Oscar Profile #320: Ann Blyth

Born August 16, 1928 in Mount Kisco, New York to Irish-American parents, Ann Blyth’s parents split up when she was very young. She moved to Manhattan with her mother and sister, where they shared a walk-up apartment on East 31st Street and her mother took in ironing to make ends meet. A natural actress and trained singer with a lilting soprano, Blyth performed in radio plays as a child from 1935 to 1941 when she was cast as the daughter of Paul Lukas and Mady Christians in the award-winning Broadway play, Watch on the Rhine.

While on tour with the play in Los Angeles, Blyth was offered a contract with Universal Studios. She accepted and made her film debut third-billed behind Donald O’Connor and Peggy Ryan in the minor 1944 musical, Chip Off the Old Block. She followed it with similar roles in The Merry Monahans, Babes on Swing Street and Bowery to Broadway later that year. Then came her big break when Warner Bros. borrowed her to play Joan Crawford’s selfish daughter in Mildred Pierce.

A sensation in Mildred Pierce, the petite actress (all 5’2’’ of her) received an Oscar nomination for her performance. Warner Bros. borrowed her again for the lead in Danger Signal, but a skiing accident in which she broke her back put her out of commission for a year and a half and she was replaced by Faye Emerson. She returned to Universal in a supporting role in 1947’s Brute Force, but had a more substantial role on loan-out to MGM in that year’s Killer McCoy. 1948 saw her once again put to good use in A Woman’s Vengeance, Another Part of the Forest and Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid. In 1949 she starred opposite Bing Crosby in the box-office success, but critically lambasted Top O’ the Morning. She rebounded dramatically as the star of 1950’s Our Very Own opposite Farley Granger.

Three of Blyth’s five 1951 films, The Great Caruso opposite Mario Lanza, Thunder on the Hill opposite Claudette Colbert and I’ll Never Forget You opposite Tyrone Power, all for different studios, were major successes.

Now under contract to MGM, Blyth succeeded Kathryn Grayson as the studios pre-eminent female musical star in the likes of Rose Marie, The Student Prince and Kismet, while also starring in such dramatic films as All the Brothers Were Valiant and The King’s Thief. However, three 1957 box-office flops, Slander opposite Van Johnson, The Buster Keaton Story opposite Donald O’Connor and The Helen Morgan Story opposite Paul Newman, soon ended her big screen career.

Blyth kept before the public in sporadic TV appearances from 1959-1969 during which time she was extremely active in musical theatre. She slowed down considerably after that, making only two appearances each in the 1970s and 1980s. Her last appearance was in a 1985 episode of Murder, She Wrote.

Married to Dr. James McNulty, the brother of singer Dennis Day, in 1953, Blyth raised five children, all born between 1954 and 1963. Her husband passed away in 2007. At the age of 88, Ann Blyth is the third longest surviving Oscar nominated supporting actress behind Olivia de Havilland and Angela Lansbury. A book on her career was published in 2015.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

MILDRED PIERCE, directed by Michael Curtiz (1945)

Former child actress and lilting teenage soprano Blyth had already established herself as a prime example of Hollywood sweetness and light when she turned her screen persona on its head with her chilling portrayal of Joan Crawford’s selfish, amoral daughter in Crawford’s big comeback film which received six Oscar nominations and a win for Crawford. Blyth, nominated along with co-star Eve Arden as Crawford’s acerbic friend and fellow teenagers Angela Lansbury (The Picture of Dorian Gray) and Joan Lorring (The Corn Is Green), lost to veteran Anne Revere in National Velvet.

ANOTHER PART OF THE FOREST, directed by Michael Gordon (1948)

Blyth, who made her Broadway debut in Lillian Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine, had her only villainess role after Mildred Pierce in Hellman’s Forest as the younger version of Bette Davis’ Regina in this prequel to The Little Foxes. She smirks and schemes deliciously as the venal daughter of the even more vile Fredric March and sister of the rotten Edmond O’Brien and Dan Duryea. The only decent family member is Florence Eldredge as her mother. Blyth would obliterate her image here with her charming portrayal opposite William Powell in her next film, Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid.

THUNDER ON THE HILL, directed by Douglas Sirk (1951)

The climactic bell tower sequence in Sirk’s highly atmospheric period mystery predates Hitchcock’s Vertigo by seven years, but is just as thrilling. Claudette Colbert, in one of her best late career roles, is a nun at a convent hospital who sets out to prove the innocence of convicted murderer Blyth on the way to her execution during a flood. Both actresses acquit themselves well with a sterling supporting cast led by Gladys Cooper as Colbert’s Mother Superior. Blyth was equally memorable opposite Tyrone Power later in another 1951 period piece, in I’ll Never Forget You, the remake of Berkeley Square.

THE STUDENT PRINCE, directed by Richard Thorpe (1954)

Sigmund Romberg’s glorious operetta had been filmed only once before, as a late silent by Ernst Lubitsch with the score as background. Cast with Mario Lanza and Blyth as Prince Karl and Kathie, this first and thus far, only full musical version suffered a blow when Lanza was fired from the film and replaced with non-singer Edmund Purdom. Amazingly, the film doesn’t suffer as Purdom expertly mimes Lanza’s prerecorded singing of “Deep in My Heart, Dear” and more, opposite Blyth’s lilting soprano. They are ably supported by Edmund Gwenn, Louis Calhern, S.Z. Sakall, Evelyn Varden and more.

THE HELEN MORGAN STORY, directed by Michael Curtiz (1957)

Cast opposite rising star Paul Newman, under the direction of her Mildred Pierce director, Blyth gave one of her best performances as legendary singer Morgan who died of the effects of years of alcoholism in 1941. Unfortunately, the film suffered at the box-office due to its release just five months after a similarly titled Playhouse 90 TV version with Polly Bergen. It also suffered from the well-known fact that Blyth’s celebrated operatic voice wasn’t right for Morgan and she was dubbed by pop singer Gogi Grant. Sadly, this would be Blyth’s last big screen appearance, though she remained before the public for