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.
