Manpower - 1941

Manpower (1941) is quirky; at times a evoking the iconic working man of the WPA art images, but somehow never glorifying it.  It is a hard-bitten tale of the unlucky and the foolish, and yet manages to be unexpectedly humorous in spots. It’s not so much the movie doesn’t know what it is: it most certainly does, but it proudly and defiantly defies to be locked into any genre. Its stars George Raft, Edward G. Robinson, and Marlene Dietrich don’t care if we take them or leave them.  Director Raoul Walsh seems to have the same chip on his shoulder.

Images of great generators and turbines, of high tension wires and metal towers could provide a visual tribute to the great infrastructure projects of the 1930s when so much of America was finally electrified, but most of this background is used as a setting to reflect the esprit de corps of the cast of daring linemen.  They are not technicians as much as they are roustabouts, and they climb to the heavens with little to protect them from lightning or keep them from falling, but they are fatalistic, and bolstered with ego. 

The crew is packed with our old friends: Frank McHugh and Alan Hale as a couple of comic stumblebums; Ward Bond as a wiseacre; Eve Arden, too-little used in her role as a ten-cents-a-dance girl.  The linemen-roustabouts go to work at night in thunderstorms, and during their “high wire act” they talk about the dames.

The wind, the lightning, the torrential rains, the sizzling live wires broken and flapping around them make for treacherous work. One older fellow, of course called “Pop,” played by Egon Brecher, warns of death by live wires. He is not a climber; he works on the ground. The most sensible guy is George Raft. His best buddy is Edward G Robinson, in a role markedly different from his sinister sneering gangsters and his shrewd detectives: he plays a happy-go-lucky, and hapless lineman desperate for a date, too awkward and bumbling to be attractive to the world-weary dance hall girls. He is exuberant, quick-tempered, but joyfully oblivious to the dangers around him. That includes the dangers from women as well as high wires. The when Raft gets into trouble upon the tower, Robinson comes to his aid and gets electrocuted. Ward Bond does a curious form of CPR by pressing on his back and brings him back to life, but Robinson’s leg is broken, so Edward G goes off to the hospital. His injury is such that he will not be fit for climbing towers anymore, but his heroism merits a promotion to foreman. This happy hooligan will stay on the ground from now on and direct the action.

Pop has a grim chore of his own. He is going to meet his daughter who has just been paroled from prison. He feels guilty about meeting her, because he abandoned her and her mother when she was a child and he feels responsible for her wayward course in life. He asks Raft, because he is the most sensible and unflappable guy around, to go with him to meet her. The daughter is played by Marlene Dietrich. Her black beret tells us she is sophisticated and tough (recall our post on the black beret in movies here). And glamorous, despite being a person.

There is an interesting scene where they stop to go to a drugstore so Marlene can pick up some cosmetics. George Raft was sometimes considered a kind of Humphrey Bogart 1.0 because his fame came along earlier than Bogart’s and he got a lot of the tough guy roles (and turned down a few that made Bogart famous). Raft was not the actor that Bogart was; he did not have his range, and yet there is something so wonderfully cool about Raft in this movie that I’m not sure Bogart could achieve. Raft is unruffled, even apathetic about Marlene’s needing to buy lipstick and powder, even steps in to help her shop, though he is somewhat disgusted by Marlene’s cold reception of her father. He does not know yet that she has had a hard life because her father abandoned her in childhood. Raft sits at the soda counter in a drugstore and orders a soda, with a straw. It is such a tough guy cool thing to do with a completely unconcerned attitude as he if just belted down a Scotch. He is one tough guy, and despite spending so much time up in the high wires, he is grounded.

All the happy hooligans appear to live together in a boarding house. They kid Edward G Robinson about his girl troubles. When Pop is killed on the job, Edward G., as foreman, has the miserable task of having to tell his next of kin – Marlene Dietrich. As usual George Raft gets drafted to go along with them because Raft is the sensible one, and just his coolness steadies the nerves of others. They break the news and Raft is disgusted by Marlene’s lack of grief. She actually hardly knew her father. But Edward G. warms up to her in a curiously courtly way. He does not chase her or push himself upon her the way he does the dance hall girls, but he is very gentle and feel sorry for her.

She gets a job at pretty much the only place she’s qualified to work: the dance hall, where we meet the other world-weary ladies including Eve Arden. Miss Eve refers to one of their clients as “laughing boy,” shades of her line in Mildred Pierce (1945). She is hard-bitten and wisecracking, but unfortunately, she doesn’t get quite the screen time as she did in other films, so it is a promise unfulfilled.

Edward G. pursues Marlene with naïve gallantry. He wants to buy her a present, so he takes Alan Hale and George Raft to go to a department store to buy her a négligée. Alan Hale has the funny lines about watching the live manikins model the clothing. He remarks, “How about some underwear? Can we see some models?” The movie is filled with sudden and surprising flicks of risqué dialogue and topical references that keeps the whole story off kilter and rides a fine line between a sophisticated farce and something utterly daffy. At times we don’t know if we’re dealing with Oscar Wilde or the Marx Brothers.

At one point Marlene sings in her own inimitable, and rather indescribable, fashion. George Raft has come to see her to warn her to stay away from his buddy. The owner of the joint, seeing George’s interest in Marlene says, “She’s got a great voice, huh?”

To which George responds, “Why don’t you get your ears tuned.” In one moment Marlene has been presented as a glamorous and exotic talent and in the very next moment she is insulted.

However, Edward G. proposes, Marlene accepts, not because she loves him – she tells him frankly that she does not – but with the attitude that this might be a new turn in her life for the better. After a raucous wedding reception in a Chinese restaurant with all the gang, the movie shifts interestingly to Marlene’s domestic abilities, which are considerable. Instead of showing her as the ex-con no-goodnik who hasn’t the slightest idea how to live like a decent person, we see she is remarkably domestic. She is an excellent cook. She keeps their house immaculate. She spoils Edward G. with appetizing treats and tries to be a good wife to him. Eventually, it comes out bit by bit that, because her father left her mother, Marlene learned from a very young age how to keep the home fires burning. She had to take charge to cook, to care for her mother, to manage the household. When she turned to dance halls and crime it was not because of the love of the lurid excitement; indeed, that sort of life bores her silly. It was because she had no other skills and was too honest to market herself as a wife to the first man who came along.

Deciding on a change of course, she decides to take this second man who came along.

In another plot twist, Raft is injured at work – the setting is Southern California but evidently, they have a whole lot of thunderstorms. Raft recovers in the hospital and when he is discharged, Edward G. insists on taking them home so that Marlene can nurse him. Raft warms up to her, sees that she is a nice person and a good wife and he feels comfortable and part of the family. We see, though he does not, that Marlene is falling in love with him. Eventually, she sees no hope in the situation but to be honest. She plans to leave Edward G. and go to Chicago and resume the life of a dance hall girl. Raft, upset that she would abandon his buddy demands an answer, and keeping with the honest course, tells him she’s in love with him.

In a final climactic scene, and yet another storm, there is a showdown in this tragic love triangle and, of course, in true movie fashion one of them has to go. I’ll give you a break this once and not give you a spoiler.

Manpower a good movie to consider for Labor Day in the sense that like so many movies of the 1930s and 1940s, much of the story involves working men in the setting of their jobs. (And reminds one of Slim-1937- which we covered here.) Sometimes the job is a theme of the movie, sometimes it is almost like another character in the movie, but if filmed today, the job would be relegated to only the setting of the story and not necessarily the meat of the story. In one sense, the common working man was given greater attention in movies back in Hollywood’s heyday, but in another sense, it is simply that the minutiae of everyday life was given greater attention back then. That is what makes films of that period so fascinating. They are like scrapbooks we can open and take our time and examine all the little things in the pictures, and have questions about and imagine all kinds of stories that are sidebars to the main story, but are just as interesting. One story inevitably leads to another.

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.

Wagon Train - "The Jenny Tannen Story" & This is Your Life - 1959

It is delightful to be reminded that even on the small screen, in a written-to-formula family-friendly 1950s western—there can be great performances.

“The Jenny Tannen Story” was the first of five episodes in which Ann Blyth appeared on the TV Western WagonTrain.  Here she plays two roles: a cold, aloof middle-aged woman and the spirited estranged daughter who crosses the continent to meet her.  There’s a lot in this episode for Ann to do, including sing, and it’s easy to see why she chose this script among previous others for this show that she’d refused.  Though her last movie, The Helen Morgan Story (1957), was released about a year and a half before this Wagon Train episode was filmed, she apparently felt no need to rush into any project, but continued to be choosy about her properties. 

She also had her third baby in the meantime, so she was a bit busy.

Long post.  Please do not read this on your iPads while you are driving.

She could not have known then that The Helen Morgan Story would be the last film she’d ever make—she certainly intended to make more—but at this time there coincidentally occurred an interesting period of reflection on her career in April 1959 when she was in the middle of filming this Wagon Train episode.  She was 30 years old, had made 32 films, worked since she was six years old, and already had a handful of guest appearances under her belt in the new medium of television.  She was about to have another TV appearance, unwittingly, as the honoree/victim of This is Your Life.

What must it be like for a mere 30-year old to look back upon her life and career, when one is normally just beginning?  That alone is a poignant irony, as if foreshadowing the end of her film career.

Presented April 1, 1959, host Ralph Edwards surprised Ann at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Los Angeles where she had expected to film a TV plea for the hospital’s annual fund drive.  The Ralph Edwards stunt was really supposed to have occurred a week earlier, but Ann foiled Mr. Edward’s program by getting sick.

Part of the notoriety of This is Your Life was the surprise element.  Just about all the honorees were surprised; most were gracious about it, but not everyone was happy to be center stage in what many critics believed to be a maudlin circus and an invasion of privacy.  Some actually did enjoy the experience.  I don’t know where Ann Blyth fits in that mob, but it’s funny that she managed to trip up snoopy Ralph Edwards and put a lot of people to a lot of trouble when a virus laid her low.

She began filming “The Jenny Tannen Story” on March 24^th, and the next day got sick.  Considering it was a wagon train in the nineteenth century, she’s lucky it didn’t turn out to be cholera or typhoid or the ague. 

Ralph Edwards scrambled to show a repeat on TV that he had in the can and put off the Ann Blyth episode, stalling her husband, who was in on the surprise, and all the guests who were supposed to show up and recall Ann’s life, which included some relatives who’d come over from Ireland.  This included a bagpipe-playing uncle, who disturbed the other guests at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with his constant practicing, in his room and in the lobby.  If you think bagpipes are loud in a parade, you should hear them in the next room.

“His incessant practicing kept the hostelry’s complaint desk busy for a whole week,” reported syndicated columnist Hal Humphrey.

According to a syndicated article by Buck Herzog, “It was rather a hectic week for people around Hollywood.”

Possibly nobody was more nerve-wracked than Ann’s husband, Dr. James McNulty, whose job was to fetch her from her long day at the studio and her covered wagon and deliver her to St. Joseph’s on time, still keeping it a secret.  She had volunteered to help many charities—even as a very young woman she was noted for devoting a huge part of her life to benefits—so one more request was not unusual, but she was bushed.  Her energy was low after a five-day virus, and she likely wanted to save herself for tomorrow's shoot.

According to Mr. Humphrey, Dr. McNulty pushed her, “You can’t let the Sisters down.  They’re expecting you.”

To which she is reported as replying, “Will they put that on my epitaph?”  Her sense of duty prevailed, and when she arrived and was shocked by Ralph Edwards and that bloody album in his arm, “My mouth fell open and stayed there.”

This was April 1^st.  Unfortunately, I’ve not seen the episode, but the This is Your Life official website lists the following guests:

Dennis Day, who was her brother-in-law (we’ll get back to Mr. Day down the road).  Mrs. Gertrude Gonzales was a childhood friend who reported on the occasion when Ann was severely injured in the toboggan accident, which we discussed here in our intro post.  Gladys Hoene was her teacher at the Universal school, whom we also discussed in our intro post.  David Immerman was an artist who revealed a portrait of Ann and her (at the time) three children, and the children were also presented on the show.  Teresa Lynch, her cousin from Ireland who at the time was helping to care for Ann's children, and Miss Lynch’s father, Thomas Dill Lynch, who was the notorious bagpipe player from Ireland.  Dressed in his kilt, he played on the show.

Madge Tucker Miller was the producer of Coast to Coast on a Bus, the radio show which gave Ann her start, and which we discussed in our intro post.  Ann’s beloved Uncle Pat and Aunt Catherine (Cis) Tobin, who came to live with her after the death of her mother, also mentioned in the intro post, were guests.  The party was rounded out by Ann’s longtime pal, fellow actress Jane Withers.

I don’t know how long they kept her up that night with all the hoopla, but the next day she was back at work on WagonTrain.  The Hal Humphrey article noted that she wanted to work more often, but that she was careful about her scripts.

“I don’t want to be just part of the background.  I want something to do.”  She remarked that she liked “The Jenny TannenStory” script because it gave her more substance, “When Louis B. Mayer ran things at MGM, he saw to it that the scripts were tailored more for women.  But now movies and TV turn out mostly stories about men.”

It would be a complaint voiced by many actresses over the next few decades.

But “The Jenny Tannen Story” is hers from fade in to fade out.  It was the final episode of season two, broadcast June 24, 1959.

We begin with a weird and ominous prologue.  We hear Ann’s trained lyric soprano soaring on the last line of “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls”, and see a lady performer on stage in a long shot, thrilling a packed San Francisco concert hall.  She is Jenny Tannen.  Next, we see Ann Blyth as Jenny from the back, standing atop a staircase, the toast of the town, with a champagne glass extended, returning a toast to her gentlemen admirers.  Too tipsy, or a sudden spell, she tumbles down the staircase.  Unconscious at the bottom, face-down, we see a man attempting to help her, and we see the dark blood when he pulls his hand away from her hidden face.  She has fallen on the champagne glass.

(By the way, I don’t know if this was used on purpose by the writer of the episode, Kathleen Hite, who had numerous TV credits to her name, including several Gunsmoke and The Waltons episodes, but there’s an old theatre superstition about the song, “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls,” which is from the opera The Bohemian Girl, written in 1843 by William Michael Balfe, lyrics by Alfred Bunn.  It is bad luck to sing this song in a theater unless you’re presenting it in that opera.  Poor Jenny Tannen was singing it alone as a concert piece.  She should have known better.  Fool.)

Cut to ten years later, and the wagon train, led by Major Ward Bond, stops at a watering hole.  There, we are greeted by another lilting song about “The Good Old Golden West” in the less operatic but still fulsome soprano of a playful young woman cheerfully drawing water by a river where the wagon train has stopped to rest.  Ann plays a double role as Phoebe, who is on her own, crossing the country to get to San Francisco to find her mother, Jenny Tannen, whom she has never seen.  She’s working as a “hired girl” for a family, earning her passage.  She’s the picture of loveliness, happy, optimistic, unafraid, and with that kerchief on her head, she looks like Cinderella.  You expect woodland creatures to come up to her and do her chores.

Phoebe has some bad luck, too, right off the bat, when she tumbles from the wagon and conks her head on a rock.  Ward Bond, the wagon master, rushes over, and in a nice reprise of grim images, we see blood from the back on her head smeared on his dirty old leather gauntlet.

Because she has nobody to look after her, and because he’s the star, Ward Bond takes her to a doctor in a nearby town.  She’s conscious, but suffering headaches and her vision is blurry.  Blackouts come and go.  Doc tells Ward Bond that there’s pressure in her skull and she’s going to go blind pretty soon.

Mr. Bond, and Gabby Hayes School of Sidekicks graduate Frank McGrath leave the wagon train and take Phoebe to San Francisco pronto so she can see her mother while she can still see.  Nobody’s told Phoebe about the diagnosis.

Ward Bond has a little trouble locating the now reclusive Jenny Tannen in the big city—she’s removed herself from society after her tumble down the stairs ten years ago—but he finally locates her big old Victorian house here on the back lot.  (We must have seen this house in dozens of other shows and movies, but I’m drawing a blank right now.  Let me know if you recognize it.) 

The wonderful character actor Ian Wolfe plays the properly dismissive butler whom Ward Bond manhandles to get in to see Jenny.  Jenny, holding court by herself in a dim parlor, consents to see him.  If only to save the butler’s life.

Now, this scene that plays out between Jenny Tannen and Ward Bond is, I’m sure, why Ann Blyth took this gig.  It’s terrific.  The writing is crisp and biting.  Brava, Kathleen Hite, also director Christian Nyby for setting up some intriguing shots and knowing when to let it play.

As Jenny Tannen, Ann is suspicious, sarcastic, cold and bitter, and deeply controlled.  Her hair is piled on her head and tinged with gray, the picture of an independent nineteenth century woman of a certain age, who has created walls around herself.  It is interesting that her daughter is meant to be perhaps in her late teens or early twenties and Ann Blyth, at 30 years old in real life, is smack between the ages of the fictional characters she plays.  The reach in either direction is easy for her.  The daughter’s voice is high and soft; the mother’s falls at a lower register, with a dry rustiness to it that suggests a person who does not converse much.  In manner and speech, you can easily believe them to be two different actresses.

I think it was your friend and mine Laura of Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings last year in a post comment who remarked that Ann Blyth’s voice changes from movie to movie.  It has since occurred to me that, apart from her radio training, perhaps in the same way a trained singer is able to change keys while singing, so she might also be able to change the key of her speaking voice.  It’s not something I think we run into that much with classic film stars, who were utilized by their respective studios to promote the brand of their own stardom, largely through gimmick.  Barbara Stanwyck, or Bette Davis, or Humphrey Bogart, for instance, or Katharine Hepburn—you can close your eyes while the movie is on and still know who the actors and actresses are.  You can’t, necessarily, with Ann Blyth.  Here she has three distinct voices: Phoebe, Jenny, and Jenny as a younger woman.

Ward Bond, pleased as punch that he found Phoebe’s mother, is abashed when she displays disinterest.  She refuses to see her daughter.  She sits in profile in the dim room, rolling her glance at him out of one stern eye. 

“I have only the barest recollection of having been a mother.”  She married young, unhappily, and ran away from her severe and controlling husband shortly after the child was born.  “Please, Major, please don’t ask me to manufacture an emotion I can’t feel.”

Her control is paramount to the power of the scene.  She never teeters into mawkish or overblown emotionality.  She keeps herself tightly reigned in, and we can easily believe that this is a woman who recalls her pregnancy and former life—and having abandoned her daughter—with complete disgust.

“We were very poor when we married, but that would have been bearable if there had been any love in our marriage.”  She throws him a dagger of a look, “There was none.”  She speaks these lines as one sickened.  Kathleen Hite must have pleased to hear her lines nailed with such eloquent matter-of-fact distaste. 

Ann seethes, throwing Ward Bond’s own shock in his face, “When I could feel no more shame of wanting a little joy in life, I left him and the child I had not wanted to bear him.”  Her voice rises and falls, grows threatening, taunting, and confessional.

Ward, exasperated because he wants his happy ending and he wants it now, blurts out to her that her daughter is going blind.  Jenny remains adamant that she will not see her, but in a businesslike way offers money and to put her in touch with doctors.  Her only bit of drama, a slice of her former showmanship, is to part the drapes and let a shaft of light in so that Ward Bond, and we, can see her facial scars.  This is what happens when you fall face downward on a champagne glass.  She does not want pity, her voice is sarcastic.  “I think we can spare Phoebe the sight of her mother.” 

Back at the hotel, Frank McGrath has decided Phoebe needs a night on the town, so he and Ward go out to buy her a gown.  Reminds me of when Henry Higgins and Col. Pickering are dressing Eliza Doolittle.  Ward is decidedly awkward about all this fashion stuff, but Frank has exquisite taste.  When next we see Phoebe resplendent in her gown, sophisticated with bare shoulders and her hair up, she is the belle of the ball.  Ward Bond and Miss Blyth waltz, while Ann sings “Tomorrow is Just a Day Away” (which your friend and mine, Caftan Woman can sing just as well, I’m sure.)

Ward Bond and Frank McGrath are wearing tuxes.  They clean up good.

Ward Bond has decided he’s not going to tell Phoebe he met her mother, but somebody in the ballroom remarks on the similarity between mother and daughter, and tells Phoebe where to find Jenny Tannen.  Cat’s out of the bag now.

By the time Ann and Ward are at the great lady’s house once more, awaiting the crusty butler to open the door, Ann’s not feeling too well.  Her eyesight’s fading fast, and it’s just occurred to her that maybe mom doesn’t want to see her and this was a dumb idea.  When she blacks out again, Ward has to carry her in and set her down on the sofa in the dim parlor.  When she comes to, she’s blind.  She was never told that it was going to come to this, but now she knows, and she’s panicking.

I really like Ward Bond in this episode, his craggy tenderness for the young woman, his fatherly gentleness with her.  Navigating this girl’s illness and her reunion with her mother has been worse on his nerves than any danger he’s faced in the Wild West.

Ward calms her down as her mother steps into the room.  Perceiving the situation, Jenny feels bold enough to risk a glance over the back of the sofa to look at her daughter.  We have a convenient placement of objects and furniture in the room to allow for both to be in the shot, but by now, we may very well have forgotten it’s the same actress.  The gimmick isn’t important to the story.

Phoebe’s heart sinks when she realizes the game is really up.  She never should have tried to see her mother, and she’s never going to see her anyway.  “I guess she just doesn’t love me, Major.  She never did.  I guess I had to come and be in her house to face up to it.  It’s better that I found out before I saw her, don’t you think?”  She’s is equally afraid of being a burden as she is afraid of how she will manage alone now that she is blind.

The real drama comes from her mother though, staring blankly at the girl with only the slightest flicker of emotion across her stony expression.  She’s coming face to face with the past she tried to run away from, and its horror crumbles into dust before her.  The bitterness and disgust of a loveless marriage, a pregnancy and child she did not want, are gone.  All that remains of what was so horrible in her memory is just a helpless young woman who is a complete stranger to her.

There is no hearts-and-flowers burst of love for the girl—something much more intriguing and realistic—a sense of relief in letting go of the past, and a clean slate with curiosity for the future that this girl may represent for her.

Jenny could have extended a hand to her—she’s close enough now to touch her and make her presence known—but resists, partly in caution, but also as if respecting the girl’s pride to not be pitied for her blindness even as her own pride would not let the world see her facial scars.

Their ultimate happy reunion—and of course there’s going to be one—happens at the hospital after the inevitable successful operation, for which Phoebe’s head did not need to be shaved and she requires no bandages.  Only once do we have a Patty Duke Show split-screen effect at the end, and I suspect this was due more to an obligatory demonstration, and reminder to the audience, that they were watching one actress in two roles.

The end seems a bit of an anticlimax, and ironically, might have been more powerful with a less immediate acceptance of each other.  Still, their reunion is what Ward Bond wants and so do we.  We may guess what mother and daughter have to look forward to now they have become a family.  What would Ann Blyth have to look forward to in her career now that This is Your Life decided she had reached a plateau at only 30 years old?

Having made her last movie, unknown to anyone at that time, a sort of plateau was reached, ironically and regrettably.

We will move ahead to what happened beyond this plateau--plenty did, an entirely new facet of her career, in fact--but not yet.  Come back next Thursday when we jump back to the spring of 1948: 19-year-old Ann demonstrates her versatility of voice performing in a stellar example of radio drama at its finest—Studio One and a gothic tale of suspense in “The Angelic Avengers”.

This Wagon Train episode of "The Jenny Tannen Story" may still be up at YouTube in two parts.  Part one is here. 
___________________________________________________ 

James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Winter 1965), p. 134.

Milwaukee Sentinel, syndicated article by Buck Herzog, April 21, 1959.

Opie, Iona and Moria Tatem, eds. A Dictionary of Superstitions (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 397.

Radford, Edwin and Mona August Radford.  The Encyclopedia of Superstitions (NY: Metro Books) p. 241

This is Your Life Official Website.

Toledo Blade, syndicated article by Hal Humphrey, June 22, 1959.

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