AN OCEAN APART

Before we go any farther I need to tell you something—I'm loaded with mercury and microplastics.

Above: Ann Blyth and William Powell in a production photo made while they were filming 1948’s fish-out-of-water romance Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid. We wrote about it here.

Have her cake and eat her too.


This photo shows French actor Charles Boyer at Ann Blyth’s nineteenth birthday party today in 1947, looking hungry for more than just cake. Or maybe that’s just our silly imaginations. Such a May-December pairing wouldn’t have been terribly strange back then (though some consider it a capital offense today), however the two are not known to have been involved. The reason they were acquainted is because they were filming the Universal drama A Woman’s Vengeance, which would hit cinemas the next January.

Blyth is still around, celebrating her ninety-fourth birthday today. Boyer died in 1978. That means Blyth has lived more than forty years beyond the day Boyer passed away. That’s the joy and pain of long life, seeing so much but losing friends decades early, and it’s made even more poignant due to the fact that for celebrities it happens in the public eye. But even at ninety-four a birthday may bring a little happiness. The lucky ones amongst us will find out firsthand if that’s true. See some fun shots of Blyth here and here

Today I'm practicing for when I make enough money to do absolutely nothing.

The lovely photo at top of U.S. actress Ann Blyth was made when she was filming the tearjerker Our Very Own in 1950. It was a popular shot, and a frame from the same session was used in a 1952 issue of Photoplay Pin Ups, which you also see here. No, it’s not the same photo. The colors are different, of course, but thats just the printing process. If you look closely, you’ll see that the tilt of her head is different, and her hands are held differently. The two photos were shot instants apart.

Six years ago we featured a fun photo of Blyth in her mermaid costume from Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid and mentioned that she was still around. That remains true. She’s ninety-three and defying the presumption that all the stars from the golden age of Hollywood are gone. Among her many films is the crime drama Brute Force, which we’ve been meaning to get to, so you’ll see Blyth here again before very long. In the meantime, you can see that shot of her as a mermaid here.

William Powell discovers a rare species of marine life.

Today we’re looking at a decidedly non-pulp movie—Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid, a featherweight comedy starring William Powell and Ann Blyth. We watched it because we featured Blyth as a femme fatale last year. She was wearing a mermaid costume in the photo we shared, and an image like that will make one curious. In the movie a fifty-year-old man having a bit of a two-thirds-life crisis takes a Caribbean trip with his wife, stumbles across a youthful mermaid, and falls in love with her. Powell is good, of course, as he is in everything, and Blyth is expressive—which is to say she doesn’t speak. Why would she? She’s a fish, silly. She does hiss, though. Irene Hervey as Powell’s hot wife has a bit of a wandering eye herself, but for an actual man rather than a fantastical creature, and Andrea King plays a woman intent on making the moves on Powell. With all these potential infidelities there’s lots of dramatic potential, but this is a family comedy, which means nothing too taxing to the average moviegoer occurs and everyone ends up where they belong—Powell and Hervey recommitted to their marriage, and Blyth recommitted to the sea. Cute stuff. Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid premiered in the U.S. today in 1948.

Spare the rod, spoil the child.

We ran across this West German poster for Solange ein herz schlaegt, aka Mildred Pierce, and realized we had a substantial gap in our film noir résumé. So we watched the movie, and what struck us about it immediately is that it opens with a shooting. Not a lead-in to a shooting, but the shooting itself—fade in, bang bang, guy falls dead. These days most thrillers bludgeon audiences with big openings like that, but back in the day such action beats typically came mid- and late-film. So we were surprised by that. What we weren’t surprised by was that Mildred Pierce is good. It’s based on a James M. Cain novel, is directed by Michael Curtiz, and is headlined by Joan Crawford. These were top talents in writing, directing, and acting, which means the acclaim associated with the movie is deserved.

While Mildred Pierce is a mystery thriller it’s also a family drama revolving around a twice-married woman’s dysfunctional relationship with her gold-digging elder daughter, whose desperation to escape her working class roots leads her to make some very bad decisions. Her mother, trying to make her daughter happy, makes even worse decisions. The movie isn’t perfect—for one, the daughter’s feverish obsession with money seems extreme considering family financial circumstances continuously improve; and as in many movies of the period, the only black character is used as cringingly unkind comic relief. But those blemishes aside, this one is enjoyable, even if the central mystery isn’t really much of a mystery. Solange ein herz schlaegt, aka Mildred Pierce opened in West Germany today in 1950.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1937—Carothers Patents Nylon

Wallace H. Carothers, an American chemist, inventor and the leader of organic chemistry at DuPont Corporation, receives a patent for a silk substitute fabric called nylon. Carothers was a depressive who for years carried a cyanide capsule on a watch chain in case he wanted to commit suicide, but his genius helped produce other polymers such as neoprene and polyester. He eventually did take cyanide—not in pill form, but dissolved in lemon juice—resulting in his death in late 1937.

1933—Franklin Roosevelt Survives Assassination Attempt

In Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara attempts to shoot President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but is restrained by a crowd and, in the course of firing five wild shots, hits five people, including Chicago, Illinois Mayor Anton J. Cermak, who dies of his wounds three weeks later. Zangara is quickly tried and sentenced to eighty years in jail for attempted murder, but is later convicted of murder when Cermak dies. Zangara is sentenced to death and executed in Florida’s electric chair.

1929—Seven Men Shot Dead in Chicago

Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s South Side gang, are machine gunned to death in Chicago, Illinois, in an event that would become known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Because two of the shooters were dressed as police officers, it was initially thought that police might have been responsible, but an investigation soon proved the killings were gang related. The slaughter exceeded anything yet seen in the United States at that time.

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.
Rare Argentinian cover art for The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

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