Heat Lightning - 1934

Heat Lightning (1934) is a study of independence and need, remorse and recklessness, and a profound yet subtle quest for redemption.  It is both gritty and yet surprisingly lyrical.  Aline MacMahon has one of her best roles as the dour, protective older sister running a desert truck stop.  The movie is not all hers, but all the characters moving around her like satellites never detract and sometimes don’t even complement her life that much—she is a true loner in heart and mind.  She seems to brush most of them off like flies. We will learn she didn’t start out that way.

This is my entry in the Classic Movie Blog Association’s “Cry Me a River: Tearjerkers Blogathon.”  I hope you’ll have a look at the other great participatingblogs.

As with really great movies, the setting is as much a character in the story as the actors, and director Mervyn LeRoy certainly knows this.  Here we have a weather-beaten diner with a ramshackle car repair garage and a gas pump out front.  There are a few cabins that comprise a small “auto court” of the day.  We are in the Mojave Desert, and just as traveler Jane Darwell remarks when she and her hapless husband, Edgar Kennedy, suffer car trouble and see the roadside café up ahead, “It’ll probably turn out to be a mirage.”

We may well imagine that motorists (or those pushing their enormous cars like Edgar Kennedy), will see the run-down road stop as a welcome respite.  All around them under the big sky is vast, dusty, and with nothing but a long, hot ribbon of highway leading them away from trouble, they hope.

Jane Darwell is the audience proxy when she discovers with surprise that the auto mechanic in the rough clothes is a woman.  She proudly remarks to her bumbling husband, “Only goes to show a woman can do anything she puts her mind to,” as the movie flashes a brief feminist message, though movies of the 1930s, tearjerkers or not, tended to show strong women more than films did in later decades when they mostly seemed to be reduced to victims or vamps.  Life is more complicated than that, and women are more complicated than that, and this is a lesson Aline MacMahon would like to teach to her younger sister, played by Ann Dvorak, but Aline has too many scars to be a graceful teacher.

Another carload of comic characters are the two young ladies boldly off to Hollywood and the middle-aged stranger who gives them a ride.  Played by Muriel Evans and Joan Dennett, they mostly manage to keep Harry C. Bradley diverted from pawing them, but they suffer his dull if smarmy company because it is a free ride.

Another comic trio that pops in but stays overnight are two wealthy divorcees just having left Reno, played by Glenda Farrell and the wonderful Ruth Donnelly (with the silly tongue-twisting name “Mrs. Ashton-Ashley”).  They bicker, insult each other, and make their chauffeur’s life miserable.  He is played by the reliable regular guy Frank McHugh, who has had just about enough of them. 

But lest we mistake this moody film for a comedy, we see early on that the oasis in the desert is not all relief and restoration, where one can guzzle Cokes and eat barbecued sandwiches while Aline MacMahon fixes your car.

Aline’s kid sister, Ann Dvorak, is champing at the bit.  She’s ready for adventure and romance and she’s not going to get it tucked away in this remote desert.  Aline’s contented refuge is Ann’s prison, and there is tension between them when Aline refuses to allow Ann to go to a dance in town with a ne’er-do-well young man, played by Theodore Newton.  He is older than she is, moves in fast company, and Aline knows that Ann would be getting in over her head.

Ann makes plans to sneak out at night and meet the guy down the road.

“You never had any emotions, you never had any fun!” Ann tells her.  But there’s more to Aline than meets the eye.

Enter two strangers, stopping for lunch and a cold beer.  They are city fellows, in suits and Fedoras, and one of them, played by Preston Foster, is friendly, easygoing and searching the place with the keen eyes of someone who knows how to case a joint.  His partner, Lyle Talbot, is less interested and would prefer they got back on the road.

We will learn, drip-by-drip, that they escaped from prison, robbed a bank in Salt Lake City and in the process, Mr. Foster shot to death a couple of cashiers.  He is cool as a cucumber, but Mr. Talbot is increasingly nerve-racked over their deed and the suspense of escape.

Preston Foster sees Aline MacMahon emerge from the garage in her overalls, work shirt, and bandana.  She stops short, stunned to see him.

Ahh, they know each other.

“What are you doing out here?” he asks.

“Making an honest living.  Something you wouldn’t know anything about,” she replies.  They not only know each other, they have a romantic past and it is the reason Miss MacMahon has self-exiled to the Mojave Desert.  Back in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the old days, she was a party girl, and Preston’s girl, and he done her wrong.

Ann Dvorak knows nothing about those days, and Aline wants to keep it that way.  We see that Aline’s admirable self-reliance and rigid work ethic might be penance, as much as a do-over.

Preston Foster takes a sly, calculated interest in rekindling their relationship, but perhaps not so much for love as for what use she can be to him.

When it becomes known that the flighty Ruth Donnelly and Glenda Farrell are traveling with some pretty hefty jewels, Mr. Foster sees his chance to bankroll his and Lyle Talbot’s escape.

But Aline, thinking only that he is pursuing her for herself, brushes him off.  “I’m happy here.  I know what living is about here.  I wouldn’t leave for anything.”  Though Aline gets some strong dialogue, she really doesn’t need it.  With her soulful eyes and quiet intensity, she commands every scene she’s in.  She could attract our attention by just tying her shoes.  “I left you and that whole rotten life.  Don’t you think I’m the same woman who used to eat out of your hand, because I’m not.  I’m a whole lot wiser.” 

Maybe.

Ann Dvorak is curious about her big sister’s relationship with Foster, but Dvorak is more preoccupied with the coming nightfall and her date with the bounder.

Night falls, and the men delay leaving, to Talbot’s increasing anxiety, particularly when the sheriff pops in to see if anybody heard anything of the escaping criminals.  The desert may cool off a bit, but heat lightning flashes in the distance.  A happy Mexican family camps out, and when a rancher from nearby shows up, played by Willard Robertson, who would be Aline’s suitor if she let him, we see another side to Aline MacMahon. She dresses up for the first time in probably many months, and entertains the two men interested in her, sitting outside in the night breeze, while her sister is away.  She is not flirtatious, but she is womanly and letting her beaus see that they each have competition.

Late that evening, when all is quiet, Ann Dvorak’s date brings her back, drops her off down the road. She is clearly infatuated with him, and he appears bored with her, and we might assume that he has taken his pleasure and now wants nothing to do with her.

She sneaks back into the rooms she shares with her sister behind the diner and catches Preston Foster sneaking out of Aline MacMahon’s bedroom.  Aha!  Ann smirks slightly.  It is a revelation about her stern, puritanical older sister.  Reportedly, this scene also got the film bad marks from the National Legion of Decency.

Having left Aline, Foster now purposefully goes to work on the safe with Lyle Talbot.  The safe in the diner is where Donnelly’s and Farrell’s jewels were put for the night.

Aline goes to Ann’s room, knowing that she sneaked out, and the sisters fight, and Ann throws Aline’s tryst with Preston Foster in her face.  But Ann is not triumphant over her sister's apparent hypocrisy; she is devastated, for as Aline begins to surmise, Ann is now, also, “a whole lot wiser.”

Aline, knowing the torture of resisting a man she really wants, tenderly embraces her sister, strokes her hair, understanding that her sister has also been ill-used by a man this night.  As she puts her crying sister to bed, and kisses her shoulder, she hears noise from the diner. 

Foster and Talbot are having trouble with the safe, and Foster is having trouble with Talbot.  Lyle doesn’t want to stay any longer and doesn’t want to do any more harm, but Foster is adamant. 

“You get that safe open. I didn't spend all that time with the dame for nothing.”

Uh-oh.

Miss MacMahon enters, with a gun, and shoots Foster.  After he drops, after a moment, she goes to him, her hair loose and long out of the familiar bandana.  She is quiet, shocked, and his last words, “I had it coming.”

Talbot asks, “What about me?”

She lets him go.

When others come at the sound of the shot, she wearily brushes them off, telling them she shot at a rat.

In the morning, when the guests leave and Ann is back to work in the garage, rancher Willard Robertson returns, concerned for her.  She shows him the body and asks him to take care of it, to tell the sheriff.

He tenuously asks if Foster meant anything to her.  She is honest and says he did, once.

He offers, somewhat cruelly, “Must be a big help sometimes being like you, Olga, not having any feeling.”

“I wouldn’t know, Everett.”

A newcomer arrives, like so many others, pleased at finding the diner and garage and auto court and says, “This place is sure a lifesaver, lady.”

She agrees it’s a pretty quiet life.

The Hollywood studio system of the day gave us plenty of froth and fluff, but was extraordinary in its ability to turn out so many quiet stories of powerful substance, and describing what life was like during the Great Depression in so many, many ways.

Please have a look at the other blogs posting in the Classic Movie Blog Association’s “Cry Me a River: Tearjerkers Blogathon” 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.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation. 

 

Jane Wyatt - We're Only Human and Pitfall

The two films we cover today displayed Jane Wyatt’s strength on screen, no less steely for being presented with genteel poise. She is two different women here – a young urban career girl, and then, thirteen years later, a settled suburban housewife and mother. We recognize what is often referred to as her “finishing school accent,” but is she the same person? She could be. In both, she is supportive of the men in her life, but she demands they measure up to her standards.

We discussed last week how the Turner Classic Movies showing of four films of hers from the 1930s through the late 1940s in chronological order gives the viewer a fun tour of Jane Wyatt’s range as an actress, but the eras which reflected her film career were sometimes vastly different from her 1950s sitcom role as the suburban wife and mother. Because this long role on TV (for which she won three consecutive Emmys) is how most of us were introduced to her work, her film career is something yet to be discovered, sometimes with surprise.

Her early roles were sassy, sexy, and allowed her to demonstrate her talent for comedy, to be both sensual and scrappy. The unruffled 1950s woman who vacuumed in pearls waits in the future – but we shouldn’t just dismiss that role (screen role or real life for millions of women) as a consolation prize for youthful adventure lost. It was, rather, a progression, a maturity. For those who might consider it a regression forget how profound an impact those 1950s TV moms made on our lives and in pop-culture – so much as to leave us shocked at Jane Wyatt “girl reporter.”

We're Only Human (1935) pits Jane Wyatt against Preston Foster in her third film. It’s a gritty, somewhat manic cops-and-robbers story. Foster is a fascinating study as an aggressive cop who pushes the rules, breaks a few, to round up the bad guys, Depression-era gangsters, just so many notches on his gun. He is an adrenaline-junkie, and this will be his downfall, his greatest strength is his curse.

Jane Wyatt is the girl reporter, new to New York City from Kansas City, and it is refreshing that nobody – neither her photog sidekick, her editor, or Preston Foster – or the script, treats her condescendingly. She is as hard-hitting in her profession as Preston Foster is in his, and interestingly, even her good judgment leaves her at the end.

James Gleason is dependable as Foster's crusty-but-lovable partner. Jane Darwell, likewise, as Gleason’s wife. Foster lives with them, and they are his example of a supportive marriage and domesticity - Darwell bullies Gleason through a cold and rules the roost.

A collection of favorite character actors are on hand – Moroni Olsen as the police inspector who chews out Preston Foster over aggressive police tactics. Ward Bond is in a brief scene as a bank robber. Arthur Hohl is a crooked lawyer in league with gangsters, and Hattie McDaniel is his maid, whom Foster pushes past to have a hasty meeting with the pettifogger.  Even a few minutes of Hattie McDaniel is better than no Hattie McDaniel.

Mischa Auer is surprising as the crime boss, a far cry from his more famous comedy roles. His boisterous, goofy, charm and his Russian accent are gone here. He’s a hollow-eyed sinister creep, recently escaped from prison. Foster catches him with a display of foolhardy daring – angering his superiors for not calling backup – and when Auer eventually escapes his custody, Foster looks doubly bad.

Jane Wyatt is at first impressed with Foster's heroics. They begin a playful relationship – and though he barks, “How’d you like to be my girl?” they are friends rather than lovers. He is socially inept, and she is amused rather than devastated by his preoccupation with Mischa Auer.

She steers the course of their romance, just as she steers the roadster. At one point, he thinks she is offering him a home-cooked meal; she steers him to the delicatessen where he pays for the armload of food. She’s not a homebody.

The movie is a great big canvas for Preston Foster and he splatters himself all over it. Foster is in practically every scene, arguing, fighting, pushing, brooding, and loses none of his momentum – though nearly loses his mind – when his beloved partner James Gleason is gunned down by the bad guys.

The above spoiler was brought to you by Another Old Movie Blog – “Cheerfully Serving You Spoilers Since 2007.”

In an intense scene, Foster, accompanied by Jane Wyatt, must tell Jane Darwell that her husband is dead. Like an antsy kid who can’t keep a secret, he just blurts it out, wild and anxious. Jane Wyatt is shocked. His lack of sensitivity had been annoying to her, but now she sees the depth of his failure to appreciate or even understand the feelings of others.

Foster, as a reaction to his own grief and sense of guilt, goes off the wall, repeatedly haranguing the stunned widow with his defense that he told Gleason not to be too cautious, to rush in, that to hesitate would leave him a target, that a cop is as good as dead if he doesn’t strike first. It is a defense of his own carelessness, and an unrelenting rant of anger at his friend for dying.

Miss Wyatt silences him with a no less shocking, “Shut up!”

He tries to continue, but she slaps him down for good. “Get out!…Get. Out.”

The little woman shames him and controls him far more effectively than his bellowing police superiors, for she has worked her way into his self-serving conscience. He leaves.  She remains to console the widow.

In a later meeting when he tries to reconcile, he asks, “Mind if I sit down?”

“I wouldn’t mind if you fell down.” The sass and humor is back, but she is not punishing him like an angry girlfriend, she’s keeping herself at arm's length for her own protection.

The plot takes several twists and turns in the chase for Mischa, who taunts Foster with messages. In a shoot out, Foster is wounded in the head, and his eyes are bandaged temporarily. Another intense scene brings Jane Wyatt to his room to babysit him when Miss Darwell has left to buy groceries. Wyatt then leaves to go to the corner for a pack of cigarettes, and he has a meltdown, panicked by being alone, jumping at every sound.

A light bulb left on a table pops when it falls to the floor, and it sounds like a gunshot. 

Completely unglued, Foster pulls out his own gun and shoots wildly. He runs out of bullets just as Jane Wyatt reenters the room, the gun pointed at her.

Mr. Foster has at last learn to be cautious, so much so that when an opportunity arises to capture Mischa Auer, he hesitates, preferring to call for backup. Now it is Jane Wyatt who is rash. She has a tip on the bad guys' whereabouts and shares it with Foster, but doesn’t want anyone else to know. It might ruin her scoop. She is the aggressor now, pushing him – as Darwell says it is the job of a woman and a wife – “to make a man of him.”

There is an interesting scene using the lie detector technology of the day. Invariably, some comments left on the IMDb website reveal an unfamiliarity with the time, as some younger viewers forget that films were not made for our era, but for theirs. For example, there seems to be some disbelief over Foster's tendency to intimidate witnesses and force confessions from perpetrators by beating them up. This was, if not wholly acceptable, at least common back in the day. It should not be surprising seeing it surface in a film of that era. What is surprising is that police brutality continues in this country today – in an era where such behavior is more likely to be discovered. One can only attribute this to the fact that brutality and stupidity so often go hand-in-hand.

Preston Foster has his final showdown with the bad guys, pushed by Jane Wyatt. In the final scene, she is still in the driver's seat, recklessly kissing him as she steers – or not. She is a dynamo in a short curly bob, with a feather in her hat, and an infectious smile.

Jane is still driving in Pitfall (1948), and still challenges her man to measure up.

She is billed third behind Dick Powell, who plays her husband, and Lizabeth Scott, who plays the other woman.

Pitfall is a smooth and amazingly intricate noir, well-written and meticulously acted. Dick Powell is a revelation as the bored insurance salesman (the schmucks of film noir), frustrated by the sameness of his everyday life, who is nearly destroyed by events that all began when he finally finds something to interest him at his boring job - Lizabeth Scott.

In the opening scenes, we might almost take this for a family comedy, so funny is Powell in his sarcastic expressions of his restlessness, but he displays no sign of that shallow, smart-mouthed guy in earlier films where flippancy took the place of real acting. His usual wise-guy persona in early films seems to keep us at arm's length, not letting us get to know him too well.

Here, Powell turns himself inside out in a gutsy portrayal of a man whose integrity, his security, his family, his very life is slipping through his hands, with no one to blame but himself.

Lizabeth Scott plays her trademark role of the noir dame down on her luck who is bad luck to others but accepts it all with depressing resignation.  She is, however, very likable in the role and very personable. And the black beret she wears in the lounge scene is all I need to know she’s a great gal.

Raymond Burr is terrific as the sleazy private detective who is obsessed with Miss Scott. The scene where he poses as a customer in the dress shop where she works as a mannequin/model is one of the creepiest and most disgusting scenes of film noir. It is amazing how much is accomplished, how much is gotten away with in these days of Production Code censorship. She stands before him in an off the shoulder evening gown that demonstrates her attributes, and he as a customer has the right to ask her to remove her shawl, to turn around slowly before him while he undresses her with his eyes, a sneer indicating not only his pleasure in looking at her, but his pleasure in forcing her to do what he wants in full view of others.

She stands, fully clothed, in the midst of a crowd of workers and shoppers, almost as completely humiliated as if he had accosted her in a back alley.

John Litel is the district attorney whose speech to Powell on his idiocy for taking a gun to solve his problems remind us of the earlier movie, We’re Only Human, when the police inspector berates Preston Foster for ignoring police protocol.

Jimmy Hunt, whom we saw as the cute kid in the library in Katie Did It, is younger as Powell’s and Wyatt’s son. He adores his pop, although they have a difference of opinion as regards the comic books little Jimmy reads.

Byron Barr is the palooka who went to prison for going too far to dress his girl, Lizabeth, in jewels. Ann Doran is Powell’s dependable secretary.  Burr's secretary steals her scenes with the simple act of applying nail polish as she ignores Powell and other potential clients.

One of the treats of the film are the location shots of Los Angeles streets, Wilshire Boulevard, and the May department store where Lizabeth Scott works.

We get several postwar mile-markers – the so-called Busby Boys chapter book Powell reads to his son to distract him from the lurid comic books. “With perfect coordination” the Busby boys leaped to safety. That cracked me up. Young Jimmy wants to know why the Busby boys don’t use ray guns.

Powell snaps at him, “These are the Busby boys. They don’t have ray guns. They have slingshots.”

Jimmy sullenly answers, “Dopes.”

I also like the very small action of Powell wiping the nib of his dip pen before he uses it.  As one who occasionally uses a fountain pen, I was delighted as this bit of “business” that rings true.  I find myself always wiping the nib and lower barrel after I take off the cap.  Pen wipers used to be standard issue for offices and kids going back to school.

We start with Jane Wyatt cracking eggs in the skillet, feeding husband and son at the start of another busy day in their unvarying lives. She is just as sassy and intelligent as she was as a girl reporter in We’re Only Human. We have the feeling Jane Wyatt could not play in unintelligent person – it would be believable. Her intelligence is a huge part of what makes her an appealing screen presence. There is an excitement about her time on screen that is not really present with the languid Lizabeth Scott.

Dick Powell laments the sameness of their everyday lives.

"Whatever happened to those two people were going to build a boat and sail around the world?”

She replies breezily, while eating, “Well, I had a baby. I never did hear what happened you.”

We see at once that despite the burden he feels, theirs is a good marriage. Though his frustration will prove lethal, he is not looking for an extramarital affair.

Mr. Powell first visits Lizabeth Scott to get an inventory of the items obtaind by her imprisoned boyfriend with embezzled funds. 

His relationship with her starts as a fun and pleasant friendship. She is open, easy-going, shares her past with him as he takes notes on the insured items. She takes him for a ride in her motorboat, (not a boat to sail around the world) and we see he is instantly one of the Busby boys, going on an innocent but thrilling adventure in the middle of the workday. But Johnny stays too long at the fair, and Raymond Burr, jealous boyfriend-wannabe is lurking in the dark.

Through well-crafted twists and turns Powell gets more entangled with Scott, Burr, and the boyfriend soon to be released from prison.

Raymond Burr is a compelling creep, so sinister and if, as in the case of Jane Wyatt’s TV fans, one has been introduced to Raymond Burr through his decade-long stint as the stalwart Perry Mason, this turn as a smarmy stalker is fascinating. 

When events lead to Powell’s shooting a man, his conscience can take no more and he finally tells his wife what he’s been up to. Her reaction is cutting. No mourning and defeated little woman, she stares at him, with her expression sliding from disbelief to resentment, to something close to hatred.

“I can’t go on with this on my conscience," he says.

“Conscience?  You make it sound like a dirty word.  You worry about your filthy little conscience.  But I’ve got my son to think about…”

He wants to confess to the cops, too, but she orders him not to – not to drag the family through the dirt. “You lied once,” she snaps at him, “Came easy enough for you then.  You can lie now.”

In their early scenes, though he is troubled and wanting to break off from Scott, deeply seeking to appreciate his simple life once more, we are treated to some great lines and wonderful banter between husband and wife and son. When he is depressed, she cheers him up with the teasing, “We won the war together.” This is a brief comment that is so telling for so many married couples of that generation. The men didn’t just go away to war. The home front was as much involved. And on VJ day they had a right to slap themselves on the backs.

At one point little Jimmy wants to know what his father did during the war. Powell, somewhat shamefacedly confesses he was stationed in Denver. Jimmy is a little disappointed. Jane amusingly pipes up, "The Japs never got to Denver as long as your father was there.”

But Jane is not an idiot. She knows something’s going on with her husband. She’s just cutting him some slack, keeping observant, and waiting.

It is Lizabeth Scott who admonishes Powell, “What happens to men like you, Johnny? If I had a nice home like you do, I wouldn’t take a chance on losing it for anything in the world.”

Powell’s partner has the same opinion, and also chews him out. We see Powell is a man who desperately wants to unburden himself but he just waits too long.  He’s a decent guy, and we are touched by his humanity and his human failings, by the way he explains a nightmare to his son and kisses him goodnight, and the way he owns up to his mistakes, and tries to solve them.  By the time DA John Litel chews him out, we could cry for Powell.

In a final scene, Jane Wyatt is in the driver's seat again, picking him up from the police station and cruising down Wilshire Boulevard. He is beaten, without energy or hope, but she offers him not so much an olive branch, as a lease on a new life, suggesting that they move away to some new town. She has thought about divorce, and she is still very much on the fence. She doesn’t know if she can put this past her, but with flint in her voice, her determined gaze fixed on the road ahead, she suggests that it might be possible.

No clinch. No passionate, reckless kiss behind the steering wheel. They just go forward from that point in heavy traffic. We don’t really know what’s going to happen to them, or to Lizabeth, or to Raymond Burr, and the open-ended finale is refreshingly honest.

Jane Wyatt has backbone and a streak of independence. Her “finishing school accent” is hard and proud.

She could have been a girl reporter in her youth.

But she’s morphed into a suburban mom, a job no less gritty, shoring up the family, demanding her husband measure up, doing her job to “make a man of him.”

But Wait, There's More: Your friend and mine, Laura of Laura's Miscellaneous Musings covers We're Only Human here.

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And another thing:  Join us next week when we take part in the Planes, Trains, and Automobiles Blogathon hosted by the Classic Movie Blog Association.  My pick will be Bright Eyes (1934) with Shirley Temple, James Dunn, and a bunch of flyboys.

And the week after that, the Universal Pictures Blogathon hosted by the Metzinger sisters over at Silver Scenes.  My pick for the party -- Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).

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"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.  Her new book, a collection of posts from this blog - Hollywood Fights Fascism - is available here on Amazon.

Jane Wyatt - Time Flies with Four Films in a Row

Jane Wyatt had an acting career that spanned over sixty years, from about 1930 in the early days of the Great Depression when she was a college girl-turned-summer stock-apprentice (at the Berkshire Playhouse, I’m pleased to say, in western Massachusetts, my neck of the woods.  They’re still with us and they still do great work, one of the treats of the New England summer.)—to when she capped it off with her final television sitcom guest appearance in the early nineties, at about seventy-two years old.

One of the features of Turner Classic Movies that I especially love is those days when they program several films of one star—but particularly when they show the films in chronological order.  This allows us to see the development of a career, and in the context of the eras in which the different films were made.  The star is a youngster in the morning, and by late afternoon when we're starting supper, he or she might be entering middle age and is now an old friend whom we know very well because we've seen so many sides to this person.

Not too long ago TCM showed a day of Jane Wyatt films.    Four in a row, for example, began with We’re Only Human (1935), in which Jane was in her mid-twenties, pairing off with Preston Foster in a cops-and-robbers scenario, she playing a feisty “girl reporter.” 

Next, it was Kisses for Breakfast (1941), a silly screwball comedy of mistaken identities, where she plays the owner of a Southern plantation and marries amnesiac playboy-turned hobo, Dennis Morgan, who is also already married to her cousin, Shirley Ross. The improbable scenario was the hallmark of screwball comedy, the last leavings of a more innocent America not yet having to face World War II.

Next, Army Surgeon (1942), a wartime drama that actually takes place during World War I in a flashback where she is a pioneering female surgeon.  She must pose as a nurse overseas because there is no place, evidently, for a female army surgeon, but she earns the respect of her grumpy doc-in-charge, played by James Ellison, and is the prize fought over by two men.  At the end of the film, we are on a troop ship in World War II, she is older now, gray in her hair, in uniform.   Her husband, one of the two old beaus from the previous war, is her fellow surgeon on staff.

Finally, Jane is the sassy wife whose home is turned upside down by an unfaithful husband played by Dick Powell in the noir Pitfall (1948).   

Each film shows her at different stages in her development as an actress, and also shows the changes in society occurring not always behind the scenes, but right there on the screen.

Miss Wyatt—who despite being a flippant girl reporter, a spirited bride who beat up Shirley Ross in a raucous wrestling match, got her white nurse’s shoes dirty in the trenches with the doughboys, and played a handful of suburban wives and mothers (we also discussed her work here in Our Very Own- 1950)—was a true blueblood.  Her crisp and elegant accent never lets us forget.  She is feminine and ladylike, but tough as nails.  She was raised in a well-to-do New York family where her father was a Wall Street investor and her mother a drama critic.

Can you imagine going into acting and your mother being a drama critic?   You’d have to have guts.

She was descended of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and also of a signatory to the U.S. Constitution, yet she lost her place in the blueblood’s bible: the Social Register, when she went to work as an actress on Broadway, understudying Rose Hobart. Jane married the same year We’re Only Human was released, and enjoyed a happy and long (sixty-five years) marriage until her husband’s passing.   Jane Wyatt left us at ninety-six years old in 2006.

We may remember her best in Father Knows Best, the TV sitcom for which she won three Emmy’s in a row, but her adventures as these other characters are a fascinating revelation of just how she fits into different eras, shrugging off not just one role for another, but one decade for another.  In a matter of four or five hours we have been time travelers through crucial years of the "American Century."

Next week, we’re going to take a closer look at We’re Only Human and Pitfall.  They are two very different roles, very different movies, and very different eras.  In both, Jane is charming, plays well off her co-stars, and displays exciting moments of commanding the screen, bringing the action to a halt with the same sureness and guts that made her leave Barnard for the Berkshires, and made her one of those infamous Hollywood liberals to stand up to McCarthyism in Congress.

These chronological rosters of films that TCM presents from time to time are excellent windows on the history of Hollywood and of American pop culture—made somehow more intimate when following the thread of one individual’s meandering career.   Though TCM gets high praise from classic film fans for so many reasons, I think the chronological roster is one of the most meaningful and important aspects of TCM's classic film programming.  It’s so simple, yet powerful, and I don't think any other retro channel or network has ever done this.  

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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.

The eBook and paperback are available from Amazon and CreateSpace, which is the printer.  You can also order it from my Etsy shop. It is also available at the Broadside Bookshop, 247 Main Street, Northampton, Massachusetts.

If you wish a signed copy, then email me at JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com and I'll get back to you with the details.

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My new syndicated column on classic film is up at http://go60.us/advice-and-more/item/2047-everybody-comes-to-rick-s, or check with your local paper.