flambeau (Florida State University, Tallahassee,
Florida), article by David Dreis, January 18, 1955, p. 2.
The Free Lance Star (Fredericksburg, Virginia), syndicated article
by Bob Thomas, October 21, 1954, p. 14.
The Hartford Courant Magazine, July 19, 1953, p.7.
The Kentucky New Era, syndicated
column by Armand Archerd, June 22, 1957, p. 9.
The Lewiston Evening Journal, July 17, 1952, p. 22.
Los Angeles Times, article by drama editor Edwin Schallert,
November 17, 1946, p. A1; also by Schallert, September 22, 1954, p. B6.
The Milwaukee Sentinel, syndicated column by Sheilah Graham, August
22, 1949; syndicated article by Sue Chambers, May 1, 1954, p. 3; also
syndicated article by Buck Herzog, March 28, 1954, p. 19; also syndicated
article by Louella Parsons, September 27, 1954, p. 6.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article by Harold V. Cohen, November 12,
1951.
Portsmouth Times, (Ohio), article by Ida Jean Kain, July 15, 1949
p. 15
Sarasota Herald-Tribune, June 28, 1953, p. 6; also syndicated
article by Bob Thomas, March 24, 1954, p. 16.
The St. Joseph (Missouri) News-Press,
syndicated column by Louella Parsons, December 16, 1951.
The Sunday News Journal (Daytona Beach, Florida), September 15,
1957, p. 12A.
Wiley, Mason and Damien
Bona. Inside Oscar – The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards (NY:
Ballantine Books, 1986), p. 238.
UPDATE: This series on Ann Blyth is now a book - ANN BLYTH: ACTRESS. SINGER. STAR. -
"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.
