Toyland Premiere - 1934

Toyland Premiere (1934) unites favorite studio theme of a gathered cast of caricatured movie stars – with Santa Claus.  Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is the host for this holiday party, more about gags and mischief than seasonal joy or, heaven forbid, peace on earth.

We discussed several cartoons that featured caricatures of Hollywood stars in this previous post.  This escapade in Toyland Premiere brings us cartoon images of Tarzan, Shirley Temple, Frankenstein’s Monster (this is a Universal cartoon, if you haven’t figured it out by now), and Bing Crosby, who croons a brief hello.  Shirley sounds more like Betty Boop.  There are others in tow, but highlighted are Laurel and Hardy, whom we visited last week in Babes in Toyland (1934).

Santa arrives at the party, after a slow start in his workshop when he discovers his famous red suit has been eaten by moths. Helpful elves spray paint his blue coveralls red and slap some popcorn strings on him to simulate the white fur trim – hey, it’s the Depression.  We have to make do.

Oswald gets Santa to make an appearance at a large downtown department store, and a parade of giant balloons, not unlike the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, greets him. On the toy department floor is where the party and the Hollywood stars await him.  

It turns into a bit of a melee when Laurel and Hardy are prevented from eating cake by the Frankenstein Monster, who growls at them and warns them off.  They get stuck in a dragon suit and are attacked by toy soldiers, not unlike the ones in Babes in Toyland, made the same year (see this previous post from last week) which is probably the inspiration for this scene.  A little cross-publicity never hurts.

Santa laughs at all this and the cartoon ends suddenly and without any explicable conclusion.  I suppose most Christmas parties are like that.  Except for the Frankenstein Monster part, but I’ve never met your friends, so I don’t know with whom you associate.

We’ll revisit Hollywood stars’ representation in Christmas cartoons in a few weeks when we conclude our annual Christmas series of posts, but for the next two weeks, we’re going to take a detour to other parts of the globe.  Next week, Bush Christmas (1947) will take us to Australia.

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

GIFTS FOR THE CLASSIC FILM FAN!!!!!!!

Christmas in Classic Films provides a roster of old movies with scenes to conjure Christmas of days gone by.  Makes a nice gift, if you know an old movie buff, or if you just like to give presents to yourself.  

The paperback is available at Amazon, but also here at Barnes & Noble.

The hardcover, so far, is available only at Amazon.

Here are a few other classic movie books I've written for your gift-giving pleasure:

Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. - for sale in paperback and hardcover at Amazon,

And in paperback and hardcover here at Ingram,

And in paperback and hardcover here at Barnes & Noble.

And in paperback here at Walmart.

Hollywood Fights Fascism -  here in paperback at Amazon.

Movies in Our Time - here in paperback at Amazon.

And all of these books are available as well at my page on Bookshop.org, which helps support independent bookstores.

Stand Up and Cheer (1934)

Stand Up and Cheer (1934) is a morale-boosting movie about…morale boosting…during the worst years of the Great Depression.  Whether it actually succeeded in spreading optimism could certainly be doubted, but it likely was successful as, at least, a diversion.  The thin plot of a new government office being created to bolster good feeling during the hard times was the framework for a lineup of vaudeville acts and musical numbers that carries us through the end of the movie and the fictional end of the Depression.

Warner Baxter, a driven, hard-working producer (not too unlike the character he played in 42^nd Street the year before), is summoned by the President (who does not sound like FDR) to take over a new cabinet position, Secretary of Amusement (which reminds one, less cheerfully, of the “Secretary of Morale” position grifter and sellout to fascists Andy Griffith was given in A Face in the Crowd – 1957 – which we covered here).  Mr. Baxter arrives at the Capitol Building in an autogyro, a 1920s and 1930s precursor to the modern helicopter.  Someday I’d like to take a look at autogyros in movies and cartoons of that period.

Unlike the role Griffith played, however, Mr. Baxter is no megalomaniac, just a driven workaholic with a passion for the entertainment industry.  He calls for entertainers of all types: circus acts, ballet, vaudevillians, but apparently no “boop-a-doop singers.”  The Roaring Twenties are behind us, and flappers are passé (it’s all about autogyros now).  He calls for auditions from all 48 states, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, which at that time was still a U.S. territory.

Madge Evans plays an underling in charge of the children’s division.  We last saw her as the tragic and touching female lead in Hallelujah, I’m a Bum! (1933) here.  She will eventually become Baxter’s love interest, though there’s hardly any time for that in the continual stream of acts, sometimes coming at us in unexpected ways.  The first, rather startlingly, is when Baxter and Madge Evans are looking at a newspaper, and punching through the big headlines is Nick Foran (whom you may remember better as Dick Foran, changing his first name the following year) singing in a booming baritone, “I’m laughing.” Despite being out of work and down on his luck, this barrel-chested workingman declares that “I’ve got nothing to laugh about, but if I can laugh and sing and shout, brother, so can you!”  His spirited verse launches a montage of people who’ve got nothing to laugh about either, but they still carry on cheerfully, including a farmer, a woman with many children washing laundry on the roof of a tenement, and, most touchingly, a garment worker at her sewing machine in a sweatshop.  

Her moment in the song is not as rollicking; the tempo has slowed, and she is almost whisper-quiet, singing of dreams and future hopes.

The final verse in this song is taken by Aunt Jemima in what appears to be a church hall.  The actress is actually named Tess Gardella, but the corporate logo – for reasons both racial and monetary – was seemingly deemed to take precedence over a real actress.  Aunt Jemima was one of the oldest and most successful corporate logos in the U.S., dating back to 1889 and the Pearl Milling Company.  Pushing their flour product at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, they hired Nancy Green, a former slave, to cook pancakes, tell stories and sing songs in a kind of cozy folklore embodiment of the home goodness of their flour, and Aunt Jemima became a company trademark.  It was certainly not the first capitalist fantasy ever generated in our culture, but it would last longer than most.

The mammy image went through a few transformations over the years, but most curious was the adoption of the name by performers.  To be sure “Aunt Jemima” began as a minstrel character even before she became a corporate trademark, but though several actresses were hired to portray her in company promotions, Tess Gardella, who originated the role of Queenie in the seminal Show Boat (1927) on Broadway, was billed as “Aunt Jemima,” as this was the stage name she used in vaudeville – though she was not connected with the company that made flour and pancake mix.  (Reportedly, a light-skinned woman, she performed often in blackface.)  You can see her here on this YouTube clip.

Another veteran of Show Boat was Stepin Fetchit, who played Joe in the 1929 “part-talky” version.  His real name was, impressively, Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry.  “Stepin Fetchit” was his own vaudeville creation, “The Laziest Man in the World,” and made him one of the highest-paid performers in vaudeville, and his name in the credits of Stand Up and Cheer is more prominent than most of the rest of the cast.  For all that, the stereotype he embellished brought him no good fortune in later years and fell out of favor.  Though I can admire his success in vaudeville and early 1930s films, I confess I find him one of the most annoying characters in this movie or most other movies he appeared in—not because of the insulting stereotype—Hollywood was full of them—but because of the quality of his speaking voice.  To me, it’s like nails on a chalkboard. 

Stepin Fetchit’s part in this movie is to latch on to Warner Baxter and take a job as a guard to keep out the riffraff.  He stumbles about, has a comic struggle babysitting a penguin, and takes a plunge into a large aquarium. 

Strangely, the penguin is voiced-over, muttering complaints, by an actor doing a Jimmy Durante impersonation, wearing Durante’s trademark hat.  One wonders why Mr. Durante himself isn’t in the movie?  Maybe the penguin had a better agent.

Stepin Fetchit isn’t alone in the physical slapstick department; Jack Durant and Frank Mitchell play a couple of bumbling senators who keep up with a stream of nonsense dialogue about a dam project (“We’ve been together on every dam project!”) while they do acrobatic tumbling and throwing each other around Baxter’s office.  It’s quite funny and rather jaw-dropping.  Literally.

Handsome John Boles, in his romantic tenor days, is dressed in a white Naval uniform and sings a love ballad with Sylvia Froos, he with the rolling “r’s” and she looking a little bored.

Look for little Scotty Becket in a brief, uncredited role as one of the child actors under Madge Evans' tutelage.

Warner Baxter runs into a snag when the big business oligarchs (though the term was not commonly used then) try to scuttle his project with a “campaign of ridicule.”  He nearly quits.

I would expect any film buff worthy of the name knows that the real breakout star of the film was little Shirley Temple, who plays the daughter of hoofer James Dunn.  She is a charming moppet—her own trademark, merchandising to follow—and sings a verse of “Baby, Take a Bow” with Mr. Dunn.  Practically before the director could yell, “CUT!”, little Shirley was whisked away into a new movie called Baby, Take a Bow (along with Mr. Dunn), and became the highest box office draw for the next four years.

So memorable a figure she cut in Stand Up and Cheer, that in the film’s finale, after a rather long salute to hillbilly music “Broadway’s Gone Hillbilly,” (which features the always delightful sight of chorus girls dancing on top of New York City skyscrapers), that Shirley takes a solo bow in the big parade in Washington.

This happens when James Dunn rushes into the despondent Warner Baxter’s office and announces that the Depression is over! 

“Factories are opening up!  Men are going back to work by the thousands, our farm products are being sold the world over, savings accounts are leaping up, the banks are pouring out new loans!  There is no unemployment!  Fear has been banished!  Confidence reborn!  Poverty has been wiped out…We’re out of the red!”

That’s kind of a lot to scream at somebody, using up all those exclamation points like that.  But Dunn is right, the Great Depression has ended, and to celebrate, an NRA-style parade commences with armies of workers, nurses, teachers, military—and little Shirley Temple—all singing “We’re Out of the Red.”

Must be true.  Nick (Dick) Foran is back, dressed as Paul Revere, and his ghostly figure is riding across the sky on a horse, singing it, too.

I can remember watching this movie on TV with my parents when I was a child, and my mother chuckling, “And that’s how the Great Depression ended.”  And my father snorting, “Yeah, just like that.”

Even as young as I was, I could tell they were being sarcastic, but at the same time, the strangely wistful, almost sad smiles told me they wished it could have been like that.  They were the original audience for that movie when they were young teens.  Maybe at that age they really believed the Depression could end like that, any day now.  Maybe seeing the movie again after so many years, they realized they’d been hoodwinked.  Maybe they also realized that the fantasy was needed at the time.  Warner Baxter certainly thought so.

  *******************************

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.

It is also here in paperback from Ingram.

And here in hardcover from Ingram.

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. 

 

"That's What I Want for Christmas"

Stowaway (1936), which is not a Christmas movie, ends the movie with a Christmas scene in which Shirley Temple sings about what she wants for Christmas.

It’s used to tie up the movie, to show the happily ever after of her new family. In this adventure, Shirley is the orphaned daughter of missionaries in China. Cute as a bug, she’s raised speaking Chinese and learning Confucius-type pearls of wisdom from Philip Ahn. She’s on her own after the person who is assigned to take her to safety away from country bandits does not do his job. She wanders into Robert Young, a rich American playboy, and accidently stows away on the very ship he is taking around the South Seas. Also on board is Alice Faye, who chides Mr. Young on both his wealth and his irresponsibility (she is traveling with her dour future mother-in-law played by Helen Westley to reunite with her drip of a fiancé on a colonial plantation), but Alice eventually warms to Robert as they both find themselves shipboard babysitters to Shirley. Young’s valet, the ever-proper Arthur Treacher, helps.

Young wants to adopt Shirley, and he and Alice Faye create a fake marriage so that he can do so, which then after a few twists and turns in the plot, and a few songs, the judge in Reno at their divorce decides they should stay together. 

In the final scene, everybody’s sitting around the Christmas tree in their jammies and bathrobes and Shirley, the little girl everybody wants for a daughter in the 1930s, sings “That’s What I Want for Christmas.”  The lyrics include shoes for poor children everywhere, and soldiers who never fight, and making her new mommy and daddy happy, safe, and strong. What a swell kid!

Christmas is a convenient sort of ready-made finale for this movie. It’s the shorthand for happily ever after.

But I keep worrying about Philip Ahn not knowing where she is. 

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

Get your copy of CHRISTMAS IN CLASSIC FILMS here at Amazon in print or eBook...

...and here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a variety of other online stores.

  ************

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.

Rochelle Hudson - new biography by David C. Tucker

Rochelle Hudson is the subject of David C. Tucker’s latest book, “largely because she deserved one.”

Miss Hudson’s career began in 1930 when she was still in her teens.  A 1931 WAMPAS Baby Star, the bulk of her film work occurred in the 1930s, when her roles ranged from sadder-but-wiser gun molls, nice girls, young brides, young mothers, tricksters and vamps, in an array of gangster films, action films set from the big city to the jungle, comedies, convict stories, and melodramas.   A beautiful actress, who could also sing and dance, nevertheless her career dwindled in the 1940s and her starring roles were usually in B-pictures; her finer films usually saw her in supporting parts. 

The author notes, “Even during her lifetime, however, there was a sense that she had been underappreciated.  By the mid-1940s, when her career was past its peak, columnist Ed Sullivan lamented (in 1944) -- “Rochelle Hudson should have been a much huger success.  She had everything.”

It’s a forlorn thought, but when picking through her films, as Mr. Tucker does so well, we see there are gems to remember her by most fondly:  As Shirley Temple’s big sister in Curly Top (1935), paired romantically with John Boles, she sings “The Simple Things in Life.”

Other important roles occurred in Imitation of Life (1934) as Claudette Colbert’s daughter, Les Misérables (1935) as Cozette with Fredric March, and four films with Will Rogers, the last released just after his tragic death.  She has a minor role in Rebel Without a Cause (1955).

I found it delightful to discover that she also, at least on some occasions, supplied the cartoon voice of Honey in the series of Bosko cartoons in the early Looney Toons from Warner Bros.  I excitedly mentioned this to my cartoonist twin brother, but he already knew.  He always already knows anything about cartoons.  (We have a set of cute ceramic Pilgrim figures, a boy and a girl, purchased decades ago in Plymouth, Mass., and though they look nothing like the cartoon characters, John immediately dubbed them Bosko and Honey.  It never fails that, taking them out of the box every November, one or the other of us will shout, “Hel-l-o-o, Bosko!”)

Okay.  Back to Rochelle.

Mr. Tucker has written several Hollywood biographies (listed below), and the reader will always learn something new.  What I especially enjoy is examining the twists and turns of a Hollywood career through the nuts-and-bolts information on life in the film industry, including contemporaneous critical reviews of movies and a look at what was happening at the same time in Hudson’s life. Mr. Tucker is meticulous and thorough.

Miss Hudson also starred in a short-lived TV sitcom, That’s My Boy (1954-1955) and she noted in an interview on the sometimes difficult irony of pursuing a television career when at the same time her much younger self was being shown in old movies on TV.  It’s an issue I’ve often wondered about, how film stars of the Golden Age, still working, were almost in competition with their younger selves and always needing to measure up to that more glamorous image.

The book contains a complete and detailed filmography, preceded by a biography that includes information on her personal life, with many great photos.  It can be purchased here at the McFarland website.

Have a look below for my posts on David C. Tucker’s previous books on Gale Storm and S. Sylvan Simon.  Also below is a list of links where you can purchase Mr. Tucker’s other books.

 

Another Old Movie Blog: Review of Gale Storm: A Biography and Career Record by David C. Tucker

Another Old Movie Blog: An interview with author David C. Tucker - Gale Storm: A Biography and Career Record

Another Old Movie Blog: Review: S. Sylvan Simon, Moviemaker - David C. Tucker's new book

 

Other books by David C. Tucker: 

Gale Storm: A Biography and Career Record

Martha Raye: Film and Television Clown

Eve Arden: A Chronicle of All Film, Television, Radio and Stage, Performances

Shirley Booth: A Biography and Career Record

Joan Davis: America’s Queen of Film, Radio and Television Comedy

Lost Laughs of ‘50s and ‘60s Television

Pine-Thomas Productions: A History and Filmography

 

Have a look here at David C. Tucker’s blog

The summer after that...

There is a scene in Since You Went Away (1944) of such gossamer poignance that we might miss the impact just because it is a fleeting, throwaway line.  But these days, I think our own experience engenders empathy and we understand a little better.

Claudette Colbert plays the mother of Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple.  They sit together as Colbert reads aloud a letter to them from her husband, who is away in the war.  She reads the special message he sends to his daughter, Jennifer Jones: "...she must hold the thought that next year, or the summer after that, we'll be boating again on the lake..."

Jennifer lifts her head slightly and says, almost to herself, with a leaden epiphany, "The summer after that."

She suddenly realizes that the war may last a very long time.  She is seeing in her mind's eye a picture of the normal life she knew growing smaller in the rearview mirror.  She has no idea how to look ahead.

This movie, like many produced during World War II, was produced not only for entertainment value, or for the box office draw the big names would elicit.  It was produced to serve the country during a terrible time.  It was produced to remind us of homespun, democratic, decent values for which we told ourselves we were fighting; and also to give us hope, not only the hope of future victory, but the hope that we would remain unchanged and our regular lives of comforting normality would resume one day.

Neither theme was entirely accurate, but both were necessary.  We needed to aspire to more than just a return to normal, but to make normal better.  We do now, too.  In the meantime, we have to slog through some unpleasantness. And we have to just buck up and do it. 

In the United States, we have the Thanksgiving holiday approaching next month, which, for those from other countries who may not be so familiar with it, is a huge holiday in this country because it so deeply reaffirms our cultural heritage. Also, most of us really like pumpkin pie.

Christmas, which is celebrated around the world, will come after that in a world now consumed by the COVID-19 virus.  We in our respective countries are being told to tone down our holiday family gatherings this year to keep each other safe.  So many of us are balking at that, but I would have to ask them, if a doctor gives them a diagnosis of cancer and tells them they must begin treatment with chemotherapy or radiation, or surgery, or a combination of all three, what will be their answer?  Will they say, "No, I won't!"  And run out of the office and on to their certain deaths?  Or will they master their fear and face down their dislike of unpleasantness and inconvenience for the good of themselves and their loved ones and begin treatment?

If you are given a diagnosis of cancer, only you have the disease.  If you are infected with COVID-19, everybody near you gets it, too.  Unless you have been tested, you may not know that you have it. 

Back to Claudette, and Jennifer, and Shirley sitting together for comfort in the icy cold realization that their lives are not going to return to normal anytime soon...I'd like to add a personal note.  My father, who served overseas during World War II in the United States Army fighting the fascist enemies of democracy (that's what you do when you're Antifa), missed three Thanksgivings and four Christmases.  He had to; it was for the good of the nation and all civilization.  Some of his pals never got home to celebrate another Thanksgiving or Christmas ever again. So he didn't complain.

Neither should you.  Do your part.  Do your bit.  Wear the mask.  Stay home.  Keep calm and watch classic movies.

*********

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

Bright Eyes - 1934 - The Good Ship Lollipop

One may be charmed, certainly bemused, at the idea of two important fledgling industries – American Airlines and the Douglas Aircraft Company (future McDonnell-Douglas) – pinning their hopes on a six-year-old girl to lend them credibility. Shirley Temple and her “good ship lollipop” did the job and launched passenger air travel on a Depression-era United States.

Well, she didn’t do it all by herself, but Fox’s golden-haired moppet was the hope of American Airlines—in an era where most people did not have the price of a plane ticket – and to Douglas Aircraft and its brand-new DC-2, an all-metal plane to answer the reluctance of travelers too leery of flying in one of the, then, wooden airships. The DC-2 was introduced May 1934. This movie premiered in December of that year. The aircraft industry, and Depression-era America, had nowhere to go but up.

This is our entry in the: Planes, Trains and Automobiles Blogathon, hosted by the Classic Movie Blog Association. Have a look here for more excellent posts.

Bright Eyes is probably one of Shirley’s best – memorable most especially for Jane Withers’ devastatingly funny portrayal of a privileged little girl with the personality of an assault weapon. Indeed, she wants a machine gun as a present, as well as a wheelchair – perhaps to compete with her wheelchair-bound grand uncle- enemy, Charles Sellon. When Shirley rescues an old rag doll from Jane, Jane tells Shirley, “You can’t have her, know why? ‘Cause I’m gonna kill her.” And she proceeds to rip off the arms and legs and head of the unfortunate invalid doll.

As a child, I must say that Jane’s character intimidated me. I was more fascinated by Shirley hitchhiking a ride to the airfield to hang out with her flyer buddies. Today, that scene of hitchhiking gives me the creeps, and Jane Withers is my favorite part of the movie.  Another fascination for me as a child was a glimpse at what a Southern California Christmas must be like – with no snow and people walking about with no boots on, in what looked like to be an early fall day in New England—except for those marvelous palm trees.

It is Christmas in the hangar/pilots’ clubhouse where the boys plan a special treat for young Shirley. Her late father was a fellow pilot, and her mother now works as a maid in the nouveau riche Smythe residence, whose only daughter, Joy – the name is a delightful irony – is played with vaudevillian panache by Jane Withers.

Shirley’s mother, played briefly by Lois Wilson, gets killed by a car, so Shirley is an orphan and much of the film is a custody battle between rich Uncle Ned (Sellon) and James Dunn, the swell regular-guy pilot who is Shirley’s best pal.  Dunn takes Shirley up for her first plane ride after he learns of the death of her mother, so that he may break the news to Shirley.  She wants to know what heaven is like, and when they are up with the clouds a magnificent carpet below them, he tells her, "It's all around us now."  Though Shirley admirably turns on the tears on cue, understanding she has lost her mother, it is Mr. Dunn's thoughtful, awkward, agonized way of sharing the bad news, and sharing his idea of heaven with her that is most moving.

So contentious is the custody battle that Dunn takes on a risky mission – flying to New York in a blizzard to deliver a letter – for which he will be paid $1,000.

Shirley stows away on board, and they fly through the terrible weather. They don’t make it to New York (which at that time would not have been a nonstop trip anyway, and would have taken at least 15 hours, likely more) but must bail out and parachute to the ground. The wind drags their shoot, nearly pulling them over a cliff.

It’s exciting stuff, but little Shirley is unruffled. It was her moxie, after all, that saved Fox Studios and got us through the Depression.  Bailing out of a plane during a blizzard?  Big deal.  Child’s play.

But it is the Good Ship Lollipop, which was the DC-2, that is the heart and soul of the movie—and is the song Shirley sings on the plane taxiing around the field in a Christmas party. No danger, just a few verses (backed up by what appeared to be extras from the University of Southern California football team) where the trip is about a visit to Candyland and there are never any worries. Happy landings on a chocolate bar.

The DC-2 was a 14-seater twin-prop engine all-metal plane, with a 66-inch wide cabin, and brand-new. Shirley is dancing down the aisle. Of course flying is safe, silly.  See?

Especially when we are only taxiing around the field on a sunny Southern California Christmas afternoon.

Now fly on over to the CMBA site to navigate the rest of the blogs in this swell blogathon.

And come back next week for our entry in the Universal Pictures Blogathon hosted by the Metzinger sisters over at Silver Scenes. My pick for the party -- Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).

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

"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.

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.

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