Ann Blyth, the actress who earned an Oscar nomination for playing the scheming Veda in the 1945 film Mildred Pierce, died Wednesday at 98. KABC reporter George Pennachio was first to report the news.
Blyth played Veda opposite Joan Crawford‘s Mildred, a working-class mother whose sacrifices for her ungrateful daughter drive the film’s tragedy. Crawford won the Best Actress Oscar at the 1946 ceremony. Ann Blyth’s performance as the calculating, cold Veda earned her a supporting actress nomination. The Warner Bros. adaptation of James M. Cain‘s novel also received a Best Picture nomination that year.
Ann Blyth on her relationship with Joan Crawford
The on-screen dynamic between Veda and Mildred centers on cruelty and resentment, but the actual production was considerably warmer. In a retrospective interview for Turner Classic Movies, Ann Blyth recalled that she and Crawford “got along very well,” despite the hostility their characters show each other throughout the story. She described struggling to commit to the film’s slapping scene because of the genuine affection between them off camera.
From opera to Hollywood
Born Ann Marie Blyth in Mount Kisco, New York, she trained as a classical singer with the San Carlo Opera Company before transitioning to acting. She made her Broadway debut in the original 1941-42 production of Lillian Hellman‘s “Watch on the Rhine,” a wartime drama that also toured the West Coast. That touring engagement led to her signing with Universal Pictures.
Her screen career began in 1944 with swing-era musical comedies, including “Chip Off the Block” opposite Donald O’Connor. Mildred Pierce came the following year, though production coincided with a severe sledding accident that fractured her back. She was still recovering when she appeared in “Brute Force” (1947) with Burt Lancaster.
Her subsequent work covered a wide range of genres. She starred opposite Mario Lanza in “The Great Caruso” (1951) and appeared in “Another Part of the Forest” (1948), an adaptation of a Lillian Hellman play. In “The Helen Morgan Story” (1957), she played a torch singer whose career was undone by alcoholism. As film work slowed in the late 1950s, she moved into musical theater, taking roles in “The Sound of Music,” “The King and I,” “Carnival,” and “South Pacific.”
Television work and personal life
Ann Blyth’s television career ran from the 1950s through 1985. Credits included “Lux Video Theatre,” “Wagon Train,” “The DuPont Show With June Allyson,” and a 1964 episode of The Twilight Zone titled “Queen of the Nile.” Her final screen appearance came on “Murder, She Wrote.”
She was married to Dr. James McNulty from 1953 until his death in 2007. They had five children, 10 grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
Todd Haynes remade Mildred Pierce as an HBO miniseries in 2011, with Kate Winslet in the title role and Evan Rachel Wood as Veda.