Ann Blyth Borrows Joan Crawford's Oscar

Ann Blyth once confiscated Joan Crawford's Oscar award for a scavenger hunt.

Above, we have a photo of Ann congratulating Joan for her Best Actress win when director Michael Curtiz, Ann, other movie friends and a lot of press brought the statue to Joan's sickbed (as she claimed to have missed the ceremony due to illness) to celebrate.

With the Academy Awards fast approaching, let's take a moment for a footnote in the glamourous careers of Joan Crawford and Ann Blyth -- for a nutty and classy episode of their friendship.  As reported in Photoplay magazine in April 1949, Ann recalled for friends who hoped she would win an Oscar one day that she already had one, for an evening, at least.

"Her task in a Scavenger Hunt had been to bring back Joan Crawford's Oscar won for 'Mildred Pierce.'  And since Ann had played Joan's daughter in that film, the star handed over the Oscar, assuring Ann that no one else in the world could pry it away from her.

'And I was so afraid something would happen to it, I kept it beside me on the pillow all night."

Ann Blyth on Most Beautiful Women in Hollywood List

Ann Blyth was featured on a list of "The 12 Most Beautiful Women in Hollywood" by Photoplay magazine in December 1951.  It's an interesting list, and she appears in the number 2 slot after Ava Gardner.  The rest, in order behind her are Elizabeth Taylor, Arlene Dahl, Linda Darnell, Joan Crawford, Mona Freeman, Loretta Young, Marlene Dietrich, Susan Hayward, Rita Hayworth, and Deborah Kerr.

Though articles involving "experts" panels, even among photographers, more likely reflect popularity contests among the fans or effective barracking by the studios, we do see a reflection of what made for popular appeal in 1951 (though classic film fans today would regard glamour as timeless, surely).

From the article by Vicky Riley:

"Ann Blyth has flawless facial attributes," said one photographer, "but it is something beyond her bone structure and her exquisite, dusky coloring that makes her a great beauty -- an inner spiritual beauty which illumines her face."

Another said, "Ann symbolizes the dream of all of us.  Sher personifies everything that girls of her age want to be.  She is the girl boys desire for a wife.  And she is the girl parents want for a daughter."

She was also a photographer's dream.