Focus: A Film Review (1950-1951)

Cover Personality Ann Blyth Against a background of greengarbed ballet girls and Irish-habited singers, a pretty girl walked on to the enormous Empire Theatre stage with perfect poise and sweet reserve. After a few words of introduction she sang “An Irish Lullaby”. The huge audience, come from all parts of London to see and hear Ann Blyth with Mario Lanza in The Great Caruso, gave her a welcome that only warmhearted Londoners know' how to give and give only to those whom they know they can trust and admire to be natural and human. Then she paid tribute to English musical tradition by singing “O Happy Day” from “Kiss the Bride”. This charming song she had learnt specially for the occasion and she sang it with feeling and warmth. When I chatted with her after the show I was not surprised to have Ann Blyth confirm my impression that she was a trained singer and had been on the stage before she went into films. There is something about the way a person walks on to a stage that betrays the trained actor or actress. After a childhood radio career she was with the San Carlos Opera Company for three years. There is also an unmistakable character about the film star who has been through the theatre mill. Ann Blyth is such a one. She told me that she would not have missed that training for anything. She was very glad, she said, to have the opportunity to go back to the stage last summer for a short spell in order, as she put it, “to learn again the things i had forgotten”. Her singing, too, gave evidence of the careful artist. She treated both the songs she sang with the care that compliments both the singer and the song. So many singers nowadays imagine that they have only to “vocalise”. John McCormack taught us the lesson that anything worth singing is worth taking trouble over and Ann Blyth gives us that impression too : she had taken trouble to present her numbers to the Empire audience as well as she knew how and the audience did not take long to appreciate and react to the compliment she thus paid them. One becomes accustomed to the professional approach of many of the film stars. It was not difficult to recognise the sincerity which is Ann Blvth’s most heart-warming quality. The tough-skinned press representatives with whom I talked after the Empire show were loud in their praises of her genuine and unselfconscious manner. She had come to keep her date, regardless of the fact that she was stiff with the reactions of a vaccination demanded bv the American authorities and which had left her feeling very stiff and sore. To me she confided that it was all worth while as a preliminary to her visit to Rome. She was wildly excited about the thought of seeing the Holy Father. To a Catholic priest, of course, there is something specially delightful in the loyal, pious devotion which such a personality brings to her religious life and there was an unusual warmth in the way she responded to my “God bless you” : “Oh, thank you. Father ! ” Her film career began, as far as England is concerned, with The Merry Monahans. Mr. Peabody and the Angel, Another Part of the Forest and Top O’ the Morning are the other films of hers which have been shown over here. Now she is appearing in The Great Caruso in which she makes a hit by reason of her under-playing to Mario Lanza’s rather obvious and over-plaved Caruso. Incidentally, she is not allowed in that film to do justice to her talent as a singer when she ends the film with a song version of “Over The Waves”. She has just finished work at Denham on The House on the Square, for which she was flown from Hollywood at short notice to take over Constance Smith’s part. She is a good trouper and a fine, human character. John Vincent.