Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948) is a whimsical tale of true
love, wherever you happen to find it—in a fantasy, or your wife. Or both.
Another long post. Go long. I'll hit you in the end zone.
Ann Blyth was still in production
on
Another Part of the Forest (1948) –which
we’ll discuss in a later post—when she was given over to the mad scientist
ministrations of makeup genius Bud Westmore to attach a four-foot long
mermaid’s tail to her lower body.
These were very busy and prolific
years for her, from 1948 to 1952. Half
the 32 films she made in her entire career were in just this four-year
period, when one production rolled right on into the next. After Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid, that summer she was slated for location shooting in Utah for her first western, Red Canyon (1949). Her career was
thriving, with what must have been a gratifying variety of roles to display her
freshness and versatility.
Ann was 19 years old when the
film was made, and William Powell was 55, but the 36-year difference between
them did not really make for any awkwardness in the crush the mermaid and the
man had for each other on screen, mainly because the crush was so innocent and
so was the mermaid.
For his part, William Powell
strolled through his character’s screen midlife crisis with the panache and bemused
sophistication of The Thin Man, with that sly humor that uses discretion as a
springboard to irony. He’s perfect in
the role.
And in real life, Mr. Powell’s
wife, former actress Diana Lewis, who we saw here in
Cry Havoc (1944), was 27 years his junior.
So much for impossible age differences.
As for any possible off-screen
awkwardness, that was apparently dispelled by the good humor of both
leads. An article by Sheilah Graham in
1949, in a half-mocking, half-admiring tone, noted that Ann Blyth “a devout
churchgoer with an innocent smile, peach blossom skin and a wolf-whistle
figure” was known at this stage of her career for being shy about kissing too
passionately onscreen, or at least, “refuses point blank to go all-out.”
Mr. Powell, as discreet as his
character, Mr. Peabody, apparently handled her discomfort as well any of his
own, by remembering first and foremost that they were making a comedy.
Ann said in the interview, “He
was kidding all of the time. I was
always afraid he was going to make me laugh as he started to kiss me. It was such whimsical make-believe that I
wasn’t embarrassed when I had to kiss him.”
Mr. Powell’s problems about their
age difference ultimately had more to do with his age than hers; he had to
carry the mermaid around a lot, which was a remarkable, and exhausting, feat
for a man of his years.
The Montreal Gazette felt that William Powell was good but should
have been better, but thought Ann “…wears the fishtail as if born to it, gives
the just the right suggestion of an untutored but not unknowing denizen of the
deep. It’s her best performance.” I think they were wrong about Mr. Powell, but
Miss Blyth earned the praise. It’s
interesting reading the different reviews how critics seemed not to know how to
take this movie. It was such an offbeat
charmer that I don’t think they could categorize it into any familiar
pigeonhole.
The New York Times, however, (in a review NOT written by the easily
irritated Bosley Crowther) called Mr. Powell’s work “an engaging and highly
polished performance” and noted of Ann, “Her costuming places her beyond
criticism.” It’s signed T.F.B., and
whoever he was, that’s as stylish a piece of leering as I’ve ever read.
Now, about that costuming. The effort it took to make the film is as
delightfully whimsical as the story.
William Powell may have caught his mermaid fishing, but makeup man Bud
Westmore had to create her from scratch.
Photo credit unknown at this time. I think that's Bud Westmore.
First, you need a young woman,
about 5’2”, who doesn’t weigh very much because everybody, not just William
Powell, is going to have to carry her around a lot when she’s wearing the
tail.
Just as fish are immobile when
they are “beached”, so is Ann Blyth when she’s wearing her fish tail—which, despite its inconveniences, she
apparently didn’t mind too much.
She
recalled in a 2006 interview with Eddie Muller
(referred to in our intro post here):
“The good part about that was that I got to be carried around all day
long. Everyone was so good to me on that
movie.”
You drop the cooperative girl on a
table and get your mad scientist buddies to make a mold of her body by smooshing
clay or
Play-Doh or
Silly Putty, or whatever you have in the junk drawer, from
her torso to her toes.
Photo credit unknown at this time.
Once you’ve got that done, you
start covering her with plaster.
Thus is an actress turned into an arts and crafts project.
According to an article by Gene Handsaker in
the
Milwaukee Journal, the fish tail
cost $23,000 to make.
(Life magazine says $18,000.) “Ann lay on a sort
of operating table for three hours while being molded in clay and plaster for
the four foot mermaid tail of sponge rubber, she told me on the set of
Another Part of the Forest.
“To each scale of Ann’s tail will
be sewn a glass jewel for further sparkle—some 4,000 jewels in all…The upper
part of this, the biggest rubber ‘appliance’ ever made for a movie, will blend
into her torso in a chaste, piscatorial nude effect—if U-I can get that past
the Johnston office.”
This “piscatorial nude effect”
has to do with the fact—if you can call it a “fact” when we’re talking about a
mythical creature—that a mermaid’s upper body is that of a human woman, so
there’s a running gag in the movie about covering the mermaid’s naked breasts.
But teasing the censors is the
last thing on the agenda. First, we still have to finish our
mermaid. Once you have the sponge rubber
tail, then you’ve got to wrestle it onto the cooperative young woman. Can’t have been easy to slide into.
State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/149884
You need help. A team of three is good. Hoist the girl in the air between you and
yank that tail onto her. This pit crew
is also available for hire. Can’t get
into those tight jeans anymore? These
boys are professionals. They know what
they’re doing. Having trouble wrestling
your wiggling five-year-old child into a snowsuit? Just give them a call.
Ed and Whitey McMahan carry M'lady to the set.
State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/8892
Then, as we mentioned, the young
woman can’t walk in this thing, so she has to be carried like Cleopatra by
obliging handsome slave boys to her watery home. Where she is unceremoniously dumped in the
drink. This is likely not a good time to
tell people you have to go to the bathroom.
One more thing.
Lead weights were placed in the bottom of the
tail by her feet, some references say 30 pounds, some say 50 pounds—to keep the rubber
tail, and the person wearing it, from floating to the surface of the water.
Sounds as ominous as stories of mobsters
fitting their victims with “cement shoes”.
Here are more photos from
Life magazine, February 1948.
Newt Perry and Ann
Once the actress looks like a
mermaid, she’s got to be trained to swim like one. Here’s where Newt Perry and the team from
Weeki Wachee Springs in New Port Richey, Florida, come in. Weeki Wachee Springs was one of those
roadside tourist attractions long before we had fast food chains lining every
stretch of highway, before expensive theme parks and innumerable
corporate-owned enterprises were devised to part you from your money.
Established in the fall of 1947
by Newt Perry, it wasn’t long before Universal-International came in December
to build a special set onto Perry’s showcase of “mermaids.” They were just local high school girls—not in
mermaid costumes—frolicking under the water doing tricks and demonstrating
scenes of, as the book Weecki Wachee
Springs by Maryann Pelland and Dan Pelland notes, “eating, drinking, and
even typing underwater.” Perry devised a
system for the beauties to remain under water for longer periods by sneaking
breaths of compressed air through rubber hoses.
Newt Perry and Ann
State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/149879
Most of these photos are from the
State Archives of Florida as displayed on the
FloridaMemory.com site.
Newt Perry also trained Navy frogmen, helped
out on several Tarzan films, and taught his nephew to swim—who was Don
Schollander, 1964 and 1968 Olympic Gold Medalist.
A champion swimmer himself, Mr. Perry knew
his stuff.
According to author Tim Hollis in
Glass Bottom Boats & Mermaid Tails:Florida’s Tourist Springs, “Perry coached Ann Blyth in the proper
techniques of underwater breathing, and according to all reports, she was a
quick study and a natural athlete.
Though she performed the necessary water close-ups, her acrobatic
swimming in most of the long shots was done by the Weekiwachee regulars,
primarily Nancy Tribble.”
Mermaid doubles Nancy Tribble and Flo Wilkinson with Ann.
State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/149877
According to gossip columnist
Hedda Hopper, “Between scenes she swam and dived just for the heck of it, while
Powell, fully dressed, clung to a rope and shivered.”
Ann does her own swimming here.
State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/8897
The cast of Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid arrived in February 1948, and filmed
some of the underwater scenes here, and some back at Universal in a water tank. Andrea King, who played the rival for the
affections of Mr. Powell—a rival, as it turns out, for his wife and his mermaid—is quoted on a website
devoted to her career as recalling the weather in Florida that February to be
cold and rainy, and much of the cast fell ill, including trouper William
Powell, though, “you never would have known it.”
Back at Universal to finish up
some water scenes between her and Ann Blyth—including a spectacular fight scene
we’ll discuss below—Miss King recalled that though the tank was supposed to be
heated, the water heater malfunctioned and the water was quite cold in the
tank. “So we tried anyway for about half
an hour, but Annie and I just went numb.
I think she got terribly sick after that.”
State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/149881
And now, the movie…
Directed by Irving Pichel, written by Nunnally Johnson, adapted from the novel Mr. Peabody and his Mermaid. I lead off with the title card
here because this graphic of a mermaid, so coyly curled up with the credits, is
the only time you will really ever see a mermaid naked from the waist up in
this movie. Ann Blyth is artfully
covered by the edge of a pool and a fortunate camera angle, by a robe, by seaweed,
by her flowing curly blonde hair, by a bubble bath, and by her own expressive arms.
William Powell plays Arthur
Peabody, a man about to turn 50 years old, a fact which surprises him and depresses
him.
He is also just recovering from a
long bout of flu, so he and his wife have taken off to restore his health at a Caribbean
paradise where it’s warm.
Irene Hervey is his wife, wry and
understanding, and we can see from the outset that theirs is a good marriage,
with comfortable bantering.
She is no
shrew from whom he is trying to escape, indeed, the only “other woman” he leers
at in this entire movie is
her, when she
is partially hidden from view and he does not at first realize the legs he’s
ogling are his wife’s.
She looks good in
a bathing suit.
His demonstrated
attraction to his wife also takes the smarmy edge of his “romance” with the much
younger mermaid.
Andrea King is a visitor to the
vacation villa, a singer and performer who blatantly chases after Powell with
la-de-da j
oie de vivre, perhaps
with no real design on him except for the fact she’s bored and there apparently
seems to be a lack of other men.
And
he really is charming.
Clinton Sundberg, who we’ve all
seen in minor kindly “everyman” roles—I think my favorite is Judy Garland’s
bartender pal in
Easter Parade—here
gets a larger role as a publicity man for the villa, one of the few Americans
on this British protectorate, who is cynical, funny, and even surprisingly a
little sinister.
There’s a running gag
about his doctor forbidding him to drink or smoke anymore, and how miserably
Mr. Sundberg copes with this.
Art Smith, seen at the beginning
and the end of the movie, is the psychiatrist to whom Irene Hervey takes Mr.
Powell to get him over this mermaid fantasy.
Mr. Smith is an especially understanding fellow, who, like Powell, also
likes to fish and is amazed he could have caught a mermaid on a 12-thread line.
A wonderful old character actor (though
actually younger than William Powell), he was one of the unfortunate victims of
the infamous blacklisting in the 1950s when Elia Kazan threw him to the wolves.
I won’t go play-by-play with the
plot, but here are some delightful scenes to mention: At the beginning of the
film when William Powell sits in the waiting room of the psychiatrist’s office
and a small boy stares at him, asking his mother, “What’s the matter with him,
Mommy?
Is he crazy?”
I like that it’s snowing outside
in the city, which gives a great contrast to the sunny paradise he retreats to,
representing a rebirth of spirit.
It would have been
lovely to have the film in color, but it still manages to take us away to
tropical splendor without it.
Almost the moment he arrives, he
hears a musical trilling from some far distance—he alone hears it and we
presume it is the fabled siren’s call—but he suspects no mermaid, even when he
takes a sailboat to a deserted rocky key and finds an ornamental hair
comb.
We will soon see it belongs to the
mermaid, whom he hooks on his fishing line.
The fishing scene is good; it
takes time and plays out nicely, building suspense.
He hooks the tail of what he presumes to be a
large sport fish.
From what we see of
the tail, it could be a marlin or a swordfish, or a tuna.
Even in just these scenes of exploring,
sailing, fishing—indeed, struggling to land a big fish—William Powell is
already exorcising the demons of turning 50.
He’s already proving to himself that life is still exciting and he’s
still man enough with strength and vigor to enjoy it.
He manages to pull the fish close
enough to grasp its tail and flip it into the boat.
He’s won the fight.
Hemingway would be proud.
Then he is astonished to discover
at its other end is a pretty young woman.
No more astonished than the dazed
mermaid is to discover herself in a boat with a strange two-legged creature.
At first, the mermaid is only a
fishing prize to him, and he gleefully carries her into the rented vacation
villa as a specimen he hopes to produce before scientists.
She’s a bit faint and peaked lying on his
bed, then he realizes this creature needs to be in water, so he fills the tub,
while she looks around his room with the wonder of someone who’d never been on
land before.
Right at this moment to us,
Ann Blyth as the mermaid stops being a myth or a plot contrivance, but a person
with whom we can identify, and that goes a long way towards our caring about
the relationship between her and Mr. Powell.
Moreover, she is mute, so our compassion rises for this lost soul in a
strange place.
At first, Powell has no romantic
notions about her, though he warms from regarding her as a fishing trophy to
referring to himself as “your old Uncle Arthur” when he swiftly becomes her
caretaker.
He is giddy not with love
(even when his robe slips from her bare shoulders when she slides into the tub
and grins at him from under the water), but in anticipation of the fame and
notoriety his accomplishment in landing her will bring—and in a celebratory
mood gets a bit tipsy by the time his wife comes home.
Irene Hervey, though she has
teased her husband about turning 50, nevertheless is jealous over his attention
to Andrea King at the party the night before.
She suspects the splashing she hears in her tub is Miss King, but when
she opens the door to confront the other woman, all she sees is an enormous
fish tail protruding from a bubble bath.
It seems the mermaid, with childish curiosity,
gotten into the toiletries.
Miss Hervey thinks her drunken
husband has played a joke on her, and she wants that fish out of her tub.
I like the scene when she’s on the phone
talking to a man she’s met at the party (she’s been making friends too) while
William Powell carries the mermaid down the stairs.
He’s had a little too much to drink and, in
the doghouse with his wife, so he carries the mermaid outside intending to
release her back into the ocean.
But he gets tired hefting
her.
“You’re no guppy.”
(One of my favorite lines.)
He sits on the edge of the enormous
ornamental fishpond to rest, with the mermaid in his lap, and finally takes a
long look at her.
His fishing trophy,
his scientific discovery are only a popped balloon—popped by his wife—and he
now regards the mermaid in a second look, a second chance at a first crush.
“You don’t want to go back in the
sea, do you? It’s so big, and you’re so
pretty.”
He lightly kisses her, off to the
side of her mouth, and the astonished mermaid, uncomprehending eyes wide open,
is gobsmacked.
Trying to figure this
out, she parts and closes her lips as if to taste the kiss he’s left
there.
She likes the sensation and wants
to kiss again.
He leaves her in the fishpond,
half-pet, half-mistress.
William Powell is so entertaining
and so sweet in his role, which is basically comic, but lends it such skillful depth
and poignancy.
Ann Blyth’s work here is luminous
and captivating.
It is a non-speaking
role, but there is remarkable and touching eloquence in the way her eyes roam
over his face, as if trying to read him, trying to understand his words and his
facial expression.
Middle-aged Mr.
Peabody is wondrous and fascinating to her, and her unlikely crush for him
alone adds another level to the comedy, and the poignancy.
We can see why he might take a fancy to her,
but her radiant and achingly silent adoration of him is charming.
The funniest scene in the movie
is when Mr. Powell heads to a women’s clothing store in town to purchase some
sort of top for his mermaid.
His
befuddled awkwardness sets the stage for a terrific scene, and he plays the
straight man for Mary Field, whom you’ve probably seen uncredited in a zillion
movie walk-on parts.
Here she gets a
good role as the primly officious clerk, who delights in her soliloquy sales
pitches to the uncomfortable Mr. Powell.
She sounds like a Banana Republic or J Peterman catalog description gone
amuck.
She displays a sweater, “Light as
a whisper, gay as a sunbeam, wearing it will be an emotional adventure spangled
with the moon glow of twilight.” (I
swear, if just one sales clerk ever spoke to me that way, I’d buy everything in
the store. I am so heartily sick of,
“How you guys doin’?” when I am not a guy, and they never know the answer when I
ask a question and too lazy to find out. They discuss their personal lives in grating voices with coworkers and I am just a shadow who hands them money when they've paused to notice me.
Oh, for the days of professional sales help. Call me ma’am,
just once, please.)
Miss Field continues her merry
prattle, “A gay spectrum of springtime hues—fuchsia, purple almond, banana,
marshmallow, peach dream and licorice!”
Mr. Powell replies, “Would you be
good enough to tell me something?”
Miss Field: “Enchanted.” (I love her over-the-top playfulness with
proper speech.)
Mr. Powell: “Whatever became of
blue?”
She finds he is going to be
trouble, especially when he wants to know if someone can swim in her sweaters.
“May I ask is the young lady’s
prejudice against swimming in a swimming suit quite deep-seated?” (One of
my all-time favorite lines. I just love
her. In a way, her intonation and
enunciation reminds me of a reformed Eliza Doolittle when she is carefully
trying to explain to Freddy Eynsford-Hill that, “Them she lived with would have
killed her for a hat-pin, let
alone a hat.” Her careful
stroking of the difficult language as if to tame it.)
Mr. Powell just realizes he could
buy his mermaid a two-piece swimsuit instead of a sweater and she could just
wear the top part. But Miss Field,
Saleswoman of the Year, insists they do not sell half of a bathing suit. She holds one up, “The diaper model. Provocative, n'est–ce pas?” (She’s
straight-faced, slam-dunk hysterical.)
Nobody in the movie calls these
two-piece suits a bikini, but the name, as well as the design, was still quite
new. They arrived in 1946, about a year
and a half before this movie went into production, and were named by the
designer for the Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific, where the U.S. conducted
its first peacetime nuclear test explosions.
He wanted the swimsuit to similarly bear (or is that bare?) the
reputation of an intense "reaction".
Mr. Powell buys three bikinis,
and next we see him sitting by the fishpond, separating the panties from the
bras with delicate thoroughness as the mermaid solemnly watches.
He gently begins his lecture:
“Darling, I don’t want to offend you, but you’re not dressed for company.”
(Another favorite line.)
He tries to explain modesty to her, but she
is uncomprehending.
She plucks one of
the bras he has displayed on the edge of the pond for her perusal, and she
places it on top of her head.
She has no
idea what to do with it.
He stretches a bra across his own
chest to demonstrate, but she’s not interested.
She wants attention.
She wants
him to kiss her again, but he won’t and gently remonstrates her, too, that she
must also stop eating the expensive rare tropical fish in the fishpond.
The camera cuts over to a neat lineup of fish
skeletal remains on the side of the pool.
He wants her to eat canned sardines instead.
She is upset and starts to tear
up (and for me, as silly as this scene is, it’s as heartbreaking as when you
see a toddler’s face fall when he is told “no”).
She just wants to be loved.
She just wants this wonderful male two-legged
creature to talk sweetly to her again and leave soft kisses on the side of her
mouth.
He comforts her and is amazed by
her.
“My age means nothing to you, does
it?”
She explores his face with her
adoring eyes, and now he’s a goner, pleasantly lost in the first flush of his
second spring.
But the mermaid can also be quick
to anger.
She does not like Andrea King
messing with
her male two-legged
creature.
She hisses when Mr. Powell
talks about Miss King.
Here Ann Blyth is
dubbed (not for the last time in her career—but we’ll get to
The Helen Morgan Story eventually).
According to a syndicated article in the
St. Petersburg Times, Gene Fowler, Jr.,
assistant producer, could not find a suitable sound for a mermaid snarl, so
they took a crew to the San Diego Zoo and found the sound they wanted from an
irritable ocelot.
They recorded him on
tape, and the sound of the ocelot snarl, played backwards, is apparently what
we hear on screen.
When Andrea King stops by, the
mermaid spies on her overt flirtation with Mr. Powell and becomes jealous.
When Miss King teasingly strips off her
evening gown and dives into the fishpond in her unmentionables, the mermaid
sneaks up on her in the murky depths of the pool, and grabs her.
There’s a vigorous fight underwater between
them, no doubles here—it’s really Ann and Andrea in an oxygen-deprived soggy
girl fight—and the mermaid bites her leg.
Andrea can kick her way to the surface, but Ann’s got 30 to 50 pounds of
lead weights in her tail keeping her nicely submerged.
In the middle of the night,
Powell hears the mermaid’s trilling, and sneaks out to the pond to find her
sitting on the edge of the pool in Miss King’s gown as a trophy (Miss King, terrified, has
run off without it), which she wears like a debutante to impress him.
With great tact and understanding, he
compliments her appearance, and she clings to his hand, kissing it.
But his wife is fed up with him,
sure that he’s carrying on with Miss King, so she leaves him.
When she disappears, the local authorities
think he murdered her, and now poor Mr. Powell has to get the mermaid back to
the ocean and get back his wife.
A nice shot here when the mermaid
overhears Powell telling the sardonic Clinton Sundberg that he’s in love with a
mermaid, and she responds silently with a brilliant, ecstatic smile.
The only thing better than your male
two-legged creature telling you he loves you, is hearing him talk about how
much he loves you to somebody else.
Ann Blyth has some clever and
remarkable stunts to perform underwater, most especially the fight scene, but
also a bit where she swims around an enormous castle-like structure, where she
cries underwater into a handkerchief and blows her nose, and gathers up her
comb collection when Mr. Powell tells her they have to leave this place.
Their adventure culminates on a
rock at sea, with the British authorities after them. It is a tragic moment when he sees he cannot
stay with the mermaid, and must let himself be taken back to the land. He reunites with his wife, and gives her a
present: one of the mermaid’s ornamental combs.
I think the above–mentioned New York Times reviewer hit the nail on
the head when it comes to the ending of this movie: “Mermaids are not good
subjects for cinematic comedy, since they just can’t settle down and live
happily ever after.”
True, for though we may be happy
for the Peabodys’ reunion, there is a sense of sadness that we don’t know what
happened to the mermaid, and wonder if she will ever find another male
two-legged creature to love her.
He was so dear, tender…I had asked him for a picture at the end of the
movie and he took several lines from the movie and wrote them on the picture. Actually he taped it to the picture and said,
"I like you. I like you very
much."
You can watch
Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid currently
here at YouTube.
Come back next Thursday when we
jump eleven years later to 1959 and a new medium—television—for Ann Blyth’s
first of five appearances on the western
Wagon
Train.
It’s
The Jenny Tannen Story, where she has a dual role of a cold, bitter
woman, and the young daughter who travels across the continent to see her.
This one’s dedicated to your friend and mine,
the
Caftan Woman, for her particular fondness for this episode. It was during the filming of this episode that Ann was surprised by Ralph Edwards on
This Is Your Life. We'll talk about that too.
____________________________
FloridaMemory.com website, Florida
Photographic Collection of the State Archives of Florida.
Hollis, Tim. Glass
Bottom Boats & Mermaid Tails: Florida’s Tourist Springs, (Mechanicsburg,
PA, 2006) p. 99.
Life magazine, February 9, 1948, pp. 91-94.
The Milwaukee Journal, article by Gene Handsaker, December 18, 1947;
article by Sheilah Graham, August 22, 1949, p. GS1.
The Montreal Gazette, October 23, 1948, p. 21.
The New York Times, review by T.F.B., August 14, 1948, p. 6.
Ocala (Florida) Star Banner,
April 14, 1981, p. 10A
Pelland, Maryann and Dan
Pelland. Weecki Wachee Springs (Charleston, SC., Chicago, Portsmouth, NH,
San Francisco, 2006), p.7
St. Petersburg (Florida)
Times, December 10, 1947, p. 14; April 4, 1948, p. 34
Youngstown (Ohio)
Vindicator,
syndicated article by Hedda Hopper, March 8, 1948, p. 16.
UPDATE: This series on Ann Blyth is now a book - ANN BLYTH: ACTRESS. SINGER. STAR. -
"Lynch’s book is organized and well-written – and has plenty of amusing observations – but when it comes to describing Blyth’s movies, Lynch’s writing sparkles." - Ruth Kerr, Silver Screenings
"Jacqueline T. Lynch creates a poignant and thoroughly-researched mosaic of memories of a fine, upstanding human being who also happens to be a legendary entertainer." - Deborah Thomas, Java's Journey
"One of the great strengths of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is that Lynch not only gives an excellent overview of Blyth's career -- she offers detailed analyses of each of Blyth's roles -- but she puts them in the context of the larger issues of the day."- Amanda Garrett, Old Hollywood Films
"Jacqueline's book will hopefully cause many more people to take a look at this multitalented woman whose career encompassed just about every possible aspect of 20th Century entertainment." - Laura Grieve, Laura's Miscellaneous Musings''
"Jacqueline T. Lynch’s Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is an extremely well researched undertaking that is a must for all Blyth fans." - Annette Bochenek, Hometowns to Hollywood
Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star.
by Jacqueline T. Lynch
The first book on the career of actress Ann Blyth. Multitalented and remarkably versatile, Blyth began on radio as a child, appeared on Broadway at the age of twelve in Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine, and enjoyed a long and diverse career in films, theatre, television, and concerts. A sensitive dramatic actress, the youngest at the time to be nominated for her role in Mildred Pierce (1945), she also displayed a gift for comedy, and was especially endeared to fans for her expressive and exquisite lyric soprano, which was showcased in many film and stage musicals. Still a popular guest at film festivals, lovely Ms. Blyth remains a treasure of the Hollywood's golden age.
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