Ann Blyth

A radio performer by the age of five, American actress Ann Blyth trained seriously for opera and made her first appearance in that field with the San Carlo Opera Company. At fifteen she portrayed Paul Lukas’s daughter in the 1943 Broadway staging of Watch on the Rhine; two years afterward Universal Pictures signed her, positioning the newcomer as a potential rival to the studio’s established soprano Deanna Durbin. Her abilities remained largely untapped until she was chosen to play Joan Crawford’s venomous daughter Veda in Mildred Pierce (1945). That role, which moved from veiled barbs aimed at Crawford to the killing of her mother’s lover Zachary Scott, earned Blyth an Academy Award nomination. Once she had recuperated from a back injury, she maintained a steady film workload, shifting between cloyingly sentimental characters in Free for All (1949) and Sally and St. Anne (1951) and far harsher parts such as the fiercely combative Regina Hubbard in Another Part of the Forest (1948). One of her most eccentric leads came in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948), where she embodied the title’s aquatic half and appeared for much of the picture in a state of implied undress. Only in 1954 did the studio finally allow her to use her rigorously trained voice, casting her in the musicals The Student Prince (1954), Rose Marie (1955), and Kismet (1956). When she was asked to portray the real-life singer in The Helen Morgan Story (1957), however, her vocals were supplied by Gogi Grant. That picture marked her last screen appearance; thereafter she worked in theater, on television, and in concert, and during the late 1970s she served as the notably down-to-earth spokeswoman for Hostess Cupcakes.