{"id":518710,"date":"2026-06-26T01:41:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T01:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/518710\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T01:41:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T01:41:12","slug":"ann-blyth-dead-mildred-pierce-star-was-98","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/518710\/","title":{"rendered":"Ann Blyth Dead: ‘Mildred Pierce’ Star Was 98"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAnn Blyth, the petite actress and singer who earned an Oscar nomination for portraying Joan Crawford<\/a>\u2019s demon daughter, Veda, in the classic 1945 melodrama Mildred Pierce, has died. She was 98.<\/p>\n

\n\tBlyth died Wednesday of natural causes, KABC\u2019s George Pennacchio reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tAn operatic soprano, Blyth introduced the classic song \u201cThe Loveliest Night of the Year\u201d when she played the wife of Enrico Caruso (Mario Lanza) in The Great Caruso (1951) and starred in three other MGM musicals: Rose Marie (1954), The Student Prince (1954) and Vincente Minnelli\u2019s Kismet (1955).<\/p>\n

\n\tBlyth also portrayed Burt Lancaster\u2019s wife in the gritty prison drama Brute Force (1947) and was an attractive creature from the sea brought home by William Powell in the fantasy Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948).<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter she departed MGM and hooked on with Warner Bros., she starred in two 1957 biopics: Sidney Sheldon\u2019s The Buster Keaton Story, also starring her former teenage dancing partner, Donald O\u2019Connor, and The Helen Morgan Story (1957), in which she played the alcoholic 1930s torch singer opposite Paul Newman.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn loan from Universal, where she played innocent teens in small roles, Blyth, then 16, landed the part of the spoiled Veda opposite Crawford, who had just left MGM with her career in disarray. Hundreds of teenagers had auditioned, but Crawford saw something in Blyth and helped her get the role by appearing opposite her in her screen test.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI 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,\u201d she told<\/a> THR\u2019s Scott Feinberg in 2013. \u201cPeople just didn\u2019t do that, not people of her stature.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCrawford\u2019s instincts were correct; for playing the self-sacrificing mother, she won the best actress Oscar (missing the ceremony but famously accepting the trophy at home in bed in her pajamas), and Blyth was nominated for best supporting actress.<\/p>\n

\n\tBlythe excelled as the beautiful brat who will do anything \u2014 even commit murder \u2014 for money.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis Blyth child is exquisite in her understanding of one of the most difficult roles ever written,\u201d The Hollywood Reporter wrote in its review. \u201cOnly the undeniable genius that has made Joan Crawford the great popular star she long since became enables her to keep Ann Blyth from running off with the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFive days after wrapping Mildred Pierce, Blyth broke her back in a sledding mishap near Lake Arrowhead, California.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOne minute we were sailing down the hard-packed icy hillside like snowbirds, then there was a crash and I fell on my back with a sickening thud,\u201d she wrote in a 1954 storyheadlined \u201cMy Career Took a Toboggan Ride.\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t cry out. The feeling was too big for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 5-foot-2 Blyth spent seven months in body cast and several more confined to a wheelchair. She did manage to attend the 1946 Oscars, wearing a studio-designed gown that fit over her back brace.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the 1970s, Blyth became known to a new generation of TV viewers when she appeared as a mom in a series of commercials for Hostess Cupcakes, pitching Twinkies, Crumb Cakes\u00a0and Ding Dongs.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnne Marie Blythe (she shortened her first and last names after coming to Hollywood) was born Aug. 16, 1927, in Mount Kisco, New York, and raised on the Lower East Side on Manhattan. Her father left the family, leaving her mother to raise her and her older sister.<\/p>\n

\n\tBlyth sang and recited poetry on radio shows starting at age 6 and performed with the San Carlos Opera Company. In the principal\u2019s office at school, she was approached by writer Lillian Hellman and producer-director Herman Shumlin to read for a part in the anti-Nazi Broadway drama Watch on the Rhine. She won the role as Paul Lukas\u2019 daughter in a 1941-42 production, turning 13 during the run.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter Watch on the Rhine closed on Broadway after almost 400 performances, she toured around the country with the play and joined other castmembers for dinner at the White House with President Franklin D. Roosevelt.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAnn Blyth<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhotofest<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1943, Blyth was signed by Universal in part to provide competition for their chronically dissatisfied resident soprano, Deanna Durbin, and she quickly was cast in four musicals released in 1944: Chip Off the Old Block, Babes on Swing Street, The Merry Monahans and Bowery to Broadway (three of those with O\u2019Connor).<\/p>\n

\n\tMichael Curtiz\u2019s Mildred Pierce, based on a 1941 novel by James M. Cain, came next, and after her back mended, she played another brat in Swell Guy (1946). A few years later, she refused to play another bad girl in the film Abandoned and was put on unpaid suspension.<\/p>\n

\n\tBlyth also appeared in such films as Killer McCoy (1947), Another Part of the Forest (1948), Top O\u2019 the Morning (1949), Once More, My Darling (1949), The Golden Horde (1951), I\u2019ll Never Forget You (1951), One Minute to Zero (1952), The World in His Arms (1952), All the Brothers Were Valiant (1953), The King\u2019s Thief (1955) and Slander (1957).<\/p>\n

\n\tCurtiz\u2019s The Helen Morgan Story was her last feature \u2014 she quit the movies even though she was considered for the lead in The Three Faces of Eve (1957), for which Joanne Woodward won the best actress Oscar.<\/p>\n

\n\tHowever, she had a nightclub act in Las Vegas, appeared in local theater and appeared on such TV shows as Wagon Train, The Twilight Zone (as a Hollywood star who doesn\u2019t age), The Name of the Game, Quincy M.E. and Murder, She Wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1953, Blyth wed Los Angeles obstetrician James McNulty, the brother of singer Dennis Day. They had five children, Timothy, Maureen, Kathleen, Terence and Eileen, and were together until his 2007 death at age 89. <\/p>\n

\n\tDuane Byrge contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ann Blyth, the petite actress and singer who earned an Oscar nomination for portraying Joan Crawford\u2019s demon daughter,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60,69320,14767],"class_list":["post-518710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-joan-crawford","tag-obituaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}