Deep in My Heart - 1954

Deep in My Heart(1954) is a delightful musical, a biography of composer Sigmund Romberg that is perhaps not so much biography as it is pastiche—but this is what makes it so successful.

It is long a common complaint of classic film fans, even fans of musicals, that filmed biographies of composers fall short of the mark when it comes to being authentic or factual.  I won’t disagree.  However, neither do I expect a musical, even in the form of a biography of a composer, to be a documentary.  It is first and foremost a revue of his music, and Deep in My Heart, though giving us a smattering of Romberg’s experiences as in immigrant to the U.S. in the days of Tin Pan Alley, nevertheless firmly keeps to his music as a method of telling the story of his aspirations as a composer.  To this end—fighting the “modern” trends of music with its soul-crushing disposable fads, and yearning for the opportunity to express himself in his own way—these ideals are timeless among creative people and in telling this story the film is completely successful.

Stanley Donen, I think, was an exceptional director of musicals, and his quick style and expressive camera work reminds me a little of the work of Michael Curtiz in a way, the way the camera sweeps, pans, and catches little things.  It is never static.  But it is the unlikely cast of this musical that is the most intriguing.  José Ferrer stars as composer Sigmund Romberg.  A star on Broadway in Shakespearian roles, and, of course, his Tony-Oscar-Emmy win for Cyrano—who in the world suggested, “Ah, a frothy musical on a Viennese composer of operettas!  Let’s get José Ferrer!”?  I don’t know whose idea it was, but it was a serendipitous choice.  Mr. Ferrer is astounding in this role.  A true Renaissance man, his abilities not only in dramatic acting, musicianship, languages, and a beautifully silly flare for comedy, Ferrer is perfect in this film.

Helen Traubel, another in the “how did they ever think of her?” category, is splendid as Ferrer’s longtime buddy, an immigrant like himself from the Austro-Hungarian Empire who carries the sentimental veneer of Old Vienna, while at the same time espousing a scrappy American immigrant’s idealism and love for her new country.  She owns the café where Ferrer, a newcomer to the New World himself, plays piano, sometimes his own lovely compositions, and also waits on tables.  She is with him through thick and thin throughout his career, just as much a part of his life at the beginning as at his triumphant final moments before the fade out.  Miss Traubel was something of a Renaissance woman herself: one of the Metropolitan Opera’s Wagnerian sopranos in the 1940s, she later wrote mystery novels and was a long-time baseball fan, eventually becoming part-owner of her favorite, and unhappily unsuccessful team, The St. Louis Browns.  She and Ferrer play off each other well, as much celebrating as parodying the gemütlichkeitof their culture.

Joining Miss Traubel in supporting Ferrer’s career is Merle Oberon as Dorothy Donnelly, Sigmund Romberg’s real-life partner in musical theatre.  Dorothy Donnelly had an interesting and important place in American theatre in the early days of the twentieth century; noted stage actress, even appearing in a few silent films, playwright, producer, and director.  She also enjoyed fame as the librettist to many of Romberg’s most successful operettas.  In this movie, she has the rather shadowy role of being Romberg’s advisor, supporter, partner, but also as played by the fey and lovely Merle Oberon, a woman silently in love with him, who, for whatever reason, keeps her infatuation to herself.  Miss Oberon gives the role an intriguing sadness.  Her best roles, the height of her career was behind her, but she gives this slight role a lustrous charm.

 

Rounding out the cast we are given more real-life personages, but presented, in typical Hollywood fashion, more as “types.”  Doe Avedon, who enjoyed only a brief career in film, plays the elegant upper crust debutante with whom Ferrer is smitten and eventually marries. 

Walter Pidgeon, now relegated from leading man to character roles, mostly fuddy-duddy businessmen, plays theatre impresario J.J. Shubert. 

Paul Henreid briefly plays Florenz Ziegfeld.  Later this year, we’re going to discuss a bit more about Florenz Ziegfeld and the actors who played him on film.
 

Paul Stewart, normally relegated to gangster types with that icy stare, here has a prominent role as Bert Townsend, Shubert’s producer who frankly admits to being in the theatre racket for the money and who panders to a public he feels are more likely to attend snappy shows with up-to-date situations, dialogue, and tunes.  He stomps down hard on Ferrer’s artistic bent for presenting operetta with all its cultural, dramatic, and musical richness, and this is the running theme of the story:  The artist being allowed to create what he wants versus what is currently the rage in the marketplace.

This theme pulls this splendid movie from the cozy dream world of the usual MGM musical and plants it firmly in today’s era of art versus product marketability.  It’s the same for music, theatre, books, as it is for any artistic endeavor, and every artist can relate.  The only thing perhaps holding back a modern appreciation of the struggles Romberg faces in this film is that the struggles are over operetta.  Unfortunately, as we discussed last year in our posts on The Student Prince (1954), Rose Marie (1954) and The Great Caruso (1951), operetta, outside of regional theatre, no longer enjoys the popularity it once did.  Paul Stewart, the grumpy producer, feels the same.  He wants no part of these Viennese-inspired cupcakes.  He wants Al Jolson in blackface, college co-eds, and flaming youth.

Needing the money, and the exposure, Ferrer sells his soul, as it were, and allows himself to become the composer of a great number of these now-forgotten topical “hits” of the World War I era and the early 1920s.  He constantly hammers at Mr. Stewart to allow him to write the kind of music he wants to write, constantly shoving the score of Maytime in his face, at which Stewart turn up his nose like smelly garbage.  Maytimewould become one of the colossal hits of Broadway, which finally gave Romberg a leg up on doing the kind of music he wanted.

The Student Prince, Desert Song, and Rose Marie were even bigger hits in the 1920s, and it is for these operettas, Romberg’s pride, that he is remembered and not the dreck he was forced to write earlier in his career.

So there, Paul Stewart.

A few scenes of note:  I love how the movie starts, slowly, elegantly, and grandly with a full orchestra, as the camera pans probingly, lovingly on the musicians at their instruments (I doubt close-ups were ever given to orchestra musicians before or probably since), then finally lands on José Ferrer conducting, and then, bang, the credits.  It is a classy way to begin.

The use of a roster of MGM stars to present the various musical numbers is genius: it allows the studio to play its first-stringers, and it allows most of the story to be centered on the music and not on any awkwardly strung-together “biography.”  Jane Powell and Vic Damone, Howard Keel, Tony Martin, Ann Miller all are presented in numbers that show off their best talents.

Ferrer, who, among his other talents, can sing a little as well, is presented in a charming number with his new wife, Rosemary Clooney, “Mr. and Mrs.”  And proves to be a pretty snappy dancer.

He also performs the ragtime novelty song and dance “Leg O’ Mutton Rag” with the delightfully game Helen Traubel.  Wagner?  Who’s that?

Cyd Charisse and James Mitchell dance to “One Alone” from The Desert Songin one of filmdom’s most sensual performances ever.  They way they move and cling to each other in perfect interpretation of the music makes her climbing over his body look curiously almost like ice dancing.  You’d swear there is more movement than the camera is capturing.

We see the fun stuff, and the most exquisitely beautiful popular music ever written.  “Softly, as a Morning Sunrise” is tops among these, and Helen Traubel gets to save it, most majestically, from its early foot-stomping mangled version as concocted by the Shuberts and the manic styling of Tamara Toumanova.

Gene Kelly, in a rare film duet song and dance with his brother Fred, appear in the “I Love to Go Swimmin’ with Wimmen.”

But the tops is José Ferrer’s tour-de-force performance in the scene where he is requested to describe his latest work for the Shuberts, a silly romp called “Jazzadadadoo” from Bombo.  Embarrassed about this show, he is reluctant to act and sing it in front of his lady friend and her snobby mother, but once persuaded, he throws himself into it, manic and most hysterically funny.  The performance is incredible; not only does he compresses the entire plot of the ridiculous show in a single scene, but he dances, does mimicry, funny voices, smears on a little blackface to imitate Al Jolson, and will make you laugh until you cry or wet your pants or both.   It’s like a Monty Python skit.

Dignity slowly returns to Romberg, and the movie, when we witness his eventual vindication among the Shuberts and all low-brow folks when his operettas are the hits of the shallow 1920s; when he mourns the loss of his pal, Merle Oberon as Dorothy Donnelly, who sadly died at only 47; and in the final majestic number before a full orchestra, Romberg’s signature tune, “Deep in My Heart.”

But were the Shuberts right, did they have the last laugh in knowing that someday operetta would no longer be what the public wanted?

Listen to the music.  “Softly as a Summer Sunrise” is one of the loveliness, most sensual tunes ever written, and is still performed by jazz/blues singers today, as well as “Lover, Come Back to Me” both from the operetta The New Moon.

And consider that if Linda Rondstadt and Kermit the Frog can perform “When I Grow to Old to Dream,” then it really is a cool song after all, isn’t it?

In this old radio show, we have Ferrer, Rosemary Clooney, Jane Powell and others on the soundtrack promoting the film: 

Deep in My Heart, sometimes shown on TCM, is available on DVD here:

©Jacqueline T. Lynch, 2007-2015. 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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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).

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

 

Ann Blyth's TV Appearances -- 1950s and 1960s

Television would come to have the strongest impact on popular history and cultural memory in the United States among all media in the twentieth century.  Though Ann Blyth did less television than radio or stage work, nevertheless her varied sporadic appearances through four decades included something like 20 featured guest roles in dramas and comedies, but an additional 80 or so appearances in talk shows, panel shows, musical variety, game shows, telethon spots,(not including commercials) etc., that allowed her to sing or otherwise publicize either her current professional projects, or involvement in charities.  TV became the place for getting the word out, for reminding the public, and the producers, one was still in the game.

Ann Blyth was still in the game after her last film was released in 1957, but on her own terms around the needs of her family, and appeared in a wide range of shows and genres that illustrated the growing force and changing nature of television.  TV would provide the widest range of employment opportunities for actors and writers, though still, paradoxically, make obsolete what was popular in one year by the crushing steamroll effect of a constant search for the new fad. 

We’ll cover the 1950s and 1960s today, time enough for TV to burst on the scene with enthusiasm, a certain idealism and naiveté, then to slide into a routine maturity by the end of the 1960s that strove less for innovation and drifted into clichéd scenarios before the 1970s and 1980s ramped up the energy again with shows exploring controversial subject matter, and technology allowing shows to leave the confinement of the studio.

Ann Blyth made a few early forays into taped, syndicated television programs such as Christopher Closeup, a Catholic show on which she would make many appearances over the years, and The Ken Murray Show in 1952, on which she made a cameo along with Lorraine Day, and Les Paul and Mary Ford.  Her real splash into the new medium came with a live dramatization of “A Place in the Sun” on Lux Video Theaterin January 1954.  It was a risky, but wonderfully exciting way to establish her presence in the new medium.

Ann was 25 years old, married less than a year, and expecting her first child in June.  Her role was the part that Elizabeth Taylor played in the 1951 film.  Interestingly, the critics were dismissive of the challenge of live TV, in an era when many shows were performed live, and more focused on how much better the show would have been had it not been done live.

Columnist John Crosby felt that since the story had to be cut to under an hour, it was considerably watered down, though marveled that time was the only element to be restricted, as this was “one of the most lavish and expensive in the history of live television.  Produced in CBS’ Television City in Hollywood, it boasted 67 actors with 17 sets which is about three times as many as those used in most TV dramas.  Even the climactic scene when the rowboat tips over in a mountain lake was done live by some sort of camera trickery.”  But he adds, “which, frankly, wasn’t very convincing.”

It’s encouraging that television, in such a few short years, has taken such vast strides in overcoming the physical limitations of live staging.  I just hope, though, that the producers don’t get so wrapped up in technical perfection, don’t get so immersed in the scenery, that they ignore the writers and the actors, something which is quite likely to happen in Hollywood.

An interesting and rather prescient observation.  He nearly forgot to mention the actors himself, but noted that John Derek, who played the Montgomery Clift role, was “stone-faced” and that Ann Blyth “was very pretty and fashionably husky-voiced and breathless.”  The cast included Raymond Burr, Marilyn Erskine played the doomed girl, and, to move the plot along, narrated by Ronald Reagan, who as we saw in last week’s post, would reunite with Ann in the next decade on Wagon Train.

Syndicated columnist Erskine Johnson railed at the technological glitches in the program, feeling that the show:

…was another great argument for telefilm.  Stars Ann Blyth, John Derek and Marilyn Erskine did their best, but a cast of unseen technicians changed the title to “A Noise in the Studio.”

There was a man’s shadow bigger than King Kong on a mansion exterior; voices behind intimate scenes; more shadows; a meaningless shot of a stage curtain; a flash of Ronald Reagan caught off guard before a commercial, and constant behind the camera noise that sounded like the story was being acted out in a pool hall.

From a starring dramatic role, Ann deftly switched to the actor’s alternate use for TV: self promotion.  She had garnered a spot on the Academy Awards telecast in March 1954, singing the nominated song “Secret Love”, her pregnancy at the time generating discussion if not controversy, which we discussed in this previous post.

By the end of that year, having delivered her child, did more film work, was a hit singing in Las Vegas, which we also discussed in the above post, Ann proved herself as versatile as she was busy.  She continued a very hectic year with an appearance on her brother-in-law’s TV show.  He was Dennis Day.

Long a fixture on Jack Benny’s radio show, Mr. Day also had his own radio show, and branched out into TV with a kind of situation-variety on NBC.  He plays himself, and Ann plays herself, as his real-life sister-in-law.  Her husband, his brother, Dr. James McNulty, makes a cameo.  The plot of this episode has Dennis causing problems when trying to finagle them into vacationing in Sun Valley, unaware they each have alternate, and conflicting, vacation plans.  Interestingly, a young Johnny Carson has a minor uncredited role as an expectant father.  Don’t know if this episode is preserved in any form.

Guest singing through the decade occurred on Ed Sullivan, Dinah Shore, Perry Como, Jack Paar, Steve Allen, and Tennessee Ernie Ford.  Sometimes, as in the case of one Perry Como Show appearance, she had to work around her pregnancies.  She had to cancel her October 1957 stint on this show as she was expecting her third child (her baby daughter was born in December), and her doctor advised that working on the show would be too exciting—to which at least one critic did not miss the comic beat and responded, “Perry Como?  Exciting?”

One of the loveliest examples of her TV work occurred on the Bell Telephone Hour in 1959, one of those magnificent showcases of art and culture we rarely see on TV anymore except maybe occasionally during PBS pledge breaks.  This episode featured a varied collection of artists on the American music scene including soprano Eileen Farrell, violinist Isaac Stern, and jazz pianist Joe Bushkin.  Ann Blyth and Howard Keel, whom we discussed  in Kismet here (We'll get to Rose Marie next month), appeared together in a skit that was a tribute to musical theatre.  They played a romantic couple separated, then reunited, told through songs taken from musicals.  This was also an early color program—still in an era when most people did not have color TVs.  

The skit takes place on a minimalist set.  First Howard Keel sings “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” from Oklahoma, surrounded by townspeople who are also the resident troupe of dancers.  Along with actors and writers, early TV gave a lot of work to a lot of dancers.  They are in a small town, but in Mr. Keel’s self-satisfied baritone rejoicing, he does not see trouble on the horizon.  His best girl, Ann Blyth, is headed to the big city, writing him a note to break off with him, singing “Deep in My Heart” from The Student Prince.  Crushed, he grips the letter singing, “This Nearly Was Mine,” from South Pacific.  Next we see Ann, forlorn in her rooming house wistfully gazing at her love’s photo and singing, “Someone to Watch Over Me” from Oh, Kay! The chorus and “S’Wonderful” telescopes time, and we have Howard Keel waiting at the train depot for Ann’s return, where they joyously reunite with “They Say that Falling in Love is Wonderful” from Annie Get Your Gun.  Lifting these songs from different musicals is a neat way of creating this microcosm musical show and is a great example of how musicals move the plot along through song. 

What I especially like in this sequence is that it was done live, and so this is a great opportunity, for those of us who have never enjoyed it, to see Ann Blyth as she would have performed in her musical stage shows.  We see her musical range (including the final hat tip of the high C she nails at the end), her meticulous control and really impressive vocal power.  This is not pre-recorded and pre-mixed singing (though the show was obviously filmed).  Most happily, it is actually available on DVD.  It was put out on a collection of Howard Keel’s Bell Telephone Hour appearances by VAI, here at this website.

Adrian M. Slifka editor for the Youngstown Vindicator noted that this “colorcast” was an “impeccable production with something for every musical taste….the 15-minute opening segment, in which Howard Keel and Ann Blyth sang tunes from hit musicals, got the program off to a solid start.

This was one of the most beautiful colorcasts I have seen in recent weeks.  All of the settings and costumes for the Keel-Blyth duet contributed to an eye-appealing panorama of sparkling pastels.”

This was one of the finest TV hours of music and song this year.  I hope you didn’t miss it.”

We’ve noted in various previous posts that the western series Wagon Train afforded Ann Blyth several opportunities for performing drama and comedy, and I’ve covered those shows separately because they allowed the guest to really star, while the regulars took supporting roles in many episodes.  Unfortunately, neither westerns nor musical variety of this nature have a place on television today (except for “reality” style singing and dance contests).  If the above reviewer for “A Place in the Sun” was worried about the diminishing importance of actors and writers on TV, he may have indeed predicted the era of reality television.

We mentioned in this earlier post on “The Year Joan Crawford Won the Oscar” that Ann Blyth turned down the opportunity to join the cast of Saints and Sinners as a regular.  A few years earlier in 1957, it was reported that Earl Holliman and Ann were considered for a new TV series based on Claudia and David, a film we covered here.  Other opportunities came along for series work, but Ann was wary to accept them and to have to commit herself to the long hours for months on end, which would have seriously eroded her time with her family.

Another type of program that seems to have gone the way of westerns and musical variety is the anthology show.  One of the most famous, The Twilight Zone, featured a wide array of stars in intense dramas.  Many of you have commented on the Ann Blyth episode, which I won’t cover today, but rest assured, it’s on the docket for this October.

Another anthology show was The June Allyson Show-DuPont Show, which one reviewer lauded “has become gutsy” with new episodes such as “Suspected,”  broadcast December 28, 1959, in which, according to the Pittsburgh Press, “Ann Blyth, a public stenographer, is in a hotel room, evading the clutches of an amorous business man.  She runs away but leaves some incriminating evidence…when the man is stabbed…and a drunken witness swears Ann was the girl who cut up the man.  Well-done. There are good scenes of Ann in jail, facing the prospects of a lifelong lease…” 

The Milwaukee Sentinel, however, felt that “sweet little Ann Blyth seems completely miscast.”  See our previous post on “What’s a Nice Girl Like Ann Blyth Doing in a Place Like this?”

“Your previewer found himself kind of wishing she’d been found guilty.”

Wittily dissing the star is a critic’s best tool to avoid working hard at actually writing analytically.  But as for his revealing the outcome of the story—hah, and you thought I give out spoilers.

By the next decade, TV had settled into a smooth pattern of following trends rather than setting them, and stars who adapted were the ones to survive, at least until the next big fad.  Ann’s career had shifted to stage musicals by the 1960s, so television was less a substitute for film work than it was a change of pace from her singing roles. 

She made two appearances on the whimsical detective series Burke’s Law starring Gene Barry. Both are fun and utterly goofy sides of sweet little Ann Blyth that should make any future critic dispense with typecasting her in their reviews.

In the “Who Killed Andy Zygmunt?” episode broadcast March 13, 1964, which satirizes the world of modern art and pokes fun at avant garde artists—one such artist has been murdered—Ann plays another beatnik style artist whose specialty is spray painting her live models with different colors and having them roll around on a canvas spread on the floor.   She is a suspect in the murder, and replies to the investigator, “Hey, man, can’t you see I’m busy working here?...you wouldn’t have buzzed Toulouse-Lautrec when he was fast sketching the lovely Jane Avril?” She grins at the detective, “Your perceptivity just knocks me out, soldier.”

We learn she is a junkie, hooked on previously prescribed painkillers.  To keep herself supplied, she forges doctors’ signatures on prescription cards.  The victim knew this and was blackmailing her.  However, Ann is not the only suspect, and collection of similar kooks includes Aldo Ray as a dog groomer, MacDonald Carey, Jack Weston, and Tab Hunter all as free-spirited weirdos who could have murdered the dead man.  Gene Barry, star of the show, will tell us who did it after the last commercial.

In the show’s second season, Ann returns in “Who Killed Mother Goose”, broadcast January 13, 1965, playing a children’s TV show host, a cheesy, super-cheerful story-telling Miss Muffet type, who, once the cameras stop rolling, deflates into a bitter, sarcastic, hard-as-nails ex-B-movie actress who’s clinging to her job like grim death. She's not at all sorry that Mother Goose, a rival children’s book author, soon to host her own show, has been murdered.

Ann has an alcoholic elf as her sidekick, who gets a face full of black power explosions whenever he misbehaves.  It’s like all the Simpsons episodes of Krusty the Klown that ever were.

Gene Barry enters her TV studio and questions her while the "magic cartoon" is rolling:

“Would you like to see my magic badge?”

“I guess you’re here about Mother Goose?”

“Yeah, somebody closed the book on her.”

“I’m glad the old witch is dead.  Somebody finally handed her a poisoned apple.”  She invites the detective for a magic martini.

This unabashedly playful episode with its black humor also features Lola Albright, George Hamilton as a very convincing beatnik poet, Jan Murray, and a delightfully obtuse Walter Pidgeon.  Burke's Law can be seen sometimes in re-runs, and the first season is available on DVD.

Ann’s 1960s TV appearances concluded with a very different detective series and a much more dour and traditional role.  In The Name of the Game, episode titled “Swingers Only,” broadcast January 10, 1969, Ann plays the hurt wife of a sports writer who’s been cheating on her.  He is played by Robert Lansing, who appeared with Ann in the above-mentioned Saints and Sinners episode.  His girlfriend on the side has been murdered, and he is a prime suspect.  His friend, magazine editor, Robert Stack, tries to ferret out the story and the real murderer.  

Also along as Mr. Stack’s assistant is a young Ben Murphy, who later played Ann's husband on the Murder She Wrote episode we discussed here.

Jack Klugman also appears in this episode, and Ann will reunite with him in two future episodes of Klugman’s Quincy M.E. series in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Robert Lansing’s portrayal “Maybe I’m just a middle-aged sports writer trying to be young again,” is sullen, self-pitying, and not terribly sympathetic.  Her scene with him at a park above Los Angeles, where they arrive after miles and miles of silence on the entangled freeways, reminds me, with their positioning around a tree, of the final scene of Our Very Own (1950), discussed here, where she seals her happy future with Farley Granger.  The difference here being the tree is an obstacle to the couple’s physical togetherness, and the scene with its cold and bitter dialogue leaves us without much hope for their relationship.

“Dear God, it makes me sick to admit it, but I do want to know why,” she says of his affair.

More appealing is Ann’s scene with Robert Stack, also outdoors in a park, but the natural setting here, with her son playing close by, is gentler, warmer, and could even be romantic if Stack’s character were not already married.  His close attention to her seems not only the sign of a good investigator, but also carries a wistful feeling of longing.

He gets to the bottom of the case, and though there are many action scenes, both Robert Lansing, as a prisoner in jail, and Ann Blyth, as the wife who must deal with her husband’s philandering, are passive roles.  She complains to Robert Stack of her husband, “When I look at him all I see is failure, mine.”

It is interesting that his response is more feminist than hers, “If you’re going to break with him, okay.  But don’t pack his guilt and call it yours.”  The Name of the Game in can still be seen in re-runs.

Four years earlier, Ann appeared on an episode of the Kraft Suspense Theater called “Jungle of Fear,” broadcast April 22, 1965.  It is a departure from the hipper Burke’s Law and The Name of the Game, and even the reviewer felt bound to point out it was “Crammed with familiar gimmicks, clichés, etc., but an effective suspense story nonetheless…you’ll probably enjoy this one if you can forgive it for being old fashioned.”

This was long before the 1970s era of nostalgia-themed shows.  Spies, swingers, and social causes and all things mod were the engine that drove 1960s television. “Jungle of Fear” is pleasingly quaint, a wild west story not in the wild west without any Wild, Wild West gadgets.  The time is 1850 and the place is Panama.  Robert Fuller, who we last saw with Ann in the Wagon Train episode of “The Fort Pierce Story,” noted above, plays a saloon keeper and maker of deals in this jungle outpost populated by people traveling to California in the backwash of the gold rush.  This was before the Panama Canal was built, of course, so if they wanted to avoid a long sea voyage around South America, the next best option was to cross over land at the isthmus, where it would still take five days to journey through treacherous territory jealously guarded by Indians, and then take a clipper on the Pacific side of Panama to California.

It’s all very similar in feeling to Casablanca and Rick’s café.  Robert Fuller spars with the territory’s authority figure, played by Robert Loggia, and must deal with all kinds of people coming to his gambling parlor and saloon to arrange passage for them.  Most are escaping something.

Ann Blyth is a widow with a young boy.  She and her son are Chinese, and they are headed back to China because her son is the new emperor upon the death of her husband.  Tailing her is a suave and sinister Richard Anderson, with whom Ann appeared in The Student Prince, which we’ll get to next month.  He is an American mercenary, hired by usurpers to the throne to kill the boy.

The role allows Ann a character part, utilizing her skill with accents—her speech is simple, not heavily stereotyped, but with precise and careful intonation suggesting an educated noblewoman who has been in the U.S. many years supervising the American education of her son.  Her small, delicate steps carry the suggestion of foot binding typical of an upper class Chinese woman of that period.

She appeals to Robert Fuller to help her get back to China, and Mr. Fuller engages in knife fights, fistfights, shell games about where to hide her and the kid, and finally, a suspenseful showdown on a rope bridge over a muddy jungle river.

For me, nothing says adventure in a jungle like a rope bridge.  (“Oh, a rope bridge!” the blogger claps her hands like a happy little girl.  I would like one for Christmas.)

There is also a brief moment of romance when Robert Fuller reminds Ann with a kiss that she is not only the young emperor’s regent, she is “also a woman.”

In the last scene where she is boarding the clipper to take her and her son away to their home in China, she has changed from peasant clothing to her court finery, and the headpiece reminds me of her garb in The Golden Horde (1951).  We’ll get to that down the road.  The "Jungle of Fear" episode of Kraft Suspense Theater is, I think, still up on YouTube.

The final shot of the great sailing ship is a perfect segue into our post next week, also featuring escaping royalty, sailing ships, and the year of 1850—The World in His Arms(1952), as sensual and romantic a movie you will ever see that also happens to have seal clubbing in it.  That’s hard to do, really.

See you next Thursday, same time, same blog.

Now roll credits, and a word from our sponsor.

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Austin Daily Herald, October 26, 1957.

Deseret (Salt Lake City) News, January 28, 1954, p. 4C.

Miami News,September 17, 1957, p. 5B, column by Hedda Hopper.

Milwaukee Sentinel, December 28, 1959, p. 8.

Park City Daily News(Bowling Green, KY), November 4, 1957.

Pittsburgh Press, December 27, 1959, p. 35.

Portsmouth (Ohio) Times, March 4, 1959 p. 8.

The Spencer (Iowa) Daily Reporter, February 9, 1954, p. 3.

St. Joseph(Missouri) News-Press, April 22, 1965, p. 6C.

St. Petersburg (Florida) Times, February 5, 1954, p. 40, column by John Crosby.

Youngstown (Ohio) Vindicator – March 5, 1959

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THANK YOU....to the following folks whose aid in gathering material for this series has been invaluable:  EBH; Kevin Deany of Kevin's Movie Corner; Gerry Szymski of Westmont Movie Classics, Westmont, Illinois; and Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear.

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HELP!!!!!!!!!!

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

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

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

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.