Ann Blyth on Radio: Three Performances

Ann Blyth appeared in 32 films over the course of a screen career that lasted 13 years.  She made possibly as many as 400 radio performances and appearances in her career, over a course of several decades.  Today we’ll talk about three of those performances, and about the peculiar sensation of sound and imagination that creates the so-called “theatre of the air.”

In the middle twentieth century, radio was the main entertainment vehicle, with access to far greater audience numbers than even the movie industry at its most popular.  Acting on radio required a different skill set than performing on stage, but it was like being on stage, especially for shows that were broadcast in front of a live audience. 

Radio required different acting than on screen, yet like film acting, it relied on the actors’ ability to emote and connect with an electronic device—in this case, a microphone instead of a motion picture camera—rather than to play to the audience, even if an audience was present.

As we’ve mentioned in this previous post on old time radio, and in this one on Ann Blyth’s appearance on the Studio One episode of “The Angelic Avengers,” some stars were more successful on radio than others, and some more prolific.  Ann, began her acting and singing career on radio when she was a child of six in New York City, had learned the ropes early on and by the time she was an adult, performed splendidly in a medium that required precise articulation, breath control, the ability to use accents, and most especially, the quality of intimacy with the listener that makes really fine old time radio performances so thrilling and appealing.

Our first show is a version of “State Fair” performed on General Electric Theater September 10, 1953.  This is the chestnut that had been made into a film three times over three decades, and popped up on radio from time to time.  Ann had performed in another version for the Hallmark Playhouse in 1948.

This script was adapted by one my favorite television writers, Kathleen Hite, and because of the half-hour time constraint, focuses on the problems of Ann’s character, Frake family daughter Margie and her experience at the state fair.

Tom Tully is her dad, Verna Felton is her mother, and features old radio and film standbys Sam Edwards, Joe Kerns, Dick Ryan, and Lamont Johnson.  Ken Carpenter is the announcer, who keeps reminding us how wonderful General Electric appliances are, and at one point Ann heartily agrees, as they contribute to “the ease of modern living.”  It seems we can get a standing freezer for $2.69 a week, plus a small down payment.

The show was performed before an audience, but then edited and prettied up before being broadcast on “transcription,” or recording.  There’s a lot of “fair” sounds to add and with some quick cutting, the show is well-produced.

Though radio shows, like stage and screen, were rehearsed beforehand, there is still an element akin to a “cold” reading because the actors are not playing to each other, not playing to the audience, not working with props, or costumes, or any of the usual devices that help them to get into character.  They must just stand before the mic and BE that character, only through their voice, yet performing in this situation is more physical than it seems. 

Listen to the mechanics of Ann’s expression of emotional turmoil: her irritability, her fight with her boyfriend, speaking her lines through tears, and later with her parents, sobbing on the car ride, sounding frustrated and brokenhearted.  We can’t see her, so she can’t rely on facial expressions, body movements, no trembling lip, hanky twisted in hands or dabbing at tears, no turning from the camera to hide the inability to manufacture tears behind heaving shoulders.  No glycerin drops in the eyes courtesy of the makeup man.

She’s got to sob, really.  Because the only thing that sounds like sobbing is sobbing.  She’s got to bring it up from the belly, and it’s got to be messy, nose-running, stomach-tightening sobs.  We have to HEAR her.  And then she’s got to be able to put on the brakes and stop it instantly because of the quick shifts in scene on radio. 

Ann also narrates the episode, voicing over scenes, in the interest of time constraint.  She tells us she is “full of feelings that I didn’t understand, that welled up quickly, soared and flew, and then slipped away into nothing.  Then I’d be all empty inside and lonely.”

The really fun scene is the roller coaster, where she meets the reporter who becomes her new love.  Listen to the roller coaster sounds, the carnival barker, the ratcheting of the cars on the cogs up the coaster slope, and then we can imagine, the car teeters for a moment at the top, then plummets, making us feel the lurching in our own stomachs.  Listen to her splendid, genuine screams, timed right at the moment of descent and the rush of speed.  The ride ends with their chuckling at the exhilaration, and her embarrassed giggle for having screamed.  Good radio sounds very natural, as if we are eavesdropping.

Listen to the episode here:

Or visit the Internet Archive website here and scroll down to "State Fair" where you can either listen or download to your computer.

Next, we have a darker mood and a sinister tale of SUSPENSE.  Suspense was a long-running program from 1942 to 1962 (its ending in September 1962, along with the final episode of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar would mark the end of the Golden Age of Radio), and featured the biggest Hollywood stars in top-notch scripts.  Harlow Wilcox is our pitchman for sponsor Autolite Spark Plugs.  I love that distinctive hollow two-note chime we hear as a show theme and feel in the pit of our stomachs.

Edmund O’Brien, with whom Ann starred in the film Another Part of the Forest (1948), discussed here, is the lead in “Muddy Track”, broadcast November 11, 1948.  He’s a mug down on his luck, and takes a job for a bookie.  He finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, and ends up being a hunted fugitive.  Ann plays a damsel in distress…or is she?

This is a studio-produced show, with no live audience.  The intimacy is controlled, and every sound is intimate in this show, wonderfully evocative of mood and location.  The tinkling of glasses, a lazy plunking of a piano tells us we’re in a bar.  The sound of someone writing on a notepad in a heavy hand, scratching the pen across the paper.  All the soft sounds of life going on all around us that we usually do not notice in the din and cacophony of our world today, where attention deficit syndrome is as common a diagnosis as obesity, and as much a product of our society.

Edmund O’Brien’s resonant voice is made for radio, his cynicism, his worry, his panting panic as he narrates his actions.  He discovers a dead body, and then realizes he is being set up as a fall guy.

Ann’s first entrance is a sharp, gasp of terror when she discovers O’Brien in the compromising situation.  He pretends he is a cop investigating the murder, and he hustles her away to a hole-in-wall restaurant to question her.  She’s rattled, recovering from the shock, drinking a cup of tea he’s ordered for her.  Ann, still teary and upset, delivers her plot exposition while swallowing sips of liquid—again, the mechanics of acting before a microphone.

Later, when they are on the run together in a city park, in order to hide from a cop strolling by, they kiss each other quickly, pretending they are lovers.  The technique used here to illustrate the urgency of the situation—which then becomes a moment of true passion—is for Ann to say her line to the point her words become mingled into a kiss.  Though we next have O’Brien’s voice-over narration describing his feelings, it is not the explanation of the kissing that thrills the imagination; it is the actual muffled sound of the kiss interrupting the line and the following moments when we are allowed to hear them only breathing.

It’s like G-rated phone sex.

At the end of the episode, were are told Ann Blyth can now be seen in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid, which we discussed here.  Have a listen to “Muddy Track”:

Or visit the Internet Archive website here and scroll down to "Muddy Track" to listen or download to your computer.

Finally, we have another mysterious outing in the popular “Shadow of a Doubt,” a version of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1943 film that was produced on radio by several different programs.  This one is from Hollywood Sound Stage, a Screen Guild Players incarnation that raised funds in support of the Motion Picture Relief Fund.  It was broadcast January 10, 1952.  (Ann Blyth had previously performed another version for Ford Theater in 1949 with Ray Milland.)

Here her co-star as the sinister Uncle Charlie is Jeff Chandler, another superb radio voice, and our favorite Mr. Boynton on Our Miss Brooks.


Ann is on almost the entire show. She narrates in a smooth, controlled voice, and she plays the intelligent niece whose hero-worshiping of her uncle melts into disillusionment and terror.

One fun aspect to the production is that she gets to hum “The Merry Widow Waltz” during the dishwashing scene.  While her mother and Jeff Chandler speak, we hear the clatter of plates in the background.  Ann’s lovely voice hums the waltz behind the other two actors, and she frequently interrupts herself to say her own lines, then back to the tune.

Later, in the moment where she trips on the broken wooden step, we hear a sickening thud, punctuated by her gasp and shriek, “Mother!”  It requires very quick and precise timing. 

In the final scene with the struggle on the moving train, we hear the rush of the increasing speed of the train, and her scream dies off in a kind of aural “fade to black”.

Listen to “Shadow of a Doubt” here:

Or visit the Internet Archive website  and scroll down to "Shadow of a Doubt" to listen or download to your computer.

I sometimes think in our fast-paced world of media, especially portable media, exploding all around us, that we really don’t listen enough, or listen well.  It’s hard when there are so many distractions, and much of what we see and hear in the media today is less entertaining than it is a mere distraction.

To be fully engaged, we need to be quiet sometimes, very still, and listen.  Sounds have textures, most especially the human voice.

Come back next Thursday when we cover a tale of two stage dramas:  Ann’s roles in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at the La Jolla Playhouse in 1950, and in Wait Until Dark in Chicago in 1967.

Publicity photo, credit unknown at this time.

****************************

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.

***************************
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. 

***************************

A new, collection of essays, some old, some new, from this blog titled Movies in Our Time: Hollywood Mimics and Mirrors the 20th Century will soon be issued in eBook as well as print.  I hope to have it published within the next two weeks.

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



Ann Blyth - Profession of Faith

On February 20, 1955, Ann Blyth was given the Star of David Award at a charity ball in Los Angeles for her work in support of the Jewish Home for the Aged.  This was only one occasion of many when she had been noted for the charitable work she'd been involved in since she came to Hollywood, including both religious and civic organizations.  On another occasion, she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from St. Joseph’s College in Emmitsburg, Maryland, for her years of participation in these activities. 

Charity and civic work played a large part of her private life, but since this series is focused on her career, we’ll cover in this post those professional gigs that combined her acting career with her personal commitment to her faith.

She found herself part of a small colony of Roman Catholic actors in Hollywood, some of whom belonged to the Catholic Actors Guild, founded 1914.  Its first president was Jerry Cohan, George M.’s father.  Other members included Claudette Colbert, Pat O’Brien, Irene Dunne, Wallace Ford, Rosalind Russell, Ruth Hussey, Raymond Massey, Helen Hayes, and Jane Wyatt.

From time to time, some of these folks, Ann especially, appeared in a long-running radio program called Family Theater, which presented literary classics like A Tale of Two Cities, mixed with family dramas and gentle comedy.  The host, usually a guest actor, would remind the audience that praying together as a family would help lead to world peace.  Founded by Fr. Patrick Peyton, who established the Holy Cross Family Ministries, the program featured such other Hollywood luminaries as James Stewart, Bob Hope, and Barbara Stanwyck.  Fr. Peyton, you might recall, coined the phrase: "The family that prays together, stays together."

Ann’s first appearance on the show was in August 1947, and she appeared several times in the show’s run, which ended in 1957.  The Triumphant Hour was a kind of kin to this show, and she appeared on this radio program, and The Joyful Hour in December 1949, playing Mary to MacDonald Carey’s Joseph in The Nativity.  Bing Crosby and Dennis Day were part of a large cast.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, television broadcast The Christophers, where Ann appeared as a guest in a kind of talk show or panel discussion on such topics as: “Gear Yourself to a Fast Changing World” (1963), “Careers That Count” (1958), “You Can Change the World” (1951), “Give Children Good Reading Habits” (1960), and “Teen Agers: Today and Tomorrow” (1965).  “You Can Change the World” is no longer up at YouTube, but it featured a large cast including Irene Dunne, Loretta Young, Ann Blyth, Jack Benny, all in discussion with Fr. James Keller.  Though Jack Benny was along for comedy relief, it was William Holden’s concerned face being among the earnestly staged discussion that just sort of made me smile.

Here is a clip from a Family Theater short in celebration of Easter, with Ann Blyth singing “Come Holy Ghost.”  The clip demonstrates her rich, surprisingly powerful soprano voice, and I particularly like how relaxed she appears while singing, the leisurely pace of the song and her vocal technique itself creating drama.  It's a fine display of both her artistry, and her contentment in singing and in her faith.

A Happy Easter to those who celebrate it.

 

For those of you in the mood for a little Easter OTR (Old Time Radio), have a listen to Ann in "The Arbutus Bonnet," a dramatic episode of Hallmark Playhouse, hosted by author James Hilton, in a script adapted by Jean Holloway (one of my favorite radio and TV writers).  It was broadcast April 6, 1950.  Scroll down to "50-04-06" and download or listen.

Come back next Thursday when we discuss the delightful comedy Sally and Saint Anne, a coming-of-age story where small-town girl Ann Blyth suffers vast growing pains amid a daffy family in a circus of a home.  She has the help of her best buddy, Saint Anne.

 

*************************

Pittsburgh Press,May 8, 1964; also article by Carl Apone, July 28, 1968, p. 13.

*************************

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.

**************************

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 Name of the Game, 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.

***************************************
In response to the number of kind people who've requested print copies of my eBook Classic Films and the American Conscience, which is a collection of essays from this blog -- I still can't print that book because you wouldn't be able to lift it, and I couldn't afford to print it.  BUT, I'm putting out a new, smaller, collection of essays, some old, some new, from this blog titled Movies in Our Time: Hollywood Mimics and Mirrors the 20th Century.   It will be issued in eBook as well as print, and I'll let you know more about it down the road.  I hope to have it published sometime in May.

 

 

Top 'O the Morning - 1949

“Top ‘O the Morning” (1949) is yet another example of how much the Irish love to parody themselves, or more specifically as in the case of this Hollywood-made movie, how much Irish Americans love to parody the Irish.  Only the real Irish in Ireland know the truth behind the silliness, and are usually quite forgiving of the Irish American cousins for believing their own fantasies about Ireland.  I suppose it’s too hard-hearted slap down someone who idolizes you so much.

This is our tribute to upcoming St. Patrick’s Day and Ann Blyth’s affinity for her Irish ancestry.

The movie is a comedy, a mystery, and a love story, but a partnership not always so much between leads Bing Crosby and Ann Blyth, as between Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald, and a love between the Irish Americans with Ireland. 

The story is a cute idea.  The famed Blarney Stone in Blarney Castle has been stolen, and Bing Crosby, an American insurance investigator—nothing like the hard-edged Edward G. Robinson in Double Indemnity (1944)—is on the case.  However, like, Fred MacMurray in that same movie, Bing does take to relating his impressions into a Dictaphone.  More of our (okay, MY) fascination with recording devices in movies in this previous post.
 

Barry Fitzgerald plays the village constable.  His re-match with Bing Crosby, a partnership that first brought success to both of them in Going My Way (1945), is the focus of the film.  Mr. Fitzgerald is a crusty, pompous codger, has no idea how truly innocent he is, and holds the reigns of authority in this village only in his own mind.  The villagers, even his own daughter, acknowledge that he is not taken seriously and that solving the crime of the stolen Blarney Stone might finally get him the respect he craves. 

Hume Cronyn is his assistant, delightfully played with  excitable hero-worship of his superior, but as the plot progresses, we see that Mr. Cronyn has more going on under the surface.  “All the excitement!  It’s a pity Ireland doesn’t have more to steal.”

Eileen Crowe, who, like, Barry Fitzgerald was a product of Dublin’s famed Abbey Theatre, plays Biddy, a village crone with great wit and wisdom.  She’s the go-to gal for legends, premonitions, and curses.  I love her observation: “It does little good to put a curse on Americans.  They don’t seem to know the difference.”

It’s odd to think the actress playing the old woman is actually only 51 years old in real life.

John McIntire has a small role as the district police superior to Barry Fitzgerald, a much smarter, no-nonsense guy to who works with Bing Crosby to solve the crime.  Mr. McIntire will come back to us next month when we cover Sally and St. Anne(1952) in a wonderfully comic role, quite different from his normal fare of tough guy supporting players.  We’ll meet him again a few times later this year in other Ann Blyth films, and especially next week when we join Ann for a ride on McIntire’s Wagon Train.

Look for Mary Field as a chambermaid, who gets to sing a line or two with Bing.  We last saw her here as the hilarious saleslady selling bikinis to William Powell in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948).

 

Ann Blyth plays the daughter of Barry Fitzgerald.  She keeps house, feeds Da porridge for breakfast, and keeps track of how many times she has been kissed in her life.  She longs for her true romance, and falls for Bing Crosby, but though certainly none of Crosby’s movie romances were terribly romantic—he tends to coast through these roles without much fire, she gives us the perfect dream-image of a lovely and spirited Irish lass. 

She gets to sing a duet with Bing, but apart from that and a line in the crowd number, the foot-stomping “The Donovans,” that’s all we get to hear.  Bing gets most of the songs.  It was Bing’s production company that made the film, distributed through Paramount.

Reportedly, his first choice for the female lead was Deanna Durbin, but she turned down the offer, planning her final escape from Hollywood and a life of happy retirement.  There were several career connections or coincidences between Deanna Durbin and Ann Blyth.  Ann was discovered while touring in Watch on the Rhine, discussed in this intro post, by Universal director Henry Koster, who made several films with Deanna Durbin and may have seen something in Ann to remind him of her.  Ironically, despite having brought her to Universal, he never directed a film with Ann Blyth.

There may have been, in the beginning of Ann’s film career, a tendency to regard her as “the other” Deanna Durbin.  A syndicated article by Harold Cohen when she was signed to Universal in December 1942 noted, "Pretty little Ann Blyth of Watch on the Rhine may be Universal's new Deanna Durbin...although she doesn't sing in the play, she has a lovely voice..."  Because of her first four light musicals, she may have been groomed to be a second-string Deanna Durbin (even as, when she arrived at MGM, Ann may have been considered a second-string Kathryn Grayson).  If, indeed, in both cases she was regarded as a spare soprano, it may explain in part why Ann had such difficulty getting the prime musical roles she desired.  We'll talk about her MGM musicals down the road.
 

I find it odd that, since she was so adept at drama, but was also a trained singer, the studios for which she worked did not find a way to slip in a song or two in more of her non-musical films.  For instance, in something like I’ll Never Forget You (1951), which we discussed here (and will discuss again later in the year), it would seem like a natural fit to have this actress with her trained singing voice at a pianoforte performing an air from the historical period of this time-travel piece.  Anytime you see a dramatization of, say, a Jane Austen novel, there’s always going to be a woman banging out a tune on a pianoforte and singing.

I would compare Ann to Irene Dunne, who was also adept at drama and comedy.  But Miss Dunne sang often in her films, even those not considered musicals.  Consider Love Affair (1939), which we discussed here.

Irene gets that wonderful moment where she plays and sings “Plasir d’Amour.”  Life with Father (1947), discussed here, gives us the lovely duet with William Powell on “Sweet Marie”. 

You can better believe that if Irene Dunne were in a movie that was staged entirely in a broom closet, they’d find some way of stuffing a piano in there too.

But though Ann Blyth’s versatility as an actress was celebrated in the press in these early years of her career, her singing talent seemed under-utilized.  She should have gotten more singing time in Top 'O the Morning.  She should have gotten more singing time in lots of movies.

Bing is a nice guy in this movie; he’s always a nice guy, which makes his first song “When Irish Eyes are Smiling”, sung to a little girl when he’s getting his passport photo taken for the trip to Ireland, slow and unnecessary.  We already know his character.  It’s the one he usually plays.  It is a wasted opportunity for him not to be singing it to, or with, Ann Blyth, as he does in this clip here.

This clip, performed on the set of Top ‘O the Morning was actually filmed for Family Theater, a Catholic media production as a program promotion.  It’s a shame the duet doesn’t appear in the movie, but it’s nice that it was preserved on film anyway.  She’d get to sing "Toora Loora" on TV’s Ford Startime with Art Linkletter in a variety episode called “The Secret World of Kids”, broadcast October 27, 1959.

In September of this year, 1949, (a month after Top ‘O the Morningwas released) Ann would appear with Bing on the Lux Radio Theater in “The Emperor Waltz”, but here, too, he gets the lion’s share of the songs as the happy-go-lucky phonograph salesman pitching his wares to Ann’s stuffy duchess in turn-of-the century middle Europe.

Top ‘O the Morning is a sweet, pleasant movie, but critics’ chief complaint seemed to be the ersatz feel of Paramount soundstage  rather than the rustic Irish landscapes, and vigorous if equally-self parodying dialogue, we would be treated to later in John Ford’s The Quiet Man (1952).  To be sure, we do have a requisite shot of Blarney Castle slipped in, but for the most part, it’s a Hollywood version of Ireland.

Barry Fitzgerald’s humble cottage, when we visit for a party, suddenly seems as large as a Costco inside to accommodate all the dancers.  Ann gets to jig a wee bit, and in “The Donovans” number, young Jimmy Hart, a boy who figures prominently in the plot, starts to sing a verse with what we may presume to be a Guinness in his hand when he is promptly slapped in the head by Barry Fitzgerald.  A favorite moment of mine, as a little slapstick is suitable to almost any occasion.

Another cute scene where Ann, trying to find clues to verify an old legend with which Bing is unaware he has a major role, keeps sneaking peeks into the different pockets of his coat while they are dancing.  He gives her a “what a weirdo” look, and wonders if she’s a closet pickpocket.

 

The climax of the film, quite unexpectedly, has a more serious, even sinister tone, as the mystery is solved and the real thief of the Blarney Stone is discovered, the thief also having committed murder.  For some critics, this was too drastic a change in mood from lighthearted to sinister, but I like it.  A little Celtic noir.  A little slapstick.  A little romance.  A little porridge.  Did not G.K. Chesterton make the mercurial Celtic nature most plain when he wrote:

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.

There is a happy ending—especially for the insurance company.  Now they won’t have to pay out.

Ann Blyth’s Irish accent in this film, we may presume, came without much difficulty.  As mentioned in our intro post here, Ann’s mother was originally from Dublin (a Lynch girl, which automatically makes her swell), and Ann grew up hearing the accent at home, as well from the aunts and uncles who emigrated along with her mother to the US, including the aunt and uncle with whom she made her home after the death of her mother.  According to one reporter for The Milwaukee Journal, that aunt, Mrs. Catherine Tobin, “…has a brogue so thick that she is sometimes difficult to understand.”

This movie is embroidered with a lingo of enthusiastic superlatives: “I tracked him gallantly.”  “That’s a gigantic reply."

That autumn of 1949, Ann was planning her first trip to Ireland with her aunt and uncle, hoping for a break in her film schedule the following year.

 

Ann Blyth strongly identified with her Irish ancestry and her mother’s birth country.  She had several aunts, uncles, and cousins still living there, and it must have been a deeply emotional moment when she visited her late mother’s hometown of Dublin for the first time.

St. Patrick’s Day 1950 kicked off her Irish year when The Ancient Order of Hibernians in Los Angeles named her the year’s outstanding Irish screen or radio performer, presenting her with a statuette at their St. Patrick’s Day Ball.

Columnist Sheilah Graham noted after Ann’s return from the Auld Sod, “Ann Blyth is dreamy-eyed when she talks of meeting a ‘Hundred of my relatives in Ireland.  I had my own claque when I appeared at the Royal Theater in Dublin.’"

Louella Parsons wrote, “She had a wonderful summer there with her aunt and uncle and all their many friends...“‘Ireland is even nicer than I ever dreamed it could be,’ Ann said…‘And how willing they are to go out of their way to make you happy.  And those people are so contented with so little.’”

Top ‘O the Morning got the Lux Radio Theater treatment on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1952, with Barry Fitzgerald and Ann Blyth reprising their roles.  You can have a listen here, scroll down to the episode.  In Bing Crosby’s shoes this time is singer/comedian and Jack Benny sidekick, Dennis Day.  Mr. Day would figure prominently in Ann’s future.  His younger brother, James McNulty, would become Ann’s husband the following year in 1953.  Both she and her husband would make cameo appearances on Dennis Day’s TV show in the 1950s, and Ann would join her brother-in-law in concert in distant future.  More on that later.

Ann celebrated another St. Patrick’s Day, in 1959, with her husband at the White House where President Dwight D. Eisenhower invited her to sing for the visiting President of Ireland, Sean O’Kelly.

Have a look at Laura's take on Top O' the Morning here at Laura's Miscellaneous Musings.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to those who celebrate it.  Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh.

May the road rise with you,

May the wind be always at your back,

May the sun shine warm upon your face,

And the rain fall soft upon your fields.

And until we meet again,

   may God hold you

   in the palm of His hand.

Here's "The Donovans" number currently playing on YouTube:

 

Come back next Thursday when we join Ann as an ornery saloon gal, Dick York as stumblebum bank robber, John McIntire as the unluckiest wagon master in the west, and a little boy with an ugly disposition in a comic episode of TV’s Wagon Train  from 1961 called "The Clementine Jones Story."  It's part of the Big Stars on the Small Screen Blogathon hosted by Aurora over at How Sweet It Was.

*************************

Milwaukee Journal, November 2, 1949, p. 1.
Milwaukee Sentinel, syndicated article by Louella Parsons, March 13, 1959, part 2, p. 2.
Paley Center for the Media website.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 3, 1942, syndicated article by Harold V. Cohen, p. 22.
Spokane Daily Chronicle, March 10, 1950, p. 20
The Spokesman-Review, syndicated article by Sheilah Graham, August 20, 1951, p. 5
St. Joseph (Missouri) News-Press, syndicated article by Louella Parsons, December 16, 1951, p. 4D.

************************

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 Burke's Law, Switch, The Name of the Game, 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. 

**************************

Oh, and while I still have you on the line, here's one more thing.  In response to the number of kind people who've requested print copies of my eBook Classic Films and the American Conscience, which is a collection of essays from this blog -- I still can't print that book because you wouldn't be able to lift it, and I couldn't afford to print it.  BUT, I'm putting out a new, smaller, collection of essays, some old, some new, from this blog titled Movies in Our Time: Hollywood Mimics and Mirrors the 20th Century.   It will be issued in eBook as well as print, and I'll let you know more about it down the road.  I hope to have it published sometime in May.

Jean Arthur

This is the 111th anniversary of the birth of Jean Arthur. The clips below might help to illustrate her unique quality of preoccupied self knowledge, comic pathos, and that ability, elusive-to-description, to be Everywoman and at the same time like nobody you ever knew. She brought depth and empathy to screwball comedy. She brought sly silliness to sober drama. Humanity was something she understood and conveyed easily, but crowds unnerved her and she preferred the silence of her own contemplation.

Remember to scroll down to the bottom of the page and mute the music so you can hear the videos.



In 1942, she visited Fred Allen’s radio show for a couple of comic skits, and this unabashed duet of “In My Merry Oldsmobile”.




Here in “A Lady Takes a Chance” (1943) she tried to cozy up to a resisting John Wayne. He should have done more comedy. Look at his antsy reaction to her having beer foam on her lip. It drives him nuts. She blithely prattles on, unaware how clownish she looks. She never played the clown. She played the social faux pas and the recovery from embarrassment. That was her spin. Notice at the end how she’s floundering in an agony of jealousy and frustration, and shouts “More beer!” to retaliate for his ignoring her.




She understood so much, instinctively, and yet explained very little. It required a light touch, and that was her genius.