National Train Day with Ann Blyth

Today we celebrate my favorite holiday, National Train Day, which is observed this coming Saturday, May 9th. This year, however, Amtrak, our national passenger railroad, is expanding the hoopla to National Train DAYS, a series of them throughout the year to demonstrate "the importance, benefits, and value of train travel."

They've already sold me.  I'm a train fan from way back.  Here's a shot of the blogger on the platform at Washington, D.C.'s Union Station. Or maybe it was Philly?  Or Baltimore?  I can't remember.  It was a flashback scene, anyway.  Actually, this isn't from "way back," it's from last year.  I'm waiting for Cary Grant to bring my luggage.  (Quick, what movie?)

Last year, you'll no doubt recall, I was a bit busy with my year-long blog series on Ann Blyth.   More on the upcoming book in the next few weeks.  For today, we take the train with Ann.  The lead photo was from her first film, Chip Off the Old Block (1944), discussed here.

She met Donald O'Connor by accident, and immediately went out to the rear observation platform with him to sing.  I can't tell you how many times that's happened to me.

Her next film, The Merry Monahans (1944), discussed as well in the above-linked post, also featured a meet cute where Donald strolls along the roof of the moving train, like a hobo, and later takes Ann up there with him for a little quiet conversation.

I can't even tell you how many times that's happened to me.  

In The Helen Morgan Story (1957) discussed here, Ann begins the movie traveling to the big city to make her way in the world.  Please note the black beret, a style of headgear to which I am particularly disposed, and which we discussed in this previous post on black berets in the movies.  Seriously, that could be me.  In my dreams.

In the only movie I didn't cover in depth last year, Katie Did It (1951),  Ann has a couple funny scenes on a train from New England to New York.  She tries to avoid her co-star, Mark Stevens, but he has convinced the train conductor that Ann is his mentally disturbed wife and it would be safer for the rest of the passengers if he sat with her to keep her calm. Arguments, melees, and a pulling on the emergency cord which sends people flying into the aisle.  

Rest assured, it'll be covered in the upcoming book ANN BLYTH: ACTRESS. SINGER. STAR.

Have a look here, meanwhile at Amtrak's TRAIN DAYS site, and next time you have a hankering to roam to the big city, or anyplace else that you can get to by train, for heaven's sake, TAKE THE TRAIN, the most economical and environmentally valuable way for most of us to crisscross this great nation of ours.

George Coulouris - Villain in Watch on the Rhine (1943)

George Coulouris is a sublime villain, supremely important to Watch on the Rhine (1943), so charming in his lazy gentlemanliness, so pitiable in his bad luck and bad moves, and so treacherous in his motives.

The character he plays, a blasé Rumanian count, and a refugee from Europe and his own failed enterprises, is one of playwright Lillian Hellman’s most simple, and yet most brilliant creations.  He is not a blustering fascist—in this anti-Nazi drawing room drama that would stand out like tacky décor, and besides, the bold and courageous resistance fighter Paul Lukas plays is too clever to let himself get too near a real storm trooper-type.  Coulouris is dangerous because he is not an instigator, not a brainwashed (or brain dead) Nazi; he is on the second tier of evildoers—an opportunist.  As Lukas (and Lillian Hellman) describes his ilk: “Some of them were, up to a point, fastidious men.  For these we may someday have pity.  They are lost men.  Their spoils are small.  Their day is gone.”

This is my entry in The Great Villain Blogathon hosted by those evil villains at Speakeasy, Shadows & Satin,and Silver Screenings blogs. 

Watch on Rhine began as a tremendously successful Broadway play.  I discuss more about it in my upcoming book on Ann Blyth, who had a minor role in that play as a child.  The play’s producer and director, Herman Shumlin, went to Hollywood to cast the adult roles because throughout the Great Depression that’s where a lot of the best stage-trained actors went.  He didn’t want Hollywood stars, necessarily, he wanted stage veterans.  In February 1941, he came back with three heavy-hitters: Paul Lukas; Lucile Watson, who would play the acerbic matriarch; and George Coulouris.  Interestingly, he wanted Henry Daniell, but Daniell wasn’t free (he appears in the film as Baron Von Ramme).

Before we get to the film, we need to appreciate the overwhelming respect this play received when it was produced in 1941-1942.  I think in the decades that followed the film lost its strength for a modern audience that regards it as sentimental propaganda, a museum piece of a more gullible era.  Sometimes one of our worst sins is our condescension about the past.  Add to this the changes in the script that gave a larger role to Bette Davis—I’m afraid she tends to take too much of the spotlight in her scenery-chewing.  But the original play hit the theatre world like a storm.  The emotion of the day for the Broadway play was genuine.

Here is one review:

I want to tell you that I believe the finest, most deeply moving play that has been written in America in years is at Ford’s Theater this week…I say it because it is each man’s high duty to inform his fellow-men when he finds, or thinks he finds, something very true, very beautiful, very important.

Watch on the Rhine is all these things to me.  And it was obvious when the curtain fell on the opening performance that it had these qualities to many others, too.

There was the testimony of the applause which continued until the desperate theater manager turned on the bright house lights.  There was the testimony of many tear-filled eyes…With humor and with tenderness, with logic and with occasional poetry, Lillian Hellman has written this play.  And Herman Shumlin has produced it not as a theatrical businessman presents plays.  He has staged it, quite obviously, with love and with great reverence…I do not like to use the word ‘great,’ particularly about a play whose theme is so close to the headlines that our viewpoint may unconsciously be distorted.  Only years can tell that.

But certainly it casts a spell which, for a time at least, transforms a theater into a rare and holy place where the heart is touched, elated, ennobled. – Louis Azrael, Baltimore News-Post.

In an unusual move, Warner Bros., in securing the rights to the play, allowed Herman Shumlin to direct (this was his first movie, and he made only one other); and allowed Paul Lukas, George Coulouris, Lucile Watson, as well as Frank Wilson, who played the butler, to come with Shumlin as part of the deal.  Paul Lukas would win an Academy Award for his performance, and Lucile Watson was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

George Coulouris, originally from the U.K., had a Shakespearean background, and then met up with Orson Welles’ troupe and began a long and very distinguished career in film, stage, TV, radio alternating between noble characters and villains.  That he was adept at both says a lot for how he plays his character in Watch on the Rhine.  We understand him, and can even sympathize as we despise him. 

The intelligent script by Hellman gives all the characters a great forum, and this is what makes a great script.  No character is wasted, they are all necessary and everything they say matters.

We meet Coulouris coming down to breakfast on the terrace of Lucile Watson’s palatial family home outside Washington, D.C.  He is married to Geraldine Fitzgerald, and we see their marriage is rocky.  He snipes at her, accuses her of being too fond of Donald Woods, the son of the house.  In a moment, he greets his hostess Lucile Watson with old-world European charm, and we settle in to the intriguing world of a professional houseguest in the home of a rich patron.

Later, he goes to the German Embassy for an evening gala and a late-night card came.  This scene was written by Dashiell Hammett, to whom Hellman handed off the screenplay chore as she was busy with another commitment.  I like Hammett’s additions for the most part, he opens the story up to all of Washington.  However, some of the strength and verve of the stage play is also watered down in the process, which is a shame.  I suppose it’s a tricky line to walk.

Here at the card game, like a player showing his hand of cards, we are shown the various “face cards” in the arena of fascist villains: Blecher, a cold, sneering bully, referred to as a butcher, who runs the game and the show.  He is the head bad guy to whom his agents report.  He is shrewd and ruthless.  Ironically, this ultra Nazi swine is played by Kurt Katch, born an Eastern European Jew and a veteran of the Yiddish theatre.  He comments on the others and introduces them to us: Baron Von Ramme, played by Henry Daniell is “contemptuous of us, but chiefly because we are not gentlemen.  Would be satisfied enough doing the same things or worse under some stupid Hohenzollern.” 

Then there is the money-grubbing publisher of the American Nazi newspaper, and Chandler, the American oil man who wants to sell to the Axis; the mysterious Oberdorff, played silently by Rudolph Anders who seems the most evil simply because we, and Blecher, know nothing about him.  He is a question mark. 

Then Blecher comes to Coulouris, whom he dismisses as a man who sells things “but at the moment you have nothing to sell.”

He will soon, when Paul Lukas and his family show up, and he suspects from the moment he meets Lukas that here is a man the Nazis would like to get their hands on.  With very little prospects and at the end of the road, it is inevitable that a man like Coulouris will want to sell Lukas to the Nazis, but how we get to that point is intriguing.

In some scenes between them, even though the room is full of other characters, it seems as if we are watching a two-man play. They spar and take each other’s measure carefully in polite conversation.  Lukas, fresh from a daring escape and having been wounded in a previous mission, is the more emotionally brittle.  Coulouris comes off as suave, with the panache of a former diplomat who has learned early not to commit himself, who deals with life with a shrug of his shoulders, a man in evening dress with no neck to stick out.

His behavior is privately more unstable with his wife, alternately pleading and threatening her, but to the others, he maintains his British Public School manners and his Continental charm.  He is good at bridge, knows the right things to say.  He is apolitical, out for himself, but he feels more distaste for freedom fighters than for fascists because he understands the latter.  But he comes to admire Paul Lukas, if not for his political stance, then for his resiliency.  After the scene where he blackmails Lukas in return for not turning him over to the Nazis, Coulouris remarks after Lucile Watson and Donald Woods have left the room:

“The New World has left the room.  I feel less discomfort with you.  We are Europeans, born to trouble and understanding…They’re young.  The world has gone well for most of them.  For us, we’re like peasants…work, trouble, ruin.  But no need to call curses on the frost.  There it is.  There it will be again, always, for us.”

But he is no peasant and has never worked hard at anything.  It is only in his imagination that he identifies with the sorrows of European peasantry.  In a sense, he does have a master, too: the Nazis that have taken over all Europe.

In his final scene, we finally see his fear and panic as Paul Lukas, who despite his ill health is still a man of action, points a gun in Coulouris’ face and angrily tells him, “There is no substance to you.”  He both accuses, and mourns for Coulouris, because the blasé count, though he is frightened about dying now, he will have forgotten all about it in the morning if Lukas lets him get away. 

We know this is true, because George Coulouris, for all his benign charm, the salon and sidewalk café façade, has shown us his empty heart from the beginning.  We can’t write him off as just another bad guy.  He could be our houseguest, a friend or relative who could stab us in the back to save himself.  As Bette Davis says, “We have seen them in so many living rooms.”

Please have a look at the other entries in The Great Villain Blogathon here.

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My book on Ann Blyth's career—Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. will be published on June 18th.  I’d like to invite any blogger—film blogger or book blogger—to participate in a blog tour. I’ll be looking for blogs to schedule publicity-oriented posts beginning Monday, June 1st. The last day will be June 17th. If anyone wants to pick a day, please let me know so I can coordinate with others. Think of it as a kind of blogathon. On your day, you can post a review of the book (I’ll have ARCs – advanced reading copies - available in PDF form which I’ll email to you that you can read on your computer), or you can do a Q&A with me, or I can just send you a 250-word excerpt of the book, or you can just post the cover and a link to the Amazon page, if you will. Just a little something to spread the word. I will be posting here every day from June 1st through the 18th and I’ll be linking to your blogs, pushing traffic to you.

Among those 17 bloggers who participate, I’ll throw your names in a hat and pick five winners who will receive a print book of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. when it is published on the 18th.  The rest will receive an eBook file in whichever format you choose: ePub, Mobi, or PDF (Note, the ARC copies will not have the index).

For more on the upcoming book, please see this post.

Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. - Cover Reveal

Today, I'm pleased to reveal the cover for my forthcoming book on the career of Ann Blyth...

(Climbs billboard at great peril, loses shoe, which falls 100 feet to the ground, struggles with tarpaulin, gets wrapped in it for a moment when the wind picks up, then proudly shakes lose the tarp .  Dang, glasses go flying off her face.  Makes "ta-daa!" gesture, squinting myopically at the gathering crowd below, wears a cheesy grin...)

Ready?

I'd like to thank most sincerely and congratulate most heartily the graphic artist who designed this cover, your friend and mine, Constance Metzinger, one half of the Metzinger Sisters who author the swell blog Silver Scenes.  Please have a look at their blog and you'll be regular customers.

The cover above will be on both the eBook and the print version, but the print book will also have another photo gracing the back.  This one:

And there will be a bunch of photos in between, some that you've never seen.

By the way, they Metzinger gals are hosting The Luck of the Irish Blog 'O Thon, and my post is coming up this Sunday the 15th.  Come back Sunday for Paddy O'Day (1935) with Jane Withers.

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My book on Ann Blyth's career--Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. will be published on June 18th. To that end, I’ll be looking for some help in the pre-launch phase, so I’d like to invite any blogger—film blogger or book blogger—to participate in a blog tour. I’ll be looking for blogs to schedule publicity-oriented posts beginning Monday, June 1st. The last day will be June 17th. If anyone wants to pick a day, please let me know so I can coordinate with others. Think of it as a kind of blogathon. On your day, you can post a review of the book (I’ll have ARCs – advanced reading copies - available in PDF form which I’ll email to you that you can read on your computer), or you can do a Q&A with me, or I can just send you a 250-word excerpt of the book, or you can just post the cover and a link to the Amazon page, if you will. Just a little something to spread the word. I will be posting here every day from June 1st through the 18th and I’ll be linking to your blogs, pushing traffic to you.

Among those 17 bloggers who participate, I’ll throw your names in a hat and pick five winners who will receive a print book of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. when it is published on the 18th. The rest will receive an eBook file in whichever format you choose: ePub, Mobi, or PDF (Note, the ARC copies will not have the index).

Update - Ann Blyth, Blogging, and Other Stuff

I’ve decided to devote all of 2015 to Vilma Banky.

Just kidding. (BAW-HA-HA-HA-HA. I just crack myself up sometimes.)

I’m glad to have a chance to talk to you again, after several weeks of this blog being on hiatus. They’ve been very busy weeks for me with continuing work on the Ann Blyth book: research, writing, interviews, looking under rocks for photos I can afford, etc. 

The book is to be called Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. (though in my more overtired moments I’ve come to refer to it as The Big Book of Blyth). As the title, I hope, will emphasize, this to be a study of her career and will not delve too deeply into her personal life. Even so, it’s going to be a pretty fat book. Much of it contains tweaked posts from my year-long 2014 series on Ann Blyth from this blog, but there is also a lot of new material: including chapters on her early radio work as a child, her experience in the Broadway play Watch on the Rhine, and her re-emergence for younger, newer fans of classic film as a one of the Hollywood greats (for this chapter, I have called upon the assistance of two bloggers to whom I am indebted for sharing their opinions, experiences and photos—Laura Grieve of Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings, and Janet Sullivan Cross of Sister Celluloid).  Also lending their input are fans who took the TCM Cruise last October where Ann was one of the celebrity guests.

The book will contain appendices of filmography, selected television appearances, radio appearances (with synopses of episodes), stage, discography, and for the print book, an index. The book will be as complete a resource for film fans and, especially fans of Ann Blyth’s career as I can make it. It is the first book written about her work, and I hope will be worthy of the subject.

My intention at this point is to publish the book on June 18th. To that end, I’ll be looking for some help in the pre-launch phase, so I’d like to invite any blogger—film blogger or book blogger—to participate in a blog tour. I’ll be looking for blogs to schedule publicity-oriented posts beginning Monday, June 1st. The last day will be June 17th. If anyone wants to pick a day, please let me know so I can coordinate with others. Think of it as a kind of blogathon. On your day, you can post a review of the book (I’ll have ARCs – advanced reading copies - available in PDF form which I’ll email to you that you can read on your computer), or you can do a Q&A with me, or I can just send you a 250-word excerpt of the book, or you can just post the cover and a link to the Amazon page, if you will. Just a little something to spread the word. I will be posting here every day from June 1st through the 18th and I’ll be linking to your blogs, pushing traffic to you.

Among those 17 bloggers who participate, I’ll throw your names in a hat and pick five winners who will receive a print book of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. when it is published on the 18th. The rest will receive an eBook file in whichever format you choose: ePub, Mobi, or PDF (Note, the ARC copies will not have the index).

Also, I hope to have the book ready for pre-order on Amazon by April. (It will also be sold at a variety of other online merchants.)

For those of you with connections to book clubs, classic film societies, libraries, or bookstores, I will be available for speaking or book signing after the book is released, but will likely limit my geographic range to eastern New York and the New England states for the time being.

I’m looking forward to the year ahead and sharing it with you. More updates on the book (including the cover reveal) to come in weeks ahead. 

Speaking of the year ahead: I’m going back to blogging about a variety of old movies, and next week we’re celebrating Lincoln’s Birthday (President’s Day, Shmezident’s Day) with Raymond Massey’s truly glowing performance as Abraham Lincoln in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940). Like I always say, if you want a genuinely moving portrayal of an American President, get a Canadian to do it.

Speaking of Vilma Banky (Not that we were), the above come-hither portrait comes from a pretty swell book called Stars of the Photoplay, published in 1930 by Photoplay Magazine. It’s an album of headshots of the biggest Hollywood starts of the silent-cum-sound period, and I’ll be sharing some of those photos with you over the course of the year.

It also gives vital statistics. Vilma Banky was born in Nagydorog, near Budapest in 1903, she was 5 feet 6, weighed 120, and had gray eyes.

Chew on that for while. That’s all you’re getting of Vilma Banky.

So much for coming attractions. Now for the newsreel:

I’m very pleased to have an essay, along with those of many of your favorite bloggers, in the big year-end issue of The Dark Pages devoted to all things Mildred Pierce. Edited by Karen Burroughs Hannsberry, author of Femme Noir: Bad Girls of Film and Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir, this film noir monthly is available as an e-zine or in print. For more info on how to get your copy, or subscribe, have a look at this website.

Now for the biggest news. Well, for me it was. You may have heard me mention in a low mumble last year once or twice that I was looking for the film Katie Did It (1951), the only Ann Blyth movie I couldn’t locate.  It once was lost, but now is found and saved a wretch like me.  It has only recently become available on eBay, in what I think is probably a homemade copy of a now in public domain movie. Whatever. I’ll take it. I won’t blog about Katie here, I’m saving that essay for the book.

AND a very special Ann Blyth fan is sharing with me some very old material that was taped off TV back in the day, including her 1959 This Is Your Life episode.  I’ll go into more detail about what happens on her This is Your Life episode and other stuff in the book.

I have a few very dear new friends to thank for making this book possible, and their generosity, and their love of Ann Blyth, has been a constant source of inspiration.  Above all, this book is the product of the devotion of some longtime fans, and the espirt de corps of classic film bloggers which make this project, I feel, a community effort.

One more note: a collector of classic film stills and lobby cards, Mr. Leo Bianco, is selling items from his collection at very reasonable rates. If you’re interested in purchasing, or for more info on what he has in stock, you can reach him by email at: Leobianco@comcast.net.

See you next Thursday.



The Year of Ann Blyth - Finale

“She simply does not like to talk about herself.  That is perhaps her most unusual characteristic—her reserve.  She’s a great introvert.  It’s as though there was a wall around her.” -- Roddy McDowall, Screenland, March 1951

Her longtime friend, Roddy McDowall, knew her from that bitter period after her mother’s death and photographed her so tenderly decades later when they were both in their sixties.  Presumably, he knew her better by then.

In those later years she once described herself in an interview as still “A work in progress.”

This is our final post in the Year of Ann Blyth series.

From our first post back in January:

…if you know Ann Blyth only through her frothy MGM musicals, you don't know Ann Blyth.  In dramas she has morphed into the epitome of hateful, sensual, heartbroken, and shamed.  If you know her only as the demon teen Veda in Mildred Pierce, you don't know Ann Blyth.  The same colossal greedy train wreck of a girl who spit invective at Joan Crawford and smacked her in the jaw also performed a night club act to enthusiastic crowds in Las Vegas, bringing them to tears with the sentimental "Auld Lang Syne" and sang at the California state fair.  If you only know her from The Helen Morgan Story or melodramas, you are missing her genuine gift for screwball comedy.  Sinking herself intellectually, just as much as emotionally into these roles, she swims against the powerful and unrelenting current of studio typecasting. 

After more than 50 posts and more than 150,000 words, I still don’t know Ann Blyth.  There is much about her that intrigues me yet, because it remains below the surface, only rising in sudden, instant epiphanies of delighted recognition.  That I don’t really know who she is—that’s okay with me.  With deference perhaps unusual, and usually undesired, in a biographer—though I never intended to be one—I am content to leave her personal life to her.  I don’t need to know her, because I know her characters.

I know Killer Connell and Rosemarie Lemaitre.  I know Gail McCauley and Regina Hubbard.  I know the enigmatic mermaid, Lenore.  I know Veda Pierce.  We knowthem.

Ann Blyth’s deft and emotionally transparent portrayals of these people demonstrate not just an extraordinary depth and versatility in her acting, but perceptive intellect and genuine empathy.

One factor in keeping this series to her professional life and not her personal life is my irritation on the irony that most biographies and autobiographies of films stars have a frustrating habit of actually giving short shrift to the movies they made.  Often we’ll slog through narratives of multiple marriages or liaisons, and the occasional bar fight to finally come upon the film we love…and the writer comments only:  “And then he did such and such a film.”  And then we move on to another anecdote about who he insulted or was insulted by at a party.

That’s it?  I waded through generations of his family tree, his childhood fear of cereal, and how his father never took him to the circus—which is why you hypothesize he has a problem with commitment (and other assorted jerry-rigged “dime store Freud”)—just so I could read about his movies, and you’re not going to talk about them?!  Why, I oughta…

Granted, if Ann Blyth had beaten up several people at Ciro’s, quite possibly that would have made an interesting chapter.  (Picturing a 5’2” drunken young Ann clubbing an equally drunken and combative Errol Flynn mercilessly on the skull with a belaying pin she has stolen from the set of The World in His Arms.  Hmm.  Yes, that has possibilities.)

Most film fans are interested in the private lives of their favorite stars, that is only human.  Because it is a natural and common interest, invading the privacy of celebrities has become a profitable industry. 

But for the most part, the gossip of scandals or the name-dropping in film star biographies bores me silly as something not merely gratuitous, but juvenile.  I readily accept that film stars are human beings, and so take for granted with the utmost compassionate understanding that most of them are probably sleeping with someone…just who is irrelevant to me.  We have all experienced or been exposed to divorce, infidelity, financial ruin, and rude remarks at parties, and maybe even thrown a punch or two, etc.  (Even if we never settled an argument with a belaying pin.)  But I don’t know anyone who took a bow on a Broadway stage with Paul Lukas in Watch on the Rhine at the age of 12.  I don’t know anyone who reported to the makeup department where Bud Westmore turned her into a mermaid.  This is what really interests me, the nuts and bolts of the job, because it is quite beyond my realm of experience. 

So this is where I’ve chosen to focus.

Her job as an actress included many years in radio, (another facet that most film biographers tend to ignore, and so I wanted to cover it here), along with her TV and stage work (which usually also rates little discussion, included usually only by authors who arrogantly and ignorantly dismiss the rigors of summer stock and the joy it brings to people who can’t possibly travel to Broadway as a fallen actor’s laboring in obscurity).  These venues show not only how Ann Blyth mined opportunities and surfed the currents of change in her decades-long career, but show what was happening to actors in the twentieth century, how entertainment became an “industry” and how the “entertainment industry” evolved—and how it left many behind.

To a great extent, the careers of performing artists are the sum total of their press.  This is why, in part, I’ve relied upon magazine and news articles of the day to illustrate her place as it evolved in the entertainment industry and the media.  I’ve tried to avoid using information I could not verify, for as all who’ve researched history from popular sources know, wrong facts are continually perpetuated either by the ignorant use of past writers' errors, or else frank laziness.  Instead, I’ve tried to use these sources more as a window on the world in which Ann Blyth forged her career and lived her life, and what her contemporary critics and audience thought of her. 

The old Hollywood studio system certainly knew the value of publicity and worked hard to create it, exploit it, and at times, manipulate it to their best advantage.  Occasionally, an actor-employee would come along who would not cooperate, or proved to be a particular challenge.

A young woman whose stunningly sensual appeal on screen, but whose private life was a hotbed of church activities was, amusingly, a conundrum for them, and perhaps as well for the audience.  It was hard to package a devout vixen, and the “nice girl” image sometimes worked against her professionally, even if it gave her a satisfying private life.

In the very first post of this series back in January, I quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson:

 “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”

In 1949, columnist Ida Jean Kain wrote of Ann:

She is poised and genuinely unaffected…and in a quiet, confident way, she knows where she is going, and she is neither deviating nor taking short cuts.

What fascinates me about that statement is it was made so early in her career, she was 20 years old at the time, and rang completely true, and would remain true.  She, with remarkable constancy, knew indeed where she was going or wanted to go…yet decades later, it would be asked, as it often is of actors….“Whatever happened to…?” 

What ever happened to Ann Blyth?

So, where did she go?

That many of her films are not available on DVD and because of the whole murky Universal “vault” legal quagmire, most are not being shown on TCM, much of her work has been forgotten by younger generations.  So, just what did happen between Mildred Pierce and The Helen Morgan Story? 

A lot, and beyond.  It is a story of variety and versatility, and constant new challenge. There is so much richness to discover in her films, so much that she attempted and mastered in her career, and I hope this series has been a launching pad for others to rediscover this marvelous actress.  I hope it will at least help put to rest the image of Ann Blyth only as the super-brat Veda Pierce and “that actress who was dubbed in The Helen Morgan Story and then retired.”  Here I quote from my discussion on my pal John Hayes’ blog Robert Frost’s Banjo a few months ago:

This woman had been the flavor of the month all through the late 1940s and most of the 1950s, on enough magazine covers to choke a horse, and as famous in her day as any young star could be.   Today, she is nowhere to be seen in that kitschy souvenir shop universe where classic film fans can easily snag T-shirts and coffee cups and posters of Clark Gable and The Three Stooges, Mae West and Betty Boop, and, of course, the ever-exploitable Marilyn Monroe.  

Where was Ann Blyth?  She never retired from performing.  She had, unlike most other stars of that era, performed in all media from radio to TV to stage, and was successful in all of them.    Far, far more talented than any other 1950s glamour girl, yet she is not as well known today among younger classic film fans.  I wanted to know why.

Paradoxically, among those older fans whom  I’ve heard from in the past year, Ann Blyth is remembered with deep and abiding love, with an admiration and wistful, sweet affection I have not heard expressed for other stars.  I wanted to know why.

This has been an extraordinary journey for me, both professionally and personally.  Last summer, 2013, when I first kicked around the idea of writing a series of blog posts on Ann Blyth’s movies, and then decided to stretch the series to cover not only her films, but also her stage, radio and TV work, and to have the series last the entire year of 2014—I did not expect this series, and this actress, would become so important to me, for quite personal reasons.  I’ve marveled how Ann has accepted sorrow and suffering and success with her hope, faith, and dignity intact, and remained a kindly and gentle person. 

I think sometimes for a writer (or artist, or photographer, etc.) your subject picks you.  This series came along at the right time for me.

Again quoting from my interview on John’s blog.

I think I am even more awed by how hard one must work to get anywhere in the business, and how much luck is involved, how much is due to the help and contribution of others from makeup, publicity, and anyone in the production end willing to go to bat for a performer, and how much is out of one’s hands.  Ann always appreciated her contract with Universal, but the studio did not always showcase her in the best movies.  On the one hand, she enjoyed a variety of genres and experiences.  On the other hand, there was no clear and strong trajectory to her path.  She controlled as much of her course as she could with admirable prudence.  What she could not control, she handled with quiet resolution.

What I admire most about Ann Blyth, above and apart from her skill as an actress and talent as a singer, is what appears to be an innate sense of the importance of balance and self-discipline, despite riding that mind-bending, gut-twisting pendulum of great highs and crushing lows in her profession.  And also, in a funny contrast to the picture of serenity she exudes, what I sense to be a fire-in-the-belly ambition and a gutsy spirit of adventure.

I have not touched upon her personal life too deeply in the series for another practical reason that, without interviewing her, or those closest to her, I am ill-equipped to discuss it.  Speculation is for fiction.  In non-fiction, it is the mark of a hack writer.

I have not addressed in-depth her religious faith, again, because I intended to focus on her career.  I’m also aware that any mention of religion is likely to raise the hackles of an audience who fears being preached to, and my intention is certainly not to proselytize.  Not everyone is able to discuss, or read about with a detached attitude another person’s religious faith.  On the contrary, it inevitably excites some strong emotion, positive or negative.  But not to have addressed her faith at all would have been ignoring the elephant in the room, so profound an influence it has had on her life, a motivating force since early childhood.

An actress lives many lives.  First, there are the scores of roles that overshadow her real self.  Then, as part of the business rather than the art, a necessary wearing of different hats: publicity, training in the craft, being the CEO of the image that has been created.  If actors are particularly fortunate, there is a private life, a family to nurture and to be nurtured by in turn.  But even apart from the family, there is another private chamber of the soul belonging to all of us.  For some, it is a rich haven of memory and experience, hope, dreams, and spirituality.  For some, it is, sadly, a black hole of emptiness to be desperately escaped in any way possible.

In the past few years, possibly as part of the Turner Classic Movies parade of movie star resurrections—but most especially because of its frequent airing of Mildred Pierce—interviewers of Ann Blyth inevitably want to know what it was like to slap Joan Crawford.  It is the question she gets asked most these days.  Had Christina Crawford's tell-all book Mommie Dearest never been written, I doubt it would occur to anyone to ask that--Ann had slapped and been slapped in other performances.  I sometimes wonder if Ann thinks to herself, bravely smiling at the interviewer, “I worked my ass off for eighty years, and this is all they remember?”

I would have had many questions for her about her work, and her impressions of her career journey, what she learned from colleagues and who inspired her.

But the last one, I think it would be this:

You once played the character Emily in Thornton Wilder’s classic Our Town on stage.  There is a scene where Emily, in spirit, is allowed to revisit a scene from her childhood, to move around her loved ones without them noticing, so the she can look upon again all the miraculous minutiae of everyday life and discover how precious they are.  It is a joyous and bittersweet moment, painful in its simple honesty.

If you were allowed to have the power to re-visit a similar scene in your own childhood, perhaps the apartment where you lived in New York with your mother and older sister, during the Depression, before that tap on the shoulder by Herman Shumlin and Lillian Hellman that brought you to Watch on the Rhine on Broadway, what would you see there?  If you could speak to your child self, 11-year-old “Anne”, what might you say?

I conclude this series by giving Ann Blyth the last word.  This clip is from an interview, when Miss Blyth was 84 years old, with Scott Feinberg at The Hollywood Reporter on the occasion of her participation as a guest at the 2013 TCM Film Fest:

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I never envisioned at the outset, collecting these blog posts into a book, though some of you very early on, with far more imagination than I, suggested this.  I think the first was Java’s Journey last summer before the series even started.  Java, if you are also able to predict winning lottery numbers, drop me a line.  I could use a million bucks right now.

The book will be published summer 2015, and will include more material that is not in these posts.  You may recall, as I do with a certain degree of embarrassment, my failed Kickstarter campaign this last August to raise funds to obtain the rights of copyrighted photos.  My sincere thanks, again, to those of you who were willing to donate if it came to that.  I know the sacrifice was not easy for all, and that makes your gesture all the more honored by me.

I’m grateful to many long-time fans of Ann Blyth.  I know that she answers fan mail, but some too shy to write to her have contacted me, wanting to share their own strong feelings about her.  I think that’s moved me more than anything.

One reason I wanted to do this series is to honor an actress who is still with us, that she may know how much her work is respected and loved.  Too often we wait for posthumous tributes to show our appreciation.

Some fifty-plus posts after this series began, I find myself still interested, and eager to work on the book.  But I need a bit of downtime from this blog to get some stuff done, so I’m taking several weeks off.  I’ll see you on Thursday, February 5^thfor another year of Another Old Movie Blog, and back to posting on a variety of movies and subjects.

Until then, I wish all who celebrate a very Merry Christmas, and Happy Hanukkah, and to everybody a very happy and healthy, and peaceful New Year.

Thank you for the pleasure of your company.

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Miami News, July 16, 1949, column by Ida Jean Kain.

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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 actor/singer/author Bill Hayes.  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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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 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 is now out in eBook, and in paperback here.

I’ll provide a free copy, either paperback or eBook or both if you wish, to 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.

The Helen Morgan Story - 1957

The Helen Morgan Story (1957) is one of Ann Blyth’s best dramatic performances, indeed, the hospital scene is astonishing—more on that later—but she is remembered in this movie more for what seems viewed as an ignominious indictment of having her singing voice dubbed by Gogi Grant.  This was the last film Ann Blyth ever made.  Because the movie, for several valid reasons, has a reputation of not being as good as it could have been, and because she was dubbed, both the film and the conclusion of Ann Blyth’s film career seems shackled to an aura of defeat. 

This is unfortunate—and ridiculous.  Today we will take a good look at The Helen Morgan Story, Helen Morgan, and Ann Blyth.

And Gogi Grant, and Polly Bergen.  And Michael Curtiz and Martin Rackin and Jack Warner.

This may be the longest blog post you ever read in your life.  Take off your shoes.  Turn off your cell phone.  Leave a forwarding address.

Helen Morgan - Library of Congress, Prints & 
Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection

Helen Morgan was one of the most renowned singers of the 1920s.  She was enormously popular with the public, and beloved by those who knew her.  Despite a rise to fame from a girl with an eighth grade education learning to sing torch songs in Chicago speakeasies at the beginning of the decade, to starring on Broadway and even appearing in Hollywood films by the end of the decade, it is still difficult, exactly, to call her a success.

Helen Morgan was a shy, anxious young woman, who craved affection and belonging, but who made bad choices, suffered bad relationships,and could only find the approval of adoring audiences by wallowing in her vulnerability with sad songs that told tales of being lonely, abused, and heartbroken.  She was so moving in this persona that audiences ate it up, but it left a bewildered Helen, who was a meticulous singer and conscientious artist, wondering where her personal sorrow left off and the performance began.  It seemed one fed the other.

Mark Hellinger was writing his column for the New York Daily News at this time, news and gossip of the theatre world, Damon Runyon style, and was both a fan and friend of Helen Morgan, and had also written sketches for the Ziegfeld Follies of 1931 in which Miss Morgan appeared.  After Helen Morgan died in 1941 at only forty-one years old, Mr. Hellinger, then in a new career as a writer and producer in Hollywood, bought the rights to her story intending to make the film biography of her life for Warner’s.  He died before they found the right person to play her. 

At the time he was writing his column in New York, when Helen Morgan was starring at the Ziegfeld Theater on Sixth Avenue and 54^th Street (long since torn down) in Hammerstein and Kern’s colossal hit Showboat (our old friend Edna May Oliver played the role of the overbearing Parthy), Ann Blyth was a baby on the other side of town, in a considerably lower rent district, an area along East 31^st Street that has also since been bulldozed away in the slum renewal projects of the 1960s.  In twelve years Ann would be on Broadway herself while still a child, and in fifteen she’d be in Hollywood, where she got to know Mark Hellinger when she appeared in his productions of Swell Guy (1946), which we discussed here, and Brute Force (1947), here.  Hellinger would say of Ann:

“Outside, she’s as untouched as a convent girl—and inside, she’s as wise as a woman of 50.”

Perhaps one could say the opposite about Helen Morgan.

The Helen Morgan Story has always been a tale of two reputations: Helen Morgan’s and Ann Blyth’s.

It was a shock to many in December 1956 when Ann was chosen for the role over several who were tested, and a few hundred other wannabes.  Even director Michael Curtiz, for whom she had performed brilliantly in Mildred Pierce (1945) covered here, did not consider her for the role.

Syndicated columnist Aline Mosby noted:

Movie-goers will be in for a surprise when they see Hollywood’s perennial ‘good girl’ sitting on a piano to portray Helen Morgan, the sensual torch singer of the ‘20s.  Ann will do a hula and sob in the drunk scene.  Ann Blyth?

“I didn’t want to test Ann at first,” Curtiz admitted, “…I tested 25 girls and interviewed another 25.  I talked to Olivia de Havilland, Jennifer Jones…singers Julie London, Connie Russell [who would cut her own tribute LP to Helen Morgan].

“After everybody was exhausted, I took a chance and tested Ann.  She made just a brilliant test!”

Apparently, columnist Hedda Hopper urged Curtiz to test her, and Ann’s agent, Al Rockett, pushed hard.  In an interview with Miss Hopper, Ann acknowledged with some chagrin that her quiet personal life evidently made her viewed as a poor choice for a torch singer.

“But why is it that producers and directors find it so hard to separate an actress from her private life?  Unless you’re a flashy person they never think of you for the colorful parts.  If you lead a quiet life in your own personal existence, they give you only sticky, sweet roles.”

Ann had to live down not only her reputation, but Helen’s.  Because Helen Morgan lived a much less stable life, got in trouble with gangsters and the law for her activity with speakeasies during the Prohibition, and sat on pianos and sang torch songs and was a hopeless alcoholic, it was reckoned she was a pretty tough customer.  She wasn’t. 

Helen Morgan was very quiet and soft-spoken, and leaned heavily on her mother, with whom she was inseparable as a girl—rather like Ann Blyth.  She was recalled by her friends as being sweet and overly generous, but insecure.  According to Hedda Hopper:

Helen always spoke softly and with dignity, even when she was drinking—you couldn’t tell she was intoxicated—and how quiet and wistful she was when under contract to Warner’s in 1935.

But other columnists who either forgot that or else never knew Helen Morgan, knew only that she drank herself to death, imagined her to be more hard-bitten, and took the first surprising news of Ann Blyth’s being cast in the role and played it to the hilt.  Syndicated columnist Bob Thomas:

A lot of eyebrows were raised when it was announced that Ann Blyth would star in the life of Helen Morgan…After all, Helen Morgan was a symbol of the ‘20s, a hard-drinking, fast-living party girl.  Ann—well, Ann is just about the epitome of sweetness.

Some fans also rebelled, fearful this was a turn to the dark side for their favorite actress.

Ann Blyth is still a good girl, despite what some of her fans think…Ann is receiving critical mail from some fans who fear that Hollywood’s “little lady” compromised her own moral principles in taking the part.

To which Ann responded:

"There are always people who can’t disassociate an actor’s personal life from her screen life…I just couldn’t go on playing any more sweet roles; it would be career suicide."

It was called “the shock casting of the year,” but producer Martin Rackin explained in the same article the reasoning behind their choice of using Ann:

There are some actresses in this town who can roll in the gutter and it won’t move you.  They look at home there.  But when you put a good girl like Ann in the gutter, it tears your heart out.

Doris Day went up against similar prejudice when she was cast as torch singer (and Helen Morgan colleague) Ruth Etting in Love Me or Leave Me(1955).  Before her death in 1978, Miss Etting said she thought Doris Day’s portrayal of her was too tough, and that she would have preferred Jane Powell in the role.

Doris Day received good reviews for her excellent work in that film (which we’ll have to discuss in more detail sometime or other).  Interestingly, Doris Day refused to make the biography of Helen Morgan when it was offered to her in 1950 because of the presumed sordidness of Morgan’s lifestyle, which she felt would go against her wholesome screen image, yet the Ruth Etting character she portrayed was much less sympathetic than Helen Morgan.  (Hedda Hopper broke the news that Miss Day would play Morgan for director Michael Curtiz as early as 1948; Louella Parsons broke the same news in 1950.)  Apparently, Doris Day changed her mind about unwholesome roles by 1955 when she played Ruth Etting.  Her name came up for the Helen Morgan role again in 1956 when this movie was undergoing “the biggest casting search since Scarlett O’Hara.”

The 1950s inexplicably launched an era for nostalgic films about female singers on the rocks.  With a Song in My Heart (1952) gave us Susan Hayward as Jane Froman (Hayward was also up for the Helen Morgan role), who was injured in a plane crash, but managed to continue her singing career on crutches.  Interrupted Melody (1953) put Eleanor Parker, as Marjorie Lawrence, in a wheelchair with polio.  Susan Hayward took another turn at bat as the alcoholic Lillian Roth in I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955).  Peggy Lee received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her alcoholic torch singer in Pete Kelly’s Blues (1955).

Incidentally, Hedda Hopper had also publically barracked for Ann to get the Susan Hayward role as Lillian Roth in I’ll Cry Tomorrow in 1955:

Why not Ann Blyth for Lillian Roth’s story I’ll Cry Tomorrow?  Ann made her initial success as the nasty daughter of Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce.  Her dramatic talent has been smothered in sweet costume ickies, and I’d like to see her emerge again as a dramatic actress.  This would do it.

I’m not sure if the critics or the public were battling girl singers’ tragedies fatigue by 1957 when The Helen Morgan Story was released, but they had already seen one other version of her life.  In May 1957, some five months before the film’s release, the television show Playhouse 90 produced an original script on Helen’s life as told by her mother.  Polly Bergen played Helen Morgan, and received very good reviews.  You can see a clip of the program here on YouTube.  I especially like the way she acts out the mood of the song, creating an unselfconscious intimacy with her audience.

Polly Bergen did her own singing.  Ann Blyth signed on to the film project with the understanding she would do her own singing.  It was decided afterward that she would be dubbed by pop singer Gogi Grant, whose hit single the previous year, “The Wayward Wind” reached number one on the Billboardchart and held the position for a record eight weeks.

Syndicated columnist Erskine Johnson interviewed Gogi Grant, who mused:

“It’s funny too…I wasn’t asked to listen to any of Helen’s old records.  The studio didn’t even suggest I change my style of singing.  They just said, ‘Sing like YOU sing…I guess I was the only girl singer in America who wasn’t after the role of Helen Morgan…the studio called me one day right out of the blue.”

She was hired by Warner’s studio musical director:

“At first the studio figured that Ann, known as a singer, might skip by unnoticed with a dubbed-in singing voice.  Even after hiring Gogi for the chore, the studio worried about the box-office appeal of a non-singing Ann Blyth in the role of Helen.”

But Gogi’s agent sweetened the pot, and suggested that Gogi would work for less money if they gave her screen credit.  There was no attempt to hide the owner of Helen’s screen singing voice, nor could there have been.  From that point, Ann’s being dubbed influenced the reputation of The Helen Morgan Story.

Ann praised Miss Grant’s work and told columnist Bob Thomas:

“Gogi has done a wonderful job on the songs…she’s not only a good singer; she has a dramatic quality that the songs require.”

Determined to look at it in a positive light, she acknowledged after filming got under way:

“I’ve been hoping for a role like this for a long time.  I’m a little disappointed about not being able to sing, but Helen’s character and the story really are more important.  Her greatest appeal was her personality.  To do a good job and be convincing is all I ask.”

It was a generous and professional attitude to take, but in terms of lending legitimacy both to the film and to her career, the decision to dub her was a punch to the gut. 

Ann Blyth wasn’t an actress who couldn’t sing and therefore needed to be dubbed; she was a singer, moreover, a richly talented singer with a powerful voice.  She had sung on film, she had sung in nightclubs, just as Helen Morgan did.  One could imagine that for a trained singer to have her singing dubbed, to act her songs and lip-synch to the playback of another woman’s voice might have been demoralizing.  It certainly would have felt strange.  It also left her with only half a characterization - she couldn't work through the mood of the lyrics the way Polly Bergen did because she wasn't creating the mood - she was only able to follow the template laid down by Gogi Grant.

Ann had meticulously researched her role preparatory to making the film: speaking with people who knew Helen Morgan, reading newspaper accounts, and, unlike Gogi Grant, listening to her recordings.  Helen had a high, thin soprano, with careful diction, a delicate sound and articulation that hearkened back almost to the style of lady songstresses of the turn of the century.  That was the irony in this tale of two reputations: Ann Blyth’s robust soprano was not considered “torchy” enough for a public the studio felt would expect a more brassy, pop sound—and Helen Morgan’s thin, sweet voice was unlike the nasal boop-a-doop warblings of the cutie pies or the throaty and gin-soaked moaners of the 1920s.  Her vocal style didn’t match what was currently popular in her own era, and yet she was still a star.  Her personality while singing made her so; not necessarily her voice.

Gogi Grant, as people seem to frankly acknowledge now, did not sound at all like Helen Morgan, but then as she said in her interview quoted above, she wasn’t supposed to even try.  Polly Bergen, who played Helen on television, with a deeper voice sounded even less like her. 

Ann Blyth’s rich voice, her range, her precise articulation and skill in holding a note for its full value would have been entirely compatible with Helen Morgan’s singing style.

(Mildred Pierce - 1945 - Ann at 16)

Besides, if the studio really wanted vampish and torchy, who was it that sang “Oceana Roll” with torrid suggestiveness, a bare midriff and a scarf in her hand (à la Helen Morgan)?  Veda Pierce—nobody but 16-year-old Ann Blyth.

As we noted in this previous post on The Student Prince (1954), when Edmund Purdom was called in to replace Mario Lanza, but was dubbed using Lanza’s singing voice, it pretty much sunk any hope of Purdom’s making the role his own.  The Student Prince suffered for it, its reputation tarnished before filming even began.

Just as with Edmund Purdom, being dubbed took away from Ann Blyth’s owning the role. However, Ann’s remark that it was really the dramatics of the story that mattered was, in part, true.  The role still presented a thrilling challenge for her.  She mused for Photoplay in December 1957:

“I know everybody’s going to think the drunk scenes were the toughest for me,” she says with a grin, “They weren’t.  People don’t realize that, for an actress, a good drunk scene is an emotional field day.  You can just sort of let out all your stops…”

The movie has its strengths and weaknesses.  Ann acknowledged in the same interview:

“After all, no one motion picture can really do full justice to a person’s life.  How can it, when often the person doesn’t do justice to himself?”

This hints at one of the major problems of The Helen Morgan Story, and which really is nobody’s fault—Helen was passive, insecure, and a self-destructive person, who came to a miserable end.  It is difficult to craft a film that will entertain an audience, to keep them emotionally involved in the story even when things get very grim. (Though I think her story deserves another treatment, a documentary at least.)  Nobody saved her, and she could not save herself.  It does tear your heart out, as producer Martin Rackin predicted, but it is depressing.  Despite a lump-in-the-throat ending scene where Helen’s friends pay tribute to her, there really is no uplifting message.

Other problems with the film could have been corrected, and are the result perhaps of first, too many writers stitching together a project that had been on the Warner’s shelf for nearly 15 years, and second, an unfortunate collaboration between those writers and director Michael Curtiz to hammer every 1920s cliché they could think of in order to make us remember we are in the Jazz Age.  It feels a little heavy-handed in some spots.  Some scenes border on parody and some of the dialogue is quite hokey.

One scene at the very beginning, I confess, has always bothered me for the incongruity of a strong actress and a moment of weak direction.  A very young Helen, just starting out in show business, sings in a carnival side show for Paul Newman, who is a barker trying to sell phony lots in the famous 1920s Florida land scams.  A torrent of rain scatters the fairgoers, the carnival breaks up for the day.  As Newman says goodbye to Ann, he suddenly suggests she stay the night with him and impulsively pulls her into a smothering embrace.  She struggles for a moment, taken aback, but after his first forceful kiss, she hesitates, and then hungrily kisses him again.  She’s lonely and it is thrilling to be desired.  The two actors have terrific chemistry together, as will be evident in all their scenes.

The problem is the morning after scene, when Ann wakes, lying across a bed that clearly has not been slept in, which the director keeps prominent in the foreground.  She is alone, looks around, and finds a note Newman has left her, a curt kiss-off.  Her reaction is powerful, a wordless, explosive mixture of hurt and horror. 

Director Michael Curtiz, however, has let his leading lady down by carelessly putting her in an odd setting: we have been given to understand she slept with Newman, yet she wakes fully clothed on a bed that isn’t even rumpled, as if she had inexplicably passed out cold after their conversation.  When she gets up to walk to the window to look for Newman, we hear the clunking of her high-heeled shoes.  She hadn’t even taken off her shoes.  Then she discovers the note he has left on the pillow.  

Her expression tells us this is a woman who has been used and thrown away.  This isn't a case about being sad she didn't get to say goodbye to Mr. Newman because she overslept; she's been humiliated. 

While I’m not calling for a graphic bedroom scene to prove they have been intimate, I would suggest there are other ways, more subtle but certainly on-point to give support to Ann’s devastated reaction to the note.  Perhaps the scene could have begun when she is waking alone in bed, or perhaps while she is dressing, looking expectantly for Newman as if assuming he has only stepped out of the bungalow for a moment, a shot of the bed (which through this scene remains prominent in the foreground) unmade, and then discovering the note on a table. 

Other moments of Mr. Curtiz’s direction are quite good, and he moves the many episodes of Helen Morgan’s life along at a brisk pace.  I especially like the quick cut from the tense scene on the fire escape (where, crying through her lines, she begs him, “Tell me you love me, please!”) to a shot of a mirror ball and a blast of a nightclub act singing the bouncy hit, “The Girlfriend.”   The montage of her European tour is good, and Mr. Curtiz uses music as a motif throughout the film with incredible and exciting skill.

The movie is flooded with delightful snippets of songs that capture the ebullience of the 1920s, and the despair of Helen’s darker moments.  Gogi Grant’s glossy rendition of the songs is enjoyable; she had a smashing voice, big and brassy.  Ann Blyth’s lip-synching is believable, possibly aided by the fact that she sang in public herself and knew about breath control and presentation, so much so that even today newcomers to the film are often confused about whether she did her own singing.

Unfortunately, the movie makes only a brief nod to her Broadway role as Julie in Showboat --easily the most important role of her career, and there is no reference at all to her time in Hollywood.  The main focus are the Chicago speakeasies and the no good bum who keeps popping up her life, Paul Newman.

Paul Newman’s character is fictional.  He is meant to represent the men who done her wrong.  Mr. Newman was not keen on doing the film, and it was never one of his favorites.  According to biographer Shawn Levy in Paul Newman – A Life:

He didn’t exactly bond with Curtiz, complaining that the director would tell him to “Go faster,” rather than give specific counsel as to the emotions that were required in a scene.  But he admired Blyth’s work ethic…

His character is forceful and dynamic, but has very little dimension.  Only one scene where he, exasperated over Ann’s anguish over a friend’s suicide, tries to wise her up with his philosophy on survival, mentions he won medals in the war but now they’re worthless.  But the moment is dropped and we never really see inside him again.  We don’t really see him develop—he’s as much an opportunistic skunk at the beginning of the movie as at the end.  His final scene, when he has a change of heart and arranges a tribute to Helen, telling her that from now on she comes first in his life, is not really believable.  We have, unlike Helen, learned not to trust him.  Newman’s work in the picture is fine; it’s the script that leaves him hanging.  Curtiz, too, might have strengthened Newman’s character, given him more depth with some strategic close-ups, but this is CinemaScope, and we know about CinemaScope and close-ups.

Actually, it’s an interesting thing about Paul Newman and what I guess we would term “star quality.”  Unlike some of the other young actors in the 1950s like Marlon Brando and James Dean who suddenly blazed on the scene and became instant stars, Newman manages to be both charismatic and yet still blend in with the setting and acting style of the other actors, a seamless part of the whole.  Wherever he is, he belongs.  Brando and Dean, with their so-called natural style of acting had a screen presence like a black hole – they absorbed all the spotlight, but never reflected it anyone else.  Newman did not demand our attention, but he got it, and it strikes me that if he had come along in the 1920s, or 1930s, or 1940s, he still would have been just as much a star.  Plunk him into any decade and he would fit.  He had that quality, but entirely without gimmick like the other gentlemen, and it’s no wonder he remained a star for decades until the end of his life.

Richard Carlson is the well-heeled, but married attorney with whom Helen also becomes involved.  He is a gentler companion than Newman, but ultimately their relationship is just as destructive to the lonely singer’s quest for a stable relationship.

Cara Williams lends strong support as her best friend, a hoofer with a heart of gold and a big mouth, who keeps her boyfriend, played by Alan King, in line.  King is quite good in his minor role, funny and natural as Newman’s good-natured henchman.

Real-life figures in Helen’s life, including her accompanist Jimmy McHugh, Rudy Vallee, and columnist Walter Winchell make appearances.  The late Mark Hellinger is played in two brief scenes by an actor.

Bess Flowers shows up at the U.S. Customs checkpoint on the pier.  Not only did she have the costumes to get all these walk-on roles, she must have had the luggage too.

A few things of note: Ann’s slight hesitancy of speech in this role is an empathetic and intuitive gesture to Helen Morgan’s own speech, described as halting, and Ann’s voice in the later scenes grows raw as if with smoking and drinking.  They didn’t let her sing, but she still did a lot with her voice.

In a noir-ish scene Paul Newman lurks in the dark in her apartment when she arrives home, and watches her undress in the other room (mostly behind a screen).  She discovers him, and they argue.  She wants to get him out of her life, tired of being used by him, bone weary and a little drunk.  She tells him with heartbroken ferocity that she hates him, but he forces her to admit her desire for him by crushing her to her bed with another steamy kiss.  All their scenes are quite intense (he slaps her around a few times), and we would write off Newman’s unpleasant one-note character except for his powerful screen presence and her always passionate response to him.  Whether wrapped in each other's arms or standing on opposite sides of a room, these two are always locked into each other.  (His character as written is just not as interesting as, say, James Cagney’s bullying yet insecure gangster in Love Me or Leave Me.)

Another scene where Richard Carlson, as Newman’s polar opposite – gentle, but weak and ineffectual, comes upon Ann in the wee hours, drinking at a bar, alone.  She is bitter, as hard-edged as the critics thought Helen Morgan should be, and pretty near the end of her rope.  In between sips and a drag on her cigarette, blowing the smoke over the rim of her glass, she growls her lines and slurs her self-loathing.  “It isn't you or Larry, it's me, only me.  Something terrible happening inside me..."

And I would be remiss if I did not point out the black beret she wears at the beginning of the film as young woman starting out on her own, in a train on her way to Chicago.  See our previous post on the stylish and cinematically necessary beret.

The most powerful scene comes toward the end of the film.  First, we see Ann in a dive of a bar, unkempt, dressed in rags, no makeup, and half-drunk, in the cozy, if boisterous, company of winos.  She hears a recording of herself on the radio, and she attempts to sing along.  I believe, because of what would have been difficulty of matching the audio interspersed with the spoken lines, this is not Gogi Grant butchering the song, but Ann herself mimicking Miss Grant doing so, and it has to make one smile that though Jack Warner wouldn’t let Ann sing as Helen, here she sings for Gogi singing for her, with a rusty, gin-soaked screech.  Please correct me if I’m wrong.

She is on the edge psychologically, and a physical wreck, her halting words come trembling out of her throat, and when she leaves the bar, Curtiz follows her with a tilted camera down a wet and dirty alley.  She walks away in a haze, seemingly without any idea where she’s going, and collapses, where a cop finds her face down in the gutter.

Curtiz, with dazzling skill and artist’s eye, and absolutely no mercy, swoops us immediately to a charity hospital psych treatment room, where Ann, lying restrained and naked under a sheet, is suffering delirium tremens, shivering, sweating, and screaming in agony while a stoic staff observes her in this cold and sterile environment, as we do, like a bug in a jar.  Her tortured expression, her wailing is all-out, heartbreaking, and really quite shocking.

Her last hoarse scream of “Help me!  Somebody help me!” is agonizing to watch, a reprise of her earlier confessed memory of an episode of childhood panic.

For these few gutsy moments alone, never mind the consistent strength of her other scenes, Ann Blyth should have been nominated for an Academy Award. 

Most of us classic film buffs, being as familiar as we are with movie greats who never won an award, nor were even nominated, do not keep score on talent by awards.  Far from it.  Nor do I.  However, stepping aside a moment to look at the nominees of that year, we find Deborah Kerr in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, Anna Magnani for Wild is the Wind, Elizabeth Taylor for Raintree County, and Lana Turner for Peyton Place.  We may discuss the merits of the other nominees, agree or disagree, but…Lana Turner for Peyton Place?  Hardly a demanding or large role, and her work not of the same caliber of Ann Blyth’s in The Helen Morgan Story.  The winner that year was Joanne Woodward for The Three Faces of Eve.  Her performance was splendid, and she deserved to be singled out.

It is ironic to note that Ann Blyth was originally up for Miss Woodward’s role in The Three Faces of Eve—and turned it down.

“Big mistake,” she noted in interview with Classic Images in February 1995, but, “I think you can only regret momentarily.  You can’t hang onto those regrets.  But it was a mistake.”

At that Academy Awards ceremony that year, she sang one of the nominated songs, “April Love” in company with Shirley Jones (who, like Ann, was one of the celebrity guests on the recent TCM Classic Cruise), Anna Maria Alberghetti, Jimmie Rogers, Tommy Sands, and Tab Hunter (also on the recent TCM Classic Cruise).

Ann Blyth was, however, nominated for a Laurel Award (conducted by Motion Picture Exhibitor magazine) for Top Female Musical Performance in The Helen Morgan Story.

“I was a little sad to see it end,” Ann said of the movie, “It’s the most exiting picture I’ve ever done and we had a great cast and crew.”

Reviews were mixed, but one by Harold V. Cohen of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette typifies the negative response pretty well:

…practically everything about this lumbering biography of the Roaring Twenties’ misty-eyed torchbearer is drenched in dreariness.  The lachrymose story is a corny commissary of stringy sentiment and Miss Ann Blyth has no business whatsoever in the title part.

He felt she was miscast.  The Daytona Beach Sunday News-Journal praised her work:

Preview audiences have acclaimed Ann’s performance of the tragic Helen as one of the most brutally honest yet seen on screen.

From the Pasadena Independent, September 1957:

“The important thing,” says Ann, "is to find a role that gives one a satisfying feeling of achievement.  To know that you have brought a difficult characterization to life is the accomplishment I have longed for over a period of years.”

Director Michael Curtiz and producer Martin Rackin, who were dubious at first that she was the right girl for the part, are now loudest in praise of her performance.  They say she is embarking upon a new and more brilliant career.

..those who watched the picture being made were amazed and enthralled at Miss Blyth’s tremendous enactment of the fabulous torch singer…

“I never wanted a particular role so much in my life,” says Ann. “And I never worked so hard to make a part perfect.  I did everything I could to submerge myself into the characterization of the real Helen.  Everyone connected with the picture has been very kind.”

It may be that with the passing of the decades as we get farther away from both the 1920s and the 1950s, The Helen Morgan Story has grown in stature, deeply moving younger, new audiences, who are able to emotionally connect with a story of a gentle, kindly, but hopelessly trapped soul without comparing any memory with the real Helen Morgan or the knowing much about the 1920s.  I rather think that this movie is even more approachable, and more timeless, to modern audiences than The Three Faces of Eve for different reasons, but we can discuss that in the future.

Ann Blyth wanted a challenge, and since her own shy childhood, liked to immerse herself in a role with that imagination she compared to “a deep well.”

She told Photoplay in 1957:

“An actress shouldn’t get too comfortable in her professional life—she’s liable to get lazy and won’t fight for the roles she wants and won’t fight against those she doesn’t want.  I’m free of all studio commitments for the first time since I arrived in Hollywood.  I can choose the roles I want, and if I want them badly enough, I’ll fight for them, just as I did for Helen Morgan.  I hope though that I’ll be offered three-dimensional roles from now on…It may shock some people, but I can honestly say that Helen Morgan is my favorite role…of course, that could be because it’s the one I’ve just done!  But seriously, I’m grateful just to have the chance at last to show that I have developed as a woman and I’m not just a goody-goody.  And I hope this role will lead my career into new and exciting channels.”

She did head for new channels, but not on film.  There were decades of performances ahead on TV, theatre, and concerts, which she was able to work around her family's needs.  Another legacy of The Helen Morgan Story is the apparent myth that she retired after doing this movie, as if she punched out her time card and said, “I’m outta here.”  She wanted to do more movies.  Two decades later she replied to interviewer Lance Erickson Ghulam’s question on why that was her last film:

Good parts just never seemed to come to me.  Rather than waiting for them, I decided to return to the stage and do that again.  I’ve done some television through the years as well, and I’ve been happy ever since.  That’s the main reason why we’re doing what we’re doing, right?

A tiresome legacy of the film was that Ann would repeatedly field questions from interviewers, for decades, who wanted to know if she did her own singing in The Helen Morgan Story, or why didn’t she do her own singing?  Nevertheless, her transcendent performance is the strongest element in this flawed movie, for there is a glowing warmth beneath the sadness, an appealing vulnerability and continues to affect today’s audiences.

Polly Bergen won an Emmy for her TV role as Helen Morgan.  She also released an album in 1957: Bergen Sings Morgan. 

Gogi Grant also released an album of Helen Morgan’s songs from the movie, which sold well, climbing to #25 on the Billboard chart. 

Ann finally got a chance to sing some of those songs on TV guest spots, maybe just to prove she could, and in her own concert and cabaret career in the 1980s and 1990s.  Sometimes, she sat on a piano, as she did in New York’s swank Rainbow and Stars.

Helen Morgan is all but forgotten today, and even most theatre buffs may not be able to tell you why in the much-produced stage musical Showboat, the character of Julie climbs on a piano to sing “Bill.”  It’s because the part was played by Helen on Broadway, and since she was known for sitting on top of a piano to sing in her nightclub act, she was asked to repeat her signature gesture in the play.  Even today, if you see a revival or touring production of Showboat, Julie is often sitting on a piano.  When you see that, think of Helen Morgan.  It is an homage to her.

Below…Miss Helen Morgan singing “Bill,” from Showboat, recorded the year Ann was born, 1928:

The Helen Morgan Story is available on DVD, and is occasionally shown on TCM.



The 1936 Showboat with Helen Morgan as Julie is also finally available now on DVD, and has been shown on TCM after a long period of being almost completely unknown to younger generations who were familiar only with the 1954 version. I think it's coming up again in January if you want to keep on the lookout for it.

Ann Blyth performed in Showboat many times on stage in the 1970s, as mentioned in this previous post on her stage career.  However, she did not play Helen Morgan’s supporting role of Julie; she played the lead, Magnolia.  An undisputed soprano part for an undisputed soprano.

The Helen Morgan Story was Ann Blyth’s last film, and this is our last film in the Year of Ann Blyth.  Come back next Thursday for one final post to wrap up with a few thoughts on Ann’s career and on this series.

©Jacqueline T. Lynch, 2007-2014. All rights reserved. If you're reading this on a site other than Another Old Movie Blog, please be aware that this post has been stolen and is used without permission. 

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Beaver Valley Times (Beaver County, PA), January 18, 1957, syndicated column by Aline Mosby, “Steps Out of Character- Ann Blyth Gets Sexy Movie Role,” p. 11.

Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine, June 9, 1957, “Happy Girl on a Piano,” by Hedda Hopper, p. 24.

Classic Images, February 1995, “Ann Blyth: Ann of a Thousand Smiles” by Lance Erickson Ghulam, p.22.

Daytona Beach Sunday News-Journal, September 15, 1957, “Good Girl in Movie Gutter,” p. 12A.

Deseret News, November 27, 1950, column by Louella Parsons, p. F3

The Independent (St. Petersburg, FL) September 1, 1948, column by Hedda Hopper, p. 16.

Levy, Shawn.  Paul Newman – A Life (NY: Harmony Books, 2009), p. 121.

Milwaukee Sentinel, October 28, 1956, column by James Bacon, p 9, part 2.

Modern Screen, December 1949, article by Kirtley Baskette, p. 43.

Pasadena Independent, September 11, 1957, “Ann Blyth Plays Exotic Torch Singer,” p. 8.

Photoplay, December 1957, “You Don’t Know Ann Blyth”.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 7, 1957, review by Harold V. Cohen.

Reading (PA) Eagle, February 7, 1957, “Ann Blyth’s Role in Morgan Story Raises Many Eyebrows,” syndicated column by Bob Thomas, p. 2.

Register-Guard (Eugene, Oregon), September 25, 1978, “Ruth Etting, Early Radio Star, Dies at Age 80,” p. 13A.

The Spencer (Iowa) Daily Republican, July 25, 1957, syndicated column by Erskine Johnson, p. 5; May 21, 1957, syndicated column by Erskine Johnson.

Valley Morning Star (Harlingen, Texas), March 19, 1955, syndicated column by Hedda Hopper, p. 7.

Wiley, Mason and Damien Bona.  Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards (NY: Ballantine Books, 1986), p. 287.

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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; Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear; and actor/singer/author Bill Hayes.  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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 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 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 is now out in eBook, and in paperback here.

I’ll provide a free copy, either paperback or eBook or both if you wish, to 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.