Criss Cross - 1949

Criss Cross (1949) is a romantic triangle told noir style involving three poor souls who can’t help being themselves.  There’s a heist in there, too. 

This is my entry into the Classic Movie Blog Association fall blogathon:  “Blogathon & the Beast” featuring characters battling, or losing the battle, with their primal inclinations.  In my house, we’ve always called that being your own worst enemy.  But there are enemies aplenty in this yarn, to be sure.

Burt Lancaster and Yvonne De Carlo are in their prime here as both stunningly photogenic and emblematic of the scowling hopelessness of fate in film noir.  Dan Duryea, a favorite sniveling baddie, is the third point in the triangle.  Love and betrayal go together like a horse and carriage.  Or something like that.

The story is set in Los Angeles (where else?) with an aerial shot over the credits of a misty twilight, as we move toward the Bunker Hill section of town that is no more.  Like director Robert Siodmak’s camera shots, the streets are always at a treacherous angle.  We get lots of location views, including Union Station, and the famous Angel’s Flight funicular, which we covered previously here in The Turning Point (1952) and in this essay specifically on the Angel’s Flight in movies.

Burt provides occasional narration, and the plot is revealed drip by drip, so we are always left off balance and wondering.  He is returning home to L.A. after a year of travel about the States, working here and there, coming back to his mother’s house to renew acquaintance with his younger brother, played by Richard Long; his boyhood pal police detective Stephen McNally; and the bar and nightclub where he used to hang out before he went into a self-imposed exile.

The reason for his exile and the reason for his return appear to be the same:  Yvonne De Carlo.

The movie starts with great energy by plunking us down in the middle of a crisis.  Miss De Carlo and Mr. Lancaster, clutching each other between parked cars in the parking lot of the night club, seem to infer that there’s a plan about to the hatched, and she wishes it were all over.  He tells her to wait in a secluded cottage by the beach many miles away, and they must not be seen together.

“It’ll be you and me, the way it should have been from the start.”

Inside, gangster Dan Duryea, smarmy even in an immaculate white dinner jacket, is curt and suspicious when Yvonne enters, badgering her with questions.  Aha!  She’s his wife and she’s messing around with Burt!

Burt’s old pal Stephen McNally sticks his nose in and warns Burt off her and they argue.  He wants to prevent a fight between Burt and Duryea, but he can’t.  They fight, and when he attempts to arrest Duryea for having a knife, both men act like nothing’s wrong.  They don’t want the cops involved.  They both go out in the alley at a dirty old iron set tub to wash.  They don’t have a men’s room?

Here, Duryea, his gang, and Burt have a splintered discussion that clues us in to their mysterious behavior.  The fight is fake.  They are setting up the cops.  But how, and why?

We next see Burt at his job, an armored car driver chatting with his work pals, including old man “Pop” who is his partner and rides in the back of his truck with the money.  They are headed out on a highway, and we see over Burt’s shoulder in the back of the truck is a rifle.  Director Siodmak is meticulous in dropping foreshadowing hints.

But as Burt drives and his mind wanders, we finally get the required noir flashback to tell us the whole story.

Burt has returned to sunny L.A. after a year spent trying to his get ex-wife out of his system.  Yvonne De Carlo.  He swears he’s over her, but we see he’s not.  His worried mother, who never liked Yvonne, sees he’s not.  His interfering pal, Stephen McNally, sees he’s not.  Most especially, a delighted Yvonne De Carlo sees he’s not.

He goes to old haunts trying to accidently run into her on purpose, and finally encounters her at the nightclub dancing a vigorous rumba with Tony Curtis is his first film role.

After a verbal and psychological tug of war between them, Burt wants to get together again, is eager for it, but she disappears and afterward he finds out she has married Dan Duryea.

But why?  Especially when after several months he stalks her again and she haughtily barks at him, but eventually breaks down and says she had no choice.  Stephen McNally threatened to run her in and send her to prison on trumped-up charges if she didn’t stay clear of Burt.  So she married Duryea, who treats her badly.  One look at the bruises on her back, and Burt is steadfastly her hero again, ready to fight the world to protect her and defy family and friends, heaven and earth, to keep her to himself, where he will make her safe and happy.  She is a tragic figure.  So is Burt, by virtue of his big, stubborn heart.

The movie is full of favorite character actors in bit roles, including Percy Helton as the bartender, Griff Barnett as Pop, John Doucette as one of Duryea’s mob.  We have to feel at least a little sorry for Joan Miller for being known in the script and on the credits only as “Lush,” though she does get a few good scenes on her barstool.

The dynamics shift again when Duryea and his gang surprise Burt and Yvonne at Burt’s mother’s house, and we think for a moment Burt is going to be fitted for cement shoes, but Burt surprises everyone with a hastily thought-up excuse to not only diffuse the situation, but to also hatch a plan for his intended escape with Yvonne.

He tries to interest Duryea in a heist of the armored car he drives.  Burt will be the inside man in the crime.  Duryea bites, and they proceed to have a meeting in an empty apartment right next to the Angel’s Flight funicular with an expert to help them plan the heist:  dapper Alan Napier, who we can see without much explanation, is an intellectual loner, with his books, his chessboard, his educated speech and demeanor, and his weakness for alcohol.  Everyone here has a weakness.

He plots out the scheme with mathematical precision, while the gang hovers about drinking beer, and Yvonne De Carlo watches morosely, tensely, clearly fearful of the consequences and not being able to get away with Burt. 

The ploy involves driving the armored truck at a specific time and location, passing by an ice cream truck to be used to take the loot away, a couple of plants at a manhole who will discharge smoke bombs at the right moment, plenty of firepower, and some gas masks.  Burt’s only requirement is that Pop not get hurt, and they all agree.

It’s a nice bit where the gang member who poses as the ice cream truck man pulls a kid away from the traffic about to be hit by the armored car at the last minute. 

But things go wrong, and Pop is killed, and Burt tries to save what’s left by firing his gun on the baddies.  He is shot, too, and he wakes in the hospital, told he is a hero because he saved half the payroll.

Only his pal, cop Stephen McNally suspects Burt was in on it.  He warns him that Duryea will be after him.  Burt tells him to shove off, but spends an anxious night worried that any sound in the hospital corridor will mean one of Duryea’s boys has come to get him.

There’s a nice duality between two scenes with dressers:  Earlier in the apartment when the gang is planning the heist and a few of them sit playing cards around a dresser for a table.  The dresser has supports for a mirror, but the mirror is missing.  Later in his hospital room, Burt is riveted on the dresser with a tilted mirror, trying to see the man sitting in the chair in the hall.

A terrific suspenseful scene with Robert Osterloh, who plays a man visiting his wife in the hospital—who turns out not to be quite that, and we find ourselves with Burt and Yvonne reunited at the secret hideaway, because Burt bribed Osterloh to get him there.

Now that Burt’s got everything he wants—Yvonne and half the money from the heist—he thinks his troubles are over and he’s outsmarted everyone.  “I just wanted to hold you in my arms, to take care of you.”

Yvonne, who was never stupid, blows up at him.  Osterloh, she says, will run right back to Duryea and tell them where they are.  How could he be so stupid?  She packs her things, and the money, and briskly and in no uncertain terms, without an ounce of guilt, tells him she has to look after herself.  Everyone does.  It’s just how people are.  She’s going to leave him there, helpless and injured, and broke.

Poor Burt is gobsmacked.  For such a clever, quick-thinking guy, he never thought of this.  He never thought she was really as mercenary as everyone said. 

Duryea shows up, just like Yvonne knew he would, and plugs them both, and Burt’s last sensation is of holding her in his arms when she claws at him for protection.

Then with satisfaction, Duryea turns away, and then a look of horror as we hear approaching sirens.  Osterloh has sold him out, too.  With all the bribes he’s taken just this night, he’s got to be filthy rich.

Criss cross.  Every betrayal merits a double-cross.  In the film noir world, it’s just the way things are.  Yvonne De Carlo knows it.  Burt can’t help being who he is, even after hard lessons.  Duryea and his boys know no other life.  All of them fight the beast within. 

Except maybe Pop.  He’s a nice old fella.

For more great blog entries in CMBA’s “Blogathon & the Beast” have a look here.

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

 

All the Brothers Were Valiant - 1953

All the Brothers Were Valiant (1953) is a snapshot of the studio system assembly line.  It was a routine picture; a remake of a movie that had been filmed twice in the 1920s; a routine assignment for male leads Robert Taylor and Stewart Granger, men who typically followed studio orders—Mr. Taylor in particular, who never squawked at a role but did what he was told; and it was Ann Blyth’s first movie under her new MGM contract.  Hollywood’s largest studio chose a vehicle for their new star that was no challenge for her considerable dramatic abilities, but rather treated her as little more than a pretty ornament. 

However, even the most routine films in Hollywood’s golden years had a way of containing treasures.  That is the wonderful contradiction here.  There is much to like in this movie, even if these shining moments are incidental to the overall feeling that the film is running on autopilot.

In an interview for Classic Images in February 1995, Ann Blyth recalled of co-stars Taylor and Granger:

Who wouldn’t be happy with those two good-looking men around you?  It was just lovely.  They were both so sure of who they were, there was never an issue of one fighting for more attention than the other.  The feeling on the set was terrific.

Indeed, the viewer may see that it was just another day at the office for Taylor and Granger, but they are successful in their roles because of that well-oiled studio machine that took care of them in a manner that made many actors feel stifled, casting them in comfortable roles.

They play brothers at odds over command of a whaling ship in the late 1800s, and at odds over a young woman, played by Ann.  One can see how important casting was in this era where a studio could have its pick of any number of actors to plug into different roles.  Robert Taylor is the calm, introspective brother whose careful and prudent command of his ship will earn him an accusation of cowardice by his brother, who leads a band of mutineers against him. 

Taylor’s quiet style is perfect for his character.  Though he appears too old for the role, and too old to be referred to as Stewart Granger’s younger brother, nevertheless, there is a quietness, a self-assured serenity to the way Taylor takes command of his new ship at the beginning of the movie, and his warm relationship with the elder Lewis Stone as his former captain, and most especially, in his indulgent amusement with his bride, Ann Blyth—especially when she is climbing the rigging to the crow’s nest—that speaks volumes for this character whose good nature will be taken advantage of by his reckless brother. 

He is not a talker, but keeping his own counsel will prove his undoing in the face of dangerous assumptions by his men and his new wife.  It is a paradox that his greatest strength will be his downfall.

Ann goes with him on his long whaling voyage.  There is a poignant scene when they are pulling away from the wharf in New Bedford, Massachusetts, as Ann watches the town grow smaller, and we are impressed with what a shock it must be to her to leave her home for the first time, that she will be at sea for probably three years, and almost all of that time in the company of only men.  More could have been done in this movie on that point, but Ann’s anxiety and deeper issues as a woman on board ship is swept aside in a character that is shown as chipper, spirited, and almost childlike in her bravado.  

This attitude of vivacity will get her into trouble when Taylor’s long-lost brother appears.  (By the way, it was not unusual for wives to accompany their captain husbands aboard whaling ships, though obviously, for various reasons, not all chose to do so.)

Stewart Granger, the former master of the ship, was reported as lost at sea, though his men grumbled that he deserted them.  He had.  Stewart tells of a period of sickness when he was cared for by an island native woman, played by Betta St. John, and while on her island stumbled upon a great stash of pearls.

This episode is told in flashback where we meet Kurt Kasznar and James Whitmore as a couple of scruffy brigands who plot to steal the pearls.  Though these fellows have strong, and sinister, roles, I would suggest this flashback scene is really too long, as it takes us away from the triangle tension of Taylor-Blyth-Granger, and because the three principals in this scene: Kasznar, Whitmore, and St. John, are not seen again.  They are in the past and do not reappear. 

Betta St. John has the thankless role of playing the stereotyped native girl.  However, it is refreshing that she does not speak in a kind of movie pidgin-English, but rather speaks in a (probably made up) dialect that sounds as if it could have been a lingo from Micronesia.  She chatters to the recovering Stewart Granger constantly, and protects him.  We can relate to her, and she draws our sympathy, though we never get to know her very well.

It is a telling aspect of Granger’s self-serving character when he muses, “I never learned her name.”

Stewart Granger plays a sneering, greedy rascal, and so deadly charming that Ann Blyth cannot help but be attracted to him and utterly innocent to the kind of con game this guy is playing.  Granger is good in this role of bad boy adventurer, so sexy that he commands every scene he’s in.  Ann’s relationship with husband Robert Taylor is warm and tender, but placid compared to the energy Granger brings.  When Granger steps in and plants doubt in her mind as to Taylor’s worthiness as a man, she is caught between a man she loves and a man who excites her.

A striking scene when Granger takes her in his arms, and she forgets all about Robert Taylor, until she glances over Granger’s shoulder and sees her husband watching her. 

She is shocked at how the scene must look to him, and she when she returns to their cabin, she cannot even adequately apologize, overwhelmed by shame.

The title is a phrase and family motto in the ship’s log, “All the brothers were valiant…and all the sisters were virtuous.”  She will have to earn back her husband’s trust, as he will have to earn back her respect.

Directed by Richard Thorpe, the move is punctuated by some excellent scenes—as simple as the sunny morning Mr. Taylor visits his old captain, Lewis Stone.  Now retired, Stone clearly savors his quiet life on land after a long career at sea.  He lifts a small cluster of flowers from his garden for Taylor to smell, regarding them as a kind of wondrous miracle.  He was without flowers for three years at a time at sea.  It’s a touching moment. This was the wonderful Lewis Stone’s last film.  He died suddenly of a heart attack two months before it was released.

Other great scenes are far more technically complicated, such as the storm where Taylor and his mate fight the ship’s wheel to keep the ship steady, while Ann Blyth steps out, dressed like the men in a coat and Sou’wester, because she wants to share her husband’s experience. 

“We must never leave each other alone.  We must always keep close to each other.”

Obviously, the scene was done in a controlled environment in the studio, but this makes it all the more worth admiring.  There is no CGI here, no real ship at sea, but a set that is tossed and drenched in gallons of pouring water and spray that evokes the experience that we can share on a human level, and does not remove us from the human emotions with a lot of technological razzle-dazzle.

Another is the scene where the longboats go out to harpoon the whale.  Most of this is rear-screen projection, but it’s done extremely well.  The whale is pierced with the harpoon, and takes off, his great tail rising into the air and pounding into the sea, pulling the men on the rope in what in my neck of the woods is called a “Nantucket sleigh ride.”  It’s a thrilling scene, where danger faced by these men includes the high risk of failure, the risk of injury and losing their lives in an instant.

(Speaking of my neck of the woods, they pronounce the name of the ship, Pequot, as pee-co.  It’s supposed to be pee-quot, after the Indian nation hereabouts.  Somebody seemed to have thought it was a French word.)

The scene where they are successful in bringing a whale aboard and we see, without a lot of words or explanation, the fascinating process of cutting up the whale blubber, boiling it for oil, and storing the oil in casks below decks in this era where whale oil was as important a commodity as crude oil is today. 

We see the hard work involved, and Ann Blyth demonstrates the abominable smell of the process.

A great shot where, having arrived at an island, Ann and Robert Taylor look forward to going ashore for a little down time, and in the window of their cabin, we see a man rowing towards the ship.  It is long-lost Stewart Granger.  A foreshadowing of trouble, he will turn their tidy little world upside down.

Finally, a shocking fight scene at the end between Stewart Granger, brandishing our old favorite, a belaying pin… (We haven’t seen one of those since our discussion of The World in His Arms – 1952, here.)…and Keenan Wynn, who comes at him a harpoon.  

It’s quite graphic, especially the sound effect of the hollow, stomach-turning thwunk of the belaying pin smashing on Keenan Wynn’s forehead and the swatch of red blood pasted there in a sickening instant.

I won’t tell you how the story ends, though it’s fairly predictable—again, like a routine assignment off the filmmaking assembly line.  One routine aspect of the movie that is such fun is the cast of familiar character actors who populate the rowdy crew, including Keenan Wynn as a really nasty guy, Peter Whitney in a strong role as a turncoat, and a couple of fellows we meet in other posts in this series: Michael Pate, who would play the village idiot in Thunder on the Hill (1951) which we discussed here, and John Doucette, so terrific as the post commander in the Wagon Train episode of “The Fort Pierce Story” which we discussed here.

One scene that the preview audience responded to in July 1953 was the brief sight of Ann and Robert Taylor getting married in church before the voyage.  According to Hedda Hopper’s column:

Ann Blyth got a special hand when she appeared on the screen in a wedding gown.

She had been married in real life the month before.

Have a look here at the trailer for All the Brothers Were Valiant:

Here is a neat set of  "liner notes"for Miklós Róza’s score for this movie here at Film Score Monthly.

If All the Brothers Were Valiant was also a routine assignment for Ann Blyth as well as her male co-stars, Rose Marie, which we discussed here, was slated next and filming began shortly after her wedding, with the hope that MGM would now showcase their new star in the big-budget musicals that were this studio’s specialty.

Happily, All the Brothers Were Valiant is available on DVD from Warner Home Video.

Come back next Thursday when we continue our look at Ann Blyth’s historical costume dramas, and go farther back in time, with The Golden Horde (1951) where she is a Persian princess guarding her kingdom from attack by the forces of Genghis Khan.  She does not use a belaying pin.

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Classic Images, February 1995, “Ann Blyth: Ann of a Thousand Smiles” by Lance Erickson Ghulam.

Milwaukee Sentinel, December 2, 1952, syndicated column by Louella Parsons.

Toledo Blade, July 21, 1953, syndicated column by Hedda Hopper.

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

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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. -

*********************
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.
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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.

Wagon Train - "The Fort Pierce Story" -1963

In “The Fort Pierce Story” episode of Wagon Train Ann Blyth is an officer’s wife, the only woman in a frontier fort, battling her demons with alcohol.

One can easily see why this script appealed to her: her character is multi-dimensional, gets to be angry, to show fear, depression, anguish, be occasionally silly, brittle at times verging on hysteria, and gets to play a drunk scene in the middle of a formal dinner. 

Her officer husband is played by Ronald Reagan in one of his last handful of TV roles before he entered California politics.  Though he strikes me as a little too old to play a young officer up and coming in his career, nevertheless, he draws our sympathy as being a man torn between duty and love for his wife.  He’s trying to find a middle ground, made more painful by the guilt he feels for subjecting his wife to life on a lonely outpost and the rigors of the frontier.

She seems as delicate to him as the fine china teacups out of which she drinks cheap whiskey when she is alone, and she is alone a lot.  Slipping a mint in her mouth when she hears his troop return, Ann steps gingerly out into the hot sun of the parade ground, where the other soldiers are on eggshells in her presence, as if fearing she will go off the deep end.

They have reason, as we will learn later when Mr. Reagan tells the horrific story of their baby having died two months previously while he was away on patrol, and Ann sat in her rocker with the child in her arms, refusing to give it up.

She wants no more children.

The happy news that a wagon train with settlers is coming through excites her, just the thought of seeing new faces, especially other women, and she gets a little giddy at the thought.  Our old friend John McIntire, who led the wagon train on a previous episode, “The Clementine Jones Story” which we discussed here, and appeared in several of Ann Blyth’s films, brings a feeling of civilization and hope with the settlers he is guiding west.  However, we have a secondary plot of the fort’s being understaffed due to Washington pulling back funding (“In Washington everything translates to votes and dollars”), and the military escort McIntire requests is denied.  The wagon train will be at the mercy of attack by Indians when they leave the fort to continue west.

Another fellow on board as a scout is Robert Fuller, whom we will meet again in an episode of Kraft Suspense Theater when he plays opposite Ann in “Jungle of Fear” (1965).

I especially like John Doucette as the grim colonel of the fort, who curtly debriefs Reagan on his patrols, and casts a severe eye upon Ann Blyth as a disruption to the discipline of his command.  He will order her to be taken away on the wagon train when it leaves.  He is steely, but intelligent and though he seems cold and strict, he is nonetheless fair.  Dry, sarcastic, demanding, yet one can envision in him a renaissance man by his crisp, educated speech.  The script by John McGreevey allows all parties to be flawed, but still possessed of a nobility of spirit.

Ann Blyth, left in the position to mind the baby of a young couple on the wagon train, played by Ron Hayes and Kathie Browne, learns that the only way to face the frightening future is to come to terms with the wretched present.  Traumatized and nearly sick with self-loathing, she takes her first steps at healing herself when she cuddles the crying baby.

Ronald Reagan must, in defiance of all the proud ancestors in his military family, carve his own trail through his career that includes his duty to his wife. 

John McIntire clashes with the colonel, as well, when he demands a military escort through dangerous territory.  The climax of the episode occurs when the wagon train, with Ann Blyth on board, leaves without escort, and the attack that follows.

Longtime fans (I’m looking at you CW) will note the soft waltz played on a banjo and fiddle that occurs outside among the pioneer families having a party as “The Tomorrow Waltz” which Ann sung in a previous episode of Wagon Train we covered here.

“The Fort Pierce Story,” from the seventh season of Wagon Train, was broadcast September 23, 1963.  It was Ann’s fifth and last guest appearance on the show.  According to a column by Joseph Finnegan, at least part of this episode was filmed at Kanab, Utah in the summer of 1963.  Several Wagon Train episodes have been up on YouTube from time to time, but happily, I believe all seasons of this show are now available on DVD.

Ann Blyth’s fifth and last child was born in April that year, and, along with her stint on WagonTrain, at 34 years old, she immediately launched into preparing herself for one of her early forays into summer musical theatre with a production of Carnival in July.  We’ll talk about her musical theatre roles in a future post.

Though stage musicals would present an entirely new career for her, there was still room and energy enough for a few more TV appearances. 

Come back next Thursday when we talk about TV in the 1950s and 1960s.

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The News Texan, May 22, 1963, column by Joseph Finnegan, p. 2.

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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.

***************************

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

*********************
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.