Phantom of the Opera - 1943

Phantom of the Opera (1943) is a musical, a Technicolor feast for the eyes. There is a horror story in here, too, but it is cloaked in understanding and the eerie hindsight that dreams dashed can be a pervasive kind of horror.

Between the Phantom’s woes, portrayed with much more sensitivity than Lon Chaney’s infamous ghoul in the silent 1925 version, and the young soprano Susanna Foster’s real-life sorrows – there is enough pathos to make this movie a poignant ode to dreams that died.

The movie, more musical than monster, seems an homage to the world of operatic music than to the original nineteenth century penny-dreadful novel, though it was perhaps a smart move not to attempt to re-create the original classic silent story "note-for-note," as it were. We are given something extra, treated to the powerful baritone of Nelson Eddy and the beauty of Marta. Other “operatic” performances are not taken from operas, but are adapted works from Chopin and Tchaikovsky.

The Paris Opera of the late nineteenth century is the familiar setting for the tale, but there are differences in this movie – Nelson Eddy stars as the opera company’s baritone and Edgar Barrier plays Raoul, the local police inspector. Both men are romantic rivals for the hand of Susanna Foster, who plays Christine DuBois, a talented member of the opera chorus. The gents try to woo her, and Susanna enjoys their attention. Another man loves her and works to further her career – Claude Rains.

Mr. Rains is the Phantom of the piece – and there is no mystery about his identity. When we first meet him, he is not hiding in the shadows. He is in the orchestra pit playing the violin, a mild-mannered, middle-aged musician employee of the opera house. His encounters with Susanna are shy and awkward, and she gives him no thought other than he is a polite but odd old man. The Phantom is not a ghoul here, but a sad soul, and he breaks our hearts from the beginning. We discussed the original Phantom and the 2004 movie based on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s long-running stage musical in this previous post. We observed that the presentation of the Phantom had changed because of our evolution, not his:

      Perhaps a good deal of this transformation of the Phantom in our popular culture has simply to do with ugliness. Gerard Butler’s Phantom is a man with what looks like a few old burn scars on part of one side of his face. Nothing we can’t live with, even though he vainly keeps it covered. Lon Chaney’s face is a rotting, putrid skull. It gives us nightmares. The original book was written in the days when ugly was synonymous with evil, at least as far as storytelling was concerned. Chaney’s film was made, similarly, when the representation of evil was done mainly through an image of ugliness. We still have film monsters who are ugly to be sure, but they are evil and ugly, not evil because they are ugly. There was not a whole lot of sensitivity towards people with mental or physical handicaps in those days, when desperate parents were still leaving deformed children with carnivals. There wouldn’t be any empathy left over either for folks who were less than beautiful. In the code of old Hollywood, the heroes and heroines were beautiful, and the sidekicks and villains were not.

Today we have a bit different take on evil, on beauty, and on empathizing with those who appear different, and that perhaps is one of the reasons why the Phantom has changed. He needs to be repackaged in order to be sold. It would be difficult to film the same 1925 story and present it to a 21st century audience, with the same simplistic judgments. The Phantom’s evil as represented today is more psychological, and more a problem of society because he has been treated so shamefully. Instead of nightmares, he gives us second thoughts.

Universal was known for monster movies as being its specialty, but it also produced a large number, even more than MGM, of what could be termed teen musicals. It is from their stable of talent they drew Susanna Foster and began to groom her as one of their biggest stars. As such, Susanna had a featured role in Bowery to Broadway (1944), which we discussed here, with another youngster who was to replace Susanna as Universal’s leading songstress – Ann Blyth.

The 1943 Phantom is a kind of missing link between the two incarnations of silent ghoul and Lloyd Webber’s lavish musical.

The camera pans from Claude Rains playing violin with the orchestra in the pit, and pulls back to encompass a grand opera house interior, with every seat occupied by the well-to-do in their gowns, tuxedos, and jewels, in every box and loge. We finally pull back to the very end of the farthest rafters, the cheap seats, to reveal the enormous opulent glass chandelier. This, of course, has a prominent place in the story and the shot is breathtaking for its dual use as eye candy and premonition of things to come. It is more so a premonition because by 1943, though the original Phantom, while it may not have been as familiar to that generation, nevertheless had reached legend such that people knew the story they were about to see, or they thought they did.

There are flickering candles in every desk candelabra and overhead ceiling chandelier in every office, in every parlor and boudoir, casting shadows, and reflecting a warm glow. The film moves at a leisurely pace and we sink ourselves into its environment, from cold, gray streets, to actors adjusting costumes behind the flats backstage, to the grand but artificial sets on stage.

Claude rains plays Erique. He is a longtime employee of the opera house orchestra, but is fired because his playing has become slack, to which he attributes his hands and fingers becoming stiff. He may be one of the first people in classic films to be fired for a repetitive motion injury. But poor Erique has no workers’ compensation to fall back on. He is, worse still to any employer, getting old.

He is crushed by being dismissed, and wanders in a daze back to his one-room garret. We see he is living a poverty-stricken life, though his employer and others assume he must have a lot of money in savings from his 20-year career. However, we next see that he has spent his savings on a very expensive endeavor that is both a kindness and a fantasy. He has been anonymously paying for singing lessons for Susanna Foster, who does not know her benefactor. She has been studying with the Maestro – that’s our old friend Leo Carrillo, for three years.

Claude Rains also writes music, and he has an ace in the hole, a manuscript of a concerto he has been writing for years. He intends to have it published, thereby solving his money problem. However, the publishing house stalls him, treats him badly, and when he perceives that they are going to steal his work, in an angry rage he confronts the publisher, who is in conference with his lady friend. They are amusing themselves with his hobby of etching photos on steel plates with acid.  Nothing says love in the afternoon like etching photos on steel plates with acid. Rains attacks the publisher and strangles him to death, and the lady friend grabs the acid and tosses it in Rains’ face.

Whimpering in pain, Rains staggers out of the office and through a maze of rain-washed streets. He is hunted by the police. He takes refuge, of course, in the city sewers that lead to the bowels of the opera house – and we have our Phantom.

He steals his trademark mask and cape from the opera house costume department. It is a rather stylish sea-green mask with eerily arched brows painted on it. He steals supplies from the opera house and lives there and continues to support Susanna Foster’s career, mainly by trying to oust the pompous Diva with threats of violence. Something in his gentle, befuddled personality has slipped askew – he is more cunning, more sinister, and will do anything to get what he wants – and now he wants Susanna, no longer content to love her from afar.

Claude Rains has become strangely athletic and acrobatic in his rope climbing and rafter leaping, and that rakish forelock that drapes over his mask adds a cavalier touch.

Look for Hume Cronyn as one of the police inspector’s men who chase the Phantom through the opera house and try to lay traps for him.

Susanna Foster, at the center of the piece, is a delicate figure, but despite being the focus of the film—even more than the Phantom in this version—she seems not to have a strong screen presence here, though perhaps the role of Christine is too passive to appreciate Foster's abilities as an actress. She was known for having the ability to reach the note B above high C in her vocal range; and the film presents her beautifully, exhibiting this tremendous gift.  Perhaps this information was difficult for audiences who were not opera fans to appreciate, despite the Universal publicity department’s attempt to market it.  Phantom of the Opera was her most important film, her fifth film. She began in Hollywood in 1939 at the age of 12 years old in The Victor Herbert Story, and her path went from MGM, which never used her, to Paramount; to Universal, where they had a robust youth unit whose most famous star at the time was Deanna Durbin.

Reportedly, Susanna was brought on to keep Durbin “in her place,” giving the studio the ability to threaten to replace Durbin with another soprano if she did not conform to their demands of her. Durbin turned down the Phantom script and Susanna inherited the role. She only did a handful of films in her career. In 1945, Universal granted her wish to study opera and tour overseas, which she did, but then she decided to quit the movies.

She confessed to never being very ambitious and felt overwhelmed by the Hollywood machine, but she must really have been made of stronger stuff, for Susanna coped with more than her share of burdens. She grew up with alcoholic, abusive parents, but supported them and two younger sisters while she was still a child herself. When she returned from Europe and her movie contract was over, she reportedly gathered her resources, including selling her fur coat, to rescue and raise her two younger sisters and make a home for them. She eventually married baritone Wilbur Evans, but that union was unhappy. They did some stage work together, but when they divorced, though he was an absent father, he apparently demanded as part of the divorce decree that she not take their two sons more than 100 miles away from New York, thereby ending her attempts to have a comeback in film. She took work in New York City as a receptionist and did what she could with office jobs to support her two sons, with no help from her controlling ex-husband. Years later, she returned to the West Coast, and for a time, was homeless and living in her car.

According to author Bernard F. Dick in City of Dreams: The Making and Remaking of Universal Pictures (The University Press of Kentucky, 1997, p. 125), he notes that in 1989, Jane Withers and Margaret O’Brien learned that Susanna Foster was living in her car and “they came to her aid.”

Most poignantly, The Phantom of the Opera had begun an amazing new incarnation through Andrew Lloyd Webber’s blockbuster stage musical. At that time that Jane Withers and Margaret O’Brien were financially helping Susanna, Lloyd Webber’s Phantom was playing in Los Angeles. According to Mr. Dick, the two ladies “made it possible for her to see it.”

She had been the first singing Christine in a time when the Phantom began to appear less ghoulish to us and more troubled, more sad. For the first time, we saw his side of the story.

Susanna had a story, too. In her final years, her son (one had predeceased her) moved her back to the East Coast and was able to place her in nursing home care. She died in 2009 at the age of 84 at the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey.

No horror story for the blog for this Halloween. At least, not the kind you were expecting.

Brute Force - 1947

Brute Force (1947) remains a giant among prison movies.  Visually stunning, it has a noir foundation on which is hung an unusually sensitive (for noir) study of men trapped by their circumstances, their sins, their weaknesses, their fears, their anger, and even by their ability, those that still have it, to feel the pain of those around them.

Burt Lancaster heads a sterling cast, even the most minor character is vivid and memorable in this film.  That’s what happens when you have a crisp, literate, and biting script, and most especially, a director and cinematographer who freely turn what could have been a stiff sort of docudrama, or clichéd melodrama—how most prison stories tend to be filmed—into unabashed art.  We are treated to a generous array of stunning close-ups and interestingly framed shots that tell us volumes about the men, especially since they are in a setting where they are close-mouthed, unlikely to tell us everything that’s going on inside them.

Expository dialogue goes to the administrators in the prison.  We have Richard Gaines, so dependable in officious roles as the severe, pompous superintendent, always pressuring the anxious, ineffectual warden, played by Roman Bohnen.  The warden complains of cutbacks in funding, that the prison is overcrowded, that the men need job training…all of which the superintendent balks at, saying what the men need is more discipline. 

The soft voice of the head of the prison security force, played by Hume Cronyn, belies his sadistic nature.  The little man enjoys the fear he excites in the hardened men, most of them much larger and physically imposing—but Cronyn wields power he’s swiped in a vacuum of leadership, tortures them physically and psychologically, and he has Ray Teal following behind him with a billy club like a human swagger stick.

The cast is a feast of favorite character actors, like Sam Levene, and Charles McGraw in one of many uncredited roles that filled the first several years of his film career. 

The wonderful Charles Bickford is the level-headed old timer, who breaks up fights in the prison among the other cons, and bides his time until his hoped-for parole.

Sir Lancelot sings calypso rhymes he makes up on the spot to narrate what he sees, as either a funny jest, or a warning, or a requiem for yet another dead prisoner.

There’s Jack Overman as one of the cellmates, an easygoing, simpleton ex-fighter.  One of my favorites, he has a bigger role here for once.  We’ve seen him in a non-speaking minor role in Once More, My Darling (1949) here, and also in Swell Guy (1946) here.  Sadly, Mr. Overman died in late 1949 at only 32 years old.

His cellmates include Whit Bissell, as a small-time embezzler, a sad, brittle fellow who, obsessed his shallow wife, played by Ella Raines in a flashback segment, fearing losing her love, steals from his employer to buy her a mink coat. 

John Hoyt is a stylish grifter, mainly in phoney stocks, a man-about-town with a charming easy-come, easy-go attitude.  I love his line, “I wonder who Flossie’s fleecing now?”

Howard Duff, in his first film, is a former soldier who took the rap for Yvonne De Carlo, an Italian woman he falls in love with during the war.  She has murdered her father to save Duff, but though he takes the blame to save her, I don’t believe his current imprisonment is for that crime.  He remarks about always wanting to get back to Italy to see her, but “one rap led to another.”

The best lines, and probably the best role of the film happily goes to Art Smith, who plays the prison doctor.  He’s just as fatalistic as the cons, and drinks heavily to dull the pain of this miserable place.  It's a terrific performance.   

But unlike the weak warden Roman Bohnen, who gives in to the bullying Richard Gaines and the devious machinations of Hume Cronyn, Mr. Smith is still a man of strong conscience.  He gets into shouting matches with them all, gets right in their faces and bleeds his anger and sarcasm all over them.  Again and again, they slap him down.

Burt Lancaster, whose character as the leader of his cell, and one of the most respected by the other prisoners for his toughness, is beautifully lit, if you can call his deadly cold glare and vicious snarl beautiful. 

We first see him standing in the prison yard in the pouring rain, but with his soaking wet shirt tucked neatly into his soaking wet prison trousers, he strides back to his cell, his shoulders straight, his head held high with an air of nobility.  Though he has just come out of solitary confinement, he is not broken.  He is angrier, and more charismatic to us and to the other prisoners, than ever.  The other men light his cigarettes as a mark of his leadership.  The only one who ranks him is Charles Bickford, who freely reaches into Lancaster’s prison jacket in another scene and swipes a match from Burt’s shirt pocket to light his own cigarette.  Burt lets him, hardly noticing, as if the older man could be his father and is allowed such liberties.

Because this is a setting of confinement, much of the film has the feeling of theatre, and the action that takes place is muted and judicious, until the very end of the film when we have the attempted prison break.  Director Jules Dassin and writer Richard Brooks have the perfect marriage of script and cinematography, where each supports the other, and the pace of the movie flows beautifully, building tension, and then releasing it a bit at a time in unexpected moments of black humor, and when, where the men watch the 1947 comedy The Egg and I starring Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert, it seems surreal.

Ann Blyth, like the few other women in the cast, save for the officious and severe secretary of the warden, is shown in flashback.  The women on “the outside” show us what the men’s lives were like before they went to prison.  There has always been a debate as to whether the flashback scenes with the women are necessary to the film.  Some critics and viewers feel they are fitting to the story, and others feel they slow the story down and detract from the intensity of the prison scenes. 

Even director Jules Dassin apparently did not want to use the flashback device.  Author Alan K. Rode in his biography of Charles McGraw, Charles McGraw: Biography of a Film Noir Tough Guy, reveals that Dassin gave in to producer Mark Hellinger and the studio brass to include the four flashback scenes that show women who have influenced the lives of some of the men in the cell.  He quotes Dassin:

“Truly, the film is demeaned by the inclusion of ‘the women.’  I had to choose between not making the film and yielding to having the women nonsense.  Many years later when I looked at the film…I do not forgive myself.”

I don’t know how screenwriter Richard Brooks felt about the women scenes, but I’m inclined to think Mr. Dassin’s dislike of them might be, in part, a director’s usual, and quite understandable, bristling at having to shoot the film to someone else’s vision.

On another note, Mark Hellinger had to fight toe-to-toe with the Breen office because the MPAA wanted to censor many of the films violent scenes, a reference to marijuana, and even to exclude the word “cancer” when referring to Ann Blyth’s diagnosis because the very word was upsetting to the public.  Perhaps Hellinger threw Breen a bone when he has the doctor, Art Smith, reassure Burt Lancaster that, “These days, cancer doesn’t have to mean death at all.”

That’s another reason why Burt has to bust out of prison.  There’s a time element to Ann’s needed operation.

Others have suggested that the flashbacks represent a societal misogyny, or some statement to the effect that these are regular Joes who’ve been led astray by dames.  Again, here I disagree.  They show the men, more than the women, to be flawed.  Though John Hoyt has his car, his gun, and his gambling winnings stolen by a floozy, he was obviously willingly, knowingly taking chances in an underworld game of roulette, and the odds were against him this time.  He shrugs it off, amused and unrepentant.

Whit Bissell’s wife’s cooling ardor for him, and her greed for the mink coat which she clearly treasures more than her husband, leads to his downfall, but she did not force him to embezzle, had no idea he was doing it.  Bissell was not led astray, he was a fool who turned to thievery, and his obsession with his wife was such that it leads to his suicide when Hume Cronyn tells him (whether true or not) that his wife is divorcing him.  “I get quite a kick out of censoring the mail.”

Howard Duff’s taking the rap for Yvonne De Carlo does not make her a villain, her act of love is to protect him; his was to protect her.  But thinking this paints Duff as a hero wrongly placed in prison is also erroneous.  He is not in prison for assuming the guilt for her murder of her father; he plainly tells us he’s had other “raps” since.  Besides, he would have been incarcerated in a military prison were that so.  Look at the scene where he, John Hoyt and Jeff Corey go after a “stoolpigeon” prisoner with blowtorches, forcing him to be crushed in a stamping machine.  Look at their expressionless faces.  These regular Joes are killers. 

We could probably dispense with their flashback scenes (indeed, Anita Colby as Hoyt's floozy girlfriend never even gets any lines), but the one with Burt Lancaster and Ann Blyth I think is important to the film.  We don’t know if Lancaster has committed murder on the outside, but we see he is tied in with a gang he gives orders to, and probably is involved in something more like bank robbery.  Just before he leaves on another “job,” he stops by the house where Ann Blyth lives, an invalid in a wheelchair.  Lancaster hands a caregiver an envelope with money, “See that she doesn’t need anything.”

Ann is at first asleep, then he wakes her, and in their tender scene shows us that Lancaster is tired of running, that this will be his last job, and then he will come back to her for good.  He tells her that when he met her, he was a guy who “found the first important thing in his life.”  She doesn’t know what racket he’s in, but she senses he is troubled.  She wants to help him, wishes she weren’t sick so that she could help him.

“There are all kinds of sick people, Ruth.  Maybe we could help each other.”  The scene is gentle, affectionate, somewhat sad.  Ann’s character is not a gun moll, she’s a sweet, decent girl who trusts him.  This is important because it bolsters the visual image we already have of Burt Lancaster in the film as more a wounded animal than a psychopath.  

Indeed, at the very end of the movie when he is shot in the prison escape, he rears back with a single roar of pain and rage, like an animal in a trap, cut short as he fires several rounds into the guard who wounded him.  Bookending his cold expression of anger through most of the film is the softened, relaxed look of tenderness on his face when he sees her sleeping, and at the very desperate end when he sees that the escape plan has failed, and he looks for a moment like he could cry.

We need this scene with Ann Blyth, maybe all of “the women” scenes, not to remind us that the men are human, but because we are.  We can’t root for criminals to break free from jail, not unless we have some emotional stake in their success.  Without emotion, it becomes as academic as a watching the outcome of a dog race, and without the betting.

Interestingly, their scene ends with the camera remaining focused on Ann after Burt has left the room, tears welling in her eyes, heartbroken, frustrated, and fearful.  Dassin's touch, or Hellinger's?

One wonders what private demons she might have faced in the brief scene.  She was eighteen years old.  In the previous two years she had spent several months really in a wheelchair as a result of her spine injury, and her mother really died of cancer, both discussed in our intro post to this series.  Life's coincidences are occasionally macabre.

Producer Mark Hellinger may have had yet another reason for putting Ann Blyth and Burt Lancaster together.  He had hired her for Swell Guy (1947), and him for The Killers (1946).  They were two of Universal’s most talented up and coming stars, and he may have wanted to turn them into a team.  According to syndicated gossip columnist Dorothy Manners who wrote this in May 1946:

Mark Hellinger, always good for a bright idea, said to me, “Where are those swell romantic teams that used to make the fans goggle-eyed over their love scenes…It’s time the love team is revived on screen,” and Mark is the boy who is going to do it with his two young stars, Ann Blyth and Burt Lancaster…he wants to make three or four with Ann and Burt.  This Blyth girl is the real star stuff—young, tempestuous and definitely a screen personality.  If you saw her as Mildred Pierce’s daughter, you know what I mean.

Having played in her previous two films as young women of dubious, or downright evil, character, her role as the kindly, gentle Ruth in Brute Force would be the first important break in a string of roles that could have left her typecast, and farther away from ever doing the musicals she hoped to make.  But Ann Blyth was not done with bad girls yet: A Woman’s Vengeance (1948), discussed here, and Another Part of the Forest (1948), discussed here, were on the horizon.  She’s in Brute Force all of only about three or four minutes, but her scene is indelible, and does more for Burt Lancaster’s character than the awe the other prisoners show for him.

Their romantic team never did materialize.  Both went on to other films, and Mark Hellinger, who might have made a pet project of bringing them together again on screen, tragically died about six months after Brute Force was released.

For more on Mark Hellinger’s career, have a look at this excellent post by your friend and mine, Moira Finnie over at her blog, The Skeins.

Brute Force is available on DVD from the Criterion Collection.

Come back next week to Katie Did It (1951), a movie I can’t find, and a few thoughts about that and on Ann’s career as we round the corner and head for the home stretch on this series.

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Milwaukee Sentinel, May 31, 1946, syndicated column by Dorothy Manners, p. 4.

Rode, Alan K.  Charles McGraw: Biography of a Film Noir Tough Guy, (McFarland, 2007), p. 32.

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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.

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.

Top O' the Morning - 1949

Top O' the Morning (1949) is yet another example of how much the Irish love to parody themselves, or more specifically as in the case of this Hollywood-made movie, how much Irish Americans love to parody the Irish.  Only the real Irish in Ireland know the truth behind the silliness, and are usually quite forgiving of the Irish American cousins for believing their own fantasies about Ireland.  I suppose it’s too hard-hearted to slap down someone who idolizes you so much.

This is our tribute to upcoming St. Patrick’s Day and Ann Blyth’s affinity for her Irish ancestry.

The movie is a comedy, a mystery, and a love story, but a partnership not always so much between leads Bing Crosby and Ann Blyth, as between Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald, and a love between the Irish Americans with Ireland. 

The story is a cute idea.  The famed Blarney Stone in Blarney Castle has been stolen, and Bing Crosby, an American insurance investigator—nothing like the hard-edged Edward G. Robinson in Double Indemnity (1944)—is on the case.  However, like, Fred MacMurray in that same movie, Bing does take to relating his impressions into a Dictaphone.  More of our (okay, MY) fascination with recording devices in movies in this previous post.

Barry Fitzgerald plays the village constable.  His re-match with Bing Crosby, a partnership that first brought success to both of them in Going My Way (1945), is the focus of the film.  Mr. Fitzgerald is a crusty, pompous codger, has no idea how truly innocent he is, and holds the reigns of authority in this village only in his own mind.  The villagers, even his own daughter, acknowledge that he is not taken seriously and that solving the crime of the stolen Blarney Stone might finally get him the respect he craves. 

Hume Cronyn is his assistant, delightfully played with  excitable hero-worship of his superior, but as the plot progresses, we see that Mr. Cronyn has more going on under the surface.  “All the excitement!  It’s a pity Ireland doesn’t have more to steal.”

Eileen Crowe, who, like, Barry Fitzgerald was a product of Dublin’s famed Abbey Theatre, plays Biddy, a village crone with great wit and wisdom.  She’s the go-to gal for legends, premonitions, and curses.  I love her observation: “It does little good to put a curse on Americans.  They don’t seem to know the difference.”

It’s odd to think the actress playing the old woman is actually only 51 years old in real life.

John McIntire has a small role as the district police superior to Barry Fitzgerald, a much smarter, no-nonsense guy to who works with Bing Crosby to solve the crime.  Mr. McIntire will come back to us next month when we cover Sally and St. Anne(1952) in a wonderfully comic role, quite different from his normal fare of tough guy supporting players.  We’ll meet him again a few times later this year in other Ann Blyth films, and especially next week when we join Ann for a ride on McIntire’s Wagon Train.

Look for Mary Field as a chambermaid, who gets to sing a line or two with Bing.  We last saw her here as the hilarious saleslady selling bikinis to William Powell in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948).

Ann Blyth plays the daughter of Barry Fitzgerald.  She keeps house, feeds Da porridge for breakfast, and keeps track of how many times she has been kissed in her life.  She longs for her true romance, and falls for Bing Crosby, but though certainly none of Crosby’s movie romances were terribly romantic—he tends to coast through these roles without much fire, she gives us the perfect dream-image of a lovely and spirited Irish lass. 

She gets to sing a duet with Bing, but apart from that and a line in the crowd number, the foot-stomping “The Donovans,” that’s all we get to hear.  Bing gets most of the songs.  It was Bing’s production company that made the film, distributed through Paramount.

Reportedly, his first choice for the female lead was Deanna Durbin, but she turned down the offer, planning her final escape from Hollywood and a life of happy retirement.  There were several career connections or coincidences between Deanna Durbin and Ann Blyth.  Ann was discovered while touring in Watch on the Rhine, discussed in this intro post, by Universal director Henry Koster, who made several films with Deanna Durbin and may have seen something in Ann to remind him of her.  Ironically, despite having brought her to Universal, he never directed a film with Ann Blyth.

There may have been, in the beginning of Ann’s film career, a tendency to regard her as “the other” Deanna Durbin.  A syndicated article by Harold Cohen when she was signed to Universal in December 1942 noted, "Pretty little Ann Blyth of Watch on the Rhine may be Universal's new Deanna Durbin...although she doesn't sing in the play, she has a lovely voice..."  Because of her first four light musicals, she may have been groomed to be a second-string Deanna Durbin (even as, when she arrived at MGM, Ann may have been considered a second-string Kathryn Grayson).  If, indeed, in both cases she was regarded as a spare soprano, it may explain in part why Ann had such difficulty getting the prime musical roles she desired.  We'll talk about her MGM musicals down the road.

I find it odd that, since she was so adept at drama, but was also a trained singer, the studios for which she worked did not find a way to slip in a song or two in more of her non-musical films.  For instance, in something like I’ll Never Forget You (1951), which we discussed here (and will discuss again later in the year), it would seem like a natural fit to have this actress with her trained singing voice at a pianoforte performing an air from the historical period of this time-travel piece.  Anytime you see a dramatization of, say, a Jane Austen novel, there’s always going to be a woman banging out a tune on a pianoforte and singing.

I would compare Ann to Irene Dunne, who was also adept at drama and comedy.  But Miss Dunne sang often in her films, even those not considered musicals.  Consider Love Affair (1939), which we discussed here.

Irene gets that wonderful moment where she plays and sings “Plasir d’Amour.”  Life with Father (1947), discussed here, gives us the lovely duet with William Powell on “Sweet Marie.”  

You can better believe that if Irene Dunne were in a movie that was staged entirely in a broom closet, they’d find some way of stuffing a piano in there too.

But though Ann Blyth’s versatility as an actress was celebrated in the press in these early years of her career, her singing talent seemed under-utilized.  She should have gotten more singing time in Top 'O the Morning.  She should have gotten more singing time in lots of movies.

Bing is a nice guy in this movie; he’s always a nice guy, which makes his first song “When Irish Eyes are Smiling,” sung to a little girl when he’s getting his passport photo taken for the trip to Ireland, slow and unnecessary.  We already know his character.  It’s the one he usually plays.  It is a wasted opportunity for him not to be singing it to, or with, Ann Blyth, as he does in this clip here.

This clip, performed on the set of Top O' the Morning was actually filmed for Family Theater, a Catholic media production as a program promotion.  It’s a shame the duet doesn’t appear in the movie, but it’s nice that it was preserved on film anyway.  She’d get to sing "Toora Loora" on TV’s Ford Startime with Art Linkletter in a variety episode called “The Secret World of Kids,” broadcast October 27, 1959.

In September of this year, 1949, (a month after Top O' the Morning was released) Ann would appear with Bing on the Lux Radio Theater in “The Emperor Waltz,” but here, too, he gets the lion’s share of the songs as the happy-go-lucky phonograph salesman pitching his wares to Ann’s stuffy duchess in turn-of-the century middle Europe.

Top O' the Morning is a sweet, pleasant movie, but critics’ chief complaint seemed to be the ersatz feel of Paramount soundstage  rather than the rustic Irish landscapes, and vigorous, if equally-self parodying, dialogue we would be treated to later in John Ford’s The Quiet Man (1952).  To be sure, we do have a requisite shot of Blarney Castle slipped in, but for the most part, it’s a Hollywood version of Ireland.

Barry Fitzgerald’s humble cottage, when we visit for a party, suddenly seems as large as a Costco inside to accommodate all the dancers.  Ann gets to jig a wee bit, and in “The Donovans” number, young Jimmy Hart, a boy who figures prominently in the plot, starts to sing a verse with what we may presume to be a Guinness in his hand when he is promptly slapped in the head by Barry Fitzgerald.  A favorite moment of mine, as a little slapstick is suitable to almost any occasion.

Another cute scene where Ann, trying to find clues to verify an old legend with which Bing is unaware he has a major role, keeps sneaking peeks into the different pockets of his coat while they are dancing.  He gives her a “what a weirdo” look and wonders if she’s a closet pickpocket.

The climax of the film, quite unexpectedly, has a more serious, even sinister tone, as the mystery is solved and the real thief of the Blarney Stone is discovered, the thief also having committed murder.  For some critics, this was too drastic a change in mood from lighthearted to sinister, but I like it.  A little Celtic noir.  A little slapstick.  A little romance.  A little porridge.  Did not G.K. Chesterton make the mercurial Celtic nature most plain when he wrote:

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.

There is a happy ending—especially for the insurance company.  Now they won’t have to pay out.

Ann Blyth’s Irish accent in this film, we may presume, came without much difficulty.  As mentioned in our intro post here, Ann’s mother was originally from Dublin (a Lynch girl, which automatically makes her swell), and Ann grew up hearing the accent at home, as well from the aunts and uncles who emigrated along with her mother to the U.S., including the aunt and uncle with whom she made her home after the death of her mother.  According to one reporter for The Milwaukee Journal, that aunt, Mrs. Catherine Tobin, “…has a brogue so thick that she is sometimes difficult to understand.”

This movie is embroidered with a lingo of enthusiastic superlatives: “I tracked him gallantly.”  “That’s a gigantic reply."

That autumn of 1949, Ann was planning her first trip to Ireland with her aunt and uncle, hoping for a break in her film schedule the following year.

Ann Blyth strongly identified with her Irish ancestry and her mother’s birth country.  She had several aunts, uncles, and cousins still living there, and it must have been a deeply emotional moment when she visited her late mother’s hometown of Dublin for the first time.

St. Patrick’s Day 1950 kicked off her Irish year when The Ancient Order of Hibernians in Los Angeles named her the year’s outstanding Irish screen or radio performer, presenting her with a statuette at their St. Patrick’s Day Ball.

Columnist Sheilah Graham noted after Ann’s return from the Auld Sod, “Ann Blyth is dreamy-eyed when she talks of meeting a ‘Hundred of my relatives in Ireland.  I had my own claque when I appeared at the Royal Theater in Dublin.’"

Louella Parsons wrote, “She had a wonderful summer there with her aunt and uncle and all their many friends...“‘Ireland is even nicer than I ever dreamed it could be,’ Ann said…‘And how willing they are to go out of their way to make you happy.  And those people are so contented with so little.’”

Top O' the Morning got the Lux Radio Theater treatment on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1952, with Barry Fitzgerald and Ann Blyth reprising their roles.  You can have a listen here, scroll down to the episode.  In Bing Crosby’s shoes this time is singer/comedian and Jack Benny sidekick, Dennis Day.  Mr. Day would figure prominently in Ann’s future.  His younger brother, James McNulty, would become Ann’s husband the following year in 1953.  Both she and her husband would make cameo appearances on Dennis Day’s TV show in the 1950s, and Ann would join her brother-in-law in concert in distant future.  More on that later.

Ann celebrated another St. Patrick’s Day, in 1959, with her husband at the White House where President Dwight D. Eisenhower invited her to sing for the visiting President of Ireland, Sean O’Kelly.

Have a look at Laura's take on Top O' the Morning here at Laura's Miscellaneous Musings.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to those who celebrate it.  Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh.

May the road rise with you,

May the wind be always at your back,

May the sun shine warm upon your face,

And the rain fall soft upon your fields.

And until we meet again,

   may God hold you

   in the palm of His hand.

Here's "The Donovans" number currently playing on YouTube:

Come back next Thursday when we join Ann as an ornery saloon gal, Dick York as stumblebum bank robber, John McIntire as the unluckiest wagon master in the west, and a little boy with an ugly disposition in a comic episode of TV’s WagonTrain  from 1961 called "The Clementine Jones Story."  It's part of the Big Stars on the Small Screen Blogathon hosted by Aurora over at How Sweet It Was.

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Milwaukee Journal, November 2, 1949, p. 1.
Milwaukee Sentinel, syndicated article by Louella Parsons, March 13, 1959, part 2, p. 2.
Paley Center for the Media website.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 3, 1942, syndicated article by Harold V. Cohen, p. 22.
Spokane Daily Chronicle, March 10, 1950, p. 20
The Spokesman-Review, syndicated article by Sheilah Graham, August 20, 1951, p. 5
St. Joseph (Missouri) News-Press, syndicated article by Louella Parsons, December 16, 1951, p. 4D.

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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, 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.