Babes in Toyland - 1934

Babes in Toyland (1934) stars Laurel and Hardy in a fairytale land battling evil and proving that virtue conquers all.  There’s quite a bit of bumbling going on, but it all comes out right in the end.

The boys are boarders in the shoe of the Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe.  They work in a toy shop which, we may be surprised to learn, is a supplier to Santa Claus.  Perhaps his elves were on strike, otherwise why would there be this outsourcing?  There were a lot of strikes in the Great Depression; quite possibly the elves had poor working conditions and low pay and no coffee breaks.  Solidarity forever, for the union makes us strong! 

Charlotte Henry plays Little Bo Peep, who keeps losing her sheep.  She’s got an even more dreadful problem, however.  A villain named Silas Barnaby, played with old-time mellerdramer exaggeration by Henry Brandon (even his makeup is exaggerated), lusts after the winsome shepherdess.  Bo Peep is also a resident of the shoe, on which there is a mortgage – held by Barnaby, of course.  He demands of the Old Woman, played by Florence Roberts, that she force Bo Beep to marry him, otherwise, he will take her shoe.  The big one that they live in.  She’s behind in payments.  It’s the Depression.

Meanwhile, Tom-Tom, the Piper’s Son, played by Felix Knight, is in love with Bo Peep, and after a duet or two, we see the feeling’s mutual.  He’s a trilling tenor (it’s a musical, of sorts), but he is no match for the persevering evil Henry Brandon as Barnaby.  Here’s where Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee step in, and that’s Stan and Ollie.

At first, they plan to take their life savings ($1.48) to pay off the mortgage, but failing that, they hope to ask their toyshop boss, played by curmudgeonly William Burress, for a loan. 

But the boss fires them for making a huge mistake…and it is huge.  The toy soldiers they were to make on order for Santa (because his long-suffering elves are on strike for a decent wage and an end to child-elf labor), have been made the wrong size.  They’re HUGE, a little bigger than life size, and when they are wound up (actually, just push a button on their backs), they clomp around like Frankenstein’s monster and are almost as scary.

The boys try to steal the mortgage document from Barnaby, Ollie nearly gets drowned in a judicial ducking, and Bo Peep, trying to save the Old Woman’s home, tearfully agrees to marry the villain.  Stan bursts into tears.  “Upset?  I’m housebroken!”

The whole menagerie of Mother Goose (who’s also there, played by Virginia Karns and sings “Toyland”) characters live in the snug little village, and we might be reminded of the later Wizard of Oz (1939) set, but this one is in black and white.  It also has, like Oz, a race of monsters seemingly controlled by Barnaby, not unlike the flying moneys, called Bogeymen, who live in the dreadful Bogeyland.  They are creepy.  Their netherworld cavern reminds one a little of the lair of the Phantom of the Opera.

After much travail, Stan and Ollie save the day with their earlier mistake – the giant toy soldiers.  They are put into action and in the movie’s climax, the battalion vanquishes the hideous Bogeymen and Barnaby, to the tune of Victor Herbert’s “March of the Wooden Soldiers.”  Some of them are figures brought to life with stop-motion animation, and in other scenes are actors.  I think the most striking scene is when one of them, in Frankenstein monster-like fashion, bursts through a wall and loses his head.  It’s funny and upsetting at the same time.

Another weird and creepy creature is a money-like Mickey Mouse.  It’s his earlier version, but it’s seeing him alive and hopping around and teasing a cat that puts one off.  Definitely, not our beloved and recognizable Mickey.

The movie has since been colorized, but the original black-and-white version is still available, including on YouTube.  For many a Boomer, this was a beloved annual holiday tradition, despite its flaws.  I can’t say it was in my house—there were other movies that were considered “musts” for the holiday season, but I think any time spent with Laurel and Hardy is well worth it.

Next week, we’ll have another visit to a mythical toyland with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in Toyland Premiere (1934).

Until then, may I wish Americans here and abroad a very Happy Thanksgiving!

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Christmas in Classic Films provides a roster of old movies with scenes to conjure Christmas of days gone by.  Makes a nice gift, if you know an old movie buff, or if you just like to give presents to yourself.  

The paperback is available at Amazon, but also here at Barnes & Noble.

The hardcover, so far, is available only at Amazon.

Here are a few other classic movie books I've written for your gift-giving pleasure:

Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. - for sale in paperback and hardcover at Amazon,

And in paperback and hardcover here at Ingram,

And in paperback and hardcover here at Barnes & Noble.

And in paperback here at Walmart.

Hollywood Fights Fascism -  here in paperback at Amazon.

Movies in Our Time - here in paperback at Amazon.

And all of these books are available as well at my page on Bookshop.org, which helps support independent bookstores.

 

Black Legion - 1937

 

Black Legion (1937) reveals how a factory worker from the Midwest is lured into a white supremacist gang, commits atrocities in fellowship with them, and what happens to his family, friends, and community. It should have made Humphrey Bogart a star, but that would have to wait a few years until the studio decided to promote him as such.  But Warner Bros. showed no hesitancy to rush to produce this film barely a year after the real-life incident on which it was based.

 

One is drawn to obvious social and political parallels today about the recurrence of violent fascism in our country, culminating most recently with the attempted coup and overthrow of the government with the Trumpist-militants’ terrorist attack on the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.   The depressing thought that such lunatics have always existed in this country is certainly shameful, but Black Legion is a film that one should view not just with sober realization of an evil undercurrent in our country; the movie should be recognized with pride as an important film that Hollywood had the guts to make.  America is uniquely forthright in airing our dirty laundry, so to speak, and uniquely able to reboot, again and again.  Our ability to address social ills and repair injustice, as difficult and slow as that is, should be a source of pride and something to which each succeeding generation should aspire.  Movies like Black Legion informed a Depression-era audience by reflecting their own times, their own world.  It was current events. The uncomfortable topic wasn’t trivialized, hidden, or given the asinine “both-sides-ism” treatment in order not to offend people who might take revenge. (Of course, Warner Bros. execs didn’t have to fear MAGA goons walking around the streets in those days with military-grade automatic weapons.)  It was just a story about a guy.  That happened to be true.

 

Humphrey Bogart plays Frank Taylor, a factory worker who is seemingly happy in his life. He’s got a steady job – something to be grateful for in these Depression days – a good marriage, a good, healthy son played by Dickie Jones, and some good buddies like Dick Foran.  We learn early on that Bogie, though he likes his job, is not exactly a go-getter.  Like some of the other fellows, he teases a fellow machinist on the line who spends his lunch hour studying so that he might earn a promotion.  His name is Joe Dombrowski, played by Henry Brandon in one of eleven films he did that year.  Oh, the life of a bit player.  It’s a wonder he had time for lunch at all.

 

John Litel is the foreman (he did nine films released in 1937). He’s moving up the ladder to a better job and the company will choose from among the workers to take his place.  Bogie thinks he’s got seniority and is better at this job than anyone on the line, convinces himself the job’s in the bag.  He’s so sure, he’s walking on cloud nine and plans to buy a car to celebrate, plans on fixing up the house and buying his wife a vacuum cleaner.

 

But Joe Dombrowski gets the job. Bogie is humiliated, and angry.  The charming scenes with his wife at home, and listening to a children’s adventure show on the radio with his boy are wiped away in his growing resentment of being passed over.  Bogie is very skilled in showing the, at first, subtle change in his character.  The early lighthearted scenes are a far cry from the usual brooding gangster he played in his early film career, but he is entirely believable at creating a very likable persona. 

 

Then being passed over clouds his mood, and later, his judgment.  Suddenly, the home and the job are both dissatisfying.  His resentment grows, and it’s not directed at the company he works for but rather the fellow who got the job.  Joe Dombrowski lives with his widowed father on a small farm on the outskirts of town.  His father is an immigrant from Poland.  We don’t know if Joe was born in the U.S. or not, but he and his father get labeled as foreigners, one strike against them in this apparently fairly homogenous white Midwestern town.  Another strike is they are likely Roman Catholic, in what is apparently a largely Protestant community.  Put these two together in a fellow who got a job that a “real American” considered was his, and we have the typical trigger for a vigilante group looking for any excuse to start trouble.

 

Bogie, following a trail of hints and whispers of a brotherhood who will give him a sense of belonging, not to say superiority, stumbles upon the Black Legion in the basement of a drugstore in town.  The druggist, and other prominent businessmen, are members, “free, white and 100 percent American.”

 

They take him into the gang and in an initiation ceremony late at night in the woods, he kneels like a postulant before a group of men clothed in Ku Klux Klan-style robes and hoods, and takes an oath:

“In the name of God and the Devil, one to reward and the other to punish, and by the powers of light and darkness, good and evil, here under the black arch of Heaven's avenging symbol, I pledge and consecrate my heart, my brain, my body, and my limbs and swear by all the powers of Heaven and Hell to devote my life to the obedience of my superiors and that no danger or peril shall deter me from executing their orders. That I will exert every possible means in my power for the extermination of the anarchist, the Roman hierarchy and their abettors…”

Taking an oath in the name of Satan is peculiarly appropriate for a mob intent on such evil activities, and Bogie falters over some of the words, seems bewildered and nervous about what he is doing, wondering what it means and what might really be expected of him.  He seems surprised at what he is reading on the card, but he adjusts quickly to his new brethren when he is offered a robe and hood (for $6.50) and his very own revolver (for $14.95.)

The scene back at home when he poses with his new revolver in front of a mirror, admiring his tough image, swaggering a little – we have seen that many times since, not only on feature films (Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver – 1976), but in countless sickening cell phone videos posted to the Internet by self-described avengers.

He spends more time away from home in the evening, and tells his wife, played by Erin O’Brien-Moore, that he has joined a lodge.  She is concerned, and she suffers his road to hell on the sidelines.

Bogie goes out with them at night to terrorize the Dombrowski farm, meaning to teach the “undesirable alien” a lesson.  They beat up father and son, kidnap them, set fire to the home, and then dump the Dombrowskis on a freight train.  The thugs drink and celebrate at a bar later on.

Bogie comes home drunk for the first time, gets Dombrowski’s job as shop foreman (not only did Joe Dombrowski not show up for work the next day, he was never seen again), buys a new car, and tries to get his pal, Dick Foran to join the Black Legion.  Mr. Foran’s response, “That’s for half-wits.”

Bogie is understandably put off by this insult, but Dick Foran knows nothing about the group, not really.  He rooms at the home of their older fellow worker, Mike Grogan, played by Clifford Soubier.  Old Mike has a beautiful daughter, played by Ann Sheridan.  Dick Foran and Ann Sheridan are sweethearts.  Their bliss will soon be shaken by forces building around them.

The Black Legion goes on more raids, smashing the store windows of “cut rate” shops, i.e., immigrant-owned, Jewish-owned.

The militant group requires membership dues and each member is required to sign up two new recruits.  Now that Bogie is the shop foreman, he’s in a position of authority to pressure his workers on his line to join. 

He asks one worker what church the man goes to, and the man replies he goes to none.

“Are you willing to protect your job?” He takes another tack, plays the foreigner taking his job angle, and the guy agrees to join.

Bogie tends more to the Black Legion than he does his job, and there are problems on the production line.  He messes up and asks people to cover for him with management.  Bogie is demoted and his foreman’s position is given to someone else – Pa Grogan.  Uh-oh, Mr. Grogan has an Irish accent.  He wasn’t born in the U.S.  He’s an immigrant taking the job of a “real” American.

No surprise, the Black Legion goes after Grogan next.  He is brought out to the woods, stripped to the waist, tied to a tree, and whipped.  “That ought to give the Irish something to remember us by.”

Old Grogan is hospitalized, and Dick Foran gets suspicious and asks Bogie’s wife about his lodge meetings.  Bogie takes up with the town floozy, played by Helen Flint.  Foran confronts Bogie, laying down the law to him when Bogie comes home drunk and hits his wife.  Bogie, in a drunken panic, exclaims he can’t leave the group because they won’t let him.  He fears their power.  Fascists are always cannibalistic; they always destroy their own.

Dick Foran is now the target. He is kidnapped, taken to the woods, but in an attempt to run away, he is shot dead.  All the thugs run away except for a shocked Bogie, who tearfully, haunted, tells Foran’s lifeless body, “I didn’t mean it!”

There is a suspenseful manhunt sequence as he stumbles away in the darkness, goes to a truck stop to pull himself together, flinches at the sight of motorcycle cops and spooked by the radio report of a body being found. 

The cops nab Bogie, and through a series of scenes we see the mop-up of the terrorist gang.  Bogie is imprisoned, and when his wife is brought to him, he falls on his knees, throws his arms around her, and cries. 

But he has another visitor to his cell, a rep from the Black Legion, who wants him to keep quiet.  He threatens to kill Bogie’s wife and child if Bogie talks.  He is told to tell the judge that he killed Dick Foran in self-defense, and to not implicate anyone else who was there. There is a plot to defame Dick Foran, and a courtroom full of Black Legion thugs smirk at each other in anticipation of their victory.

But Bogie, overwhelmed at the faces in the courtroom, including his wife, his mind reeling at the events of the past months, cracks, confesses, and names names.

We are dashed into a conclusion of headlines and the judge reading from the Bill of Rights, but perhaps the most profound impact is the last shot of Humphrey Bogart as he is being led away to spend the rest of his life in prison.  He throws a look to his wife.  It is half-apology and half-plea for an explanation, as if to say, “How did this happen to me?”  It is perhaps the bewilderment even more than the remorse that cuts to the audience.

How many real-life members of the Black Legion were moved by this film we won’t hazard a guess; they were undoubtedly more directly hit by the investigations that came their way after their kidnapping and murder of Charles Poole, a French-Catholic organizer for President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration in Michigan in 1935, resulting in the imprisonment of nearly 50 of them.  The fascist organization was against Blacks, Catholics, Jews, union members and leaders, Communists where they could find them and tagging people with that label when they could not.  They counted businessmen, pillars of the community in their ranks, as well the disgruntled uneducated mobs who were their willing foot soldiers. 

Read this fascinating article in The Detroit News for more on the Black Legion and the incident that inspired the movie. 

Note that the article was published in 1997.  Note that Michigan is again plagued by fascist terrorists, some of their leaders charged after their plot to kidnap and murder Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was foiled by the FBI. 

For more on classic films that explored and exposed fascism, have a look at my book Hollywood Fights Fascism, available in print and eBook:

Hollywood Fights Fascism (eBook):

Amazon

Apple

Kobo

Barnes & Noble

PRINT BOOK  - Amazon

My Etsy shop

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References:

The Detroit News, “The Murder that Brought Down the Black Legion,” August 4, 1997.

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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.

Wagon Train - "The Martha Barham Story" - 1959

The Wagon Train episode of “The Martha Barham Story” is one in a string of television appearances Ann Blyth made in a variety of shows and genres in the immediate years following her last film, The Helen Morgan Story (1957), which we’ll talk about down the road.  There was no expectation by Miss Blyth or anybody else at this time that this would be her last film, but circumstances conspired together such that good scripts were not forthcoming, the studio system was not there anymore to plug her into the old assembly line of roles, and what offers did appear were often filmed far away from Hollywood.  As she told syndicated columnist James Bacon,

“All the movie scripts offered wanted me to go to Europe and for such a long time…I just felt that I couldn’t be separated from my family that long…I think long separations, no matter how understanding the husband or wife, have broken up more Hollywood marriages than any other single factor.  No script is worth that.”

She was also the mother of three.  At 31 years old, she was not ready to completely abandon her career.  TV anthologies filmed in Hollywood allowed her to slip in and out of a variety of roles with minimal disruption to her family, and with steady frequency.  In October 1959, she appeared in a skit on the Ford Star Time Hour variety show with Art Linkletter in an episode called “The Secret World of Kids”.  She played a new mother caring for her infant and sang “An Irish Lullaby”.  Vincent Price was another guest.

The following month, she appeared on Wagon Train, and in December, a tense drama in The DuPont Show with June Allyson.  There was more TV in early 1960, and her star planted along with others on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  By the end of year, she gave birth to her fourth child, a baby son.  She had traded a film career in these years for a juggling act.

On Wagon Train, season 3, episode 6, broadcast November 9, 1959, she plays the haughty daughter of a frontier fort commander, played by Dayton Lummis.  She is a former love of show star Robert Horton, but displays disdain for him now when he rides through the stockade because she has a new fiancé, an officer on her father’s staff, played by Mike Road.  

Also, she regards Mr. Horton with frank disgust because he enters the fort with his best friend, a Sioux named Curly Horse, played by Read Morgan.  Miss Blyth’s character, high tempered and tempestuous, is bigoted toward Indians.  Her father may regard one tribe over another as allies or enemies, but she lumps them all in the same category as inferiors, which earns an even greater repugnance than an enemy.

Horton renews acquaintance with her, teases her, but bristles at being called a “renegade white” for his friendship with Curly Horse.  They might both be well rid of each other, except a truce with the Sioux is on shaky ground.  White hunters are shooting the buffalo, taking the hides only and leaving the meat to rot in the sun, which infuriates the Sioux because their people are starving.  Ann’s officer fiancé, in a frontier gesture at proving both his manliness and his devotion to her, shoots a buffalo and skins the hide to give to her as a wedding present.  This last buffalo carcass is the last straw for the Sioux, who capture the fiancé to make an example of him.

By the way, look for a young Warren Oates as an exhausted cavalryman reporting on the ambush.

Curly Horse is asked to act as intermediary.  He is not happy about the job, and we see a man uncomfortably caught between two cultures, and torn.

Meanwhile, the Sioux’s enemy, the Cheyenne, have attacked the fort and killed pretty nearly everybody, including Ann’s father.  She has escaped, hidden the fort, where Robert Horton finds her, hysterical, terrorized and half out of her mind with hatred.  He saves her from a second-round attack, and when she faints, he carries her out of the garrison loft, down a ladder, through the fort and out to where he tied his horse.  I know she didn’t weigh a lot, but he must have been exhausted.

Strong-willed, shouting, sick with hatred, she resists going with him, but he puts her on his horse and off they get, as fast as they can, before the Cheyenne spot them.  In the wee hours of the night, she walks away from their camp, taking his horse, hoping to get to the next fort, but the Sioux catch her, and through her, catch Mr. Horton.  They are both taken prisoner, reunited with her fiancé, and Curly Horse, who has to pretend to hate them to save his neck.

Henry Brandon plays the angry, murderous son of the chief who wants to take Ann for his woman.  We last saw Henry in the same position in The Golden Horde (1951) discussed here, as the son of Genghis Khan, who wanted to take Ann for his woman.  Poor Henry’s in a rut.

The Sioux have are going to torture the men, and tie them to stakes, setting a ring of brush around them on fire. 

Curly Horse slyly crafts their method of escape, which requires Horton to wrap skins around his bare feet so he can walk on hot embers carrying the fiancé over his shoulder in the wee hours when the village is asleep.  Horton does a lot of heavy lifting in this episode.

They will take horses and ride to a distant spot, where Curly Horse will meet them, hopefully with Ann, whom he will to free by himself.

There is a long, dramatic scene of Horton carrying the injured fiancé out of the fire, but in a sense, it’s kind of a wasted moment.  He’s the star of the show, the regular who’ll be on next week.  We know he’ll be okay.  Ann and Read Morgan are the couple on whom the climax should focus.  Instead, they all show up at the meeting place at the right time, Ann is humbled and grateful to Curly Horse, and Horton brushes her off kindly when she begins to fall for him again.  She goes off with her fiancé, status quo.

What would have been more interesting is seeing the exchange between Ann and Read Morgan when he knocks out the fellow who’s been guarding her, and saves her.  Does she resist him as she resisted Horton, thinking he’s up to no good?  Does she scream, is she so frightened of her ultimate fate as Henry Brandon’s new woman that she clings to Curly Horse as her rescuer?  How do they interact with each other in the intimacy of escape?  At what point does she decide she’s been wrong about her bigotry and come to regard Curly Horse with gratitude?  It’s a big message in this episode, where we begin the 1960s with looming social issues of equality and brotherhood of man, and come to face our blatant prejudices as a nation.  Westerns are no longer about shooting the Indian.  There’s more going on in the West now, even if it’s just the back lot. 

Instead, the episode falls back on pure manly daring-do that is uncomplicated and untroubled by conscience.

But the episode ends with a shocking scene.  The Sioux discover that Curly Horse has betrayed them, and they beat him to death. 

We don’t know if Robert Horton will ever learn the fate of his friend, or if Ann, one day telling the adventure to her children and grandchildren on the prairie, will ever comprehend how much Curly Horse gave up to save her.  But we see it, and our inability to tell them what happened, and to watch them go off to resume their presumably happy lives, unknowing, is a powerful and ironic indictment of the ignorance and waste of bigotry.


Wagon Train season 3 is available on DVD.

Come back next Thursday for more TV, this time a double-header: a comic episode of Wagon Train where Ann plays a saloon gal who has to hide the fact from her visiting father; and a modern drama from The Dick Powell Show called “Savage Sunday” where she plays a sassy Washington correspondent at a New York newspaper.

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Ocala (Florida) Star-Banner, September 2, 1958, “Ann Blyth, Screen’s ‘Little Lady’ Now a Saloon Singer” by James Bacon, p. 3

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As  most of you probably know by now, this year's TCM Classic Cruise will set sail (proverbially) in October, and one of the celebrity guests is Ann Blyth.

TCM has just published the itinerary for the cruise.  Ann will be doing a couple hour-long conversation sessions, and will also be on hand for a screening of Mildred Pierce.

Have a look here for the rest of the schedule and events with the other celebrity guests. Unfortunately, the cruise is booked, so if' you're late, you can try for the waiting list.

I, sadly, am unable to attend this cruise, but if any reader is going,  I invite you (beg you) to share your experiences and/or photos relating to Miss Blyth on this blog as part of our year-long series on her career.  I'd really appreciate your perspective on the event, to be our eyes and ears.  Thanks.

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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.  And thanks to all those who signed on as backers to my recent Kickstarter campaign.  The effort failed to raise the funding needed, but I'll always remember your kind support.

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TRIVIA QUESTION:  I've recently been contacted by someone who wants to know if the piano player in Dillinger (1945-see post here) is the boogie-woogie artist Albert Ammons. Please leave comment or drop me a line if you know.

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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.

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A new collection of essays, some old, some new, from this blog titled Movies in Our Time: Hollywood Mimics and Mirrors the 20th Century is now out in eBook, and in paperback here.