The Helen Morgan Story (1957) is one of Ann Blyth’s best dramatic
performances, indeed, the hospital scene is astonishing—more on that later—but
she is remembered in this movie more for what seems viewed as an ignominious indictment of having
her singing voice dubbed by Gogi Grant.
This was the last film Ann Blyth ever made. Because the movie, for several valid reasons, has a
reputation of not being as good as it could have been, and because she was
dubbed, both the film and the conclusion of Ann Blyth’s film career seems
shackled to an aura of defeat.
This is unfortunate—and ridiculous. Today we will take a good look at The Helen Morgan Story, Helen Morgan,
and Ann Blyth.
And Gogi Grant, and Polly
Bergen. And Michael Curtiz and Martin
Rackin and Jack Warner.
This may be the longest blog post
you ever read in your life. Take off
your shoes. Turn off your cell
phone. Leave a forwarding address.
Helen Morgan - Library of Congress, Prints &
Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection
Helen Morgan was one of the most
renowned singers of the 1920s. She was
enormously popular with the public, and beloved by those who knew her. Despite a rise to fame from a girl with an
eighth grade education learning to sing torch songs in Chicago speakeasies at
the beginning of the decade, to starring on Broadway and even appearing in
Hollywood films by the end of the decade, it is still difficult, exactly, to
call her a success.
Helen Morgan was a
shy, anxious young woman, who craved affection and belonging, but
who made bad choices, suffered bad relationships,and could only find the approval of adoring
audiences by wallowing in her vulnerability with sad songs that told tales of
being lonely, abused, and heartbroken.
She was so moving in this persona that audiences ate it up, but it left
a bewildered Helen, who was a meticulous singer and conscientious artist, wondering
where her personal sorrow left off and the performance began. It seemed one fed the other.
Mark Hellinger was writing his
column for the New York Daily News at
this time, news and gossip of the theatre world, Damon Runyon style, and was
both a fan and friend of Helen Morgan, and had also written sketches for the Ziegfeld Follies of 1931 in which Miss
Morgan appeared. After Helen Morgan died
in 1941 at only forty-one years old, Mr. Hellinger, then in a new career as a
writer and producer in Hollywood, bought the rights to her story intending to
make the film biography of her life for Warner’s. He died before they found the right person to
play her.
At the time he was writing his
column in New York, when Helen Morgan was starring at the Ziegfeld Theater on
Sixth Avenue and 54
th Street (long since torn down) in Hammerstein
and Kern’s colossal hit
Showboat (our
old friend Edna May Oliver played the role of the overbearing Parthy), Ann
Blyth was a baby on the other side of town, in a considerably lower rent
district, an area along East 31
st Street that has also since been
bulldozed away in the slum renewal projects of the 1960s. In twelve years Ann would be on Broadway
herself while still a child, and in fifteen she’d be in Hollywood, where she got to know Mark
Hellinger when she appeared in his productions of
Swell Guy (1946), which we discussed here, and
Brute Force (1947), here. Hellinger
would say of Ann:
“Outside, she’s as untouched as a convent girl—and inside, she’s as
wise as a woman of 50.”
Perhaps one could say the
opposite about Helen Morgan.
The Helen Morgan Story has always been a tale of two reputations:
Helen Morgan’s and Ann Blyth’s.
It was a shock to many in
December 1956 when Ann was chosen for the role over several who were tested,
and a few hundred other wannabes. Even
director Michael Curtiz, for whom she had performed brilliantly in
Mildred Pierce (1945) covered here, did
not consider her for the role.
Syndicated columnist Aline Mosby
noted:
Movie-goers will be in for a surprise when they see Hollywood’s
perennial ‘good girl’ sitting on a piano to portray Helen Morgan, the sensual
torch singer of the ‘20s. Ann will do a
hula and sob in the drunk scene. Ann
Blyth?
“I didn’t want to test Ann at first,” Curtiz admitted, “…I tested 25
girls and interviewed another 25. I
talked to Olivia de Havilland, Jennifer Jones…singers Julie London, Connie
Russell [who would cut her own tribute LP to Helen Morgan].
“After everybody was exhausted, I took a chance and tested Ann. She made just a brilliant test!”
Apparently, columnist Hedda
Hopper urged Curtiz to test her, and Ann’s agent, Al Rockett, pushed hard. In an interview with Miss Hopper, Ann
acknowledged with some chagrin that her quiet personal life evidently made her viewed
as a poor choice for a torch singer.
“But why is it that producers and directors find it so hard to separate
an actress from her private life? Unless
you’re a flashy person they never think of you for the colorful parts. If you lead a quiet life in your own personal
existence, they give you only sticky, sweet roles.”
Ann had to live down not only her
reputation, but Helen’s. Because Helen
Morgan lived a much less stable life, got in trouble with gangsters and the law
for her activity with speakeasies during the Prohibition, and sat on pianos and
sang torch songs and was a hopeless alcoholic, it was reckoned she was a pretty
tough customer. She wasn’t.
Helen Morgan was very quiet and
soft-spoken, and leaned heavily on her mother, with whom she was inseparable as
a girl—rather like Ann Blyth. She was
recalled by her friends as being sweet and overly generous, but insecure. According to Hedda Hopper:
Helen always spoke softly and with dignity, even when she was drinking—you
couldn’t tell she was intoxicated—and how quiet and wistful she was when under
contract to Warner’s in 1935.
But other columnists who either
forgot that or else never knew Helen Morgan, knew only that she drank herself
to death, imagined her to be more hard-bitten, and took the first surprising
news of Ann Blyth’s being cast in the role and played it to the hilt. Syndicated columnist Bob Thomas:
A lot of eyebrows were raised when it was announced that Ann Blyth
would star in the life of Helen Morgan…After all, Helen Morgan was a symbol of
the ‘20s, a hard-drinking, fast-living party girl. Ann—well, Ann is just about the epitome of
sweetness.
Some fans also rebelled, fearful
this was a turn to the dark side for their favorite actress.
Ann Blyth is still a good girl, despite what some of her fans think…Ann
is receiving critical mail from some fans who fear that Hollywood’s “little
lady” compromised her own moral principles in taking the part.
To which Ann responded:
"There are always people who can’t disassociate an actor’s personal life
from her screen life…I just couldn’t go on playing any more sweet roles; it
would be career suicide."
It was called “the shock casting
of the year,” but producer Martin Rackin explained in the same article the
reasoning behind their choice of using Ann:
There are some actresses in this town who can roll in the gutter and it
won’t move you. They look at home
there. But when you put a good girl like
Ann in the gutter, it tears your heart out.
Doris Day went up against similar
prejudice when she was cast as torch singer (and Helen Morgan colleague) Ruth
Etting in Love Me or Leave Me
(1955). Before her death in 1978, Miss
Etting said she thought Doris Day’s portrayal of her was too tough, and that
she would have preferred Jane Powell in the role.
Doris Day received good reviews
for her excellent work in that film (which we’ll have to discuss in more detail
sometime or other). Interestingly, Doris
Day refused to make the biography of Helen Morgan when it was offered to her in
1950 because of the presumed sordidness of Morgan’s lifestyle, which she felt
would go against her wholesome screen image, yet the Ruth Etting character she
portrayed was much less sympathetic than Helen Morgan. (Hedda Hopper broke the news that Miss Day
would play Morgan for director Michael Curtiz as early as 1948; Louella Parsons
broke the same news in 1950.)
Apparently, Doris Day changed her mind about unwholesome roles by 1955
when she played Ruth Etting. Her name
came up for the Helen Morgan role again in 1956 when this movie was undergoing
“the biggest casting search since Scarlett O’Hara.”
The 1950s inexplicably launched
an era for nostalgic films about female singers on the rocks. With a
Song in My Heart (1952) gave us Susan Hayward as Jane Froman (Hayward was
also up for the Helen Morgan role), who was injured in a plane crash, but
managed to continue her singing career on crutches. Interrupted
Melody (1953) put Eleanor Parker, as Marjorie Lawrence, in a wheelchair
with polio. Susan Hayward took another
turn at bat as the alcoholic Lillian Roth in I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955).
Peggy Lee received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her
alcoholic torch singer in Pete Kelly’s
Blues (1955).
Incidentally, Hedda Hopper had also publically
barracked for Ann to get the Susan Hayward role as Lillian Roth in I’ll Cry Tomorrow in 1955:
Why not Ann Blyth for Lillian Roth’s story I’ll Cry Tomorrow? Ann
made her initial success as the nasty daughter of Joan Crawford in Mildred
Pierce.
Her dramatic talent has been smothered in sweet costume ickies, and I’d
like to see her emerge again as a dramatic actress. This would do it.
I’m not sure if the critics or
the public were battling girl singers’ tragedies fatigue by 1957 when
The Helen Morgan Story was released, but
they had already seen one other version of her life. In May 1957, some five months before the
film’s release, the television show
Playhouse
90 produced an original script on Helen’s life as told by her mother. Polly Bergen played Helen Morgan, and
received very good reviews. You can see
a
clip of the program here on YouTube. I especially like the way she acts out the mood of the song, creating an unselfconscious intimacy with her audience.
Polly Bergen did her own
singing. Ann Blyth signed on to the film
project with the understanding she would do her own singing. It was decided afterward that she would be
dubbed by pop singer Gogi Grant, whose hit single the previous year, “The
Wayward Wind” reached number one on the Billboard
chart and held the position for a record eight weeks.
Syndicated columnist Erskine
Johnson interviewed Gogi Grant, who mused:
“It’s funny too…I wasn’t asked to listen to any of Helen’s old
records. The studio didn’t even suggest
I change my style of singing. They just
said, ‘Sing like YOU sing…I guess I was the only girl singer in America who
wasn’t after the role of Helen Morgan…the studio called me one day right out of
the blue.”
She was hired by Warner’s studio
musical director:
“At first the studio figured that Ann, known as a singer, might skip by
unnoticed with a dubbed-in singing voice.
Even after hiring Gogi for the chore, the studio worried about the
box-office appeal of a non-singing Ann Blyth in the role of Helen.”
But Gogi’s agent sweetened the
pot, and suggested that Gogi would work for less money if they gave her screen
credit. There was no attempt to hide the
owner of Helen’s screen singing voice, nor could there have been. From that point, Ann’s being dubbed influenced
the reputation of The Helen Morgan Story.
Ann praised Miss Grant’s work and
told columnist Bob Thomas:
“Gogi has done a wonderful job on the songs…she’s not only a good
singer; she has a dramatic quality that the songs require.”
Determined to look at it in a
positive light, she acknowledged after filming got under way:
“I’ve been hoping for a role like this for a long time. I’m a little disappointed about not being
able to sing, but Helen’s character and the story really are more
important. Her greatest appeal was her
personality. To do a good job and be
convincing is all I ask.”
It was a generous and professional attitude to take,
but in terms of lending legitimacy both to the film and to her career, the
decision to dub her was a punch to the gut.
Ann Blyth wasn’t an actress who
couldn’t sing and therefore needed to be dubbed; she was a singer, moreover, a
richly talented singer with a powerful voice.
She had sung on film, she had sung in nightclubs, just as Helen Morgan
did. One could imagine that for a
trained singer to have her singing dubbed, to act her songs and lip-synch to
the playback of another woman’s voice might have been demoralizing. It certainly would have felt strange. It also left her with only half a characterization - she couldn't work through the mood of the lyrics the way Polly Bergen did because she wasn't creating the mood - she was only able to follow the template laid down by Gogi Grant.
Ann had meticulously researched
her role preparatory to making the film: speaking with people who knew Helen Morgan,
reading newspaper accounts, and, unlike Gogi Grant, listening to her
recordings. Helen had a high, thin
soprano, with careful diction, a delicate sound and articulation that hearkened
back almost to the style of lady songstresses of the turn of the century. That was the irony in this tale of two
reputations: Ann Blyth’s robust soprano was not considered “torchy” enough for
a public the studio felt would expect a more brassy, pop sound—and Helen
Morgan’s thin, sweet voice was unlike the nasal boop-a-doop warblings of the
cutie pies or the throaty and gin-soaked moaners of the 1920s. Her vocal style didn’t match what was currently
popular in her own era, and yet she was still a star. Her personality while singing made her so; not necessarily her voice.
Gogi Grant, as people seem to frankly
acknowledge now, did not sound at all like Helen Morgan, but then as she said
in her interview quoted above, she wasn’t supposed to even try. Polly Bergen, who played Helen on television,
with a deeper voice sounded even less like her.
Ann Blyth’s rich voice, her
range, her precise articulation and skill in holding a note for its full value would
have been entirely compatible with Helen Morgan’s singing style.
(Mildred Pierce
- 1945 - Ann at 16)
Besides, if the studio really
wanted vampish and torchy, who was it that sang “Oceana Roll” with torrid
suggestiveness, a bare midriff and a scarf in her hand (Ã la Helen Morgan)? Veda Pierce—nobody but 16-year-old Ann Blyth.
As we noted in this
previous post on The Student Prince (1954), when
Edmund Purdom was called in to replace Mario Lanza, but was dubbed using
Lanza’s singing voice, it pretty much sunk any hope of Purdom’s making the role
his own.
The Student Prince suffered for it, its reputation tarnished before
filming even began.
Just as with Edmund Purdom, being
dubbed took away from Ann Blyth’s owning the role. However, Ann’s remark that
it was really the dramatics of the story that mattered was, in part, true. The role still presented a thrilling challenge
for her. She mused for Photoplay in December 1957:
“I know everybody’s going to think the drunk scenes were the toughest
for me,” she says with a grin, “They weren’t.
People don’t realize that, for an actress, a good drunk scene is an
emotional field day. You can just sort
of let out all your stops…”
The movie has its strengths and
weaknesses. Ann acknowledged in the same
interview:
“After all, no one motion picture can really do full justice to a
person’s life. How can it, when often
the person doesn’t do justice to himself?”
This hints at one of the major
problems of
The Helen Morgan Story,
and which really is nobody’s fault—Helen was passive, insecure, and a
self-destructive person, who came to a miserable end. It is difficult to craft a film that will
entertain an audience, to keep them emotionally involved in the story even when
things get very grim. (Though I think her story deserves another treatment, a documentary at least.) Nobody saved her,
and she could not save herself. It does
tear your heart out, as producer Martin Rackin predicted, but it is
depressing. Despite a lump-in-the-throat
ending scene where Helen’s friends pay tribute to her, there really is no
uplifting message.
Other problems with the film
could have been corrected, and are the result perhaps of first, too many
writers stitching together a project that had been on the Warner’s shelf for
nearly 15 years, and second, an unfortunate collaboration between those writers
and director Michael Curtiz to hammer every 1920s cliché they could think of in
order to make us remember we are in the Jazz Age. It feels a little heavy-handed in some
spots. Some scenes border on parody and
some of the dialogue is quite hokey.
One scene at the very beginning,
I confess, has always bothered me for the incongruity of a strong actress and a
moment of weak direction. A very young
Helen, just starting out in show business, sings in a carnival side show for
Paul Newman, who is a barker trying to sell phony lots in the famous 1920s
Florida land scams. A torrent of rain
scatters the fairgoers, the carnival breaks up for the day. As Newman says goodbye to Ann, he suddenly suggests
she stay the night with him and impulsively pulls her into a smothering
embrace. She struggles for a moment,
taken aback, but after his first forceful kiss, she hesitates, and then
hungrily kisses him again. She’s lonely
and it is thrilling to be desired. The two actors
have terrific chemistry together, as will be evident in all their scenes.
The problem is the morning after
scene, when Ann wakes, lying across a bed that clearly has not been slept in, which
the director keeps prominent in the foreground.
She is alone, looks around, and finds a note Newman has left her, a curt
kiss-off. Her reaction is powerful, a wordless,
explosive mixture of hurt and horror.
Director Michael Curtiz, however,
has let his leading lady down by carelessly putting her in an odd setting: we
have been given to understand she slept with Newman, yet she wakes fully
clothed on a bed that isn’t even rumpled, as if she had inexplicably passed out
cold after their conversation. When she
gets up to walk to the window to look for Newman, we hear the clunking of her
high-heeled shoes. She hadn’t even taken
off her shoes. Then she discovers the
note he has left on the pillow.
Her
expression tells us this is a woman who has been used and thrown away. This isn't a case about being sad she didn't get to say
goodbye to Mr. Newman because she overslept; she's been humiliated.
While I’m not calling for a
graphic bedroom scene to prove they have been intimate, I would suggest there are
other ways, more subtle but certainly on-point to give support to Ann’s
devastated reaction to the note. Perhaps
the scene could have begun when she is waking alone in bed, or perhaps while
she is dressing, looking expectantly for Newman as if assuming he has only
stepped out of the bungalow for a moment, a shot of the bed (which through this
scene remains prominent in the foreground) unmade, and then discovering the
note on a table.
Other moments of Mr. Curtiz’s
direction are quite good, and he moves the many episodes of Helen Morgan’s life
along at a brisk pace. I especially like
the quick cut from the tense scene on the fire escape (where, crying through her lines, she begs him, “Tell me you love me, please!”) to a shot of a mirror ball and a blast of a nightclub act
singing the bouncy hit, “The Girlfriend.”
The montage of her European tour is good, and Mr. Curtiz uses music as a
motif throughout the film with incredible and exciting skill.
The movie is flooded with
delightful snippets of songs that capture the ebullience of the 1920s, and the
despair of Helen’s darker moments. Gogi
Grant’s glossy rendition of the songs is enjoyable; she had a smashing voice,
big and brassy. Ann Blyth’s lip-synching
is believable, possibly aided by the fact that she sang in public herself and
knew about breath control and presentation, so much so that even today
newcomers to the film are often confused about whether she did her own singing.
Unfortunately, the movie makes only a brief nod to her Broadway role as Julie in Showboat --easily the most important role of her career, and there is no reference at all to her time in Hollywood. The main focus are the Chicago speakeasies and the no good bum who keeps popping up her life, Paul Newman.
Paul Newman’s character is
fictional. He is meant to represent the
men who done her wrong. Mr. Newman was
not keen on doing the film, and it was never one of his favorites. According to biographer Shawn Levy in Paul Newman – A Life:
He didn’t exactly bond with Curtiz, complaining that the director would
tell him to “Go faster,” rather than give specific counsel as to the emotions
that were required in a scene. But he
admired Blyth’s work ethic…
His character is forceful and
dynamic, but has very little dimension.
Only one scene where he, exasperated over Ann’s anguish over a friend’s
suicide, tries to wise her up with his philosophy on survival, mentions he won
medals in the war but now they’re worthless. But the moment is dropped and we never really
see inside him again. We don’t really
see him develop—he’s as much an opportunistic skunk at the beginning of the
movie as at the end. His final scene,
when he has a change of heart and arranges a tribute to Helen, telling her that
from now on she comes first in his life, is not really believable. We have, unlike Helen, learned not to trust
him. Newman’s work in the picture is
fine; it’s the script that leaves him hanging.
Curtiz, too, might have strengthened Newman’s character, given him more
depth with some strategic close-ups, but this is CinemaScope, and we know about
CinemaScope and close-ups.
Actually, it’s an interesting
thing about Paul Newman and what I guess we would term “star quality.” Unlike some of the other young actors in the
1950s like Marlon Brando and James Dean who suddenly blazed on the scene and
became instant stars, Newman manages to be both charismatic and yet still blend
in with the setting and acting style of the other actors, a seamless part of
the whole. Wherever he is, he
belongs. Brando and Dean, with their
so-called natural style of acting had a screen presence like a black hole –
they absorbed all the spotlight, but never reflected it anyone else. Newman did not demand our attention, but he
got it, and it strikes me that if he had come along in the 1920s, or 1930s, or
1940s, he still would have been just as much a star. Plunk him into any decade and he would fit. He had that quality, but entirely without
gimmick like the other gentlemen, and it’s no wonder he remained a star for
decades until the end of his life.
Richard Carlson is the well-heeled,
but married attorney with whom Helen also becomes involved. He is a gentler companion than Newman, but
ultimately their relationship is just as destructive to the lonely singer’s
quest for a stable relationship.
Cara Williams lends strong support as her best friend,
a hoofer with a heart of gold and a big mouth, who keeps her boyfriend, played
by Alan King, in line. King is quite
good in his minor role, funny and natural as Newman’s good-natured henchman.
Real-life figures in Helen’s
life, including her accompanist Jimmy McHugh, Rudy Vallee, and columnist Walter
Winchell make appearances. The late Mark
Hellinger is played in two brief scenes by an actor.
Bess Flowers shows up at the U.S.
Customs checkpoint on the pier. Not only
did she have the costumes to get all these walk-on roles, she must have had the
luggage too.
A few things of note: Ann’s slight
hesitancy of speech in this role is an empathetic and intuitive gesture to Helen Morgan’s own
speech, described as halting, and Ann’s voice in the later scenes grows raw as
if with smoking and drinking. They
didn’t let her sing, but she still did a lot with her voice.
In a noir-ish scene Paul Newman
lurks in the dark in her apartment when she arrives home, and watches her
undress in the other room (mostly behind a screen). She discovers him, and they argue. She wants to get him out of her life, tired
of being used by him, bone weary and a little drunk. She tells him with heartbroken ferocity that
she hates him, but he forces her to admit her desire for him by crushing her to
her bed with another steamy kiss. All
their scenes are quite intense (he slaps her around a few times), and we would
write off Newman’s unpleasant one-note character except for his powerful screen
presence and her always passionate response to him. Whether wrapped in each other's arms or standing on opposite sides of a room, these two are always locked into each other. (His character as written is just not as
interesting as, say, James Cagney’s bullying yet insecure gangster in
Love Me or Leave Me.)
Another scene where Richard
Carlson, as Newman’s polar opposite – gentle, but weak and ineffectual, comes
upon Ann in the wee hours, drinking at a bar, alone. She is bitter, as hard-edged as the critics
thought Helen Morgan should be, and pretty near the end of her rope. In between sips and a drag on her cigarette, blowing the smoke over the rim of her glass, she growls her lines and
slurs her self-loathing. “It isn't you or Larry, it's me, only me. Something terrible happening inside me..."
The most powerful scene comes
toward the end of the film. First, we
see Ann in a dive of a bar, unkempt, dressed in rags, no makeup, and half-drunk, in the
cozy, if boisterous, company of winos.
She hears a recording of herself on the radio, and she attempts to sing
along. I believe, because of what would
have been difficulty of matching the audio interspersed with the spoken lines,
this is not Gogi Grant butchering the song, but Ann herself mimicking Miss
Grant doing so, and it has to make one smile that though Jack Warner wouldn’t
let Ann sing as Helen, here she sings for Gogi singing for her, with a rusty,
gin-soaked screech. Please correct me if
I’m wrong.
She is on the edge
psychologically, and a physical wreck, her halting words come trembling out of
her throat, and when she leaves the bar, Curtiz follows her with a tilted
camera down a wet and dirty alley. She
walks away in a haze, seemingly without any idea where she’s going, and
collapses, where a cop finds her face down in the gutter.
Curtiz, with dazzling skill and
artist’s eye, and absolutely no mercy, swoops us immediately to a charity
hospital psych treatment room, where Ann, lying restrained and naked under a
sheet, is suffering delirium tremens, shivering, sweating, and screaming in agony
while a stoic staff observes her in this cold and sterile environment, as we
do, like a bug in a jar. Her tortured
expression, her wailing is all-out, heartbreaking, and really quite shocking.
Her last hoarse scream of “Help
me! Somebody help me!” is agonizing to
watch, a reprise of her earlier confessed memory of an episode of childhood panic.
For these few gutsy moments
alone, never mind the consistent strength of her other scenes, Ann Blyth should
have been nominated for an Academy Award.
Most of us classic film buffs,
being as familiar as we are with movie greats who never won an award, nor were
even nominated, do not keep score on talent by awards. Far from it.
Nor do I. However, stepping aside
a moment to look at the nominees of that year, we find Deborah Kerr in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, Anna Magnani
for Wild is the Wind, Elizabeth
Taylor for Raintree County, and Lana
Turner for Peyton Place. We may discuss the merits of the other
nominees, agree or disagree, but…Lana Turner for Peyton Place? Hardly a
demanding or large role, and her work not of the same caliber of Ann Blyth’s in
The Helen Morgan Story. The winner that year was Joanne Woodward for The Three Faces of Eve. Her performance was splendid, and she
deserved to be singled out.
It is ironic to note that Ann
Blyth was originally up for Miss Woodward’s role in The Three Faces of Eve—and turned it down.
“Big mistake,” she noted in
interview with Classic Images in
February 1995, but, “I think you can only regret momentarily. You can’t hang onto those regrets. But it was a mistake.”
At that Academy Awards ceremony
that year, she sang one of the nominated songs, “April Love” in company with
Shirley Jones (who, like Ann, was one of the celebrity guests on the recent TCM
Classic Cruise), Anna Maria Alberghetti, Jimmie Rogers, Tommy Sands, and Tab
Hunter (also on the recent TCM Classic Cruise).
Ann Blyth was, however, nominated
for a Laurel Award (conducted by Motion
Picture Exhibitor magazine) for Top Female Musical Performance in The Helen Morgan Story.
“I was a little sad to see it end,” Ann said of the movie
, “It’s the most exiting picture I’ve ever
done and we had a great cast and crew.”
Reviews were mixed, but one by
Harold V. Cohen of the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette typifies the negative response pretty well:
…practically everything about this lumbering biography of the Roaring
Twenties’ misty-eyed torchbearer is drenched in dreariness. The lachrymose story is a corny commissary of
stringy sentiment and Miss Ann Blyth has no business whatsoever in the title
part.
He felt she was miscast. The Daytona
Beach Sunday News-Journal praised her work:
Preview audiences have acclaimed Ann’s performance of the tragic Helen
as one of the most brutally honest yet seen on screen.
From the Pasadena Independent, September 1957:
“The important thing,” says Ann, "is to find a role that gives one a
satisfying feeling of achievement. To
know that you have brought a difficult characterization to life is the accomplishment
I have longed for over a period of years.”
Director Michael Curtiz and producer Martin Rackin, who were dubious at
first that she was the right girl for the part, are now loudest in praise of her
performance. They say she is embarking
upon a new and more brilliant career.
..those who watched the picture being made were amazed and enthralled
at Miss Blyth’s tremendous enactment of the fabulous torch singer…
“I never wanted a particular role so much in my life,” says Ann. “And I
never worked so hard to make a part perfect. I did everything I could to submerge myself
into the characterization of the real Helen. Everyone connected with the picture has been
very kind.”
It may be that with the passing
of the decades as we get farther away from both the 1920s and the 1950s, The Helen Morgan Story has grown in stature,
deeply moving younger, new audiences, who are able to emotionally connect with
a story of a gentle, kindly, but hopelessly trapped soul without comparing any memory with
the real Helen Morgan or the knowing much about the 1920s. I rather think that this movie is even more
approachable, and more timeless, to modern audiences than The Three Faces of Eve for different reasons, but we can discuss
that in the future.
Ann Blyth wanted a challenge, and
since her own shy childhood, liked to immerse herself in a role with that
imagination she compared to “a deep well.”
She told Photoplay in 1957:
“An actress shouldn’t get too comfortable in her professional
life—she’s liable to get lazy and won’t fight for the roles she wants and won’t
fight against those she doesn’t want. I’m free of all studio commitments for the
first time since I arrived in Hollywood.
I can choose the roles I want, and if I want them badly enough, I’ll
fight for them, just as I did for Helen Morgan.
I hope though that I’ll be offered three-dimensional roles from now
on…It may shock some people, but I can honestly say that Helen Morgan is my
favorite role…of course, that could be because it’s the one I’ve just
done! But seriously, I’m grateful just
to have the chance at last to show that I have developed as a woman and I’m not
just a goody-goody. And I hope this role
will lead my career into new and exciting channels.”
She did head for new channels, but
not on film. There were decades of performances ahead on TV, theatre, and concerts, which she was able to work around her family's needs. Another legacy of The Helen
Morgan Story is the apparent myth that she retired after doing this movie, as
if she punched out her time card and said, “I’m outta here.” She wanted to do more movies. Two decades later she replied to interviewer Lance Erickson Ghulam’s question on why that was her last film:
Good parts just never seemed to come to me. Rather than waiting for them, I decided to
return to the stage and do that again. I’ve
done some television through the years as well, and I’ve been happy ever
since. That’s the main reason why we’re
doing what we’re doing, right?
A tiresome legacy of the film was
that Ann would repeatedly field questions from interviewers, for decades, who
wanted to know if she did her own singing in The Helen Morgan Story, or why didn’t she do her own singing? Nevertheless, her transcendent performance is
the strongest element in this flawed movie, for there is a glowing warmth beneath the
sadness, an appealing vulnerability and continues to affect today’s audiences.
Polly Bergen won an Emmy for her
TV role as Helen Morgan. She also
released an album in 1957: Bergen Sings Morgan.
Gogi Grant also released an album of Helen Morgan’s songs from the movie, which sold well, climbing to #25
on the Billboard chart.
Ann finally got a chance to sing
some of those songs on TV guest spots, maybe just to prove she could, and in
her own concert and cabaret career in the 1980s and 1990s. Sometimes, she sat on a piano, as she did in
New York’s swank Rainbow and Stars.
Helen Morgan is all but forgotten
today, and even most theatre buffs may not be able to tell you why in the
much-produced stage musical Showboat,
the character of Julie climbs on a piano to sing “Bill.” It’s because the part was played by Helen on
Broadway, and since she was known for sitting on top of a piano to sing in her
nightclub act, she was asked to repeat her signature gesture in the play. Even today, if you see a revival or touring
production of Showboat, Julie is
often sitting on a piano. When you see
that, think of Helen Morgan. It is an
homage to her.
Below…Miss Helen Morgan singing
“Bill,” from Showboat, recorded the
year Ann was born, 1928:
The Helen Morgan Story is available on DVD, and is occasionally
shown on TCM.
The 1936 Showboat with Helen Morgan as Julie is
also finally available now on DVD, and has been shown on TCM after a long
period of being almost completely unknown to younger generations who were familiar
only with the 1954 version. I think it's coming up again in January if you want to keep on the lookout for it.
Ann Blyth performed in
Showboat many times on stage in the
1970s, as mentioned in
this previous post on her stage career. However, she did not play Helen Morgan’s supporting
role of Julie; she played the lead, Magnolia.
An undisputed soprano part for an undisputed soprano.
The Helen Morgan Story was Ann Blyth’s last film, and this is our
last film in the Year of Ann Blyth. Come
back next Thursday for one final post to wrap up with a few thoughts on Ann’s
career and on this series.
©Jacqueline T. Lynch, 2007-2014. All rights reserved. If you're reading this on a site other than
Another Old Movie Blog, please be aware that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.
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Beaver Valley Times (Beaver County, PA), January 18, 1957,
syndicated column by Aline Mosby, “Steps Out of Character- Ann Blyth Gets Sexy
Movie Role,” p. 11.
Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine, June 9, 1957, “Happy Girl on a
Piano,” by Hedda Hopper, p. 24.
Classic Images, February 1995, “Ann Blyth: Ann of a Thousand
Smiles” by Lance Erickson Ghulam, p.22.
Daytona Beach Sunday News-Journal, September 15, 1957, “Good Girl
in Movie Gutter,” p. 12A.
Deseret News, November 27, 1950, column by Louella Parsons, p. F3
The Independent (St. Petersburg, FL) September 1, 1948, column by
Hedda Hopper, p. 16.
Levy, Shawn. Paul
Newman – A Life (NY: Harmony Books, 2009), p. 121.
Milwaukee Sentinel, October 28, 1956, column by James Bacon, p 9,
part 2.
Modern Screen, December
1949, article by Kirtley Baskette, p. 43.
Pasadena Independent, September 11, 1957, “Ann Blyth Plays Exotic
Torch Singer,” p. 8.
Photoplay, December 1957, “You Don’t Know Ann Blyth”.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 7, 1957, review by Harold V.
Cohen.
Reading (PA) Eagle,
February 7, 1957, “Ann Blyth’s Role in Morgan Story Raises Many Eyebrows,”
syndicated column by Bob Thomas, p. 2.
Register-Guard (Eugene, Oregon), September 25, 1978, “Ruth Etting,
Early Radio Star, Dies at Age 80,” p. 13A.
The Spencer (Iowa) Daily Republican,
July 25, 1957, syndicated column by Erskine Johnson, p. 5; May 21, 1957,
syndicated column by Erskine Johnson.
Valley Morning Star (Harlingen, Texas), March 19, 1955, syndicated
column by Hedda Hopper, p. 7.
Wiley, Mason and Damien
Bona. Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards (NY:
Ballantine Books, 1986), p. 287.
********************************
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; Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear; and actor/singer/author Bill Hayes. 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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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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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.
