Ann Blyth Refuses to Smoke in Film

Ann Blyth Refuses To Smoke In Films

HOLLYWOOD - Although Ann Blyth plays a toughie in "Swell Guy," Mark Hellinger production for Universal, she balked at learning to smoke.

"I'm practically an alcoholic in the picture," said Ann, "but the drinks are fake. There's no way to fake smoking, so I'll just have to skip it. I've never learned to smoke and even a smoke-filled room makes me ill."

For the picture, Ann had to learn to flip a coin like a dyed-in-the-wool gambler. With between-scenes insstruction from Sonny Tufts, William Gargan, John Craven, John Litel and other males of the cast, it took her about a week to acquire this skill.

(Transcribed from THE DESERET NEWS, Monday, 9 Sept 1946)

Ann Blyth is Perfect Hollywood Star

Ann Is Perfect Hollywood Star - - She's Liked By Fellow Workers

By HOWARD PEARSON

Ann Blyth is one of those rare individuals who reach the top rung of stardom in Hollywood. She is as popular with her Hollywood colleagues as she is with the fans.

The tiny 24-year-old charmer of many pictures has been called "the perfect trouper" by those whose responsibility it is to make preparations for star tours, draw up itineraries and then accompany the celebrities wherever they make personal appearances.

NO DEMANDS
One studio representative on a recent tour with "Annie", as she is called by those who know her, said that Miss Blyth makes no unreasonable demands, is perfectly amiable at all times and accommodating to all. "She's the type of woman I hope my daughter becomes," he said.

Little things that cause such comments include putting on extra shows at military bases when the boys cannot be accomodated at the regularly scheduled number of programs, stopping to chat with youngsters who want to see her, and generally putting herself out for her fans and fellow workers.

FINE HABITS
Additionally, Ann's personal habits make her one of the most pleasant stars to work with. She does not smoke or drink or visit night clubs, and her behavior is always the best.

These items probably account for her long-standing stardom in Hollywood, where she has been at the top since she was 11 years old, when she scored in "Watch on the Rhine." [This was actually on stage, not film.] Since then, her roles have covered all types and varieties. These include "The World In His Arms," now playing at the Lyric Theater, and "One Minute to Zero," soon coming to the Utah Theater.

DIFFERENT ROLES
Illustrative of her versatility, these pictures present her in different types of parts in different centuries. In "The World in His Arms," she is a Russian countess in an adventure film whose story takes place in the 1850s. In "One Minute to Zero," she is an American girl with the United Nations forces in Korea.

(Transcribed from THE DESERET NEWS, Wednesday, 13 Aug 1952)

Anne Baxter is Tops in Dialogue

Anne Baxter Is Tops In Dialogue

Anne Baxter, who is always letter-perfect in her lines, established a new record for a day's performance before the cameras. For her starring role in "My Wife's Best Friend," in which she is teamed with MacDonald Carey, she polished off 11 pages of dialogue and went through 14 different setups without a hitch. Three to five pages of dialogue are considered good pace for the average day's work.

(Transcribed from THE DESERET NEWS, Wednesday, 13 Aug 1952)

'Have Faith, My Darling. You'll Walk.'

In 1954, Guideposts published a book of stories by different celebrities who had gone through particularly trying times. The volume was compiled by Norman Vincent Peale and titled "Faith Made Them Champions". Screen actress Ann Blyth shared about the time that she suffered a broken back in a sledding accident. She was, and still is, a devout Catholic, whose faith grew during a time when her world seemed to be ending. Her story was published in many newspapers across the country under the title "Lenten Guideposts".

MY CAREER TOOK A TOBOGGAN RIDE
By Ann Blyth

When I was a very little girl I remember praying fervently for a pair of red wings. After several days of watching and waiting, I took my shaken faith and spread it out before my mother.

"Why?" I demanded. "Why don't I get red wings?"

My mother had, skillfully balanced with her sensitive Irish wit, an enormous respect for a serious problem. Together we examined mine. "Faith, my darling," she told me, "is believing that God is very wise. Wiser than you. Somehow you must be praying wrong."

As I grew older, I was filled with gratitude that I need not walk through life wearing red wings. But, I was equally grateful for her gentle lesson.

Mother worked very hard and her tiny body wasn't nearly as big as her heart. Yet I never heard her complain. In our walk-up flat on New York's East side, she would jubilantly finish a batch of ironing for her select Park Avenue clientele and call to us to admire its crisp freshness.

A Constant Faith
Sometimes it was a close shave when it came to scraping together the money for my singing, dancing and dramatic lessons, but she never told me of it. Instead, she let me know constantly that Faith was the foundation for lasting joy, the chief cornerstone for building a whole life.

She dreamed dreams about my wonderful future as an actress and at eight, nine, and ten, I began getting radio and stage bits. When I tried for something better and failed, she would smile her wonderful warm smile, put a pert new feather in my hat, and together we'd go to St. Boniface's to pray.

"Just have faith, my darling," she'd say cheerfully as we walked home in the fading light. "Something better will come." And it did. It came so fast it was like riding a giant roller coaster clear to the top. We two looked out over the whole world.

At 13, I was on Broadway as Paul Lukas' daughter in "Watch on the Rhine." At 14, I had dinner at the White House. At 15, I came to Hollywood and was given the coveted role of Joan Crawford's daughter in "Mildred Pierce." Overnight, life was glamorous, exciting, completely wonderful.

Her Back Broken
Yes, we went up so fast that when we hit the first giant dip, it shook my faith. But it didn't shake my mother's on that tragic day in a hospital room, where doctors told me I might never walk again.

We had finished "Mildred Pierce" and mother took a group of us to Snow Valley, a spot in the San Bernadino Mountains. While my friends and I were tobogganing, it happened. One minute we were sailing down the hard-packed icy hillside like snow birds, then there was a crash and I fell on my back with a sickening thud.

I din't cry out. The feeling was too big for that. Involuntarily, from long habit, my spirit reached out for faith and halting prayers rose to my lips. At the hospital, the doctors were grave; my back was broken.

My glowing world tumbled all about me. It seemed like the end of everything.

At first, I couldn't look at my mother. When at last I raised my head, I was startled. Those warm, hazel eyes under her crown of auburn hair were actually smiling.

"Have faith, my darling," she said. "You'll walk."

Busy Days
Together my mother and I planned cheerful, busy days. In a cast, with my head and feet toward the floor, my back raised high, I concentrated on high school work, determined to graduate with my studio class.

But still there were those long periods of just lying down. The busy, exciting world I had known faded away and my life slowed down to little things.

But even hear, I found myself blessed, for a new sense of prayer began to unfold to me. Now there were not the busy times of telling Him what I needed, but rather, times of listening communion, of gathering strength, when my human strength and courage seemed to ebb away.

In seven months, they told me I could walk. Not walk really, but take those first important steps on the long road back to complete freedom. As I had gotten to know Him in my time of trial, I knew Him now in thanksgiving.

7 Months in Chair
I took those steps, and then more. I graduated with my class from a wheel chair. There were seven months in and out of that wheel chair, but every one was another step forward. There was my first swim. The preview of "Mildred Pierce." My first game of golf. And then I made my first picture since the accident.

Now, at last, my life was again the same. Only, not quite the same. I found within me an immense gratitude for simple things. An acute appreciation of all I might have lost, all the things I had accepted unconsciously before.

And one more difference, I had grown up. At first, I had clung to my mother's faith, leaned on her, step by step as she showed me the way. Now, I had found my own rock. Nor did I find it too soon.

An Emptiness
Before I finished that first picture after my accident, I was standing alone. My mother, beloved companion, was gone. A little unsteadily, I clung to my rock.

But I missed her. There was an aching emptiness. Until it came to me, almost in a revelation, that she had not left me. She had prepared me for her going as she had prepared me for everything else I'd met in life.

Reaching out again for my faith came the assurance that she would be by my side in every good, beautiful, and true experience, wherever I might go; a part of every decision, every success and every happiness - for they all stemmed from her inspired teaching. They would become the flowers of the mustard seed of faith she had placed in my heart.

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

"I think that period was the greatest test of my faith. That was my most desperate moment. But it's how you cope with such moments, how you come out of them, that counts. Sometimes we do have to survive periods when we wonder whether God has forgotten all about us. However, God never forgets us. He always answers our prayers, though he doesn't always answer them in the way we wish He would."

(Lenten Guideposts; Lebanon Daily News (PA); 20 March 1954, pages 1 and 9)
(The Press-Courier (CA); 11 Aug 1974, page 10)

"Does Music Help the Actor?" by Elissa Landi

I got a stack of old Etude magazines and, as I was browsing through the contents page, found a very interesting article by actress Elissa Landi. Elissa Landi was a stage and film actress during the 1920s and 30s. Born in Italy, raised in Austria and England, she appeared on British and American stage in the '20s. She wrote her first book when she was twenty. She appeared on Broadway in the early 1930s and in American films since 1931. She played the heroine in Cecil B. DeMille's epic "The Sign of the Cross" in 1932, and two years later played Myrna Loy's cousin in "After the Thin Man". Only two more films followed until her retirement in 1943. She dedicated herself to writing novels and poems. She died of cancer in 1948 at the age of 43.

Does Music Help the Actor?: A Conference with Elissa Landi, Distinguished Actress of Stage and Screen. (Highlights of an article published in the September 1945 issue of Etude Magazine).

"My interest in music began when I did. Music was always a member of our home. Singing and playing were as much a part of the taken-for-granted routine of home as talking and reading. . . . As a girl, I worked at piano study with great enthusiasm and little talent, and played - and still do play - for my own enjoyment. . . . At no time have I regarded music as a possible career - yet music has been of immeasurable help to me in my career.

A Happy Coincidence
"By curious chance, seven out of ten plays in which I have acted in the past years have required me to sit down at a piano to play, sing, or both. Perhaps this is purely coincidence - . . . whatever the cause, though, the result that I felt much more at home in my roles than if I had had to start in learning how to place my hands on the keys. Incidentally, the management benefited also from my early music lessons - since I could manage the required playing myself, there was no need to hire a pianist to dub in the music from backstage!
But the relationship between music and acting roots far deeper than the odd chance of being required to play on stage. Skilled acting is a rhythmic art, and only those who are deeply aware of music and rhythm can hope to capture its fullest flexibility. When a company is newly assembled to begin rehearsals, you can invariably tell which of the group are musical and which are not. You can tell it from the way they work, and I have found that very few skilled actors - none of the great ones - are unmusical.

The relationship between music and acting shows itself in timing, and timing is the very soul of dramatic representation. Timing is the curious syncopation of gesture and speech which builds a telling effect. Suppose your script says simply: 'And that is that. (Banging on the table.)' When are you to speak the words? When are you to do the banging on the table? What - if any - is to be the relationship between the words and the banging? There you have a problem of timing. It is quite possible to speak and to bang in such a way that any connection between them becomes dissipated. Then you have a weak effect. It is also possible to time the bang between words so that it emphasizes them. Then you have a forceful effect. It is achieved by establishing an actual rhythmic pattern for the words and bringing the bang on one of the beats. You really count the rhythm, quite as you do in music study! Suppose we try it. Let us fashion our pattern into three bars of four-part rhythm - one, two, three, four.

The rhythm gives it pace to the words, and the gesture enters, in proper time, as part of the pattern. If the gesture of banging comes in unrhythmically, or in just haphazard fashion, the emphasis is lost. In solving such problems of timing, it is helpful to think of the words as the melodic line - the part that is written across the staff - and of the gestures as the harmonic accompaniment - the chords that are written up and down on the staff."

The Value of Effective Timing
"If you study dramatic techniques, you will find that this completely rhythmical art of timing is the source of most great dramatic effects. Young, inexperienced actors give emphasis through greater volume in tone - they raise their voices when they come to the telling moment in their lines. Seasoned actors achieve emphasis more through pauses and timing. Certainly they may raise their voices - sometimes the script calls for a louder tone - but they never depend on loudness alone. Such loudness is saved for the main beat of the phrase, and it is always fitted into the rhythmic relationship between words and gestures, quite as a crescendo would be bracketed across a complete musical phrase. Since timing affects every combination of word and gesture in a play, it is readily seen how necessary it becomes for the actor to know music. Indeed, I have more than once seen stage rehearsals in which the director actually beat the time for a scene, quite as a conductor does in a symphonic rehearsal. The immensely important matter of timing is, of course, a well-known technique, with which every one in the theatre is familiar. " ...

Three Minutes of Melody

I found a very interesting article in one of my old Deanna Durbin scrapbooks. It appears to be from a music magazine, and describes everything that goes into making one three minute song in a film.

"In her newest starring vehicle, "IT'S A DATE" (Universal), Deanna Durbin sings Musetta's Song from "La Boheme"; Loch Lomand; Schubert's Ave Maria; and Love Is All, by P. Tomlin and H. Tobias. A scientifically minded film fan, holding a stop watch on the average Durbin song, would discover that he was getting three minutes of melody. What he could not discover is that he is also getting the benefit of several pieces of chalk, five hundred fifty feet of celluloid, and seven hundred seventy-six work hours of ninety-seven experts. The singing itself, which seems no more complicated than allowing Miss Durbin to send out her tones, is in reality a very involved piece of work.

Take, for instance, the rendition of Musetta's Song. The aria is first sung into a microphone in a sound room, to the accompaniment of a fifty piece orchestra, under the direction of Charles Previn. The chalk was used to write the words of the song in large letters on a blackboard high on the wall facing Miss Durbin, as is the custom in all screen singing. In the action of the picture, Miss Durbin sang the aria again, in a Hawaiian ballroom scene. This time it was photographed but not recorded, her silently filmed lip movements being later synchronized to the previously recorded song. For her gown in this scene, used once and then discarded, the services of one designer and six seamstresses were needed. Also, active in the "shooting" were one make-up man, one hairdresser, one script girl, two camera men, one assistant director, one dialogue director, and an orchestra of fifteen musicians, whose accompaniment, like the photographed song, were filmed but not recorded. An average eight hour work day was expended by each of these experts, either in filming or recording; and other specialists in the cutting room, the library, and various departments, complement the full count of ninety-seven experts needed to bring a single song to the public."

(Here are some photos of Deanna Durbin recording "I Love to Whistle" for her 1938 film, Mad About Music.)