ANN BLYTH

(16 August 1927 - 24 June 2026)

The American singer and actress Ann Blyth, who has died ‘of natural causes’ at the age of 98, was popular in her day and made a great impression on every genre she worked in. Beginning with radio, then the New York stage, a contract with Universal Pictures began with film musical comedies, and she later made many prestige pictures before returning to the theatre and finally a television career. She was the sort of performer every bright young American girl wished to be and she more than fulfilled that dream.

Ann Blyth’s birth name was actually Anne Marie Blythe, but she dropped the two ‘e’s later on. She was born in Mount Kisco, New York state, to Harry and Annie Blythe. Both she and her older sister Dorothy appeared on New York radio shows before Ann joined the New York Children’s Opera Company. Her first Broadway performance was as Paul Lukas’ daughter Babette in Lillian Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine in 1941, and she won a New York Drama Circle Award. While touring in the play, she was offered a contract by Universal Studios. Her first film was a musical, Chip Off the Old Block (1941) with Donald O’Connor and Peggy Ryan, followed by two more - The Merry Monahans and Babes on Swing Street.

A loan to Warner Brothers proved that Blyth could play drama just as well as musical comedy when she appeared as Joan Crawford’s two-timing daughter Veda in Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce, which gained her a nomination for an Academy Award as best supporting actress. Next, she made Swell Guy with Sonny Tufts and Brute Force with Burt Lancaster for director Jules Dassin. Then she went to MGM for Killer McCoy, a boxing film that was a big hit for her and Mickey Rooney. She carried on working for Universal with Gregory Peck in The World in His Arms and for RKO she did One Minute to Zero with Robert Mitchum, with Ann Blyth replacing an indisposed Claudette Colbert.

Throughout her life Ann Blyth had a very good soprano voice which she used to full effect in MGM’s The Great Caruso (1952) with Mario Lanza, so after Universal she signed with Metro for All the Brothers Were Valiant with Stewart Granger and Robert Taylor, with Blyth replacing a pregnant Elizabeth Taylor. She did the remake of Rose Marie with Howard Keel, although a projected version of The Girl of the Golden West never happened. Without Lanza, apart from his voice, she next starred in Richard Thorpe’s The Student Prince with Edmund Purdom. With Purdom again, and David Niven, she did The King’s Thief. Having been replaced by Kay Kendall for The Adventures of Quentin Durward, Blyth made her last Metro picture, Slander, with Van Johnson, in 1956.

With film work gradually drying up, Ann Blyth turned to the theatre and television, and officially retired in 1985 after an episode of Murder, She Wrote. Ann Blyth married only once and her husband from 1953 was the obstetrician James McNulty, brother of the singer Dennis Day. They had five children. McNulty died in 2007 aged 89.

Ann Blyth’s career was typical of the times she lived in – promising youngster reveals enough talent to go on the stage, appear in films and make herself a popular star in the media. There are not many left from Hollywood’s Golden Age but Ann Blyth certainly was a very bright twinkle in that American movie firmament.

Film Review named Ann Blyth a ‘Rising Star’ in 1945, alongside Gregory Peck, who would later appear with her on the cover of our 1952 annual (for Raoul Walsh’s adventure film The World in His Arms).

MICHAEL DARVELL