Ann Blyth, the Oscar-nominated actress and one of the last surviving figures from Hollywood’s Golden Age, has died at the age of 98.
Blyth died Wednesday, June 24, of natural causes, KABC entertainment reporter George Pennachio shared Thursday on Facebook. Pennachio noted that the actress was just two months away from celebrating her 99th birthday.
Blyth’s career began in the 1930s, when she was still a child performer appearing on radio. She later made the move to the big screen, building a film and entertainment career that stretched across more than seven decades.
Her best-known role came in the 1945 film noir classic Mildred Pierce, in which she played the daughter of Joan Crawford’s title character.
Directed by Michael Curtiz, the acclaimed melodrama helped launch Blyth to wider fame and brought her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Blyth was only 16 when she portrayed Veda, the spoiled and materialistic daughter of Mildred Pierce, a divorced mother who works as a waitress to satisfy her child’s demands and is ultimately pushed into making increasingly painful sacrifices.
Ann Blyth, the Oscar-nominated actress and one of the last surviving stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, died Wednesday at 98, according to KABC’s George Pennachio; she is pictured in Hollywood in 2013
Blyth’s most memorable screen role was as the daughter of Joan Crawford’s title character in the 1945 film noir classic Mildred Pierce, pictured here
The film was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, Actress, Screenplay and Black-and-White Cinematography.
Blyth and her costar Eve Arden split the Best Supporting Actress category and went home empty-handed, while Crawford won the film’s only Academy Award.
Blyth later told The Hollywood Reporter that what helped her score her Mildred Pierce Role – despite mostly playing innocent teen roles up to that point and competing against hundreds of other young women – was Crawford’s confidence in her.
Unlike her numerous competitors, she got a leg up when the legendary leading lady decided to act opposite her during her audition.
‘I knew that other people wanted the part as well, but I was the lucky one because Joan Crawford did the test with me, and it made a world of difference,” she said in 2013. ‘People just didn’t do that, not people of her stature.’
Film noir historian and preservationist Alan K. Rode marveled to the Los Angeles Times that Blyth ‘just blew everybody away’ with her performance on the occasion of a Turner Classic Movies (TCM) salute to Blyth in 2013 for her 85th birthday.
‘It’s certainly Joan Crawford’s movie, but she is really the spine of the movie,’ said Rode, who went on to write a biography of Curtiz. ‘She is the epitome of the film noir daughter from hell. It’s just an amazing performance that stands the test of time.’
But the rising star couldn’t fully appreciate the success of Mildred Pierce, as she broke her back just days after she finished shooting the film during an ill-fated toboggan crash near Lake Arrowhead, California.
Mildred Pierce was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, Screenplay, Black-and-White Cinematography and Supporting Actress nominations for Blyth and costar Eve Arden. Crawford was the film’s only winner for Best Actress; (L–R) Jo Ann Marlowe, Ann Blyth and Joan Crawford
Blyth was also a talented singer, and her soprano voice made her a popular choice for luscious Hollywood musicals of the 1950s, including director Vincente Minnelli’s Kismet, The Great Caruso, Rose Mari and The Student Prince; pictured in 1950 in a promotional image
Blyth also played the wife of Burt Lancaster in Brute Force (1947), an even grittier noir crime film that featured some of the most extreme violence featured on screen up to that time.
Blyth was born in Mount Kisco, New York, in 1927, and her future in the entertainment industry was assured by the time she began appearing on children’s radio shows at just five years old.
She began appearing on Broadway in 1941 in Lillian Hellman’s Watch On The Rhine, and the success of the play helped her move to Hollywood and score a contract with Universal Studios.
Blyth was also a talented singer who had performed opera later in her childhood, and her soprano voice made her a popular choice for luscious Hollywood musicals of the 1950s, including director Vincente Minnelli’s Kismet, The Great Caruso, Rose Marie and The Student Prince.
She proved to be adept with more down-to-earth roles in biopics later in the ’50s with The Buster Keaton Story (starring Donald O’Connor as the iconic silent film star and filmmaker) and The Helen Morgan Story.
She played the eponymous 1920s and ’30s torch singer in the latter film, which reunited her with Mildred Pierce director Michael Curtiz and paired her with a young Paul Newman.
Both films were failures – both at the box office and with critics – and Blyth retired from the film industry after their dismal reception, never to make another movie.
Blyth was married for five decades to James McNulty, an LA-based obstetrician and the brother of another famous singing star, Doris Day.
Later in the decade, the actress began working in theatre and TV. She starred in productions of The King And I, The Sound Of Music and Show Boat, while on TV she was a popular guest star on Wagon Train, The Twilight Zone and Murder, She Wrote, among other shows; seen in 1945
Blyth was married for five decades to James McNulty, an LA-based obstetrician and the brother of Doris Day. The couple, who wed in 1953, shared five children, who survive her. McNulty died in 2007 at 89; Blyth is seen in 2021
The couple, who wed in 1953, shared five children, Timothy, Maureen, Kathleen, Terence and Eileen.
McNulty died in 2007 at 89.
In 2015, Blyth biographer Jacqueline T. Lynch theorized that it was the actress’s conservative family life and strong Catholic faith that ultimately played a role in the death of her film career.
‘When the publicity department and gossip columnists got hold of the news of her quiet, church-going private life, they put a different spin on her career trajectory, and the studios relegated her to more lightweight roles,’ Blyth told Broadway World. ‘I guess they thought it would be hard for the public to accept her in villain roles when they were fed so many stories on her being a nice girl.’
Later in the decade, the actress began working in theatre and on television.
She starred in productions of The King And I, The Sound Of Music and Show Boat, all of which showed off her musical talents, while on TV she was a popular guest star on Wagon Train, The Twilight Zone and Murder, She Wrote, among several other shows.
Blyth is survived by her children.
