that Blythethe young actress and singer who received an Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of Joan Crawford’s diabolical daughter, Vida, in the classic 1945 melodrama Mildred PierceHe died. It was 98.
Blythe died Wednesday of natural causes, KABC’s George Pennacchio reported.
Blythe, an operatic soprano, performed the classic “The Most Beautiful Night of the Year” when she played a wife Enrico Caruso (Mario Lanza) in The great Caruso (1951) and starred in three other MGM musicals: Rosemary (1954), Prince Student (1954) and Vincente Minnelli I divided (1955).
Blythe She also portrayed Burt Lancaster’s wife in the gritty prison drama Brute force (1947) and was an attractive creature of the sea that William Powell brought home in fiction Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948).
After leaving MGM for Warner Bros., she starred in two films in 1957 CV photos: Sidney Sheldon The story of Buster Keatonalso starring her former teenage dancing partner, Donald O’Connor, and Helen Morgan’s story (1957) where she played an alcoholic 1930s The Torch Singer opposite Paul Newman.
On loan from Universal, where she played innocent teenagers in small roles, Blythethen 16, got the spoiled part of Alvida opposite Crawford, who had just left MGM and whose career was in disarray. Hundreds of teens had auditioned, but Crawford saw something in it Blythe She helped her get the role by appearing opposite her in her screen test.
“I knew others wanted the role too, but I was lucky to have Joan Crawford audition with me, and that made a big difference,” she said. THR‘s Scott Feinberg in 2013. “People didn’t do it, not people in her position.”
Crawford’s instincts were correct. For playing a self-sacrificing mother, she won the Best Actress Oscar (she missed the ceremony but famously accepted the trophy at home in bed in her pajamas), and Blythe She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.
Blythe excelled as the pretty brat who will do anything—even commit murder—for money.
“this Blythe “The child is amazing in her understanding of one of the most difficult roles ever written.” Hollywood Reporter He wrote in his review. “Only the undeniable genius that made Joan Crawford the great popular star she has long become can enable her to keep Anne Blythe From escaping with the movie.
Five days after packaging Mildred Pierce, Blythe She broke her back in a skiing accident near Lake Arrowhead, California.
“One minute we were cruising down the packed icy hill like snowbirds, and then there was a crash and I fell flat on my back with a sickening thud,” she wrote in a 1954 story titled “My Career Took a Skiing Journey.” “I didn’t scream. The feeling was too great to do that.”
5 feet-2 Blythe He spent seven months in a corpse mold with many others confined to a wheelchair. She was able to attend the 1946 Academy Awards, wearing a studio-designed gown that fit her back brace.
in The seventies, Blythe She became known to a new generation of television viewers when she appeared as a mother in a series of commercials for Hostess Cupcakes, promoting twinkies, Crumb cakes and ding Dong.
Anne Marie Blythe (she shortened her first and last name after coming to Hollywood) was born on August 16, 1927, in Mt. KiscoNew York, and grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Her father left the family, leaving her mother to raise her and her older sister.
Blythe He sang and recited poetry on radio shows starting at the age of six and performed with the San Carlos Opera Company. In the principal’s office, the clerk, Lillian, called her Hellman And producer and director Hermann Shumlin To read for a role in an anti-Nazi Broadway drama Watch on the Rhine River. She won the role of Paul Lucas’s daughter in the 1941-42 production, turning 13 during the run.
after Watch on the Rhine River It closed on Broadway after nearly 400 performances, and she toured across the country with the play and joined the others com. castmembers To have dinner at the White House with President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In 1943, Blythe She was signed by Universal in part to provide competition for the chronically dissatisfied resident soprano, Deanna Durbin, and was soon cast in four musicals released in 1944: Chip off the old block, Babes in Swing Street, Merry Monahans and Bowery to Broadway (Three of these with O’Connor).
Michael Kurtz Mildred Piercebased on the 1941 James M. Cain novel, Next Came, and with her back repaired, played another brat in Man swelled (1946). A few years later, she refused to play another bad girl in the film Abandoned He was suspended without pay.
Blythe has also appeared in films such as Killer McCoy (1947), Another part of the forest (1948), Up, morning (1949), Once again my dear (1949), Golden Horde (1951), I will never forget you (1951), One minute to zero (1952), The world in his arms (1952), All the brothers were brave (1953), The king’s thief (1955) and Slander (1957).
Cortez Helen Morgan’s story It was her last film – she left films even though she was considered a pioneer in them The three faces of Eve (1957), for which Joan Woodward won the Oscar for Best Actress.
However, she had a nightclub show in Las Vegas, appeared in local theater and appeared on television shows such as Wagon train, The twilight zone (Like a Hollywood star who never ages), Name of the game, Quincy May and Murder, she wrote.
In 1953, Blythe married Los Angeles obstetrician James McNulty, brother of singer Dennis Day. They had five children, Timothy, Maureen, Kathleen, Terence and Eileen, and were together until his death in 2007 at the age of 89.
Duane Berg contributed to this report.
