Ann Blyth, the Evil Daughter in ‘Mildred Pierce,’ Dies at
98
The Oscar-nominated actress also starred in 'The Helen
Morgan Story' and sang in such films as 'The Great Caruso' and 'Kismet.'
The Hollywood Reporter
By Mike Barnes
June 25, 2026
Ann Blyth, the petite actress and singer who earned an
Oscar nomination for portraying Joan Crawford’s demon daughter, Veda, in the
classic 1945 melodrama Mildred Pierce, has died. She was 98.
Blyth died Wednesday of natural causes, KABC’s George
Pennacchio reported.
An operatic soprano, Blyth introduced the classic song
“The Loveliest Night of the Year” 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’s
Kismet (1955).
Blyth also portrayed Burt Lancaster’s 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).
After she departed MGM and hooked on with Warner Bros.,
she starred in two 1957 biopics: Sidney Sheldon’s The Buster Keaton Story, also
starring her former teenage dancing partner, Donald O’Connor, and The Helen
Morgan Story (1957), in which she played the alcoholic 1930s torch singer
opposite Paul Newman.
On 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.
“I 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,” she told THR’s Scott Feinberg in 2013. “People just
didn’t do that, not people of her stature.”
Crawford’s 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.
Blythe excelled as the beautiful brat who will do
anything — even commit murder — for money.
“This Blyth child is exquisite in her understanding of
one of the most difficult roles ever written,” The Hollywood Reporter wrote in
its review. “Only 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.”
Five days after wrapping Mildred Pierce, Blyth broke her
back in a sledding mishap near Lake Arrowhead, California.
“One 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,” she wrote in a 1954 storyheadlined “My Career Took a Toboggan
Ride.” “I didn’t cry out. The feeling was too big for that.”
The 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.
In 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 and Ding Dongs.
Anne 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.
Blyth sang and recited poetry on radio shows starting at
age 6 and performed with the San Carlos Opera Company. In the principal’s
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’ daughter in a 1941-42
production, turning 13 during the run.
After 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.
In 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’Connor).
Michael Curtiz’s 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.
Blyth also appeared in such films as Killer McCoy (1947),
Another Part of the Forest (1948), Top O’ the Morning (1949), Once More, My
Darling (1949), The Golden Horde (1951), I’ll Never Forget You (1951), One
Minute to Zero (1952), The World in His Arms (1952), All the Brothers Were
Valiant (1953), The King’s Thief (1955) and Slander (1957).
Curtiz’s The Helen Morgan Story was her last feature —
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.
However, 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’t age), The Name of the Game, Quincy M.E.
and Murder, She Wrote.
In 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.
BLYTH, Ann (Ann Marie Blyth)
Born: 8/16/1928, Mount Kisco, New York, U.S.A.
Died: 6/24/2026,
Ann Blyth’s westerns – actress:
Red Canyon – 1949 (Lucy Bostel)
Rose Marie – 1954 (Rose Marie Lemaitre)
Wagon Train (TV) – 1959-1963 (Clementine Jones, Eve
Newhope, Nancy Winters Jenny, Phoebe Tannen, Martha Barham)
