Ann Blyth - Two Stage Dramas

Author's collection.

Two stage dramas, seventeen years apart in Ann Blyth’s career, tell of her acting range and of how she mined opportunities for a variety of work.  One occurred in 1950 when she was well established in her film career and a star just shy of her 22^ndbirthday.  The second occurred a decade after her last film, when, though still a working actress on TV guest roles and in summer musical theatre around the country, she was considered, at 38, to be flying under the radar for her absence on the big screen.

The first play: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at the La Jolla Playhouse in La Jolla, California, in August, 1950.  The second: Frederick Mott’s thriller Wait Until Dark at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago, 1967.

With her latest film released, Our Very Own (1950), which we covered here, the year 1950 brought new adventures, and challenges, for Ann Blyth that gave her a break from her film work.  One of these was her first time singing at the Academy Awards, which we'll cover in a future post.  Another was a week’s engagement at the La Jolla Playhouse, founded by actors Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire, and Mel Ferrer, which we talked about here in this previous post.

It had been seven years since Ann had trod the boards, having come to Hollywood via the national touring company in Lillian Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine, in the role of Babette, which Ann originated on Broadway.  We discussed that in our intro post to this series on Ann Blyth’s career here.  Ann was a child of 12 when she won her role in that prestigious play. 

Though Hollywood scavenged a lot of actors from the theater, the seven-year contract rarely released them back to that other world.  The La Jolla Playhouse, with its limited summertime schedule, offered a chance for stage-starved actors to put a toehold back in that other world, if only briefly.

Photo Modern Screen, November, 1950 (public domain)

Mel Ferrer, Millard Mitchell, Ann Blyth, Marshall Thompson

Our Town featured Millard Mitchell as the stage manager, with Ann as Emily, opposite Marshall Thompson as George.  Beulah Bondi as Ann’s mother, and Edgar Buchanan rounded out the top-notch cast of Hollywood escapees.  Mel Ferrer directed the show, performed at the La Jolla High School Auditorium.  Also in the cast were O.Z. Whitehead, Esther Somers, Raymond Greenleaf, Clarence Straight, Jay Barney, Frank Conlan, Elizabeth Slifer, and Ricky Barber.

In a review by Katherine Von Blon for the Los Angeles Times, the scene where Ann as Emily returns as a ghost to relive a happy birthday morning from her past is described as “almost unbearably moving.”

Exquisite Ann Blyth demonstrated rare and sensitive gifts as an actress.  There were few dry eyes in the house when she made the speech ending with “goodbye world.”

The show was “truly an unforgettable experience.”

But, of course, the stage world is ethereal, and so we may not forget, but we move on with only memories—and a few reviews and a tattered, yellowed program—to document the event.

Have a look at a few production photos of Our Town rehearsal here at the Mel Ferrer website.

At the end of the run, Ann returned to Hollywood, and was loaned out to MGM for The Great Caruso, which began her participation in MGM’s screen musical golden age.  We’ll talk about that film down the road.

By 1967, when Ann performed in the Chicago production of the Broadway hit Wait Until Dark, she had not made a film in a decade, and her stage work that had come to replace film as her main acting endeavor was devoted to popular musicals, allowing her, at last, to use her beautiful, trained, singing voice in a wide range of musicals that she never got to do on film.  But she was still receptive to a good dramatic role, and the part of Suzy, the blind woman at the mercy of a gang of drug dealers was an exceptionally meaty role.  It is emotionally draining, and physically challenging, and most actresses who’ve tackled the role get bruised and bumped up in the fight scene.

Production photo, credit unknown at this time.

I’ve always thought that the climactic scene where the villain opens the refrigerator door, casting a beam of light across a darkened stage to find his victim, who has been hiding from him, one of the most chilling sights in theatre.  So simply done, no theatrical razzle-dazzle, yet so creepy.

“Creepy” was the watchword of Thomas Willis’ review of Wait Until Dark in the Chicago Tribune.  Mr. Willis, longtime arts and music critic for the Tribune, labels not only the gang of drug dealers as creepy, but also the husband of the blind woman for his “deliberate lack of sympathy” for his wife’s blindness in forcing her to be more independent.  He calls Ann Blyth “the most believable” in her role and also finds it creepy she is able to compensate for her character’s blindness by distinguishing people around her by their footsteps, yet still has trouble navigating her own apartment.

Miss Blyth is beautiful as ever, but somewhat stiff in characterization of the girl not yet accustomed to sightlessness.

With that typically bored and blasé tone of many critics, he notes that the rest of the "uniformly capable" cast, “measure up," with most of his review describing the plot of the story, rather than commenting specifically on the acting or technical elements.

Wait Until Darkplayed for five weeks.  James Tolkan played the sinister Harry Rote.  Donald Buka and Val Bisoglie were the thugs-as-chumps, with Michael Ebert as her husband.  Sheryl Mandel was Gloria, the little girl upstairs who proves to be an ally.

Six bucks for the orchestra.  (The blogger heaves a big sigh.)

Later on in this same year that Ann performed in Wait Until Dark, 1967, she went back to musical theatre in The King and I in St. Louis, and then right into Carnival in Salt Lake City, where the Deseret News called her a “petite star of all five mediums,” recounting her role in Mildred Pierce (1945), which we discussed here, and then reminds us, “After that, she was one of the brightest stars of the movie world.  She has also starred in television, on the stage, and in nightclubs.”

It sounds like an obituary.  Just rounding 39 years old, and the press was reminding readers who she was.  But these musicals, though “off the radar” by standards that judged film to be the most important reflection of popular culture, yet offered her creative challenges, the ability to flex muscles, and, most especially, starring roles.  We’ll cover those in a later post.

We mentioned last week in a post on three of her radio performances that though while Ann Blyth is primarily remembered for her films, she made only 32 of them.  She performed as many as 400 times on radio.

But she acted on stage probably at least 700 times over the course of more than 40 years, not including her singing concerts, which extended her career another couple of decades. 

Her first stage appearance in Chicago was in 1942, (twenty-five years before Wait Until Dark) the year she turned 14, on the road show of Watch on the Rhine, which played at the Grand Opera House on Clark Street.

The year before, 1941, the show was still on Broadway, and Ann recalled for Modern Screen magazine in an article from 1953 a funny, but uncomfortable stage memory from that show:

What I remember particularly is the second act when I was supposed to be on stage and cook some potato pancakes (really flat bran muffins) for Lucile Watson.  One night I was so busy chatting with someone offstage that I missed my cue and Miss Watson had to improvise.  She walked right to the stage entrance where I was dreaming and said, “Where is Babette?  Oh, there you are!  (Looking at me so sharply that I woke up and realized what I had done).  I was wondering where my potato pancakes were!”  I ran on stage with them.  But when the act was over, I burst into tears that lasted all through the intermission, and I’m still embarrassed about it.

Missing a cue at 13 is even more terrifying than being attacked with a trick knife in Wait Until Dark at 38.

Still, that 13-year old leaves a small but special footprint -- it is common that when a playscript is published, the names of the original cast are included.  When you order a Watch on the Rhine actor's script today from its current publisher, Dramatists Play Service, this will greet you in the opening pages:

Come back next week when Ann rides TV's Wagon Train once more in 1963, as a tragic frontier officer’s wife who drowns her anguish in alcohol.  Ronald Reagan co-stars in one of his last acting roles.

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Chicago Tribune. "Wait Until Dark' at the Studebaker Tomorrow", May 14, 1967, p. E13;  "Wait Until Dark Simulates Terror" by Thomas Willis, May 16, 1967, p. B3.

Deseret News (Salt Lake City) August 26, 1967, p.10A, “Ann Blyth to Star in Carnival at Valley Music.”

Hellman, Lillian.  Watch on the Rhine. (Dramatists Play Service).

Janesville Daily Gazette (Janesville, Wisconsin), May 15, 1967.

Modern Screen. “Take My Word for It” star column by Ann Blyth, January 1953, p. 69.

Modern Screen,November 1950, “Ann Blyth’s Story” by Cynthia Willet, p. 88.

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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.

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HELP!!!!!!!!!!

Now that I've got your attention: I'm still on the lookout for a movie called Katie Did It (1951) for this year-long series on the career of Ann Blyth.  It seems to be a rare one.  Please contact me on this blog or at my email: JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com if you know where I can lay my hands on this film.  Am willing to buy or trade, or wash windows in exchange.  Maybe not the windows part.  But you know what I mean.

Also, if anybody has any of Ann's TV appearances, there's a few I'm missing from Switch, The Dick Powell Show, the Dennis Day Show (TV), the DuPont Show with June Allyson, This is Your Life, Lux Video Theatre.  Also any video clips of her Oscar appearances.  Release the hounds.  And let me know, please. 

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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 will soon be issued in eBook as well as print.  I hope to have it published within the next two weeks.

I’ll provide a free copy, either paperback or eBook or both if you wish, to classic film bloggers in exchange for an honest review.  Just email me at JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com with your preference of format, your email address, and an address to mail the paperback (if that’s your preference).  Thanks.