Ann Blyth's Easter Visit to the Crew of the USS Wisconsin

Ann Blyth spent Easter Sunday, April 13, 1952, visiting the crew of the USS Wisconsin, which was then docked at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. For more photos of the event, see this website for the association of former USS Wisconsin crew members.

The event is also described in my book, Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star., along with some of Ann's other visits to military bases.

Happy Easter to all who celebrate it!

Kismet on TCM

Ann Blyth and Vic Damone, pictured in the above lobby card, star in Kismet (1955).  Turner Classic Movies presents this classic this coming Saturday.  From my book,  Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star.:



The “Strangers in Paradise” number.  Vic Damone has followed Ann to the walled garden of a small house.  She is trespassing, but he thinks she is the well-to-do young woman of the house and he falls in love with her.  He doesn’t tell her he’s the Caliph; he lets her think he is a gardener.   He is dressed in colors making him a part of the garden—sand and bright green, and she is in yellow, like the flowers dotting the foreground in this scene.  He is the plant; she the flower.  They are both organic to the place, they belong here.  Note the staging, how they stand in tableau in the arches, how they part, she slightly above him on steps as his adored one on a pedestal, with a peacock between them. 

Next, as the song, which is their courtship, progresses, they stand together with another peacock unfurling his magnificent white fan of tail feathers.  Finally, they come together in a section of the garden with red flowers, the color of romance, when their passion culminates in a kiss and a promise.  Interestingly, they step back away from us to kiss.  Perhaps to get their full forms in view, but CinemaScope did not work really well with close-ups.  Minnelli makes CinemaScope work well for this picture with gracefully framed shots.  Ann promises to meet Damone here at moonrise.  It’s a lovely scene, but dissolves too quickly when we really want to linger on her watching him leave.  It’s one of the most graceful and elegant scenes ever filmed in CinemaScope.

Catch Kismet on TCM Saturday, March 24th at noon ET.

Happy St. Patrick's Day with Ann Blyth and Bing Crosby

We celebrate upcoming St. Patrick's Day with Ann Blyth and Bing Crosby in Top o' the Morning (1949).  As noted in my book, Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star.:

Bing Crosby remarked of Ann in a Modern Screen article:

“She looks so small and fragile, but she’s got an awful lot of drive.  There’s nothing in Hollywood that’s going to stop this kid.”

For more on Top o' the Morning, have a look at this post on my Another Old Movie Blog.  I'll leave you today with a foot-stomping scene from the movie and the song "The Donovans."  Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Ann Blyth interviewed in new book on director Michael Curtiz

Ann Blyth fans may be interested to read the excellent new biography of her favorite director, Michael Curtiz, by Alan K. Rode. Two of her films were directed by Curtiz:  Mildred Pierce (1945), for which she was nominated for a Best Supporting Oscar at the age of 17, and her last film (pictured above with Paul Newman), The Helen Morgan Story (1957).

Michael Curtiz – A Life in Film, published by the University Press of Kentucky (2017) is a well-written and well-researched study on one of Hollywood’s most talented, and yet perhaps most overlooked, directors.  Mr. Rode rectifies Curtiz’s omission among the great auteurs with a fair and unblinking examination of the director’s foibles, even occasional cruelty, but chronicling his impressive body of work and his unique cinematic storytelling.  The book is foremost a tribute to a complex but talented man.

The author interviewed Ann Blyth for this book, and she supplies her memories of working with Michael Curtiz and her experiences on her two films with him, praising his talent and reaffirming how much she enjoyed working with him.  She sensed that, “…he was always seemed to be in my corner.  I remember that we talked about this later on in years when I worked with him again and I wished that that had happened more often…He had a wonderful way and would say all kinds of crazy things, but there was always a twinkle in his eye….I was very, very fond of him.”

There is a photograph in the book of Curtiz directing Ann in the memorable scene in Mildred Pierce where she sings “The Oceana Roll” in the waterfront dive owned by Jack Carson.  For more on Ann’s interview, and for an in-depth review on the life and career of this director whose hits include Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Casablanca (1943), and White Christmas (1954) to name only a few perennial favorites, Michael Curtiz –A Life in Film is a treat for classic film buffs who have waited a long time for a book-length biography on this director.