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.

Mildred Pierce - 1945...Revisiting Veda

Mildred Pierce (1945) gave Ann Blyth a film career.  The loan-out to Warner Bros. to make the film proved a serendipitous event, handing her an astounding opportunity.  She responded, astoundingly, with a remarkably intense and mature performance. 

I know I keep warning you about long posts.  They won't all be long.  But enough will be so that you should always bring a snack to this blog.

Ann was only sixteen, with four minor musicals to her credit at Universal (which we’ll discuss in a later post), and all of these films were ensemble pieces.  She never had a starring role in any of them, and in the last film she made before Mildred Pierce, a bit of vaudeville fluff called Bowery to Broadway (1944), she was in the film as the daughter of ex-vaudevillians Frank McHugh and Rosemary DeCamp for all of about three minutes, singing a song at the finale.  How the lightweight, chirping, innocent teens she played in these movies ever paved the way to creating the role of Veda Pierce—a manipulative sociopath—is a phenomenon often mused over by classic film fans, but probably will never be fathomed by anyone looking for a logical explanation.  The ability for an actress to shed her skin and crawl into another person’s psyche is what’s supposed to happen—but it shocks us when it’s done so well.

Fifth billing here, not only did the film really launch Miss Blyth’s career—certainly more than the Universal musicals did—but it sustained her career over that horrific period when she was out of work for more than a year during the recovery from her severe spinal injury (which we discussed in our intro post to this series here).  A year is a long time in the film industry, and once momentum is lost in one’s career, it is often gone for good.  Many film careers have gotten derailed and never recovered from circumstances far less serious than Ann’s.  But her splendid work in Mildred Pierce, which earned her a Best Supporting Actress nomination, kept her in the industry’s focus and in the favor of the fickle and forgetful public during her convalescence.

According to gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, who reported in December 1947, “…Of all the promising youngsters in our town, I predict the brightest future for Ann.  She’s got it.  In Mildred Pierce, she stole many scenes from the star.”

The star of the film, Joan Crawford, in her way helped to get Ann the role by pairing up with her for Ann's screen test.

Joan Crawford was at a crossroads in her career, having left MGM with her star power draining away in predictable roles and the inevitable crisis of maintaining screen glamour for an actress entering her forties.  Miss Crawford was not ready for character parts yet (and never would be), and headed for Warner Bros. in the hope of reviving her brand with meatier roles.  Mildred Pierce was just the ticket for her, but in what must have been a very canny and savvy act, she read with Ann Blyth during Ann’s screen test.  This is not something stars usually did—that was a chore for an underling, but Joan Crawford had a lot riding on this movie, and she wanted to be sure that the actress playing her daughter Veda, who was the linchpin of the movie, was the best she could get.

Miss Crawford, despite her stardom at the biggest studio in town before she came to Warner’s, had to jump through some hoops herself to get her role as Mildred.  Director Michael Curtiz had not wanted her, and it wasn’t until other established Warner’s stars like Bette Davis had turned down the role that Joan was considered.  She was even required to test for it first, which had to have been an insult, but Joan Crawford was nothing if not a fighter, and she wanted this movie.  She knew with impressive clarity that it could be her making—or re-making, as if were—and that the actress playing Veda was key.

Ann Blyth was one of the last to test of many, many young actresses who badly wanted this role of the spoiled, troublesome and, at times, downright evil Veda.  Ann recalled in interviews that her agent at the time pushed for a chance for her to test for the role, sensing some as yet untried ability in his young client to meet the challenge.

Warner’s, however, was not really keen on having Ann do the role, even if she were really good in the part.  Why make a star of a young actress who belonged to another studio?  They had plenty of young women in their own stable to groom.  But Ann was good in the tests, and Joan wanted her. 

Ann Blyth never forgot it, and in the distant decades ahead when Joan’s name and reputation after her death became a scandal and a joke, Miss Blyth remained one of her biggest fans and defenders.  You can have a look at her TCM tribute to Joan Crawford here.

In the final days of shooting the film in February 1945, curiosity in the press buzzing around the studio presaged the huge hit this film was going to be.  Columnist Sheliah Graham: “Joan Crawford is taking a big chance with her following in Mildred Pierce.  In the matter of her glamour girl status, I mean…Joan has a grownup daughter…in this case, it’s pretty Ann Blyth…In Mildred she wears no makeup in some of the scenes and looks bedraggled and drab.  To further emphasize the change in Joan: she plays many of the scenes with her back to the camera, facing Ann’s pretty, youthful face.  Miss Crawford certainly has changed—and for the better.”

 

We’ve discussed Mildred Pierce before in this post here, but that was to concentrate on Ernest Haller’s gorgeous cinematography.  Today we focus on Ann Blyth’s Veda character.  The movie is so rich in performances and imagery, that I suppose you could pick out different aspects of the film and never run out of things to talk about—there may be somebody out there right now working on their Master’s Degree thesis on Mildred Pierce.

For this post, I’d like to explore the idea that Kay Pierce, Veda’s younger sister played by Jo Ann Marlowe, was a steadying influence on Veda and that had she lived, the course of Veda’s life and her downfall might have been very different.  Veda had two negative and ultimately destructive influences in her life—Monty, played by Zachary Scott, was one.  The other was her own mother.

Kay, the rough and tumble little sister Veda lorded over, was actually the most positive influence in her life, and had more subtle power over Veda than anybody.

Of course, neither the movie nor the original novel play with this notion, but this is my blog and it’s my football. 
 

In the striking opening shots Zachary Scott is gunned down by an unseen murderer and the movie, completely unlike the novel, begins with a murder mystery.  We see Joan Crawford pondering a suicidal leap off a dark wharf in desperation, and then try to ensnare Jack Carson in a murder rap.

Veda, who will figure so prominently in the movie, first appears like a minor character, skirting nervously across the room to her mother, Mildred, played by Joan Crawford, who comes home to find the police there already waiting to question her.

Veda runs to her for comfort, explanation, protection, “Mother, where have you been?  What’s happened?”  She is a pretty young woman covered in a long bathrobe.  She seems genuinely frightened by the police and genuinely mystified by what could possibly have brought them here at this late hour.  She seems like any innocent teen.  Director Michael Curtiz has set the scene beautifully, with his showman’s artistry. 

One of the problems, if it is a problem, of making a movie on what was then a currently popular novel is that a good part of the audience knows what happened in the story.  Mr. Curtiz and the team of writers, by adding the murder mystery, turned the story on its ear and made it something new.  That murder mystery also carried to greater depths the darker mood of the story than to the novel, and the darker places in the souls of the mother and daughter.

We have only one clue in our introduction to Veda that there’s more to this girl than meets the eye.  She wears that, now iconic, enormous gardenia in her dark hair.  Her hair is fashionably coiffed, set off by the gardenia and she's wearing earrings.  If we notice that much, then we might assume she’s been out this evening, perhaps she hasn’t been home for very long.  But we don’t have too much time to dwell on it at this stage in the movie.

Joan Crawford comforts her and tells her to go to bed, that she will handle everything.  It is the theme of the movie.  Veda dutifully goes upstairs and Joan is taken by the police to the station.  We might note also, if we are observant, that Veda actually runs up the stairs to her bedroom looking anxiously over the banister once or twice as the police leave the house.  We may take that as an indication that she can hardly wait for them to leave so she can attend to something.  At the very final moments, we will learn that she has tried to take it on the lam. 

Then of course the movie goes into its famous flashback and we get all the background on Mildred’s life of drudgery, the weak and ineffectual husband, the marriage that falls apart and her new career as a successful businesswoman.  We go back in what is something like four years and meet her children Veda and Kay. 

Like that opening scene where we meet Veda, we learn a great deal about Veda and Kay’s relationship by what subtle clues director Michael Curtiz gives us about their appearance, their body language and reactions to each other.

They come home from school on the day their father and their mother separate.  First, we see Kay, wonderfully played by Jo Ann Marlowe, a much younger girl, probably about nine years old playing football in the street with her friends.  She’s wearing overalls and her hair is in pigtails.  She's just a happy, carefree kid.

Veda comes along, probably a freshman or sophomore in high school, dressed smartly. Veda takes Kay by the hand and drags her home with the pseudo-sophistication of an older sister, someone who criticizes her and condescends, who nags at her for not behaving like a little lady, but Kay, with sublime self-confidence and extraordinary good humor, lets it all roll off her back.  She skips, she hops, and she doesn’t mind Veda’s big sisterly criticism because she is so wonderfully contented her own little world that she finds happiness easily.  For all the possessions Veda aspires to, she is the one who will never find happiness because she will never be content with anything.  Nothing will be enough.  She’s a tragic figure in that way and maybe Kay sees that Veda is the one who needs to be humored because she’s not the strong one.  Kay is.

An interesting scene occurs when they get closer to home and they see their father putting his belongings in the family car.  They stop on the sidewalk and watch him, and there is a moment when Veda turns to look at Kay, but it is not the protective look of an older sister.  Rather, it appears almost as if Veda is looking at Kay to understand the scene through Kay’s eyes.  She’s looking for Kay’s reaction because in some way, even though the child is much younger, Veda relies on her opinion.  Veda, not in the course of the whole movie, ever displays a sense of caring about another person’s feelings.  Later when Joan Crawford comes to see that the girls are asleep and finds Veda reading a magazine, Veda will tell her that Kay has cried herself to sleep over their father and says it in such an unconcerned tone that we know she really doesn’t care about Kay’s sadness.  She has never been wrapped up in anybody but herself.

And yet there are keys, such as those seen on the sidewalk, where she looks for Kay’s reaction that would almost suggest to us that Veda is the needy one in the relationship and that Kay, simply by being impervious to Veda’s nonsense, is the only one whose reaction Veda trusts.  Her father pulls away from her.  Her mother goes overboard trying to please her, so much so that Veda has a great sense of power over her mother.  She lost respect for Mildred because her mother is always so obviously under her thumb. 

But Kay is amused by Veda, has her own strong sense of self and does not feel threatened by Veda.  She doesn’t give in, she doesn’t ignore.  She takes Veda for who she is with a grin.

They go into the house and we have the scene where Veda sits at the piano to play the new tune she has learned, Chopin’s “Valse (or Waltz) Brillante” (I love Joan Crawford’s bemused, “Does it really?” when Ann Blyth tells her what the word means.)  Kay immediately starts dancing to it quite unselfconsciously, as freely as if she had been in the room alone.  Veda provides accompaniment. 

When her mother tells Veda that a dress she ordered for her has arrived, Veda is thrilled, forgets all about the trouble between her father and her mother.  She runs upstairs to see her new dress—but she grabs Kay’s hand and pulls her upstairs with her because she wants Kay to see the dress too.

We never see Veda with other girlfriends and we never hear her talk about them.  With such a conceited and bullying personality as hers, we may imagine she probably doesn’t have too many friends.  It may be that Kay is her whole world.  The one person who she can feel superior to by virtue of her age and yet feel equal to because Kay takes none of her guff.

When they are up in their room and Veda tries on her new dress, Kay gathers the wrapping paper in the box and puts it to the side because she is responsible and she is neat and she looks after Veda.  But she also tells Veda, “You ought to do something about your sit down.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It sticks out.”

Kay is the only person in the world who probably ever told Veda that she’s got a big butt.  Veda, rather than be affronted, blames it on the dress and then continues to criticize the dress as if she’s talking to someone her own age instead of someone much younger, sitting there on the bed, fondling a ragdoll. 

Kay throws it back at her, unconcerned and funny, when Veda complains about the quality of the dress and Kay responds, “What did you expect?  Want it inlaid with gold?”  And when Veda continues to find fault with the dress, Kay remarks, “You’re breaking my heart.”

They speak as equals, and there is no one else in this movie who speaks to Veda as an equal.  She is kowtowed to, she is avoided.  She is threatened.  She is flirted with, but nobody ever looks her in the eye and tells her what’s what, except for little sensible Kay.

We very soon learn how big a problem Veda is going to be to her mother in the scene where Joan Crawford comes up to the girls’ room at night and Veda tells her that she overheard her conversation with Jack Carson and wishes that her mother would marry him because he has money.  Mildred tries to explain that she can’t marry a man she doesn’t love just for the money and Veda wants to know why.

Veda wants more than a new dress.  She wants a life of luxury, now.  Her mother is surprised and shocked, and Veda sensing she has said something wrong, but doesn’t really know why, cuddles up to her mother and lies just a bit, affirming that everything is all right as long as mother and daughters stay together.  But we know she doesn’t mean it.  Veda is a budding sociopath.

One of the most interesting scenes in the movie begins quite deceptively with a funny moment where Kay is dressed up like a mini Carmen Miranda and sings the hit song “South American Way.”  Veda is at the piano in their living room playing the tune and singing along.  She sings a light high harmony to Jo Ann Marlowe’s exuberant faux-Brazilian lead. 

Their mother walks in and ends up hustling Kay away, telling her to wash her face.  The thing that’s so remarkable about this scene is that, here again, we have a brief but telling look at Veda’s relationship with her younger sister.  Veda’s not playing “Valse Brillante”, or any of her high-tone music.  She singing a popular song of the day with her little sister dressed up as Carmen Miranda clowning around.  Veda is playing,as in pretending. This is the only point in the movie were we see Veda with her hair down and the person she can do that with is her little sister, nobody else.

She’s playing at a musical act.  Much later on in the movie will see that when Joan Crawford kicks Veda out of the house and Veda has to find work, she ends up in Jack Carson’s waterfront dive singing the ragtime saloon song “The Oceana Roll” and we may wonder if she got her training for that unlikely career by playing with Kay in the living room singing a song like “South American Way”.  She has a little of Kay’s flamboyance if not her unselfconscious joy, as she is leered at by sailors in the dismal dive.

Joan Crawford’s sickened expression in the saloon watching her daughter is priceless.

When Mildred arrives home, complaining about all messy makeup on Kay’s face.  It is Veda who speaks up in a very irritated tone and says, “It’s just a little lipstick, Mother.”  Perhaps she’s the one who put it on Kay.

Then, of course, the tone of the scene changes radically with Kay out of the room and Veda is left alone with her mother.  Still at the piano, Veda switches to a classical piece.  She is stony faced.  She is a different person with her mother than she is with Kay.  This is the first confrontation scene between them when Veda reveals that she has discovered that her mother is working as a waitress.  She is embarrassed by this, and when she insults her mother, Joan Crawford slaps Ann Blyth across the face with a resounding forehand and backhand.

Before we get to the famous return slap by Ann, a bit more on her relationship with Kay.

Another companionable scene between Kay and Veda occurs just as the girls are packing to go on a weekend trip with their father.  Veda wonders aloud if there will be any boys there, and Kay, who has retrieved Veda’s bathing suit and tosses it to her, responds with matronly wisdom, “If there are any, they’ll be sure to find you,” and the sisters smile briefly at each other.  Kay is the reassuring constant in her life.

How their relationship might have developed into adulthood makes interesting speculation, but we never get the chance, for Kay dies of pneumonia, and we are given one last scene to decipher.  We have some tragic, and artfully framed shots of the child in an oxygen tent with doctor, nurse, and family at the bedside.

Joan Crawford and the children’s father, played by Bruce Bennett, are stoic bystanders.  The most emotion, the most worry and horror displayed is on the face of Veda.  Again, we do not imagine she feels compassion for the suffering little sister.  Rather, she is shaken for herself.

She snuggles up to Joan Crawford, clutches her almost as if she’s trying to climb into her pocket, like a small child who is afraid of standing in line to see Santa Claus.  She’s clinging to her mother for protection.  Perhaps somewhere deep inside she realizes she is losing the one person who just by her easy, no-nonsense personality has created a comfort zone for Veda. 

When Kay is pronounced dead, Joan Crawford sits down in shock and Veda rests her head in Mama’s lap, still in tears.  Mama, meantime, more in the novel than in the book, acknowledges that she’s relieved it was Kay who died and not Veda, her favorite. 

Later on in the movie when Joan marries Zachary Scott and moves into his beautiful mansion, purely as bait to get her estranged daughter to come back to her, Mr. Curtiz sets up a tantalizingly poignant shot of Joan looking out the window at Veda in the driveway.  In the foreground is a piano on which perhaps no one plays “Valse Brillante” or “South American Way”, and on top of the piano is a framed photograph of Kay.  So many pianos, so much subtext.  

 

Here we see in this quiet moment when Bruce Bennett brings his daughter to be reunited with her mother, and Veda appears repentant and contrite that we see Kay still has influence in the scene. 

“I’ll change, Mother.  I’ll never say mean things to you.”

But then in the next moment, Zachary Scott enters the room offers Veda a cigarette and Veda’s final downfall has begun.

That is Veda’s relationship with Kay, for anyone who wants to do their Masters Degree thesis on it.  Good luck.

Michael Curtiz is largely responsible for the construction of these scenes, but they would never come off without the intuitive interpretation by Ann Blyth, who steps up to the plate and handles everything so well in this movie, taking whatever baton Mr. Curtiz and Miss Crawford hand to her and running with it.  With Kay gone, we have more close-ups and more emotional involvement with the evil teenager. 

The scene where she entraps the rich boy, marries him for his money, and casts a knowing, purposeful glance over the rim of her champagne glass at Jack Carson, who helps her set the trap.

Her sexually charged chuckle in the dark in the arms of Zachary Scott, one of my favorite scenes where Joan Crawford discovers them embracing, Ann’s back arched over the bar. 

I love the blocking on this scene where Ann says a formal goodnight to Zachary Scott, and Jack Carson mimics her, saying an equally ridiculous formal goodnight to an amused Joan.

 

The famous scene where she tells Joan off and slaps her in the face, a scene so full of rage it must have left them both exhausted.  I cannot help but wonder at the direction given this 16-year-old girl by Mr. Curtiz.  "Okay, now you haul off and belt one of Hollywood's biggest stars."

The scene where she is dancing with Zachary Scott after first meeting him, with Jack Carson tipsily singing a song to accompany them, and Ann hums along.  Mr. Scott says, “You have a very nice voice, you know that?”  I always wondered whether that was ad libbed.

Veda smoking for the first time because Zachary Scott has given her a cigarette case, and she peppers her conversation with French phrases like Miss Piggy trying to impress.

Her stealing her mother’s husband, “I’m glad you know.  He never loved you.  It’s always been me.  I’ve got what I wanted and there’s nothing you can do about it.”  Her triumph, searing through narrowed eyes and the gloss of a long-aspired to sophistication hangs in the air just for a moment, until the catastrophe happens, by her own guilty hand.  Hysterical and sobbing, begs her mother, “Help me!”

This is no ploy, she is genuinely at the end of the rope.  Her, by now, truly tragic emotional collapse and her mother’s leaden inability to take any more--is topped only by more flip-flopping by both until the movie’s last few moments.

It’s quite a ride.  Ann Blyth is consistently believable in Veda's mercurial psyche.

My only bone of contention is having Mildred walk off into the rosy dawn with Bruce Bennett.  After all, she did throw Jack Carson under the bus by trying to pin a murder on him.  If she was so willing in her desperation to send an innocent man to the gas chamber, (comforting herself that he could talk his way out of it) maybe Veda’s frank and open avarice is at least honest compared to her mother's sneaky if desperate manipulation?

The movie was a hit, and changed the fortunes of both Miss Crawford and Miss Blyth.  A critic for the Hollywood Review wrote, “This Blyth child is exquisite in her understanding of one of the most difficult roles ever written.  Only the undeniable genius that has made Joan Crawford the great popular star she long since became enables her to keep Ann Blyth from running off with the film.”
 

We still marvel, as the critics did then, that she was only sixteen when she played this complicated young woman, especially since Veda's character really does not change in the film.  We go to deeper levels of nastiness and ability to wound, but that's all.  The character, played by a less intuitive actress, could have come off as just shrill.

Syndicated columnist Dorothy Manners crowed, “This Blyth girl is real star stuff—young, tempestuous and definitely a screen personality.  If you saw her as Mildred Pierce’s daughter—you know what I mean.”

Shortly after wrapping the movie, Ann Blyth was seriously injured with a fractured spine that kept her not only out of movies, but in doubt as to whether she would even walk again.  This is covered in our intro post to the series here. 

When she was able to be taken out of a body cast, she was allowed to swim as part of her physical therapy.  She and her mother lived in an apartment at the time with no pool available.  She took many swimming sessions in Joan Crawford’s pool.

While she was on the mend, two things happened which proved to be hopeful portents on her shelved career.  First: though the character she played in Mildred Pierce was hardly likeable, she received enough fan mail to keep her publicity afloat.

As The Coaticook Observer noted: “While under the care of doctors, Miss Blyth’s fan mail took a rise from solicitous servicemen and school-going fans.”

And the second thing was the most stunning.  She received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her work, the youngest up to that time ever to have been nominated.  The nominations were announced January 27, 1945.

Her fellow nominees in this category were Anne Revere for National Velvet, Joan Lorring for The Corn is Green, Angela Lansbury for The Picture of Dorian Gray, and her fellow Mildred Pierce cast mate, Eve Arden.

Joan Crawford, of course, was nominated in the Best Actress category.

The ceremonies were held at Grauman’s Chinese Theater on March 7, 1946 at 8:00 p.m., hosted by Bob Hope and James Stewart.  The supporting awards were given out by actor Van Heflin. You can see a newsreel of part of the festivities here on YouTube.

Joan Crawford, as I would guess everybody knows by now, did not attend the awards due to illness, or what she said was illness, but received the press at home when director Michael Curtiz brought her Oscar to her bedside.  Other friends and colleagues dropped by the impromptu house party to congratulate the very happy winner.

Anne Revere won Best Supporting that year, though Ann Blyth was reportedly a sentimental favorite, in part due to the injuries she suffered, as The Deseret News reported, “…it is both unusual and heartwarming to find a…girl, her body still in braces as a result of an almost fatal accident, selected for a finalist’s nomination as best supporting actress of the year.  Ann Blyth is this girl, a gifted and lovely lass…”

Ann was one of the well-wishers at Joan Crawford’s house on the night Joan won the Oscar.  They remained friends over the years, and had occasion to drop by each other’s sets in future days.  Here Joan visits Ann on the set of All the Brothers Were Valiant (1953), which we'll discuss later this year, and next Joan displays her famous leggy pose when Ann visits her on the set of her movie Torch Song (1953).

Here’s a candid of Joan showing Ann some knitting tricks on the set of Mildred Pierce.

But I think my favorite photo of them together is this one:

 

The night Joan clutched the Oscar in her hand.  Ann, despite her pretty dress the studio made especially for her to fit over the steel back brace she was wearing, and despite the importance of the occasion, looks nothing like the ultra chic Veda here.  She’s just a happy kid sharing a warm moment with the Big Hollywood Star and acting mentor; a kid who, at least in part, helped Joan get that Oscar.  Judging by Joan’s affectionate kiss, we might say even Joan knew that.

The role of Veda Pierce went a long way in cementing Ann Blyth’s future in Hollywood, but not necessarily of playing a bad girl.  Come back next Thursday when we discuss how the press and the public and the studio painted a good girl image on Ann that was hard to shake—even when she wanted to play the baddies.

 

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The Coaticook Observer(Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada), May 25, 1945, p. 9

The Deseret News, February 23, 1946, p. 8.

Hollywood Reporter, as quoted in Hansberry, Karen Burroughs. Femme Noir – Bad Girls of Film (Jefferson, NC & London: McFarland & Co., Inc. Publishers, 1998), p. 35.

The Milwaukee Sentinel, syndicated article by Dorothy Manners, May 31, 1946, p. 4.

The Ottawa Citizen, syndicated article by Sheilah Graham, February 1, 1945, p. 5.

The Spokesman Review, January 29, 1946, p. 11.

Toledo Blade, syndicated article by Hedda Hopper, December 16, 1947.

Wiley, Mason and Damien Bona.  Inside Oscar – The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards.  (NY: Ballantine Books, 1986), p.154.