Slander - 1957

Slander (1957) is a noble experiment, and if it fails to be as biting a drama on the scandal press as it could be, perhaps that is because it is difficult to make a tasteful movie about a distasteful subject.  It’s trying desperately to appeal to the better instincts of its audience.

That it also tries, at the same time, to indict the readers of scandal magazines—the movie-going audience—is a daring, but ultimately futile, tactic to legitimize the film’s message.  A lot of people bristle at any message in a movie, considering it preaching.  They like a clear-cut villain to shoulder all the blame and get his comeuppance in the end.  We have a villain here, and he does get foiled in the end.  But our villain does not, cannot shoulder all the blame for the evil in the story.  We must assume some of it.  The result is inevitably awkward.

Ann Blyth was rounding the corner on her 28^th birthday when she made this film, her last film for MGM under her contract.  It would be the first of her three final movies, all of them released in 1957.  Slander came out in January; The Buster Keaton Story, which we covered here, was released in May for Paramount, and finally, The Helen Morgan Story, for Warner Bros., which we will cover in weeks to come, released in October 1957.  With this flurry of activity, more films at one time than she had made in years, and for three different studios, it did not seem like her film career was winding down.  There was no handwriting on the wall, no way to predict she would be a “former movie star” soon at 29 years old.

Harrison Carroll, a syndicated columnist, visited the set while Slander was being filmed, and watched her confrontation scene with character actor Harold J. Stone.

After the shot is over, I remark to Ann that it is an unusual sort of role for her to play.  Her face becomes very serious.

“It is a difficult decision for the woman in the story to make,” she says, “And anyway,” she defends, “It gives me a different sort of a part.  Audiences get tired of you if you fall into a rut.  And, just as important, a performer also gets tired of being in a rut.”

Her previous film to this had been the musical, Kismet, which we discussed here, and which had capped a string of several films, musical and non-musical which put her in fairy-tale circumstances and fanciful costumes.  In Slander, however, she is the picture of unglamorous modern reality, a housewife making beds and preparing meals for a husband and son in a tiny New York apartment in the low-rent district, her costume a neat but nondescript housedress and a wary, anxious demeanor.  Her last three films would feature her in serious, even doleful roles that were mature, sedate, and emphatically told the audience and future potential producers that she had grown up.

Her husband here is Van Johnson, in one of his last starring roles, as an up and coming entertainer.  He is a puppeteer (his work with marionettes being done by famed puppeteers Bil and Cora Baird), who has just landed a plum job with his own children’s show on TV.  Van had a hardscrabble youth in a rough neighborhood, and his past will come back to haunt him.

Their young son is played by Richard Eyer, whom we saw here in Friendly Persuasion (1956), a natural and charming kid.  His goofy, cockeyed grin is sweet, and he is the sort of gosh-gee all-American boy who loves baseball, and gets a huge kick out of his father being a TV star, as it makes him top dog at school.  But there is a down side to fame, and young Richard will suffer for it.

Harold J. Stone is Van Johnson’s agent, a friend to the family and a loyal, but ineffectual barrier to the cruelties of public life.

Directed by Roy Rowland, who directed Ann in Killer McCoy (1947), which we discussed here, the film is a good attempt at delivering a socially conscious agenda, but falters when some of the dialogue goes terribly mawkish.  I don’t think Mr. Rowland’s work here is as good as it was with Killer McCoy, most of the camera work is fairly lackluster, but I would lay most of the blame on the script for the movie’s just missing the mark.

The opening credits show the title as a blot on screen, and the actors’ names awash in a nightmarish image of floating tabloid magazine covers.  We are given the impression of sordidness from the beginning.

Then Rowland sets his opening shot on the city, its canyons of brick and steel monuments to mankind that represent both wealth and poverty, depending upon the angle.  We settle in on wealth and power first, in the palatial Park Avenue apartment of Steve Cochran, who plays the editor/publisher of one of those dirty tabloid confession magazines.  We don’t know that yet.  At first, all we see is a well-dressed man, fastidious in manner and speech, who with extraordinary thoughtfulness, arranges the daily activities of his semi-invalid mother, played with seasoned, nuanced irascibility by Marjorie Rambeau.

He is dapper, polished, refined and deliciously unrushed.  But there is a seed of doubt about him planted for the viewer by his mother’s resentfulness toward him, and by what we may suspect is the false adoption of his well-groomed self-superiority.  There’s more to this guy, and it doesn’t take long to find out.

We follow him to his office, where the gloves come off and we see that he is the master of his own kingdom of hack journalists, losers on the edge of the profession who deal in dirt, secrets, even outright lies when it serves them.  But all is not well in Steve Cochran’s world.  He has been in business for two years, enjoying enormous profits, but now he has competitors, other magazines imitating his formula for spoon feeding scandal to their readers.  Cochran’s gentlemanly demeanor of the introductory scene is stripped away when we see his work, and his cutthroat manner.

“The public has about as much brains as a halibut steak.”

He has found his success in the public’s appetite for filth.  But to top his competitors, he needs a big new story, and has found it in a well-known actress named Mary Sawyer.  Interestingly, we never see Mary Sawyer in this film, and though not showing a character that is spoken about is usually a problem in film, in this case her not being seen is perhaps a way of illustrating the point that it does not matter who is smeared.  Anyone can be a victim.  All we know of this Mary Sawyer is that she has been an actress for a long time, and is currently appearing in an uplifting film called Song of Faith.  “In the minds of the American public, she’s practically a nun.” 

One tipster has supplied information that Mary Sawyer is not practically a nun and that she fell upon some sort of disgrace in her youth.  Someone who might be able to give the magazine more information is a person who knew her from way back when, grew up with her in their old neighborhood—Van Johnson.

From this point, Van Johnson and Ann Blyth are squeezed in the jaws of a vise of moral conscience.  Van must tell what he knows about Mary Sawyer to Steve Cochran’s magazine, or else Cochran will spill the beans on Van’s secret.

As a teenager, Van committed robbery and assault with a knife, and went to prison for several years.  If the public found out, his career as a performer on a kid’s TV show is over.  There are arguments between husband and wife about the logic of throwing Mary Sawyer to the wolves to save themselves. 

What might appear as mere screen melodrama to younger viewers today was really a hot issue when this film was made, and based on numerous factual cases.  One of the most famous of these was probably when the foremost of these new scandal magazines, Confidential, threatened to disclose Rock Hudson’s homosexuality to the public.  His agent stepped in and made a deal, feeding them info on his other client instead, newcomer Rory Calhoun, who had a past involvement in armed robbery and prison time as a teen.  

Gossip columns and magazines had been part of the Hollywood scene since the first reel was shot, but what had been fairly innocuous, if occasionally irritatingly intrusive, interest in the stars’ homes, hobbies, and romances, exploded in the post-war era as a sinister inquisition into the private lives of stars, a wildly cruel seek-and-destroy mission. Hollywood actors and actresses were attacked not merely on peccadilloes in their private lives, but for their politics, and sometimes created scandal where there was none to be found.  Confidential, and other magazines and columnists of this sort who were politically conservative had taken their cue from the infamous blacklist tactics and sought to sink the careers of Liberal-leaning actors, directors, and members of the film community.

Shirley MacLaine, in her first memoir, Don’t Fall Off the Mountain, recounts a run-in with one such trash columnist of the day, Mike Connolly of the Hollywood Reporter, who, apparently believing her affiliation with liberal causes required punishment, inferred that she had her nose fixed, had attempted suicide over an unhappy love affair, had undergone an abortion, and other lies.  Sufficiently fed up, and after consulting her attorney and bringing along her secretary as a witness, Ms. MacLaine marched into Connolly’s office and slapped him hard, twice, across the face.

Columnist Hedda Hopper, despite being known, and feared, for her own self-important brand of heavy handedness, called her and told her, “Why didn’t you knock him out cold at least?  As far as I’m concerned, you should be ashamed of yourself for not finishing him off completely.”

Everyone applauded Shirley MacLaine when she visited Chasen’s restaurant; former middleweight champ Rocky Graziano sent her a pair of boxing gloves; and she received many congratulatory telegrams by those in the industry, by the governor, and a humorous one from President John F. Kennedy. 

I think of Ms. MacLaine’s the-slap-heard-around-Hollywood during the scene where Van Johnson visits Steve Cochran in his office, and slaps him.  It’s a temptation to draw similarities with Cochran’s character to real-life figures working for the scandal mags, but they’re really just types, there were plenty of them, and megalomaniacs exist in every industry.

The upshot of all this nonsense was an ugly grab for power.  This is the template by which Steve Cochran wields the whip hand over Van Johnson.  Van, his wife and child, mean nothing to Cochran, but the end result of more power, more circulation is irresistible to him.

In this climate of real-life controversy, we might suggest that the studio was brave to make this film, throwing such a moralistic dart at these magazines.  However, we could also note that the story takes place in New York, with an unknown puppeteer and involves the world of TV.  It’s as if the studio pulled a punch on this one.  If Hollywood really wanted to tell the story as it was, they’d place the setting in their own backyard, they’d show a studio mogul or two throwing an innocent actor under the bus to quash a story about to be planted about someone more valuable to them and to stay in the magazines’ good graces, the way you fork over your lunch money to a bully.  That was the way the HUAC worked during the blacklist; that’s the way all power is achieved.

But Slander attempts to show more than how the rotten deal worked; it attempts to educate the audience that buying these magazines and reading them is not nice.  That’s a tougher message to sell.

There’s a secondary social blot here to examine, but it falls by the wayside, and that’s how our society tends to grab children in a headlock and feed them garbage.  The sponsors of Van Johnson’s kids’ show, who make breakfast cereal, have the most to lose—the most money, that is, especially when, as Van’s agent Harold J. Stone proudly announces, “Kids would eat carpet tacks if Jeff Martin told them to!”

The sponsors admit their nervousness over Van’s past, and frankly admit, “We’re trying to sell children.”  It’s about as opportunistic and unseemly as the scandal mags pushing dirt on a public dirty-minded enough to enjoy that stuff.

Not all enjoy it, and some look down on Steve Cochran—respected publishers who bar him from speaking on a television panel show, waiters and maître d’s who won’t serve his mother in swank restaurants, and even his mother, who wishes he would quit this racket.  Cochran just grows more defensive and more poisonous.

The movie skirts just shy of another big issue, and that is what truth worth knowing?  We may regard a movie star’s third marriage as his own business and not worth shouting about.  But if our congressman was, say, an abusive spouse or parent, wouldn’t we want to know?  That aspect of his personality may have nothing to do with balancing the fiscal budget, but most of us would feel ill to realize we voted for such a person, and would want to avoid voting for someone who, if not a saint, at least was not cruel or involved in illegal activities.

A wise old respectable editor, who is meant to represent the nice journalists, says of Cochran: “If our drinking water was being poisoned, none of us would think it funny.  Why should we laugh at something that is doing us the same sort of damage?”

Cochran tells his ashamed mother, “I’m giving the public something that they not only want, but something they need.”

Two sides of the coin, indeed, but the movie pulls back from any thoughtful debate, preferring to show us Cochran’s arrogant sneer, Van’s hunted look of fear, and all-American boy Richard Eyer’s silly grin. 

I’ve got to give you a spoiler here, because I really can’t discuss this film without it, so go down to the corner and get a paper if you don’t want to hear this.  Or a magazine.  A nice one.

Despite a wedge driven through his marriage because of this, and his career on tenterhooks, Van won’t give Steve Cochran the information.  In part, his decision not to fold is because of the shame he carries from his crime as a teen and his prison sentence.  He is deeply sorry for that and is determined not to carry any more shame in this life than what he’s already got.  That should be played up more; instead we are given only the picture of a decent man doing the decent thing.  Honorable, to be sure, but his motives are more than pure righteous stubbornness. He’s haunted.

In retaliation, Cochran prints the story, and the sponsors, horrified at the loss of sales of cereal, drop Van Johnson from the show.  His sponsor apologetically tells him, “The public always calls the tune.”

So true, which is why when we get inferior products, either in the form of entertainment or anything else we deserve it because we don’t demand better.

The cost of his marriage and career isn’t enough, and Van must suffer one more great sorrow: the death of his son.  The kids (a microcosm of the adult world with its own rules for bullying and swaying public opinion), turn on young Richard and tease him.  Distressed, he bolts out of the schoolyard and gets hit by a car in traffic.  He dies. 

On the one hand, it’s tempting to view this scene as really going overboard, as indeed, some critics of the day felt.  On the other hand, it’s so shocking and unexpected, just by itself the scene has immense power.  We may or may not draw a direct correlation to Steve Cochran’s bullying and the death of a little boy due to the boy’s own negligence, but we see the pattern of poison entering the minds of society and the minds of children that has far-reaching effects we cannot imagine.

The aftermath also gives Ann Blyth one of her most intense scenes.  She is at her mother’s apartment, sitting in an almost catatonic state, when Van Johnson, who has just heard the news about the death of their son, rushes to her.  She had been on her way to pick him up from school when the tragedy happened.  She thaws out of her shock, and it is as painful for us to watch her allow herself to grieve as it must be for a woman to smack hard against the realization her little boy isn’t coming home anymore.  When Van kneels to embrace her, she gulps slurred words in broken sentences of helpless, almost apologetic explanation to him, and wails, a heartbreaking moan, repeatedly calling her son’s name.  A very real and powerful scene.  She goes deep here, and it is deftly played.

Van Johnson is nearly sick trying to hold himself together.

The dénouement of this is for Van to appear on the nice editor’s TV panel show to have his say on things, and though his illusion to his son being poisoned by the gossip is an analogy as true as it is emotional, unfortunately the rest of his cautionary speech limps along, weakly written.

Because we have to have an ending to all this horror, agent Harold J. Stone catches up with the sorrowing Van and Ann, and tells them that the TV station is being flooded with phone calls of support, that the public is determined not to buy anymore of these kinds of magazines.  Hurray.

It would have been a better film, and a better service to an impressionable movie audience, to simply have them walk down a street, see the latest issue with their son’s grisly death splashed across the cover, and a line of eager customers waiting to buy it.  That’s not the kind of thing we might want to see, but it would be the truth.

Though there are still a few tabloids knocking around today, for the most part they have been rendered harmless by their ridiculous stories of Hitler’s brain being kept in a laboratory or celebrities being abducted by space aliens.  Truly, only idiots buy them.  However, the real reason we have few of the old-time scandal mags is that this kind of reporting is no longer considered gossip.  It’s considered news.  Dirt, and at the very least, fascination with the superficial and shallow, has gone mainstream. The line between good solid journalism and schlock has blurred, and not only the public, but the professionals in journalism don't seem to know the difference anymore.

A few more good scenes:

When Ann and Van lie in their beds at night, unable to sleep, are acutely aware the other is awake, but are loathe to continue the fight they had earlier in the evening, and any words, even ones of comfort, are difficult now.

Van’s tortured struggle with his past and his guilt, and his pained refusal to be anything less than the decent man he wants to be.  He loses everything in the attempt, but still seems like a champion. 

Marjorie Rambeau’s caustic sniping at her son, and her futile, and melodramatic, visit to Ann Blyth after the death of the little boy to determine for herself if the cause of his death was the smear campaign.  Ann lets her have it between the eyes.

Then Miss Rambeau’s careful, pained walk down the steps of their brownstone, thumping with her cane, shoulders slumped in sorrow, just an unknown old lady to Van and Mr. Stone as they rush past her.

The triumph, the fire in Cochran’s eyes when Van Johnson calls him out on TV, because he knows it will mean even more publicity for his magazine.  Steve Cochran is very good in this role, especially as this is not the usual sort of bad guy.

One may feel the story jumped the shark when Steve Cochran is shot to death by his own mother, like a bad seed she must kill for the greater good.  Since he had made a remark earlier in the film about someone being driven to a suicide attempt over one of his previous smear jobs, perhaps it would have been more in keeping with the flow of the story to have his mother commit suicide over her son’s activities.  Some grisly end for Cochran is generally what would happen in these scenarios, though the reality is nothing would ever happen to him to make him regret his actions.

Here’s the trailer for Scandal:

A review in the Florence (Alabama) Times wrestles with the telling of this story and the idea that, like Steve Cochran’s gleaming eyes at the kill, may have given more power to the scandal mags by giving them importance:

For what is an obvious attempt at retaliation at one of Hollywood’s most feared foes, Scandal could hardly be classified as a mortal blow.

In fact, this middle bracket drama…might not only have missed the target altogether, but may have inadvertently given aid, if not comfort, to the enemy…where even the hardest knocks boomerang into boosts.

Ann Blyth took a more gentle, if no less earnest, course to address the scandal mags.  In February 1955 she was called upon to be hostess, and Pat O’Brien was master of ceremonies, at the film industry’s fourth annual Lenten Mass and Communion breakfast.  Around 1,500 film workers attended at the Blessed Sacrament Church in Hollywood, where Mass was celebrated by James Francis Cardinal McIntyre (who had performed Ann’s marriage ceremony two years previously – see this post).

She delivered a speech that she and her husband, Dr. James McNulty, wrote together.  It was reprinted in several newspapers afterward, and even today you can still find the tale of it's enthusiastic reception bouncing around the Internet.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  And since then one million billion words have been said.

There are words that sing and jump and skip and dance: little girl words.  And there are words with fun in their eyes and things in their pockets and their hair mussed: little boy words.

There are young words.  And there are wise old words with a glint in their eyes.  There are words wide-eyed with wonder, soft as a baby’s feet, strong as a baby’s twining fingers.

There are steel words and iron words; thrusting, stinging, lancet words; cruel blades of words.  And there are sweet words; soothing, unguent words: father, mother words: the words that raise you like a child again, and hoist you on their shoulders.

Words are everything that man is; everything he can be-they are everything he should not be.  They are his slave; they are his master.  In a world of mercy, of the word of God, man is at the mercy of words.

In the beginning was the word—all the infinite wonder and beauty and truth and love and life that God is, uttered in one divine word.  This is the truth.  And, by its nature, every word should be a reflection of the divine Truth.

I plead with you, gentlemen of the press to remember that words are written about men, and read by men.  I plead that infidelity is not new—it isn’t even news.  That a Decalogue broken on the front page helps no one and hurts many.  That sensationalism and emotionalism and carnalism are a direct appeal to man’s baser part and the betrayal of a trust.

You are the light bearers, men of the press.  Don’t burlesque man; lead him.  You have the words.  You have the truth.  Lead not the child of God into darkness.

Come back next Thursday for Ann Blyth and Robert Mitchum, adversaries and lovers in the Korean War in One Minute to Zero (1952).

A love triangle: Ann, Robert Mitchum, and the box on which she is standing.

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Catholic Herald, (London, England) February 25, 1955, p. 1.

The Florence (Alabama) Times, February 19, 1957.

MacLaine, Shirley.  Don’t Fall Off the Mountain. (NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 1970) pp 108-110.

The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, May 26, 1956, letter to the editor by G. E. Grezaud, p. 16.

The Warsaw (Indiana) Times-Union, September 1, 1956, syndicated column by Harrison Carroll, p. 12.
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 THANK YOU....to the following folks whose aid in gathering material for this series has been invaluable:  EBH; Kevin Deany of Kevin's Movie Corner; Gerry Szymski of Westmont Movie Classics, Westmont, Illinois; and Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear.  And thanks to all those who signed on as backers to my recent Kickstarter campaign.  The effort failed to raise the funding needed, but I'll always remember your kind support.

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TRIVIA QUESTION:  I've recently been contacted by someone who wants to know if the piano player in Dillinger (1945-see post here) is the boogie-woogie artist Albert Ammons. Please leave comment or drop me a line if you know.




mel said...

I consulted David Meeker's authoritative and exhaustive book "Jazz On The Screen - a Jazz And Blues Filmography" (2008) and Albert Ammons is not mentioned as performing in Dillinger (1945).

So my educated guess is a negative.

November 7, 2014

Thanks, Mel.

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UPDATE:  This series on Ann Blyth is now a book - ANN BLYTH: ACTRESS. SINGER. STAR. -

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The audio book for Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is now for sale on Audible.com, and on Amazon and iTunes.

Also in paperback and eBook from Amazon, CreateSpace, and my Etsy shop: LynchTwinsPublishing.

 "Lynch’s book is organized and well-written – and has plenty of amusing observations – but when it comes to describing Blyth’s movies, Lynch’s writing sparkles." - Ruth Kerr, Silver Screenings

"Jacqueline T. Lynch creates a poignant and thoroughly-researched mosaic of memories of a fine, upstanding human being who also happens to be a legendary entertainer." - Deborah Thomas, Java's Journey

"One of the great strengths of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is that Lynch not only gives an excellent overview of Blyth's career -- she offers detailed analyses of each of Blyth's roles -- but she puts them in the context of the larger issues of the day."- Amanda Garrett, Old Hollywood Films

"Jacqueline's book will hopefully cause many more people to take a look at this multitalented woman whose career encompassed just about every possible aspect of 20th Century entertainment." - Laura Grieve, Laura's Miscellaneous Musings''

"Jacqueline T. Lynch’s Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is an extremely well researched undertaking that is a must for all Blyth fans." - Annette Bochenek, Hometowns to Hollywood

Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. 
by Jacqueline T. Lynch

The first book on the career of actress Ann Blyth. Multitalented and remarkably versatile, Blyth began on radio as a child, appeared on Broadway at the age of twelve in Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine, and enjoyed a long and diverse career in films, theatre, television, and concerts. A sensitive dramatic actress, the youngest at the time to be nominated for her role in Mildred Pierce (1945), she also displayed a gift for comedy, and was especially endeared to fans for her expressive and exquisite lyric soprano, which was showcased in many film and stage musicals. Still a popular guest at film festivals, lovely Ms. Blyth remains a treasure of the Hollywood's golden age.

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A new collection of essays, some old, some new, from this blog titled Movies in Our Time: Hollywood Mimics and Mirrors the 20th Century is now out in eBook, and in paperback here.

Ann Blyth's Concert Career

 

Where has Ann Blyth been all these years?

This was the lead to Stephen Holden’s New York Times review of Ann Blyth’s concert with Bill Hayes at the famed and elite Rainbow and Stars atop Rockefeller Center in November 1992.

…she seemed so physically unchanged from her 1950s self that it was possible to imagine she had been frozen for the last 30 years and had thawed herself out for the occasion.

Their act was called “An Elegant Evening of Beautiful Music,” a collection of theatre and movie songs.

The kind of show that rarely plays in Manhattan nowadays.  Suburban dinner-theater entertainment aimed at audiences over 60, it trades heavily in nostalgia toward these show-business veterans who have aged well and seek only to spread sugarcoated cheer….Miss Blyth’s lyric soprano is still in good condition.

Today we discuss Ann Blyth’s “third act” career as a singer.  I use the term “third act,” though the more common dictum “second act” refers to a career adopted, or revived, late in life.  It stems from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s hard luck observation, “There are no second acts in American life.”  Well, there weren’t for him, poor man, but for others…a second act, a second chance at life, a revival is sometimes possible.

Ann Blyth had more than a second act, she had a “third act,” her singing, which took her beyond both her screen and stage career, in her resilient soprano that is like a metaphor for her resilient career: surprisingly strong, stunning it its loveliness, and carefully controlled.  Her “third act” was not so much a new venture as a reprise.  She always was a singer—before she became a movie star, before she even became an actress, she was a singer.  At six years old, she auditioned for a children’s radio program in New York City, and stood upon a box to reach the microphone, and sang the late hit “Lazy Bones” by Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael.

Years later she would be required to stand on a box to kiss Gregory Peck.  Some of the best things in life are just out of reach.

Unless one perseveres.

She sang, and acted, on many radio programs as child, before her life-changing audition for Lillian Hellman’s Broadway play, Watch on the Rhine.  When her film career was launched in her early teens, she continued to perform as a singer for charity venues on her own time.  Donating her talent to needy causes had a secondary effect: it gave her experience singing live in front of an audience, even if it was just 50 people in a church hall. Gradually, those audiences became larger.  She traveled many miles to perform for them.

Syndicated columnist Sheilah Graham wrote of one such benefit: 

 Ann Blyth is one of the reasons why people like Hollywood.  She is just back from doing a swell show for the Loretto Heights College in Denver.  

Perhaps her largest audience in these years was the combined theater and radio audience who heard her at the 1949 Academy Awards, held March 23, 1950 at the RKO Pantages Theatre, where she sang one of the nominated songs, “My Foolish Heart” in a low-cut red gown.  In one respect, she was announcing her availability as a singer in the industry for those who had forgotten, or else never knew of, her talent, and throughout the 1950s took advantage of other opportunities to sing.  

She sang on Louella Parson’s radio show in September 1951.  After suffering the obligatory and heavily scripted “interview” on whom she was, or was not, dating, Ann soars in a song called “My Golden Harp” to the tune of “Danny Boy” or “The Londonderry Air.”  One imagines it was a payoff for the indignity.

Other radio shows gave her chances to sing, and television would give her a few more, including another Oscar® program in 1954, which we discussed in this previous post.  The fifties was a great era for musical variety on TV.  Among the shows on which she sang were The Perry Como Show, The Dinah Shore Show, The Fisher-Gobel Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show, and The Jack Parr Show.  

It was also during this decade that Ann Blyth took an unusual (for a movie star) and brave plunge into nightclub performing.  In the late summer of 1954, still a new mother, her first baby only a few months old, she tested a new singing act for a few nights at the Tops Nightclub, a Streamline Moderne popular spot on the Pacific Coast Highway in San Diego.  

She wowed the crowd, and then brought the act up to Sacramento for a weekend at the state fair in September, all preparatory to opening at the Sahara in Las Vegas in late September for a month’s run.  The Los Angeles Times reported:

Ann Blyth proved that night-club entertainment can be something utterly new and different when she made her debut here tonight.  She received thunderous applause when she wound up her headline singing and intimate conversation with her audience at the Sahara.

 We discussed this nightclub act a bit more in this previous post.

Ann came down with laryngitis during that engagement, and though these comic press photos indicate her brother-in-law Dennis Day came to minister to her sore throat, he really helped out by filling in for her on stage.

There was to have been another appearance at the Sahara two years later in 1956, but MGM, her home studio at the time, called her back for the film Slander (1957), which we’ll discuss next week. 

But it was back to the nightclub circuit in 1958, when after The Helen Morgan Story (1957), which we’ll discuss in a future post, turned out to be her last film.  In September 1958 she opened a new act the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles.  Louella Parsons was in the audience.

Ann Blyth, so refreshingly sweet and beautiful at the Coconut Grove joined us after her show.  She said every night she sings a song about her husband, Dr. Jim McNulty, and that night he was sitting ringside when suddenly she looked and he was gone.  You guessed it—a call from the hospital sent him scurrying there to deliver a baby.

She had broken in the act the previous weekend in Phoenix, Arizona, where again, her obstetrician husband couldn’t make it to opening night because the stork interfered.  The entertainment press at this time conjectured how a two-career marriage and a growing family would work.  

The Los Angeles Times ran a brief blurb to announce the debut of the act that read more like a dossier than a feature story:

Subject: Ann Blyth, singer-film star, female.

Makes local nightclub debut at Coconut Grove, Ambassador Hotel on Wednesday.  Only other such appearance at Sahara in Las Vegas three years ago.  Plans to make club dates another facet of her career.

Sounds like Sgt. Joe Friday wrote that one.

Her planning to make club dates another facet of her career stemmed, in the wake of no upcoming films after The Helen Morgan Story, from practicality as well as her desire to sing.  From a syndicated column in September by James Bacon, which teases Ann as Hollywood’s “little lady” becoming a “saloon singer,” he quotes Ann:

“All the movie scripts offered wanted me to go to Europe and for such long times.  I just felt that I couldn’t be separated from my family that long.”

After the Coconut Grove, Ann would take this act to the Sahara in Las Vegas, and then to New York and Miami Beach, Florida.

In the early sixties, Ann re-joined the theatre world in what would be three decades of touring musical theatre performances, which we covered in this previous post.  Her re-emergence on the concert scene came in the mid-1980s.

In 1985 she teamed up with her brother-in-law, Dennis Day, for a show in Downey, California, that was so well received, they did an encore performance at El Camino College in Torrance, California.  Perhaps there might have been more concerts with Dennis Day, beloved longtime radio sidekick of Jack Benny, but sadly, Mr. Day became ill and was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease.  He died in 1988.

Ann called upon Bill Hayes to be her singing partner in a series of concerts that would continue for another decade.  Mr. Hayes had appeared with her in Brigadoon on stage in the late 1960s, and most recently had starred opposite Ann in Song of Norway in March 1985.  Many will remember Bill Hayes from his long run on the daytime drama Days of Our Lives.

Together, they joined Ann’s first screen partner, Donald O’Connor, for a two-week stint at The Dunes in Las Vegas in June 1992, then Hayes and Ann continued to take their show to several spots across the country, culminated by a four-week engagement at the exclusive Rainbow and Stars in New York City in late October through November 1992.  At the time she was 64 years old.  For a really stunning publicity photo of Bill Hayes and Ann Blyth together, have a look at Mr. Hayes’ website here.

And here:

Courtesy Bill Hayes, used by permission.

To promote their concert, Ann and Bill Hayes appeared as guests on Casper Citron’s radio talk show on New York’s WOR on November 14, 1992.  The studio was in the same building where Ann started in radio as a six-year-old child singer.  The poignancy of her bringing her career full circle in this very place seemed lost on Mr. Citron, who was a former politician, former theatre critic, and longtime radio host in New York.  He had interviewed many famous people, and yet one is struck by his lack of preparation and frank ignorance in this interview.  One is also struck by Bill Hayes’ gallant explanations to their host on Ann’s accomplishments, when she would not toot her own horn.  Both Bill and Ann were quite patient with their host who wandered off track many times.  Below are a few brief excerpts of a transcript of the interview:

AB:     We do a variety of music from Broadway and Hollywood.  I think a lovely potpourri, songs that everyone can certainly remember, songs that everyone has hummed or sung or whistled.

CC:      Your career in films was not as a singer?

AB:     Well, it didn’t start out that way, that’s correct.  And really, when I did my test, they said, “What else do you do?” and, of course, I said, “Well, I also sing.”  But it wasn’t until…

CC:      Did you sing in The Helen Morgan Story?

AB:     No, they used someone else’s voice, Gogi Grant, who has a completely different sound, a marvelous voice, to be sure, but a very pop sound and for some reason the studio at that time felt that that would be an added, an added dimension for some reason to that movie.

……………..

BH:     But Casper, Ann really did sing in a lot films.  It was just The Helen Morgan Story that…

CC:      What was your biggest singing role?

AB:     Well, I…

CC:      Pardon my stupidity on this.

AB:     I think I would have to say The Student Prince, and…

CC:      Oh, that’s a big singing role.

…………………….

CC:      Do any of these people that you have worked with through the years come up to Rainbow and Stars?

AB:     Oh, indeed, and that’s half of the pleasure of what we do, is, of course, seeing people that perhaps you haven’t had a chance to see in many, many years—the nature of our business being such that you find yourself on one coast and so many of your friends are someplace else.

………..

BH:     We do two different shows.  We do a dinner show and an after-theatre show.  The dinner show is at 9:00.  People come at 7:00 or 7:30 and have dinner, and we work from 9:00 to 10:00.  And then they come after the theatre, we do an 11:00, excuse me, 11:15 show.

CC:      How many times a week?

BH:     We do that five nights a week, so we’re off Sundays and Mondays, and we play Tuesday through Saturday.  And it’s a thrill.  It’s a breathtaking view.

CC:      That’s 10 times a week.  That’s even more than Broadway.

AB:     But it’s such lovely music.  We really do have a good time.  It is a lot of singing, but we do have a good time.  And the view is spectacular.

CC:      It always has been.

AB:     Here I am back in the very same building that I started in.

CC:      A number of years later.  We don’t ask…

AB:     Yes.

CC:      …how many.

AB:     Well, I’m just glad that I’m here.

Some of those old friends mentioned above who turned up in the audience were Claire Trevor; Arlene Dahl; Imogene Coca, with whom Bill Hayes appeared on the wonderful classic TV Your Show of Shows; Ruth Warrick, with whom Ann appeared in Swell Guy (1946); which we discussed here, and her old pal, Roddy McDowall.

Syndicated columnist Liz Smith was also in the audience:

Ann Blyth, who was a movie star when the words really meant something, looks incredible.  Time seems literally to have stood still for her—and not only physically.  The star’s soprano is as lilting and steady as when she was knocking out those MGM musicals…

Blyth, expertly partnered with Bill Hayes, even perched on a piano a la Helen Morgan and belted out “Why Was I Born?”

The room was awash with nostalgia.

Ann and Bill Hayes continued sporadic touring with their show, popping up Florida, Illinois, and a cruise ship from Acapulco to San Francisco.

More gigs in the mid-1990s partnered her with John Raitt, with whom she performed in Los Angeles.  In October 1994, they appeared at the Academy Plaza Theatre for two hour-long concerts, along with Ann’s longtime music director and accompanist, Harper MacKay, on piano.  They performed solos and duets from many musicals, including teaming up on “If I Loved You” from Carousel.

What has become known as The Great American Songbook has achieved a certain degree of “cool” these days, but twenty and thirty years ago was still in a nadir patch of being termed “old people music.”  Some of the articles about their performances have a slightly condescending tone to them. 

Ann Blyth, as on many occasions and in many circumstances of her life, seemed above it all, and serenely took the path, and musical form, that was right for her.

From the Los Angeles Times article by Libby Slate promoting her concert with Mr. Raitt in October, 2004:

Although they have sung many of Sunday’s selections numerous times, both say the songs remain fresh.  “In almost every phrase, there’s such emotion that it would be difficult not to feel it when you sing it, and hopefully, pass it on to the audience,” Blyth says.  “It’s the best way to communicate to those who are perfect strangers; suddenly, they’re not strangers any more.”

Ann Blyth continued into the twenty-first century with an act she performed with her accompanist, singing and telling stories of her film career on the woman’s club circuit in support of charities, once again bringing a facet of her career full circle.  In May 2000 she performed for an audience of 500 at a Holiday Inn in Hanover Township, Pennsylvania, to raise funds for the Visiting Nurse Service of Sacred Heart Hospital, opening with “With a Song in My Heart.”

From the Express-Times of Easton, Pennsylvania: 

Her voice, after nearly six decades of professional activity, was a little rough around the edges, but pleasant, warm and surprisingly powerful for such a tiny person; she wears a size four.  Her upper range is clear and easy, and she holds each phrase for its full value.

She was 71 at the time, and mimicked herself as a small child singing “Lazy Bones” for her very first audition, and playfully following the trajectory of her early career, sang “Peg O’ My Heart,” which was the song she sang for her audition prior to being signed by Universal.

We’ve noted previously that Ann sang at the 2009 Thalians Ball, along with other Hollywood stars, in Los Angeles in support of that charitable organization’s raising funds for children with mental health issues.  These types of charitable venues not only serve the community, but they seem to be, these days, the most receptive to aging singers.  It’s one thing for The Great American Songbook to be accepted by a young person in the form of a young entertainer, like Michael Bublé, or even someone older but tolerated as sufficiently hip, like Tony Bennett, but a roster of old tunes sung by old singers for more than a good cause is still more than the apparently hipper-than-thou can take.  In October 2005, Stephen Holden of the New York Times panned a concert of songs from the movies at Lincoln Center, an over-long event (some three-and-a-half hours)…

– which featured mostly second-and-third-tier performers along with reminiscences by semi-and-semi-semi legends like Ann Blyth, Arlene Dahl, Sally Ann Howes, Jane Powell and Margaret Whiting, strove to connect old-time Hollywood glamor with the New York cabaret world.  

The master of ceremonies was Turner Classic Movies’ own Robert Osborne.  

With the exception of Ms. Powell’s, and to a lesser extent, Ms. Blyth’s, the reminisces of the semi-legends consisted of dull, over long mixtures of trivia, sentimentality, and self-glorification. 

Bad reviews come and go, and so do bad reviewers, as much as bad performances.  The music lingers, at least for those who like it, and for one lady who has sung it all her life.

“I’ve always enjoyed the joy, the excitement, the pure pleasure of singing this music.  It’s so easy to listen to, it stays with you.  Isn’t any art supposed to do that—to climb inside you and give you a wonderful feeling?”

Come back next Thursday when we return to Ann Blyth’s movie career and discuss the power of the press to do more than critique in Slander (1957).

PASS THE WORD!!!!!   Looking for photos and shared memories of the recent TCM Cruise regarding Ann Blyth's talks.  This material will be used for my upcoming book on Ann Blyth's career.  Please contact me at: JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com.

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Bill and Susan Hayes.com - http://www.billandsusanhayes.com

Chicago Tribune, October 28, 1990, special article to the Tribune by Bill Hayes.

Daily Breeze, (Torrance, California), March 1, 1985, article by Sandra Kreiswirth; October 19, 1922, article by Sandra Kreiswirth, p. C1.

Daily News of Los Angeles, June 21, 1992, “Hayes of ‘Days’ Fame Hits the Road in Song-Filled Gala, by Lynda Hirsch, p. L25.

The Express-Times (Easton, Pennsylvania), May 4, 2000, “Actress Ann Blyth captures memorable career in songs – She is most known for ‘Mildred Pierce’ by Cynthia Gordon, p. B4.

The Los Angeles Times, September 22, 1954, “Ann Blyth Wins Ovation at Sahara in Las Vegas” by Edwin Schallert, p. B6; August 31, 1958, p. D1; June 23, 1988, article by Edward J. Boyner; October 14, 1994, “Playing Their Songs: Concert by John Raitt and Ann Blyth will target a crowd that craves ‘hummable’ music,” by Libby Slate.

Milwaukee Sentinel, September 10, 1958, syndicated article by Louella Parson, p. 6, part 3.

The Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania), May 4, 2000, “Ann Blyth Appears at an Annual Benefit That Raises Money for Children’s Causes in the Lehigh Valley,” by Christian D. Berg, p. B02.

New York Times, November 3, 1992, review by Stephen Holden; October 22, 2005, by Stephen Holden.  

Ocala Star-Banner (Florida), September 2, 1958, syndicated article by James Bacon, p. 3.

The Spokesman Review (Spokane, WA), syndicated article by Sheilah Graham.

St. Petersburg Times (Florida), September 18, 1994, “Onetime Oscar Nominee Picks Stage Over Screen” by Jay Horning, p. 12A.

Toldeo Blade, November 13, 1992, syndicated column by Liz Smith, p. P-1.



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 THANK YOU....to the following folks whose aid in gathering material for this series has been invaluable:  EBH; Kevin Deany of Kevin's Movie Corner; Gerry Szymski of Westmont Movie Classics, Westmont, Illinois; and Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear.  And thanks to all those who signed on as backers to my recent Kickstarter campaign.  The effort failed to raise the funding needed, but I'll always remember your kind support.

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TRIVIA QUESTION:  I've recently been contacted by someone who wants to know if the piano player in Dillinger (1945-see post here) is the boogie-woogie artist Albert Ammons. Please leave comment or drop me a line if you know.


mel said...

I consulted David Meeker's authoritative and exhaustive book "Jazz On The Screen - a Jazz And Blues Filmography" (2008) and Albert Ammons is not mentioned as performing in Dillinger (1945).

So my educated guess is a negative.

November 7, 2014

Thanks, Mel.

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UPDATE:  This series on Ann Blyth is now a book - ANN BLYTH: ACTRESS. SINGER. STAR. -

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The audio book for Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is now for sale on Audible.com, and on Amazon and iTunes.

Also in paperback and eBook from Amazon, CreateSpace, and my Etsy shop: LynchTwinsPublishing.

 "Lynch’s book is organized and well-written – and has plenty of amusing observations – but when it comes to describing Blyth’s movies, Lynch’s writing sparkles." - Ruth Kerr, Silver Screenings

"Jacqueline T. Lynch creates a poignant and thoroughly-researched mosaic of memories of a fine, upstanding human being who also happens to be a legendary entertainer." - Deborah Thomas, Java's Journey

"One of the great strengths of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is that Lynch not only gives an excellent overview of Blyth's career -- she offers detailed analyses of each of Blyth's roles -- but she puts them in the context of the larger issues of the day."- Amanda Garrett, Old Hollywood Films

"Jacqueline's book will hopefully cause many more people to take a look at this multitalented woman whose career encompassed just about every possible aspect of 20th Century entertainment." - Laura Grieve, Laura's Miscellaneous Musings''

"Jacqueline T. Lynch’s Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is an extremely well researched undertaking that is a must for all Blyth fans." - Annette Bochenek, Hometowns to Hollywood

Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. 
by Jacqueline T. Lynch

The first book on the career of actress Ann Blyth. Multitalented and remarkably versatile, Blyth began on radio as a child, appeared on Broadway at the age of twelve in Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine, and enjoyed a long and diverse career in films, theatre, television, and concerts. A sensitive dramatic actress, the youngest at the time to be nominated for her role in Mildred Pierce (1945), she also displayed a gift for comedy, and was especially endeared to fans for her expressive and exquisite lyric soprano, which was showcased in many film and stage musicals. Still a popular guest at film festivals, lovely Ms. Blyth remains a treasure of the Hollywood's golden age.

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A new collection of essays, some old, some new, from this blog titled Movies in Our Time: Hollywood Mimics and Mirrors the 20th Century is now out in eBook, and in paperback here.